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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
And this is fine. You just aren't having the same discussion in the first place.
There are definitely Action Combat players who definitely only care about the Free Aim and Free Movement and don't specifically desire 'mechanics that become possible and emergent from that system'.
I will be disappointed if this is what Ashes is, but not much (I will worry WAY more about the balance).
I agree with you though, again.
"5 Layered Mechanics" vs "3 Layered Mechanics + 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging" is fine.
There's one problem here, which I would NEED you to play Monster Hunter to 'get' fully maybe.
It's not 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging. It's 'however many slots it takes to track everyone else's moving and whether or not their abilities hit'.
Which increases exponentially as you add more players. However if things are as simple as 'hit dodge button, achieve dodge' even in Action mode, then it's fine.
Tracking players comes to communication and if you need to set positions for players to be around at certain parts of the encounter that is a thing as well. There might be more planning going into it and a lot more communication needed based on whatever the encounter is that needs you to look for a certain player.
Ie if there is a mech where 4 color orbs spawn and all players get a random buff 1 allows for dps, one needs you to stop attacking or you die, one has you being mobile or you die , and some other random effect and you need to be at the player. You simply can have a pre-set callout for when that mech starts so people know where they need to go. There is nothing wrong stopping dps for a second if you need to glance around and do what you need to do. Balance should account for those aspects.
Again, I agree, but again, we are not having the same conversation.
You cannot have a preset callout in the games I play because so much other stuff would have been happening already, that adapting to that mechanic would never be a situation of 'ok guys here's our pre-set response'.
I agree that for many encounters, being able to have such a pre-set response would be a good thing for the game. However for top level content, I would expect and hope that anyone who asks 'ok so what do I do when $Mechanic' happens gets one of the following responses depending on the 'toxicity' of their group.
1. Laughter from all involved at the mere notion that there could be a single response.
2. A full halt called to the raid planning to explain the 17 different situations.
3. A situation where they are given a preset, and everyone else is assigned extra work to deal with the fact that the newbie is learning the mechanics and they have to be taken care of for a bit.
To me though the idea of a 'preset response' to any mechanic for a top end encounter is so laughable as to be BDO tier.
As for why so much dodging or why the boss gotta be different or why hit particular parts - imo, all those things represent what action combat provides that is different from tab. You can hit different parts of a mob because you have precision aiming in action. You can do precise well-timed dodges in action. And you can track/predict location/movement of a small boss in action, while in tab you're just targeting it.
So my question is, if you're not utilizing the specific features of your combat system in your best quality top lvl content - why da fuck are you using that particular system? There's a limit on how much stuff can be verbally said in a timely matter in a group of 40 people, w/o everyone shouting over everyone else. And, again my personal preference, you can't split your whole raid into 5 8-men voice rooms because the raid should require pure synergistic work from all 40 people. And in order to do that w/o everyone yelling at everyone and making calls - you need to have each player aware of their surroundings as much as possible. And tab camera/system allows that, while action restricts it.
Obviously you can just have bosses/raids that don't require that level of involvement, and Ashes should obviously have those bosses too, but when talking about top lvl content - I expect it to be on the level of complexity that I've described. And I'd assume Noaani would have an even higher expectation from it.
If you are doing a whole raid with your guild they should know you haven't done it as you are a guild. Or if you are new to the guild and they are talking crap 100% would leave the guild if they are trying to be toxic on purpose.
One of my reasons for this whole action can't do high end raid content is tab people that believe that will have that mentality "Why are you using that skill,. swap your shit or get kicked out only tab is good"
End of the day the content should be hard where you should look at a guide or you as a guild need to figure out and communicate together. Its the top end content and won't be a dungeon you just jump in and are fine doing some dps and doing some mechanics. Finding a good guild is important that meshes well with you and aren't full of toxic people. My guild has great people, we are competitive not anti toxic with each other since we are friends and all. For me personally the only thing i want to do is help my guildies and there are plenty of people like that out there. So no on should have to deal with a toxic group and stay even more so if they are over elitist, ill show up and pk them xD
I'm sorry, I mean no disrespect when I say that I no longer follow what you are talking about, and since I don't think we have been talking about the same things for multiple posts now, I think my involvement here is no longer useful to you.
And then you scale this up to the size of a full raid and the question from some dude in the middle of the raid of "what do I do here" would definitely get a few laughs from the regulars. Because the chances are, if someone's gotta ask that in that kind of raid - you've wiped already.
And in all the cases of all the players knowing what needs to be done in certain moments, we come back to the issue of "not everything in the raid can be called out, so you need to know your own amount of info to properly react to your surroundings". And in action games that amount is lower than in tab games, which directly influences the design of the encounter itself.
I fully understand but when I here action combat can't do raid content or do it well so you will use tab. My reply is to that type of content.
You have a mis conception of action combat in mmorpgs and my statement so hopefully we can make it clear. Lets go to the very root, what is the difference between action and tab? Tab you lock on, action you can freely attack without a target. The reason why people prefer action is because the sense of control of their character with it also being more of a fluid and immersive experience.
why da fuck are you using that particular system?
Action combat simply opens up more doors available for types of variation in content do to the system not being bound by the limitations of tab target. high levels of mobility, free aim, hitting certain parts of a body, etc are all things that can open up to different levels of difficulty and experiences. Everything is to further enhance that feel of control you have over your character.
At its core you have the base of your action combat that people like and enjoy giving you more access to design choices for how you want to design your gameplay. As I've said before you have your base level of tools that players have access to and based on the difficulty of your designs you have the option of adding more types of design decisions that rely on action combat and can scale the difficulty in tandem with the mechanics with a high difficulty raid.
Communication isn't that hard with a 40 man raid, but again it depends on the people and how you mesh well together. If you know the raid, people are balanced and respectful its not a hard task to call out what is needed. The raid isn't going to be designed to be chaotic and make 0 sense, there is going to be a flow to it and that doesn't mean all 40 people are talking at the same time.
When I did my node wars in new world we had 50+ people in chat, everyone had free mics and could say what they wanted for call outs in that kind of chaotic situation where you are fighting a war with 6 different groups split up between the 50. And we did completely fine, its 100% doable in a large pve raid. The level of difficulty should require that kind of communication
Again remember convo stems from Don't use action combat only tab can do it mentality....
Why not?
This is the single core question that you need to think about for us to have this conversation.
Why isn't it just going to be just 'chaotic random stuff happening'?
PvP is often random stuff happening. Monster Hunter is random stuff happening. Elite Dangerous is random stuff happening. And FFXI and EQ2, my 'Tab Target MMO' and Noaani's 'Tab Target MMO' are largely 'random stuff happening'.
So what we're telling you is 'top end raids' in SOME games are 'random stuff happening' and 'raids that are random stuff happening' get kind of insane in Action Combat.
I feel there is some exaggerations with tab and tracking, this is why i need example but no one will give them and its not a good sign if you can't provide a single shred of evidence.
In what tab target mmorpg encounter are you as a single player tracking 6-7 at the same time as you are dealing dmg to the boss? What are the reasons for each player needing to track this 6-7 things at the same time? What are these 6-7 things that you are tracking?
I'm not explaining it in detail immediately, but I am glad to if you are seriously asking.
EDIT: To be clear, the complexity of that encounter is NOT VISIBLE from just the page. It is also a relatively lower requirement encounter for the game, midlevel at best I'd say. I chose the thing that will give me EXACTLY 6 things that almost EVERYONE and every class in the group will be tracking.
Each player may track a slightly different 6 things, but this is the one that comes to mind where 'everyone must track about 6 things'.
Because designers don't make it like that there is always is some logic behind it.
You are wrong. See above link. I can just say that this time. Sorry. You're wrong. Period.
is this the right thing?
Please note that if you intend to ASSERT things based on what you see there, as someone who has NOT fought it, to someone who HAS fought it, I'm not continuing the conversation. Do me at least the courtesy of not ASSERTING things you don't understand and forcing me to spend 18 posts clarifying your misconceptions, cause I ain't doing it today.
EDIT: Verified from date and watching of video that this is in fact 'representative of the thing I am talking about' level Jormy.
Sorry but its too late unless you are saying this information is wrong, Looks like he has a pattern https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Jormungand
See you just did it again. You don't know how this game works at all. But I'll humor you this time. Tell me Jormy's pattern from that page.
Even if you tried to make each phase random of some new kind of boss he still has attack patterns and things it does that a player will figure out and know what to expect. Like if a boss always seems to be attacking a random person but really its the person furthest back in the room and eventually you figure it out and know what to do.
Are you talking about a boss casting something and it has a random effect on you and our party so you aren't expecting it? but eventually you would know the effects on what to do and manage overtime. Chaotic is more the first run when you don't know any of the mechanics that would be the closest thing tbh..
Does it use sporadically uses Horrid Roar three times in succession from 25% health until death?
And this is why I separated the boss encounters the way that I did. And why I hope that Intrepid can find a way to combine both of those sides into a single encounter and then make several different encounter with that combination. And I was a guild leader of roughly 120 people during a siege, so I know how it is to control a crowd of big sizes during sieges. It's way easier than controlling 40 people during a super hardcore pve encounter cause there's more things to look out for. In pvp you're just looking at your enemy and maybe dodge some attacks while trying to achieve some bigger goal. In top lvl pve, from what I understand, you have a very specific role that can have several sub-roles that might need to synergize with people with other roles - all while tracking several mechanics. I mean, I think the main point was "tab can do things that action can't and vice versa". Noaani was basing his take on the fact that action games haven't even tried to put out a pve encounter that's as difficult and complex as smth from EQ2. And it seems that Azherae agrees with that take, and from what I've seen Azherae has played more action mmos than Noaani (at the very least BDO).
But the take itself could be dismissed somewhat just because we should be thinking in terms of "what the best hybrid encounter we can come up with". I think we've established enough proof for either side supporting their good qualities, so now we gotta figure out how to merge those in such a way that doesn't just tell players to pick a single side.
Alternatively we can just wait till Intrepid releases a super complex raid and then criticize it
So you are disengaging on this point? I am glad to.
The fact remains that Jormungand has no pattern that you can just react to. You get some control, but the individual actions of the Dragon are mostly chaos. And that fact does not care how you feel about it nor whether or not you believe it.
However because I am a toxic petty person I offer to everyone on this forum who needs to make this argument the ability to just 'Summon the Ice Dragon'.
If you need to make the point, mention Jormungand and call me.
For the short form on that answer because tab is boring and action is more fun do to having control of your character. So I'd juxtapose that with why have tab combat when you can have something more intuitive and fun like action combat. Again though that is not the point, the point was a comment saying action combat can't do what tab target can do. . If you are saying its the same thena ction combat can do what tab target can do.
~ still reading the rest
Why not have action for other aspects of the game since the game is not just large scale boss fights. I think this is what the argument boils down to. At the very least, you can make an action fight play the exact same as a tab fight.
Why does the lack of a pattern matter?
I was not saying it would be impossible in an Action System. I was only offering what Mag asked for.
I personally believe that you must get up to 10-11 things to mentally track at once before I PERSONALLY start to drop things in Action Combat, but I am aware that for others it is lower. That fact is not relevant because even if I am consistently able to do what others cannot, it would just imply that I was in the 10% or so of players Ashes expected to be able to compete in Raid content.
I believe that in an Action Combat system, 50% of 16-person groups could defeat a slightly toned down Jormungand. If you are willing to engage in good faith (imo you sometimes are, sometimes not, or sometimes you don't keep the same conversation target in mind that your 'opponent' does), I will explain this fight in more detail and why it may be difficult for some.
If your wish is to continue believing that you are right, I will not. I also am not accepting your usual 'one liner encouragement to continue', though, so if you actually care, you might need to 'convince' me somehow. This is by no means a request.
Same goes for action. You can have directional or super precise attacks, while in tab there'd be no difference.
Both sides have things that the other side can't do, so hybrid should combine both of them and find the perfect middle ground.
And that's exactly what I'm saying. We'll have a hybrid game so we should be thinking about hybrid gameplay, while also providing both sides with their own style of combat sometimes.
Ideally Intrepid would have some peak action encounters, some peak tab ones and at the very top of complexity and difficulty it'd be hybrid, with both combat styles pushing players to the limit and requiring near-impossible amount of concentration and game knowledge/skill.
Its quite different from game to game and that depends on the mechanics in the pve encounter that people still refuse to say a word on. Pvp encounters a lot more chaotic and there for require more communication. If the pvp is a zerg fest where you are just throwing numbers at people it prob would be easier. But when you need to worry about defense groups, flex groups*, defense, enermy positions, countering enemy plans, keeping moral up and strong instructions for people to follow, mechanics and strats to use with siege and the items available to your team. Communication is key as you can't see everything on a while siege battlefield and a lot of people need to share constant information. Unlike a pve encounter where you know what is going to happen and its easier to translate and understand information nd have foresight on knowing what to do.
There was the one from nwo I linked but eq2 has done what eq2 is known for as that game has more of a focus on PvE content. With the focus its normal they should be creating the best kind of content for what they do. Comparing other mmos that are built more on greed then money isn't really proving any point besides simply action just hasn't done it. Mmo genre as a whole is stalling and actually dying same old, same old ideas, and nothing new or innovating from a content perspective. So its understanding of a lack in quality, but a lack in quality doesn't mean action based combat can not do that kind of content as good if not better.
That is why i tried to start the raid post and i hoped it would have got more energy and more ideas, find it interesting it wasn't as hot a topic. What if they don't have complex raids though and they are fun but only average or somewhat difficult they are having heavy focus on pvp with their systems and all so their resources are split. Hard or the less then 10% could simply because of gear more then anything we don't know.
This is why I keep asking for mechs and examples, I've done pve content. If had mechs where there are a bunch of orbs you need to all stop that spawn randomly around the area and if you don't you wipe at the boss. Technically that be tracking like 7 objects but its part of a mechanic and something a action player can do. People normally over exaggerate to prove their point.
Me playing both i know the weaknesses of both and instances where things are designed badly especially for bdo. And I don't hear many actual issues brought up, the closest i heard was that tank one, but that is hardly a issue. Have gear that naturally generates higher threat, aoe taunt or just give them a tingle target taunt and use tab for that.
Im not unrealistic but I hear more head cannon i think this so its true, over actual logical facts relating directly to gameplay with an example.
Ok, what data are you basing this off of?
If i don't come off as arguing in good faith then it's because i don't think what i'm arguing against is being made in good faith.
You have just randomly said that 50% of a 16 person group could do this fight but who are these 16 people and why 50%?
Are we to assume that the all 16 people could do it if the game is tab?
Are you claiming that the 50% who couldn't do it could never learn to do it?
Even if your scenario was true, is it proof that you can't do as much in an action system?
This data sounds made up to me, the scenario is oddly specific, and you claim the outcome is proof of your hypothesis.
Can you understand where i'm coming from?
Im sure how many abilities you want that will make you happy but eventually in tab get abilities feel kind of the same and you are just mashing your keyboard based on the pattern you need. Pretty sure in AOC you won't have like 50 abilities think i read somewhere they are trying to limit things
Action mmorpgs shouldn't be 4 buttons, in bdo it was like that but more elegant in how you used your skills and abilities and had plenty to use between. You had around like 20-40 skills easily.