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Tab target is just sad
Foni
Member, Alpha One
It looked similar to the old ranger video I saw years ago. People play WoW for its nostalgia not for its combat and ashes will not have any nostalgia to benefit from.
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Ashes' selling point is not generally its combat, many people just thought it was.
I wonder if that's frustrating to Steven, in the end... All that Node System work, and people fixated on 'Hybrid Combat' as if we haven't had that for years in many games.
To be fair, we haven't really seen or heard anything Node related since the Alpha really. We still haven't seen a walkthrough of a City or Metropolis level node and I assume the Village and lower levels have had significant development since we last saw them.
I still can't wrap my head around how they are going to pull it off to be perfectly honest. 6 different stages of Node development with 9 different potential racial outcomes for each of the stages. and we haven't even seen the full development of one...
Considering the equally as large contingent of players hating on action combat (à la New World) for just being a poor man's FPS game, I think you argument cancels out into yet another subjective opinion you're trying to peddle as a fact or gospel.
Players will play this game and test it and we'll see what the feedback is. If this worked in other games, not sure why it wouldn't in AoC.
If one feels substantially disadvantageous during Alpha 2, course will be corrected. Or we can change it to purely action based/FPS style and we can then await people's inevitable whining once they can't hit shit in PvP conflicts due to mobility (like the fucking teleport dash we've seen a hundred times) and the number of players in the way.
To be honest, i don't even understand the amount of people who seems they came here because of the action combat design (or the hybrid) because this is, for me, out of the major point... the least sold.
Node, totally open PvP (with the corruption system) nearly no instance, restricted fast travel (which lead to the family teleport debates)
also, i am probably biased, i love tab targetting, i love action... i love both.
What is the problem is the global design, the gameplay has to be fluid, feels good while controller / keyboard and mouse in hand.
I doubt people saying "why tab ? action is so better" (or the opposite...) only like one kind of gameplay...
And this op make me feel there is mainly some easy thought : tab is for old MMORPG, but is bad.
This is what i saw for people defending the action turn of Final Fantasy Games... until 10 it was various way to do turn base, but "old, slow" ... then came Bravely Default... which is totally a Final Fantasy game which has another name.
Because most (all?) current MMORPG are action system doesnt mean this is the only way to design it...
And to end, as was said here : ashes tries not to make a comeback of the tabtargetting... but try to do the hybrid : have both kind in the game, in the hope to fit more people tastes...
Not everyone enjoys action combat so deal with it.
Cry us a river elsewhere.
The angle to look at WoW (classic) specifically is that the game's combat is still good despite being Tab target. Meaning what makes combat good or bad is not mostly about the system being used but other factors.
That said, I don't have any major issues with what we saw. Not a huge fan of the homing arrows, but there is an active dodge mechanic along with blocking and LoS interruption, so it's not like Rangers will just auto-hit every shot. I'll have to wait and see more of the combat system before passing judgment on it.
If done right, tab target combat can be fun. If done poorly, tab target combat can be dogshit boring.
If done right, action combat can be fun. If done poorly, action combat can be a shitshow.
If Intrepid is able to make both options fun and viable, each one with its pros and cons, then there's nothing to whine about. People who complain about either combat styles are just butthurt because their preferred style isn't the only option available. If both combat styles are well done and you hate tab target, never use it. If both combat styles are well done and you hate action combat, never use it.
If either of the combat styles is dogshit or if one is extremely better than the other, then by all means, crate as many shitposts as you possibly can. Sadly you can't know that before playing the game.
Though I aree, I think the more reasonable people aren't necessarily complaining about one or the other, but rather on whether one is inherently better than the other.
If one is vastly superior, it renders the other unnecessary or worse: it will make your PvX team feel like you're throwing for not picking the better option.
I asked a few questions on my feedback post (in the intended thread):
Basically it comes down to this: does an arrow loosed from a tab targeting press have the same odds of missing as one loosed from action camera?
If a target is outside of my bow's range, can switching to action camera and aiming higher, allow the arrow to fly further than it could in tab target?
How far off of the target can my reticle be and still have my arrow hit the target? Does this change if I have a hard-lock or not?
Drinking refreshing snowflakes tears
0dbea148-8cb8-4711-ba90-eb0864e93b5f
WoW had one of the best tab targeting systems out there. Games like ESO and GW2 have tried to have a mish-mash between tab targeting and action combat and failed, feeling a lot more floaty and unimpactful.
On the other hand, a game like black desert online or blade&soul that did action combat fairly well which was really fun but also became a chore to play a lot quicker because of how much combo spamming you had to do just to commit to the every day grind and farm. It's very taxing after a while. WoW you can sort of go hard or chill out and still get by fairly well unless you're trying to be more hardcore for any PVP/PVE instance.
Just because it's an old system, does not make it terrible. I also hate my character being locked to a reticule as it was in ESO or TERA.
Noone likes getting 1 shot headshot by players over and over.
0dbea148-8cb8-4711-ba90-eb0864e93b5f
It's still tab targeting, really. People act like the action camera is action combat.
Edit: The reticle camera mode is not tab target, it's softlock aiming. Still not the action combat how people describe it though. Personally I like the direction Ashes is going with the hybrid combat.
It's really not though. I think it is great from a gameplay POV to have the ability to switch over between Tab targeting and a type of action combat. I think the feel of gameplay and how it will cater to those different playstyles is going above and beyond to cater to players IMO. Both the Tab and Action elements looked smooth and responsive.
I do think that having a small crit spot on creatures that can only be hit through Action combat would elevate a lot of the moaning from the FPS crowd (Who I don't think will stick around regardless as there will always be better full FPS games for that type of gameplay)
I also think it will be important to try and integrate Action combat abilities in others ways. Hitting switches and levers in dungeons, aiming at certain targets through quests. From the limited amount we have see, won't all siege weapons also be action combat?
It is tab targeting, but with an action camera - since it's not actually aiming, it has a softlock.
Edit: The reticle camera mode is not tab target, the softlock aiming is indeed a type of action combat. Personally I like the direction Ashes is going with the hybrid combat.
If that is what he said, I assume that he meant in the area that the arrow is going. Just like you don't have to precisely aim at the target for the arrow to hit. And if not, I don't see that happening often, since you'll be aiming somewhat near someone if your intention is to hit that person - and if that is the case, the lock will make your arrow hit the target anyway.
But I'm not hating on the direction they're going, just saying it's not really action combat.
Was impressed when i heard that, will add more complexity to fights if it works well like that and help balance out the ranger class while involving more strategy in wars / fights.
Now there's a chance Steven misspoke, but that'd be one hell of a misspeak so I don't think he did. And if arrows are projectile I'd hope/assume that magic missiles are too. At which point you have yourself an action range combat.
I'd assume that if you aim at a crowd of people the soft lock will in fact just make your attacks hit one target, but if you're on top of a wall during a siege with a group of archers and yall are just unloading onto the ground before the gates, anyone who steps into that line of fire should be hit with those arrows even though they were loosened w/o a lock on. To me that sounds like as much of an action combat mechanic as anything can be.
Then you have BDO (which is respectively successful) and new world. Respect New World, it's now got its concurrent player base rocking around 45k players lets see if it can grow on that - and I don't know if there are reliable stats on BDO's playerbase but lets just assume it's doing okay. I still think that the current audience of actively-action-playing players are smaller than tab.
It's not to say that there aren't action players waiting for a good action MMO to come out, but you'd be pulling figures out of thin air to assume it outweighs the tab players.
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if you hopped into any of these tab games i.e. WoW and jumped into the arena, you would have to put in a lot of work to challenge for any worthy accolades - akin to any action game as well. Tab doesn't have the requirement for mechanical aim, but if you watch professional WoW players and track their APM, it's no afk simulator by any means.
Everyone's entitled to their own taste - but intrepid has sold hybrid and so I am dead curious what they can do to have them coexist, if they will get action closer to what the action crowd want, then what I am more interested in how they will balance the two - the true challenge.