Combat Discussion

Taking the opportunity to reiterate the current compilation again since it puts it near or at the top of the page, so it lets me put the reasonings back in it and improve the language. No corrections or updates, since most of the discussion has been philosophical.

Current Compilation/MVP
1. Directional control over the Q/LMB attack, specifically being able to 'slide attack' left or right with a fixed animation and distance, two separate strikes as the character spins, with no way for both attacks to hit a character except if they chose the same direction at the same time (also probably a S+Q/LMB that doesn't move your character forward).
Reasoning: Allows for mobility but not as much issues with ping or lag. The attacker can evade frontal abilities with good timing. The defender has enough time to turn to use their own W+Q/LMB to chase, guess the 'same side', or use an ability, while knowing relatively quickly what the position of the opponent will be, based on the movement distance.

2. A "Brace" function that locks you for a moment, probably not cancelable, but can be held, and slowly drains a little stamina. This Brace would block some portion of damage from the front and reduce chance of CC, attacking players could add the ability to overwhelm this CC reduction to their attacks.
Reasoning: As Ashes is balanced around small group combat anyway, and a bracing player can be outmaneuvered (especially if it takes a while to cancel out of it), the player can 'decide to brace' when they know a very obvious CC is coming, but the enemy gets to feint and be mobile, or use a long-cast high damage ability that isn't a CC. Monsters and bosses can then be given some amount of natural Overwhelm on various abilities, putting the 'random factor' of CC resists and so on, on the side of the attacker spec.

3. A tiny stamina cost for Q/LMB attack and larger Stamina costs for abilities to make the decision of if to keep doing Q/LMB between other skills, a meaningful one, with Stamina regen over time, set to be very slightly less than what you use up 'spamming Q/LMB'
Reasoning: Some players and classes will spec into strengthening Q/LMB and movement, others can ignore Q altogether, or just use it opportunistically when they are using abilities that also have very low stamina costs.

4. A modified form of gated strings, possibly as part of weapon skill trees, or just default, so that the combo attack changes in ways other than 'following the standing Q/LMB with a directional Q/LMB or ability)
Reasoning: Dynamic flow, ability to have specific abilities with wider attack arcs and 'hitboxes', to differentiate weapons and offer a way to increase damage for heavy weapon users without necessarily just relying on stats applied to the weapon.

There's been no direct complaints about this one so far, I think? Please complain if you have complaints, philosophical or otherwise.

I might do an explanation later about the many potential pitfalls of split body movement during attacks (not saying it can't work).

This is true, and also a point of discussion. Should we have stamina? I expect it would be intended, but maybe Dodge should still have a cooldown, or it will get... interesting. Rolling at least twice could be good? Would it be acceptable to limit it to two, in your opinion @Neurath ?

If they did split the stamina, if we consider where we are so far, should Brace be on the side of Combat stamina?

The MVP currently 'doesn't care' much if Sprint or Dodge or 'get up from prone' or whatever else, use the same stamina as weapon abilities. Due to this, it would mainly be a question of 'which one of these things, when overused, should prevent the player from being able to Brace for CC reduction?'

I've also reviewed the other Combat related posts for today, but they seem to be addressing different things, or minutiae of expectations, but @Neurath would have to clarify, there, given their higher activity in those threads.

So let me know if you need/want me to 'pull' anything from those discussions that I may have overlooked.

Here's the pitfalls post I mentioned I'd make.

Aiming to avoid derailing this thread. Don't really want to derail it with a discussion about whether or not BDO is successful either.

But there was no big post today in here because of the above.

An interesting point from one of the other threads, should jumping use stamina?

If there is any chance that simply jumping can help to avoid an ability, or worse, somehow avoid melee under certain conditions (all you Star Wars watchers know what I'm talking about, I see you Obi Wan), then there might be a good reason to put a limit on 'spamming jump', even if jumping locks the player out from doing anything else.

Pros: Limits players who just jackrabbit during PvP for no reason, and also allows more flexibility in balancing mechanics and jumping itself, in combat.

Possible Side-Effects: Open world activities that rely on jumping are currently rare and there's no specific reason they would increase a lot, it might even make 'rogue infiltrations' and similar more interesting.

Cons: Might give some players the impression that because it uses stamina, it should be usable to dodge certain attack types other than things like the Elder Dragon's shockwaves.

The current discussion is mostly at 'how precisely this should work', actually. There are multiple people so far, who disagree completely, but the Compilation is actually designed to work almost exactly the same whether the player tab-targets or not.

So @HellzBlessing , I have a question. Is it important for you, that a less skilled player has lower accuracy with their melee attacks and skills, assuming that they are not just spamming the button?

If the player is 'trying to spin the camera to keep track of the other player, using their skills at the right time, but isn't good enough at moving the camera reticle', do you specifically want that player to be less accurate for most of their attacks?

This particular discussion is likely to lead to philosophical disagreement, which is useless only because the terms of disagreement are too loosely defined.

Posters who disagree over the combat, I ask for your time, to define your terms.

"Spammy" - This is reasonable description of the two top videos you can find of people playing on YouTube.
"Excited comments on YouTube" - These are mostly not visible in easily searched videos, there are either no comments, or comments of a specific type, but at least one currently easily searched video has some. But if you turned Ashes into a side on, 2D fighting game whenever two players entered a 'dueling ring', there would be a lot of fighting game players who would make comments exactly like the ones I can find. Excited, yes. Also 'definitely not in an argument with anyone who thinks that this is ridiculous'. For contrast, you could go view the video from Kira instead (Kira generally shows nearly no gameplay, but that's not the point)

Coming from the design side, all the things I've previously discussed, and in the Pitfalls thread, are shadowed in Apoc. These aren't usually bad things, but I'm concerned if Action Combat players are devoted to them specifically.

1. Melee aren't actually using 'skill' in terms of accuracy, they have such big hitboxes that it just looks that way. The skill is apparently in 'getting close to someone running away/jumping around'.
2. Ranged play is definitely an FPS with bows and similar so immediately all the way to the other side.
3. Movement speed as a generality doesn't match the current Ashes flow and the MMO's speed probably can't be changed to match this too much, for latency reasons.
4. Time to kill is laughable, and true healing plays very little role. (It would be easy for a sniper on a hill with a Cleric behind them to dominate, for example, they would be too advantaged against a melee by range, even with the 'double jump flight' and too advantaged against another ranged by just being healed rapidly).

Each side wants things that can mostly be pieced together if they give any ground. So . here's a link to something both sides can complain about .

Battles are at 3:00, 5:35, 6:55, 10:31, 11:20 (tower objective group battle), 13:25 (another), 17:00, etc

Please don't complain about how 'these players suck' (firstly, they don't, relatively), and even if they did, average players need love too.

For those who don't watch the video, the context is Paragon, an Epic Games 3D MOBA. Low mobility relatively, higher Time To Kill, Healing abilities, and the ability to build your character statistically as you level as with all MOBAs (was slightly different for a while in the past, but moved more toward 'normal' in this video).

It is also a relatively clear outcome for 'objective based PvP' design. My group's played this game extensively, so if you're not sure if you should hate something, based on how it looks, I can probably clarify.

What do you hate about this, relative to 'this being what you get in Ashes'?

Thanks for the extremely detailed response and perspective. That's a lot of insight into both your stances and perceptions. Regardless of the 'actual way Paragon plays' it tells me the following:

for @maouw
1. You prefer a TTK that allows you to react and probably a GCD where you don't just have to retreat because your opponent will have their abilities up to finish you off before you have a chance to counter.
2. You would prefer if strafing and melee were more impactful, or that there were more abilities overall (please clarify if, in a game like Ashes with mana costs on abilities, if you'd prefer the 'Strafing Melee' or similar from the Compilation, or a larger number of movement+damage abilities that cost mana)
3. Preference for player synergy rather than outmaneuvering as the solution to being approached by superior numbers.
4. Possibly ground position lock on 'Ultimate' type abilities.
5. You would prefer that the solution to melee vs ranged not devolve into 'can the melee get into range?'
6. You'd prefer that re-spec is rarer.
7. You want some specific way to tank for teammates even in an actiony setting.

I won't waste your time addressing whether or not your conclusions about the gameplay are correct, you can let me know if you really care about that for some reason.

for @Littlekenny21
1. You would prefer more mobility
2. You would prefer more positioning stuff
3. You would want more abilities.

I think I noted, but, I'm paying just as much attention to what people don't complain about, as to what they do, but I can't summarize that, because it primes other responders in a way that isn't as useful as any 'priming' from the above.

Thanks for the data.

There's no update to the compilation today, since the overall TTK discussion doesn't have enough input yet. For those who don't have time to watch the video, though, here's a question.

"Would you prefer that TTK is naturally lower even without the enemy evading, or should TTK on an afk player be short, with only active abilities and evasion/low accuracy on the part of the attacker, actually extending this to be longer?"

Basically 'how fast do you want to be able to delete someone who isn't good at PvP?'

Nothing major, and definitely nothing you could easily have understood from just watching that video.

There are more CC (usually on other characters), specific traits you can give your hero, similar to augments but usually for your basic attack... and a few 'abilities that are not specific to the hero/champion but only synergize well with certain ones'.

Most of the characters in the game are not actually very auto-attack heavy in combat, but you use it a lot while killing minions, as with all MOBA.

Finally, all this results in there being at least some tactics to skirmishes, involving stuns to stop retreats, places where an enemy must stand their ground, and even one healer having an Ultimate that lets them fly from wherever they are to one target ally, heal them, and then join whatever fight they got into.

This game was unfortunately rebalanced repeatedly to change it from being more interesting and dynamic, to 'more like a standard MOBA and therefore appealing'. It ... mostly didn't work.

Also, if you don't mind, I still need the answer to the TTK question. You're definitely on the 'longer' side, but specifics, if you have them, would help. I'm a fighting game/FFXI player, and I know that both those are pretty niche now, but I'll throw mine in for once, for comparison.

I prefer if the standard melee takes 6-7% of their opponent's health in one swing, in the 'mirror match', and 14-21% with most abilities. Rogues get 30-35% on their first backstab or whatever. This gives 7 seconds before your health is at 50%, or your opponent can drop you to just 25% if they use all their skills at once, hit with all of them, and you use no mitigation or counterattack.

Mages would be squishier but probably escape from the 4th or 5th ability and start fighting back pretty hard without necessarily getting hit by more melee swings for a bit.

On average, an afk player would fall in 12 seconds, a player who reacts, about 27, and a duel where both players know what's going on and have potions and pre-battle buffs might go up to 45 seconds.