Please Rank These Combo Systems

Cool post, @Azherae. Took me a little bit to map your vernacular to my own experience and what I enjoy playing - so forgive if I misuse some of your definitions.

My preference:
- Gated strings ( I think of this as "oil spill" as a flammable AOE slow, "ignite oil" as the catalyst to cause direct dmg + fire dot, then a "kaboom" which deals exponential dmg if the first 2 conditions are met)
- Feint combos ( I'm reading this as individual abilities that can be activated then cancels with another ability - is that right?)
- True links ( I like being able to determine what combos work best, without them being prescribed.)
- Only for auto attack: target combos (best example I can think of is the 3 combo primary attack for warriors in GW2)

CROW3 wrote: »

Cool post, @Azherae. Took me a little bit to map your vernacular to my own experience and what I enjoy playing - so forgive if I misuse some of your definitions.

My preference:
- Gated strings ( I think of this as "oil spill" as a flammable AOE slow, "ignite oil" as the catalyst to cause direct dmg + fire dot, then a "kaboom" which deals exponential dmg if the first 2 conditions are met)
- Feint combos ( I'm reading this as individual abilities that can be activated then cancels with another ability - is that right?)
- True links ( I like being able to determine what combos work best, without them being prescribed.)
- Only for auto attack: target combos (best example I can think of is the 3 combo primary attack for warriors in GW2)

Actually I should have clarified that I meant for 'autoattacks' or the equivalent. So, if you've got a more specific perspective there, even as a Ranger, or, for example (since I know your intent from my compilation threads), 'how melee should go once you have to pull out the sword and shield', it'd help too.

I definitely agree that when it comes to actual ability combos, especially for rangers, a good 'one-two-three' of that type would be really engaging, but in terms of what I was talking about, it would be moreso something simplistic like 'draw and shoot', 'use skidback from first shot to spin, crouch and shoot again', 'use force from that to roll backward and shoot again', by just pressing, say, Q, S+Q, S+Q, without any specific timing requirement.

Whereas if you didn't do the first 'skidback shot' your S+Q would explicitly not be able to do 'rollback shot' in the 'Gated Strings' form.

Azherae wrote: »

Actually I should have clarified that I meant for 'autoattacks' or the equivalent. So, if you've got a more specific perspective there, even as a Ranger, or, for example (since I know your intent from my compilation threads), 'how melee should go once you have to pull out the sword and shield', it'd help too.

Aha! That's helpful. If we're just talking 'auto-attacks' - which in AOC I think are called filler attacks, since auto-attacks won't be a thing - I'd modify my thoughts a bit:

Ranged auto-attacks: target combos (some basic shots downrange, I don't want movement generating combos as I may in a place where unspecified movement might kill me - like the edge of a mountain, or climbing a keep)
Melee auto-attacks: Gated-strings (still high but I would want to keep the combo multipliers fairly normalized so it doesn't overly inflate the combat experience and make the active abilities WAY over the top) or target combos, but with some more basic sword and shield specific attacks (e.g. slash, bash, and thrust with the appropriate movement forward)

I think that comports with your original ask, no?

JustVine

I personally am happy with less complex combo systems so I don't need a bunch of pieces to make me happy directly, BUT there are a lot of things that could make me UNhappy design philosophy wise. So I've broken up the pieces by tier, to make it easier to discuss the design philosophy issues I can see coming up that would make a system lower and lower quality as more layers get added.

S Tier
Just Cancels
I prefer mmo's optimal damage to be more focused on teamwork than 'me doing fancy combos'. That being said I think everyone can agree they want to look cool when they are doing big damage. This offers a way to do so with some mild creativity and low stress executionally for most classes. Additionally I can see this mechanic translating fairly well into team combos. There are some pve mmos this worked well in (Onigiri is the main one that comes to mind) but I think it could work well in pvp if they thought about the balance a little.

A Tier
Gated Strings
I ALMOST consider this mandatory for a game where your weapon decides your basic attack style and combat goals. Right now Ashes feels pretty confusing in how it wants to go regarding that. But there is a lot of potential for it to go that way. I'll probably go brood warden if Gated Strings are a thing. I'd love to have complex footsies and neutral while overwhelming people with my summons positionally. Especially if there is active blocking. There is a lot of stuff in melee combat I can get behind and this is definitely up there. That being said it would also imply the devs are considering base weapon to be far more important attack style wise than currently hinted at if they added this in. If that was the case you could give me this and things in c and I'd probably be just as happy as having nothing other than just cancel. I just expect other people would find it TOO complicated relative to what an mmo is. But as mentioned in other games, I'm a fighting gamer. I don't MIND complex. It's just not generally what I come to an mmo for. Macro and team based strategies are generally what I come to an mmo for other than the crafting.

B Tier
Timed Cancels
Meh, this is ok if it lets me do team work oriented combos, even better. Not really interested in this per say. If this were central to basic attacks over other combo systems I might just use wand/book?

C Tier
Gatling/Target Combos
It's ok. But I'd really only 'like' this in the game if there were these pre-requisites: 1. A heavy focus on positioning making a big difference in combat 2. knock back on it causing you to lose the full gatling or target combo if you started it at too far a spacing 3. no hard cc to make getting into this super easy 4. your weapon choice being as strongly indicative of your combat capacity as your class. Especially if they add in gated strings. Given that I doubt they will make all FOUR of those things a reality, this goes in C. Otherwise it's more like an A tier for me with those four things. Otherwise this would just lead to a lot of thoughtless 'required' combos and rotations.

D Tier
Mashing/Hold

I actively dislike. It's probably because of my mmo background, but for me this just makes an mmo's execution needlessly higher when combined with other things. This isn't to say I wouldn't play a game with it, but the design thought process of a system based in it probably has some other stuff that makes it feel either boring, or unfun. The only reason I can see this being a 'valid' part of core game play is because coding gatlings or gated strings with an auto attack is harder and requires animation canceling or a possibly long delay that makes game play feel slower than necessary. Game play wise I don't see what this adds to someone's fun however. If this is the intended main focus of the combo system I'm probably just going to book/wand to save myself the stress on my hands and play Conjurer.

E Tier
C-c-c-c-combo Breaker

F Tier
True Links
I have fighting games. I have an mmo fighting game even. Anyone who has actually played a fighting game knows how bad dropping a combo feels like due to lag. A team based game shouldn't put people through that. I dislike this one mostly due to the lack of possible leniency and the implied approach to cc. I'd still probably do siege, but I'd probably just not even go for the cool melee summoner concept type I'm hoping I get to play and be totally back line for objective based pvp. I'll simply not even bother trying to fight pvp like this though and hope there is a way to cheese a summoner build for raid content if they go this route. In other words I lose both a possible identity path way AND possibly 'activities' in the game if this is in it.

G Tier
Feint Cancels/Light Weaving
This would be straight up awful in an mmo that isn't built to be a fighting game. The lag, design choices, and ability types would just be straight up bad.

CROW3 wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Actually I should have clarified that I meant for 'autoattacks' or the equivalent. So, if you've got a more specific perspective there, even as a Ranger, or, for example (since I know your intent from my compilation threads), 'how melee should go once you have to pull out the sword and shield', it'd help too.

Aha! That's helpful. If we're just talking 'auto-attacks' - which in AOC I think are called filler attacks, since auto-attacks won't be a thing - I'd modify my thoughts a bit:
Ranged auto-attacks: target combos (some basic shots downrange, I don't want movement generating combos as I may in a place where unspecified movement might kill me - like the edge of a mountain, or climbing a keep)

Melee auto-attacks: Gated-strings (still high but I would want to keep the combo multipliers fairly normalized so it doesn't overly inflate the combat experience and make the active abilities WAY over the top) or target combos, but with some more basic sword and shield specific attacks (e.g. slash, bash, and thrust with the appropriate movement forward)

I think that comports with your original ask, no?

Yeah, understood, and I can see it. I don't know what Intrepid intends to do for Rangers who literally just want to shoot Bow (I think there was a 'secondary weapon button' at some point, but no indication if you would just 'hold that down to keep shooting').

I can easily see how, depending on the implementation of that, Rangers would not want Gated Strings on their bow 'filler attacks'.

GrilledCheeseMojito

My big sticking point in combo systems is making sure the rhythm of them feels intuitive, and that the system rewards "staying on beat". Anything that deviates from making combos feel like a satisfying dance of sorts ends up making combat feel stilted an unnatural.

I don't mind precision in a true sense - I play games where I hit several hundred 33 millisecond windows in a row, after all - but I really am not looking to have that sort of experience when playing an MMO. If I wanted "super tight strings", I'd go back to pop'n music, and I expect that most people playing a game like Ashes wouldn't want to have that be a baseline requirement to play their class either. I'm a big fan of "so long as you hit it and it sounds on beat, then you succeed", and in the case of an MMO I want the button combinations to lead to immersion for using the weapon; in my ideal case, weapons should feel very different from each other in terms of the timing they require to execute, without being so difficult as to exclude someone who wants to switch weapons from picking it up.

For the below, rankings I order things in the ranking "within the tier", with the first being the most preferable. And, for reference, I intend to go with Sword and Shield, possibly Mace at times.

S Tier
"Just" Cancels, Gated Strings, Target Combos

For all of these you have a clear rhythm to follow, which leads to satisfying flows in both animation and in your own transition from state A to state B in the string, which leads to combat being intuitive and immersive once you understand the system. They also don't tend to have precise enough Within these, I like the "Just" cancels the best because it is the most rhythmically satisfying with respect to the animations: you need to watch the string for the right moment and learn where the slot is, and if you replicate that rhythm every time you'll get the correct animation. It's nice to hit and it's intuitive to find out where the slots are, if the animations are executed well, and so far Ashes' animation I believe to be of high enough quality to get such a result.
For the other two, I like Gated Strings better because it allows for branching in the flow. I really like the way Dynasty Warriors handles large-scale melee action, which is by using a Gated String system where you can either do up to 6 reps of the "light" attack, or branch into "heavy" at any of those points, with vastly different results in terms of your hitbox and movement, leading to a lot of variety and thought with a very simple two-button system. I would imagine that doing something like this with e.g. three buttons would result in something surprisingly versatile without being overcomplicated. Target Combos are nice, but it's not as intuitive to understand the branch points as the Gated Strings. Still, they're very rhythmically intuitive and work well for making an immersive experience.

A Tier
Gatling Combos

I'm not nearly as big a fan of these as the others, and it's also part of what bewilders me when I play Guilty Gear as opposed to more "traditional" fighting games. I'm not as big a fan of these because the rhythm is comparatively unintuitive, and the limits of the "gatling table" can be arcane and lead to strange interactions, especially if the gatling table is too restrictive (looking at you, Strive air combos...) or there's lack of clarity on what makes for a good ender for your string. It also is a system very likely to lead to unintended consequences and a lot of combo development, which would make the damage differential between newer and more experienced players fairly large if an "exploit" is found to artificially extend it. It's not as big of a deal here since enemies don't really stagger from attacks, but it could still end up happening. Still, I rank it fairly high because if implemented right, the rhythm is still relatively immersive, just less so than the ones I have at S, but it is definitely one that can become worrying.

B Tier

I don't think I have anything here.

C Tier
Mashing/Holding

C is for Credit, and for Perfectly Acceptable but not Exciting. What we have now is fine. It isn't particularly exciting, but it also doesn't turn me off from the game at all minus the part where I sometimes go careening past my enemy due to the momentum in the attacks, which to my understanding is something that's actively being iterated on. If combat stays "mashy" but the target locking issue is somehow resolved, I would not be upset, but I definitely would want "better".

D Tier
Timed Cancels

In a "character action game" I'd put these at at least B tier, but I strongly believe that strict timing in an MMO like Ashes, which is both online by definition and not designed around "being a fighting game at the core", is just counterproductive to the goals of the game. If I wanted this, I'd either go play Absolver, or just go back to fighting games. It's not productive here, but it's not terrible. It wouldn't make me quit or anything, but it would make me make exasperated sighs a lot, especially when I needed to explain the system to someone who doesn't have fighting game experience, and might not be able to keep up in Ashes because of it.

E Tier
True Links

Again, I'm not here to play a fighting game, and this one is strictly worse, because not only is it difficult execution, but these usually result in something that is absolutely terrible and unintuitive rhythmically and often requires visual cues. Doing all of that while in something intense like a Siege, where even in the best of conditions you might experience some jitter from either your GPU or the netcode? No, thanks. I would still learn it, but I'd grow pretty frustrated with it over time, especially if it's tight enough that any net jitters could cause it to drop in small party PvE environments.

F Tier
Skipping this one because...

G Tier
Feint Cancels/Light Weaving

This kills the entire breath and heartbeat of the action and movement, and leads to combat that feels like garbage. This would be enough to make me actually feel awful when playing, and I would expect it to be an extremely polarizing change, leading to a lot of players to respond when asked how they feel about the combat "it's boring but I can't explain why". Please don't do this for melee weapons. I leave it to actual Mages to talk about whether they'd want this for spells since it sounds less terrible, especially if you have some sort of elemental wheel system deciding whether you get extra damage for going through your spells in a particular order, but for melee this would be awful in many, many ways.

I'm not 100% certain here, even with the descriptions I'm having trouble matching them to specific games so it's hard to imagine. I also feel like the Cancels and the Strings or Combos tend to show up together rather than exclusively. I'd be grateful if you could assign an example game to all of these (thank you for the couple you've already done) so I can reference and possibly change my list later on, but for now, here goes:

S tier
- Cancels (combining both into one since they're the same except for the timing forgiveness which varies game to game) this is BDO combat
- Gated Strings (Vindictus combat)

A tier

- Mashing/Holding: this only gets A-tier if it includes light and heavy attacks, plus blocking and telegraphed enemy attacks so you can know when to block, dodge, move, etc. Otherwise, C-tier.

B tier
- Target Combos (Not really into fighting games such as Mortal Kombat, etc)
- Gatling Combos (definitely have not played a game with this style, but guessing it will be around B tier)

Everything else

Cypher wrote: »

I'm not 100% certain here, even with the descriptions I'm having trouble matching them to specific games so it's hard to imagine. I also feel like the Cancels and the Strings or Combos tend to show up together rather than exclusively. I'd be grateful if you could assign an example game to all of these (thank you for the couple you've already done) so I can reference and possibly change my list later on, but for now, here goes:

S tier
- Cancels (combining both into one since they're the same except for the timing forgiveness which varies game to game) I feel like this is BDO combat?
- Gated Strings (Staying here for now until I figure out which of these is more like Vindictus and which is more like Mortal Kombat/DoA)
- Target Combos (After looking at Absolver gameplay I can say this seems like mortal kombat or DoA unless I'm missing something? You have DoA listed as an example for Gated Strings though.) But this would be fighting game combos?

A tier
Waiting for a clarification before moving an S ranked system down here to A.

B tier
- Gatling Combos (not sure I've played a game with this system before)
- Mashing/Holding (would be much better with some variety, like light and heavy attacks with blocking)

Everything else

Yeah if you aren't familiar, having played either quite a lot of old and frankly not great MMOs, or a decent amount of Fighters, you wouldn't necessarily know these. It's actually a problem in trying to explain fighting games to people because they so often look the same, but of the current popular fighters, only two instances really 'share their combo system with another'.

That said, you're correct that Absolver is pretty much Target Combos, at least in what you'd be able to see from most videos.

A serious player of Action combat games, particularly MMO-similar ones, may not think of there being a difference between the different cancels.

I think Vindictus has to count under Gated Strings because you can't actually just 'do most or all of their attacks without any previous'. For it to be a Target Combo, you need to be able to do each of the moves individually on demand, with a 'bonus' for doing them in a certain sequence (usually speed).

Gatling Combos are rare in games generally so even if you played a ton of them, you probably still didn't encounter one, I actually can't think of a non-fighting game as an example, off the top of my head.

The main difference between the Cancels, is that in BDO if you do attack A, and then press the button for B after probably the first hit (sometimes not even that long), if the cancel is available, A ends and B starts. Even if it had a longer animation.

A Timed Cancel is strict, the game won't accept the input for B until A is at a specific point. For some people this is natural and easy, for others it's frustrating and clunky.

But wanting any form of cancel automatically implies a wish for different types of attack that are controlled by the player, either Light and Heavy, or 'Forward, Neutral, Back'. The only question is 'how good you need to be at the timing'. Gated Strings let you give up the control and precise variation, to make the timing easier, moving further away from the strictness of fighters.

@Azherae Thank you so much for providing all of those examples and explanations.

I amended my previous post instead of reposting the edited list. Let me know what you think if you have an opinion of it.

Cypher wrote: »

@Azherae Thank you so much for providing all of those examples and explanations.

I amended my previous post instead of reposting the edited list. Let me know what you think if you have an opinion of it.

Thank you. The main reason for checking all this was actually related to someone mentioning their wish for Combos a while back, and the realization that 'which type of combos' is often unclear when people say that.

Intrepid has enough on their plate (if they decide to even offer combos) without also having to try to figure out what people mean when they say it, so my hope was to lessen any arguments by giving at least something to help us figure out where our differences in interpretation matter.

So one more thing. My data collection indicates that you are likely to play Mage in Ashes, but you've recently said that you played Valkyrie in BDO. Which leaves one burning question... what weapon do you even hope to use in Ashes, and are you having the same problem as most others with the long 'wait' from the end of a melee animation to the moment you can activate a skill?

Azherae wrote: »

Cypher wrote: »

@Azherae Thank you so much for providing all of those examples and explanations.

I amended my previous post instead of reposting the edited list. Let me know what you think if you have an opinion of it.

Thank you. The main reason for checking all this was actually related to someone mentioning their wish for Combos a while back, and the realization that 'which type of combos' is often unclear when people say that.

Intrepid has enough on their plate (if they decide to even offer combos) without also having to try to figure out what people mean when they say it, so my hope was to lessen any arguments by giving at least something to help us figure out where our differences in interpretation matter.

So one more thing. My data collection indicates that you are likely to play Mage in Ashes, but you've recently said that you played Valkyrie in BDO. Which leaves one burning question... what weapon do you even hope to use in Ashes, and are you having the same problem as most others with the long 'wait' from the end of a melee animation to the moment you can activate a skill?

You’re correct although this time around I’m going to do something a little different thanks to my early access to the game. I’m going to try every single class before release. But, that being said I’m almost certainly going to roll a Mage or a Tank as my main class.

As for the weapons, that’s a super interesting question because I think this game will have more weapon variety than any other MMO that I’ve played (at least that I’ve played more than once). And the fact that you can use any weapon as any class makes it that much harder to choose! Probably Staves, Bows, Orbs, Sword/Shield and Dual Swords would be all of my interests. And I really am not sure if I’m having that problem of “waiting” after a melee attack. I’ll test specifically for that tomorrow when/if able.

JamesSunderland

Quite an interesting post even tho some of the combo systems can overlap.

S Tier
Just Cancels
Basically the skill gap amplifier, a bit harsher on the latency side of things but overall the best for players freedom and improvement potential, specially if we get skill animation cancelations to pair with it.

Timed cancels Can go here aswell depending on the restrictiveness of the timings.
(Least restrictive here on S Tier)
(Ultra restrictive all the way down to E/F Tier)

A Tier
Gatling Combos
A boost to players freedom when combined with cancels gives the player the option to go full optimal or to be average. (Gets boosted to S Tier if combined with Cancels)

B Tier
Target Combos
Kinda limiting and basic but does the trick better than mashing/holding.
(Gets boosted to A Tier if combined with Cancels)

Gated Strings
Gated Strings even tho being quite a detractor to player freedom are still functional.

C Tier
Mashing/Holding
Basic, simple, limited and restrictive but functional, not alot to say about that one.

D Tier Nope
E Tier Nope

F Tier
True Links
Unreasonable for autoattacks, maybe functional for specific skill combinations, but very limited.

G Tier
Feint Combos/Light Weaving
In my opinion unreasonable and unfit for MMORPGs in general.

@Azherae - how do you classify Bless Unleashed action combat?

CROW3 wrote: »

@Azherae - how do you classify Bless Unleashed action combat?

Bless is a Gated Strings game with a small amount of actually having to time what you're doing. The game tells you what you can do, and tells you to do it by pressing this sequence. The intermediate strikes aren't generally possible outside of the combo.

You may notice for some melee classes how the 'next hit' seems to flow naturally somewhat from the position of the weapon at the end of the previous hit, this is not specifically an indicator of Gated Strings on its own, but is relevant to Bless' overall style.

Thanks. Just trying it out, figured I’d ‘feel’ what the action combat style was in our conversations while I was at it.