Glorious Alpha Two Testers!

Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!

For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.

You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.

Tab Target vs Action: What if a game had both?

I know there are games out there that allow you to choose which you prefer as default... but I am talking about both active at the same time

What if combat design had tab target as its base BUT got an accuracy bonus or a damage bonus if you maneuvered your target to the center of your screen as you attacked. The bonuses could escalate the more "perfect" you got the target toward center, or even have both accuracy AND damage bonuses stack on well-centered attacks

this would allow action defense too as you would try to avoid allowing your opponent those bonuses by moving

seems like this would be a good compromise, yet I don't know how hard this would be to program

Comments

  • I've seen a couple of MMO's do this and it worked out in a positive way and in a negative way.

    The positive way: There is a lot more action involved in combat this way, which makes it more challenging, fun and rewarding (In my opinion).

    The negative way: Combat becomes a lot harder for some people and for those individuals who don't know how to use it, since it is a very different way of playing, wil get annoyed by it very fast and will give up on the fighting aspect.

    Personally I don't really mind what system we get, but those are the things that I've noticed on other MMORPG's who did that.
  • Well in my view mixing both can work but it should center around adding mobility and positioning as key elements.

    To me tab-target often has 1 single flaw. The superiority of ranged classes as some if not many if not all skills of ranged dd's as well as healer skills were often implemented as homing missiles. Basically a fire and forget system. Cast a spell - it will hit - no matter what location your target is - once casted - it will hit. Obviously obstacles matter in some games but in some they do not. And that's pretty idiotic in my view.
    From what I've seen so far (the "A Mage's life" video") there is already the situation that a mage on range already has the advantage. Sure you can cover it by adding cast times and so forth but that's not really a good solution because it kills the dynamic and often makes playing a mage a real pain in the butt.

    My take on that one would be as already said - make positioning, timing and mobility matter.

    For example a mage soft targets an enemy (press tab, get enemy info, get a lock on the target). The mage then casts Lightning for example which applies damage to the players position rather than the player itself so the player could avoid the spell by moving. Obviously it has to be tweaked that you can't simply walk 1 step away and not getting hit and maybe it should be only doable by executing a defensive ability which I'm getting to next.

    I'd say implement active dodging, blocking or parrying along with a stamina system so you can't dodge yourself out of everything but maybe two or three occasions.

    I'd say do something similar to GW2 (but without down states) or so. It's kind of hard to explain when we can't actually say something about how the game feels in general.
  • I personally would love to see an mmorpg that can incorporate both systems at the same time. MOBA games like DOTA2 and LoL already do this where you have some abilities that are "point-and-click", and others that are "skill-shots" which have to be aimed manually. One of the things that balances abilities is whether they are point-and-click or skill-shot, with (as a general rule) point-and-click abilities being a little less powerful than skill-shots. I'm sure the devs could do something similar here where you had a set of abilities that use tab-targetting, and others that are manually aimed. This would give you more variety in the combat and allow you to easily switch between systems depending on whether you needed to be more mobile or not for a given situation.
  • Honestly the discussion has been beaten to death on this form. Its time to just stop talking about it at all and wait until people start playing with it. We already been told the game will not be traditional Tab Target, its tab target but people will be moving not standing still casting like WOW. So until Combat comes out and starts to get worked on in Alpha I feel any talk about Combat just because a bunch of people want Action Combat just causes problems.
  • https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/tab-target-really/

    Tab target is not the opposite of action combat, is all i'm going to say. One does not exclude the other and there are lots of precedences for that.
  • [quote quote=7837]Honestly the discussion has been beaten to death on this form. Its time to just stop talking about it at all and wait until people start playing with it. We already been told the game will not be traditional Tab Target, its tab target but people will be moving not standing still casting like WOW. So until Combat comes out and starts to get worked on in Alpha I feel any talk about Combat just because a bunch of people want Action Combat just causes problems.

    [/quote]

    you are probably right

    and another thing that i didn't think about is this game is probably farther along in development than most indie crowdfunded MMOs are at this point in production because Intrepid wanted a more-tangible product to kickstart, so it may be too late to even suggest a major change in combat mech at this time

    was just reading the TT vs AC posts and thought "Why not both?"
  • [quote quote=8143]<blockquote>
    <div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/tab-target-vs-action-what-if-a-game-had-both/#post-7837" rel="nofollow">Helzbelz wrote:</a></div>
    Honestly the discussion has been beaten to death on this form. Its time to just stop talking about it at all and wait until people start playing with it. We already been told the game will not be traditional Tab Target, its tab target but people will be moving not standing still casting like WOW. So until Combat comes out and starts to get worked on in Alpha I feel any talk about Combat just because a bunch of people want Action Combat just causes problems.

    </blockquote>
    you are probably right

    and another thing that i didn’t think about is this game is probably farther along in development than most indie crowdfunded MMOs are at this point in production because Intrepid wanted a more-tangible product to kickstart, so it may be too late to even suggest a major change in combat mech at this time

    was just reading the TT vs AC posts and thought “Why not both?”

    [/quote]

    I think we are too far along in the development cycle to even bring up changing combat because if combat is changed from tab target at this time to free aiming you are talking about changing what has already been in development for 14 to 18 months at this point. Changing the Combat could alter Ashes coming out in 2018 (18 months from now) to 2019 or 2020 because making a major change to combat comes with a lot of development time vs changing how spells work from standing to cast a fireball to casting the fireball on the move. This will then lead to a lot of content not getting put into the game.

    I understand that people want Action Combat. However I think the Developers made their choice and should stick with it and let the game go to beta. There is no way you are going to make everyone happy, so pick a group of players you want and stick with them.
  • Guild Wars 2 has this kind of system you are suggesting. Classes with Leap abilities will leap to their target. Think of it like a warrior charge in WoW, but in GW2 players can turn off auto-targeting to utilize a no target functionality of their leap abilities. It is a good system as it allows for abilities to be used in more than one way. You can also shoot projectiles without a target, although the shots then lose their homing when you do this. Some people don't like this system. I personally like being able to use just about any ability without a target myself.
Sign In or Register to comment.