Any Guild Wars 2 Inspiration/Mechanic implementation? Edit: A thread about mobile combat

I've been an avid MMO player since the launch of Vanilla WoW and have played many different titles, eventually ending up with GW2 and Wildstar (RIP) as my favourites because of their world and combat systems.

I've been looking around to see if there's any mechanics that were taken from these games but to no avail. It's a little disappointing and discomforting personally because after playing the fluidity of GW2's hybrid tab-target/action and constantly moving combat I have a hard time playing MMO's where you spend most of the time stationary and just racking up damage/heals with the occasional "move out of the fire" gameplay.

From what I've seen from AoC gameplay, it looks like casting is stationary and there's going to be little movement and that's very disappointing to me if that's the case, but I might be willing to endure it for the sake of all the other world mechanics I've seen so far. That being said, I understand I have a bit of a bias that might be showing here.

Anyways, to sum up my long preamble and get to my question, have the developers talked about any mechanics they've liked from GW2, combat or otherwise? It seems Steven has a preference for classic Tab-targeting games and I haven't really seen him mention any of the "relatively newer" MMO's other than BDO a few times.

Edit: I guess I should add that I know there's going to be some action-combat abilities in AoC, but I'm wondering how they will play out, and how limited they are if at all?

Edit2: Better clarified thread summary in title

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Leiloni

Dreoh wrote: »

I'll copy-paste my edit because you actually beat me to finishing it before you replied

"I just realized I didn't really bring it all around to address your comment. Like I said in my previous comment, if some abilities are ONLY tab-target while others are ONLY reticle-based that creates a jarring kind of gameplay interaction as you have to switch between the two.
To be clear, when I'm referring to Action combat skills, I'm referring to frontal cones, projectiles (like bows or fireballs), etc.

Well there's a few key points that help to understand what he's saying. I'd say for now, disregard the idea of reticule mode/action camera, vs tab target mode because I don't think that has anything to do with how skills work, just the controls you decide to use. That's just confusing the matter a bit.

His definition of what a tab target skill is vs what an action skill is, can at it's simplest be broken down to one question:
Does this skill require a target to cast? Then it's tab target. If it does not require a target, it's action combat.

Steven answered this question directly and went into more details here -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep5Dsglari8&feature=youtu.be&t=38m03s

So your skill shot example that Steven talked about earlier is in line with this. It does not require a target. Based on what he said, the "action" version of this ranged skill would be a line AoE on the ground, so the player would place themselves in the right spot to get this AoE to hit the intended target, and it might also potentially hit other targets in the way as well. So no target required, just an AoE effect on the ground - but a skinny line AoE to mimic it being an arrow shot for example.

The tab version of this would require a target and be a simple single target damage ability. So when you mention "projectiles", that by itself doesn't say much. Even in this example, both of these skills would have an arrow projectile, but they are targeted in different ways - AoE vs targeted single target. I don't think it's going to be jarring at all when you consider how they'll function.

Dreoh wrote: »

Why have two different versions of power shot? Why not create the Action-Combat version, and then make it just auto-target if you're doing tab-target mode.

Well that's just a tab target skill then. If it requires a target, it's tab target. You can still use it in action camera mode, and I have to assume (I don't know but logically speaking here) that using action camera mode (so the control scheme here, not changing skills) would auto target the skill like in ESO or GW2.

Dreoh wrote: »

I get what you're saying in that players can choose how they want to play and stuff, but there's going to be versions of abilities that are just better when you split them like that, that's just going to happen as it does in every game.

Well we don't know this yet until we see them in game. But from the video we've been quoting (link below to this particular section of it) he does address that balance. He says that because the action version of this power shot is an AoE (small line AoE) and has the potential to hit more than one target, it'll do less damage than the tab target ability, because the tab target ability can only ever hit one person. And then both would have additional affects as well.

So this is where that quote comes into play "Action oriented and tab oriented versions of skills will have different characteristics. Variables will change based on which version is chosen.[13]". This is how they balance the skills out. How well that balance turns out is of course to be determined, but that's the plan at least.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXIpLC__7fA&feature=youtu.be&t=1h09m49s

Dreoh

Leiloni wrote: »

Well there's a few key points that help to understand what he's saying. I'd say for now, disregard the idea of reticule mode/action camera, vs tab target mode because I don't think that has anything to do with how skills work, just the controls you decide to use. That's just confusing the matter a bit.

This is just not true, there's so much footage of players running around in third person view shooting arrows and spells using reticle-based aiming. I know a lot of it is Apocalypse footage, but Apocalypse was their testing ground for AoC combat.
You can't just simplify all "non-target" skills as one type of Action skill.
There's ground target action skills, ground directional action skills (like the narrow line arrow example you used), there's frontal-based action skills, and there's reticle-based action skills (like third person shooters, or in AoC, bows and projectile/hitscan based spells like the lightning spell in Apocalypse).
The thing is, with all the footage of the Reticle-based type of Action combat skills, it's hard to assume that they aren't going to be in the game, and Reticle-based type of Action combat skills REQUIRE an Action-camera mode to use, unless you make them auto-target a tab-target like they do in GW2.

Leiloni wrote: »

His definition of what a tab target skill is vs what an action skill is, can at it's simplest be broken down to one question:
Does this skill require a target to cast? Then it's tab target. If it does not require a target, it's action combat.

Steven answered this question directly and went into more details here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep5Dsglari8&feature=youtu.be&t=38m03s

So your skill shot example that Steven talked about earlier is in line with this. It does not require a target. Based on what he said, the "action" version of this ranged skill would be a line AoE on the ground, so the player would place themselves in the right spot to get this AoE to hit the intended target, and it might also potentially hit other targets in the way as well. So no target required, just an AoE effect on the ground - but a skinny line AoE to mimic it being an arrow shot for example.

This again is just not true.
In this video example that you linked Steven actually confirms that Reticle-based abilities are in the game. He says, and I quote "An action oriented skill is anything that can be utilized by placement of the player. Whether that be placement on a reticle, placement on the ground, and template directional placement.."

With the confirmation of reticle-based skills, of which I'm assuming power shot will be because It's a bow skill and there's already plenty of footage of reticle-based bow combat, which I guess I'll actually rename as Shooter skills to better help us understand what I'm talking about, we go right back to the problem I was describing.

If you have shooter skills mixed in with traditional MMO skills then the camera-switching is something that's going to happen unless the auto-targeting for shooter skills exist. But then if auto-targeting for shooter skills exists, then why have split abilities (power shot and others like the shield ability)?
Do you see what I mean? Either they've found a way to blend them together smoothly in a way they haven't shown yet, or there's going to be an inherent clunkiness/jarringness to the combat in the final product.

Edit: Or everyone's going to default to playing in Shooter-cam like ESO because you can implement tab-targeting in Shooter-cam far easier than you can add Shooter-targeting in MMO-cam

Edit2: I know he's not an official source or anything but I've asked Jahlon about if the Action combat is going to be the Apocalypse combat, and he confirmed it's going to be a polished version of it. He's not an Intrepid dev so I know it's to be taken with a grain of salt but if that's the truth it just confirms that there's some credence to my worries

Dreoh

I know I'm double-posting (I try my best to just edit my most recent posts instead) but I'm just going to add this here because LazyPeon just released a GW2 2020 review like 3 hours ago and in it he himself praises it as the best hybrid Action/Tab target MMO he's seen so far, so I'm hoping this helps people understand why I've been so passionate about it in this thread and others.

https://youtu.be/Tvco6ISqvEw?t=924

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