Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Here's the problem with developers listening to players.
You say they should ditch the tab target system.
What if I say they should ditch the action combat system.
We are both players, which one of us should Intrepid listen to?
It is at this point where we would each need to back up our stance on the matter, for whichI would simply point out that the biggest MMO of all time - which is still the biggest MMO out there - is exclusively tab target.
You can show any examples of action combat MMO's that you want, but until you can show one that has the longevity of WoW, you have nothing to back your point up with.
So instead of saying Intrepid should listen to the community, which obviously means listening to all the community - not just you - you should leave Intrepid to develop their game and then have your say on it when they are happy with it enough to let us actually play it.
[Scene 1]
Wife comes home, hangs her coat up.
Walks over to the couch.
*Eyes widen*
He's playing Ashes of Creation!
Sticking his sword into Sorrow's Hunger (the ugly one).
[Scene 2]
He snaps his fingers.
Wife crawls over.
He points to a hole in the Underrealm.
Wife gets down, picks up keyboard, and plays too.
[Scene 3]
Doorbell rings.
A large group of friends comes in consisting of every facet of type of individual.
They SEE EVERYTHING.
One guy took pictures with his phone.
If that is not your intent, you should perhaps rethink your entire posting stance.
It is worth pointing out as well, you may have 17 years "experience" playing MMO's, but the development team at Intrepid have a combined total of several centuraries of development experience of MMO's. One year of development experience is worth 10 years of player experience - so you do the math there.
You wouldn't go up to General Motors and tell them that you have 17 years experience driving cars, and so they should listen to you because you know how they should design their next car - so why do you think it is ok to do that with a game development company with massive amounts of individual experience?
Of course it will, everything eventually dies.
However, there isn't a game in development now that wouldn't consider attaining the success WoW had to be beyond their wildest dreams.
As for BDO combat, I think it is decent and certainly impactful. Tho I personally wouldn't take it as the golden standard for MMO combat as it appears to be the sentiment for many people.
What we've tested in Apocalypse was true action combat. Since it was a BR and had low time-to-kill many people couldn't experience it fully. I replied to someone before about this so here's my copy pasta response to your concerns about the combat:
Steven Sharif (CEO/Creative Director) has said, in Ashes, action are all the abilities that do not require a target to be utilized, while tab abilities are those that do. Therefore, according to his definition, Guild Wars 2, as well as most other MMORPGs technically have 'hybrid combat'. What they want to do is to take it further and add things like actual aim-able abilities - what they call ''true action combat'', co-existing with tab targeting. Players will be able to choose up to 75% of either tab or action abilities.
In terms of balance, hard CCs are planned to be action (aimed, placeable AoEs and every ability that does not require a target) while soft CCs will be tab targeting. Furthermore, tab abilities will deal less damage and will be RNG based (since, that's what tab target is: sort of like auto-aim missiles that hit or miss, based on a mathematical formula i.e. math rules of accuracy vs evasion) while action abilities, you will need to actually land, hence the justification for more damage.
Now if this does not work or/and proves to be not fun, they will go with tab targeting with AoEs (like what we've watched in the Alpha 1 Early Preview). Tho, I and many other people hope that it won't come to that and devs will actually nail it and make the combat complex, engaging and fun, which is extremely important for a dynamic PvX oriented game like Ashes. So we are all waiting patiently for them to show us progress on the hybrid combat and how it shapes, along with other key features of the game 🙂
In my opinion, black desert online has one of the most horrible and disgusting combat systems I have ever seen.
Based on my over 25 years of Internet Experience and 30 years of typing experience, I feel it is my obligation to point out to you the Enter Key (sometimes referred to a Return Key) that happens to reside to the far right of your home row. By pressing this key inbetween ideas, you can eliminate the wall of text that you so unceremoniously presented.
With that said, if you had 17 years of experience in playing MMORPGs you would know that the way games develop are Concept > Tech Testing (also called internal testing > Pre Alpha > Alpha > Beta > Launch. Given that we are still in the Pre-Alpha testing phases, of course from a person who is only watching and not actively playing the game it might appare as if the game is "slow and clunky". The development cycle is to make sure it works first, and then make sure it looks good second. They are still in the making it work stage.
Next up, you called Black Desert Online a successful game. That is a nice opinion to have, however, by which metric, standard, or evaulation did you come up with this opinion? If this is a "tab vs action" debate, let me simply point you to the two most financially successful MMORPGs in History: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV and they both utilize Tab Combat.