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Action/Twitch, 8-button Combat
ignore_me
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,987
The lure of MOBA $$, the lack of trinity, the need for simple controls because movement along 3 axes will be necessary. What's your take on this feature of EQNext?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Comments
I don't care about the combat. In most MMOs i adapt to whatever combat they throw at me, instead of getting all nitpicky if it doesn't match my exact specifications. The other features that this game promises to ship with are far more important in my eyes. Only game where combat matters to me is TESO, because they switched from manual aim to soft lock, and claim it is skyrim online.
The only thing that can really bother me about combat is when they take away freedom of choice and force you to use abilities that are useless in your build. (for example GW2 forcing 5 of the same weapon skills to every rifle user)
Ok, we got the attacking the poll post out of the way.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
GW1 has an eight skills bar and TSW has ten. Both games are deep and smart. Quality > quantity.
But 8 buttons doesn't mean quality and with the 40 classes and all their skills it realy sounds more like quantity in general. I have to admit i never played gw1 but both TSW and GW2 keep getting me frustrated with the lack of usable skills and the limits to its builds. Well GW2 woul have a huge potential if you add an additional set of 5 skills that are not dependant on the weapon but have a similar cooldown like weapon skills and a 2nd set of 5 skills that work like fully passive or like signets(realy meaningfull skills not just some stats. Things like additional pets for a necro, more slots for mesmer illusions or even a permanent illusion).
8 skills and limited selection(dependant n class your 2nd set of 4 skills has specific slots) can work fpr certain playstyles like the melee-warrior or a ranger but it will be a nightmare for every caster or everyone that wan't some more complex mechanics(like cc, decent buff-/debuff-system). Another Problem for me is that 8 skills sounds like its becoming a game of role-switching every 5 minutes like rift and that did ruin immersion for me.
EQ2 fan sites
Well, no feature means quality by itself. What I'm saying is that quality of skills is what makes character building good or bad. Having 8 buttons at your disposal doesn't mean quality, but neither does having 40.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mesmer_skills
Here are the skills of GW1's Mesmer. That's just one profession out of the two your character can have. Choosing only 8 skills is a tough choice, which is exactly what a choice should be like.
Both TSW and GW2 screwed the system up a bit. TSW is too unbalanced and has too many sameish skills, while GW2's utility skills aren't important enough to be build-defining in PvE. GW2's problems don't come from its ability bar limitations, however, because you can have up to ~40 skills equipped at once.
I am neutral about the whole thing, because we as MMO players should be use to it by now. The only difference now is that we are moving around a-lot more. Its hard not to see why we are since technology has improved both graphically and similiar for the AI or abilities of the creatures we fight.
Even looking back to the original Everquest you had, for the majority of the low level game with eight or less actions you could use; depending if you were a spell caster or, even less actions, as a fighter. As a caster, you were locked to the eight spell bar, but had a large array of spells to choose from their spell book. While the fighter abilities conflicted with each other via cool-downs; which made you think exactly what ability you needed to do depending on the fight. You could say the same for the caster who could meticulously choose the right combination of spells for the task at hand, but both the fighter/hybrid/caster classes were LIMITED (EQ 1 was released in 1999).
Mobs, also in EQ 1, did do AOE abilities and you could move out of the way to avoid certain damage being dealt; as some AOE came in waves or targeted a single person (at-least if you knew who was targeted you could avoid the damage).
If I was to guess what EQN combat will look like; I am going to assume it will be a mix of FFXIV ARR and GW 2 combat. If you are still negative about how many abilities we have, at-least know that we will have items with abilities that we can click too (just like old EQ 1). Also the fact that we can multi-class, it will be like having the caster spell book; I know I will take my time and choose the best combination (gotta catch em all).
It really all depends on whether or not SoE has found a way to make boss encounters interesting and complex within the action/twitch no trinity model.
This is where i think GW2 did a terrible job.
I am excited about EQ Next but not for any of the reasons you talked about. It seems like they are trying to make a world to experience and not just a game to play. These companies are too busy just making games.
The single most important part of combat is that it feels smooth. This is why games like WoW and GW2 and even D3 are so popular and games like SWTOR, WAR, Rift, PoE never will be. If your basic gameplay feels like you are walking through quicksand the game just isn't going to thrive. It will turn off too many players.
Not once has it bothered me that I don't have more skills in GW2, especially on my Engineer who uses something like 20 skills on a regular basis (filter through pistol skills, then to grenades, then to bombs all the while using the 4 special attacks as well). It does bother me that the world is so bland and the game constantly seems to be filtering me away from the world to do everything.
I'm with you on this. The boss fights in GW2 felt like they kept the boss with trinity mechanics but divided the characters into equal hit point bags to be melted off quickly.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I have to say that I agree with you on most points. I did wish my engineer could use more weapons at times, and EQN as it has been explained doesn't allow you to flip the bars in combat like GW2, so you won't get the effective 16 or so buttons.
I feel like they kind of threw combat under the bus because the big gimmick is the world. I am only going on the combat info that is out so far of course, but what I have learned thus far is more worrisome to me than not.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
EQ1 essentially had 8 spells up at once for casters, but not 4 abilities and 4 abilities tied to a weapon. I see people state this all the time, like they are equal. If they do not put spells on your weapon abilities, then casters will be very limited, as I forget the breakdown, but you would have like 2 offensive spells, 1 utility and 1 of some other class max, if your weapon does not add spell function.
We will see what they do, but as for the one person saying nothing has pointed to action, I disagree, they have hinted a lot that it is action based and tab may be not used or minimized, when talking about combat.
if the combat is fun then its fun i dont care how many buttons it has and i dont see it being anything to do with a MOBA..
Still the game is not out yet so I cant really tell you if i like it or not.
It's almost guaranteed they will. It would make little sense not to. Caster weapons will probably function like in GW2:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elementalist_skills#Weapon_skills
I also like to have a minimal UI. GW2 did a good job keeping it small and tidy. Too much GUI ruins immersion for me. I know you can turn off most aspects of a GUI in games but if the game isn't built around keeping the GUI simple then the GUI tends to creep up or bleed through.
I just hope they add some flavor spells like feather fall, Eye of zomm, illusions, and utility spells like knock. The problem with GW2 is that all the skills were pretty much combat orientated. In a RPG I expect useful non-combat abilities to solve problems. This sort of thing hasn't been done well in quite some time. EQ1 did it well, EQ2 to a lesser degree and DDO really does it well which is why of all the MMOs I've played I like going back to DDO every once in a while.
Playing games like GW2, neverwinter and TSW made me realise that i love gaems with several hotbars filled with skills and real time decisions in choosing those skills...
On top of that it made me realize how much i love the trinity..
I lost my interest in EQnext because of this...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
They also suggested you could combine skills into new skills. A game needs a lot of skill choices, it doesn't need a lot of active skills. Managing 20 skills at a time is more of a pain than it is fun. Make the combat engaging and you just don't need it. Games like Rift and WoW where movement isn't as important during the fights and you can just tab target everything need it a bit more because skill rotation becomes the only real skill to playing. Games where positioning matters a ton it doesn't matter as much.
Depending on the other aspects that add strategy to combat performance (gear/build mods for example) I think this style of combat, of what we know/assume, is needed as a breath of fresh air. Not that many abilities in a tab target system are bad but they seem more akin to turn based RTS games in comparison. When considering the root of MMORPGs, fantasy literature, even reading a book with combat in it is more engaging than standard tab target. This can easily be seen by watching a combat video of most MMOs over the past 10 years.
That said I wouldn't consider EQN a strictly "Action/Twitch" based MMO yet. It was described by McPherson as a mixture that fans of both side would enjoy. Avoiding a direct response? Yes, because they are still working on the combat system. They do understand that some people do like auto lock features though so I doubt it will be reticle based, unfortunately IMO.
Edit: Speaking on the issue of trinity, as long as there are defined roles for people to play I think having the "tank, healer, DPS" trinity is a non issue. In fact, having the root of the system based on a numerical hate system is a little one dimensional. Just 2cp.
My one reservation is the lack of cool flavor abilities and buffs. I actually like to have a bunch of long term buffs to manage and share. Anyone want to buy a SoW?
On items: im looking forward to learning more about the different abilities that items will give us. I have read that items will be an important part of an overall character build. Maybe this is a way to low fun abilities like levitate, SoW and invisibility without locking it to a class.