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.

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Dygz

NishUK wrote: »

I am not suggesting that systems mold with very popular genres, only steal ideas that lead to elevating it.

You are doing both. With a very narrow and biased vision of what elevating entails.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

BDO made 20+ skills incredibly accessible by utilizing direction input like the fighting game Tekken (that has 50+ moves on average for every character), it's user convience bliss in comparison to holding shift/alt whatever and working mouse button 1-12 etc.

If you are having to use a combination of keys like this, you are doing it wrong. Don't blame the tab target genre for you not being able to figure out how to bind your abilities.

When I set up my keybinds, I use ~ through to 7, T, Y, G and H. Between these buttons and 2 buttons on my mouse that I use for this as well, combined with shift, ctrl OR (not and - never and) alt, I have 56 immediately available keybinds.

These are the binds I can use without needing to look or think, that I can go between any two in less than one second, while still retaining viable use of WASD.

It seems to me that all BDO did was lower the player skill ceiling. Knowing how to bind your abilities and having the dexterity to access those abilities is actual real player skill - in the same vein as twitch/reflex is a skill.

NishUK wrote: »

If a Healer class in an mmo has a lantern and chain (let's just say Thresh), and strengthen's and heals allies via souls and there's a more "ruthless" gameplay style, along with lore and conflict from the holy side of life, adding character to the more traditional type of healing we see in typical mmos and thereby making being a healer/support more desirable, that is infact an evolution, nothing short of it.

Which part of this do you think would be an evolution?

The first point I want to make here is that the personality of a character in an MMO is supposed to come from the player, not the class (or character, in the case of LoL that you are talking about here). If you are trying to say that classes in an MMO should come with a built in character as they do in games where you pick a character rather than a class, I would call that a devolution, not evolution. You play an MMORPG to play with other players - people you get to know extremely well - not to play with characters that some developer created.

If you think the evolution part of the above is the healer also buffing players, I agree. That was an evolution that EQ2 managed 18 years ago - as literally every healer in EQ2 buffs allies (literally every character in that game has a number of buffs it can cast on themselves and on others - yet the game still has room for dedicated support classes - because it is not shit).

EQ2 also does have Censers (the proper name for a "lantern on a chain" that a "holy" person may have - a fact you would know if you played early EQ2 at the top end). However, EQ2 doesn't limit any one class to any one weapon type (games that do are games that are targeting the lowest common denominator - which means people that think aspects of those games should be moved over to other games are themselves that lowest common denominator).

Doing the above now isn't an evolution, it is just copying something that happened a generation ago - just as it was when it was when LoL did it. It was an old idea back then, it is an old idea now. That doesn't mean a game like Ashes should have it (at least, the healers also having buffs thing - the rest of it is out of place in Ashes), it just means that it is not evolutionary any longer.

NishUK

Well for one, bind is not casual friendly, forgive me for wanting to allow accessibility while maintaining hardcore interest.

Also, gear that someone wears, doesn't change their gameplay (or if it does it's on the very low spectrum), it only changes their avatar/appearence, which is a great thing. Gameplay and gameplay options (weapon swapping btw I implore) can be just as big as if not bigger to a certain demographic as the class and purpose you assign yourself as it maintains interest and expertise going forward as opposed to old practices of gear gives you +++ stats and "exciting" skill required usage and cooldown discipline.
You can keep ignoring what other people have experienced, from korea attempts at action or unique improvements to tab or from other genre's, your way is simple not going to appeal to audiences that have experienced evolutions in user input and gameplay.

Feel free to make a thread explaining why a polished tab and Everquest focus is king, please explain how it would geinunely excite people, people who have played other mmo's alternative to yours, newcomes to the genre, please.

Lowest common denominator, right, great, I hope EQ3 comes for you, I''ll seriously be happy for you.

Noaani

NishUK wrote: »

Also, gear that someone wears, doesn't change their gameplay (or if it does it's on the very low spectrum), it only changes their avatar/appearence, which is a great thing.

Gear does change the way you play.

I'll give you two games as examples. The first is Path of Exile (an online ARPG). Your gear literally dictates what builds are available to you. Almost all build guides for that game list the specific items of gear you absolutely need to make the build even function, and then also give a list of some good to have items.

Then there is EQ2 (didn't want to disappoint). In most content cycles, there were two or three points where the gear you have acquired would see you able to take a different spec. Changing spec in EQ2 was quite the change to your character, since EQ2 had 6 or 7 different "talent trees" (note, trees, not branches, these were all individual, and all had their own branches you could pick) per class.

In some of these cases it was a matter of getting enough of a stat to be able to remove points from that to place elsewhere, (which also means removing the points you needed to place in the tree in order to get to that stat).

In other cases it is literally getting a single item alters the viability of specific builds. When you have a build that gives you an ability that does absolutely massive damage, but leaves you with absolutely zero mana, you have to kind of build things around that ability. If you can't build things around that ability, you can't take that ability. If you can build things around that ability, your gameplay now becomes focused around maximizing your use of that ability.

Or it could be that you managed to pick up an item that - when used - lowers your position on the targets hate list by 24 players (in a game with a raid size of 24). If you are a DPS character, having this item changes how you play your character.

In fact, me having this item, and having the setup to use the spell I described above as well, altered the gameplay of the tank in my raid - not just my own gameplay. He would pull a mob, and combat would start, then when we knew nothing was about to go off, I would cast that massive damage dealing ability (that would deal perhaps a full percent of a bosses HP in damage). This would send the boss right after me, the tank would have perhaps 50,000 hate generated against the mob, and I just generated 500,000 in a single cast. The tank would then use a taunt that would increase his position on the targets hate list by 1, meaning he would now be at exactly 1 threat point above me. I would then use the item that decreases my position on the hate list by 24, meaning the tank is now at over 500,000 hate, the next highest DPS is at about 45,000, and I am sitting at 0 hate.

This meant that the tank no longer needed to spec in to things that would allow him to generate hate quickly, and could instead spec in to other things.

All only possible due to me having a specific combination of items.

Point being, gear ABSOLUTELY does alter how you play your class - and your gear can alter how others play their class.

NishUK wrote: »

Feel free to make a thread explaining why a polished tab and Everquest focus is king, please explain how it would geinunely excite people, people who have played other mmo's alternative to yours, newcomes to the genre, please.

I've already gone over what issues a new tab target game would have - I see no need to start a new thread about it when this thread right here will do me just fine.

How about you explain to me how any western PvP MMO is going to survive when the expectation is that the bottom 10% will leave the game every 3 months - because that is the best case scenario if you attract the MOBA crowd.

Selo

Dygz wrote: »

I just now took a look at Skyrim combat. Seems close to what I'd want for action combat. It's not Hack & Slash.
.

People say that in every forum for new mmorpgs in development.
Every mmorpg that have tried it have failed..HARD
Its very niche and doesnt work well in mmorpgs
Unfortunally the players that thinks they want it are very vocal and ruins alot of potentially good mmorpgs.

CROW3

Selo wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

I just now took a look at Skyrim combat. Seems close to what I'd want for action combat. It's not Hack & Slash.
.

People say that in every forum for new mmorpgs in development.
Every mmorpg that have tried it have failed..HARD
Its very niche and doesnt work well in mmorpgs
Unfortunally the players that thinks they want it are very vocal and ruins alot of potentially good mmorpgs.

Are you saying that action combat was the cause for these MMOs to fail hard? If so, which MMOs are you thinking of?

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Gear does change the way you play.
I'll give you two games as examples. The first is Path of Exile (an online ARPG). Your gear literally dictates what builds are available to you. Almost all build guides for that game list the specific items of gear you absolutely need to make the build even function, and then also give a list of some good to have items.

Then there is EQ2 (didn't want to disappoint). In most content cycles, there were two or three points where the gear you have acquired would see you able to take a different spec. Changing spec in EQ2 was quite the change to your character, since EQ2 had 6 or 7 different "talent trees" (note, trees, not branches, these were all individual, and all had their own branches you could pick) per class.

In some of these cases it was a matter of getting enough of a stat to be able to remove points from that to place elsewhere, (which also means removing the points you needed to place in the tree in order to get to that stat).

In other cases it is literally getting a single item alters the viability of specific builds. When you have a build that gives you an ability that does absolutely massive damage, but leaves you with absolutely zero mana, you have to kind of build things around that ability. If you can't build things around that ability, you can't take that ability. If you can build things around that ability, your gameplay now becomes focused around maximizing your use of that ability.

Or it could be that you managed to pick up an item that - when used - lowers your position on the targets hate list by 24 players (in a game with a raid size of 24). If you are a DPS character, having this item changes how you play your character.

In fact, me having this item, and having the setup to use the spell I described above as well, altered the gameplay of the tank in my raid - not just my own gameplay. He would pull a mob, and combat would start, then when we knew nothing was about to go off, I would cast that massive damage dealing ability (that would deal perhaps a full percent of a bosses HP in damage). This would send the boss right after me, the tank would have perhaps 50,000 hate generated against the mob, and I just generated 500,000 in a single cast. The tank would then use a taunt that would increase his position on the targets hate list by 1, meaning he would now be at exactly 1 threat point above me. I would then use the item that decreases my position on the hate list by 24, meaning the tank is now at over 500,000 hate, the next highest DPS is at about 45,000, and I am sitting at 0 hate.

This meant that the tank no longer needed to spec in to things that would allow him to generate hate quickly, and could instead spec in to other things.

All only possible due to me having a specific combination of items.

Point being, gear ABSOLUTELY does alter how you play your class - and your gear can alter how others play their class.

That whole explanation makes me wish mmos split into "pvp and pve" subgenres instead of "tab and action or hybrid" subgenres. Because that sounds like a great pve design that is utterly useless in pvp. At which point, if you wanted to have pvp in the game and make gear variability important there too - you'd have to make a separate set of gear for that.

And I feel like if at least a few companies risked a good pvp game back in the WoW days, where the world would stay persistent, while player power would be semi-equalized with longtime hardcore players being a few steps above newbies but w/o utterly destroying them - the genre would've been better off because of that. But I guess that risk came in the form of mobas and fps games instead of big worlds that progress through time. The cheaper choice always wins

NishUK

NiKr wrote: »

That whole explanation makes me wish mmos split into "pvp and pve"

Hey there's nothing to stop a PvE experience from being more interactive inside of a game where PvP exists. The whole premise of gear being the be all and end all of everything in development is weak to hang onto or at least letting the 2 co-incide, it's a mighty balancing chore, that also involves the horrible practice of usually making classes weak/strong for PvE/PvP.

You're familiar with my long friend L2, PvE combat devolves a hell of a lot into piggybacking off of the Destroyer. Strong PvE doesn't need to be involving gear, it can always be a true group effort like doing a Kraken at sea in Archeage for instance, utilizing tools like cannons, obv needs to add a bit more involvement than ship repairs as a side chore and then you focus on that sweet PvP competitive scenerio or don't at times or depending, for casual sake.

My example would be, have gear that covers trash/open world mobs and PvP that both gel and balance together with all those nice attack/casting speed and damage bonuses you all gasm over (stats+++ won't nearly need to be as extreme though in a Hyrbid/action game as it's already more fun from base, challenging with aim/skill and "reactive mechnically" to play) and let top end PvE/raid just always be reliant on the utilization of tools or subset skills + base skills such as agro'ing/healing.

Ludullu

NishUK wrote: »

Hey there's nothing to stop a PvE experience from being more interactive inside of a game where PvP exists. The whole premise of gear being the be all and end all of everything in development is weak to hang onto or at least letting the 2 co-incide, it's a mighty balancing chore, that also involves the horrible practice of usually making classes weak/strong for PvE/PvP.

You're familiar with my long friend L2, PvE combat devolves a hell of a lot into piggybacking off of the Destroyer. Strong PvE doesn't need to be involving gear, it can always be a true group effort like doing a Kraken at sea in Archeage for instance, utilizing tools like cannons, obv needs to add a bit more involvement than ship repairs as a side chore and then you focus on that sweet PvP competitive scenerio or don't at times or depending, for casual sake.

My example would be, have gear that covers trash/open world mobs and PvP that both gel and balance together with all those nice attack/casting speed and damage bonuses you all gasm over (stats+++ won't nearly need to be as extreme though in a Hyrbid/action game as it's already fun and "reactive mechnical" to play) and let top end PvE/raid just always be reliant on the utilization of tools or subset skills + base skills such as agro'ing/healing.

L2's pve was the biggest gearcheck though. There were pretty much 0 gameplay mechanics to do while fighting, so it was just a dps check which came from gear. And later on even when there were some mechanics, the boss itself still was just a thiccque HP piñata that required you to have as best of a gear set as possible so that you wouldn't die due to running out on mp on your supports.

And that was mainly done because L2 gear was universal so you'd use it in both pve and pvp. Adding pve mechanics to that gear would introduce the "I gotta have a dozen different gear pieces" issue (as it did in the later updates where attributes were important), while having both pve and pvp versions would make that shit even worse (was also the case for any and all top lvl Oly champs, because they needed to counter the enemy att). And that's not even considering the augmentation on gear in L2. That shit added even more required gear to pvp.

And having a cool pve experience that interacts with your non-boring gear, while also supports the potential of there being some pvp around that pve experience, where you'd also need the same non-boring gear (unless you go for separated sets) - all of that would require a ton of great design and balancing from devs. And I guess Intrepid's trying to do that. Now I don't know how well they can manage it and whether it's even possible, but I sure hope it is cause it'll just prove that all the previous mmos just didn't even try to do that, for one reason or the other.

Yes, skill should be important in both pve and pvp, but I do agree with those saying that RPGs have usually depended highly on player's gear to define their power lvl. And the best representation of good pvp gear balance (imo) was L2, where you still needed good gear for pve, but weaker gear still worked just fine in pvp. But I can definitely say that the gear itself was super basic and usually had very similar stats on it, with higher gear tiers just having those stats higher.

I've heard that SWG had some good pvp and had an amazing crafting/gear system, if Intrepid manages to combine that system with L2's balancing - I feel like we might have one of the best gear systems in mmos. But obviously they'll have to prove that, so only the time will tell.

Dygz

NiKr wrote: »

And I feel like if at least a few companies risked a good pvp game back in the WoW days, where the world would stay persistent, while player power would be semi-equalized with longtime hardcore players being a few steps above newbies but w/o utterly destroying them - the genre would've been better off because of that. But I guess that risk came in the form of mobas and fps games instead of big worlds that progress through time. The cheaper choice always wins

Shadowbane doesn't count?

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

Shadowbane doesn't count?

Have never even heard of it in my corner of the internet. Did it flop so hard that no one else even attempted to make another mmo in the same "genre"?

edit: looked into it. Looks like it suffered the usual fate of old mmos w/o billions of dollars of support. Concept seems great and looks like Ashes will have some similar mechanics of player agency. And as one of the steam reviews pointed out, Ashes will also have one of the biggest issues with such a game - days/weeks/months of work can be destroyed within a day. So we'll see how Intrepid manages to avoid the game's death because of that mechanic.

Wokal

I enjoy both types. But in the long run i prefer tab targetting simply because form my experience it opens up for more different rotations/playstyles, making classes/specs feel special and different.

I really enjoy Elder Scrolls Online combat for a couple of weeks a few times per year, but in reality all classes/builds/specs are the same since it all instant casts but with some graphic differences.
(I am talking out of a perspective of those of us who dont cheat, as in macro script or lag switches, but play it like it was meant to be)

I always end up going back to WoW though. Even though its in the worst state its probably ever been, there is actual class fantasy and the classes/specs have a real difference in playstyle.

Adding interesting/complex/different rotations into action-style combat doesnt seem possible to me.

Okeydoke

NiKr wrote: »

Have never even heard of it in my corner of the internet. Did it flop so hard that no one else even attempted to make another mmo in the same "genre"?

It ultimately flopped, but it had a small dedicated following. I was going to play it, can't remember what happened. Think I got a girlfriend shortly before launch or something weird like that. So I never played it.

But yes, it had the typical problems of low budget, bugs, exploits etc.

Dygz

PvP-centric MMORPGs rarely have enough players to last long.

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

PvP-centric MMORPGs rarely have enough players to last long.

I dunno how DAOC was, but from all the other pvp mmorpgs I've seen they usually suffer from bots/p2w/exploits/etc on release and then rarely fix it. And even if they do fix it, it's usually too late. I'm not saying that they'll ever have more players than smth like wow or ff14, but as you said yourself, there's at least a million people ready to try out a mmorpg (even if they didn't call it that) with pvp in it. And even NW got killed by the same issues as all those other older pvp mmos. 20 fucking years, yet nothing has changed. Big sad.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

PvP-centric MMORPGs rarely have enough players to last long.

I dunno how DAOC was, but from all the other pvp mmorpgs I've seen they usually suffer from bots/p2w/exploits/etc on release and then rarely fix it. And even if they do fix it, it's usually too late. I'm not saying that they'll ever have more players than smth like wow or ff14, but as you said yourself, there's at least a million people ready to try out a mmorpg (even if they didn't call it that) with pvp in it. And even NW got killed by the same issues as all those other older pvp mmos. 20 fucking years, yet nothing has changed. Big sad.

Not exactly...

Remember that New World had to take out the no-flag PvP because of seal-clubbers.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Not exactly...

Remember that New World had to take out the no-flag PvP because of seal-clubbers.

Yeah, I know it's not as pvp as Ashes or older mmos, but it was still advertised as "mmo with pvp" iirc. And even with a $40 price it got 1 mil on release. And I'm sure if Amazon had not fucked up pretty much every single fucking thing they could've possibly fucked up - the game would've lasted way longer and would've had at least a few hundred thousand active players. Which is why Intrepid gotta iron out as many kinks as they can before release, considering that their pvp is harsher so it's gonna be a tougher sell.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Not exactly...

Remember that New World had to take out the no-flag PvP because of seal-clubbers.

Yeah, I know it's not as pvp as Ashes or older mmos, but it was still advertised as "mmo with pvp" iirc. And even with a $40 price it got 1 mil on release. And I'm sure if Amazon had not fucked up pretty much every single fucking thing they could've possibly fucked up - the game would've lasted way longer and would've had at least a few hundred thousand active players. Which is why Intrepid gotta iron out as many kinks as they can before release, considering that their pvp is harsher so it's gonna be a tougher sell.

But this would generally not change the way it flows, because the core flaw of how PvP MMOs are designed is to create antagonism with minimal benefit to all but the toughest of psyches.

New World, in particular, even with good design otherwise, simply shifted who was on the receiving end of that 'pain' by adding scaling so that lower level players could win fights. This resulted in a different set of people being salty and 'damaged'.

I'm not saying MMOs shouldn't have PvP, I'm saying that if that PvP happens outside of arenas or has real consequences, in the game paradigms we have available NOW, they suffer the same problem every time.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I'm not saying MMOs shouldn't have PvP, I'm saying that if that PvP happens outside of arenas or has real consequences, in the game paradigms we have available NOW, they suffer the same problem every time.

Which is why we're long overdue a paradigm shift. But it's so risky to do, moneywise, that no one even attempts it. And the ones who even try going for smth pvp-centric, usually go for nostalgia-inspired games, instead of trying to come up with a new system where owpvp might work in everyone's favor (if that is even possible obviously).

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I'm not saying MMOs shouldn't have PvP, I'm saying that if that PvP happens outside of arenas or has real consequences, in the game paradigms we have available NOW, they suffer the same problem every time.

Which is why we're long overdue a paradigm shift. But it's so risky to do, moneywise, that no one even attempts it. And the ones who even try going for smth pvp-centric, usually go for nostalgia-inspired games, instead of trying to come up with a new system where owpvp might work in everyone's favor (if that is even possible obviously).

Well, we don't know if Intrepid is going to try to come up with such a system eventually. There's nothing tying them to the less effective paradigms as of now.

But I think their messaging is correct to start where it is. Many methods of introducing PvP to those who 'hope to just avoid it', even methods explicitly intended to lead to growth and additional fun, are interpreted by those people as 'Oh good I don't have to PvP' instead of 'Oh good I have a chance to get good at/enjoy PvP'.

Which means that no matter how well you design the system, there will always be a subset of very loud people willing to broadcast to the world that 'this game is supposed to protect me from PvP but it doesn't'. Better to make it clear up front 'yeah you're gonna just get killed and you probably won't be able to do anything about it', and then work on properly incentivizing 'participation' later depending on your game's other progression mechanics.

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