Best examples of Action Combat? Starting to Feel Like Tab > Action

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Eh, it's the same as me always using L2 in my examples or wow andies using wow. It's just what's near and dear to Noaani's heart because they've played 10 years of it. And EQ did in fact inspire a ton of stuff in the industry, so it obviously did some things right.

And just as I try to show the best features of L2 here, Noaani tries to show EQ's best feature too. And that many big expansions that kept the game alive for this long is in fact a huge accomplishment and imo completely justifies its mention.

But yes, afaik EQ(2) were an NA thing, cause before getting into the bigger internet in the 2010s, I haven't even heard of it. And even after hearing about it, it was very rare to see a person that played it. Kinda same with L2, though L2 is rarely mentioned due to its low size, while EQ is just an older game, with EQ2 getting low recognition because it came out around WoW (same as L2) and we all know which game is more popular.

Just throwing out there that you shouldn't use 'rebalances' as reasons why MOBAs and similar games stay alive. That's two parts combined to achieve that effect, neither of which actually has basically anything to do with the normal player's PvP experience.

1. Renewed interest because people need time to try to understand it and see if it has somehow made their skill level more viable (nearly never actually does this, but some get to imagine it does, long enough to train more or realize they were just on a bad streak)
2. Shakeups in the meta mean that you can swap to something you consider more powerful easily (at the beginning of every match) and keep playing even if you are incorrect in that assessment, especially if you happen to win against one of those people who is doing the same thing but with a less suitable character.

Fighting Gamers know this situation all too well, people flock to new games because they haven't learned their 'tier' in those games yet. Often the reaction is just 'I was below average at all those OTHER games before but maybe THIS time, there's a CHANCE!' (of course discounting the fact that their fundamental skills are lacking and if they do win it's by ignoring this fact as much as possible through some initially-hard-to-counter mechanic).

Apply the above to a game where opponents who play better actually gain concrete mechanical advantages over you over time, and they both fizzle out pretty fast.

Competitive games work in this model of longevity because they don't have persistent gear in them.

Azherae wrote: »

Competitive games work in this model of longevity because they don't have persistent gear in them.

I'd say that depends on the gear-to-class balance. The RPS of the class system can be cycled through by adding counters in the form of abilities and new gear stats.

The first example that comes to mind was a new upgrade to old gear in one of the L2's updates. Before that updates there was a fairly big problem with Berserk class and its OP stuns. So in the update NCsoft added a new upgrade to an older set of gear that gave 50% stun resist. The class itself didn't really go down in power. They could still overpower hard mobs and could still proc quite a few stuns in a crowd (cause it was an aoe dash stun ability), but the overall impact of that class became less, because a ton of people upgraded their old sets.

Now that's obviously a fairly direct nerf to a failed piece of balance (that being the OP stun ability), but I'm just saying that updates in mmos can still influence the pvp matchups w/o impacting the whole game too much.

We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.

I mean, I'm not saying that EQ didn't exist outside of NA, I'm saying that the popularity lvls weren't the same everywhere. I'm from ukraine and have played with the bigger part of all CIS countries in L2 for 12 years and just talked to a ton of people from those countries about mmos. Not one of them ever mentioned even trying EQ. But every single one knew L2.

As is evident from Ashes forums/reddit/discord - only a select few have played L2, and that's considering that L2 is one of the inspirations for the game and has been namedropped by Steven himself in multiple interviews/streams. So in theory any english-speaking L2 enjoyer would at least try to follow the game. And the fact that out of hundreds of different vocal people in this community barely a dozen have played L2 shows that its western influence was very low.

So what I'm saying is that both L2 and EQ(2) had their audiences in several places, but had way bigger in some places while way smaller ones in others.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Competitive games work in this model of longevity because they don't have persistent gear in them.

I'd say that depends on the gear-to-class balance. The RPS of the class system can be cycled through by adding counters in the form of abilities and new gear stats.

The first example that comes to mind was a new upgrade to old gear in one of the L2's updates. Before that updates there was a fairly big problem with Berserk class and its OP stuns. So in the update NCsoft added a new upgrade to an older set of gear that gave 50% stun resist. The class itself didn't really go down in power. They could still overpower hard mobs and could still proc quite a few stuns in a crowd (cause it was an aoe dash stun ability), but the overall impact of that class became less, because a ton of people upgraded their old sets.

Now that's obviously a fairly direct nerf to a failed piece of balance (that being the OP stun ability), but I'm just saying that updates in mmos can still influence the pvp matchups w/o impacting the whole game too much.

Well then let's actually circle back from both directions because this is pretty useful to talk about.

In an Action-y game with Ashes' goals, when a class or the meta gear that class wears is nerfed, no matter how justifiably, the overall landscape of the game changes. In those cases the question is not 'will the dedicated players who pay enough attention to realize the implications of this, appreciate the change'. It is 'will the players who were losing interest or stopped playing, see this as meaningful, return, and stay'.

A change in game landscape affects those who are active and playing. It increases the engagement for externals and 'peripherals' only through things like streams and that one thing that MOBAs and FightGames do differently .

And from the other direction then, you mentioned BDO earlier so I'll reference that.

When BDO makes big balance changes, one of the first things they do is make it much easier for every single player in the game to 'reroll' to a new class at least once. This decently mimics the MOBA and FightGame function. "You think your character is better now? Great!" "You think a different character is strong now and that we messed up balance and you know how to win? Great!"

Both those types play more, and the game flatly gives them the ability to do this by letting them transfer skills, weapons, and the fact that all classes in the game can wear the same armor (there's only like 10 individual Glove slot options in the entire game, of which a whopping 3 are viable). To them, this is a beneficial structure.

Take a Tab based game now where gear and build trumps your twitch skills and even pattern recognition abilities. Basically just make gear determine more. But your main Archetype is set, and BiS for Cleric and BiS for Ranger are totally different gear pieces. The group sitting on the giant pile of gear due to winning more often before, can adapt faster, and so they win again, and they can do this without any meaningful change to their actual ability to play.

Ashes will probably never let this happen. The most we'll get is the change of perception of 'what's the best Secondary Archetype', 'what's the best in slot for this archetype', or 'what's the best team comp'.

None of those things reset the situation because your opponents were winning due to 'Dominance Skill' not 'Instance Skill'. Most people can do that analysis. If you 'need to fight in PvP against strong enemies to learn and improve', but those enemies are too strong for you to see if you're improving (or in some cases, even get a chance to improve), most people can see this as a losing situation and stop. MOBAs solve this by 'matchmaking' and 'resetting'. MMOs provide neither.

Azherae wrote: »

In an Action-y game with Ashes' goals, when a class or the meta gear that class wears is nerfed, no matter how justifiably, the overall landscape of the game changes. In those cases the question is not 'will the dedicated players who pay enough attention to realize the implications of this, appreciate the change'. It is 'will the players who were losing interest or stopped playing, see this as meaningful, return, and stay'.

A change in game landscape affects those who are active and playing. It increases the engagement for externals and 'peripherals' only through things like streams and that one thing that MOBAs and FightGames do differently .

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. On top of sending the usual update emails to all the players, have some big in-game tournament event at all gear tiers where players can try out newest gear/augments on their old characters just in that event. Advertise it through streamers. Hell organize the event itself with the help streamers. Make the well-known in the community streamers into shoutcasters of the event, pay them some standard amount, but not give them in-game stuff. Participating in the event could reward with some soft catchup mechanic, while winning it could give a cool title or a cosmetic.

Make the new expansion an event that would show all the people who left that there's something cool to come back to and give them a taste of the new stuff during said event.

Azherae wrote: »

When BDO makes big balance changes, one of the first things they do is make it much easier for every single player in the game to 'reroll' to a new class at least once. This decently mimics the MOBA and FightGame function. "You think your character is better now? Great!" "You think a different character is strong now and that we messed up balance and you know how to win? Great!"

Both those types play more, and the game flatly gives them the ability to do this by letting them transfer skills, weapons, and the fact that all classes in the game can wear the same armor (there's only like 10 individual Glove slot options in the entire game, of which a whopping 3 are viable). To them, this is a beneficial structure.

Imo that's a shoddy design. I'd prefer a "something new for all" approach rather than "you can switch to smth else if you wanna". Now obviously that's a much more difficult thing to design properly, but imo it'd feel much better to return to your main character and see all the new stuff that you can do with it rather than coming back just to switch to something else completely.

By the looks of it Steven has a similar idea, with archetype being never-changing and all, but we'll have to see what he'll come up with for returnee players.

Azherae wrote: »

Take a Tab based game now where gear and build trumps your twitch skills and even pattern recognition abilities. Basically just make gear determine more. But your main Archetype is set, and BiS for Cleric and BiS for Ranger are totally different gear pieces. The group sitting on the giant pile of gear due to winning more often before, can adapt faster, and so they win again, and they can do this without any meaningful change to their actual ability to play.

Ashes will probably never let this happen. The most we'll get is the change of perception of 'what's the best Secondary Archetype', 'what's the best in slot for this archetype', or 'what's the best team comp'.

None of those things reset the situation because your opponents were winning due to 'Dominance Skill' not 'Instance Skill'. Most people can do that analysis. If you 'need to fight in PvP against strong enemies to learn and improve', but those enemies are too strong for you to see if you're improving (or in some cases, even get a chance to improve), most people can see this as a losing situation and stop. MOBAs solve this by 'matchmaking' and 'resetting'. MMOs provide neither.

But if making a new BiS takes longer than getting an old one, the weaker players will have some time to catch up. The returnees would know what they want (that is if we have the event I mentioned), so they'd have a rough plan of action and be preoccupied with it for some time. The top people would be fighting each other in lvl6 node sieges because you'd most likely have to change some nodes around to unlock the new content.

And to support those who lose the sieges and all the returnees who might no longer be citizens, you could have some update-related bonuses for new citizens, which would let them catch up to the stronger bois even more. And it could even promote migration of more casual players who were still playing the game.

In other words, you'd raise up the power floor w/o immediately raising the ceiling. Yes, it wouldn't be a complete reset, but it would at least rebalance the power on the server.

I need you on my team for some other stuff if you seriously think like this. No sarc. I could use that energy.

BDO does all those things you mentioned. Same result. I don't think I'm going to try to convince you that 'just because it never seems to work, it can't work'.

Something new for all. New class entirely. Easy trick. "Here's a new class, maybe THIS one is the one for you!"
Everyone complains that it is OP because they don't know how to beat it... then they learn... then we're back where we started.

Getting new BiS technically 'can't' take 'longer' than getting an old one, we're talking about like 'balance changes mean that Ranger/Tank is now awesome' and the previously superstrong Fighter/Bard is not'.

Unless Ranger/Tank was terrible before, that means that there are a bunch of Ranger/Tank already. The better ones amongst those now dominate. Who did this affect? All it does is 'dethrone' one group. If it doesn't do more than that, then it wasn't a shakeup.

So if we assume that there is a proper shakeup to 'keep things fresh', you've made 'the people who got effectively buffed' feel better, and some of the ones who used to play might return, but for the other 80% or so who left because "Fighter/Bards stomp my friend group which doesn't have a Fighter/Bard", they gained nothing that makes them go 'oh yeah let's come back and try again!'. Because they already left, and if they were gone for long, they know that 'the other group' that is their 'rival' or whatever who 'always won because they had a Fighter/Bard' is now stronger than them in other ways.

But like I said, not really trying to convince. My entire 'thing' in Fighting Games is to try to fix this, to try to convince people 'give it a try, you CAN actually learn in a way other than having this frustrating experience'. I expect our Ashes content to be similar.

Just noting that you're different. When you're in the thick of it, trying to teach and convince people to stay because 'things aren't that bad, we can still improve', and they're having the same flat/generally unsatisfying experience every time... idk. I can't just write off people who want to give up in that situation as 'not being serious enough'. It's a game.

One thing I will remind though...

It's not that people who are 'not at the top' are leaving. It's that the 'bottom half' are leaving. And the 'bottom quartile' doesn't feel any positive effects in competitive situations in that way no matter what the devs do unless those devs are literally 'rewarding people with strength, for losing'.

I don't know of any MMOs that go so far as to reward the losing group with power.

EDIT: Realized that we might be literally 'losing the thread' in terms of how it connects to the topic.

MOBAs succeed at shakeups because player skill is in responses and planning, Tab-heavy MMOs wouldn't because player 'skill' and power is in their gear and builds around that gear. Do we even measure 'above average' in PvP Tab Target MMOs by player skill? Not 'the best'. Just 'two average people randomly meet on a field and fight'. I expect the more geared player to win that 90% of the time. The difference is that when Action skill stuff and forced errors are involved, the other player might figure out something or learn something beyond 'Oh, I need better gear'.

We have not received permission from NishUK to share the quoted post.

Ok let's start from the top a bit, no sarc, (maybe just snark)?

You MIGHT be making some assumptions about why I say things and I was avoiding 'throwing out backstory' to lessen the drift of the thread but clarifying my position might have that effect in the other way.

1. Popular COMPETITIVE Genres reward those types of players. Competitive genres are the niche thing here. I base this on my involvement with Fighting Games, competitive space sims, and of course, MMORPGs. I am all for increasing people's interest and willingness to participate in those games.
2. Humans perceive rewards relative to what everyone else gets. in competitive games. This is debatable to a point, but I can't even manage to convince most people that both rank-down and rank-up in SFV are 'rewards' because they both put you closer to 'matches with people of your own level of skill'. That should be good, right? Since enjoying those matches is the point.
3. I personally think all MMOs should have combat systems at minimum more like MOBAs. Don't like Isometric? May I suggest Predecessor ? I also think that all MMO gear should make a given player meaningfully better at playing the game the way they want to play it and not just 'the way that is better flat out'. I'm waiting for a game that achieves that.
4. I would love BDO combat in PvP if it wasn't plagued with the standard issues of lag/rollback, low TTK, and high technological accessibility requirement. I don't know why one would call BDO in particular the future of combat, given that until you are at least at my level, you don't even get to actually 'participate' in the 'fight' part if you don't win. You use your skill to dance around carefully so that you get the engage to do your combo, or you fail and your opponent touches you with their combo and you explode. Learning BDO PvP is entirely 'being destroyed dozens of times every time you mis-step' until you learn what 'don't mis-step' is, except that your opponents don't have true patterns like Dark Souls/Elden Ring.
5. My role in my design group is balance (hit boxes, hurtboxes, frame data) for both our Fighting Game content and our MMORPG combat designs so whenever you see me talk about anything, it's at the microlevel. I'm not concerned with whether or not any given MMO's idea 'can be good'. I'm concerned with things like 'hm, Kunoichi's grab range on Suicide Fall is slightly too low for the amount of active frames it has and there's two less invincibility frames during the startup than there needs to be for that to be good'.
6. Potential to a mass audience does not correlate to player retention even in single player games. When I think mass audience I think 'people who can be convinced to buy your game'.

There's a story stuck in my mind that I wish I could easily find now. Before the release of its expansion, 50% of players who bought Monster Hunter: World quit at the fourth Monster. Anecdotal and some gathered info from the devs indicate that it was too hard for at least 20-30% of them, as they didn't just 'get bored and stop', they hit a wall. On Anjanath. In a game where you can change weapon freely, and before you COULD have needed considerably better gear to do it. People are extremely varied in their skill at games , but more importantly from this anecdote is... they quit . They quit SINGLE player games with great combat, full freedom, potential to play with friends, and no real penalties for losing, a game with a history so you could know what you were getting into, a game where they managed to clear the first three experiences, because the game went 'ok now try something slightly harder that represents the rest of the gameplay a bit better'. And at least 30% of people noped right out of that until they were handed relatively OP (compared to the target monster) gear and better players were directly incentivized to carry them. And after that they largely quit 5(?) fights later because they hit the wall where even carrying them becomes hard cause they have to at least manage to participate and not die.

So I absolutely don't mind if BDO is the future of combat (assuming MMOs start integrating GGPO or something). I do believe, however, from just data collection on this forum alone, that I, or someone like me, would have to find a way to teach over 50% of the population the absolute basics of competitive Action Combat for them to even start to think 'this is cool, kinda fun' in a competitive situation. Maybe do some Vindictus match analysis.

If the future of MMOs is 'Just Ashes, Ashes is the best so it absorbs all 100 million MMO players in the world with the skill or tenacity to keep doing this and who won't quit because they understand that losing their fights and Node is part of the narrative for them to enjoy', I am 100% on board for that. I wouldn't even be here if I thought they couldn't achieve at least that.

However I play enough BDO and track their development enough to know that the thing keeping BDO alive on the 'casuals' level is DEFINITELY not the combat system. I'll assume you play it enough that I don't need to explain exactly how their manipulations to retain monthly user metrics work. If not, for everyone else... think EVERYTHING that Steven has promised not to do in Ashes and do ALL OF IT.

So, hopefully now with me off the list of 'people who are just here to oppose proper PvP incentives' and no one else in the thread with those views, you can target the things I say that are actually wrong.

Are We Cool Yet?

Azherae wrote: »

I need you on my team for some other stuff if you seriously think like this. No sarc. I could use that energy.

If I manage to get the money for the alpha2, we might work together a bit

Azherae wrote: »

So if we assume that there is a proper shakeup to 'keep things fresh', you've made 'the people who got effectively buffed' feel better, and some of the ones who used to play might return, but for the other 80% or so who left because "Fighter/Bards stomp my friend group which doesn't have a Fighter/Bard", they gained nothing that makes them go 'oh yeah let's come back and try again!'. Because they already left, and if they were gone for long, they know that 'the other group' that is their 'rival' or whatever who 'always won because they had a Fighter/Bard' is now stronger than them in other ways.

And this is why Intrepid should balance the archetypes to the best of their ability in such a way that having one of each in your party is the literal best composition. The classes might add some variation and/or even a replacement here and there, but one of each should be the goal imo. This way there's no real "wahhh, this class combo beats us every single time, neeerf!!" Obviously people will still complain about the RPS matchups in smaller groups, but if there's a class that dominates over 80% of the other classes, shifting the RPS in the favor of those 80% would, in theory, bring the ones who left due to that domination back.

Azherae wrote: »

It's not that people who are 'not at the top' are leaving. It's that the 'bottom half' are leaving. And the 'bottom quartile' doesn't feel any positive effects in competitive situations in that way no matter what the devs do unless those devs are literally 'rewarding people with strength, for losing'.

I don't know of any MMOs that go so far as to reward the losing group with power.

This is where mmos gotta somehow take a page from mobas' book. There's always a loser in any match. There's always someone at the bottom of the rank ladder. But those people still play the game because the process itself is fun and probably because the reset makes them feel that they haven't lost in the grand scheme of things, even if they went lower on the ladder. Their next match is still against people who might lose and if you have enough understanding of the ranking system you know that this match is probably against weaker people so you have a potentially higher chance to win, so you keep playing.

I think we could imitate this through node lvls. If we have some seasonal system that's tied to your actions (mainly pvp ones) within nodes, we could break up its rewards based on which node you're acting in.

If you live in lvl4 node (let's say that's around adventure lvl 25-35) and you participate in caravan pvps and guild wars and other pvp events, you'll get points purely for participation. You'll get a bit more points if you win, but you'll always get some point.

Now let's say you've been on a losing streak and feel like quitting. What this system could do for you to support you is trade you seasonal points in lvl4 node to more points at a lvl3 node. Maybe you get a discount to rebuild your freehold there, or for the citizenship itself. Maybe you get a temporary boost to xp gain, so that you can farm mobs around that node (which might be 15-25).

This way you've rewarded a loser, you still rewarded the winner (because they got what they wanted in the pvp event), you rebalanced the power lvl of 2 nodes (now that lvl3 node has a stronger defender in the case of a siege) and you shifted the marketplace a bit because that higher lvled loser can now farm lower lvled locations better/faster, which brings more money/node points to the lvl3 node.

Now obviously this is just a quick idea that would need a ton of testing/balancing/changing, but I do think that we can minimize player loss in this kind of way.

Azherae wrote: »

MOBAs succeed at shakeups because player skill is in responses and planning, Tab-heavy MMOs wouldn't because player 'skill' and power is in their gear and builds around that gear. Do we even measure 'above average' in PvP Tab Target MMOs by player skill? Not 'the best'. Just 'two average people randomly meet on a field and fight'. I expect the more geared player to win that 90% of the time. The difference is that when Action skill stuff and forced errors are involved, the other player might figure out something or learn something beyond 'Oh, I need better gear'.

Imo this is where RPS class matchups come into play. Obviously if it's the same class, then the more geared person should win more times, but with a good RPS system (with the addition of augments on top of it) you might circumvent some of the gear power. And I think that's what Steven means when he says that only 50% of player power will depend on gear. And if the gear balance is in such a way that tier 5 doesn't just obliterated tier 4 - the difference in power would be even less.

I've seen countless battles where undergeared players won against overgeared ones through purely class RPS, and have seen cases where better knowledge of both classes played a roll in winning in spite of RPS. Add to that some soft dmg rng, augments factor and personal mechanical/strategical skill and you have yourself a somewhat fair pvp system.

Now obviously none of this would prevent some people from leaving, just because they can always find a reason to leave the game. But I do believe that, if designed well enough, Intrepid can minimize the player loss in Ashes.