Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Most people who like action combat also complain about lag and getting desynced. They haven't realized there's a technical limitation that makes online action combat games bad, they attribute problems to the game and not the genre. Action combat doesn't work in online games.
Ranged should have plenty of action skills too, they already have enough inherit advantages.
Indeed, action combat offers a dynamic and immersive gameplay style that resonates with a significant portion of the gaming community. Its responsiveness and engagement can truly elevate the experience, adding a layer of excitement and skill-based gameplay that complements the immersive world-building and stunning visuals of Ashes of Creation.
As passionate followers of the game's development, it's crucial for us to voice our aspirations and concerns to the development team. They undoubtedly hold the key to shaping the final product, and understanding the community's expectations regarding combat is essential for delivering a game that resonates with all players.
The idea of implementing a hybrid combat system that seamlessly integrates both tab target and action elements is intriguing. Such an approach could potentially cater to a broader spectrum of players, offering flexibility and variety in gameplay styles. It's my hope that the development team is receptive to such suggestions and open to exploring innovative solutions to ensure that the combat mechanics of Ashes of Creation shine as brightly as the rest of the game.
Let's continue to engage in constructive dialogue and collectively work towards a gaming experience that fulfills the aspirations of the community. Together, we can help shape Ashes of Creation into a truly exceptional journey for all adventurers.
Safe travels and may your adventures be filled with excitement and wonder!
In conclusion, it's certainly possible that artificial intelligence was used to generate some of these posts. However, it's important to note that more information would be needed to make any definitive statements one way or the other.
Having to use 27 binds for combat alone is not what combat should be in my opinion.
Just realized I've already answered to this thread and someone just necro'd it.
The only criticism I have of this game is its combat system oriented towards the tab target, it is horrible, that killed the hype for this game.
I agree it's not action combat, but it's essential for good tab-target/locked-target style combat. It allows you to have to think about what to do when, instead of just being a braindead repetitive rotation smashing. I did a whole thread on this, I won't contribute more here after this comment.
Essentially, if you want to do a hybrid game, you have to give enough depth to the tab-target portion, or it will just be braindead button mashing on top of the action combat features; and if you give enough depth to the tab-target portion, you can't do insane action-combat mechanics, because people wouldn't have enough hands to do both; fast aim & instant reaction speeds, and pressing 30 different buttons.
But I just want you to think about how much more strategy there is to having to think on-the-fly about which skills of your 20-40 skills to use in response to what your enemy is doing, compared to being restricted to the same 8-12 abilities, where regardless of what situation comes up, the most efficient answer will always either be to put everything you have on cooldown, or spam one bread-and-butter ability 10 times in a row.
This becomes more of a problem with ranged abilities as the chance to miss increases. If you don't incentivise it enough, then it isn't worth using.
Now this is great for the highly skilled top 10%? of your customer base, but rather like the unathletic not being terribly keen on sport, it is essentially upsetting more people than it is making happy. It is very difficult to balance and very possibly impossible to balance.
My thought is that action targeted stuff should be multi-target/AoE so that accuracy is less of a thing, and that if you do have a single target ability it is long cooldown and/or has a channelled component for maximum damage, so it isn't game-breaking, and can be interrupted.
You wont see much action combat until the end of A2, because the difficulty is in the balance not in implementing them, and it would be a huge distraction during initial testing.
If you are pro action combat, I would remain hopeful though. Intrepid seem to be creating a tight bond between PvPers and PvEers that encourages the PvP players to defend (their own) PvE players, like you would villagers in Age of Empires. The better they achieve this goal, the more skill based abilities and bonuses you will see.
also i gotta say, i am tired of having a "i am concerned" thread every week, since when we are getting those? whe i first came there there were posts like that already
BDO actually has more button combinations than that, the key is setting buttons up to use multi inputs Shift+E Shift+F, Shisft+mouse click, etc
As for the hybrid concept, a true hybrid of the two systems would be impossible. If you make it so that any class can be played as either tab or action, you inevitably end up with a system where players who're capable / willing to train action combat skills will ALWAYS outperform tab players. Because tab will always be easier than action, you'd have to make it that way.
Action combat introduces opportunities for error where tab does not. So you either have to make the performance ceiling at the level of tab, then force action combat players to always be at the top of their game in order to compete, or you have to make the the performance ceiling a shared space between tab combat and the average action combat player, whatever that intangible means, ultimately resulting in the average action player being just as good as the best tab player and the best action players being better than the best tab players. The whole concept is just a mess.
The only other option for true action/tab combat is to make some classes action only and some classes tab only, but I'm positive that would just make people riot. I wouldn't want it either.
The solution Intrepid came up with was a faux-action / tab hybrid. The 'action' system the game has now is essentially a soft-lock auto-target tab combat system with a reticle in the center of the screen instead of separate mouse and camera controls. So it feels snappier, but it's also less precise, since people can more easily body-block your targeting, where tab combat allows you to target past groups of people. I really don't see their 'action' combat system getting much use, personally.
It's disappointing, but I never had any expectations for Intrepid to actually produce a good full-action combat system in an MMO when even the 'big-dogs' in the industry haven't done it that well yet. Not trying to throw shade, but Intrepid has struggled over the past several years putting together a decent tab combat system, and it's still not fully there yet. Now you're asking for true action? Sorry, it's just not gonna happen.
- a lot of melee abilities are action and don't require a target;
- a lot of ranged abilities are tab, however you may hold a key to "free aim" them if needed.
So you don't end up with aim contest and the ranged abilities actually hit, meanwhile in close range melee you just cleave without worrying about the target (most of the time). Not only does this make it a fair "hybrid" system for both close and long range classes, but it's way easier to balance because you don't need to think of two separate ways (action and tab) of using the same ability, and you don't need to consider player's mechanical skill (aim) that much.