Personally I'm taking a wait and see attitude. I'm certainly willing to give it a go, the game has so many features that look like they will be great and if as Avery says it plays as smooth as a babies bottom thats a big plus Just so long as there are any big black holes dropping you to the desktop or through the world.
Avery combos are ok but what about combat skills like many other games have. Do melee characters have any of these abilities? Things like stuns, snares, bleeds, knockbacks, debufs, taunts, bufs, etc? Or are these all tied to combos and if they are tied to combos how the heck long do fights typically last? I mean if it takes 3-4 attacks to do one ability and the attacks aren't too fast that is easily 10 seconds or more before you can get off your first ability. Does a typical fight last say 30 second for a regular mob??
I mean pressing buttons to attack even with the shield thing is really very mechanical. The playing out of combos could become quite tedious esp if the combos tend to be pretty long. I mean I want to do a stun so I gotta do 1,3,2 and the rose buttons light up to guide me through it? Thats almost like the combat wheel in EQ2 except longer.
One big question will be the balancing of combo abilities. This will be a bit of a challenge in that if the shields reduce damage to play out a combo then the combo effect better be quite significant else the loss of damage playing against the shields to make the combo might not be worth while.
Everything I've read really leads me to believe that to play this game effectively you will really want to use a gamepad. This will give you a lot better control over the game UI with buttons and joysticks easily accessable. Where trying to move with the mouse and the wasd keys while pressing 1,2,3 sounds like it will be quite a challenge unless you can fight while basically stationary which doesn't seem to be the case.
The thing about games with autoattack is that the autoattack doesn't really matter. It's the routine damage. The combat is about using your skills to maximize your damage, protect players, debuf mobs, or other effects. Like in eq2, or wow you lead with some debufs, then do your damage abilities or maybe do something that bufs you or generates hate to keep agro. There are a wide assortment of abilities and skills you have to plan to use to best effect. Wow is better then eq2 in my opinion in that there are various build ups or other features that allow you to leverage finishing moves. The best combat system in my opinion to date is Vanguard where not only do you have abilities, finisher chains, buildups, but also you have reactive and defensive abilities and vulnerabilities.
So really I'm interested in how these more strategic elements are reflected in the combat system in AoC?
Personally I'm taking a wait and see attitude. I'm certainly willing to give it a go, the game has so many features that look like they will be great and if as Avery says it plays as smooth as a babies bottom thats a big plus Just so long as there are any big black holes dropping you to the desktop or through the world. Avery combos are ok but what about combat skills like many other games have. Do melee characters have any of these abilities? Things like stuns, snares, bleeds, knockbacks, debufs, taunts, bufs, etc? Or are these all tied to combos and if they are tied to combos how the heck long do fights typically last? I mean if it takes 3-4 attacks to do one ability and the attacks aren't too fast that is easily 10 seconds or more before you can get off your first ability. Does a typical fight last say 30 second for a regular mob?? I mean pressing buttons to attack even with the shield thing is really very mechanical. The playing out of combos could become quite tedious esp if the combos tend to be pretty long. I mean I want to do a stun so I gotta do 1,3,2 and the rose buttons light up to guide me through it? Thats almost like the combat wheel in EQ2 except longer. One big question will be the balancing of combo abilities. This will be a bit of a challenge in that if the shields reduce damage to play out a combo then the combo effect better be quite significant else the loss of damage playing against the shields to make the combo might not be worth while. Everything I've read really leads me to believe that to play this game effectively you will really want to use a gamepad. This will give you a lot better control over the game UI with buttons and joysticks easily accessable. Where trying to move with the mouse and the wasd keys while pressing 1,2,3 sounds like it will be quite a challenge unless you can fight while basically stationary which doesn't seem to be the case. The thing about games with autoattack is that the autoattack doesn't really matter. It's the routine damage. The combat is about using your skills to maximize your damage, protect players, debuf mobs, or other effects. Like in eq2, or wow you lead with some debufs, then do your damage abilities or maybe do something that bufs you or generates hate to keep agro. There are a wide assortment of abilities and skills you have to plan to use to best effect. Wow is better then eq2 in my opinion in that there are various build ups or other features that allow you to leverage finishing moves. The best combat system in my opinion to date is Vanguard where not only do you have abilities, finisher chains, buildups, but also you have reactive and defensive abilities and vulnerabilities. So really I'm interested in how these more strategic elements are reflected in the combat system in AoC?
As I've mentioned earlier, as well as others have, there are combat abilities aside from the combos. Here are some of the Rangers:
“Piercing Shots”, which allows the Ranger and their group to penetrate or even eliminate directional shields on their target of choice.
“Linebreaker”, which is a powerful shot capable of knocking down all foes in a column between the Ranger and his target
“Volley”, which allows all of the Ranger’s shots to affect additional targets
“Heartseeker”, which will instantly kill an opposing minion in addition to increasing the likelihood of one’s team performing fatalities for a period of time.
Should you care to see some of the others for the classes that have had previews thus far you may visit the TTH AoC site and look in the interviews section.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Finding it increasingly difficult to understand how people find auto attack interesting......
I dont' think anyone finds auto attack interesting but it is kinda like the bread and butter attack and leaves the player free to focus on other things like using special abilities and strategic application of these abilities with a bit of time that enables coordinating with other group members.
Some of us are not sure that manual attack is a step forward. Should I really need to sit there and hit a button for each attack. I'll grant you the addition of a shield icon and combos has made it a bit less then mindless but not really much... You will most likely always start on the weak shield side and then religiously follow combos as the lights light up. This assumes the combos are powerful enough to be something you always want. If not then it might be just better to hit the weak shield side constantly... Anyone play wack-a-mole :P
I believe this will make combat more intuitive. To be honest I am not exactly sure how everything will pan out much like a lot of the people here. The combo's might become repetitive, the lack of auto attack might drive away some players but I see this as innovation in a sense that they are at least trying different things. Lets for instance go forward into the near future where AoC is released and hundreds of thousands of players pick it up and start playing and find that the combat is fine, they get used to it and life goes on as it did before the advent of AoC. New thing has been tried, and perhaps the genre has been moved a step in the right direction. Lets on the other hand assume that AoC tanks because of the choices they made and becomes a niche game for a minority, well so be it. They will have a game they like playing and now FunCom's mistakes can be used as a base to be improved upon to take a less then successful idea and expand it, change it, mold it into something successful.
Imagine the first guy that said hey I'm gonna make an rpg, that will be played on a massive scale with hundreds of thousands of people at the same time. The people at that time probably laughed at him and said it couldn't be done for various reasons or how it might kill the small group aspect where friends gathered at lan parties and played Baldur's Gate together on 4 or 5 computers.
If nobody tired new things the genre would become (or is becoming) stagnant and diluted to the point where there really is no reason to pick up the next BIG game to come out because it more or less resembles exactly what you were playing a week ago. Just give it a chance, if you don't like it, so what. There are other games do out in or around the same time as AoC. You waited this long, another week or 2 won't kill you
Just my 2 cents
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
I'm sure I've read somewhere that all classes can auto attack. It's just the combos which need physical input. Correct me if I'm wrong.
No this is the issue. There is no auto attack. You hit your attack button for each individual sword swing and you have several swings, initially from the left, right or above. Then like in other games where you have skills in aoc you have combos. So you might have a special attack called the hammer, which requires maybe a blunt weapon and you do a left, right, and overhead sequence to execute the hammer attack.
After doing a bit more research I'm seeing there are also feats, and auras for melee types. Feats appear to be instant attacks or other abilities that are presumably like other games where you just hit them at the appropriate time to use the ability. Auras are like other games also presumably just a toggle that has some area effect on the player or group.
So the real debate is if the process of manually playing out attacks using the 1,2,3 keys which also is used to attack the unshielded side of the enemy based on shield icons around the targeted mob, is preferable to having an autoattack with skill based special attacks that are applied during combat.
Compared to other games it really isn't that hugely different since you still hit buttons to do attacks it just means you have no steady background stream of damage going. Take a game like wow and just add 3 new attacks, left, right, overhead and get rid of autoattack and you got nearly the same thing. The downside however is that the focus on the left, right, and overhead attacks will make it hard to focus on the other special attacks and abilities you might have in your wow character. this is mittigated some because they have been made into combos so rather then hitting a button for your bleed attack you might need to hit left, right, right. So you are combining your special attack with your manually regular attacks.
It all sounds rather tedious to me and like it removes a lot of the strategy in combat. I'm also concerned about the balancing of combos vs attacking unshielded sides, it looks like one might significantly devalue the other.
It might have been better to have an autoattack that you select the style of, left, right, above and switch up in battle. Then make all the combos and other abilities into hotbar abilties you click. This might have made the combat even more strategic then many other games, instead of burdening the player with needing to manually do all the attacking which will detract/compete/defocus your attention from using other special attack abilities as you will be focused on combos and watching the combat rose to make sure you fire off the correct sequence.
I believe this will make combat more intuitive. To be honest I am not exactly sure how everything will pan out much like a lot of the people here. The combo's might become repetitive, the lack of auto attack might drive away some players but I see this as innovation in a sense that they are at least trying different things. Lets for instance go forward into the near future where AoC is released and hundreds of thousands of players pick it up and start playing and find that the combat is fine, they get used to it and life goes on as it did before the advent of AoC. New thing has been tried, and perhaps the genre has been moved a step in the right direction. Lets on the other hand assume that AoC tanks because of the choices they made and becomes a niche game for a minority, well so be it. They will have a game they like playing and now FunCom's mistakes can be used as a base to be improved upon to take a less then successful idea and expand it, change it, mold it into something successful. Imagine the first guy that said hey I'm gonna make an rpg, that will be played on a massive scale with hundreds of thousands of people at the same time. The people at that time probably laughed at him and said it couldn't be done for various reasons or how it might kill the small group aspect where friends gathered at lan parties and played Baldur's Gate together on 4 or 5 computers. If nobody tired new things the genre would become (or is becoming) stagnant and diluted to the point where there really is no reason to pick up the next BIG game to come out because it more or less resembles exactly what you were playing a week ago. Just give it a chance, if you don't like it, so what. There are other games do out in or around the same time as AoC. You waited this long, another week or 2 won't kill you Just my 2 cents
I'm definitely gonna give it a chance. I'm sceptical but I think everyone should stay with a wait and see attitude. This WILL make or break the game so yeah trying something new can be good I just hope it works cause in most ways AoC looks to be an excellent game that I'm really looking forward to playing. I'm just afraid of this new "inovation". But with anything new there will be fear uncertanty and doubt and thats I guess what I'm expressing and trying to get other people who might have more experience playing the game to comment on.
This isn't to just look at it and play it and go it's new and different and makes things fun. This is looking at it from the perspective of 1000 hours played in the game will it still be fun or will it just be a rote bother...
From what you know, would you say there is still some level of strategy using the skills? Lets say you see a caster about to cast something and you are in the middle of a combo, would you hit the skill to cancel the cast or would you finish the combo to get the most damage? For casters, is spell weaving still in game?
From what I read it kind of sounds like you use a skill than follow up with directional attacks, is this correct? Also, is spell weaving still in the game?
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by Playa10
Avery, From what you know, would you say there is still some level of strategy using the skills? Lets say you see a caster about to cast something and you are in the middle of a combo, would you hit the skill to cancel the cast or would you finish the combo to get the most damage? For casters, is spell weaving still in game? From what I read it kind of sounds like you use a skill than follow up with directional attacks, is this correct? Also, is spell weaving still in the game?
Of course there is strategy, from my experience from the trip to Oslo, I played an Assassin. When you hit the hotbar for a combo and the indicator on the combat rose lights up to tell you which button to press (or you can just go ahead from memory) you can also immediately pick another combo to cancel out the other one. (A combination is just that, a sequence of moves from 1 animation to a few) I had to do this a few times, changing strategy because the dynamic shields had shifted on the foe. You will always do more damage with a combination that a regular directional attack.
Spell Weaving is still in, but I didn't try it out.
So you can be pressing 1,2,3 for directional attack (and Q and E if your further in the game) then you can just press or click on the hotbar number 4, number 4 could be a combo that could lead from the left or the right or an overhead attack, it might only be a 1 press combo (just like a regular skill) and it will perform the combo with the added damage and the benefit of pulling it off - maybe a knock back say - or a faster speed attack. Then you can either do another combo (if you have them learnt) or just carry on as normal with regular Q,1,2,3,E - you can chain combos together to keep your attacks consistant with the most damage dealt. However, they all have cooldowns though, just affecting that type of combo and not a general cooldown for all of that time length (that I saw).
Works the same with casters and rangers too, your direction for best damage depends on your foes dynamic shields, where they are placed and strategy comes in on placing your shots well and timing too.
You can mash your standard directional attacks q,1,2,3,e if you want but its not going to do the best damage, thats where your combos come in, weighing up the direction you face too.
i'll probably do a bit more of an indepth post or topic at the weekend. One thing it was when I tried it, it was Fun, it was different and personally it felt refreshing and familar at the same time.
Combat systems like this one require either a 3rd hand or a gamepad. How the heck am I supposed to click specials, the rose thingie for direction of my attacks, AND keep moving into position of the enemy ?
This leads me to believe there are no snares, bleeds, stopping shots, knockdown, etc type specials or if they exist they dont matter much. It has been my experience in these recent quasi FPS type games that specials are window dressing and dont matter much...see Tabula Rasa, Star Wars Galaxies, Auto Assault, and others.
The more I read and think about this combat system, the more I dislike it. FPS genre doesnt belong in MMO's. It makes armor and weapon stats obsolete. It wont matter if my weapon is a legendary sword that I busted my rear to get if I cant keep a mob in range bleh. Reflexes, a steady hand, etc will win out over better gear and thats just silly. It defeats the whole point of an MMO. Might as well go the Halo route and make all gear the same and rely on the player's reflexes.
Perhaps the combat system is designed to work best on a console. And considering the type of gamer that plays on consoles, this fps might appeal to them. But not me honestly. I play MMO's to see my avatar get powerful from my time and effort. If I want to lose to someone who has better hand-eye cooridination Ill play Halo
No no no no NO! Why do you want another run-of-the-mill raid MMO? Do MMO's have to have a defined standard? Frankly, the only reason i'm following AoC is because it's an MMO thats finally running off of the standard, something called innovation.
I like how you say that sitting in a raid racking up DKP is working your ass off to get the legendaries. I think armor and weapons should play a pretty good role for those who have 20+ hours a week to devote to this game, but why can't we have an MMO that rewards skill past the simplicity of using the right common sense spell/ability patterns? Someone skilled SHOULD be able to beat some no-brainer who got lucky enough to get in the right guild in a player vs player combat. Thats the entire point of combat, to see who is better. A gear-fest is truthfully not anyones idea of fun. There's an entire other aspect to the game (PvE) designed for those who just want a relaxing time farming gear, no reason to make the same grind in PvP. Someone with legendary gear should have a noticable upper-hand in any PvP situation, but it SHOULD take both skill and gear for that person to trully dominate.
If you want another bland boring MMO that you can just right click on a mob and watch TV(I don't know about you, but this fun drained out after my 2nd MMO maxing a char), then why not play one of the DOZENS of MMO that follow this risk-free mold? Play WoW, EQ1, EQ2, Vanguard, WAR, CoH, DAoC, GW, or any of the other countless choices. You act as if this game is some atrocity for adding in a complex rewarding twitch system. I hate to break it to you, but the market for this type of game is MUCH larger than you think, it's why the hype for this game has surpassed even WAR.
The reasons why those "quasi-MMO's" not doing so hot aren't because no one likes them... it's because no one has made a decent one yet, and the only ones that are out their are either buggy, unbalanced to bejesus(planetside, which really doesn't even count), or just downright subpar in every conceivable area(as if the MMO was a gimmick to release the combat system).
Theres no real reason to bash this game for what it is without even playing it, especially sense the game you are obviously looking for is found under many different names everywhere.
Comments
Personally I'm taking a wait and see attitude. I'm certainly willing to give it a go, the game has so many features that look like they will be great and if as Avery says it plays as smooth as a babies bottom thats a big plus
Just so long as there are any big black holes dropping you to the desktop or through the world.
Avery combos are ok but what about combat skills like many other games have. Do melee characters have any of these abilities? Things like stuns, snares, bleeds, knockbacks, debufs, taunts, bufs, etc? Or are these all tied to combos and if they are tied to combos how the heck long do fights typically last? I mean if it takes 3-4 attacks to do one ability and the attacks aren't too fast that is easily 10 seconds or more before you can get off your first ability. Does a typical fight last say 30 second for a regular mob??
I mean pressing buttons to attack even with the shield thing is really very mechanical. The playing out of combos could become quite tedious esp if the combos tend to be pretty long. I mean I want to do a stun so I gotta do 1,3,2 and the rose buttons light up to guide me through it? Thats almost like the combat wheel in EQ2 except longer.
One big question will be the balancing of combo abilities. This will be a bit of a challenge in that if the shields reduce damage to play out a combo then the combo effect better be quite significant else the loss of damage playing against the shields to make the combo might not be worth while.
Everything I've read really leads me to believe that to play this game effectively you will really want to use a gamepad. This will give you a lot better control over the game UI with buttons and joysticks easily accessable. Where trying to move with the mouse and the wasd keys while pressing 1,2,3 sounds like it will be quite a challenge unless you can fight while basically stationary which doesn't seem to be the case.
The thing about games with autoattack is that the autoattack doesn't really matter. It's the routine damage. The combat is about using your skills to maximize your damage, protect players, debuf mobs, or other effects. Like in eq2, or wow you lead with some debufs, then do your damage abilities or maybe do something that bufs you or generates hate to keep agro. There are a wide assortment of abilities and skills you have to plan to use to best effect. Wow is better then eq2 in my opinion in that there are various build ups or other features that allow you to leverage finishing moves. The best combat system in my opinion to date is Vanguard where not only do you have abilities, finisher chains, buildups, but also you have reactive and defensive abilities and vulnerabilities.
So really I'm interested in how these more strategic elements are reflected in the combat system in AoC?
---
Ethion
Should you care to see some of the others for the classes that have had previews thus far you may visit the TTH AoC site and look in the interviews section.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I believe that AoC combat will be awesome, and it does look awesome from vids iv seen so far, nothing like we seen in other mmos.
I'm sure I've read somewhere that all classes can auto attack. It's just the combos which need physical input.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
To wank, or not to wank. The ultimate MMO sacrifice.
Finding it increasingly difficult to understand how people find auto attack interesting......
I dont' think anyone finds auto attack interesting but it is kinda like the bread and butter attack and leaves the player free to focus on other things like using special abilities and strategic application of these abilities with a bit of time that enables coordinating with other group members.
Some of us are not sure that manual attack is a step forward. Should I really need to sit there and hit a button for each attack. I'll grant you the addition of a shield icon and combos has made it a bit less then mindless but not really much... You will most likely always start on the weak shield side and then religiously follow combos as the lights light up. This assumes the combos are powerful enough to be something you always want. If not then it might be just better to hit the weak shield side constantly... Anyone play wack-a-mole :P
---
Ethion
I believe this will make combat more intuitive. To be honest I am not exactly sure how everything will pan out much like a lot of the people here. The combo's might become repetitive, the lack of auto attack might drive away some players but I see this as innovation in a sense that they are at least trying different things. Lets for instance go forward into the near future where AoC is released and hundreds of thousands of players pick it up and start playing and find that the combat is fine, they get used to it and life goes on as it did before the advent of AoC. New thing has been tried, and perhaps the genre has been moved a step in the right direction. Lets on the other hand assume that AoC tanks because of the choices they made and becomes a niche game for a minority, well so be it. They will have a game they like playing and now FunCom's mistakes can be used as a base to be improved upon to take a less then successful idea and expand it, change it, mold it into something successful.
Imagine the first guy that said hey I'm gonna make an rpg, that will be played on a massive scale with hundreds of thousands of people at the same time. The people at that time probably laughed at him and said it couldn't be done for various reasons or how it might kill the small group aspect where friends gathered at lan parties and played Baldur's Gate together on 4 or 5 computers.
If nobody tired new things the genre would become (or is becoming) stagnant and diluted to the point where there really is no reason to pick up the next BIG game to come out because it more or less resembles exactly what you were playing a week ago. Just give it a chance, if you don't like it, so what. There are other games do out in or around the same time as AoC. You waited this long, another week or 2 won't kill you
Just my 2 cents
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
No this is the issue. There is no auto attack. You hit your attack button for each individual sword swing and you have several swings, initially from the left, right or above. Then like in other games where you have skills in aoc you have combos. So you might have a special attack called the hammer, which requires maybe a blunt weapon and you do a left, right, and overhead sequence to execute the hammer attack.
After doing a bit more research I'm seeing there are also feats, and auras for melee types. Feats appear to be instant attacks or other abilities that are presumably like other games where you just hit them at the appropriate time to use the ability. Auras are like other games also presumably just a toggle that has some area effect on the player or group.
So the real debate is if the process of manually playing out attacks using the 1,2,3 keys which also is used to attack the unshielded side of the enemy based on shield icons around the targeted mob, is preferable to having an autoattack with skill based special attacks that are applied during combat.
Compared to other games it really isn't that hugely different since you still hit buttons to do attacks it just means you have no steady background stream of damage going. Take a game like wow and just add 3 new attacks, left, right, overhead and get rid of autoattack and you got nearly the same thing. The downside however is that the focus on the left, right, and overhead attacks will make it hard to focus on the other special attacks and abilities you might have in your wow character. this is mittigated some because they have been made into combos so rather then hitting a button for your bleed attack you might need to hit left, right, right. So you are combining your special attack with your manually regular attacks.
It all sounds rather tedious to me and like it removes a lot of the strategy in combat. I'm also concerned about the balancing of combos vs attacking unshielded sides, it looks like one might significantly devalue the other.
It might have been better to have an autoattack that you select the style of, left, right, above and switch up in battle. Then make all the combos and other abilities into hotbar abilties you click. This might have made the combat even more strategic then many other games, instead of burdening the player with needing to manually do all the attacking which will detract/compete/defocus your attention from using other special attack abilities as you will be focused on combos and watching the combat rose to make sure you fire off the correct sequence.
---
Ethion
I'm definitely gonna give it a chance. I'm sceptical but I think everyone should stay with a wait and see attitude. This WILL make or break the game so yeah trying something new can be good I just hope it works cause in most ways AoC looks to be an excellent game that I'm really looking forward to playing. I'm just afraid of this new "inovation". But with anything new there will be fear uncertanty and doubt and thats I guess what I'm expressing and trying to get other people who might have more experience playing the game to comment on.
This isn't to just look at it and play it and go it's new and different and makes things fun. This is looking at it from the perspective of 1000 hours played in the game will it still be fun or will it just be a rote bother...
---
Ethion
Avery,
From what you know, would you say there is still some level of strategy using the skills? Lets say you see a caster about to cast something and you are in the middle of a combo, would you hit the skill to cancel the cast or would you finish the combo to get the most damage? For casters, is spell weaving still in game?
From what I read it kind of sounds like you use a skill than follow up with directional attacks, is this correct? Also, is spell weaving still in the game?
Spell Weaving is still in, but I didn't try it out.
So you can be pressing 1,2,3 for directional attack (and Q and E if your further in the game) then you can just press or click on the hotbar number 4, number 4 could be a combo that could lead from the left or the right or an overhead attack, it might only be a 1 press combo (just like a regular skill) and it will perform the combo with the added damage and the benefit of pulling it off - maybe a knock back say - or a faster speed attack. Then you can either do another combo (if you have them learnt) or just carry on as normal with regular Q,1,2,3,E - you can chain combos together to keep your attacks consistant with the most damage dealt. However, they all have cooldowns though, just affecting that type of combo and not a general cooldown for all of that time length (that I saw).
Works the same with casters and rangers too, your direction for best damage depends on your foes dynamic shields, where they are placed and strategy comes in on placing your shots well and timing too.
You can mash your standard directional attacks q,1,2,3,e if you want but its not going to do the best damage, thats where your combos come in, weighing up the direction you face too.
i'll probably do a bit more of an indepth post or topic at the weekend. One thing it was when I tried it, it was Fun, it was different and personally it felt refreshing and familar at the same time.
Thanks Avery, that definelty cleared some things up I wasnt to sure on.
This is my concern as well.
Combat systems like this one require either a 3rd hand or a gamepad. How the heck am I supposed to click specials, the rose thingie for direction of my attacks, AND keep moving into position of the enemy ?
This leads me to believe there are no snares, bleeds, stopping shots, knockdown, etc type specials or if they exist they dont matter much. It has been my experience in these recent quasi FPS type games that specials are window dressing and dont matter much...see Tabula Rasa, Star Wars Galaxies, Auto Assault, and others.
The more I read and think about this combat system, the more I dislike it. FPS genre doesnt belong in MMO's. It makes armor and weapon stats obsolete. It wont matter if my weapon is a legendary sword that I busted my rear to get if I cant keep a mob in range bleh. Reflexes, a steady hand, etc will win out over better gear and thats just silly. It defeats the whole point of an MMO. Might as well go the Halo route and make all gear the same and rely on the player's reflexes.
Perhaps the combat system is designed to work best on a console. And considering the type of gamer that plays on consoles, this fps might appeal to them. But not me honestly. I play MMO's to see my avatar get powerful from my time and effort. If I want to lose to someone who has better hand-eye cooridination Ill play Halo
No no no no NO! Why do you want another run-of-the-mill raid MMO? Do MMO's have to have a defined standard? Frankly, the only reason i'm following AoC is because it's an MMO thats finally running off of the standard, something called innovation.
I like how you say that sitting in a raid racking up DKP is working your ass off to get the legendaries. I think armor and weapons should play a pretty good role for those who have 20+ hours a week to devote to this game, but why can't we have an MMO that rewards skill past the simplicity of using the right common sense spell/ability patterns? Someone skilled SHOULD be able to beat some no-brainer who got lucky enough to get in the right guild in a player vs player combat. Thats the entire point of combat, to see who is better. A gear-fest is truthfully not anyones idea of fun. There's an entire other aspect to the game (PvE) designed for those who just want a relaxing time farming gear, no reason to make the same grind in PvP. Someone with legendary gear should have a noticable upper-hand in any PvP situation, but it SHOULD take both skill and gear for that person to trully dominate.
If you want another bland boring MMO that you can just right click on a mob and watch TV(I don't know about you, but this fun drained out after my 2nd MMO maxing a char), then why not play one of the DOZENS of MMO that follow this risk-free mold? Play WoW, EQ1, EQ2, Vanguard, WAR, CoH, DAoC, GW, or any of the other countless choices. You act as if this game is some atrocity for adding in a complex rewarding twitch system. I hate to break it to you, but the market for this type of game is MUCH larger than you think, it's why the hype for this game has surpassed even WAR.
The reasons why those "quasi-MMO's" not doing so hot aren't because no one likes them... it's because no one has made a decent one yet, and the only ones that are out their are either buggy, unbalanced to bejesus(planetside, which really doesn't even count), or just downright subpar in every conceivable area(as if the MMO was a gimmick to release the combat system).
Theres no real reason to bash this game for what it is without even playing it, especially sense the game you are obviously looking for is found under many different names everywhere.