Combat is moving in the wrong direction

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My main class had two teleports (backward and forward), with the backward tp being an aoe attack at the use location, with a stun effect, so I had to position myself correctly to hit the enemy with the aoe, while also approach at a correct angle so that when I use the skill I tp in a correct direction. And I had a fear aoe cone ability used in front of the character, so if I wanted to hit someone with it I'd need to track their movement and predict it if they were in a full run.

And again, all of this is based on your mouse clicks, which you needed to use as targeting, so the overall pace of actions was higher and you had to keep track of more stuff and act precisely on that tracking.

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Feints usually came down to the knowledge of the opponents skillset and the general order of its use. And some classes depended on the spacing, but it was more about "if he enters this radius, will he use this ability or another one" and that enemy bating a wrong move by stopping for fraction of a second to make the other dude think he was about to use a certain ability. But this usually only worked at the very top lvl of pvp, so was somewhat rare.

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Like I said, there's a big lack of videos for L2. Especially considering that a ton of people disliked the newer versions so they only played on old private servers, so there was even fewer videos for the new stuff.

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Yes, it's all about the amount of stuff you gotta consider and how quickly you gotta do that. And videos don't tell you any of that, because you don't know what the player is considering or what he's reading in his enemy's actions. The pace of combat just implies all that stuff, but as Azherae said, BDO fools people into thinking there's more stuff to consider, while in reality there isn't much. Though I know you disagree with that, but that's a thing you two can argue on your own, cause I don't know enough about BDO to do that. I'm just saying that if L2 can have a high pace of combat and I know that it requires a ton of consideration during fights, I'm willing to believe that there are other tab games that can have the same design.

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I can't really speak for other games, but L2's speed variety gets sanded down by the dependence of its animation on the atk/cast speed. Late game has really high cast/atk speed, so the overall speed of everything is high too, which makes you feel that everyone is at the same lvl.

On one hand that's bad, because everyone feels almost the same, but on the other hand it's good because people are more equal in pvp, so even melee classes have a chance to beat ranged ones because they're fast enough with their attacks.

But lower lvls have a ton of speed variety. A few phys classes have very long casts, but do a good chunk of dmg. Daggers have really fast animations. Mages vary depending on their race. The difference is probably not as big as EQ's, but it's present.

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Video required as prerequisite for explanation, but is not in itself explanation.



Fighting Games solve this differently than BDO and certain PvP games by having lower mobility and a somewhat limited 'optimal movement range'. 2D ones limit you in the way seen above. 3D ones are a different matter that I can explain by grabbing Mag7's Siegfried play that I have somewhere from before on these forums.

Basically it takes 2-3 seconds to close the distance safely so long cast times are ok when applied in one of three ways.

1. The cast itself must finish, and has a duration over which it does damage and probably lowers the mobility of the opponent, MMO equiv: Mage's Black Hole or Prismatic Beam.
2. The charge time is not 'rooting you' but 'requiring you to hold a button which for whatever reason reduces your other options while you are holding it'. These are reasonable to have a player hold for up to 3 seconds in Fighting Games. Release and execution of the attack may still not be instant even then (up to 25f startup is common). The player is 'charging up' and trying to put the opposing player in the right position for unleash at the right time. This type works in MMO PvP provided it has enough defenses or discouragements, while remaining mainly balanced even with a good tank.
3. The character moves slowly in general but the opponent has multiple sorta-passive reasons other than the long casts that they do not want to be near this character. Often requires that the character has 'bubble' type or 'frontal guard' type defenses, resistance to slows, and timed counterattacks. This type doesn't work well in MMO/MOBA situations in my experience because the mirror match ends up feeling stupid. For Fighting Gamers this can be fine/fun because micromovement matters more in those. Better MOBAs allow you to make builds where it works similar to that.

Even then, the timeframes don't often get into the 2-3 second range but this is a little 'non-applicable' to fighting games of certain complexity because the better players may spend 3-5 seconds just minutely repositioning without real attacks.

Inapplicable to BDO because BDO is a 10 second button-masher with single-interaction rounds for 90% of its engagements. It has a theoretical skill space where this is not true, but the type of player who likes BDO for the combat is normally actually not a Fighting Game player seriously because it is not as satisfying to them due to the shallow nature of the combat.

Even those people who prefer to 'play games where you flit around for 6 seconds and then combo the opponent to death for 10, want to be able to show off their 10 second Touch of Death combo skills, whereas in BDO you can kill someone with minimal actual combo skill faster than they could even attempt to respond.

Basically, such characters exist on the Fighting Game side, and FFXI PvP does have some similar situations as well, but it's difficult to explain it to the unfamiliar.

The video offers what little I can show easily from a 2D game that is similar to BDO. "Actually rather slow but looks fast".

The only 3D game I know that is similar to BDO is Soul Calibur, which is both ironic and annoying given what it will likely trigger if we for some reason continued to discuss it in order to improve our feedback.

2 seconds is an eternity, and the better the game, the more it is an 'eternity of tiny decisions'. Whether that is deciding to constantly act (Kunoichi above) or constantly watch (Crusader above).

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I do.

Forgive the flippant empty response, but in my experience and extrapolating, Ashes is going to be closer to BDO than almost any other PvP combat game besides ArcheAge.

There is, at minimum, no contrary evidence that we've been provided.

They could definitely go in a direction that adds more depth, but the two are very similar.

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I liked Valheim quite a lot but I definitely do not want that kind combat in an mmo. And I'm not sure if it would even work for what Ashes is trying to do.

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I don't have any specific response to this. I was indirectly asked for data and provided it while attempting to maintain relevance to the topic. I understand that you disagree that my data provides relevance to the topic, but I have no specific reason to value your analysis(?) over my own at this time.

Please note that since I'm arrogant and toxic, I'm just going to view this as your bias until we have a proper discussion. Lots of people look at Ashes combat and see what they want to see. I at least know that I can speak for myself when I say that I don't see something I specifically want or like, so I feel it's less likely to be bias.

I find Ashes' described intents and frame data to be considerably closer to BDO than to GW2, with the main connector being the 'Split Body motion', which tends to lead to a perception shift.

I'm happy to hear your reasons why Ashes combat is not like BDO, with the note that I tend to talk more about the strategies that emerge from the frame data that end up being effective, than about the 'feel of combat'.

Other half of data, for the 'big bruiser character with reasons why you don't want to approach them'.

This is still mostly 2D but you CAN try to circle around your opponent if you want. One doesn't do so because side-movement doesn't require anything from the opponent. If you were locked onto a Tab Target in Ashes that would be the same. The player doing the sidesteps would be wasting time since your character would just keep track of them anyway.

Some people believe that the 'correct' way to play the larger character here is to 'calmly walk forward and use your range options' because the opponent can't easily close the distance in time. If they try, even with a very quick thing, sometimes the options available are too strong (there's a point where Mag uses a metered attack to destructively and decisively punish a roll).

In that sense, therefore, what you'd have is the whole 'I am holding a button to prepare one of my powerful attacks, while calmly advancing and keeping track of your position and my other (limited) instant attacks are on standby'.

The mobile/faster player must then feint in a way that makes the player either unleash the slow 'Charged' attack and miss, or use up their limited instant attack without reward, and then get another approach before it's available again.

In Ashes terms this could be the equivalent of 'tricking a tank into using Tremoring Bellow' without it actually landing the CC, when that Tank player who has Weapon Skill for example that has been 'charging for a while'. These character types are actually common, but only in games where the 'bruiser' character has tools to deal with repetitive long ranged attacks and retreating.

In a game with reasonably long TTK, this would probably work fine even if the charge/cast times were long. Decent to balance in full group, but likely to be overwhelmed by multiple opponents compared to a high mobility rapid attacker.

Bonus if being CCed doesn't cancel your charge as long as you keep holding the button, which is basically the main prerequisite for 'making long charge times anything other than stupid in these games'. The CC would still be useful because you could use it to prevent the 'instant attack' and get some damage, but the 'bruiser' would still have a chance of landing their big attack, instead of 'starting that attack, telegraphing it completely, obviously getting CCed, and becoming useless'.

Here's a very rudimentary application of "charge up an attack" in L2. Some of this class' skills require charges (ranging in quantity). The ability that gives 1 charge takes 0.9s to cast. So in order to hit opponents with strong abilities you gotta charge up first.

At 0:15 you can see the MC take 6 shots to the face while they charge up (it's the Sonic Focus (7th on the bar) in the combat log). The tradeoff for this charging system is obviously a shitton of hp on this class (and the other class that uses this mechanic).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyp9Y6QwMbs

You can disregard the general ttk of this video cause it's a pvp server with OEd weapons and full autobuff, but the mechanic itself is not changed.

Ok, this is kinda offtopic, but I found it fucking hilarious I tried looking for the other class that uses the charge mechanics and literally the first vid I find starts with Steven getting summoned onto mobs by trolls I took a triple take and had to go look for info on where he played and this seems legit. Lionna server, White Order guild.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8job3S9SAnk
At 1:33 Steven tries to kill the MC, but doesn't quite manage to do it.