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To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
You said you prefer action combat healing, and I was wondering what game did it so well as to make that your preference?
Here's the problem with the way you approach this based on what I've seen in other threads and rechecked from the last conversation.
If a game has Action Healing, even if it could be an MMO, it probably isn't. The reason is often almost exactly where we are right now. It's hard to get certain types of player to want 'Action Healing'. So if I name a MOBA, which I consider to have combat equivalent to many MMOs, I would expect the response to be 'MMOs only'. If I name an 'FPS', same issue. If I name an MMO in which the FEEL is close to Action but Tab Target or Softlock Target is valid, then I'd have to prove/justify that I would have done it without that or enjoyed it more, and I have no way to prove it.
Otherwise what use is it? I could go 'I liked healing in WildStar', it doesn't gain either of us anything unless I can 'prove' that I enjoy Wildstar's healing specifically for the Action elements. Is anything less 'MMO' than WildStar even 'acceptable'? Can either of us gain anything from the interaction?
Insulting does not make your argument. What is the logic behind wanting tab target for heals?
Where is the skills?
Why would a healer play a healer in an action combat game and degrade her skills over time because it's not training her aiming.
If you think healing can work like overwatch in a mmorpg you are really confused on the game you are playing.
If you are going to talk about healing and are serious, say an idea based on a actual design you can think of. Don't use overwatch as an example... Raiding will have 40 members, there are going to be large scale fights in the game. Overwatch is designed completely differently...
This guy I think does a good job explaining differences between the two...I've linked this elsewhere.
I'd have to reiterate what's mentioned in this video, and imply that skill, in tab target, revolves around planning and utilization of cooldowns, focusing more on knowledge of the game.
So how important is it, really, to have everything aimed? And does the skill required in moving a mouse around IRL really matter?
What has more to do with the actual game? Aiming seems to only be related to you as a person IRL, whereas knowledge is part of the game, regardless of whether aiming is present.
That depends on the game, hence my other comment in the other thread.
If things are moving, 'how to aim' is also knowledge, and it is a type that some people feel better with, prefer, and consider important for balance.
The skills are different but mostly equal. The person being addressed just doesn't consider Tab to take skill so we get into this side of it. But one can enjoy the aiming and the moving and the predicting that Action Healing provides, and then want a benefit to that (which doesn't have to be related to how much healing you output, it could just be a benefit to the aiming and moving and predicting so you have even more fun).
Issue with this is knowledge applies to both tab and action it is not tab exclusive. I don't view the knowledge part as skill. Skill is reaction, tracking, aiming which is all much higher in action and much less so in tab.
QED. @DarkTides
It may be worth noting that from prior experiences, I for one (and some others) are not sure that Mag has ever played any Tab games at a level where the skill was required. With no ArcheAge to compare from, it's harder to see the point, for sure.
But @BlackBrony is right also. If I am sitting back playing heal whack-a-mole, even if it is made quite hard (and it usually is not, which makes me pass on a LOT of games), I am not using the same skills or having the same experience as others in an Action game. I shouldn't have to play DPS in order to have the same experience as others and have it matter.
I've already made it clear I've been playing mmorpgs since EQ and am PvP focused. Skill and knowledge are two different things, there never has been a point where it was hard to land a skill in tab target that is physically impossible. Knowledge, builds, class and experience.
Unless you are trying to say archage is the only TAB mmorpg to reference to be good at and even then i had no issue landing skills on anyone for the very short time I played that game. Warborn having a mode akin to action combat / hybrid when they transform with some of their skills.
So if a point brought up archage is the only tab target mmorpg that is considered skill or has the highest skill we could always look exactly why that it, and if it is because of slight hybrid than that only further pushes the point on skill being related to action as it should.
As you know I have no intention of arguing with you directly or making comments about your skill exactly. I'm just rebutting your claims about the skill-lessness. I am aware that the skills required for Tab games are not skills you value.
I believe you can also agree that you don't think PvE in Tab games can require more skill than Action games? Is it fair to say that based on everything we've discussed in the past? But right now we're talking about Healing, and the skill involved. So I'll ask you this.
Is Tab Target Healing skilled or not?
While you may say "I am talking about skill in an MMO, not in a job", I would counter with "skill is skill, if you dont consider knowledge a skill, that applies to all aituations".
Basically, your definition of "skill" is demonstrably incorrect, from an objective perspective.
Tab healing and tab combat I view as the same. Though healing depending on the content you might have more to focus on keeping the team alive as a whole, and challenges that come with that. Where Dps are less focused on the whole team and more focused on their targets or the task they need to do.
So I'm not sure what your point is, in that case.
If Tab healing requires much less skill because Tab Combat requires less skill, why should we distinguish one from the other? Shouldn't Action Healing be the same as Action Ranger stuff?
This has 0 relation to what I'm talking about, as usual you are trying to be manipulative to try to misrepresent words that are not in relation to the content at hand we are talking about. You aren't someone I'd ever trust you show 0 respect and are just annoying.
Tab you have skills, action you have skill and you need to have reaction, tracking, aiming. By default an action player has more to deal with than you as a tab player.
Rogues always tried to move behind your back, because some of their abilities only worked there, so the rogues would be constantly repositioning themselves.
If you ever only concentrated on your ability bar, you'd most likely die within seconds of doing so w/o doing any real damage to the rogue, because you would've lost his target and would stop casting abilities.
And that's if you were fighting him 1v1. If it was a bigger fight and you, say, were trying to kill the enemy healer, the rogue could change your target and your mana would be wasted on someone else instead. Tanks could agro your target onto them too and even had magic reflect buffs so you might've killed yourself if you weren't paying attention. Both of those abilities could be done at a range so it's not like you could just pay attention to anyone who was directly beside you.
In other words, tab targeting can require the same type of skills as the action one, it just has to be designed properly and with pvp in mind. Oh, also, in action combat you'd still be able to let out your abilities, so you'd just have to shift the camera a bit and you'd probably still hit the enemy with your aoes, while in tab you'd either be doing literally nothing or you'd be wasting mana on a target that you didn't want to hit. So imo it required even more skill than action combat
As far as the selecting target thing goes, once you select even with "retarget" you are good you do not need to continue to track them to hit them, while worrying about other things happening on the battlefield behind you and reacting to them with less visual notice.
Selecting a target just is not the same as having to continuously do that. Unsure what you mean on the aoe part if you have the target selected it would be selected and hit your target. Saying it is aoe for action you still need to land it and the person has to not dodge it be it with a skill to stop damage or physically moving to dodge it.
Back damage exist in action mmorpgs as well which can influence some or a greater amount of your skills and your damage. Even more so if you are trying to get around someone blocking in front of you.
I've never heard of forced targeting change even if you had selected someone else that sounds a bit annoying. There should be a indicator you are selecting someone else that you should easily be able to tell with the hp bar changing to a different value and a name. Which doesn't compare to action to me still because technically you can always be de-target in action do to movement. If you were tracking them the whole time in tab you should be fine then (which would be a better thing, but I'm guessing not something you are always expecting and having to do)
Besides target abilities in action you have access to all abilities, meaning as far as those you can't say action doesn't have abilities be it reflection or taunt ones they could do that forces you to look at them (akin to smite).
I don't think anyone would accept the type of Tab Targeting you seem to be worried about, though, and Ranger is exactly the reason.
Ranger should never be able to shoot BEHIND them, particularly in a game where forward walkspeed and back walkspeed are not equal. That's just ridiculous. All the Tab Target games I play have a cone in front of you where if your Tab Target is not in it, your abilities just don't fire at all.
Spells don't work like that in all of those games, but spells in those games have casting time where the caster can't move at all, so it isn't the same. A standard 'projectile' spell shouldn't have a huge casting time and therefore also probably shouldn't be able to hit a Target out of view.
Ashes is an immediate no-go for a lot of people if somehow Ranger shots hit outside of a 75-90 degree cone in front of them, so keeping things 'on target' is always important, equivalent to soft lock for melee anyway.
L2's forced detarget/retarget requires you to pay attention to your entire screen and not just your rotations. It needs you to react as soon as your targeting changes in any way. It needs you to track your preferred target so that you can immediately retarget them (L2 pvp videos show that everyone is always moving). And your aiming must be more precise, because the amount of pixels an enemy character takes up on your screen in L2 is way lower than bdo's or even NW's amount.
And considering how much your target has moved, you might have to first move your camera, then find their char on the screen, then click on them and only then can you attack them again. While in action you do all of that with literally one move of the mouse.
I'd say that NW's headshoting comes close to L2's detargeting interactions, mainly because you also have to track just a few pixels on your screen in order to attack in the best way possible.
Here's the abilities I'm talking about
I believed you on the skills just not something i have experienced before except for invis classes.
I'm definitely gonna be asking for as much targeting gameplay as possible in my feedback.
I can agree if it is a common thing to get de-targeted based on the amount of times there he be a lot more focus needed and a measure of those skill elements at a high rate than other tab mmorpgs.
So (and I really hope you can see that I'm not just trying to make you look bad by saying this), if you haven't really ever experienced detargeting in Tab games, maybe you just haven't played any of what you would consider the Good Tab games?
Maybe just assume in this sort of conversation, all the people who prefer Tab have played those games, so they don't understand why you keep saying that Tab doesn't require skill?
What Major mmorpgs have de-targeting where its a common thing besides invisibility.
None come to my mind nor would I think there would be a issue in many to begin with. The only reason for L2 where it would be a issue is large scale fights. Where other mmorpgs don't have that you can retarget in a second as you are not dealing with massive wars or massive fights.
Oof you make me wanna give up...
NiKr has specifically detailed how detargeting affected L2 PvP, by personal experience, before.
I don't know what you even consider 'Major MMOs', Lineage ain't THAT niche.
Just gimme a list of what you call 'Major MMOs' then...
Are you trying to say that you only play Major MMOs?
What I consider main is major mmorpgs and western ones that had a decent audience.
L2 would be among them they had enough players in that game and i remember advertising for it.
If it is a mmo no one has ever heard of and has a tiny audience I can't say that is a major representation of tab target mmorpgs that people play and gain experience from. I have played some asians one and flyff and don't consider those to be major ones (not that i played those ones long)
Point of this is the majority of peoples experience is with other games then you can't really say de-target is the norm for expectations in relation to skill with tar target games. So either i missed some, or didn't think much of it if there was a point where I was de-targeted do to the ease it was to target someone anyway in pvp.
Much larger scale pvp was more so shadowbane for me which can be a bit more difficult then being really easily to select your target and move with the war sizes and the chunkiness of the game.
That would be the only one where it would actually matter imo based on the large fights I'm sure were in it. But I'm open to the possibility of I having missed mmorpgs that had it.
All I'm asking is that you recognize that the people who are here, interested in this specific, Hybrid Combat MMO, might not be 'the majority of people' whose main experience is 'Major MMOs'.
Ashes is conceptually born from ArcheAge, Lineage, EQ2 and MAYBE FF11 (not sure, Jeff didn't mention it much).
So the forum is possibly a lot of Lineage, AA, EQ2 and FFXI players, right?
I don't really think we have a lot of people here with very positive perceptions of WoW, for example.
Well, whatever. I just wish people could SAY 'Tab Target has aiming/targeting skills' and you not immediately assume they are a 'Lower Skill WoW player'. It derails a lot of threads. At least this one, it was kinda the point.
At 0:30 the mage uses an aoe detargeting skill and the dagger not only gets his cast interrupted, but also takes a whole 2 seconds to catch back up and start fighting the mage again.
At 2:28 you can see a bard using the tank's agro skill to retarget the dagger to him to try and help another support to run away.
If the RPS balance in mages case or the gear difference (the party is in t3 while dagger is in t5 gear and t6 weap) in the second one were just a bit closer, the dagger could've lost. There's also the overall skill difference too, cause I'm pretty sure that my friends and I managed to fight off these kinds of dudes with those kinds of parties before, while this group was either afk running or just had no coordination. Though the video does cut out, so who knows mb the dagger lost.
The mage coulda used more slows to try and kite the dagger (though still low rate of success in that situation), while the party should've just been more coordinated. They had a strong dps warrior, a dagger with a detargeter to mess up the attacker at least somewhat and two bards with good buffs, one of which had an agro which would've definitely helped.
And here's a video of a top player of his class (a hero) on the server having a detargeting ability literally as his first one on the bar. And you can see that he uses it quite often (sometimes using another one, 11 on the second line) and he stops casts with it and just tries to disorientate people with it (successfully too).
And the fight at 6:37 is the biggest example of what 2 daggers can do when it comes to detargeting.
In other words, detargeting works great both in small scale and in huge scale pvp.
It has plenty of "relation" to what you are talking about.
You seem to be conflating "skill" with "physical skill".
The examples I gave (engineer and factory worker) were two examples where your seeming conflation falls through.
We could also just talk about chess. Based on your definition of "skill", becoming a chess grandmaster is not something that requires skill.
What I am attempting to explain to you is that there are skills of the body, and there are skills of the mind.
Action combat absolutely takes more "skills of the body" than tab target. There is more precision aiming needed, without a doubt. This isnt to say there isnt some aiming needed in tab target - the above conversation is an example of it, but so too is the need to aim an AoE (often requiring leading a target and predicting an appropriate location).
All said though, action combat absolutely uses more of this type of skill than tab target games.
However, it is the other type of skill that tab target uses more of than action. Mind based skills (often referred to as "thinking").
While some games dont have a lot of this involved (WoW), this is an outlier rather than a rule. Most tab target games see you needing to use these "mind skills" more often than any other game genre requires it, arguably more than chess does, in some situations - though I cant speak about chess at grandmaster level. Heading on down to any amateur chess club though, you will use less "mind skill" to beat everyone there than you would use in an equal amount of time spent in top end tab target gameplay.
To be perfectly fair, in all of the above, I am working on the assumption you understand tab target games (other than WoW) enough to know how much thought goes in to top end combat, and how you cant just repeat the same rotation over and over again in most games.
It may well be that you do consider "mind skills" to be a thing, and just dont realize how much of a part they play in top end tab target games. I may indeed have it all around the wrong way here, I'm fully aware of this.
However, I'm making the assumption that you are indeed aware of the thought needed in the above.