Combat Discussion, Receiving DMG and Doing DMG

Gragis

Now I understand we are still in Alpha testing and this system or small tweaks may not even be made but plan to be made down the line. However after watching the Mage showcase I wanted to throw my opinion out there. (Great Showcase btw love the format way better)

While watching the showcase I noticed that it was really hard to tell that the Dev was even taking damage. Now for old school players this might be normal and they don't mind having to pay attention to the small health bar in the top left. But I personally think if you want to have a lot of immersion and for the user to feel like they are getting hit there are a few ways to do this. This is my personal opinion as the best comparison I can make is New Worlds combat. Ill be it not the best combat system due to desync and such but getting hit and hitting people in New World feels like second nature. After some investigation I saw that the reason for that is listed below,

• There are hit markers,
• Whenever a player gets hit there is a subtle red tint on the top right of the screen
• The sound when getting hit feels impactful and noticeable.
• The health bar actually gets larger and appears in the bottom middle of the screen.

Now I think that some of these can be added to Ashes easily and make the combat look/feel a lot better. I personally do not see any of these as a negative impact on the game. Now I will preface again because reading is hard for some users. I understand this is in alpha testing and this just may not be the priority for the team yet. I am just throwing this out there because I do not want to see the game turn into "Stare at my health bar 90% of the fight while pressing rotations" I believe Steven and the Dev Team will always make the right call and want the game to feel interactive. So I just wanted to throw my opinion out there.

Here's my question for you though, what do you think would make the combat feel better? and don't just say action combat or tab combat. Give me the little things. I'd love to hear from everyone

Songcaller

Well, I gave a lot of ui feedback with regards to the health location. Takes a while to see revamps.

I do like the idea of a red flash but we already have very flashy effects. It can also prevent some people from playing due to health issues. I feel the indicators should be more localised like a red flash around the portion of health lost.

The reason is to make it visibly clearer to the healers.