Adressing The combat System TTK and comparison with TERA

After having had some discussions on the combat system, and the importance of it being good in the discord, I think that the discussion on combat systems always lands on agreement with TERA having been the game to implement it the best. Me being one of the people in the world that played TERA the most, I want to attempt to give the input on what the TTK was for TERA on each stage of the game, and how it affected the gameplay dynamic with simple video illustration and comments.

This is what the combat system looked like at vanilla level one (or very soon after the introduction): Its quite simple in the freedom of movement and that any skill can be cast in any direction and that the interaction between the character -> skill -> other character hitboxes is set by specific distances, that also shows on the crosshair.

https://youtu.be/BulBq40fRdM?si=F54poQNjblB_4GIt

As for TERA 1v1s, this random video shows a duel where one is much overgeared than the other, still the opponent could easily win, and there is a lot of outplay required:

https://youtu.be/2Ku2aKbKNPg?si=5WoH8DfK2rhsWO_9
Low geared tank outplay 1v1:

https://youtu.be/BXOy2efMFzw?si=ls58sIl3FF1tUEmm
Low level warrior gameplay 1v1:

https://youtu.be/mu4hXamJls4?si=14VBB02y-YKOSItZ

It seems to me the ttk is quite consistent, the game is quite matchup dependent. Any oneshotting combo, regardless of the complexity behind it can not be a part of the combat system. And any one ability can not do any substantial amount of damage if it is something that can easily hit an opponent. The damage done should be proportional to the skill it takes to land it, and inversely proportional to how well the opponent is defending themselves.
I would say max 20% of the opponents hp for a charge time hardest hitting single skill, and 30% for the strongest combo perfectly executed.
Fundamentals I personally can think of might be in that with balancing, 1v1s and 3v3s has to be balanced across all classes on each gear level. As 20v20 and large scale pvp works with that. The ttk has to be long enough to maintain a buffer also, in which competing against higher gear equals an advantage, which then has to be compensated for by skill, experience and knowledge with the class in order to win. If gear is exactly equal, the most skilled player should win about 90% of the time regardless of class.

Next we have an example of a 3v3 game, very low skill level probably around a year after the release of the game, where the one in the video is severely overgeared compared to the enemy team, and also lower skill level, and as you can see at around 48 seconds, he onetaps the enemy healer, and effectively wins the game because of it. So this is an example of how too short TTK makes skill not matter, and the only example I have ever seen in TERA of someone getting oneshot from that ability.

https://youtu.be/dP_vL3UiM-Q?si=6ad1k1Oe_MbD0y49

Next is an example from a higher skill match at a later stage of the game, idk if it is from the same guy but, all heavy hitters, equally geared:

https://youtu.be/TT5H0ubYOUA?si=FxAXEjrEu_PL64bN

Next we have another game, but from a ranged magic perspective. This is a much more technical match, graphics is optimized for fps pov decent sorcerer (not the best).

https://youtu.be/0z_ShxUL_T4?si=OHba2rtzsM5Camuz
It might look like there is not much going on, but this is much because the class has a kit with blink, shield, slows, stun, sleep, stagger and mana drain, and
- at around 30 seconds lands a slow/dot on the tank and is then free to look for opurtunities on turning the game in his/her favor.
- At 1:25 the enemy healer is hit by a sleep from the teams healer, which he then casts another aoe sleep on to chain the duration. With the healer slept he now goes to slow the enemy tank, to free his other teammate, and his teammate then goes for a chain knockdown/prone combo on the archer while he is also putting damage in on the archer, that puts the archer down to around 10% hp but the enemy tank then pulls to interrupt them both to save him. Which is around the time the healer wakes up and they recover completely. Well played from both sides.
- At 3:20 they are not getting anything done against the priest (strongest class in arenas) so he first activates a barrier to cc for a second, then perfectly blinks onto the enemy healer and lighting strike staggers into a stun, then backsteps to reposition for landing his sleep, but this is recognized by the enemy archer which interrupts his cast by knocking him down. He then precedes to cast his mana drain on the healer at 70%.
- At 4:15 his healer goes all in and blinks on their healer to purge all his buffs, which then puts their healer at low mana, and then sees an opportunity to continue draining the mana from 25%, which makes the fight go in their favor even against a priest, as it should considering the enemy archer is undergeared and this team went on to hit the top of the rankings.

Next video I think very clearly illustrates the short TTK issue in other games that have what other people consider something similar to the combat system in TERA, from Lacari which I have dueled hundreds of times around the time people first hit level 60 on release. He went on to become a streamer in bdo, but I do believe he would completely agree with me that the short TTK completely eliminates any strategy to the gameplay:

https://youtu.be/aoOw_-hpR2M?si=UwMa2jWrJXBRVsfn

Next to illustrate another example, the combat system in Throne and Liberty could be summed up into this video, as the games pvp is nothing but a meme on a tab targeted stun -> knockdown -> hit which oneshots everything at max gear. The game is overall a oneshot game and there is no real skill involved other than pressing those 3 buttons in succession when in range of a target, and swiping for the gear (which is about 400 dollars, and 2000 dollars for the archboss weapon, which is not needed as everyone gets oneshot regardless). Skill matters not.

https://youtu.be/EkcGQiQbth0?si=cuWg9zdtabOxQsjq

I don’t want to insult anyone for being low skill or meme, but here is a video to show greatsword dagger and why the entire playerbase that stayed in the game are playing that class, and entire top 1000 in throne and liberty arenas is playing greatsword. So even if it is a copy of the aion/tera combat in terms of abilities, it is nothing similar, and just a a meme due to the TTK being zero, as in you get oneshot, and if you don’t get oneshot it just means you get oneshot on the second attempt sadly, no skill involved:

https://youtu.be/klXA7bY7SC4?si=6jO1PdWdWm8_zJSB

BDO also when it came to 1v1s seems to not be very skill based or well made, this being a 1v1 with high skill holds little depth other than dashing back and forth and whoever lands the first hit (seems mostly random) gets to do some button mashing and probably oneshot the other player. Not a well developed system, even if the graphics and animations are good, there is major weakness in the clarity, depth, ttk and hitbox interactions of the combat system:

https://youtu.be/vsfUs6szgls?si=S96HfQb-tEhNQz6j

In comparison the tera pve also shows the combat system in comparison is much more colorful, clear and impactful on the environment compared to other iterations on action combat. Also a disclaimer pertaining to the tab targeting vs action mode, this is a video of TERA combat on console version that has aimbot or lock on where it also keeps the camera aimed at the opponent, but also the character model facing in that direction, this is in general not necessary in my opinion:

https://youtu.be/-VfIkw4wFmE?si=JIjHjYh8vGu_5Pc7
He is a video of a controller player on PC with the same class:

https://youtu.be/Tp08n-poMLo?si=r42We6BEFKyeSlo7

The sense of freedom in the combat system is very important, being able to use any ability without a target is very important, especially for skills that moves the character in space as they can be used for mobility. The character interacting with the environment at any time, and for the animation to look cool and the graphics to look the best is also very important, even more so than the combat system itself.

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Comments

GreatPhilisopher

well said

Azherae

A great post that could easily inspire me to write an equally long one, but instead I'll try to stick to just this:

The Ravager Meta in Throne and Liberty is a massive stain on that game even for those of us who like it. You're just playing an entirely different game depending on if there is a Ravager or not, and it's not even the big hit that matters, it's almost purely the inability to respond due to the Silence on Shadow Step. The 'Trinket' does not help.

Ashes is basically this, except 'everything could be the equivalent of a Ravager and you wouldn't know, and you can't usually just give up and leave the area/event where those players are getting whatever they get out of being able to do this'.

But unlike TERA which had periods of this happening due to specific small things or gear imbalances, and TL where someone just 'felt that a gap closing dagger skill with a short cooldown also needed a 4 second Silence along with the Bind it does' for whatever insane reason, Ashes is this pretty much all the time.

That Syndrome quote is not a suggestion, design wise.

GreatPhilisopher

excuse my poor English as its not even my 2nd language .

maybe a way to fix it is instead of having the weapons being just a bigger stat stick number of "physical/magical power" , let them have a main secondary attribute that is more personal to every weapon , of course the higher the weapon level /rarity u get more "phys/int power" but to a way lesser degree than what it is now so they can basically be the secondary stats for weapons in a way and different weapons focus on different branch of the stats in the main stats which are according to the wiki ( constitution, wisdom,mentality,strength,dexterity,intelligence)

so lets say any weapon can still be magical or physical(tho having weapons be more focused might be good too like spears cant be magical but can have magic penetration but a bow can be both...etc might help with diversity too) anyway say a bow can be magical or physical but the main attribute it add is a part of the different evasion stats , a wand can focus on magical casting speed/rating , a spear focuses on physical penetration or even magical one too.

maybe let the weapons have a minor secondary stats too and let the crafting be able to alter the minor or even both of them to a degree.

as long as any weapon can have both physical and magical power ratings doing that wont stop not just the mage but every class of having a bow basically be their main weapon 80% of the time like how it is now but it will reduce it significantly and let people do a lot more different builds with different weapons where they have to choose a certain type of weapons depending on the build they want to go for like a mage focusing on cast speed and penetration would have a wand and a spear , a tank that wants to be magic focused and evasion would have a magic shield/sword with like Magical Critical Avoidance Rating and magical avoidance rating and a physical power focus with magic resist or smthn.

in this way the mgc/phys power rating wont be as important but will still be the main way for a character to hit harder but be more focused in certain path depending on the types of weapons you choose.

maybe letting the players be able to have 1 physical and 1 magical weapons too not 2 of any type might help or not and as far as i can tell most of the weapons skill trees barely have any difference outside of a little bit of some main passive skills between physical and magical weapons other than that its mostly basically the same between the weapons of the same type and we also get too many skill points so there is no need to choose a path at all.

maybe if the weapon skill trees were more unique or have unique active skills that work better for different classes instead of how they are now it wouldnt be as bad.

does any of this make sense , i dont know tbh but might be better than whatever we have right now .

SmileGurney

Whatever it takes to make Ashes combat more about players ability, basic combat mechanics, game and class knowledge and outplays, instead of "My stat stick is bigger than yours" mentality we see atm.

Solvryn

Hmm

EPMAN

Easy way to balance it is just to lower the number of skill you can use. Just have the same number to choose from, but only have like 5-6 available to use, then stack lvl of the skill up every lvl not increase the number of skill available. Also removing the range for not range class will have effect.

I play tank, the number of skill i need to spam is insane. GG if it go on like this to lvl 50

Its still alpha testing, so end of day, they need to try our other systems to balance it, only time can tell if the development team can manage to change/balance from the player feedback, i must say that they haven´t shown any progress until now. Do they even read those forums post.

I do agree that its seems better the system showed in the vod´s but a little hard to tell with those poor graphics.

Noaani

EPMAN wrote: »

Easy way to balance it is just to lower the number of skill you can use. Just have the same number to choose from, but only have like 5-6 available to use, then stack lvl of the skill up every lvl not increase the number of skill available. Also removing the range for not range class will have effect.

I play tank, the number of skill i need to spam is insane. GG if it go on like this to lvl 50

Its still alpha testing, so end of day, they need to try our other systems to balance it, only time can tell if the development team can manage to change/balance from the player feedback, i must say that they haven´t shown any progress until now. Do they even read those forums post.

I do agree that its seems better the system showed in the vod´s but a little hard to tell with those poor graphics.

Making the game absolutely shit to play is not really a viable way to increase the PvP TTK.

An MMORPG should see players having significantly more abilities to use in combat than an average ARPG. We should be aiming for 20 - 30 skills and balancing TTK around that, not suggesting gutting the rest of the game in order to achieve a more desirable TTK.

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