Thanks for that explanation. So the game's combat does at least rise to the level of "you have to pay attention", which is more than can be said for some games. It sounds to me like it's not very good (and the track record of trinity combat demonstrates that it's very, very hard to make it good), but could easily have been much, much worse.
Imo, when I played, I did not find the AI to be strong at all -- thus I did not need to 'pay attention' so to speak to defeat the mobs.
If felt like playing the other BW games on base or even eazy-mode, rather than difficult mode.
I have seen some people report that the AI 'patterns' become rather predictable as you play --- like a QB that always passes his first 2 downs and then runs the ball on 3rd down.
It is one area I would like to see BW improve -- increase the AI difficult, at least until they can put in a more intellegent aI system. Imo, while EQ AI was basic, the trains, open dungeon, roamers, and aggro list systems made up for the AI weakness.
I'll try and compare it to a game you've likely played.
It's exactly like WoW except less responsive and the classes tend to be a bit more homogenized when it comes to skills. That is the best way I can describe it. Are there a good amount of skills you can use? Sure. Very similar in number and useability to a typical WoW class.
So if you've played that game, you pretty much know what combat is going to be like. I played Sage and Operator to 50 by the way. Sage felt somewhat disc-priesty and operator felt somewhat rogue-y.
Seriously though, it is. Its very cut and dry. A lot of what I have experienced personally (Since I can't claim to of done all the classes) is all about using stuff off CD, the few different energy systems being the only real 'change up' for this. Its very very basic MMO style... to the point you can call it generic beyond any MMO you played. Its really weird to explain but it just feels like it was ripped off from some non descript game that started to basics of all MMOs in both classes and combat.
When looking for good combat, I was hoping for something more substantial than "the animations look cool". Though I suppose that fits in with what seems to be the theme of the game: "the cut scenes look cool".
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"As for making you use your skills, it does it in a variety of ways. One is cooldown times like most games use. Another is situational abilities, but the situations tend to come up a lot. Such as powers that only work if the target is held or stunned. It can happen a lot, so the powers are still very useful. There is also a necessity to use different powers based on the abilities of your enemies. And then there is the fact that some abilities affect others, making them more useful than normal. I have to agree with the person you were talking about in your OP though, just trying to use the same 5 or 6 powers against an equal level elite or especially a champion will most likely end with you getting creamed. "
Thanks for that explanation. So the game's combat does at least rise to the level of "you have to pay attention", which is more than can be said for some games. It sounds to me like it's not very good (and the track record of trinity combat demonstrates that it's very, very hard to make it good), but could easily have been much, much worse.
RED=Maybe you should play the game. It is probably the best way to determine of the game has combat that you would like.
Green=WTH????? I am pretty sure there is no evidence of that. You may noe like it, and since you typed we can assume it is your opinion; however, that statement jumps into the realm of confusing opinion with fact. You know the game is based on tab targeting and the "holy trinity" so if you don't like those types of things, why even make the post. It screams of someone who has an agenda. Someone who does not like playstyle Y and wants to let everyone know why Y is inferior.
I personally think your entire premise is flawed. The idea that any game is a complete gear/level check is foolish. Inherently, the player chooses what they engage. Even in the most gear/level dependent games the player still as the ability to fight enemies they should not be able to beat and have to work very hard to achieve their goal. I know I have taken on enemies that have been out side of my range and still beat them by squeezing every last bit of the character and it has been very difficult. I am not sure how this is the developers fault. If people want challenge in games they can find it. It is often easier and faster to avoid difficult combat so people avoid it. That does not mean the game is devoid of challenge. It just means people make choices.
I have never played a game where I could not find difficult combat when I wanted it. Some games make it easier to find, but a player can always find a battle that is very hard if they choose. The choice is in the players.
How many games launch in a typical year? Dozens? Hundreds? Depending on how far into the weeds you want to look for indie games, maybe thousands? I don't have time to spend a couple of weeks on every single game that comes along to determine that it's definitely not good. Even if I did, there would still be people six months later saying that I should try it again because it's a lot better now.
As I said earlier in the post, there have been games with tab targeting combat that I liked, such as Guild Wars and Champions Online. While I haven't seen any games with trinity combat that I liked, it doesn't automatically follow that such games cannot exist, but only that it's hard to make trinity combat that is good. I thought companions might well be a step in that direction, so that, as in Guild Wars, rather than spamming endlessly because there aren't enough healers to go around, you just add a companion and go.
The reason for this thread is what I said it was in the original post. When the game first launched, I wrote it off as just another mostly combat game with bad combat. But then someone in another game I played insisted that the combat is actually pretty good, so I thought I'd have another look. The agenda that I came in with was to find out whether the game was good and I should take a shot at it.
While games generally aren't purely a level/gear check, some have a much greater dependence on the skill of the player than others. In WoW, a very good player won't perform as well as a somewhat decent player who is a mere two levels higher, even with identical gear. In Spiral Knights, in contrast, a somewhat decent player in five star gear with the best possible UVs won't perform nearly as well as a very good player in four star gear with no UVs at all.
I'm not looking purely for something difficult, but rather, something interesting. Completely trivial usually isn't interesting, but difficult isn't automatically interesting, either. For example, in Spiral Knights, both Vanaduke and Sinful Steps are hard levels, but for entirely different reasons. Vanaduke has a heavy dependence on monitor resolution, and is a horribly buggy fight, with at least three independent bugs that can make the fight uncompletable, not to mention a variety of other bugs and bad game design decisions. Sinful Steps, on the other hand, has a very heavy dependence on player skill, and carefully picking mobs apart, blocking, timing your attacks, and so forth, in order to break up groups of quite a few devilites and kats. While they're both hard, Sinful Steps is interesting and Vanaduke is not.
Depends how you feel about tab-target combat. It's your standard WoW combat with no auto-attack, but more complex combat animations. If you are are tired of tab-target combat, you won't enjoy it. If you are fine with that type of combat, it's the best tab-target combat I"ve seen.
Combat is actually one of the game's main strengths. It's as good as you can get for the type of tab-target combat that it is.
Cthul description is right on the money, also you get skills such as shooting lightlning from your fingers if you are a sith- so you do get some cool powers as you might expect playing a star wars game
with that I mean that as oposed to the old way (press 1,2,3 always in that order) you now have a priority list that is also influenced by various procs, buffs and debuffs
Combat in SWTOR is typical tab target, just like WoW. The mechanics are pretty much the same. Problem here is really crowd control. Because tab target mmorpg's are not twitch at all, developers have decided use crowd control mechanics to make instances more difficult. Otherwise it would just be tank n spank everything. The developers of Star Wars added way too much crowd control which makes the combat kinda silly, especially for pvp.
Comments
Imo, when I played, I did not find the AI to be strong at all -- thus I did not need to 'pay attention' so to speak to defeat the mobs.
If felt like playing the other BW games on base or even eazy-mode, rather than difficult mode.
I have seen some people report that the AI 'patterns' become rather predictable as you play --- like a QB that always passes his first 2 downs and then runs the ball on 3rd down.
It is one area I would like to see BW improve -- increase the AI difficult, at least until they can put in a more intellegent aI system. Imo, while EQ AI was basic, the trains, open dungeon, roamers, and aggro list systems made up for the AI weakness.
It's bad.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
The combat in SWTOR is just as good as any current MMO.
I'll try and compare it to a game you've likely played.
It's exactly like WoW except less responsive and the classes tend to be a bit more homogenized when it comes to skills. That is the best way I can describe it. Are there a good amount of skills you can use? Sure. Very similar in number and useability to a typical WoW class.
So if you've played that game, you pretty much know what combat is going to be like. I played Sage and Operator to 50 by the way. Sage felt somewhat disc-priesty and operator felt somewhat rogue-y.
Combat is so generic you can't go wrong...
Seriously though, it is. Its very cut and dry. A lot of what I have experienced personally (Since I can't claim to of done all the classes) is all about using stuff off CD, the few different energy systems being the only real 'change up' for this. Its very very basic MMO style... to the point you can call it generic beyond any MMO you played. Its really weird to explain but it just feels like it was ripped off from some non descript game that started to basics of all MMOs in both classes and combat.
How many games launch in a typical year? Dozens? Hundreds? Depending on how far into the weeds you want to look for indie games, maybe thousands? I don't have time to spend a couple of weeks on every single game that comes along to determine that it's definitely not good. Even if I did, there would still be people six months later saying that I should try it again because it's a lot better now.
As I said earlier in the post, there have been games with tab targeting combat that I liked, such as Guild Wars and Champions Online. While I haven't seen any games with trinity combat that I liked, it doesn't automatically follow that such games cannot exist, but only that it's hard to make trinity combat that is good. I thought companions might well be a step in that direction, so that, as in Guild Wars, rather than spamming endlessly because there aren't enough healers to go around, you just add a companion and go.
The reason for this thread is what I said it was in the original post. When the game first launched, I wrote it off as just another mostly combat game with bad combat. But then someone in another game I played insisted that the combat is actually pretty good, so I thought I'd have another look. The agenda that I came in with was to find out whether the game was good and I should take a shot at it.
While games generally aren't purely a level/gear check, some have a much greater dependence on the skill of the player than others. In WoW, a very good player won't perform as well as a somewhat decent player who is a mere two levels higher, even with identical gear. In Spiral Knights, in contrast, a somewhat decent player in five star gear with the best possible UVs won't perform nearly as well as a very good player in four star gear with no UVs at all.
I'm not looking purely for something difficult, but rather, something interesting. Completely trivial usually isn't interesting, but difficult isn't automatically interesting, either. For example, in Spiral Knights, both Vanaduke and Sinful Steps are hard levels, but for entirely different reasons. Vanaduke has a heavy dependence on monitor resolution, and is a horribly buggy fight, with at least three independent bugs that can make the fight uncompletable, not to mention a variety of other bugs and bad game design decisions. Sinful Steps, on the other hand, has a very heavy dependence on player skill, and carefully picking mobs apart, blocking, timing your attacks, and so forth, in order to break up groups of quite a few devilites and kats. While they're both hard, Sinful Steps is interesting and Vanaduke is not.
Combat is pretty typical mmo combat. If you like wow's combat, you'll like swtors combat.
QFT. It is standard MMO combat.
Cthul description is right on the money, also you get skills such as shooting lightlning from your fingers if you are a sith- so you do get some cool powers as you might expect playing a star wars game
standart modern day mmo combat
with that I mean that as oposed to the old way (press 1,2,3 always in that order) you now have a priority list that is also influenced by various procs, buffs and debuffs
Combat in SWTOR is typical tab target, just like WoW. The mechanics are pretty much the same. Problem here is really crowd control. Because tab target mmorpg's are not twitch at all, developers have decided use crowd control mechanics to make instances more difficult. Otherwise it would just be tank n spank everything. The developers of Star Wars added way too much crowd control which makes the combat kinda silly, especially for pvp.