The combat was the weakest mechanic in the game in my opinion. Where exploration was the strongest. I simply hated the combat. It wasn't new or innovated. Just not used alot.
Originally posted by seraphynx I enjoy ESO combat but for overall feel I like GW2 but in gw2 I don't like the lack of playstyle variety or lack of skill variety..For combat systems my favorite is Rift but I hate the generic feel of combat in Rift...to me the system and the feel are both very important
I hear you man. GW2 was cool, but no block button sucked. Plus like you said really limited variety. I played RIFT for 10 months, rank 8 or something. It was like WoW but grittier and more choice, like you said though, somethings felt really generic. After 10 months all I knew was that I was sent back in time to save the world.
ESO took GW2 combat and added more control over you actions. Being able to fight and kill w/o ever touching a skill on the skill bar adds so much depth to the ESO combat system, that when you do start selecting skills for builds there are so many options. Remember when what's his name said "you swing a sword then you swing a sword again...we don't want you to do that..."? In ESO each battle feels different, because you actually swing your sword/shoot your arrow different each battle.
I agree with that last part. ESO takes what made GW2 fun and improves upon it by removing invulnerability frames and adding a block button. It's nothing innovative in my opinion, it's more of just a more polished version of any action combat that currently exists in the genre.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Originally posted by seraphynx I enjoy ESO combat but for overall feel I like GW2 but in gw2 I don't like the lack of playstyle variety or lack of skill variety..For combat systems my favorite is Rift but I hate the generic feel of combat in Rift...to me the system and the feel are both very important
I hear you man. GW2 was cool, but no block button sucked. Plus like you said really limited variety. I played RIFT for 10 months, rank 8 or something. It was like WoW but grittier and more choice, like you said though, somethings felt really generic. After 10 months all I knew was that I was sent back in time to save the world.
ESO took GW2 combat and added more control over you actions. Being able to fight and kill w/o ever touching a skill on the skill bar adds so much depth to the ESO combat system, that when you do start selecting skills for builds there are so many options. Remember when what's his name said "you swing a sword then you swing a sword again...we don't want you to do that..."? In ESO each battle feels different, because you actually swing your sword/shoot your arrow different each battle.
I agree with that last part. ESO takes what made GW2 fun and improves upon it by removing invulnerability frames and adding a block button. It's nothing innovative in my opinion, it's more of just a more polished version of any action combat that currently exists in the genre.
DDO released 2006 with active block, weapon ranges, weapon arcs, flanking, tactical and mobile combat, the ability to attack without using a skill, FPS style ranges attacks where you can miss and can lead targets....yeah ESO is really ground breaking and innovative!
This is just one example of a plethora of games that have done the things you call ground breaking and innovative and did them long before ESO was even is the design phase.
First - I crack up at the many people that somehow think ESO didn't work out and there's only a few that play it. Are you serious or too stupid to see it is a success. Even if it isn't "The Bestest". It IS a success and is getting better. Some of you people are like Coke drinkers that refuse to say Pepsi is good too.
Second - You people that act like the combat is bad or different or whatever. The combat is lie AN ES GAME morons! They added MMO elements to appease the brain dead MMO crowd, but it is like Skyrim whether you admit it or not. So if you have played other ES games...you know the combat. If not...then you have morons typing crap here like usual.
First off, I played ESO, pre-ordered, and felt greatly disapointed in many aspects of the game. That said, I thought combat was fun at first, but felt flat due to bugs and only 5 actions per bar.
Bugs - When you try to swap weapon to heal in PvP when there's a heavy server load, it happened to me that I was unnable to swap weapons - GAMEBREAKING. Frustatingly gamebreaking. It's not, well, I'm mashing buttons like crazy while pressing the sprint button, nope, it was just simply not working. But this is just one thing.
The worst offender to any game is :
Boredom. Combat is simply too repetitive and the cookie-cutter skill templates (Y'know the OP vampire line, the OP Sorc line, the OP DK), there's just UP skills and OP skills, nothing in between. Between skills that flat out suck, and those that rock, there's nothing. Also, ranged is just so much better than melee. Also, for melee, shield bashing is the way to go, unless you like doing less damage than SnB tanks. So yeah, I grinded quests to VR4 (before they released Craglorn), and it got to me that I wasn't having an ounce of fun doing that. Even if the combat was engaging and compelling, the grind and skill rotations were just mindnumbing after a while. That's just my opinion, and I know people think VR levels are too hard, but for me, it was too easy, if you have the right FOTM skills. Gamebreakingly easy.
I could perma CC any mob, regain mana at expense of stamina and basically never run out of resources, I could dance around the mobs while stunning them and AoEing them to death. I heard of people having trouble to solo at VR levels, my response to them, L2read tooltips and L2play your class, use the right skills, you really only need 1 attack skill anyway since you can spam spamm spammmmmm it, people need to learn how to CC. Anyways, yes, I quit because my vampire sorc was just a faceroll character. The balance of ESO is so bad that it makes Warhammer look good. I had never seen in WArhammer a single player take out hundreds by himself like I saw in ESO (yes Bright wizards were good but you needed a couple of healers and tanks to keep him alive, in ESO you needed BATFUCKINGSWARM). When you step in the PvP zone all you see is batswarm, mist form, bolt escape, ALL OVER THE FUCKIN PLACE. Those OP skills really break it for me.
Sure the combat is different and innovative, but the game needed more development, more time, more different activities to do, some more group PvE hardcore raids, some ways to level through PvP. Doing too much PvE in a too short time frame killed my desire to play this game.
But the combat felt great, it just didn't carry it for me.
Originally posted by seraphynx I enjoy ESO combat but for overall feel I like GW2 but in gw2 I don't like the lack of playstyle variety or lack of skill variety..For combat systems my favorite is Rift but I hate the generic feel of combat in Rift...to me the system and the feel are both very important
I hear you man. GW2 was cool, but no block button sucked. Plus like you said really limited variety. I played RIFT for 10 months, rank 8 or something. It was like WoW but grittier and more choice, like you said though, somethings felt really generic. After 10 months all I knew was that I was sent back in time to save the world.
ESO took GW2 combat and added more control over you actions. Being able to fight and kill w/o ever touching a skill on the skill bar adds so much depth to the ESO combat system, that when you do start selecting skills for builds there are so many options. Remember when what's his name said "you swing a sword then you swing a sword again...we don't want you to do that..."? In ESO each battle feels different, because you actually swing your sword/shoot your arrow different each battle.
I agree with that last part. ESO takes what made GW2 fun and improves upon it by removing invulnerability frames and adding a block button. It's nothing innovative in my opinion, it's more of just a more polished version of any action combat that currently exists in the genre.
DDO released 2006 with active block, weapon ranges, weapon arcs, flanking, tactical and mobile combat, the ability to attack without using a skill, FPS style ranges attacks where you can miss and can lead targets....yeah ESO is really ground breaking and innovative!
This is just one example of a plethora of games that have done the things you call ground breaking and innovative and did them long before ESO was even is the design phase.
Learn the genre and stop talking crap guys.
You didn't even read my post. I said it wasn't innovative. Please learn to read before replying, thanks.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Originally posted by seraphynx I enjoy ESO combat but for overall feel I like GW2 but in gw2 I don't like the lack of playstyle variety or lack of skill variety..For combat systems my favorite is Rift but I hate the generic feel of combat in Rift...to me the system and the feel are both very important
WOW..... JUST WOW!
I read this post 2 times and I just didn't get what you were trying to communicate. Rift has a horrible combat system and feel. I do agree that GW2 combat is both challenging and fun. ESO combat is good, but it still lacks a feel... mostly with melee combat. I prefer ESO and GW2 over just about any other MMO combat.
Just the best MMO on the market today. I see you act as a hotshot 'round here, maybe you can show me your hotshotness and skillful play in it?
P.S: I like how WildStar is bleeding your favorite MMO's subs. Fun times. When TESO goes finally F2P I'll drop you a message to show you a thing or two about how your reticle doesn't matter the least.
IF Wildstar is bleeding ESO subs I can see why. The game is a lot easier to get into, especially the combat.
same reason why WoW keeps getting subs and sustaining their subs, because blizzard keeps making the game easier and easier overall.
Easier doesn't mean worse.
Which is kinda what you seem to be implying.
Wildstar's combat is intuitive and fun right away, it's also something different.
ESO's combat is clunky and difficult to learn / hard to master. It's combat is a slight variation on tab targeting, reminds me of Age of Conan.
I can easily see why Wildstar won this contest, they made a more ACCESSIBLE game.
How is wildstars combat 'something different'? ESO combat is far more removed from the traditional themepark combat.
Left mouse button to attack, right to block. Hold them both to interrupt/bash your enemy. Hold the left mouse button for longer to deal a power attack. And no cooldowns on skills. You have to manage your stamina/magika pools.
Wildstar is intuitive because most MMO gamers have played the same combat mechanics before. The only difference between it and WoW/SWTOR(example) is that you have to aim(and I use that term very loosely, you can actually click on enemies in combat without the need to aim. Something you can't do in ESO) . Everything else is very similar. A lot of players are basically calling it WoW 2.0.
IMO ESO combat is something different to what most themepark games are doing combat wise.
Originally posted by seraphynx I enjoy ESO combat but for overall feel I like GW2 but in gw2 I don't like the lack of playstyle variety or lack of skill variety..For combat systems my favorite is Rift but I hate the generic feel of combat in Rift...to me the system and the feel are both very important
WOW..... JUST WOW!
I read this post 2 times and I just didn't get what you were trying to communicate. Rift has a horrible combat system and feel. I do agree that GW2 combat is both challenging and fun. ESO combat is good, but it still lacks a feel... mostly with melee combat. I prefer ESO and GW2 over just about any other MMO combat.
Rift was amazing because of the soul system not the actual fighting.. being able to come up with so many combinations of playstyles was such a great feature.. i also loved the macro system as well( i know a lot didn't).. how the actual combat played wasn't great though which is why I said i loved the system but not the actual feel of combat.. For me there is nothing more boring than being stuck in a single role for the entire time you play that character i loved how in Rift you could set Roles and swap them out anytime not in combat.. i could have my group pve, my solo pve, my solo pvp, my healing build, my tank build ect ect(think you got 5 total but i forgot) all setup then with just a click swap them out and go on my way.. probably one of my favorite features in any MMO ever... to bad the rest of the game was meh to me...
Who is in denial here? Name a MMO with a better combat system than TESO. Stop going on about non-existent bugs, and tell us what combat system you think is better.
So far posters have only put forward TERA, NWN and Rift. I would say TERA is on a par, not played NWN and Rift was decent enough but not as good at TESO.
So what MMO combat system out there is better? Or is that question something the TESO detractors want to avoid?
Who is in denial here? Name a MMO with a better combat system than TESO. Stop going on about non-existent bugs, and tell us what combat system you think is better.
So far posters have only put forward TERA, NWN and Rift. I would say TERA is on a par, not played NWN and Rift was decent enough but not as good at TESO.
So what MMO combat system out there is better? Or is that question something the TESO detractors want to avoid?
Darkfall Online (Dead) DF:UW (although the two are very close) and Mortal Online all have "better" (ie more action less RNG) combat systems than ESO. That being said, I am LOVING ESO combat.
TERA, GW2 and NW, while they have some hints of action combat, don't even compare IMO. GW2 is floaty and basically tab-targeting, though like ESO you can hit without manually targeting and there's less available abilities at one time (Yep, do the math, GW2 has 7 including dodging at one time, ESO has 11 including dodging - and no I'm not counting the second hotbar for either, I said at one given time). Tera is all about rooting you into the ground when you attack. Ew, screw that, is all I'll say, and NW, probably the closest out of the three, still lacks the viscerality of first-person with visible weapons.
Who is in denial here? Name a MMO with a better combat system than TESO. Stop going on about non-existent bugs, and tell us what combat system you think is better.
So far posters have only put forward TERA, NWN and Rift. I would say TERA is on a par, not played NWN and Rift was decent enough but not as good at TESO.
So what MMO combat system out there is better? Or is that question something the TESO detractors want to avoid?
Rift is your traditional tab-target, hot-key combat system. It's got alot of reactive abilities but with it's macro system, the combat system is completely trivialized and you can actually play some classes with half a dozen macros.
So if someone is stating Rift as a better combat system in comparison to ESO, they are a) trolling, b)never played rift and ESO or c)one handed.
Who is in denial here? Name a MMO with a better combat system than TESO. Stop going on about non-existent bugs, and tell us what combat system you think is better.
So far posters have only put forward TERA, NWN and Rift. I would say TERA is on a par, not played NWN and Rift was decent enough but not as good at TESO.
So what MMO combat system out there is better? Or is that question something the TESO detractors want to avoid?
I would take AOC combat over TESO any day. Since it is all about personal preference and opinion..for me AOC > Teso combat.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
It could be really, really good, but it has, in my opinion some glaring weaknesses. Whether it could/would be the best is completely subjective. On to the issues I have:
1. Quite a lot of abilities do not work, active and passive ones. Combat has to work in order to be fun.
2. A reactive combat system like in TESO cannot afford to have players play with a ping of 300+ ms. I am a player on the "EU"-megaserver (which is located in the US) and the game is just unresponsive to the point where I cannot even tell the difference between my ability just being broken (again) or the server not recognizing in time. The server was said to be moved within a few weeks after release and now it looks like at least four months until they move. Unacceptable.
3. Light and heavy attacks are useless except exploiting a weakness in the opponents defense (i.e. throwing them down with a heavy attack when they are paralyszed or something like it) here and there and restoring resources if you have a passive/active triggering that. So there goes a big part of the combat that just doesn´t mean anyhting. The same goes for the roll doge - you can sprint out of AoE damage for less stamina than a roll dodge would cost.
4. Some skill trees are basically useless alltogether, at least in PvE (DW, Bow especially).
If you design a combat system like in TESO, you better make sure, that all of the five to six (if you count the ultimate) abilities on my bar work. You better make sure I have a decent connection to the server, when the game revolves around interrupting, dodging and so on of abilities within a time frame of ~1.5-2 seconds. You better make sure that the limited actions I can take are meaningful.
If all of this was the case, then yes, the combat would be great and fun. But it isn´t and I grew tired of waiting for it to get better.
It could be really, really good, but it has, in my opinion some glaring weaknesses. Whether it could/would be the best is completely subjective. On to the issues I have:
1. Quite a lot of abilities do not work, active and passive ones. Combat has to work in order to be fun.
2. A reactive combat system like in TESO cannot afford to have players play with a ping of 300+ ms. I am a player on the "EU"-megaserver (which is located in the US) and the game is just unresponsive to the point where I cannot even tell the difference between my ability just being broken (again) or the server not recognizing in time. The server was said to be moved within a few weeks after release and now it looks like at least four months until they move. Unacceptable.
3. Light and heavy attacks are useless except exploiting a weakness in the opponents defense (i.e. throwing them down with a heavy attack when they are paralyszed or something like it) here and there and restoring resources if you have a passive/active triggering that. So there goes a big part of the combat that just doesn´t mean anyhting. The same goes for the roll doge - you can sprint out of AoE damage for less stamina than a roll dodge would cost.
4. Some skill trees are basically useless alltogether, at least in PvE (DW, Bow especially).
If you design a combat system like in TESO, you better make sure, that all of the five to six (if you count the ultimate) abilities on my bar work. You better make sure I have a decent connection to the server, when the game revolves around interrupting, dodging and so on of abilities within a time frame of ~1.5-2 seconds. You better make sure that the limited actions I can take are meaningful.
If all of this was the case, then yes, the combat would be great and fun. But it isn´t and I grew tired of waiting for it to get better.
1. Certainly valid complaint. I was extremely concerned they would never be able to catch up to all the broken skills the game launched with. Man you should have seen some of my rage post on the forums. I couldn't believe an mmorpg could launch with that many skill line problems. 7 patches later, broken skills are no longer an issue, skills work. Sure there will always be a bug or two, but things are up to standard now.
2. That's no a ping thing. That's a "all of you can't play on the same server thing." A server problem. They've adjusted caps a couple times now. Upping caps then lowering, then upping again. 85% of the time things are smooth and awesome. 15% of the time (during primetime...) there are certainly sever lag issues. The servers still don't properly handle 200+ people in close proximity, but it's better. I once counted 160 people on my screen my fps was 49. Optimization is amazing, the servers are trash.
3. Here my friend is a learning curve thing. I too did not understand how to layer my attacks up until a couple weeks ago. If you are not using a light and heavy attack with every skill attack you are significantly lowering your dmg output. Sprinting =/= dodge. Dodging breaks soft CC. When your snared you can't sprint. Dodge also dodges attacks. Hard CC breaks, interrupts, stealth stuns, and blocking is also apart of this system. Again up until about 2 weeks ago I felt just like you here. Then came the ah hah moment.
4. Yeah skill balancing happens every patch. In pve physical weapons (duel wielding, bows) certainly do lag behind magic skills. In PvP for some reason the physical and magical seems much more even. It seems to me that magical attacks do a lot better at sustained dng atm. While physical attacks do on par burst dmg. As I type this I'm thinking PvP physical/magic dmg is balanced better than PvE? Hmmm. There are literally a lot of moving parts (skills) in ESO, lots of options for players. Where I was very concerned (I have the post to show it) about skills, 2 months later I just want them to fix the cheap ass servers it's like they pulled the Vanilla WoW hamsters out of retirement and put them to work! lmao
Great post man thanks for the early morning read. Maybe I should have put "When it works, it's the best" Welcome to mmorpg.com
Who is in denial here? Name a MMO with a better combat system than TESO. Stop going on about non-existent bugs, and tell us what combat system you think is better.
So far posters have only put forward TERA, NWN and Rift. I would say TERA is on a par, not played NWN and Rift was decent enough but not as good at TESO.
So what MMO combat system out there is better? Or is that question something the TESO detractors want to avoid?
To say a particular MMO's combat is the best is just the person actually saying they LIKE that particular MMO's combat the best. It's all subjective. You have already read people saying they don't agree with the OP. You have already stated you don't agree with some of the games others have listed. For example( I know some people will disagree with these which is fine), is ESO combat better because it uses mouse clicks for attack and has a block button? Guess what? DCUO had that set up already 3 and half years ago. Is it better because you can dodge? Other games such as GW2 and TSW have that already. Is it better because of crosshairs? NWN and TERA already had that covered. Weapon switching during combat? GW2. Mix and match skills on a limited hotbar? GW1 . Mass RvR,AvA,WvW? Daoc and GW2.
All of these things that ESO does has already been done before. That's not a bad thing. In fact it's a good thing. But to say it's the best and moving the genre forward when there are so many games that have already been doing what it does ( and still doing) is ridiculous. ESO's combat is based off of others that have already moved the genre forward.
TLDR: It just makes more sense to say, " I like game X the best" instead of saying "My game X is the best" because you will always have people that will disagree with you and their reasons for doing so are just as valid in their minds as your claims will be in yours.
I enjoyed ESO's combat system, in fact I enjoyed a lot of of ESO, the crappy auction house system and the follow the breadcrumbs from zone to zone are the main reasons I quit after a couple of weeks. Not that the quests were bad but just been there done that too many times for it to be entertaining anymore and whoever thought of that guild AH system should be looking for a new job
1. Certainly valid complaint. I was extremely concerned they would never be able to catch up to all the broken skills the game launched with. Man you should have seen some of my rage post on the forums. I couldn't believe an mmorpg could launch with that many skill line problems. 7 patches later, broken skills are no longer an issue, skills work. Sure there will always be a bug or two, but things are up to standard now.
2. That's no a ping thing. That's a "all of you can't play on the same server thing." A server problem. They've adjusted caps a couple times now. Upping caps then lowering, then upping again. 85% of the time things are smooth and awesome. 15% of the time (during primetime...) there are certainly sever lag issues. The servers still don't properly handle 200+ people in close proximity, but it's better. I once counted 160 people on my screen my fps was 49. Optimization is amazing, the servers are trash.
3. Here my friend is a learning curve thing. I too did not understand how to layer my attacks up until a couple weeks ago. If you are not using a light and heavy attack with every skill attack you are significantly lowering your dmg output. Sprinting =/= dodge. Dodging breaks soft CC. When your snared you can't sprint. Dodge also dodges attacks. Hard CC breaks, interrupts, stealth stuns, and blocking is also apart of this system. Again up until about 2 weeks ago I felt just like you here. Then came the ah hah moment.
4. Yeah skill balancing happens every patch. In pve physical weapons (duel wielding, bows) certainly do lag behind magic skills. In PvP for some reason the physical and magical seems much more even. It seems to me that magical attacks do a lot better at sustained dng atm. While physical attacks do on par burst dmg. As I type this I'm thinking PvP physical/magic dmg is balanced better than PvE? Hmmm. There are literally a lot of moving parts (skills) in ESO, lots of options for players. Where I was very concerned (I have the post to show it) about skills, 2 months later I just want them to fix the cheap ass servers it's like they pulled the Vanilla WoW hamsters out of retirement and put them to work! lmao
Thanks, man
I just want to comment on a few things. I was playing a Nightblade with DW and a Bow though I do not use the bow except in PvP since it is so bad. So some of my grievances stem from there, but I think the underlying problems are universal. Also I am mostly a PvE-focused player since PvP is so much different and just revolves around large groups most of the time, which is completely different from every other part of the game (which is also why bows are realatively useful there).
Off the top of my hat I can name three still broken NB ablities: Shadow Cloak and its morphs (the DoT issue and it still breaks for no reason sometimes), Hemorrhage passive as well as Haste and its morphs, which just doesn´t work at all. There are probably more and they just added some weird global cooldown today which makes things even worse.
Ping is an issue. I have very little problems with lags in Cyrodiil. But for someone who is used to playing online games with a ping of 10-20 ms in WoW, Counter-Strike, LoL, Starcraft etc. it is not acceptable to have to play on a server, no matter how good or bad that server itself is and whether that causes additional issues, that is located at the US west coast. The best case scenario is a ping around 200 ms, which is already annyoing. My own experience and all the tests I saw from other people point to an even higher actual ping from Germany and more eastern parts of Europe (230-350 ms). Anyone who has ever played an online FPS, an online RTS or something comparable knows that thats basically unplayable, especially in PvP. Add performance issues/lags caused by lackluster servers and the experience gets even worse.
It is true that you can do a lot more with stamina-based combat actions. The problem is that a lot of them only matter in PvP. In PvE avoiding CC or abilities is "do not stand in red areas on the floor" and sprinting (or even simple running) out of them is completely viable. I had hoped for doge rolling to be neccessary in these situations. Breaking CC costs stamina, fine. I don´t see how that is really exciting. Whether thats using a roll dodge or just a "button" that uses x amount of stamina to break the CC doesn´t matter.
I do know how to use the canceled animations to improve DPS, but thats just exploiting a wonky combat system/clunky animations. I thought using abilities like Haste and Flurry, which (should) improve attack speed in combination with light attacks vs. low armor targets and heavy attacks vs. heavily armored targets would be part of normal combat. But these attacks are just fillers for the time between cancelled ability animations. They represent only a miniscule amount of the total DPS, which I find weird in a game like this.
I find the idea behind the combat great. But it suffers from ping (and server) issues, clunky animations and broken abilities. The most effective way to play in a lot of cases is to just use block as much as possible (in PvP) and spam 2-3 skills. Everything else is just trying get as much regeneration on magicka as possible to keep the spam up. Less skills to use than in other games and then spamming them isn´t fun for me.
I really liked the game, but I simply won´t wait several months for them to fix the class/playstyle combination I happened to choose (NB with Bow or DW, how exotic!) or move the server to where it belongs.
Want to know what held back ESO from becoming a critically acclaimed success?
It's not the box + subscription free which many were willing to look past,
It's not the bugs which are minor annoyances in the greater scheme of things,
It's not the phasing issues,
It's not the compromises they had to make to bring Elder Scrolls to an online space,
And it's certainly not the combat system which is actually very well done.
It's the OPEN WORLD experience. That's It.
They had a chance to make something great, and instead they ended up with something just good because they could not get the most defining feature of Elder Scrolls games right. The quest grind, on-rails experience, zone restrictions, less organic exploration - that's the stuff that's hurting them the most.
This is just not true. They could not get ANY defining features of TES games right. That starts with small things such as thievery and end with stuff like question, character progression, combat. Pretty much all this stuff.
Oh, wait. They did get one thing right: VOICEOVERS^^ Not that it's not crucial for a TES game to have it...
ESO has the most innovative and visceral combat on the market, action combat. The non skill combat system is what sets ESO apart from WoW, GW2, and WS.
The ability to change what is an auto attack in the games above into a player controlled system is brilliant. The player is in charge of how hard he swings, how fast he swings, when he swings, and the direction of the swing. Couple that with being able to block incoming attacks, interrupt and even stun W/O ever using a skill on your skill bar is ground breaking. The blood, the impact, the creativity has left me saying HELL YEAH many a night. I even once heard someone yelling "WARGASIM" after a huge 100 v 100 push, and I knew what he meant.
The flip side is that there is a steep learning curve. 2 months in with countless hours played and with all my past mmorpg experience, I feel that I have just began to approach the skill cap of my class. Combat in ESO is harsh and challenging. It's enough to keep me, a sandbox pvpr interested in this quest centric thempark mmorpg.
The Combat, The skill system and Cyrodiil are worth the price of admission. If you love pvp like I do, and have not played, you are missing the party of the year.
lol. Teso got the worst Combat system ever.. very sluggy and bad.. and boring
on the other hand wildstar got the best combat system to date.. since its not the easy peasy Tab Target.. and also its all action based compared to Teso, wow and so on which have the easy target system
ESO has the most innovative and visceral combat on the market, action combat. The non skill combat system is what sets ESO apart from WoW, GW2, and WS.
The ability to change what is an auto attack in the games above into a player controlled system is brilliant. The player is in charge of how hard he swings, how fast he swings, when he swings, and the direction of the swing. Couple that with being able to block incoming attacks, interrupt and even stun W/O ever using a skill on your skill bar is ground breaking. The blood, the impact, the creativity has left me saying HELL YEAH many a night. I even once heard someone yelling "WARGASIM" after a huge 100 v 100 push, and I knew what he meant.
The flip side is that there is a steep learning curve. 2 months in with countless hours played and with all my past mmorpg experience, I feel that I have just began to approach the skill cap of my class. Combat in ESO is harsh and challenging. It's enough to keep me, a sandbox pvpr interested in this quest centric thempark mmorpg.
The Combat, The skill system and Cyrodiil are worth the price of admission. If you love pvp like I do, and have not played, you are missing the party of the year.
TERA already claimed victory to innovative combat in MMOs well beyond what ESO combat is like. I have to say with my experience in ESO it did not have a great combat system.
Come on Maple2, Wildstar has a better combat system then TESO? Please...next you will be saying the graphics are better too.
As a fan of both TERA and TESO combat I would not say one is better than the other. Its a scale of action versus strategy. The more action you have the less strategy you can have. So a tab targeting model with a set cycling of combat 'rounds' leads to longer fights with more strategy. But heading that way looses the free flow appeal of action combat.
So to me TERA is better than TESO for action, TESO has more thinking involved.
Just the best MMO on the market today. I see you act as a hotshot 'round here, maybe you can show me your hotshotness and skillful play in it?
P.S: I like how WildStar is bleeding your favorite MMO's subs. Fun times. When TESO goes finally F2P I'll drop you a message to show you a thing or two about how your reticle doesn't matter the least.
IF Wildstar is bleeding ESO subs I can see why. The game is a lot easier to get into, especially the combat.
same reason why WoW keeps getting subs and sustaining their subs, because blizzard keeps making the game easier and easier overall.
Easier doesn't mean worse.
Which is kinda what you seem to be implying.
Wildstar's combat is intuitive and fun right away, it's also something different.
ESO's combat is clunky and difficult to learn / hard to master. It's combat is a slight variation on tab targeting, reminds me of Age of Conan.
I can easily see why Wildstar won this contest, they made a more ACCESSIBLE game.
WS combat is a clunky adaptation of tab target to pseudo action oriented, though the fact you need to press the right mouse button to look around betrays how bad the attempt at integrating both systems is. Fact is: people who like WoW and dumbproof games will like WS and dislike TESO. But that doesn't say anything good about WS or those players, quite teh opposite
Sorry, but dumbproof game here is TESO. Wildstar have hard difficulty out of the box, with 1st dungeon available, while Wow begins at end-game and mostly at heroic raids. WTF challenge TESO offers? Oh, wait best combat on the market? IS IT SO HARD TO MASTER 5 BUTTONS???
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I agree with that last part. ESO takes what made GW2 fun and improves upon it by removing invulnerability frames and adding a block button. It's nothing innovative in my opinion, it's more of just a more polished version of any action combat that currently exists in the genre.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
DDO released 2006 with active block, weapon ranges, weapon arcs, flanking, tactical and mobile combat, the ability to attack without using a skill, FPS style ranges attacks where you can miss and can lead targets....yeah ESO is really ground breaking and innovative!
This is just one example of a plethora of games that have done the things you call ground breaking and innovative and did them long before ESO was even is the design phase.
Learn the genre and stop talking crap guys.
First off, I played ESO, pre-ordered, and felt greatly disapointed in many aspects of the game. That said, I thought combat was fun at first, but felt flat due to bugs and only 5 actions per bar.
Bugs - When you try to swap weapon to heal in PvP when there's a heavy server load, it happened to me that I was unnable to swap weapons - GAMEBREAKING. Frustatingly gamebreaking. It's not, well, I'm mashing buttons like crazy while pressing the sprint button, nope, it was just simply not working. But this is just one thing.
The worst offender to any game is :
Boredom. Combat is simply too repetitive and the cookie-cutter skill templates (Y'know the OP vampire line, the OP Sorc line, the OP DK), there's just UP skills and OP skills, nothing in between. Between skills that flat out suck, and those that rock, there's nothing. Also, ranged is just so much better than melee. Also, for melee, shield bashing is the way to go, unless you like doing less damage than SnB tanks. So yeah, I grinded quests to VR4 (before they released Craglorn), and it got to me that I wasn't having an ounce of fun doing that. Even if the combat was engaging and compelling, the grind and skill rotations were just mindnumbing after a while. That's just my opinion, and I know people think VR levels are too hard, but for me, it was too easy, if you have the right FOTM skills. Gamebreakingly easy.
I could perma CC any mob, regain mana at expense of stamina and basically never run out of resources, I could dance around the mobs while stunning them and AoEing them to death. I heard of people having trouble to solo at VR levels, my response to them, L2read tooltips and L2play your class, use the right skills, you really only need 1 attack skill anyway since you can spam spamm spammmmmm it, people need to learn how to CC. Anyways, yes, I quit because my vampire sorc was just a faceroll character. The balance of ESO is so bad that it makes Warhammer look good. I had never seen in WArhammer a single player take out hundreds by himself like I saw in ESO (yes Bright wizards were good but you needed a couple of healers and tanks to keep him alive, in ESO you needed BATFUCKINGSWARM). When you step in the PvP zone all you see is batswarm, mist form, bolt escape, ALL OVER THE FUCKIN PLACE. Those OP skills really break it for me.
Sure the combat is different and innovative, but the game needed more development, more time, more different activities to do, some more group PvE hardcore raids, some ways to level through PvP. Doing too much PvE in a too short time frame killed my desire to play this game.
But the combat felt great, it just didn't carry it for me.
You didn't even read my post. I said it wasn't innovative. Please learn to read before replying, thanks.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I apologise. Sloppy editing and reading from me.
WOW..... JUST WOW!
I read this post 2 times and I just didn't get what you were trying to communicate. Rift has a horrible combat system and feel. I do agree that GW2 combat is both challenging and fun. ESO combat is good, but it still lacks a feel... mostly with melee combat. I prefer ESO and GW2 over just about any other MMO combat.
How is wildstars combat 'something different'? ESO combat is far more removed from the traditional themepark combat.
Left mouse button to attack, right to block. Hold them both to interrupt/bash your enemy. Hold the left mouse button for longer to deal a power attack. And no cooldowns on skills. You have to manage your stamina/magika pools.
Wildstar is intuitive because most MMO gamers have played the same combat mechanics before. The only difference between it and WoW/SWTOR(example) is that you have to aim(and I use that term very loosely, you can actually click on enemies in combat without the need to aim. Something you can't do in ESO) . Everything else is very similar. A lot of players are basically calling it WoW 2.0.
IMO ESO combat is something different to what most themepark games are doing combat wise.
And I agree, easier does not mean it's worse.
Rift was amazing because of the soul system not the actual fighting.. being able to come up with so many combinations of playstyles was such a great feature.. i also loved the macro system as well( i know a lot didn't).. how the actual combat played wasn't great though which is why I said i loved the system but not the actual feel of combat.. For me there is nothing more boring than being stuck in a single role for the entire time you play that character i loved how in Rift you could set Roles and swap them out anytime not in combat.. i could have my group pve, my solo pve, my solo pvp, my healing build, my tank build ect ect(think you got 5 total but i forgot) all setup then with just a click swap them out and go on my way.. probably one of my favorite features in any MMO ever... to bad the rest of the game was meh to me...
Who is in denial here? Name a MMO with a better combat system than TESO. Stop going on about non-existent bugs, and tell us what combat system you think is better.
So far posters have only put forward TERA, NWN and Rift. I would say TERA is on a par, not played NWN and Rift was decent enough but not as good at TESO.
So what MMO combat system out there is better? Or is that question something the TESO detractors want to avoid?
Darkfall Online (Dead) DF:UW (although the two are very close) and Mortal Online all have "better" (ie more action less RNG) combat systems than ESO. That being said, I am LOVING ESO combat.
TERA, GW2 and NW, while they have some hints of action combat, don't even compare IMO. GW2 is floaty and basically tab-targeting, though like ESO you can hit without manually targeting and there's less available abilities at one time (Yep, do the math, GW2 has 7 including dodging at one time, ESO has 11 including dodging - and no I'm not counting the second hotbar for either, I said at one given time). Tera is all about rooting you into the ground when you attack. Ew, screw that, is all I'll say, and NW, probably the closest out of the three, still lacks the viscerality of first-person with visible weapons.
Rift is your traditional tab-target, hot-key combat system. It's got alot of reactive abilities but with it's macro system, the combat system is completely trivialized and you can actually play some classes with half a dozen macros.
So if someone is stating Rift as a better combat system in comparison to ESO, they are a) trolling, b)never played rift and ESO or c)one handed.
I would take AOC combat over TESO any day. Since it is all about personal preference and opinion..for me AOC > Teso combat.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
It could be really, really good, but it has, in my opinion some glaring weaknesses. Whether it could/would be the best is completely subjective. On to the issues I have:
1. Quite a lot of abilities do not work, active and passive ones. Combat has to work in order to be fun.
2. A reactive combat system like in TESO cannot afford to have players play with a ping of 300+ ms. I am a player on the "EU"-megaserver (which is located in the US) and the game is just unresponsive to the point where I cannot even tell the difference between my ability just being broken (again) or the server not recognizing in time. The server was said to be moved within a few weeks after release and now it looks like at least four months until they move. Unacceptable.
3. Light and heavy attacks are useless except exploiting a weakness in the opponents defense (i.e. throwing them down with a heavy attack when they are paralyszed or something like it) here and there and restoring resources if you have a passive/active triggering that. So there goes a big part of the combat that just doesn´t mean anyhting. The same goes for the roll doge - you can sprint out of AoE damage for less stamina than a roll dodge would cost.
4. Some skill trees are basically useless alltogether, at least in PvE (DW, Bow especially).
If you design a combat system like in TESO, you better make sure, that all of the five to six (if you count the ultimate) abilities on my bar work. You better make sure I have a decent connection to the server, when the game revolves around interrupting, dodging and so on of abilities within a time frame of ~1.5-2 seconds. You better make sure that the limited actions I can take are meaningful.
If all of this was the case, then yes, the combat would be great and fun. But it isn´t and I grew tired of waiting for it to get better.
1. Certainly valid complaint. I was extremely concerned they would never be able to catch up to all the broken skills the game launched with. Man you should have seen some of my rage post on the forums. I couldn't believe an mmorpg could launch with that many skill line problems. 7 patches later, broken skills are no longer an issue, skills work. Sure there will always be a bug or two, but things are up to standard now.
2. That's no a ping thing. That's a "all of you can't play on the same server thing." A server problem. They've adjusted caps a couple times now. Upping caps then lowering, then upping again. 85% of the time things are smooth and awesome. 15% of the time (during primetime...) there are certainly sever lag issues. The servers still don't properly handle 200+ people in close proximity, but it's better. I once counted 160 people on my screen my fps was 49. Optimization is amazing, the servers are trash.
3. Here my friend is a learning curve thing. I too did not understand how to layer my attacks up until a couple weeks ago. If you are not using a light and heavy attack with every skill attack you are significantly lowering your dmg output. Sprinting =/= dodge. Dodging breaks soft CC. When your snared you can't sprint. Dodge also dodges attacks. Hard CC breaks, interrupts, stealth stuns, and blocking is also apart of this system. Again up until about 2 weeks ago I felt just like you here. Then came the ah hah moment.
4. Yeah skill balancing happens every patch. In pve physical weapons (duel wielding, bows) certainly do lag behind magic skills. In PvP for some reason the physical and magical seems much more even. It seems to me that magical attacks do a lot better at sustained dng atm. While physical attacks do on par burst dmg. As I type this I'm thinking PvP physical/magic dmg is balanced better than PvE? Hmmm. There are literally a lot of moving parts (skills) in ESO, lots of options for players. Where I was very concerned (I have the post to show it) about skills, 2 months later I just want them to fix the cheap ass servers it's like they pulled the Vanilla WoW hamsters out of retirement and put them to work! lmao
Great post man thanks for the early morning read. Maybe I should have put "When it works, it's the best" Welcome to mmorpg.com
To say a particular MMO's combat is the best is just the person actually saying they LIKE that particular MMO's combat the best. It's all subjective. You have already read people saying they don't agree with the OP. You have already stated you don't agree with some of the games others have listed. For example( I know some people will disagree with these which is fine), is ESO combat better because it uses mouse clicks for attack and has a block button? Guess what? DCUO had that set up already 3 and half years ago. Is it better because you can dodge? Other games such as GW2 and TSW have that already. Is it better because of crosshairs? NWN and TERA already had that covered. Weapon switching during combat? GW2. Mix and match skills on a limited hotbar? GW1 . Mass RvR,AvA,WvW? Daoc and GW2.
All of these things that ESO does has already been done before. That's not a bad thing. In fact it's a good thing. But to say it's the best and moving the genre forward when there are so many games that have already been doing what it does ( and still doing) is ridiculous. ESO's combat is based off of others that have already moved the genre forward.
TLDR: It just makes more sense to say, " I like game X the best" instead of saying "My game X is the best" because you will always have people that will disagree with you and their reasons for doing so are just as valid in their minds as your claims will be in yours.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
I miss DAoC
Thanks, man
I just want to comment on a few things. I was playing a Nightblade with DW and a Bow though I do not use the bow except in PvP since it is so bad. So some of my grievances stem from there, but I think the underlying problems are universal. Also I am mostly a PvE-focused player since PvP is so much different and just revolves around large groups most of the time, which is completely different from every other part of the game (which is also why bows are realatively useful there).
Off the top of my hat I can name three still broken NB ablities: Shadow Cloak and its morphs (the DoT issue and it still breaks for no reason sometimes), Hemorrhage passive as well as Haste and its morphs, which just doesn´t work at all. There are probably more and they just added some weird global cooldown today which makes things even worse.
Ping is an issue. I have very little problems with lags in Cyrodiil. But for someone who is used to playing online games with a ping of 10-20 ms in WoW, Counter-Strike, LoL, Starcraft etc. it is not acceptable to have to play on a server, no matter how good or bad that server itself is and whether that causes additional issues, that is located at the US west coast. The best case scenario is a ping around 200 ms, which is already annyoing. My own experience and all the tests I saw from other people point to an even higher actual ping from Germany and more eastern parts of Europe (230-350 ms). Anyone who has ever played an online FPS, an online RTS or something comparable knows that thats basically unplayable, especially in PvP. Add performance issues/lags caused by lackluster servers and the experience gets even worse.
It is true that you can do a lot more with stamina-based combat actions. The problem is that a lot of them only matter in PvP. In PvE avoiding CC or abilities is "do not stand in red areas on the floor" and sprinting (or even simple running) out of them is completely viable. I had hoped for doge rolling to be neccessary in these situations. Breaking CC costs stamina, fine. I don´t see how that is really exciting. Whether thats using a roll dodge or just a "button" that uses x amount of stamina to break the CC doesn´t matter.
I do know how to use the canceled animations to improve DPS, but thats just exploiting a wonky combat system/clunky animations. I thought using abilities like Haste and Flurry, which (should) improve attack speed in combination with light attacks vs. low armor targets and heavy attacks vs. heavily armored targets would be part of normal combat. But these attacks are just fillers for the time between cancelled ability animations. They represent only a miniscule amount of the total DPS, which I find weird in a game like this.
I find the idea behind the combat great. But it suffers from ping (and server) issues, clunky animations and broken abilities. The most effective way to play in a lot of cases is to just use block as much as possible (in PvP) and spam 2-3 skills. Everything else is just trying get as much regeneration on magicka as possible to keep the spam up. Less skills to use than in other games and then spamming them isn´t fun for me.
I really liked the game, but I simply won´t wait several months for them to fix the class/playstyle combination I happened to choose (NB with Bow or DW, how exotic!) or move the server to where it belongs.
This is just not true. They could not get ANY defining features of TES games right. That starts with small things such as thievery and end with stuff like question, character progression, combat. Pretty much all this stuff.
Oh, wait. They did get one thing right: VOICEOVERS^^ Not that it's not crucial for a TES game to have it...
lol. Teso got the worst Combat system ever.. very sluggy and bad.. and boring
on the other hand wildstar got the best combat system to date.. since its not the easy peasy Tab Target.. and also its all action based compared to Teso, wow and so on which have the easy target system
TERA already claimed victory to innovative combat in MMOs well beyond what ESO combat is like. I have to say with my experience in ESO it did not have a great combat system.
Come on Maple2, Wildstar has a better combat system then TESO? Please...next you will be saying the graphics are better too.
As a fan of both TERA and TESO combat I would not say one is better than the other. Its a scale of action versus strategy. The more action you have the less strategy you can have. So a tab targeting model with a set cycling of combat 'rounds' leads to longer fights with more strategy. But heading that way looses the free flow appeal of action combat.
So to me TERA is better than TESO for action, TESO has more thinking involved.
Sorry, but dumbproof game here is TESO. Wildstar have hard difficulty out of the box, with 1st dungeon available, while Wow begins at end-game and mostly at heroic raids. WTF challenge TESO offers? Oh, wait best combat on the market? IS IT SO HARD TO MASTER 5 BUTTONS???
I found the combat to be rather clunky and unsatisfying.
I wanna see an MMO with Mount and Blade like combat.
Your wish will be granted as soon as they make the first truly single-player MMO !
Don't laugh, someone will almost certainly attempt it, even if it's only in their marketing hype...