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September Podcast
Sornin
Member Posts: 1,133
http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/media/videos/pp_CombatSystem_hi.zip
Last month's podcast was a disappointment, but this one is pretty good. It gives an excellent outline of how one will obtain combat abilities and the systems behind that.
All in all, this has me drooling even more!
One thing I was unclear on after watching it had to do with the Tactics and Morale abilities. Josh mentions how we can never possibly gather all of them, which implies that every character will only have a subset of these abilities available to be loaded. Does he mean there is a hard cap, like, you can only ever have 50 of a possible 75, for example, or that there are so many and it gets to be so hard to earn more after the initial say, 40, that it is practically impossible to get them all, implying a soft cap?
The way he phrases it seems like the latter (soft cap), but I feel in practice it will be more like the former (hard cap). If it is only a soft cap I guarantee some hardcore players will get them all, even if it takes grinding 8 hours per day for a year. 
Comments
Thanks for the post. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a hard cap.
From the outside looking in, that combat system sounds satisfyingly complex. Can't wait to try it out.
When Josh mentioned that "you can't have enough points for all abilities" it may me think of WoW's talent trees, i.e more abilites than points available (and moving farther down certain tree requires a certain number of points in said tree)and these different abilities are divided up into improvments that focus on different areas of gameplay ( tanking, healing, etc.). I think a system simliar to this involving the way your Tactic and Morale abilites are distributed would be pretty acceptable, so long as you can unlearn them in case you find out that some abilites you chose are not to your liking.
I also hope that WAR is perhaps a little more forgiving for those who choose not to focus entirely on damage or healing, and divide their abilites into a nice blend of both. From what I have heard and read I believe WAR may be a little more hybrid friendly, especially since the healing system is pretty unconventional compared to other propular games.
It'll bee similar to WoW talent system but each ability require a certain amount of points to purchase and there are prerequisites to obtain stronger abilities.
This is going to be so SWEET
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http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
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And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Maybe it's just me but I find this system realy kinda wrong in a fantasy setting. In the world of magic and training skills and gaining experience it seems realy demmersive to not be able to use skills you have learned but only a fraction of them.
Don't get me wrong, I think the system could be great, but more so in a sci fi setting, where it can make sense in the game world, where you could realy improve your weapon with diferent upgrades but it makes sense than you can't have all improvments at once, or where you can cary only 3 types of weapons at a time, each modified to your playing style...
I don't know, it just feels so arbitrary to have such artificial limitations without them making sense in game. I'm always hapy to see such soutions where you can explain how the mechanics work with game mechanics rather than popup tutorial that tells you that at this level you can start puting skill points in your dps talent tree...
Man, if you came up to a chaos marauder and ask him howmuch points he has in his talent tree #3 and what does his moral doo, he would look you sideways and in that half of second he would decide should he decapitate you on the spot or cut your arms off to see how far you can run before you bleed to death...
I know this is nothing realy new and has been done before in a slightly diferent way, but maybe that's the problem.
You do make a very good point - the changing of one's build is an entirely artificial system and implementation. In game terms, it really cannot be easily explained, except in a very hackneyed fashion that resorts to "You can only remember so much at a time..." You are correct in that in a sci-fi setting (implants) it would make more sense.
However, though it is very...non-RP...I do like the sound of the system because it will allow for on-the-fly flexibility and variation. With what looks to be dozens of morale and tactics abilities, every character will be a bit different. I like that sort of variation and adaptability.
One thing I despise about WoW are how talent respecs are handled. You need to pay more and more to respec each time, but the problem is that PvE builds and PvP builds are very, very different, and certain classes suffer more than others.
A warrior who is protection for PvE sucks big in PvP, so he must pay a crazy fee to switch between the two specs if he wants to be useful all the time. A mage does not have it so rough, since they can easily pull off hybrid builds that are effective in either case.
In WAR, at least now there will be no cost, just a quick menu selection (sounds like it, anyway) any time out of combat, and bam, you load up a different build. No one gets screwed by having different/specific functions, and changing up is not a pain in the ass.
So yes, it is artificial, but I think in this case they went for function over immersion, and I agree with this if the system is as cool as I think it is.
But you could ask a Marauder what Tactics he prefers to use.
Morale is just refering to abilities that need morale and I think there is nothing wrong with assuming a character will choose from a variety of morale abilities available to their class/race. As a chaos Maurader you will be given opportunity to learn morale abilities that all melee dps can learn, or morale abilities that the chaos race have developed or learn just pure Marauder morale abilities. As a student of any type you have to choose from a wide variety of subjects. It doesn't seem unreasonable for a fantasy setting to implement something like this.
You can think of actions as the compulsory subjects, while tactics and morale are your elective subjects.
It is only tactics and moral abilities that you have to pre-load.
If tactics work as suggested they are strategic based skills and it seems very reasonable that you plan your strategy before you begin combat and reasonable that you cannot change that strategy until you are free of combat.
Possibly, the morale based abilities are considered to need preparation before you use them, which could explain in a role play sense why you have to choose them before battle as well. (note I am only guessing at a possibly reasoning and I might be totally wrong, I am just pointing out that it could make sense in game).
You can use all your action abilities during combat, so it is not as if you can't swap through those and action abilities are what really define you. The rest is about customisation, which I always think is a good thing.
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It seems like there are more different tactics than there are tactic points with which you buy them, so you can't buy them all. I do however wonder how tome of knowledge's tactics will figure into this. Ie. example they gave some time, was that if you kill 500 giants you get a tactic that would increase your damage against giants by 5%. So, is that an extra tactic on top of say, 40 tactics you get with tactic points as you level, or did you just lose 1 tactic point because you got a new tactic (one that you may not want)
On morale abilities, it seems that you can switch those in combat, so, what would stop someone from quickly oppening "abilities" page and moving a morale ability they want into a slot. Example: you are fighting someone, and you went with all utility/heal morale abilities, now you lost your group and are running alone, get engaged and realize if you use an offensive morale ability, you'll win, so you open abilities drag an offensive ability into w/e slot you want, click it and win.
Granted, in the time it took you to drag it you might lose any advantage it would've given you since you coudln't really play. But still, it seems to take some of the strategy one would use when setting up morale abilities away (granted, it's not likely to happen in 6v6 where fights are moving fast and you can't spend 5-10 seconds draging different morale abilities)
All in all it seemed pretty interesting ;0 I do hope mythic implements a way to respec one's tactics and morale abilities (if there are more morale abilities than you can aquire, like with tactics) Would be kind of strange if mythic, the original creaters of "respec" didn't have those though.
As for the podcast...I was drooling too. I think the system seems great. And the models look better then ever in this month's beta video.
~~Internet gaming is not for the faint of heart or the dumb of mind.~~
Perhaps I missed it, but I don't recall them ever saying that morale abilities are locked during combat like tactics. ie, you have to be out of combat to switch tactics, but it seems you would be able to switch morale abilities while in combat (or at least they don't specifially say that you can't do that like they say about tactics)
I'm not sure they specifically said which types can be changed out or not but I'm going to go ahead and assume that they mean all the abilities until further information comes available.
~~Internet gaming is not for the faint of heart or the dumb of mind.~~
I don't want to download and watch it again, but, if I understood correctly from the nice visual they used, when not in combat you will have the opportunity to switch skill load-outs and even have the ability to "save" certain favorite load-outs to insta-switch them all at once (kinda like a macro).
This sounds fair and also very strategic, so that you can adapt to changing combat situations (as long as you are not currently in combat).
Actually, this is some of the type of strategic abilities that I had hoped for in WAR. Adaptability, flexibility and improvising on the fly. To me, this changes the game from simple a "checkerboard" to the more complex "chessboard."
We'll have to see how this plays out, but I fondly remember DAoC RvR as being the most fun thing you could do ... with your pants still on.
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I dont know the answer to the question, but one thing I worried about in the pod cast is that ((especially in PvP based games) people really go MIN/Max on abilities. I was hoping to see some way to prevent that
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
How can you possible prevent people from min/maxing? Say you have 3 abilities, but can only choose 2. Well, how would you go about stoping people from min/maxing and choosing 2 abilities that are the best for w/e it is they wanted to get (be it better survivability, more damage or what not) You can't.
Now, it would be nice if there weren't any obviously useless abilities that were only put in because devs got bored (throwing daggers talent for rogues in wow =p ) And so that all abilities were useful, some more some less, but still useful. But you will always have min/maxing unless it's possible to have everything, but then people cry that their char is exactly the same as every other char
I completely agree with evil13.
Besides, min-maxing is typically a phenomenon that occurs when someone successfully uses some build, posts it, and then a bunch of people decide to use it as well because they think they will be as successful. In actuality, there are typically many builds that work just fine, but the snowball effect (usually due to forums) makes sure only one or two builds ever are publicly legitimized.
My point is, do not buy into the hype and go your own way if you want to. Min-maxing is only a problem if you let yourself worry about it, or the game is atrociously balanced (and let us pray the latter is not true). My personal preference is to use the hyped builds as reference points and then customize them to my liking, which often results in serious modifications.
I agree with you. I suppose what I was thinking of Min/Max was basically a spec that is so dominant that it becomes the norm. Generally this does have to do with someone going so far into one path and leaving the other options devoid of any specialization. However, this is generally against what the devs design the game around. When reviewing thier statements they generally state that any one character should have some points in the paths that are offered with one path with a larger percentage.
I suppose I should amend my above statement to say "I hate cookie cutter"
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)