How to balance tab vs action abilities

Do you think this could work?

Risk vs reward principle should apply to combat

Tab target abilities = team effort = coordination
Action abilities = individual effort = skill

Tab targeting requires less aiming skills so there's no risk involved since you virtually can't miss, therefore the reward should be proportional.

Meaning the effectiveness of the individual should be lessened but compensated with the help of others as a group which should require coordination.

In comparison to action abilities it's the opposite.
Since the risk of missing your ability has punishing consequences and hitting the mark requires skill, the effect should be more significant and rewarding.

Let's take healing as an example

If Healing a target with an action ability should heal with 100% effectiveness
The same ability but as a tab targeting should heal with less % effectiveness, let's say 30%.

Bottom line is what players can't achieve with skill they can compensate with numbers; more players.

I believe this also works in scale.
Based on A1, In large scale battles it's harder and less likely to rely on action abilities therefore the majority will use tab targeting which should be coordinated to be effective.
So numbers do the talking.

On a smaller scale, action abilities are more viable so skill should do the talking.

Just an idea I thought would be interesting to discuss

No hard feelings
Have fun 😊

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Azherae

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Unsure where you are getting the sure ya ill fix it. I'm talking about creating designs for dungeons?

Ah, sorry, I think I misunderstood you. The 70-30 thing wasn't about players or 'support'. It was about the complex point Noaani has made in some thread recently.

"If you are spending time on the dodging and repositioning, and you make the encounter the same difficulty as a Tab Target one mechanically, it is now impossible."

So you always have to choose 'what percentage of the design of this encounter is Tab-optimal and what percentage is Action-optimal', that's all.

Generally when you have a mechanic you focus on the mechanic and aren't trying to do two things at the same time. It can be different person to person group one might have to focus dps as the other does the mechanic. There is a fight in lost ark where you have to run to see the mechanic mid action fight and then tell the other team what they need to do sot hey don't wipe as they are fighting.

I just don't understand these points that action can't do mechanics during combat, and people refuse to give clear examples for good reasons, instead of using made metrics in their head without giving any form of evidence to back up their point. Where is the logic in that and how can you have a good discussion? It just becomes I think this because in my head this makes sense, but I won't give a single example to back up any points. So instead of seeing waht they think based on their examples you have to debate their bias head cannon.

See what I'm saying with this? Just becomes a argument on a treadmill.

I would find that system to be weak. I prefer games with higher skill floors where you must deal with the mechanic, the action, and the coordination all at the same time.

Now, I believe your answer indicates that your perspective is (please correct me):

"Because mechanics are usually sequential and not parallel, Action is easily equal to Tab in most situations."

I agree that with the assumption of only sequential mechanics, you are correct. If Ashes only has sequential mechanics for its encounters, I'll be disappointed, but if that's what it takes to make hybrid work, then I'll accept it.

I could try to give mechanics, have you played Monster Hunter World, if so, up to what monster? If you consider Monster Hunter games to be irrelevant to the discussion, let me know, and I can try to look for something else, but we can also just disengage here, now that we've cemented where our point of disagreement is.

Mag7spy

I havnt played monster hunter only seen a bit of it, my friends were more into that they just picked up the new one yesterday haha.

I don't consider any others mechanics to be irrelevant, there is a lot of action stuff you can pull from action games where it wouldn't be something you could normally (or be felt to be made more engaging and fun) than with tab target. I don't think there will be any monster climbing in the game but the use of climbing to add more verticality to a raid can be a thing as well.

To touch up on the mechanic part though In games there are points where its separated and you would have to judge how many of them are separated from having to physically attack the boss / objectives. If its a large raid people should have different positions based on the mechanics where some might be doing them and doing call out others could be dpsing the boss and following the instructions. It isn't that its fully separated but with the amount of players you have, everyone has their roles to do throughout the encounter. Then you throw in the difficulty and what you want to do with the dodging elements and how you might want other certain aspects of action combat to play in as well.

Azherae

Yes, it sounds like we have different perspectives on what "Action Heavy Combat" means, and if you haven't played Monster Hunter I feel like I won't be able to relate properly and will just waste your time.

Sorry about that, for now, let's just agree to disagree, the related priors are not available, and I'm not about to ask you to go play Monster Hunter: World for a potentially irrelevant forum discussion.

Mag7spy

What are we even disagreeing on?

Azherae

Mag7spy wrote: »

If its a large raid people should have different positions based on the mechanics where some might be doing them and doing call out others could be dpsing the boss and following the instructions. It isn't that its fully separated but with the amount of players you have, everyone has their roles to do throughout the encounter. Then you throw in the difficulty and what you want to do with the dodging elements and how you might want other certain aspects of action combat to play in as well.

This part, but as I said it is really hard to explain without the priors.

Think of it this way. In MMOs, particularly Tab MMOs, the positions and roles and requirements of each player are fairly set at most times in a battle. You have said, multiple times, that Tab suffers because 'you just know the mechanics and dodge them', right?

I don't play games like this for very long. I play games where things 'stack', combine randomly, require rapid adaptation and shifting between roles to cover for someone else who has become unavailable in the moment due to mechanics.

"Alright the Boss is doing his AoE pull, Healers prepare to use AoE Heals."

vs.

"Ok who's silenced from that? All Healers? Ok Rogues get behind and prep for the AoE pull, don't stun the pull, we're gonna rely on the Summoner to cleanse the Healers if the pull happens, Tank prep to CC the move after the pull, if you're Stunned at that time due to the Stun from the adds yell and we'll flip the strat to have the Mage take hate with a big attack so that the boss won't use AoE on next ability. Rogues, if Tank is stunned obv you can move, get on its tail and pull hate off the Mage so we don't lose them while the Summoner Cleanses the Healers. Healers, you know what to do, top the Tank back up so they can pull off the Rogue, and ffs people remember that if we all dodge the same direction on the magma blade attack if it goes for that we'll just end up back where we started."

So in that example... The Summoner has become Cleanse, the Mage has become 'Tank', the Rogues have become 'offtank', the Healers now have to have a whole concept of how they're going to heal everybody in the correct order without wasting mana, and the boss is STILL about to randomly do maybe 6 different things which we might have to respond to before the current situation is even resolved. If the Rangers were standing near the Mage now they have to scatter, but only if the Tank is stunned, and only if the Summoner DOESN'T get stunned.

Now add to all that 'you must do all this perfectly mechanically dodging the adds so that you don't get stunned on the way to the position you're supposed to be in after the AoE pull, and you have something I consider 'an average encounter'.

Roles change fast. Roles change based on spacing. Someone else 'running up to try to land a big attack' now means every player has to load an entirely different set of responses mentally to all 8 of the random potential mechanics the boss can use next, and then in Action Combat you have to be aware of the spacing of every other player.

This is about the point where I start to have fun. Maybe I'm not much of an RPG fan.

Ludullu

I haven't played top lvl pve, but what I'm imagining when trying to roughly design some complex encounter is smth like "you gotta track ground hazards, several party memebers' positions and your relations to them, particular buffs on yourself and the boss - all while doing peak dps (or your own class' role), and all those mechanics being randomized instead of in the same order every try" for tab; and smth like "you need to aim at particular points on the boss, while dodging horizontal/diagonal/vertical attacks from mobs/hazards - ideally when the boss is not a hugeass stationary pillar and, instead, a fast-moving mid-to-tall humanoid creature" in action.

You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.

As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.

Mag7spy

Is the second point where you start to have fun? That sounds normal to me as far as a raid encounter goes. When I say you know the mechanics it doesn't mean there aren't surprises or things you have to suddenly react to, its just when it does you will have a plan as you state in your post on what you need to do.

Its just something that action combat can do as well so I don't see the players can't focus on the boss and do the mechanics as well type of thing. You have a bunch of players and you will have shot callers that help keep track of what is going on and what people need to do.

I'm not trying to argue preferences, everyone has things they like more or don't like as much. It is only about can this type of combat do it, and to me that is a yes.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

I haven't played top lvl pve, but what I'm imagining when trying to roughly design some complex encounter is smth like "you gotta track ground hazards, several party memebers' positions and your relations to them, particular buffs on yourself and the boss - all while doing peak dps (or your own class' role), and all those mechanics being randomized instead of in the same order every try" for tab; and smth like "you need to aim at particular points on the boss, while dodging horizontal/diagonal/vertical attacks from mobs/hazards - ideally when the boss is not a hugeass stationary pillar and, instead, a fast-moving mid-to-tall humanoid creature" in action.

You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.

As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.

Right, and this is my general experience. This is my general experience in 'Tab Target' because apparently I play one of the many more hybridized Tab Target games with a fairly strict range limit for abilities. I have also occasionally experienced it in Action.

I'll boil it down to one thing.

"If your healer cannot heal you because they are busy dodging a slow moving triple fireball from a three headed dragon, but you are facing that dragon and can't see the healer is dodging and not ready to heal, then you don't know if to pop your mitigation ability early or if you can save it."

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

I haven't played top lvl pve, but what I'm imagining when trying to roughly design some complex encounter is smth like "you gotta track ground hazards, several party memebers' positions and your relations to them, particular buffs on yourself and the boss - all while doing peak dps (or your own class' role), and all those mechanics being randomized instead of in the same order every try" for tab; and smth like "you need to aim at particular points on the boss, while dodging horizontal/diagonal/vertical attacks from mobs/hazards - ideally when the boss is not a hugeass stationary pillar and, instead, a fast-moving mid-to-tall humanoid creature" in action.

You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.

As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.

Few points

1.why does the boss need to be different (way more mobile) then the type of tab target boss.
2. Why do you need to hit a certain part of the boss.
3. How much additional aoe are we talking about, and why does that need to be a constant thing in a unpredictable way?

Just because something is action doesn't mean the difficulty for the fight needs to be amped up to the maximum. If you want an extremely hard fight yes include everything but nto everything needs to become an insane challenge.

Needed movement for dodging, hitting the boss in a certain part, etc are also mechanics so depending on how you have them it would be a more complex fight. If the answer for tab target is we are going to layer 3 mechanics on top of each other. And action has 2 with needing to do a dodge pattern based off its attacks in certain instances and you need to do something to stop it. That is also 3 mechanics.

If the argument is the boss does a lot of movement, a ton of aoe you need to dodge and focus on the walls that also shoot things on at you and you, those are mechanics just dodging ones....They mix of the fight and add more types of variety which is possible in the game.

Mag7spy

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

I haven't played top lvl pve, but what I'm imagining when trying to roughly design some complex encounter is smth like "you gotta track ground hazards, several party memebers' positions and your relations to them, particular buffs on yourself and the boss - all while doing peak dps (or your own class' role), and all those mechanics being randomized instead of in the same order every try" for tab; and smth like "you need to aim at particular points on the boss, while dodging horizontal/diagonal/vertical attacks from mobs/hazards - ideally when the boss is not a hugeass stationary pillar and, instead, a fast-moving mid-to-tall humanoid creature" in action.

You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.

As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.

Right, and this is my general experience. This is my general experience in 'Tab Target' because apparently I play one of the many more hybridized Tab Target games with a fairly strict range limit for abilities. I have also occasionally experienced it in Action.

I'll boil it down to one thing.

"If your healer cannot heal you because they are busy dodging a slow moving triple fireball from a three headed dragon, but you are facing that dragon and can't see the healer is dodging and not ready to heal, then you don't know if to pop your mitigation ability early or if you can save it."

The healer would communicate with you, and the combat would be balanced in a way that your party doesn't wipe because of that.

Azherae

Mag7spy wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

I haven't played top lvl pve, but what I'm imagining when trying to roughly design some complex encounter is smth like "you gotta track ground hazards, several party memebers' positions and your relations to them, particular buffs on yourself and the boss - all while doing peak dps (or your own class' role), and all those mechanics being randomized instead of in the same order every try" for tab; and smth like "you need to aim at particular points on the boss, while dodging horizontal/diagonal/vertical attacks from mobs/hazards - ideally when the boss is not a hugeass stationary pillar and, instead, a fast-moving mid-to-tall humanoid creature" in action.

You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.

As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.

Few points

1.why does the boss need to be different (way more mobile) then the type of tab target boss.
2. Why do you need to hit a certain part of the boss.
3. How much additional aoe are we talking about, and why does that need to be a constant thing in a unpredictable way?

Just because something is action doesn't mean the difficulty for the fight needs to be amped up to the maximum. If you want an extremely hard fight yes include everything but nto everything needs to become an insane challenge.

Needed movement for dodging, hitting the boss in a certain part, etc are also mechanics so depending on how you have them it would be a more complex fight. If the answer for tab target is we are going to layer 3 mechanics on top of each other. And action has 2 with needing to do a dodge pattern based off its attacks in certain instances and you need to do something to stop it. That is also 3 mechanics.

If the argument is the boss does a lot of movement, a ton of aoe you need to dodge and focus on the walls that also shoot things on at you and you, those are mechanics just dodging ones....They mix of the fight and add more types of variety which is possible in the game.

And this is fine. You just aren't having the same discussion in the first place.

There are definitely Action Combat players who definitely only care about the Free Aim and Free Movement and don't specifically desire 'mechanics that become possible and emergent from that system'.

I will be disappointed if this is what Ashes is, but not much (I will worry WAY more about the balance).

I agree with you though, again.

"5 Layered Mechanics" vs "3 Layered Mechanics + 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging" is fine.

There's one problem here, which I would NEED you to play Monster Hunter to 'get' fully maybe.

It's not 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging. It's 'however many slots it takes to track everyone else's moving and whether or not their abilities hit'.

Which increases exponentially as you add more players. However if things are as simple as 'hit dodge button, achieve dodge' even in Action mode, then it's fine.

Mag7spy

Azherae wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

I haven't played top lvl pve, but what I'm imagining when trying to roughly design some complex encounter is smth like "you gotta track ground hazards, several party memebers' positions and your relations to them, particular buffs on yourself and the boss - all while doing peak dps (or your own class' role), and all those mechanics being randomized instead of in the same order every try" for tab; and smth like "you need to aim at particular points on the boss, while dodging horizontal/diagonal/vertical attacks from mobs/hazards - ideally when the boss is not a hugeass stationary pillar and, instead, a fast-moving mid-to-tall humanoid creature" in action.

You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.

As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.

Few points

1.why does the boss need to be different (way more mobile) then the type of tab target boss.
2. Why do you need to hit a certain part of the boss.
3. How much additional aoe are we talking about, and why does that need to be a constant thing in a unpredictable way?

Just because something is action doesn't mean the difficulty for the fight needs to be amped up to the maximum. If you want an extremely hard fight yes include everything but nto everything needs to become an insane challenge.

Needed movement for dodging, hitting the boss in a certain part, etc are also mechanics so depending on how you have them it would be a more complex fight. If the answer for tab target is we are going to layer 3 mechanics on top of each other. And action has 2 with needing to do a dodge pattern based off its attacks in certain instances and you need to do something to stop it. That is also 3 mechanics.

If the argument is the boss does a lot of movement, a ton of aoe you need to dodge and focus on the walls that also shoot things on at you and you, those are mechanics just dodging ones....They mix of the fight and add more types of variety which is possible in the game.

And this is fine. You just aren't having the same discussion in the first place.

There are definitely Action Combat players who definitely only care about the Free Aim and Free Movement and don't specifically desire 'mechanics that become possible and emergent from that system'.

I will be disappointed if this is what Ashes is, but not much (I will worry WAY more about the balance).

I agree with you though, again.

"5 Layered Mechanics" vs "3 Layered Mechanics + 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging" is fine.

There's one problem here, which I would NEED you to play Monster Hunter to 'get' fully maybe.

It's not 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging. It's 'however many slots it takes to track everyone else's moving and whether or not their abilities hit'.

Which increases exponentially as you add more players. However if things are as simple as 'hit dodge button, achieve dodge' even in Action mode, then it's fine.

Tracking players comes to communication and if you need to set positions for players to be around at certain parts of the encounter that is a thing as well. There might be more planning going into it and a lot more communication needed based on whatever the encounter is that needs you to look for a certain player.

Ie if there is a mech where 4 color orbs spawn and all players get a random buff 1 allows for dps, one needs you to stop attacking or you die, one has you being mobile or you die , and some other random effect and you need to be at the player. You simply can have a pre-set callout for when that mech starts so people know where they need to go. There is nothing wrong stopping dps for a second if you need to glance around and do what you need to do. Balance should account for those aspects.

Azherae

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

I haven't played top lvl pve, but what I'm imagining when trying to roughly design some complex encounter is smth like "you gotta track ground hazards, several party memebers' positions and your relations to them, particular buffs on yourself and the boss - all while doing peak dps (or your own class' role), and all those mechanics being randomized instead of in the same order every try" for tab; and smth like "you need to aim at particular points on the boss, while dodging horizontal/diagonal/vertical attacks from mobs/hazards - ideally when the boss is not a hugeass stationary pillar and, instead, a fast-moving mid-to-tall humanoid creature" in action.

You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.

As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.

Few points

1.why does the boss need to be different (way more mobile) then the type of tab target boss.
2. Why do you need to hit a certain part of the boss.
3. How much additional aoe are we talking about, and why does that need to be a constant thing in a unpredictable way?

Just because something is action doesn't mean the difficulty for the fight needs to be amped up to the maximum. If you want an extremely hard fight yes include everything but nto everything needs to become an insane challenge.

Needed movement for dodging, hitting the boss in a certain part, etc are also mechanics so depending on how you have them it would be a more complex fight. If the answer for tab target is we are going to layer 3 mechanics on top of each other. And action has 2 with needing to do a dodge pattern based off its attacks in certain instances and you need to do something to stop it. That is also 3 mechanics.

If the argument is the boss does a lot of movement, a ton of aoe you need to dodge and focus on the walls that also shoot things on at you and you, those are mechanics just dodging ones....They mix of the fight and add more types of variety which is possible in the game.

And this is fine. You just aren't having the same discussion in the first place.

There are definitely Action Combat players who definitely only care about the Free Aim and Free Movement and don't specifically desire 'mechanics that become possible and emergent from that system'.

I will be disappointed if this is what Ashes is, but not much (I will worry WAY more about the balance).

I agree with you though, again.

"5 Layered Mechanics" vs "3 Layered Mechanics + 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging" is fine.

There's one problem here, which I would NEED you to play Monster Hunter to 'get' fully maybe.

It's not 2 mental slots for aiming and dodging. It's 'however many slots it takes to track everyone else's moving and whether or not their abilities hit'.

Which increases exponentially as you add more players. However if things are as simple as 'hit dodge button, achieve dodge' even in Action mode, then it's fine.

Tracking players comes to communication and if you need to set positions for players to be around at certain parts of the encounter that is a thing as well. There might be more planning going into it and a lot more communication needed based on whatever the encounter is that needs you to look for a certain player.

Ie if there is a mech where 4 color orbs spawn and all players get a random buff 1 allows for dps, one needs you to stop attacking or you die, one has you being mobile or you die , and some other random effect and you need to be at the player. You simply can have a pre-set callout for when that mech starts so people know where they need to go. There is nothing wrong stopping dps for a second if you need to glance around and do what you need to do. Balance should account for those aspects.

Again, I agree, but again, we are not having the same conversation.

You cannot have a preset callout in the games I play because so much other stuff would have been happening already, that adapting to that mechanic would never be a situation of 'ok guys here's our pre-set response'.

I agree that for many encounters, being able to have such a pre-set response would be a good thing for the game. However for top level content, I would expect and hope that anyone who asks 'ok so what do I do when $Mechanic' happens gets one of the following responses depending on the 'toxicity' of their group.

1. Laughter from all involved at the mere notion that there could be a single response.
2. A full halt called to the raid planning to explain the 17 different situations.
3. A situation where they are given a preset, and everyone else is assigned extra work to deal with the fact that the newbie is learning the mechanics and they have to be taken care of for a bit.

To me though the idea of a 'preset response' to any mechanic for a top end encounter is so laughable as to be BDO tier.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

Just because something is action doesn't mean the difficulty for the fight needs to be amped up to the maximum. If you want an extremely hard fight yes include everything but nto everything needs to become an insane challenge.

Maybe this is where the misunderstanding stems from. I'm talking about peak pve content (I think Noaani is usually talking about this too). The content that Steven promised "only <10% of people on the server" would be able to do. And, imo, that content requires that kind of complexity and difficulty to be fun for the people who want that content, as Noaani has said muuultiple times (and now Azherae said the same thing).

As for why so much dodging or why the boss gotta be different or why hit particular parts - imo, all those things represent what action combat provides that is different from tab. You can hit different parts of a mob because you have precision aiming in action. You can do precise well-timed dodges in action. And you can track/predict location/movement of a small boss in action, while in tab you're just targeting it.

So my question is, if you're not utilizing the specific features of your combat system in your best quality top lvl content - why da fuck are you using that particular system?

Mag7spy wrote: »

Tracking players comes to communication and if you need to set positions for players to be around at certain parts of the encounter that is a thing as well. There might be more planning going into it and a lot more communication needed based on whatever the encounter is that needs you to look for a certain player.

There's a limit on how much stuff can be verbally said in a timely matter in a group of 40 people, w/o everyone shouting over everyone else. And, again my personal preference, you can't split your whole raid into 5 8-men voice rooms because the raid should require pure synergistic work from all 40 people. And in order to do that w/o everyone yelling at everyone and making calls - you need to have each player aware of their surroundings as much as possible. And tab camera/system allows that, while action restricts it.

Obviously you can just have bosses/raids that don't require that level of involvement, and Ashes should obviously have those bosses too, but when talking about top lvl content - I expect it to be on the level of complexity that I've described. And I'd assume Noaani would have an even higher expectation from it.

Mag7spy

What mmorpg are you talking about that you can't do this, its pretty standard to me?

If you are doing a whole raid with your guild they should know you haven't done it as you are a guild. Or if you are new to the guild and they are talking crap 100% would leave the guild if they are trying to be toxic on purpose.

One of my reasons for this whole action can't do high end raid content is tab people that believe that will have that mentality "Why are you using that skill,. swap your shit or get kicked out only tab is good"

End of the day the content should be hard where you should look at a guide or you as a guild need to figure out and communicate together. Its the top end content and won't be a dungeon you just jump in and are fine doing some dps and doing some mechanics. Finding a good guild is important that meshes well with you and aren't full of toxic people. My guild has great people, we are competitive not anti toxic with each other since we are friends and all. For me personally the only thing i want to do is help my guildies and there are plenty of people like that out there. So no on should have to deal with a toxic group and stay even more so if they are over elitist, ill show up and pk them xD

Azherae

Mag7spy wrote: »

What mmorpg are you talking about that you can't do this, its pretty standard to me?

If you are doing a whole raid with your guild they should know you haven't done it as you are a guild. Or if you are new to the guild and they are talking crap 100% would leave the guild if they are trying to be toxic on purpose.

One of my reasons for this whole action can't do high end raid content is tab people that believe that will have that mentality "Why are you using that skill,. swap your shit or get kicked out only tab is good"

End of the day the content should be hard where you should look at a guide or you as a guild need to figure out and communicate together. Its the top end content and won't be a dungeon you just jump in and are fine doing some dps and doing some mechanics. Finding a good guild is important that meshes well with you and aren't full of toxic people. My guild has great people, we are competitive not anti toxic with each other since we are friends and all. For me personally the only thing i want to do is help my guildies and there are plenty of people like that out there. So no on should have to deal with a toxic group and stay even more so if they are over elitist, ill show up and pk them xD

I'm sorry, I mean no disrespect when I say that I no longer follow what you are talking about, and since I don't think we have been talking about the same things for multiple posts now, I think my involvement here is no longer useful to you.

Mag7spy

View point on the toxic part about asking for the mechanics is its fine to ask as not everyone will know everything. I wouldn't expect people to laugh / be toxic or elitism on raid content if you are running with people you know.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

View point on the toxic part about asking for the mechanics is its fine to ask as not everyone will know everything. I wouldn't expect people to laugh / be toxic or elitism on raid content if you are running with people you know.

I think you concentrated too much on the toxic part of that comment. Azherae was talking about the complexity of the encounter. And the complexity was so damn high that explaining it completely could be laughable. If there's 6-7 things that have to be tracked at the same time and those 6-7 things come from a pool of potential 20 things and the can have random triggers and order - you ain't explaining an encounter to a person. At best, you could explain what the things themselves are and what you need to do when they happen, but that still doesn't magically solve the issue of having to track several of such things at the same time, while doing your perfect rotation, while being prepared to switch up your actions because another group of 6-7 things could happen in the very next moment.

And then you scale this up to the size of a full raid and the question from some dude in the middle of the raid of "what do I do here" would definitely get a few laughs from the regulars. Because the chances are, if someone's gotta ask that in that kind of raid - you've wiped already.

And in all the cases of all the players knowing what needs to be done in certain moments, we come back to the issue of "not everything in the raid can be called out, so you need to know your own amount of info to properly react to your surroundings". And in action games that amount is lower than in tab games, which directly influences the design of the encounter itself.

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Just because something is action doesn't mean the difficulty for the fight needs to be amped up to the maximum. If you want an extremely hard fight yes include everything but nto everything needs to become an insane challenge.

Maybe this is where the misunderstanding stems from. I'm talking about peak pve content (I think Noaani is usually talking about this too). The content that Steven promised "only <10% of people on the server" would be able to do. And, imo, that content requires that kind of complexity and difficulty to be fun for the people who want that content, as Noaani has said muuultiple times (and now Azherae said the same thing).

As for why so much dodging or why the boss gotta be different or why hit particular parts - imo, all those things represent what action combat provides that is different from tab. You can hit different parts of a mob because you have precision aiming in action. You can do precise well-timed dodges in action. And you can track/predict location/movement of a small boss in action, while in tab you're just targeting it.

So my question is, if you're not utilizing the specific features of your combat system in your best quality top lvl content - why da fuck are you using that particular system?

Mag7spy wrote: »

Tracking players comes to communication and if you need to set positions for players to be around at certain parts of the encounter that is a thing as well. There might be more planning going into it and a lot more communication needed based on whatever the encounter is that needs you to look for a certain player.

There's a limit on how much stuff can be verbally said in a timely matter in a group of 40 people, w/o everyone shouting over everyone else. And, again my personal preference, you can't split your whole raid into 5 8-men voice rooms because the raid should require pure synergistic work from all 40 people. And in order to do that w/o everyone yelling at everyone and making calls - you need to have each player aware of their surroundings as much as possible. And tab camera/system allows that, while action restricts it.

Obviously you can just have bosses/raids that don't require that level of involvement, and Ashes should obviously have those bosses too, but when talking about top lvl content - I expect it to be on the level of complexity that I've described. And I'd assume Noaani would have an even higher expectation from it.

I fully understand but when I here action combat can't do raid content or do it well so you will use tab. My reply is to that type of content.

You have a mis conception of action combat in mmorpgs and my statement so hopefully we can make it clear. Lets go to the very root, what is the difference between action and tab? Tab you lock on, action you can freely attack without a target. The reason why people prefer action is because the sense of control of their character with it also being more of a fluid and immersive experience.

why da fuck are you using that particular system?

Action combat simply opens up more doors available for types of variation in content do to the system not being bound by the limitations of tab target. high levels of mobility, free aim, hitting certain parts of a body, etc are all things that can open up to different levels of difficulty and experiences. Everything is to further enhance that feel of control you have over your character.

At its core you have the base of your action combat that people like and enjoy giving you more access to design choices for how you want to design your gameplay. As I've said before you have your base level of tools that players have access to and based on the difficulty of your designs you have the option of adding more types of design decisions that rely on action combat and can scale the difficulty in tandem with the mechanics with a high difficulty raid.

Communication isn't that hard with a 40 man raid, but again it depends on the people and how you mesh well together. If you know the raid, people are balanced and respectful its not a hard task to call out what is needed. The raid isn't going to be designed to be chaotic and make 0 sense, there is going to be a flow to it and that doesn't mean all 40 people are talking at the same time.

When I did my node wars in new world we had 50+ people in chat, everyone had free mics and could say what they wanted for call outs in that kind of chaotic situation where you are fighting a war with 6 different groups split up between the 50. And we did completely fine, its 100% doable in a large pve raid. The level of difficulty should require that kind of communication

Again remember convo stems from Don't use action combat only tab can do it mentality....

Azherae

Mag7spy wrote: »

The raid isn't going to be designed to be chaotic and make 0 sense, there is going to be a flow to it and that doesn't mean all 40 people are talking at the same time.

Why not?

This is the single core question that you need to think about for us to have this conversation.

Why isn't it just going to be just 'chaotic random stuff happening'?

PvP is often random stuff happening. Monster Hunter is random stuff happening. Elite Dangerous is random stuff happening. And FFXI and EQ2, my 'Tab Target MMO' and Noaani's 'Tab Target MMO' are largely 'random stuff happening'.

So what we're telling you is 'top end raids' in SOME games are 'random stuff happening' and 'raids that are random stuff happening' get kind of insane in Action Combat.

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