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.

Combat. In-depth and specific. What would you like to see?

Combat. In-depth and specific. What would you like to see?


I know combat is a very talked about subject on these forums but I'd like to narrow it down to the specifics and what mechanics each of us would like to see. I know a lot of the discussion is about tab-targeting and action combat but since ashes of creation has been said to be a bit of both I think any mechanics we like from another game or one you've come up with yourself can fit into this game.

Here's some things I'd like to see.

<strong><em>Animation Cancels</em></strong> - I'm sure a lot of you know about this mechanic that exists in mostly action combat games but what it means is that you shorten the animation on an ability to make it get off faster in a number of ways, most often by using another ability, that allows you to play faster than you would otherwise. To put this into very clear terms abilities are made up of 3 portions usually. Start-up, active, and recovery. Animation cancels get rid of either the start up, recovery, both, and very rarely the active part. Animation cancelling different parts of a certain ability can create different results and make combat feel very creative.

A random example would be some ability allows you to upper cut and jump off the ground and come slamming back down. So this ability can be broken down into more than 3 parts. Start up (rising), active (uppercut punch), more start up (falling), active (slam), recovery (a period of time after the slam your character can't do anything). Depending on where you animation cancel this ability you can get vastly different results. You can animation cancel the recovery allowing you to combo off of the slam into abilities you perform on the ground. You can animation cancel after the uppercut to allow you to do an air ability or jump up a cliff that you wouldn't normally but able to jump up. Etc.

<strong><em>Movement abilities that do not alter the state of your character</em></strong> - What I mean by this is what is mostly teleports that allow you to be mobile while casting or an ability is already active. Examples of this is mages casting while using Shimmer in WoW or the number of teleport combos in gw2 like backstab -> steal on thief or churning earth -> lightning flash on elementalist. Often used with abilities that have a large start up and then you teleport just before the active part of the ability goes off.

This is can be more fun and have more applications than having the movement and damage ability be 1 ability. Again like animation cancels this allows you to get really creative with your combat. If you are against an opponent and you have a teleport up they have to be aware of what you may teleport into them with at any time. Some really cool applications can be with chain abilities. Don't care for the first 2 attacks of a chain but the 3rd one is juicy damage? Use the first 2 from range and teleport with the 3rd one. Heck it's even extremely telegraphed for the opposing player if they know to look for that. It just creates really cool gameplay I think.

<strong><em>Abilities create a large portion of your mobility</em></strong> - At least for some classes! I'm playing Black Desert at the moment and It's a really cool feeling to have my movement be such an active part of my game play rather than just holding strafe or forward for my movement. In almost every game there is at least a small portion of combat or out of combat time spent using abilities for your mobility and I'm saying I prefer it to be a large portion.

So these are my 3 things. Comment on my ideas or suggest some ideas for combat you'd like to see!
Sign In or Register to comment.