Best examples of Action Combat? Starting to Feel Like Tab > Action

Yours truly is trying a lot of different MMO's lately, and it's starting to feel pointless to have an Action-style combat system in a real MMORPG.

Now, I've tried Lost Ark - which is probably the end-all of Action-style combat systems. I didn't stick with it (80 hours, according to the tracker) because Lost Ark feels like a single-player game. It's almost akin to a 2D-scroller, except you can move in all of the compass directions. The most useful insight it provided is that Action-style combat really isn't very useful against a single opponent, since the game is capable of not registering that you're trying to hit the enemy; it's true usefulness seems to be in fighting against groups of enemies. However, most MMO's will let you tab-target either yourself or a single enemy, and then fire off an AoE ability, in fighting groups.

Since enemies in MMO's tend to gather directly around you or bunch up together in small, cloistered groups that you can just AoE, is it really necessary to HAVE Action-style combat in an MMO? Isn't it more of a hack-and-slash game feature?

Just started trying Guild Wars 2 - which in previous forums-threads, some people identify as Action-combat, while others identify it as Tab-targeting. I've come to define GW2 as Action-combat, since you don't have to have an enemy targeted to use your combat abilities, and your weapon swings freely - damaging any enemies in your way. I've already tried Lineage 2, since AoC is supposed to take a lot of inspiration from it's systems, and just find it too static/old now to really get into, as a new player.

Are there some really good examples of Action-based systems anyone can recommend? I'm not enjoying the feel/gameplay of GW2, atm.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

SirChancelot

Since I haven't seen anyone mention it about GW2
There is a setting you can change to make it more action'y
Switches it from tab to a target reticle

https://youtu.be/-Y2czD6BREw

Video shows you how

NishUK

Neurath wrote: »

You will always back end game. I will always back gameplay.

This is it! great line.

Most mmo addicts will always quickly look to the overview of an mmo by looking at how they fall within it at its conclusion of content "end game" but what is that really a sign of...Narcissism.
The gameplay and deep/interesting/diverse systems are always 2nd to these people, they're just after the status, to appear on or near the top after all the conquest.

The mmorpg genre...cheated onto the scene, other genres besides RTS games weren't polished enough or graphically ready to have a chance to compete, WoW came into an open field and had that "fine and ready" harvester to sweep up every single boy and man lucky enough to have internet before 2005-2010.

The mmo genre has, essentially, been a victim of WoW's massive popularity and success, it's a game made in the very early 2000's, it does not have any real groundwork or needed harsh and experienced criticism for gameplay entertainment for a 3d game and open world game and there was barely any competition against it due to costs and work involved.

The mmorpg genre, at its foundation, is screaming to get the gameplay that other genre's possess, once it's there, will see the genre jump onto the scene again in a big way!
When you look at how a very simple mmo system like FF14 has leaped into first place of the mmorpgs, with solo story content, instanced areas and 5 man max or so dungeon'ing, mmorpg's aren't anywhere close to a real game you'd spend most days on, tame PvE only content.... it's nothing more than a very casual experience, a chat zone, a sub game to your main game ( LoL / Fifa / FPS game ).

MAKE MMO GAMEPLAY GREAT AGAIN! PvX is the best! ( copium inhale ).

@Noaani the MMO is the main focus, nothing else, it's needed, more players need more players, not to be cuddled by the RPG element being the number 1 focus! As long as there are passionate RPG/Fantasy devs, it will remain as an rpg regardless of focus on player vs player entertainment!

Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud to earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!

/ epic rant "completed!"

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

Most mmo addicts will always quickly look to the overview of an mmo by looking at how they fall within it at its conclusion of content "end game" but what is that really a sign of...Narcissism.

No, it is realism.

In most MMORPG's, 90% of all online time from all characters is spent at the level cap.

If you are looking at playing a new game, would you look at what you are doing 10% of the time, or what you are doing 90% of the time?

At absolute best, Ashes will be 85/15. The stated desire to have a longer leveling experience is still miniscule in comparison to the time players will spend at the level cap. The point isn't to spread out the leveling process to make it so long that players never get there, because all this does is segregate players in a manner where many simply will not ever catch up - people tend to give up if leveling is too hard.

The mmo genre has, essentially, been a victim of WoW's massive popularity and success, it's a game made in the very early 2000's, it does not have any real groundwork or needed harsh and experienced criticism for gameplay entertainment for a 3d game and open world game and there was barely any competition against it due to costs and work involved.

This is something I agree with - but only sort of.

WoW had a LOT of criticism when it launched - but that was from experienced MMORPG players. Blizzard basically just said "but this game isn't for you, you should play EQ or EQ2, SWG, EVE or L2. We made WoW for Warcraft 3 fans".

To say WoW never received criticism is to say you weren't looking around much in 2004/2005.

I do agree that WoW doesn't have any real groundwork, but that is not because the genre didn't have it. EQ laid a fantastic foundation for the MMO genre (taking note of the mistakes of the games that came before it, rather than building on said games), and EQ2, SWG and L2 all built upon that. WoW built beside that foundation - they were aware of it, but they ignored most of it.

That foundation that EQ laid saw players have enough content - that was the key. Early EQ developers kept content up their sleeve - if players completed all the content in the game, they always had something new ready to release. There was almost never a point where a dozen guilds in early EQ had completed the top end encounter in the game before the next encounter was released.

EQ2 also did this - I was at the top end in EQ2, and literally never had more than a week or two before a new content drop where we were out of things we wanted to take on.

This is where the genre is a victim of WoW - a dearth of content. The foundation of the genre does not have this - WoW introduced it.

When you look at how a very simple mmo system like FF14 has leaped into first place of the mmorpgs, with solo story content, instanced areas and 5 man max or so dungeon'ing, mmorpg's aren't anywhere close to a real game you'd spend most days on, tame PvE only content.... it's nothing more than a very casual experience, a chat zone, a sub game to your main game ( LoL / Fifa / FPS game ).

I agree with your assessment of FFXIV here, but I disagree with it in regards to you assuming that is the PvE aspect of MMORPG's as a whole. FFXIV is - at it's core - a casual game. Complaining that it is a casual game is obviously unproductive.

I'll translate what you are saying in to cars - because why not?

You are looking at a VW Golf, and saying sure, it's a fine car to get you from point A to point B, but as soon as you take it on to Nürburgring, it doesn't hold up to other cars at all!

The thing with a PvP game is that they burn bright, but burn fast. A game like FFXIV is designed to burn low and slow - you don't get to complain about that when that is what it's design is. All you get to do is the same thing as me - chose to not play it.

Where you are making the mistake here though, is in assuming that FFXIV - that burning low and slow - is all a PvE MMORPG can be.

Pointing you again to my above point about EQ and EQ2 always adding new content (seriously, coming up to 29 expansions for EQ - when L2 has had the equivalent of 4 in it's entire life). What this does is take a game that burns bright - and would thus burn fast - and gives it more fuel. This results in a game that burns bright, but also burns long.

In a PvP MMO' you simply can't do this. You can add actual new things to a game when you add PvE. Actual new experiences that players have never come across. In a PvP game, the main thing people are doing is still fighting other players. After a while on any given server, you get to know the people on said server well enough that they are no different to a games AI - they have no surprises left to throw at you (at least, this is what I saw in Archeage after a few years). When your main enemy is inherently the same, there is no real way to add new fuel to that fast burning game.

Sure, you may well get sick of fighting the same PvE encounter in a PvE focused MMO - but the developers can always add a new one, with new abilities - or even with old abilities that it uses in a different way. The thing with PvP though, is that in order to introduce a new enemy, they need to attract a new player, and have that player level and gear up to be on par with you.

Noaani the MMO is the main focus, nothing else, it's needed, more players need more players, not to be cuddled by the RPG element being the number 1 focus! As long as there are passionate RPG/Fantasy devs, it will remain as an rpg regardless of focus on player vs player entertainment!

Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!

Not sure where I ever said that the MMO was not the main focus, nor that we don't need more and more players.

I'm also not asking for RPG elements - I don't give a shit about playing a role, you have me mixed up with someone else, I think.

Perhaps you are just using PvE and RPG synonymously here, in which case all I can do is point out how massively mislead you are.

If anything, PvP cuddles you more than top end PvE. In PvP, a player will win 100% of the time. The only question is exactly which player wins. In top end PvE, that could be as low as literally 1% of the time (I have come up against PvE encounters where my guild had a total of less than one successful kill per 100 serious attempts - good PvE gets that hard). Sure, if you are only fighting low end content you will never see this - but if you have never seen this you also shouldn't be talking generalizations about PvE content.

I do agree with your last point about needing players that don't just leave the game and wait for the next expansion. However, my experience tells me that this is almost entirely exclusive to WoW (or at least much more common with WoW). This was simply not a 'thing' in EQ2 in the decade I played it.

So, rather than saying "we need players that don't leave the game when they feel they have nothing left to do in said game" (which is why players leave a game with the intention of coming back with an expansion), what you should be asking for is developers that release new content before players are finished with the existing content.

Basically, you are taking a failing of a specific developer mindset, looking at player reaction to that (seriously, are you begrudging players that leave a game when they are no longer having fun in that game?), and you are then blaming the players rather than the developers that put those players in that situation.

There is a simple fact of life. If people are not having fun in a leisure activity, they will not carry on with said activity. This is why PvP in a persistent world has caused more harm than good in most MMO's to date. It causes more people to not have fun more often, leading to them leaving the game because of course they will leave the game if they are not having fun.

You may be upset with that because those players are needed for YOU to have fun, but again, that is a failing of PvP in a persistent world - without those players that lose to you, YOU aren't having fun any more. Those other players are your content, and when they leave because they are not having fun being your content, you suddenly find yourself with less content.

The big issue with PvP in a persistent game is that you need to reward the winners, but you also need to find a way to retain the losers, and also find a way to keep those losers competitive with the winners that keep getting rewards for winning.

This is why games like LoL or basically any BR of FPS game works. They reset.

Sure, a game could hope to be like L2 and retain a miniscule population for a good amount of time - but most of L2's current population play it for nostalgia (generated at a time when players playing the game didn't know any better in regards to an MMORPG). Nostalgia is something a new game simply doesn't have, so you can't really rely on it for a new game.

SirChancelot

NishUK wrote: »

Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!

/ epic rant "completed!"

I can really appreciate that approach

Noaani

SirChancelot wrote: »

NishUK wrote: »

Just look at league of legends, we need casuals happy to earn "gold rank" and dedicated players happy and proud earn a little bit more with platinum and beyond, not this quit and wait mentality, waiting for the next expansion and not taking it as their main gaming experience!

/ epic rant "completed!"

I can really appreciate that approach

So, maybe you can help me out here.

Are you suggesting players should stick with the game even if they are not enjoying it, or are you saying the developers should do what they can to ensure people continue to enjoy the game?

One of these I absolutely agree with, the other I can't see how anyone could think.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Pointing you again to my above point about EQ and EQ2 always adding new content (seriously, coming up to 29 expansions for EQ - when L2 has had the equivalent of 4 in it's entire life). What this does is take a game that burns bright - and would thus burn fast - and gives it more fuel. This results in a game that burns bright, but also burns long.

You keep dismissing L2's updates, but each of them added new mechanics, new gear, new mobs, new bosses, new locations (which brought new castles and fortresses in the older updates), new skills and rebalance to old ones, with some updates changing the world completely or adding new races and classes.

Here's a video that shows biggest bosses/locations in the updates and here's a video that tells about the updates in more detail(autosubs are passable for the overall info).

I'm sure that EQ's expansions are cool and big too, but if you combine 2 L2 updates (that came out ~every 6 months) into one yearly update, I bet they'd be close to EQ's in size and in quantity, even though L2 came out several years later.

There's also this small article that tells even more detail about a group of updates, just to show the approximate size of them better.

Noaani wrote: »

In a PvP MMO' you simply can't do this. You can add actual new things to a game when you add PvE. Actual new experiences that players have never come across. In a PvP game, the main thing people are doing is still fighting other players. After a while on any given server, you get to know the people on said server well enough that they are no different to a games AI - they have no surprises left to throw at you (at least, this is what I saw in Archeage after a few years). When your main enemy is inherently the same, there is no real way to add new fuel to that fast burning game.

I dunno how fast AA got its updates, but in L2 you could fight the same person across several updates and get different results because of the class rebalances or new gear that either of you acquired or new people that either of your parties got (cause usually you'd be pvping in parties instead of 1v1).

Noaani wrote: »

If anything, PvP cuddles you more than top end PvE. In PvP, a player will win 100% of the time. The only question is exactly which player wins. In top end PvE, that could be as low as literally 1% of the time (I have come up against PvE encounters where my guild had a total of less than one successful kill per 100 serious attempts - good PvE gets that hard). Sure, if you are only fighting low end content you will never see this - but if you have never seen this you also shouldn't be talking generalizations about PvE content.

Why would I, as a pvp player, care about the other player winning though? If I lost - I still lost, no matter if I lost in pvp or pve. Your example of 1% of wins in pve is literally the same as some newb only winning once against a better/more geared pvper out of 100 fights. Except for some reason people leave when that happens, while they continue bashing their heads against a dumb mob for 100 more times.

Why is that? Maybe cause the PvErs are the ones who're getting cuddled by easier pve? But, just as you said, if you only clear easy pve then you'll never get to hardcore stuff that only a few can clear. Then why wouldn't that apply to pvp too? If you're a casual, you don't go fighting lvl50 mobs at lvl25. So why would you go fighting lvl50 players when you're at lvl25? And Ashes will have a system that prevents those lvl50s from fighting you, so that part of the pvp gameplay won't even touch you. At which point, the pvp game is no different than a pve game.

Noaani wrote: »

So, rather than saying "we need players that don't leave the game when they feel they have nothing left to do in said game" (which is why players leave a game with the intention of coming back with an expansion), what you should be asking for is developers that release new content before players are finished with the existing content.

Except it takes way more time to create content than to consume it. And if devs make content that takes months to clear, people complain that it's too difficult/grindy/etc. Which is why most companies these days just make fast content and are ok with people leaving the game until the next batch of content comes online.

Noaani wrote: »

There is a simple fact of life. If people are not having fun in a leisure activity, they will not carry on with said activity. This is why PvP in a persistent world has caused more harm than good in most MMO's to date. It causes more people to not have fun more often, leading to them leaving the game because of course they will leave the game if they are not having fun.

And how many of those games were faction-based and had free PKing of the opposite side? From what I've heard, not that many people complain about BDO's pvp system because it's way closer to L2's/AoC's karma/corruption one, so people can't just freely genocide others which allows casuals to enjoy their game w/o worry, while hardcores enjoy their own fights. Though maybe I just missed those complains, so if you have any source for them - I'd love to see it.

Noaani wrote: »

The big issue with PvP in a persistent game is that you need to reward the winners, but you also need to find a way to retain the losers, and also find a way to keep those losers competitive with the winners that keep getting rewards for winning.

What is the reward for those who fail to clear an instanced super difficult boss 100 times in a row? What keeps them coming back each time? They're losers for a 100 consecutive times, so why don't they just leave the game, just how pvp losers do (at least you claim they do)? Is it the potential reward? The dim light at the end of the loser tunnel?

Why not have the same reward for pvp? If anything, that's exactly what Ashes is trying to do. The reward is caravan, castle, node, loot, pvp-event-based rewards, etc etc. You can lose 99 times in a pvp battle, but get the reward on the 100th time. Except what's different, from you doing the same thing in pve, is that you're fighting against people rather than a mob.

And if the problem is "one side wins and gets stronger, while the other loses and has to catch up even more", then it's on Intrepid to balance the system in such a way that the winning side has diminishing returns, while the losers don't get set back by days because of a loss. I definitely agree that there should be snowball-preventing mechanics in the game, mainly in the form of good gear tier balance and higher costs of upkeep/progress for those at the top. And I've even proposed systems that would support this here and here.

Noaani wrote: »

This is why games like LoL or basically any BR of FPS game works. They reset.

Sure, a game could hope to be like L2 and retain a miniscule population for a good amount of time - but most of L2's current population play it for nostalgia (generated at a time when players playing the game didn't know any better in regards to an MMORPG). Nostalgia is something a new game simply doesn't have, so you can't really rely on it for a new game.

You know what the funny thing is. Most people who still play L2 usually hop between new servers every few weeks or a month. So in a way, L2 went the way of the sessional games. Yes, there's a few big private servers that have been up for years at this point and they have quite a few thousand players there, but those are usually a rarity because it takes a lot of money and time to properly set up a server that would support thousands of people playing it for that long.

And obviously Intrepid should aim for the latter situation, though I would be interested in seeing a month-long mmo that resets characters and the world every month while giving them some sort of slow overall progress. Maybe some "generational mmorpg" where your character "dies" after some period of time, but your "family" continues. And you could have some cataclysmic events here and there that would wipe all the oldies and their gear, while introducing some new progress mechanic. This way you'd have the feeling of constant progress/leveling w/o having it all be at max lvl.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

If anything, PvP cuddles you more than top end PvE. In PvP, a player will win 100% of the time. The only question is exactly which player wins. In top end PvE, that could be as low as literally 1% of the time (I have come up against PvE encounters where my guild had a total of less than one successful kill per 100 serious attempts - good PvE gets that hard). Sure, if you are only fighting low end content you will never see this - but if you have never seen this you also shouldn't be talking generalizations about PvE content.

Why would I, as a pvp player, care about the other player winning though? If I lost - I still lost, no matter if I lost in pvp or pve. Your example of 1% of wins in pve is literally the same as some newb only winning once against a better/more geared pvper out of 100 fights. Except for some reason people leave when that happens, while they continue bashing their heads against a dumb mob for 100 more times.

Why is that? Maybe cause the PvErs are the ones who're getting cuddled by easier pve? But, just as you said, if you only clear easy pve then you'll never get to hardcore stuff that only a few can clear. Then why wouldn't that apply to pvp too? If you're a casual, you don't go fighting lvl50 mobs at lvl25. So why would you go fighting lvl50 players when you're at lvl25? And Ashes will have a system that prevents those lvl50s from fighting you, so that part of the pvp gameplay won't even touch you. At which point, the pvp game is no different than a pve game.

I can give you a massive pile of reasons why Noaani is entirely right here, but I won't derail the overall thread with it if you don't care (technically, after all, we are still discussing good reasons to have Action vs Tab Combat even if it is shifting into PvP vs PvE reasonings). Here are the most important 3, and since they have entirely to do with the psychology of players, you can just dismiss them all as 'traits of people you don't consider important'.

1. Because players adapt and bosses don't, people who lose to bosses feel like they are unraveling a puzzle, and that 'because someone can do it, and it was designed by a person, it must be possible', so they are more willing to keep trying. PvP does not have this property.
2. Because players can look at a situation, know that in order to participate in an enjoyable and successful way in that situation means needing to defeat another player of potentially superior skill and investment, and then choose to avoid that situation. The problem arises when most of the game is 'that situation' for a player.
3. Because players are mostly 'regular human beings' and the 'regular human being' response to 'being defeated by a mob over and over is 'this sucks but I can deal with it on my terms' (see #1 and #2) whereas losing to other players tends to trigger feelings of bullying and social demotion which our species is conditioned to avoid, sometimes at extreme cost.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

word

Yeah, I guess I'm just built different, cause I see none of those as good reasons

But yes, this has gone too far from the og topic.

Though I think I might tie it back in. In yall's opinion, what's better for casual pvp players: an action combat system where the player has to be very mechanically good to even come close to the better players, or a tab/hybrid system where you can take your time learning about bot/all classes and come up with strategical ways of overcoming power differences (alternatively you could just look up a guide)?

Imo tab is way better for the pvp casuals because the floor is way lower and allows them to "take it at their own pace", while if a casual player doesn't know how to noscope360fromabackflip - they ain't winning in pvp. Well, that is, if the game is even a step above the usual "action combat is just aoes".

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

word

Yeah, I guess I'm just built different, cause I see none of those as good reasons But yes, this has gone too far from the og topic.

Though I think I might tie it back in. In yall's opinion, what's better for casual pvp players: an action combat system where the player has to be very mechanically good to even come close to the better players, or a tab/hybrid system where you can take your time learning about bot/all classes and come up with strategical ways of overcoming power differences (alternatively you could just look up a guide)?

Imo tab is way better for the pvp casuals because the floor is way lower and allows them to "take it at their own pace", while if a casual player doesn't know how to noscope360fromabackflip - they ain't winning in pvp. Well, that is, if the game is even a step above the usual "action combat is just aoes".

I believe that the optimal method for a wholistic game where people want to continue playing and are willing to play it in addition to, or more than, a different genre, is that the game must have Action-Lite combat. The design of such a system could be easily determined from the principles of the desired experience for the game. I certainly believe that if the overall community or Director can define exactly what the psychological goals of PvP situations are, someone like the aforementioned Douglas Miller (hi!) could do this.

Heavy Action style combat has too many performance flaws and too high a learning curve while not mechanically adding much that is useful to the Genre, imo. BDO fits in here.

I as usual don't believe in 'Hybrid' in the way it is discussed by most posters, because the word does not have a meaning, but as usual I will not hold Steven to 'the meanings of old terms used', and it's a good buzzword.

The precise system needed to please the maximum number of players is 'Spacing matters for attack abilities, defensive buffs matter, defensive skills are tab targeted, offensive debuffs can be tab targeted but have a range limit (usually short)'.

Pure Tab is bad because it removes 'Spacing Matters for Attack Abilities'. Note that I refer to positional spacing, not range. MOBAs perfected this system so hard that even FFXIV's newest 'PvP arena' is literally just a gear-homogenized MOBA. They know what people want, so they do it.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Pure Tab is bad because it removes 'Spacing Matters for Attack Abilities'. Note that I refer to positional spacing, not range. MOBAs perfected this system so hard that even FFXIV's newest 'PvP arena' is literally just a gear-homogenized MOBA. They know what people want, so they do it.

Could you extrapolate on this? Cause I'm not sure if I completely understand what you mean, if you're not talking about range-based spacing.

Do you mean smth like "I stand here, my enemy is at the front and does X amount of damage, but if they're at the back then it's Y dmg, and Z dmg from the sides"?

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Pure Tab is bad because it removes 'Spacing Matters for Attack Abilities'. Note that I refer to positional spacing, not range. MOBAs perfected this system so hard that even FFXIV's newest 'PvP arena' is literally just a gear-homogenized MOBA. They know what people want, so they do it.

Could you extrapolate on this? Cause I'm not sure if I completely understand what you mean, if you're not talking about range-based spacing.

Do you mean smth like "I stand here, my enemy is at the front and does X amount of damage, but if they're at the back then it's Y dmg, and Z dmg from the sides"?

That's basically correct, yes. Sometimes this means that the ability will feel exactly like Action, sometimes it doesn't. Let's take a 'draw in' Javelin style ability. We assume an attack cone in front of the player. If the enemy is within the cone, they are hit and pulled in. The enemy knows 'If I want to avoid being in range of this attack I can move backward or to the side'.

Similarly a leaping downstrike shockwave with a weapon doing damage in a circle, with damage being reduced when the enemy hurtbox is toward the edges of the circle. The Attacker wants to kill the Healer, they have to target the ability so that the Healer is in the center of the attack, the healer can react by repositioning. They all end up being what most people call 'ground target', though it isn't usually quite that simple if the game is trying to be complex, because the requirement of movement creates interplay.

All I'm saying is that Tab in some games makes it so that the player can't 'see the position of their opponent and make a decision' unless the ability is limited in basically the same way, which frustrates people because they don't 'know the range'. In the case of the leaping downstrike, you'd get more of a 'I am targeting the Healer, this ability will hit the Healer as the center even if they move, and the only aspect of the shockwave damage is who was standing closer to the Healer'. The attacker no longer needs to have the skill to threaten, reposition, feint, or anticipate the enemy, so all the related interactions are lost.

Dygz

For an MMORPG, I enjoy the speed of action combat up to Neverwinter Online speed.
That is fast enough to feel somewhat realistic and responsive, but also slow enough to respond to what others in my group are doing and synergize my abilities with theirs as they make tactical decisions.

To me, this really has nothing to do with casual v hardcore and everything to do with being an RPG rather than a Hack & Slash or MOBA. Where, really the focus is on defeating enemies as fast as possile and moving on to the next combat encounter.
Action Combat should not be so fast that we are just racing through rotations as fast as cooldowns will allow.
It needs to be slow enough that we have time to adjust our tactics to support the momnt-to-moment tactics of our allies.

With regard to player twitch skills - RPGs are supposed to be about the skills of the character more than the skills of the player. Which is why features like Tab-Target become important - although AoEs can also reflect character skill.
In an RPG, I should be able to build my character to have heroic caliber aim and accuracy that surpasses what my personal aim and accuracy are as a player. Also, Fantasy RPGs tend to have abilities that are similar to Magic Missle, which locks onto a target regardless of the target's evasion attempts.
I think Neverwinter Online's soft-lock worked well enough that I did not miss tab-target in that game. Although, it's been 8+ years since I played it.

Azherae

Actually I can more specifically illustrate the concept using exactly the same two abilities @NiKr

With the Javelin, assume it has priority, it pulls one enemy, the enemy 'closest to the center of the cone' (this calculation is fine since skill calculations can be complex).

Now you have 'I can hide behind another player'. 'I can coordinate with another player who leaps into the way', 'I can backstep and and trick my enemy into pulling my Summon to them instead'.

With Tab Targeted Javelin (not saying that Ashes would have this) you can't do THOSE things, explicitly, you couldn't 'be in range, and remain in range due to a scheming plan'.

For the leap, if the leap has a set distance, or a minimum distance of 2m (after all, it's not really a leap then and you should probably be using a different skill) then 'using that leap while close up' would fail, but there would be no case for any 'autocorrection' for 'I chose to leap and my enemy charged at me'.

Whereas in many Tab games, the outcome of that interaction would be 'I leapt at my Tab Targeted enemy but their charge did nothing to help them evade my leap, I just hit them anyway'. That sort of thing reduces the skill and complexity of the combat enough both in PvP and PvE that some people find it too simplistic for a modern game.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

word

L2 played great with this system. Daggers had abilities that only worked if you hit your target's back. And they'd have a chance to work from the side, but quite rarely, and 0 dmg from the front. Tanks had a cone of their shield def, where if they met an attack with their shield - their "shield dmg mitigation" passive would work and decrease that dmg. So phys attackers would always try to CC them and move to the non-shielded side. There'd be several abilities that were action-based or ground-targeted.

Azherae wrote: »

All I'm saying is that Tab in some games makes it so that the player can't 'see the position of their opponent and make a decision' unless the ability is limited in basically the same way, which frustrates people because they don't 'know the range'.

Do they not see/know the range of the ability because of the UI? Cause L2 just had a "range" descriptor on abilities, both for distance moved and aoe radius. You had abilities that had a tab target and worked as you explained in the example, or you had pure action that worked based on your character's direction and you had to know/feel the distance to properly hit your target, which imo is the skill-testing part of the ability.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Whereas in many Tab games, the outcome of that interaction would be 'I leapt at my Tab Targeted enemy but their charge did nothing to help them evade my leap, I just hit them anyway'. That sort of thing reduces the skill and complexity of the combat enough both in PvP and PvE that some people find it too simplistic for a modern game.

And the best solution to this kind of problem that I see is to have a tab target system that has action abilities, which, to my knowledge, is most tab games.

So, at the end, it always comes down to developers and how they wanna make it. And, as you said, we gotta tell Intrepid what we wanna have in the game and Intrepid will need to find a way to realize those suggestions within their chosen system.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

word

L2 played great with this system. Daggers had abilities that only worked if you hit your target's back. And they'd have a chance to work from the side, but quite rarely, and 0 dmg from the front. Tanks had a cone of their shield def, where if they met an attack with their shield - their "shield dmg mitigation" passive would work and decrease that dmg. So phys attackers would always try to CC them and move to the non-shielded side. There'd be several abilities that were action-based or ground-targeted.

Azherae wrote: »

All I'm saying is that Tab in some games makes it so that the player can't 'see the position of their opponent and make a decision' unless the ability is limited in basically the same way, which frustrates people because they don't 'know the range'.

Do they not see/know the range of the ability because of the UI? Cause L2 just had a "range" descriptor on abilities, both for distance moved and aoe radius. You had abilities that had a tab target and worked as you explained in the example, or you had pure action that worked based on your character's direction and you had to know/feel the distance to properly hit your target, which imo is the skill-testing part of the ability.

Bear in mind that every one of us who has played different games have different priors and base assumptions.

If you played a 'Tab Target' game where range matters that much, then calling it 'Tab Target' might miss some people's perspectives. This is why I don't like the terms (though I don't fault Intrepid for using them).

There are Tab Target games that involve 'autofacing', 'abilities that hit even if your opponent moves perfectly as if to avoid it', 'interactions that mostly involve no repositioning or commitment so you can stand pretty simply around relative to the enemy'.

At that point, Tab vs Ground Target is decided by 'will my ability strike my opponent even if I don't anticipate their movement'. A game where you 'select' a target but your abilities don't auto-target your selection and don't auto-track their movement, I would question what the Tab Targeting is for (beyond changing priority of a target within a group that would all be hit, or Tab-Targeting allies for heals and buffs).

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Whereas in many Tab games, the outcome of that interaction would be 'I leapt at my Tab Targeted enemy but their charge did nothing to help them evade my leap, I just hit them anyway'. That sort of thing reduces the skill and complexity of the combat enough both in PvP and PvE that some people find it too simplistic for a modern game.

And the best solution to this kind of problem that I see is to have a tab target system that has action abilities, which, to my knowledge, is most tab games.

So, at the end, it always comes down to developers and how they wanna make it. And, as you said, we gotta tell Intrepid what we wanna have in the game and Intrepid will need to find a way to realize those suggestions within their chosen system.

Maybe so, but then we're back to interacting with OP's point.

"When is Action good, why don't we just always use Tab?"

Short of 'asking Tyranthraxus to fill out a questionnaire about what they feel Tab Targeted abilities should and should not do', there's no way to be sure. I'd assume that L2 players will be talking about what you described. Similarly, there's no quick and easy way to understand what someone means when they say "I want Action Combat".

Cleric has a 'Javelin' style skill that I would expect to be thrown forward at the first target within a cone and ignore any Tab Targeting. As of Alpha-1 (at some point) that ability sort of 'homed in on' my Tab Target. I wouldn't want this. If a player said "I don't see the point of Action Combat, I don't want my Javelin to miss because my opponent moved (even out of a cone)", that person 'doesn't want spacing to matter' and 'doesn't want movement to matter'.

When that person hears from Intrepid 'You can choose skills to be Tab Target', sees Alpha-1 footage of that attack 'homing in', and goes 'that looks great, why would you ever want anything else', the question is what to tell that person.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

If you played a 'Tab Target' game where range matters that much, then calling it 'Tab Target' might miss some people's perspectives. This is why I don't like the terms (though I don't fault Intrepid for using them).

True, pretty much any/every ability in L2 had its range stat and the better players would know those by feel and move on the battlefield accordingly.

Azherae wrote: »

There are Tab Target games that involve 'autofacing', 'abilities that hit even if your opponent moves perfectly as if to avoid it', 'interactions that mostly involve no repositioning or commitment so you can stand pretty simply around relative to the enemy'.

And L2 had those too

If you were out of range of the ability you wanted to use, and had a target selected, your character would auto-move towards the target to get in range. All weapon in the game were melee if you wanted to auto-attack with them, so mages that had action-based cone abilities with short range would usually select a target, press auto-attack so that their character turns and runs towards their target, and then use the action ability as soon as they thought they were in range.

And most tab ranged abilities would allow you to just stand in one place and spam them, because your character would turn/move with your target.

Azherae wrote: »

At that point, Tab vs Ground Target is decided by 'will my ability strike my opponent even if I don't anticipate their movement'. A game where you 'select' a target but your abilities don't auto-target your selection and don't auto-track their movement, I would question what the Tab Targeting is for (beyond changing priority of a target within a group that would all be hit, or Tab-Targeting allies for heals and buffs).

Tab is there for other abilities. The more updates L2 got, the more variety in abilities it had. With my favorite class of Soul Hound having mage and phys abilities, with several of those being purely action-based or purely tab, so you had to know ranges of your abilities and move across the field appropriately so that you could use your whole skillset.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

When that person hears from Intrepid 'You can choose skills to be Tab Target', sees Alpha-1 footage of that attack 'homing in', and goes 'that looks great, why would you ever want anything else', the question is what to tell that person.

Yep, that's the biggest issue Intrepid have ahead of them if they go with their currently planned combat system. I myself don't know how they'll balance that system cause I'd have similar issues. If I have a choice - why choose the one that can miss. L2 had no choice so it was just "ok, this one is action so I gotta learn how to use it in the best way, and this one is tab so I'll just use it when the timing's right", and the combat required you to use both of those in the best way.

But if Ashes decides to keep the "change the base system for the ability" feature, I expect some intricate design where both version of the ability have their own benefits, so it's a choice instead of one being just better than the other.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

If you played a 'Tab Target' game where range matters that much, then calling it 'Tab Target' might miss some people's perspectives. This is why I don't like the terms (though I don't fault Intrepid for using them).

True, pretty much any/every ability in L2 had its range stat and the better players would know those by feel and move on the battlefield accordingly.

Azherae wrote: »

There are Tab Target games that involve 'autofacing', 'abilities that hit even if your opponent moves perfectly as if to avoid it', 'interactions that mostly involve no repositioning or commitment so you can stand pretty simply around relative to the enemy'.

And L2 had those too If you were out of range of the ability you wanted to use, and had a target selected, your character would auto-move towards the target to get in range. All weapon in the game were melee if you wanted to auto-attack with them, so mages that had action-based cone abilities with short range would usually select a target, press auto-attack so that their character turns and runs towards their target, and then use the action ability as soon as they thought they were in range.

And most tab ranged abilities would allow you to just stand in one place and spam them, because your character would turn/move with your target.

Azherae wrote: »

At that point, Tab vs Ground Target is decided by 'will my ability strike my opponent even if I don't anticipate their movement'. A game where you 'select' a target but your abilities don't auto-target your selection and don't auto-track their movement, I would question what the Tab Targeting is for (beyond changing priority of a target within a group that would all be hit, or Tab-Targeting allies for heals and buffs).

Tab is there for other abilities. The more updates L2 got, the more variety in abilities it had. With my favorite class of Soul Hound having mage and phys abilities, with several of those being purely action-based or purely tab, so you had to know ranges of your abilities and move across the field appropriately so that you could use your whole skillset.

Right, and you enjoy that. Others don't necessarily, but balance wise, it still matters for a lot of things, and that's why this comes up. There's a weak correlation thus far between players that want Action Skills/specific playstyles and players that plan to play certain Archetypes in Ashes (I'll provide my datasets if you want, but they're small and not statistically significant, they're moreso confirmatory).

So if you have a player who comes into Ashes and says "I want to play a Wind ArchMage. I want my Tornado spell to do lots of damage. I also want my Tornado spell to manifest around whoever I have Tab-targeted, regardless of how they move, and do full damage."

That person is not going to be satisfied by 'well you can select that person as the Tab Target and it will make your character face them correctly so that when you set down your Tornado spell at the 6m distance you can safely cast it from, you are more likely to hit if they don't use one of their movement skills to get out of the way."

Tornado spells are usually pretty expensive, y'know?

You could disregard that person and say 'well, for Balance, Tornado can't be a Tab Targeted ability'. Maybe that's what they'll do. I have no opinions on just that level of decision, as its too low-level compared to most of the things I prefer to think about.

Here's some data on stuff people said. Relevant outputs are in the Spoiler tags.

Child Item