I don't like action combat, and it could very potentially stop me from playing

I haven't played it yet, so I'm not drawing any sort of line yet. But steven asked for feedback about if we are going in a positive direction, and I'm just gonna say that every action combat korean type mmo I've ever played I have absolutely hated. I am tab target 100%, I think action combat only works from an overhead 3rd person perspective like diablo or league of legends or lost ark. I don't want to aim my ability's honestly, If I use a sword and get animation locked, and at the same time I'm required to dodge some kind of skill shot. I'm not gonna be happy. If I miss a spell as a spell caster because my mouse was 4 pixels off, same thing. Tab targeting let's me focus on what I think matters.

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mcstackerson

Noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

Who said those are the only encounters?

Just because it has the large variety of tab encounters doesn't mean it can't have other encounters that use more action elements of the system, creating even more variety.

So, my take on what you are saying here is that a game with action combat could basically disable that action combat for top end raids, leaving players using only remnants of an action combat system. If this is the wrong take away from what you are getting at, let me know.

Raid content in a game that is trying to support a raiding scene is the aspirational content for the game - at least for PvE.

Content that is cutting out aspects of the combat system will not be considered aspirational content.

An honest question for you - do you see any game developer creating a combat system, and then having to disable aspects of it for their marquee content?

I mean, you may be right from a literal perspective (note; *may* be right). However, from a practical perspective, I don't think you believe what you are saying here yourself.

Yes, i'm approaching this from a literal perspective but also believe that if they were to practically implement the variety of content you are asking for, they could incorporate action elements without compromising that variety.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Back in L2 no one cared about raid videos because the fight was super easy and you just needed people and gear to win. In FF14, from what I've heard, no one cares about showing their clears because the game is so difficult mechanically that it doesn't matter if you know the mechanics, cause you still need to execute perfectly in order to beat the encounter (I believe WoW's raiding races are similar). So I got curious where EQ2 was on that spectrum, considering that you've said multiple times that people didn't release videos to prevent others from clearing some raids.

In EQ2, it was a case of there being multiple different ways to approach an encounter. Sometimes, you would think of a thing that other guilds wouldn't.

The reason you didn't want your guilds strategies to be made public is because of the open world boss content. They dropped the best gear, and so they are the encounters you want to kill. As such, you don't want to give any rival guilds any ideas on strategies that they could potentially use on one of these bosses, and more to the point, you don't want to assist those rival guilds in getting geared up faster, as that would give them a better chance at killing one of these open world encounters should they be able to get a raid together for them faster than you.

Where L2 could be described as the information not being worth sharing, FFXIV could be described as the information can't be conveyed in a video, for EQ2 it was more - the information is propriety IP belonging to the guild.

Mag7spy

Noaani wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Because you can have more happening means you can have more levels of difficulty based on however they design it. How can you not see that?

Yeah, but... this is MY argument.

Content in both action and tab can be developed past the point where it is possible to kill. Developers even do this on purpose on occasion (and then slowly tone back mechanics to leave the encounter on the cusp of what is possible).

So, logically, this means that the greater the gap is between what the combat system requires and the cap of what is possible, the more levels of difficulty the developers can place in to the design of the encounters.

Since you agree with me that tab is easier than action (in general), this leaves developers with more room on tab target content to create those varying levels of difficulty.

You aren't getting it, it means more variety of content for them to use and add to mechanics. They can layer on dodge and utilize that aspect if they want to, they can utilize damage to certain spots on a mob with certain skills. They can use any elements on action combat to spice up more types of encounters where it normally would be as fluid to do if you faked it with tab.

Again if they don't use everything that is fine nothing is being taken away, players control and use their characters how they want and do the content. If content has certain mechs involved players will simply do what they need to, if that means not moving and standing still then they will do that. If the raid has you moving at a certain part as part of the mech for a group of people they will use more of their dodge mobility.

If the devs want to make a stupid insanely hard encounter where only the best people can accomplish it with good knowledge on all systems they can do that.

Tab is easier because there isn't as much involvement from a combat stand point, that doesn't mean by throwing more mechanics you make a better experience. Nor does it mean by throwing more mechanics does it make it any harder for action players to do all those mechanics any more than a tab player.

Caeryl

There is nothing uniquely positive to tab that action cannot replicate or make more engaging. Tab asks little of the players beyond memorization and repetition. Many players want to have reason to be engaged with where the enemies are, with their surroundings, to actually have to pay attention and react to things besides the rise and fall of HP bars and threat meters. I want to be fighting within the world, not by watching UI elements.

Ashes is a hybrid game. That means you will not be playing whack-a-mole click-and-afk style fights. You’ll actually have to pay attention, and that is a good thing

Ludullu

mcstackerson wrote: »

If it's really a reaction mechanic, in an action system you also have the option of making people dodge to do it.

Yeah, but you'd need awareness to do that dodge. And fov gives you that awareness. As I said before, imo having a huge mob that you don't have to aim at properly is not my definition of hardcore action combat content. Both of the videos you showed were closer to smth like LA in their design: you have ground hazards to dodge and you have aoeish and cone-based attacks that you use against a huge mob that moves slowly.

If I was trying to design a "true action top lvl boss" I'd be using all of the action features to their max. You gotta aim properly, even as a melee character. The bosses would be way smaller and way more agile. You have more verticality gameplay than any given tab game (or even wildstar/tera). You gotta almost constantly be aware of things to dodge, those things being horizontal dangers and ground hazards (with some of the hazards accounting for verticality, so you might need to duck under or jump over them). You'll have to actively parry/block some attacks too.

That is what I think of when I hear "top lvl action combat pve content". All of the prominent features used in one encounter. And then you'd have to somehow design dozens of such encounters over the years, with tangible variability between all of them.

And in the case of all those mechanics, you'd need camera to be way closer, so that you can properly dps the boss. And when the camera is closer, your fov is narrower and anything that comes from behind you will feel unfair to the battle (at least I'd assume people would call that unfair).

Now again, I'm not saying that you have to have 360 view in order to have an engaging fight. I'm saying that a 360 view brings quite a few benefits to the design variety of encounters. And due to properly difficult action combat (again, as I see it) limiting your fov, you won't have that variety. I might be wrong in that assumption and I'd love to be proven wrong by some game devs, but, until that happens, I think this is the thing that action can't do (that being the utilization of all 360 degrees of space when designing an encounter w/o it being unfair to the players).

mcstackerson wrote: »

The last comment was just saying there are ways you could make that add so that it was jumping around like you mentioned but still easy to hit in a free aim system.

But that goes against the whole point of the encounter being top lvl. The context of the discussion is the attempt to prove that either sides have features that the other side can't do. The ones I could come up with is the 360 design in tab and the verticality precision gameplay in action.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

At this point I feel like it's coming down to the level of raiding standards for different people. Noaani and Azherae are trying to say that not utilizing literally all of the combat's mechanics during the top lvl content is asinine and that, in order to have a raiding scene, you need to have several top level raids with enough variety for all of them to be interesting to said scene.

This is correct - at least from my part.

Raiding - in a game that is attempting to support a raiding scene - is the games marquee content. Not only that, but it is where developers introduce new mechanics, which then often filter down to group content.

You can't really have marquee content if that content requires players to not use a portion of their class kit.

Trying to use raid content to trial a new mob mechanic is also not going to work if raids aren't reasonably able to use all the games combat mechanics - though this really is a minor point.

Since the compromises people are talking about are not small - they are things like just not having dodge - it isn't really appropriate for the top end content of the game to be generally absent of these mechanics if they are present throughout the rest of the game.

With players going from solo to group to raid, there should be an addition of layers, not a retraction of them.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

This happens partially because in older games, 'special' or 'secret' team/group compositions can be a thing, moreso than FFXIV which is intended to be much easier.

Yeah, I guess secrecy was a much bigger thing back in the day, just due to the overall amount of information that you could get back then.

Azherae wrote: »

The Meta-shakeups you often talked about for L2, within Raiding, can happen in that way specifically.

If only NCsoft cared about pve back then

the pvp matchups would definitely get shaken up with a new update, but pve rarely changed all that much. You still had the usual suspects when you needed top dps for a raid. And I don't think that ever really changed. At most, you might've added a new class to the roster because they got a new cool debuff in the skillset, but that kind of action was beyond obvious to anyone who played the game, so it wasn't like your new raid setup suddenly became such a huge and valuable secret that you'd tell no one about it.

Azherae wrote: »

E.g. since I've provided the point now... One might expect that the sensible way to defeat Jormungand was to get a lot of Ice defense to reduce damage, but while the fight is POSSIBLE that way, it is definitely not the easier way to do it, and the easier way to do it is not particularly intuitive.

So you might want to keep your group's 'special technique' secret.

On the topic of icey strong bastards. Here's a vid of the first attempt at a new epic boss in L2 by the strongest clan at the time. They got completely obliterated even though they had the best gear at the time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqWKEoZGg0Q

Ice protection wasn't the answer there either

Mag7spy

I have not played a action mmo and heard people complaining its not akin to something like DMC. They see the mech and do the mec be it moving a lot or moving very little with your tank having aggro. Its simply action combat with expectations for a mmo with good dungeons, content, raid elements and such.

Sure some people might want more action elements but most people understand how a mmo should be. At this point it is just assuming what people want, which doesn't really relate to doing dungeon content in action combat on a larger scale.

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

You can't imagine taking any of the the tab games mentioned, converting them to action, and adapting their content?

See, I can imagine this happening.

The thing is, that adaptation of the content is the issue. It will require adjustments in a negative fashion.

Every single adaptation of an encounter in this scenario will be a downgrade to it.

When you talk about the scale of a game like EQ2 (currently sitting at very nearly 1k raid encounters), what you are going to end up with is a whole lot of encounters that play the same, because the uniqueness of them was adapted out.

I should point out that I am not even necessarily talking about any singular specific mechanics. To me, the issue is more in relation to the total number of mechanics players can manage, while still being able to perform actual combat. If an action game were to throw the number of mechanics at players that top end tab target games do, they would have to compromise by not requiring the same level of attention be paid to actual fighting vs dealing with mechanics.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

Sure some people might want more action elements but most people understand how a mmo should be. At this point it is just assuming what people want, which doesn't really relate to doing dungeon content in action combat on a larger scale.

It's not assumptions though. We literally have Noaani, Azherae and me who want top lvl raiding content in Ashes. And in order for that content to be top lvl, it'll need to utilize literally all the mechanics and combat features in the game to their limit. Otherwise it's not top lvl.

And obviously it doesn't have to be the only content that's in the game. Afaik that was one of the reasons why Wildstar died. But it should be present if Steven really wants to appeal to high lvl raiders, and in the past he has alleged to want that (mainly with his mention of encounters only beatable by <10% of players).

mcstackerson

NiKr wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

If it's really a reaction mechanic, in an action system you also have the option of making people dodge to do it.

Yeah, but you'd need awareness to do that dodge. And fov gives you that awareness. As I said before, imo having a huge mob that you don't have to aim at properly is not my definition of hardcore action combat content. Both of the videos you showed were closer to smth like LA in their design: you have ground hazards to dodge and you have aoeish and cone-based attacks that you use against a huge mob that moves slowly.

If I was trying to design a "true action top lvl boss" I'd be using all of the action features to their max. You gotta aim properly, even as a melee character. The bosses would be way smaller and way more agile. You have more verticality gameplay than any given tab game (or even wildstar/tera). You gotta almost constantly be aware of things to dodge, those things being horizontal dangers and ground hazards (with some of the hazards accounting for verticality, so you might need to duck under or jump over them). You'll have to actively parry/block some attacks too.

That is what I think of when I hear "top lvl action combat pve content". All of the prominent features used in one encounter. And then you'd have to somehow design dozens of such encounters over the years, with tangible variability between all of them.

And in the case of all those mechanics, you'd need camera to be way closer, so that you can properly dps the boss. And when the camera is closer, your fov is narrower and anything that comes from behind you will feel unfair to the battle (at least I'd assume people would call that unfair).

Now again, I'm not saying that you have to have 360 view in order to have an engaging fight. I'm saying that a 360 view brings quite a few benefits to the design variety of encounters. And due to properly difficult action combat (again, as I see it) limiting your fov, you won't have that variety. I might be wrong in that assumption and I'd love to be proven wrong by some game devs, but, until that happens, I think this is the thing that action can't do (that being the utilization of all 360 degrees of space when designing an encounter w/o it being unfair to the players).

mcstackerson wrote: »

The last comment was just saying there are ways you could make that add so that it was jumping around like you mentioned but still easy to hit in a free aim system.

But that goes against the whole point of the encounter being top lvl. The context of the discussion is the attempt to prove that either sides have features that the other side can't do. The ones I could come up with is the 360 design in tab and the verticality precision gameplay in action.

All i have been arguing here is how you could implement tab mechanics in action games since people are more familiar with them. Yes, there are things you can do with an action system but I don't think every fight needs to leverage all of those features. If people enjoy certain tab fights as is then i don't see why you need to mess with that too much.

I don't think the FOV brings the variety. All it does is allow you to see the mechanic so if you needed to compensate, all you would need to do is change how the mechanic is seen. Easiest example of it is that mechanic you showed. You could have the same mechanic in a smaller FOV and either telegraph it a little differently or find another way for the players to figure it out how to dodge it. I think it would work fine as is but if necessary, you could have the animation last a little longer so people have time to look for it.

Once again, i'm just saying that if the tab mechanic is the goal, then you can have it. I agree that you can dial it up if that's what you want.

I also feel like you avoided my comment that actions have large FOVs. Was there a reason for that?

mcstackerson

Noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

You can't imagine taking any of the the tab games mentioned, converting them to action, and adapting their content?

See, I can imagine this happening.

The thing is, that adaptation of the content is the issue. It will require adjustments in a negative fashion.

Every single adaptation of an encounter in this scenario will be a downgrade to it.

When you talk about the scale of a game like EQ2 (currently sitting at very nearly 1k raid encounters), what you are going to end up with is a whole lot of encounters that play the same, because the uniqueness of them was adapted out.

I should point out that I am not even necessarily talking about any singular specific mechanics. To me, the issue is more in relation to the total number of mechanics players can manage, while still being able to perform actual combat. If an action game were to throw the number of mechanics at players that top end tab target games do, they would have to compromise by not requiring the same level of attention be paid to actual fighting vs dealing with mechanics.

Why would it be a downgrade, please give an example.

As i said and you agreed, you literally could have the same mechanic so if the adaptation is a downgrade, then why does it need to happen?

To me, number of mechanics is another variety thing. If you feel the mechanics are too hard to manage will doing action combat then don't require a lot of action that fight. Just because you have some fights like that doesn't mean you can't have others that aren't. Variety!

Solvryn

Now it’s a top level PvP vs PvE thread?

Ludullu

mcstackerson wrote: »

I also feel like you avoided my comment that actions have large FOVs. Was there a reason for that?

I addressed it with this.

NiKr wrote: »

Both of the videos you showed were closer to smth like LA in their design: you have ground hazards to dodge and you have aoeish and cone-based attacks that you use against a huge mob that moves slowly.

And continued to explain why I don't see that as difficult and not really a justification for having that kind of zoom in an action game.

Ludullu

Solvryn wrote: »

Now it’s a top level PvP vs PvE thread?

Always has been.

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

As i said and you agreed, you literally could have the same mechanic so if the adaptation is a downgrade, then why does it need to happen?

Same mechanic. As in singular. I am not disputing that any one mechanic could be transitioned over to action from tab (or to tab from action).

The thing is, raid encounters are made up of many mechanics, a dozen or more on the go at a time.

It is the combination of mechanics that is the issue. Tab target games already have situations where it is almost impossible to take care of all of the mechanics in the encounter while still actually performing combat to the required level.

If you alter a tab encounter to an action game, you NEED to either remove some of the mechanics, or lower the required level of combat that needs to take place.

This isn't a DPS situation or anything, it is the amount of effort needed to put in to dealing with the mechanics vs dealing with actual combat - an increase in DPS is a reduction to the amount of effort you need to put in to the combat system.

But again, this is my whole point. Because action combat requires more effort be put in to the combat system, it leaves less effort to be put in to the encounter. This means the encounter can't have as much going on, because players need to put more focus on the combat system.

If the required focus on the combat system is lowered, then players do not need to be even remotely good at the games combat system.

Now, I am sure you can understand this notion (others in this thread can't), but if you have action combat that can have some mechanics, and tab target that can have a few more, since both have the same pool of mechanics that they can use, this means that tab target has more variety of encounters that it can allow for.

Solvryn

NiKr wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

Now it’s a top level PvP vs PvE thread?

Always has been.

I think the devs are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to peoples assertions.

As I’ve raided tab and action, it’s all on the devs.

But I’m not interested in this argument there’s pages of it.

Devs are on the right path, imo.

Ludullu

Solvryn wrote: »

But I’m not interested in this argument there’s pages of it.

Yeah, you can ignore most posts on the forum at least until Alpha2. All we do is just argue pointless things in circles over and over and over and over again. And until we have the game in our hands to properly test and give real feedback on, there's not much we will achieve by discussing the same things with the same people. There might be a good point here and there and I do hope that Intrepid's mods/admins/managers read this stuff to see those good points, but even if they don't, we'll just have to remember those good points when we give feedback for alpha2.

Mag7spy

Ya no one is going to change their mind on this, and people will just say if action can do it, then tab can add more mechanics even if they didn't exist in the content before. That is why there isn't much point arguing this unless we compare with exact raids from other tab games but that conversation won't come up so -shrugs-. Infinite what ifs or assuming people cant do things or can.

Noaani

Mag7spy wrote: »

Ya no one is going to change their mind on this, and people will just say if action can do it, then tab can add more mechanics even if they didn't exist in the content before. That is why there isn't much point arguing this unless we compare with exact raids from other tab games but that conversation won't come up so -shrugs-. Infinite what ifs or assuming people cant do things or can.

But there is no point in comparing existing raids.

I mean, we can't - even if I wanted to.

There are no actual top end raid encounters at all in action games - at least not top end as would be considered in a game like EQ, EQ2, Rift or WoW (or even AoC the first, LotRO or Vanguard, which I personally consider to be second tier in terms of raid content).

Even if I gave you examples of raid mechanics that can't work in an action combat setting, you can't give any examples of top end raids in an action combat setting, because there simply aren't any. As such, any comment you may want to make about how it could work are 100% theoretical on your part - or as you would call it, your own head cannon.

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