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

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I'm not saying MMOs shouldn't have PvP, I'm saying that if that PvP happens outside of arenas or has real consequences, in the game paradigms we have available NOW, they suffer the same problem every time.

Which is why we're long overdue a paradigm shift. But it's so risky to do, moneywise, that no one even attempts it. And the ones who even try going for smth pvp-centric, usually go for nostalgia-inspired games, instead of trying to come up with a new system where owpvp might work in everyone's favor (if that is even possible obviously).

Well, we don't know if Intrepid is going to try to come up with such a system eventually. There's nothing tying them to the less effective paradigms as of now.

But I think their messaging is correct to start where it is. Many methods of introducing PvP to those who 'hope to just avoid it', even methods explicitly intended to lead to growth and additional fun, are interpreted by those people as 'Oh good I don't have to PvP' instead of 'Oh good I have a chance to get good at/enjoy PvP'.

Which means that no matter how well you design the system, there will always be a subset of very loud people willing to broadcast to the world that 'this game is supposed to protect me from PvP but it doesn't'. Better to make it clear up front 'yeah you're gonna just get killed and you probably won't be able to do anything about it', and then work on properly incentivizing 'participation' later depending on your game's other progression mechanics.

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

Yeahhh no. I'm sure the world you live in, the 'groups you encounter', are like this.

Korean MMOs simply 'have people sit in their safe zones for as long as possible' when they're the person I'm talking about. They also generally have such poor owPvP that one literally does not take it seriously when one is attacked and killed.

I'm not talking about the sort of player who 'learns to fight to defend their high level grind spot'. I'm talking about the type of player who 'eventually gets tired of dying on the road a few times in BDO and rerolls to a character that doesn't level past 49 so they can be immune'.

You're a Tekken player, right? So here's the analogy. I'm not talking about 'the people who go to tournaments but lose terribly' or even the 'people who get salty at ranked'. I'm talking about the people who boot up the game to play Story Mode and never fight another living person because it's too stressful for them and the game isn't good enough at teaching you how to FIGHT.

Oh, apparently Shadowbane also had a good gear balance for pvp. It's a shame that it had a ton of reasons for failure though could've supported this genre direction at least a bit more.

NiKr wrote: »

Oh, apparently Shadowbane also had a good gear balance for pvp. It's a shame that it had a ton of reasons for failure though could've supported this genre direction at least a bit more.

What you call good gear balance others call 'bad gearing system'.

Back to the same problem. For a PvP game to be successful in that way, the effects of 'time spent not explicitly practicing combat skill' end up minimized. Players who come into the game wanting to spend time doing things other than practicing combat skill can be 'forced to endure combat', and with enough unpleasant losses, they tire of this and leave.

The Genre is always hampered by the fact that the sort of person who wants a 'fair fight' (let's define this as a fight in which an opponent can gain a meaningful understanding or skill from the experience) seeks other games FIRST and MMOs SECOND, whereas 'bullies' seek MMOs first and other competitive skill games second. You can predict the effect of this quite easily.

Azherae wrote: »

What you call good gear balance others call 'bad gearing system'.

Back to the same problem. For a PvP game to be successful in that way, the effects of 'time spent not explicitly practicing combat skill' end up minimized. Players who come into the game wanting to spend time doing things other than practicing combat skill can be 'forced to endure combat', and with enough unpleasant losses, they tire of this and leave.

Well yeah, this is just a subjective preference. I personally consider the system where you change your gear every 2 lvls trash. Or the system where you need some exact super powerful gear in order to even try and clear some content (pve or pvp), to me, is also trash.

I understand that my view of mmos is very skewed because of L2, and on top of that I might be somewhat of a contrarian that just hates everything that's popular - but I just prefer L2's gear system to most other systems I've seen so far.

Azherae wrote: »

The Genre is always hampered by the fact that the sort of person who wants a 'fair fight' (let's define this as a fight in which an opponent can gain a meaningful understanding or skill from the experience) seeks other games FIRST and MMOs SECOND, whereas 'bullies' seek MMOs first and other competitive skill games second. You can predict the effect of this quite easily.

I guess me and the other L2 bois (not necessarily from this forum) are just bullies that enjoyed L2's pvp system first and foremost and only then went out to try other pvp games and couldn't find more satisfaction there than what we had in L2.

I've played dota 2 for over 1k hours, I've played world of tanks, cod, battlefield, CS, fall guys, rocket league, tried out a few BRs, and know a ton of people who have a similar range of experience in different pvp games - and none of those gave us the same experience as L2's pvp did. We still remember our escapades in L2 after over 7 years of not playing it. We still remember huge pvp fights from different L2 servers, both the ones that we won and the ones where we lost dramatically. We remember rivalries against people whose power lvls matched or outshone ours. Those were all 'fair" pvp fights to us exactly because, even if our enemy had superior gear, we still had a chance at victory and when we managed to achieve that victory - it was all that much sweeter.

And from all those experiences I can remember maybe a few people that complained about power differences between them and their enemies. And even that only happened if the enemy was several tiers of gear higher and maybe even OEd on top of that, where you really couldn't do much against them. But the game allowed you to not interact with those people, go farm up some resources or some weaker mobs, get the money for a bit better gear and get the chance to fight against that more powerful force with better chances. And that was the case exactly because of the gearing system in L2.

Or, at least, that's how I remember those things going down. Maybe my mind is completely clouded by nostalgia or maybe I just had such a unique experience that barely anyone else had (doubt it).

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

I wasn't talking just about action combat mmos. And imo you can still RP as your class, because I doubt that irl you're an assassin that strikes everyone's back or a renowned magician that can create lighting out of nothing. But I understand that our views on RP are different so I won't really argue that point with you.
Ashes is already shifting the MMORPG paradigm in several ways.[/quote]
And that is exactly why I'm interested in it (on top of it being "L3").

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

VRMMORPG is just action combat though well, in most cases that's been shown anime/novels.

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

Yeah, I know, which is why I defend Steven's design choices as much as I can. I can come up with additional systems that might be better for casuals, but I still try to keep the core idea in mind. And Ashes' success (or lack of) will determine for me if pvp mmos are as viable as I believe they are. But I do want the game to succeed as much as possible and that would require at least some casual-friendly systems. And AoC already has a few of those, but they'll have to get tested to prove if they're enough to appeal to that crowd.

And just as you said, there's been countless mmos that failed for multitude of reasons. Usually it's the basic failures of development, but game design is definitely one of them and having owpvp is a yet another barrier to overcome on top of bad development. And that's why I try to place myself in the shoes of a filthy non-pvp casual and try to find some middle ground that would keep the core idea of owpvp w/o just saying "fuck you" to the casual player.

One of my biggest dreams for an mmo is a particle-based spell-crafting mmo. The balance would be around character stats (that you yourself allocate), which would determine your range of control when in comes to spell-crafting. But the main point would be that you can create your own spells. I feel like UE5 could manage to support such a design idea and make it look really cool, but I dunno if there's development tools that can streamline the coding process for it. And depending on the coding part, you could determine which combat system would fit the design the best.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

What you call good gear balance others call 'bad gearing system'.

Back to the same problem. For a PvP game to be successful in that way, the effects of 'time spent not explicitly practicing combat skill' end up minimized. Players who come into the game wanting to spend time doing things other than practicing combat skill can be 'forced to endure combat', and with enough unpleasant losses, they tire of this and leave.

Well yeah, this is just a subjective preference. I personally consider the system where you change your gear every 2 lvls trash. Or the system where you need some exact super powerful gear in order to even try and clear some content (pve or pvp), to me, is also trash.

I understand that my view of mmos is very skewed because of L2, and on top of that I might be somewhat of a contrarian that just hates everything that's popular - but I just prefer L2's gear system to most other systems I've seen so far.

Azherae wrote: »

The Genre is always hampered by the fact that the sort of person who wants a 'fair fight' (let's define this as a fight in which an opponent can gain a meaningful understanding or skill from the experience) seeks other games FIRST and MMOs SECOND, whereas 'bullies' seek MMOs first and other competitive skill games second. You can predict the effect of this quite easily.

I guess me and the other L2 bois (not necessarily from this forum) are just bullies that enjoyed L2's pvp system first and foremost and only then went out to try other pvp games and couldn't find more satisfaction there than what we had in L2.

I've played dota 2 for over 1k hours, I've played world of tanks, cod, battlefield, CS, fall guys, rocket league, tried out a few BRs, and know a ton of people who have a similar range of experience in different pvp games - and none of those gave us the same experience as L2's pvp did. We still remember our escapades in L2 after over 7 years of not playing it. We still remember huge pvp fights from different L2 servers, both the ones that we won and the ones where we lost dramatically. We remember rivalries against people whose power lvls matched or outshone ours. Those were all 'fair" pvp fights to us exactly because, even if our enemy had superior gear, we still had a chance at victory and when we managed to achieve that victory - it was all that much sweeter.

And from all those experiences I can remember maybe a few people that complained about power differences between them and their enemies. And even that only happened if the enemy was several tiers of gear higher and maybe even OEd on top of that, where you really couldn't do much against them. But the game allowed you to not interact with those people, go farm up some resources or some weaker mobs, get the money for a bit better gear and get the chance to fight against that more powerful force with better chances. And that was the case exactly because of the gearing system in L2.

Or, at least, that's how I remember those things going down. Maybe my mind is completely clouded by nostalgia or maybe I just had such a unique experience that barely anyone else had (doubt it).

Actually, lemme roll with this, for a bit. Know that I'm not actually 'serious' nor attacking you with the outlandish 'claims' I'm about to make.

Yeah, if you chose an MMO first and would still do that you're more likely to be a 'bully' than not. But here's the thing. I don't think you're necessarily a bully, I think you're 'a person who would remove most of the incentive or capacity to be one, from MMOs'.

You don't have to be a bully within the game, you just have to hold that mindset of 'If I can get good, through my effort, so can anyone else, so the game shouldn't have to be changed for them at all'. You don't seem to hold this view either, but remember that the faster games become, the more mechanically intense they become, and a lot of people don't 'speak that language' in terms of gaming, so those people have years of catching up to do 'mentally'.

So when that person says "I don't know how you manage this, I just can't do it, I wish they'd make it easier/make it so that I could stick to only my own tier of opponent and not have to worry about high level players flattening me'.

If your response is 'Well just practice more and get good, it's more interesting', that's the start of it, and if you find yourself thinking 'you just gotta live with it, it's part of the game, you're too soft', then you're at the 'bully' tier.

I don't think most players hate PvP. I don't think most players hate owPvP, conceptually. I think players hate being victims and/or helpless. The 'bully' response to this is to go 'well you should just try harder, I don't see why you're letting this get to you'.

It's absolutely FINE and technically FAIR to have this response, but it's also 'the response that leads to people leaving the game'. Which is no issue if all you want is to have mechanically-skilled players playing the game until the next iteration thereof. It's just enacting a natural filter that some could argue is supposed to be there. If someone doesn't have the skill+mindset to enjoy a game, it is beneficial to EVERYONE involved if they stop playing that game.

Except the producers of the game.

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

And this is fine, I just don't know if an MMO can support this style of thing, because MMOs (with actual gear and enemy strength/challenge tiers in them) allow other people to get stronger than you and DENY YOU STUFF, including the game experience itself, while you are improving more slowly than they are. In some cases they can deny you improvement itself .

This is why Action Combat and Open World PvP are a 'problem' for certain player types. I absolutely believe that players who are willing to play games they constantly lose at, exist. But a game where someone can take up your time, while you know that you have NO chance of beating them, and take away your access to stuff?

Not even your actual stuff in your inventory, literally just your access to other stuff for your desired experience, is something that can happen. If you log into Ashes and you decide 'I want to fish', and the stronger player next to you goes 'nope sorry this entire beach is my spot go somewhere else', EVEN if Corruption happens to them for chasing you off, you still didn't get to fish. The other player's skill dictates whether or not you get to play a part of the game you enjoy. If you don't enjoy the other player AS the challenge (which is entirely possible in an MMO, even bad matchmaking in MOBAs leads to this), and you don't get to enjoy the other content you wanted to enjoy, you might just log off.

Since people don't all have the immediate reaction of 'I should practice my PvP' as a response to 'being chased off their fishing spot when they have only an hour to play that night', some of them don't keep playing the game. There are multiple reactions one could have, many of which don't involve you personally fighting the person at all, which is where I hope Ashes goes, but at the end of the day if you can't win a fight in an owPvP game you 'become a second class citizen' temporarily, and until games start to incentivize 'fighting anyway because it is fun even if you aren't that good at it', this will stay so. It isn't enough to 'discourage people from fighting those who don't want to fight back', because this doesn't change the reaction of people I'm talking about, it just delays it.

Any game that punishes the 'stronger player on the beach' from pushing the other off the beach, isn't really owPvP at all, imo.

EDIT: Actually now, I have a question? What game type? Because I was assuming you meant PvP MMOs.

Azherae wrote: »

Actually, lemme roll with this, for a bit. Know that I'm not actually 'serious' nor attacking you with the outlandish 'claims' I'm about to make.

Yeah, if you chose an MMO first and would still do that you're more likely to be a 'bully' than not. But here's the thing. I don't think you're necessarily a bully, I think you're 'a person who would remove most of the incentive or capacity to be one, from MMOs'.

You don't have to be a bully within the game, you just have to hold that mindset of 'If I can get good, through my effort, so can anyone else, so the game shouldn't have to be changed for them at all'. You don't seem to hold this view either, but remember that the faster games become, the more mechanically intense they become, and a lot of people don't 'speak that language' in terms of gaming, so those people have years of catching up to do 'mentally'.

So when that person says "I don't know how you manage this, I just can't do it, I wish they'd make it easier/make it so that I could stick to only my own tier of opponent and not have to worry about high level players flattening me'.

If your response is 'Well just practice more and get good, it's more interesting', that's the start of it, and if you find yourself thinking 'you just gotta live with it, it's part of the game, you're too soft', then you're at the 'bully' tier.

I don't think most players hate PvP. I don't think most players hate owPvP, conceptually. I think players hate being victims and/or helpless. The 'bully' response to this is to go 'well you should just try harder, I don't see why you're letting this get to you'.

It's absolutely FINE and technically FAIR to have this response, but it's also 'the response that leads to people leaving the game'. Which is no issue if all you want is to have mechanically-skilled players playing the game until the next iteration thereof. It's just enacting a natural filter that some could argue is supposed to be there. If someone doesn't have the skill+mindset to enjoy a game, it is beneficial to EVERYONE involved if they stop playing that game.

Except the producers of the game.

And in order to address these kinds of issues, I've presented a few design additions that would keep those who dislike losing too much from being forever losers. Even if I do agree with the "suck it up and move on" mentality, I can still understand those who harshly disagree with it and/or consider it bully-like. I've suggested a "universal basic income" system that would support all the time-casual players, while also bringing them closer to hardcore dudes, on top of giving some cosmetic rewards for said hardcore players. I've suggested a fairly soft gear decay system that would be quite kind to non-minmaxing players (though we obviously dunno how the current system works, so my suggestion might be completely useless). And I've suggested a "Node-based pvp ranking system" that would spread out rewards across the ranks, and even reward losers in a way.

And as far as I think, none of those suggestions go against the core principle of "risk vs reward" or remove pvp from the game, or remove material scarcity, or interrupt the hierarchy of "people who play more have more" that quite a few people on this forum dearly hold onto. Now obviously I might've missed smth or left a potential exploit in my ideas, but that's what happens to any untested and unchecked designs.

All that's to say "I believe that we can appeal to both sides of this issue w/o completely shutting either of sides off or removing some mechanics that one of the sides prefers".

And when it comes to mechanically weaker players going against superhumans that have 1k apm, I've always supported tab target and a properly balanced gear exactly because both of those things help mechanically weaker people win in pvp (or at least have a better chance at doing so). Even back in mid 00s, I've played with dudes, who were way over 40, who could kick butt and lead other people while they were at it. They knew their class' potential, they knew other classes' abilities and used that knowledge to their absolute benefit. And they could teach that knowledge to anyone else in their group/guild/alliance, which they did quite often (specifically to me too). None of it was bullyish "you either get this or you're fucked", none of it was "get the fuck out of our super elite guild until you learn this on your own" and none of it was on some artificial timer at the end of which you'd have to be the apex predator of the server.

But as you've said, games have indeed become quite a bit faster, but you know what also changed? Information availability. If back then I had to talk to that older dude to get some real knowledge about the game, then now he could just point me towards a few info sources and I could learn at my own pace on my own time. So the only problem, when it comes to game speed, is the people yelling at you "TO BE FUCKING FASTER, YOU TURTLEFUCK". But I believe that we could solve that issue by just ostracizing people like that from our community.

And afaik FF14 community has this to some extent. They let newbies watch cinematics for their first time w/o yelling at them to pick up the pace. They're friendlier to those who might not know some boss mechanics during raids. And the overall in-game community is just friendlier to each other's interests (or at least they act friendly).

Now obviously that might be because FF14 is barely competitive (outside of world first runs), but even in my L2 experience, I've always shunned dickbags in any of the guilds I was a part of and promoted friendliness towards our enemies as much as our members, when I was a leader. And if there was some conflict within the guild, I'd either take blame onto myself and made the conflicting people calm down, or I'd kick the person who was being a big ol' dick about the situation, making them an example of what not to do and what not to be in my guild. And I'd say it worked out quite nicely.

In other words, if everyone cleans up around themselves - the whole world will be cleaner.

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

I'll note (mostly for others who might not be reading through my long posts) that I'm not opposed to ANYTHING Intrepid wants to do except the whole 'no innate incentives for actually learning PvP mindsets' bit, which isn't even assured.

That said.

In order for Action Combat to be understandable to the majority, it must be slow.

If it is slow, it is barely meaningfully different from most 'Tab Target' combat except if you design it a specific way. I therefore see no difference either.

If one wants the game to be faster, it's a rush for people like me, and an unending slog for some people I know. They try, believe me, but it just does NOT work out for them. Therefore, if Ashes aims for 'slow and simple' as a way to 'cap' the skill ceiling for the absolute maniacs out there that see things in literal Frames Per Second and onscreen distances by the quadpixel, I will not get that rush, but I will think that the overall outcome was better.

Everyone's definition of 'awesome' will be different. But we can get a reasonable lower bound for 'playable'.

Anything pushing the limits of human reaction time (not aim) is effectively a Fighting Game (capitalized for Genre reference), and anything below that isn't 'Action enough' for some people, but that level, where it 'isn't Action enough' is the point where the industry mostly already knows what to do, so we don't even need to discuss it. Convergent evolution alone should handle it.

"Everything is just Breath Of The Wild with extra steps."

@Nikr , all clear, data absorbed and catalogued. Into the pile it goes!

I don't have anything additional to say, relative to that line, so I'mma get back out of the way and let NishUK and whoever else discuss stuff.

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

Yeah, it's definitely a hard thing to get used to if you've never played with/liked it. Though to me it always meant speed of actions, because my left hand was always on the skills and at the ready instead of just movement.

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

L2 was definitely leaning more towards pvp than pve in its pvx mix. The pve itself didn't have any real mechanics, while it constantly had pvp for itself. And pvp side had ffa pvp guild wars, castle sieges, fortress sieges (in later updates), a second kind of castle sieges, arena pvp that had a huuuuge influence on open world pvp, and of course pvp for the right to pve. Yes, you had karma do dissuade people from just murdering each other, but social standing was a much greater deterrent than karma ever was. And due to L2's mechanics, a lot of people just made PK alts if they really needed to kill someone, which were usually either bots or some low lvl players that stood in the way of that person's other alt that was meant for low lvl farming. Although that kind of interaction happened way more often on higher rated private servers than official ones.

All in all, I'd definitely say L2 was pvp-centric, even if most of the pvp happened around mobs. And Steven's trying to bring Ashes closer to the middle of the PvX spectrum, with all the super difficult bosses and artisan professions.