What Should The Benefit to Action Combat Be?

New post because the Combat Discussion has gotten deep and this is a philosophical thing that doesn't affect the mechanics as much anyway.

Discussion in that thread has hit a point where some definition of this, is needed, but it probably shouldn't happen in that thread.

In this case I'm giving the options, they're limited because they're feedback around the Compilation in that thread, if you want something else entirely, expect a discussion on balance. Here's the options:

1. Reduced cooldowns on all Class Abilities used from Action Target mode.
Reasoning/Lore/Expected Result: The user is a strong combatant in a high focus state. They aren't being 'guided by their Deity' or anything like a Tab Targeter. You can use your abilities more often, so missing is less painful, but you're still limited by your overall mana pool, so any unbalance comes from having a spammable ability that you have the raw skill to hit with.

2. Reduced Mana cost on all Class Abilities used from Action Target mode.
Reasoning/Lore/Expected Result: The user is using their training and not pushing their 'sixth sense' or whatever and using up their mana to do so. Allows you to miss more with lower overall mana cost, allowing you to outlast opponents, and output more damage total without necessarily shortening Time To Kill.

3. Additional effects on all Class Abilities when used from Action Target mode.
Reasoning/Lore/Expected Result: The user's accuracy is what drives the additional effect, whatever it is, by being focused. Allows you to more drastically affect the opponent's abilities, at the cost of 'having to be accurate enough to actually succeed at this, and losing damage when you miss'.

4. Reduced Recovery Frames on all Class Abilities used from Action Target mode.
Reasoning/Lore/Expected Result: If the user isn't 'stopping to guarantee their success', they also are probably 'thinking differently and moving faster' or 'didn't need to commit as much'. They 'believed they could use their force more efficiently' and so they didn't need to swing quite as hard, or something. Directly raises damage output and lessens the pain of missing.

5. None of the above
If you're choosing this, you either believe there's a much better way and will wait on Intrepid to find it, believe that all of the above are unbalanced (or are suspicious), or just don't believe Action Combat should even be in the game (For those of you who are anti-Action Combat, please just put the '5' and try not to derail the thread too much with the arguing. I request this realizing that Talking Is A Free Action)

All of these advantages, and in fact, any advantages, rapidly reach the point of being 'required' in PvE, but if I thought that could be balanced, I'd understand the Hybrid Combat intention way better. If Intrepid already has something better than any of these, this won't matter, but if they don't, it may matter a lot.

Please choose below by giving either a number or multiple numbers, e.g. 1+2 if you think both should be in, and most importantly any reasons why you didn't choose the others, even if you just say 'Balance', it's super helpful.

In case anyone is wondering why this is relevant, it's because of the 'Sticky Reticle' part of the Compilation, so if you want to just discuss that, please put anything about it in the Combat Discussion thread.

Functionally, all systems favor the experienced.

If we want to argue that Action targeting shouldn't be a requirement for effective play, we'd probably be better off talking about latency, fatigue over time, or resultant technical imbalance.

If we want to argue that Action targeting should be rewarded in any way at all, we can look at what Intrepid has said (more relying on wiki now, no, I didn't watch all the Livestreams/Podcasts to verify these):

Damage.
Charge up time.
CC effects.
Cooldown.
Energy consumption.
Cost to spec.

Attack range will likely remain the same; as it is driven by the weapon or skill itself.

I didn't ask about 'damage' because not all abilities are damaging. Similarly for 'charge up time'. These are applicable at their own timings and so on. "Cost to spec" is not possible to judge with the current skills and archetypes, and the Compilation that triggered this is one based on Action Combat players with a large preference for moving the game closer to a 'Frame data' based game, so 'Recovery Frames' became a consideration.

Also, I'll point out one more thing, apparently...

RNG is always going to play a role in Ashes of Creation whether that be in PvP or PvE, but one way to mitigate that is through the action system. The action system is going to be far less sort of dependent on those you know dice rolls and there'll be far more in your own hands. They won't ever completely eliminate that but it's a way for us to sort of reward skilled play versus sort of tactical strategies type play. – Jeffrey Bard

I make no claims about what exactly 'won't ever completely eliminate' means, but those who are faulting Dygz, you should know that it's in there.

I'll note you both as basically saying:

5 - Don't give Action Combat any bonuses other than Action Targeting itself.

This is only because you didn't give any other numbers, so I can't draw any other conclusion at the moment. Do you have any opinions on 'sticky' reticles?

We have not received permission from Littlekenny21 to share the quoted post.

Basically this is how it works. Can make healing 'interesting'. This is part of the reason for asking because of how 'sticky' reticles work in this situation is different to how straight Tab Targeting works.

It's also the reason why 'Stat-Affected Sticky Reticle + AimLock After Sticking + (from Skyra) possibly Homing aspect' would still work differently and possibly require more coordination than a full Tab Target system.

So far, unfortunately it seems like those who support Action Combat don't support any of the things Intrepid has previously said that they've planned. This leaves the Devs in a difficult position, I think. They can't go back on all the things said so far, people have 'preordered' and jumped in to help test, based on things they heard and philosophies they agreed with.

Subscription model or not, I don't expect that the Action Combat supporters will get what they seem to want without some compromise, as they are usually the ones 'asking for things not promised' and Steven is on record saying that if he is forced to choose due to incompatibility, it's Action Combat that will be reworked/removed.

I just hope that we can avoid that outcome, but as I've noted before, I don't think it is the 'Action Combat is a waste of time' crowd that is going to 'end up losing out' here if the current vocal Action Combat supporters don't 'give an inch', which would be sad because as IS maintains even now, there's a lot of potential here.

The conversation in the Combat Discussion thread is likely to move on from here, though, so if this thread stays on its current direction, I'll just leave things on that end as they are due to basically 'insufficient clarity on how to approach reticles'.

I was a Cleric in yesterday's siege test.

I'm not saying that it would not work, the way you've described it, but I will say that it would not have made things any easier for me, personally. There are multiple reasons why I wouldn't have felt better doing it that way, and some issues that might come up if I needed to target myself.

There were also situations where my teammates were pulled into a group of allies so that there was a wall of allied units between them and me, which was actually my biggest problem. With the current tab-targeting setup, I actually can't target my teammates in any way, when this happens, other than clicking on their name in the left menu for party members. (yes, the UI is already there)

The problem with Action Mode in this case is, that when I move the mouse to click on that UI, my character's focus can change in other ways. There were other moments where I purposely used the action mode because it was a faster way to get an idea of the status of people in front of me who weren't in my party, but if those people moved past each other, or got pushed or pulled, the heal would fail, or misfire.

Since Tab Targeting doesn't seem to work on allied units for me, at all, I decided to go with making sure I was not usually in Action Mode, so that I could just rapidly click trying to 'catch' anyone in front who needed targeted healing.

Sticky Reticles could solve this a little bit by 'sticking on a player for longer to let me decide if to heal them or not even if they move', but it won't solve the 'body blocking by allied units' problem. So if a non-party member gets damaged but ends up behind one or two allies or enemies, I can't help them consistently either way.

If I knew this might happen, I'd 'stick' the reticle on them beforehand, but since the game can't necessarily predict whether I'm going to want to do an attack, or a heal, any enemy that crosses my reticle will probably 'steal' it off my ally even if they are 'sticky', which I think you're saying is how you already imagine it.

The bigger question here is actually, if I was working perfectly with my siege allies, had perfect timing, and used Action Mode for healing for some reason, what benefit should I get? I think the most fair one for me, specifically, in sieges, is 'reduced Cooldown', but when I say 'fair', I mean 'it's okay to choose not to do this in most normal situations, and a reward for doing something hard in difficult situations'.

The part of this that concerns me the most is that we're already in an MMORPG that has no intention of balancing by class.

Intrepid uses the term 'rock-paper-scissors' because it's familiar and easy to understand, but MMO veterans may recognize it better when I mention it as M/C/A (or whatever order you like). Attrition, Mitigation, Cooldowns.

Attrition (Cleric, any class with magical DoT or bleed and survivability) beats Mitigation (tanks and evasion tanks), Mitigation beats Cooldowns (Rogues, Rangers, basically burst DPS), and Cooldowns beat Attrition. (Sure this is an oversimplification, just know that your gear and Augments are moreso moving you around on this slider, not coming up with some whole new incredible thing)

In most games where this doesn't happen, balance gets wrecked practically week one, so I'm glad that this is their intention, but Hybrid Combat, if done wrong interferes with this.

Either you make Cooldowns able to beat Mitigation somehow by making their damage larger, which just makes them basically the best, or you make Attrition able to beat Cooldowns somehow by making their damage too low. I truly mean no disrespect to Action Combat supporters when I say that they're almost always Cooldowns players, almost by default.

But Ashes is so much more likely to cause the second situation, than the first, that I'm concerned for them. Cooldowns players already lose to Mitigation because Mitigation doesn't involve targeting as often and just disrupts their plans, even before they start to actually miss their skillshots. Once you can miss your skillshots against Attrition players too, you're forced into doing things like X/Cleric or carrying a pile of items just to not be withered away by DoT. If it's too easy to cleanse DoT then the problem is sorta solved, but the balance gets worse (it reverses sort of, because Attrition no longer beats Mitigation).

Fantasy MMOs already have too many fiddly bits where things can break, so they end up on the same path and you can usually predict it unless they throw in some crazy mechanic that becomes balance all its own.

That's the point of the entire longwinded question above. Which number you choose, determines what 'lets Cooldowns keep their spot in the triangle'. If you try to break out too much (with your feedback) while the combat system is being designed, you're throwing your chance to make that choice into the wind.

"Don't throw away your chance, vote [Something Other Than 5, Probably] on Prop 12."

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