thoughts on combat after the latest livestream

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!

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WHIT3ROS3

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

Huh? by whom? I find WoW combat to be incredibly lacklustre.

Liniker

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

lol

Mag7spy

WoW is bad. But ya I was happy to see some animation cancelling in AoC. Hopefully there are some defensive moves fighter gets as well.

Chicago

WHIT3ROS3 wrote: »

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

Huh? by whom? I find WoW combat to be incredibly lacklustre.

definitley your opinion but considered by many for an mmo anyway

Chicago

Liniker wrote: »

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

lol

once again adding nothing to the conversation lol, you are more dull than driftwood

Liniker

Chicago wrote: »

once again adding nothing to the conversation lol, you are more dull than driftwood

lol

Noaani

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

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.

Sathrago

Noaani wrote: »

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

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.

Noaani

Chicago wrote: »

But yeah, the most popular mmorpg of all time had the worst combat. Thats just stupid to say.

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).

Sathrago

Noaani wrote: »

Chicago wrote: »

But yeah, the most popular mmorpg of all time had the worst combat. Thats just stupid to say.

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.

Noaani

Sathrago wrote: »

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.

And I said it is one of the things they didn't get right.

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.

Ludullu

WoW's combat feel floaty as fuck. There's no connection with your environment and the character just jumps around while casting shit. I hated that while playing even the little bit of what I played of Classic.

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.

Azherae

Chicago wrote: »

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.

Disagree, there was nothing I saw that indicated 'steps toward balancing combat around PvP' at any level I consider relevant. Probably too picky.

Chicago wrote: »

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. )

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.

Chicago wrote: »

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!

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).

Garrtok

WHIT3ROS3 wrote: »

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

Huh? by whom? I find WoW combat to be incredibly lacklustre.

Wow combat is to me like the most boring thing I can imagine in a videogame

Dygz

*cough*
Pantheon
*cough*

Mag7spy

night crows xD

arsnn

Wow got the „instant/control feeling“ from its animations and how they are set up.

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.

blat

I agree with OP.

Garrtok wrote: »

Wow combat is to me like the most boring thing I can imagine in a videogame

Hilarious how little knowledge people need before dropping opinions.

Vyril

Noaani wrote: »

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

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.

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.

Azherae

Vyril wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Chicago wrote: »

Wow does alot wrong but from a combat standard it is considered the gold standard

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.

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.

Child Item