nscheffel said:Xbachs said:nscheffel said:I'm all for non-twitch combat that's more tactical, but they really need to do away with the auto attack.
Just standing there while your character swings his sword every 3 seconds is not gameplay.
If the skills are set up such that the player has to trigger a spam skill every 2-3 seconds, then auto attack is pointless and the damage should just be rolled into the spam attack.
VG had auto attack, and it made zero sense. I hope they do away with it in Pantheon.
I don't think they will get rid of auto attack. I don't see how getting rid of AA would improve game play if the point is to avoid button-mashing, face-rolling dps ability spam. What I would like to see rather than mash-on-cooldown abilities is abilities you have to use reactively or in conjunction with other abilities or other players abilities in order to get full effect out of them. I hope they make us think about when and how to use abilities instead of there being a given, standard rotation used in every fight. Boooriiing.
Then why have auto attack? Just so we can see a number pop up between activated abilities? How could anyone logically be for auto attack, but against spamming the same abilities over and over? There is going to be some sort of basic attack sequence, whether it's auto attack or pressing the 1 key over and over...and I see no need for both.
I do agree that combat needs to be engaging, but the actual mechanics of how your toon physically hits the mob is not the place to implement it in an MMO.
You're on the right track with what needs to be present for engaging non-twitch combat: healing vs attacking, combos with other classes, player positioning, mob positioning, countering mob skills, target selection order, not standing in the fire, not getting knocked off the bridge, etc, etc.
Yikes. People don't want to play their hotkey bar or have a macro on their mouse that just cycles through their combat abilities. Is that really hard to understand? Auto attack allows you to actually take in the game itself instead of staring at a row of 54 hotkeys with cooldown timers.
nscheffel said:So again, what's the point of auto attack? Why not just make whatever skill you will undoubtedly be spamming anyways do more damage?
Auto attacking is for flavor and balance. When 30-40% of a melee's damage comes from auto attacks it gives melee a different feel next to casters and smoothes out their DPS compared to the more bursty nature of casters. Once you add things like crit/dodge/parry to the game all DPS then becomes spiky & unpredictable. Without auto attacks you end up with a game where melee are just melee flavor casters, and I would much prefer:
Rogue hits a skeleton for 16 piercing damage (main hand)
Rogue hits a skeleton for 10 piercing damage (off hand)
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 41 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
Rogue hits a skeleton for 17 piercing damage (main hand)
Rogue hits a skeleton for 9 piercing damage (off hand)
over:
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 100 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
wait...
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 100 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
wait...
Auto attack also makes weapon upgrades much more noticeable and exciting as melee get to see their consistant damage go up much more visably than just having slightly bigger numbers on their ability presses.
Honestly I am hoping this game isn't going to be one where you press a button every time the global cooldown is up, that's too mindless.
I don't mind auto-attack at all. It's true that playing a warrior or rogue in Everquest could feel somewhat limited since they didn't have a lot of buttons to press - at least in the first few expansions. That wasn't at all true for classes with spells though. As for just casting your strongest nuke, that would be the fastest way to get yourself killed in Everquest. Everquest, to me, was a lot about aggro-management and crowd control. I personally fell in love with the Enchanter class, juggling charm, mezzes, aggro-wipe, stuns, haste, slow and keeping everybody buffed with mana-regen. I'll actually say that Everquest is probably the mmo I've played that offered the most tactical combat.
From what I saw in the videos (and I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings) the wizard in the group kept over-nuking and getting too much aggro, thereby dying a lot. I do hope tanks will actually feel tanky and have some mob-control in the form of taunts, stuns and defensive short-burst abilities.
I'm not taking the videos as an example of what combat is absolutely going to be like, but from what I saw, it seemed rather stressful and the tanks seemed rather squishy. I personally hope healers won't just have to spam their healing spells on the tank to keep it alive even in fights with just one standard mob, and I hope there'll be other useful abilities for support casters that they'll have time and mana to use, like slows, snares, roots, etc.
I think one of the things I loved most about combat in EQ was the variation in pacing. Combat could be nice and quiet for a while, no stress, casting a spell once in a while, and then in an instant it could go to red-alert stress-mode if a pull went wrong or several mezz spells broke at the same time as charm, etc. That's what I'm hoping to experience in Pantheon as well :)
Without trying to sound like I'm looking at playing mmos with auto attack through rose tinted shades....why try to force a twitchy system in a game where the core tenants are kinda...very against it? Especially when there are numerous actiony mmo's out...
Otherwise... I think everyone needs to chill out until they actually experience the combat before calling it dated and boring...I wouldn't take an auto attack based combat system for granted.
One of the other aspect of AA is that in battle of attrition style combat auto-actions free up your brain and fingers for things other than combat. It’s hard to hit the push to talk but, death to open mic mouth breathers, much less type when you are cycling through button clicks and rotating around the target. As Pantheon is going to be more about interdependency and community interaction you will need to be communicating with both people in your group and not in your group even while fighting.
When you take time to actually speak to your group mates you will slowly make real friends and real connections. Ultimately the "thrilling combat" is not what gets you to log back into an MMO you have been playing for years it’s the friends and family you have built up over the years that you only get to see when you come "home".
Trasak said:One of the other aspect of AA is that in battle of attrition style combat auto-actions free up your brain and fingers for things other than combat. It’s hard to hit the push to talk but, death to open mic mouth breathers, much less type when you are cycling through button clicks and rotating around the target. As Pantheon is going to be more about interdependency and community interaction you will need to be communicating with both people in your group and not in your group even while fighting.
When you take time to actually speak to your group mates you will slowly make real friends and real connections. Ultimately the "thrilling combat" is not what gets you to log back into an MMO you have been playing for years it’s the friends and family you have built up over the years that you only get to see when you come "home".
Great post.
Iksar said:nscheffel said:So again, what's the point of auto attack? Why not just make whatever skill you will undoubtedly be spamming anyways do more damage?
Auto attacking is for flavor and balance. When 30-40% of a melee's damage comes from auto attacks it gives melee a different feel next to casters and smoothes out their DPS compared to the more bursty nature of casters. Once you add things like crit/dodge/parry to the game all DPS then becomes spiky & unpredictable. Without auto attacks you end up with a game where melee are just melee flavor casters, and I would much prefer:
Rogue hits a skeleton for 16 piercing damage (main hand)
Rogue hits a skeleton for 10 piercing damage (off hand)
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 41 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
Rogue hits a skeleton for 17 piercing damage (main hand)
Rogue hits a skeleton for 9 piercing damage (off hand)
over:
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 100 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
wait...
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 100 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
wait...
Auto attack also makes weapon upgrades much more noticeable and exciting as melee get to see their consistant damage go up much more visably than just having slightly bigger numbers on their ability presses.
Honestly I am hoping this game isn't going to be one where you press a button every time the global cooldown is up, that's too mindless.
All perfectly understandable, but that's not how they did combat in VG.
In VG you were hitting an attack key every single global cooldown at ~2.5 second intervals. Auto attack was still firing between that button spam. Why?
If folks think they are going make a game in 2018 where players hit auto attack and watch their character hack at a mob for 2 minutes...well...they are going to be disappointed. That game will either not happen, or it will die in 6 months.
I think it's wise to expect to be clicking/pressing a button every 2-3 seconds if you're a melee character. What those click and presses do is certainly open for debate (move your character, swing a sword, cast a spell, etc), but you won't be sitting there not interacting with the game.
Hopefully they add skill to combat in ways that don't require more user input per second, which is almost certainly the goal.
EQ was simple on the surface, with enough depth to set the great players apart from the average. Particularly with casters. Knowing when to use what, how to conserve your resources, and the fulfilling the complete scope of your role was a challenge. With melee, not quite as much unless you were pulling.
I would personally enjoy something in line with that design, only with melee on par with the casters. With such a system as the foundation, they can still add mechanics for group combos or synergies, as well as deeper encounters to further increase complexity or "raise the bar".
Nuggie said: I think EQ1 combat gets a bad rap because most people simply did not know how to play. Quick story: When I went to play P99, after having played on the eq live servers from '99 -'07 or so, in '09 I thought I had a well rounded knowledge of the game. The old EQ pro's that were on the server in the beginning were more than happy to show me that I had barely gotten past the first layer of the onion that was EQ. It's hard to know what you don't know, and as those guys showed me, I didn't know crap. Even about the classes I'd played the most. So I surmise that if your position is that EQ1 combat is boring, you just didn't stick around long enough to learn it properly. Or you weren't creative enough.
No. EQ 1 combat is boring. Coming from a live launch player in 98, a p99 launch player to agnarr player now. It's boring. BORING lol. So boring and so one dimentional. I can solo a dragon on a shaman while watching TV. Don't even get me started on melee. It's not a matter of being creative or learning to play, once you learn to play your class or any class properly, the game just gets boring because it's simple. Even in running raids with skeleton crew guilds. There is a reason why people can box 6 toons easily and more with programs.
It's 2018, this is an auto attack game, but we can certainly improve on EQ1 combat in a lot of ways given all the new and exciting developments that have occurred since 1998.
CanadinaXegony said:Please..no doing the hokey pokey when in combat for a raid...no jumping in and out of the green poo and skirting the red goo. I'm sure our Devs can come up with something more strategic and challenging than that (looking at you Rift)
What kind of player vs Environment, if any, do you feel adds to an encounter? A ground based particle effect is a very simple way to communicate a dynamic ground condition but it does tend to be over used. An idea of mine is to fight a dragon on a frozen lake. Every time the dragon does its breath attack or ground slam with its tail it begins to breath the ice. After enough damage the ice breaks and you end up with super cold water that may or may not have sea monsters in it. As an encounter you need to control where you are fighting the dragon so that you do not run out of land to fight on or even better force the dragon into the water, call it a wurm so no flying.
I agree that "dodge x particle effect" is a bit over used. I would like to see more smart AI and terrain interaction.
To me little things like not making a fight repetitious go a long way toward keeping the fight entertaining. By that I only mean having the NPC move through a static pattern makes the fight very coreographed and you end up going to the exact same fight over and over. Adding a little bit of randomness keeps thing interesting. Maybe the NPC has a rare weapon that it is using (that you want) combined with a disposition that makes that iteration of the fight especially dificult. It would be nice to not know exactly what the raid is going to be like each week I guess.
Rogue said:No. EQ 1 combat is boring. Coming from a live launch player in 98, a p99 launch player to agnarr player now. It's boring. BORING lol. So boring and so one dimentional. I can solo a dragon on a shaman while watching TV. Don't even get me started on melee. It's not a matter of being creative or learning to play, once you learn to play your class or any class properly, the game just gets boring because it's simple. Even in running raids with skeleton crew guilds. There is a reason why people can box 6 toons easily and more with programs.
To be fair, modern MMO combat isn't much better and I can still watch Netflix while doing just about anything (especially as a DPS class).
Straight auto-attack is no good but spamming hotkeys/doing ability rotations is also tired and doesn't feel good or particularly skillful.
One thing I wish had been expanded upon with other MMOs was FFXI's skillchain system, where performing a sequence of skills in a certain order and with good timing produced different elemental bursts of bonus damage. I know EQ2 had something of the sort with Heroic Opportunities but from what I understand it was not fun, required no skill, the rewards were mostly useless anyway, and all around poorly implemented. The problem with these tend to be they become the requirement and people just do them over and over, group to group.
It probably isn't possible with a limited action set but I'd like to see some kind of skillchain system that perhaps isn't under much (if any) direct control by the player when it comes to starting it. So something like: Warrior gets a string a 3 successful blocks unlocking use of Shield Slam, warrior uses Shield Slam which dazes the enemy and opens use of Expose Weakness for a few seconds for the ranger, ranger uses Expose Weakness which opens up Exploit Weakness for the rogue, rogue uses Exploit Weakness for a high damage hit that ignores the targets AC. Or maybe a DPS lands a string of crits which gives the mob a debuff "Staggered" for a couple seconds, that debuff opens the tank to use Armor Break to lower the targets AC by x% for a few seconds for the party. Likewise you could have something a little more in the control of players along the lines of: Group fighting a mage mob land x successful interrupts in a row marking the mob with a "Shaken" debuff, this could open up something like Supress Will to a caster that then makes the next spell to hit the mob ignore all resistances.
To me combat is more exciting/engaging when I feel like my button presses matter for more than just lowering the HP bar. Well timed interrupts/clutch CC, having to pay attention to and reacting to what the mob is doing over just mashing a rotation or couple hotkeys over and over. So here is to hoping Pantheon has complex mobs with often unpredictable behavior.
From what I have seen in the videos I some what agree with the OP. The combat looks lackluster but of course there is still quite a bit of time before even beta comes out so hopefully that will change. Im not expecting something like tera combat but something more closer to everquest2 where the combat flows really well and the spells are shiny. So hopefully it turns out like that.
Iksar said:Rogue said:No. EQ 1 combat is boring. Coming from a live launch player in 98, a p99 launch player to agnarr player now. It's boring. BORING lol. So boring and so one dimentional. I can solo a dragon on a shaman while watching TV. Don't even get me started on melee. It's not a matter of being creative or learning to play, once you learn to play your class or any class properly, the game just gets boring because it's simple. Even in running raids with skeleton crew guilds. There is a reason why people can box 6 toons easily and more with programs.
To be fair, modern MMO combat isn't much better and I can still watch Netflix while doing just about anything (especially as a DPS class).
Straight auto-attack is no good but spamming hotkeys/doing ability rotations is also tired and doesn't feel good or particularly skillful.
One thing I wish had been expanded upon with other MMOs was FFXI's skillchain system, where performing a sequence of skills in a certain order and with good timing produced different elemental bursts of bonus damage. I know EQ2 had something of the sort with Heroic Opportunities but from what I understand it was not fun, required no skill, the rewards were mostly useless anyway, and all around poorly implemented. The problem with these tend to be they become the requirement and people just do them over and over, group to group.
It probably isn't possible with a limited action set but I'd like to see some kind of skillchain system that perhaps isn't under much (if any) direct control by the player when it comes to starting it. So something like: Warrior gets a string a 3 successful blocks unlocking use of Shield Slam, warrior uses Shield Slam which dazes the enemy and opens use of Expose Weakness for a few seconds for the ranger, ranger uses Expose Weakness which opens up Exploit Weakness for the rogue, rogue uses Exploit Weakness for a high damage hit that ignores the targets AC. Or maybe a DPS lands a string of crits which gives the mob a debuff "Staggered" for a couple seconds, that debuff opens the tank to use Armor Break to lower the targets AC by x% for a few seconds for the party. Likewise you could have something a little more in the control of players along the lines of: Group fighting a mage mob land x successful interrupts in a row marking the mob with a "Shaken" debuff, this could open up something like Supress Will to a caster that then makes the next spell to hit the mob ignore all resistances.
To me combat is more exciting/engaging when I feel like my button presses matter for more than just lowering the HP bar. Well timed interrupts/clutch CC, having to pay attention to and reacting to what the mob is doing over just mashing a rotation or couple hotkeys over and over. So here is to hoping Pantheon has complex mobs with often unpredictable behavior.
I agree with you. I don't really have a solution for these games, I just find it a bit mystifying when people put EQ1 on a platter like it's still relevant by a combat mechanics standard and there was something more to it than there ever was. I'll be upfront, I find almost no MMO particularly entertaining combat wise (almost). I am much more of a dark souls combat guy when it comes to engaging combat. The EQ2 heroic opportunity was indeed bland and was not engaging. I think regardless of what it is, skill is the wrong term. Engaging is the term I would prefer to have.
What makes for "engaging" combat. I understand this game. I will likely be in a group with my guild (or raid) and we will mostly be bantering and bonding as we kill. That is what makes games like EQ special imo. It's not a place for dark souls or action mechanics that take away from the community perspective. Without auto attack as a filler, combat would kill all chat time. No more talking about the weather while we murder a dragon or a bunch of tree things. I really did enjoy FFXI though, I think a skill chain type system would be really cool if it fit with the classes. Being able to group combo a mob when you really want the extra effects or damage to power through a grind/faction.
From a solo group player perspective, maybe a combo type system to produce meaningful combat effects, one that maybe would replace a "hotkey skill" entirely. Like for instance, "tendon slash + backstab = non-bar memable skill."
As I said, I don't really have a solution, it would just be a shame given this game is being built from the ground up if we only had, auto attack + hotbar skills. Just seems a missed opportunity.
I think we are on the same page, I kind of read sections of your reply, wrote my own, looked up, saw some repitition, rinse repeat lol. Tiny reply box haha.
Trasak said:CanadinaXegony said:Please..no doing the hokey pokey when in combat for a raid...no jumping in and out of the green poo and skirting the red goo. I'm sure our Devs can come up with something more strategic and challenging than that (looking at you Rift)
What kind of player vs Environment, if any, do you feel adds to an encounter? A ground based particle effect is a very simple way to communicate a dynamic ground condition but it does tend to be over used. An idea of mine is to fight a dragon on a frozen lake. Every time the dragon does its breath attack or ground slam with its tail it begins to breath the ice. After enough damage the ice breaks and you end up with super cold water that may or may not have sea monsters in it. As an encounter you need to control where you are fighting the dragon so that you do not run out of land to fight on or even better force the dragon into the water, call it a wurm so no flying.
That sounds more exciting and challenging than the hokey pokey for sure. :D
Even if people are against the twitch style of combat (I'm not sure what that really means but I'm assuming fast paced combat), I don't see a whole lot of ways to make combat more dynamic without some element of fast speedy reactions. Some elements of the twitch combat are good though. I really would reccommend the interupt armor and moment of opportunity mechanics from Wildstar myself. Basically a mob will start to cast but will gain interupt armor. All interupts just reduce that armor by 1 until it hits 0 and the next interupt actually knocks the mob down and increases the damage the mob takes for a short time.
I really think Pantheon is wise with bringing challenging content while leveling up and requiring group play for leveling up too. Multiple groups in the same dungeon or just in the open world is great if it can be done without overcrowding. These are things MMOs have lost. But EQ combat was bad. EQ healing was bad. CC was a little cooler but still needs improvement. Bad combat could really hurt the game so I hope it has A LOT more than what it looks like it does right now.
Pantheon needs to be more mental. "Twitch combat" relies more on instinct as the mobs do not have complicated strategies or attributes. Instinct is faster than emotion...emotion is faster than thought. One should not be rationalizing during combat. Rationalizations occur before combat starts.
Age of Wonders 3 has a system where every unit has it's own attributes and abilities. One is required to read everything about every unit before fighting or they'll die...they'll miss the fact that the unit steals life whenever it attacks (which means one should used ranged or magic on it as melee causes a set of up to 3 retaliation attacks).
Pantheon is sitting between these two extremes. Auto-attack is a very passive ability, BUT it cannot function if the mob is not in front of your character. Maybe it should be more difficult to actually keep auto-attacking a mob, or that a retreating/moving mob takes more damage if it's not facing its attacker and is also harder to hit (weird, but it makes sense). Players should be more encouraged to stop melee auto-attack and change to ranged...or maybe there will be abilities that allow a tank to retaliate with stronger attacks while standing close to the group's casters in case the mob decides to attack them.
In a raid, a tank that has been tanking for too long can end up needing some type of waiting period in order to not incur debuffs (kind of like encumbrance and being drunk). The tank would retreat and stay close to the casters, which will actually give buffs to the casters such as threat transfer, higher defenses, higher mana regen. This may mean that mobs will not be the damage sponges of before (as tanks will become more defensive), but that their resistances will be higher and will need more debuffs (DDs and DoTs will do less damage by default, but debuffs will probably be on more abilities). The raid should have other tanks to draw on, as having just one main tank has never been strategic in the least. In AOW3 I have to rely on other tanky characters to take out the mobs beside my "main tank" due to having used up all its moves last turn retaliating against the enemy and breaking their guard. Maybe Pantheon's tanks have passive abilities that "break" a mob's defenses...they ARE distracted and perhaps now wounded. What if melee classes had passive abilities that could be changed on the fly so as to thin the amount of buttons one needs to press while keeping the unique animations going? What if every class had passive, changeable abilities that do what they say they do, no surprises? A wizard could need more interrupts on their spells, but they'll lose 5% more mana casting spells.
The tank that places his/herself beside the casters would regen stamina quickly and can trade his current position with the now-tired tank. If a tank is not beside the casters it'll be more likely that something, some add will attack them. In case there are not enough tanks, Summoners can summon something into the world that "replaces" the tank's situational passives. Of course, Enchanters have their own mind control abilities...I do want to see Intelligence classes be, well, more intelligent. INT classes should have abilities that are more strategic in nature compared to bland DD/DoT spam that does not have debuffs, CC, buffs, weird random effects, self-inflicted negatives, etc.
With so many things one now has to worry about, auto-attack can be a god-send seeing how simple it is to now simply attack a mob...but NOT to defeat a mob. In AOW3 one can be an expert and actually defy the odds by simply bringing a specially tailored group of units and knowledge of what one's supposed to do. Many people like to talk about EQ here, but EQ was definately too basic (Enchanters and Shamans felt more like cheating to me compared to the other classes). We do need something that has not been done before. Look for unconventional routes for the solutions rather than other MMOs.
hsiegfried44 said:Thats a lot of stuff to read through. Did anyone answer the question on whether or not the current combat is how its going to be during release? Seems really spazzy (if that makes sense) and kind of out dated.. almost EQ1 like haha.
The combat you saw in the streams is a foundation. The devs have said often that you can expect changes. Also, these guys are pros with a ton of experience. They know that the combat system has to be modern and that, even though it doesn't have to be twitchy, it has to be engaging and sufficiently complex. Still though, I would prefer an EQ1 style combat to a Korean-style twitch combat (nothing wrong with that style, just not for everyone).
Combat is the most repetitive thing that will happen in a MMO...Whether you are hitting 2-5 buttoms less frequently or spamming 8-10 quickly neither of those things excite me. If the main reason you are playing MMO's is for the combat system you are doing something wrong. In EQ 1 it really depended on the class you played some were much more involved than others but I would hope it's at least more involved than Warriors/Rogues who literally press like 1 buttom in combat.