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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
thoughts on combat after the latest livestream
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
i was really concerned about combat but after watching this its obvious to see that intrepid are making huge strides in the work they have done on combat and i cant give them enough credit for this, i can see by just watching this that they are already taking steps towards balancing combat around pvp and i love to see this.
There is one thing i would critique that i am really curious about others opinions, take this with a grain of salt because this could feel extremely different whilst playing, however i think that to many animations are still locking the character in place and from my experience this has never felt fun to play ( keep in mind i cant tell how it feels b just watching the stream. )
Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard and the reason for that is that combat in wow is like an extension of your arm, You have full control of your character at all times and this feels really good to play, so if there is one thing i hope intrepid take away from this post is that big flashy abilities are always going to look great but if you go from a two second charge up on your sword into another two second ability it just does not feel great to play, These are just my thoughts, have a great day guys!
There is one thing i would critique that i am really curious about others opinions, take this with a grain of salt because this could feel extremely different whilst playing, however i think that to many animations are still locking the character in place and from my experience this has never felt fun to play ( keep in mind i cant tell how it feels b just watching the stream. )
Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard and the reason for that is that combat in wow is like an extension of your arm, You have full control of your character at all times and this feels really good to play, so if there is one thing i hope intrepid take away from this post is that big flashy abilities are always going to look great but if you go from a two second charge up on your sword into another two second ability it just does not feel great to play, These are just my thoughts, have a great day guys!
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Comments
Huh? by whom? I find WoW combat to be incredibly lacklustre.
lol
definitley your opinion but considered by many for an mmo anyway
once again adding nothing to the conversation lol, you are more dull than driftwood
lol
Adding to the comments above - it really isn't.
In the mid 2000's, WoW combat was literally a meme in other MMO's. It was a joke.
The number of people I saw come to EQ2 from WoW that couldn't make sense of the class they had ("what, so you mean I don't have a rotation?" and "I want to just press 1, 1, 2 over and over again like I did on my Mage in WoW, what class would be best for that?" are questions I had people ask me literally every week.
Truthfully, I've yet to see a serious MMORPG with a worse implementation of combat than WoW.
its very strange that you would boil wow combat down to rotations when this is an extremely common occurrence in games with multiple skills. Whether its to combo synergistically for more damage or to get an added effect like the debuff combo system that ashes/archeage seems to have, these are all put together to make "rotations". They are the optimal way to push your cooldowns to maximize the outcome you want and your rotation changes according to your toolkit and the situation you are in. Simple as that.
I think the very valid point that Chicago had is that Wow has had the most fluid tab target combat on the market for an extremely long time. Archeage was a good step forward in tab target combat, but Its hard to look back on that game without grimacing due to separate issues.
But yeah, the most popular mmorpg of all time had the worst combat. Thats just stupid to say.
Edit: As for Op's aversion to the character being locked in place too much, I want to point two things out.
One: I believe most of your issues with the "rooting in place" were actually just steven being a boomer gamer. I dont mean to rag on him too much because hes making this game possible, but hes just not good at all when it comes to showcasing these classes. He has 20 skills on his action bar and doesnt have anything keybound, forcing him to click most of them. That might be the reason why you are feeling that way. hes not moving because he cant do it while clicking.
Two: From what I can tell the only skills that actually root you in place are big boy skills that you get really rewarded for landing/using successfully. This is good in two ways. First it rewards you for having good positioning and comboing to get the skill to land, And second it gives enemies time to also use skill and positioning to avoid it.
This isn't like Throne and Liberty's beta where you cannot damage people because they are moving away from you, it just seems like rare cases of powerful abilities having a tradeoff for balance and skilled play.
Equating popularity to quality is a stupid thing to say.
You can equate features to popularity, but not quality.
By that logic, McDonalds serves the best food on the planet. They don't - they just happen to be hyper-consistent, pick top tier locations and are somewhat reasonably priced which is enough to see them serve almost 70 million people a day. Sometimes, factors other than quality of product are more important.
The reason WoW was popular was because it was from an extremely popular IP, had the best (only) advertising campaign of early MMORPG's, and was incredibly polished for its time.
Just because WoW got some things right, doesn't mean they got everything right. Claiming they did is as bad as claiming they got nothing right.
The games combat system - especially at launch - was dogshit. It still isn't great (well last time I logged in to a friend's account).
The point of bringing up its popularity is to counter your insipid remark that it's the worst of any mmorpg. What a joke. Just because McDonalds isn't the best quality food doesn't mean that its made with gutter oil like street food in India. There are standards for something to be massively popular. Did EQ2 have an entire esports arena scene that had hundreds of professional pvpers fighting each other in tournaments for cold hard cash? Do you think this can happen without some form of decent combat? Or do you think things just happen randomly and have no relevance whatsoever?
Who here claimed that WoW got it all right? The OP clearly said, in the section you yourself quoted, that it did a lot of things wrong, but combat was not one of them.
You can have the opinion that you personally dont like the combat, but to claim that its the worst of the industry is just petty soyboy crap.
As to why WoW had an entire esports arena scene that had hundreds of professional pvpers fighting each other in tournaments for cold hard cash, the answer is; probably because of that cash.
If that wasn't there, that tournament wouldn't be there. If SoE put that cash up instead, those people would have been playing EQ2 rather than WoW.
You shouldn't need that explained to you - you know better than that.
Since I'm not the only person in this threat that thinks WoWs combat is a joke (I was the 4th, by my count), it should be obvious to you that my position here is a very common one.
If you want to think it had good combat, have at it. All that says to me is you prefer overly simplified combat. If that's you, great, own it.
I personally prefer deeper, more complex combat - and so to me, and many, many others, WoW combat is shit.
This is just kind of how it is.
The fact that the only thing people have really commented on from the OP is the statement that WoW combat is the "gold standard" should indicate that even if some people do like it, it really, really isn't the gold standard.
AoC's combat already went to a way more disconnected feel, due to exactly this kind of feedback. The fighter was fairly easily moving around and swinging a hugeass sword that shoulda been swinging around the fighter instead with its inertia.
So no, I don't want Ashes combat to be more like WoW's.
Disagree, there was nothing I saw that indicated 'steps toward balancing combat around PvP' at any level I consider relevant. Probably too picky.
I hate games where you never really need to commit to anything. The team did a fantastic job of telling us clearly 'which things root us in place while doing them and which don't', so I don't know what you're referring to, but Skylarck has made a post, so please reference the ability you mean.
As a preference, I really don't like WoW combat or anything like it, but that's a preference.
The only 'slightly related' thing that I hope isn't just a preference, is depth.
I have never gone deep enough into WoW combat depth (because I don't like the initial feeling even a little) to check a certain thing, I get my fix for that from other games, but...
I want some real depth, not the 'two correct ways and a bunch of shiny noob-traps' that I experience (not see, actually experience) in many games now.
But of course, this leads to the meta forming around all the people who are used to those games who assume that anything other than the 'accepted 2 ways' is just someone being a noob about 'the right way'.
I find that there is often a direct connection between 'absolute freedom where you are always able to move out of the way of any consequence of your timing/action' and 'a design space meant to appeal primarily to players who don't enjoy depth'.
I definitely understand and appreciate that those players need games to play too, and that games these days are working really hard to provide a middle ground for them, but I don't agree that all that 'freedom' is a good method for that, so I think Intrepid is doing well now.
I definitely have seen that the game is moving more and more toward WoW and further away from anything I will physically enjoy playing myself, but if that's what it takes to get the audience they want, that's great. If they have to sacrifice the depth to get there, I'd consider it a loss (but then again, the more WoW it becomes, the less likely it is to affect me, so).
Wow combat is to me like the most boring thing I can imagine in a videogame
Pantheon
*cough*
WoW‘s cartoonish graphic style make those inorganic, cut off, out of the world animations work.
Using those animations in AoC would look horrendous.
Also imo the current combat system gives you a lot of control.
Hilarious how little knowledge people need before dropping opinions.
Funny how EQ2 couldn't keep up with WoW even though they released at the same time.
Must of been how much better EQ2 combat was.
Regardless of anyone's opinion of the two games...
The simpler, less mentally demanding product always wins in the entertainment space, then destroys itself later because of adding even more accessibility.
This isn't just true of MMOs, this is true of everything. There's nothing wrong with enjoying very simple entertainment, and one could make some argument that simplicity is itself quality.
But it's moreso that it's preferable to a larger number of people.
Obviously personal bias, subjective measurements, and complexity are judgements that are made by the individual.
Now if we're going to statistics WoW combat has/had the best combat.
I personally have other "better" combat in MMOs, but I recognize WoW combat as a valid, and enjoyed version for a very large portion of MMO players.
Right... lemme put it a more directly disparaging way...
Players who like simplistic, low consequence combat are like people who play sports from their sofas instead of practicing at the sport.
There are definitely more sports fans than there are sports athletes for nearly any sport.
So the first thing you said, to me, is the equivalent of 'funny how more people prefer to watch X sport than to play it'.
If we're counting the 'gold standard' for sports as 'whatever is easiest to understand and watch', then yeah.
Well, if you prefer to dance with Noaani (or said that so you could), I'll get outta your way.
Now that, there, is true dedication.
But as we have been shown in at least one picture on this forum, you can still go further.
Pizza on pineapple.
tank video does this too, no use of active blocking in it from what I saw. mostly just swinging away showing off animations and giving an idea what we might be able to do in game. speaking off the animations I hope the unreal 5.4 update helps clean up some of that floaty leg work
EQ2 combat was too complex for many. Much as Ashes is aiming at a niche of the MMORPG market, EQ2 also aimed at a niche - but they hit their target square on.
To borrow an analogy from Azherae above, where WoW is aimed at people watching, EQ2 was firmly aimed at people playing. That is always going to be a smaller audience.