Melee Combat Feedback Post 7/30 Livestream

Semi-relatedly @Cypher - your Tweet response on this matter appears only in the 'Show potentially offensive replies' section (and yes, I know there's nothing offensive in it). Not just you either, one other 'dissenter' got thrown in there too.

Might not be able to trust Twitter for this, though presumably the Community Team reads those anyway.

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

You know, I've never figured out (and obviously never asked, until now)...

What exactly is it you find boring about GW2 combat? Also, do you have a main class in BDO? That second one is curiosity. For the sake of argument let's say 'main class' is 'highest one past 56 that you'd take into PvP'.

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I see, cool. I have watched a lot of GW2 stuff and I feel like I understand. I honestly never bothered to play it partially because of the reasons you said.

I think I've never outright said it due to the role I was aiming for in the other thread, but I prefer Action Combat, I just never assume any MMO can actually deliver it and still be something most players will enjoy, because the difficulty of convincing a certain player type that it isn't too difficult is, in itself, too difficult.

All the pieces required for it are still in place, as of now, at least. From what I understand before, the gap between what you consider good combat and boring combat lies more in the targeting and combo systems , and dynamism of requirements in combat.

I was gonna say I was surprised you like BDO, but I don't think you've ever technically said that you liked actually playing BDO, just the combat system as a whole.

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It's hard to answer because the only Action Combat I actually like in that sense is the one my group built (basic MMO style Action Combat in the Godot game engine).

If I had to settle for one MMO option, it is actually also Neverwinter, since I think people would nearly unanimously (myself included) class Absolver as a fighting game. I've seen indications that I would have liked Blade and Soul, but never had time to get into it, so I'm not sure. Monster Hunter can be good too but it has too many iFrames and too much hitstop/knockdown scenarios for an MMO to be based off it, and the movement is also unsuitable (I play Insect Glaive in MHW).

I feel like I could enjoy BDO if TTK (from first hit) wasn't basically <10 seconds, but BDO is a bunch of iFrames too, and something about the targeting always feels wrong to me, even when I'm winning.

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

I expect that you'd find Monster Hunter slow. It is, by comparison and by nature. Lots of realistic (I say this while playing a weapon that lets you fly) movements and timings.

I didn't play BDO back in what I hear were the 'good old days'. These days, TTK is like that in the other sense . The community managers themselves personally respond to this on streams with 'don't get hit, bro' (still love 'em, it's the only answer they can give, shoutouts to Trent and Shirna).

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This is interesting, you say you 'can turn off auto-targeting', so it is on by default? If a player just 'played normally', those shots would all 'automatically hit' or at least do so based on some Acc vs Eva thing? I don't want to assume you meant that, but if you did, why would one ever turn it off?

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Then I have to agree with @Cypher personally in terms of definitions, though I absolutely see your point.

If you can tab target, would never have a reason not to, and once you get to 'sticky reticle' position, your opponent's only counters are delineation and iFrames, that means with what I know of the rest of GW2's battle system, it's definitely tab-target (only because you have no good reason to turn it off).

Similarly, players who play positioning-heavy action combat games (whether or not this style is suitable for MMOs is a different question) will find them uninteresting once 'positioning' is figured out. The difficulty of the latter for any specific person depends on a lot of things.

So, please consider that Cypher (and myself) may be so relatively good at a very specific thing, that GW2's combat feels understimulating.

I however, disagree with Cypher sometimes on the degree to which an MMO like Ashes should cater to people with that skillset/innate 'mental advantage'.

I don't even care about the root motion vs split body debate except that people keep saying they want Action Combat, and the reasons they gave in my data scrape were all 'it's more engaging' or oddly 'tab target takes less skill'.

If people want 'meaningfully greater skill' in their Action Combat (and aren't talking about only PvP), they can't also want the current implementation of split body attack style unless they don't want balance.

GW2 has balance. something that looks like Action Combat (but for some people, isn't), and less 'skill'.

If you're familiar with the old StarFox games (or if not, they're easy to find game footage of), they're one of the best ways I've ever found to put this in perspective. Not necessarily 'the correct' perspective, just mine, (and probably Cypher's)

Tab Target would be 'select an enemy on the screen and hold down the fire button, and your shots will move toward that target', and your opponent's shots do the same, and you keep barrel-rolling whenever something fires at you, to deflect the shots.

Hybrid will be 'you benefit from actually pointing the shots at the ship yourself in some way, but you don't have to'. Also, do a barrel roll!

Hybrid with Split Body adds the ability to move your ship! Now all those annoying enemies that would literally crash into you back when you couldn't move your ship at all, can be avoided! You can even move out of line of sight to make some shots fail their targeting. Keep rollin'...

A 'serious' StarFox player would laugh at all these and say 'no, make me target all my shots myself, and stop enemy shots from locking on to me, what even is this?' An 'opponent' of that player's perspective then says 'well if you can just move out of the way of enemy shots, they would have to shoot a lot more for it to be interesting'.

(Ground target stuff are Bombs in this analogy, so they're an interesting addition, but they don't affect any of the scenarios enough for me, the ability to move out of the AoE of the bomb does not make the rest of the game more interesting)

(I hope this is still making sense).

At some point people get hung up on the semantics of 'whether or not the game is more skilled or more interesting' based on this. It doesn't matter, they're different games at that point.

I oppose the people who want to be able to move the ship out of line of sight and call that skill, while changing nothing else about the game, while implying that they too, want 'serious StarFox'. Even if they are making a mistake. Explaining to them 'no, that's not serious StarFox, that's something else and not what was promised', and then showing them 'serious gameplay' is the inflection point.

If they go 'oh that's great more of that', then they really did want (in our analogy) Action Combat. If their response is 'oh, wait, no, that looks limiting, I'd have to do XYZ all the time' or 'that will just make the enemies shoot too much for me to play', they didn't.

What I really don't want is 'a Tab Target game where the enemies are designed as turrets (analogy)' that calls itself Action Combat because you can get out of their line of sight, and that's what GW2 seems to be (if no one turns off autotarget). Shots can't miss randomly, so do a barrel roll!

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Then it sounds like we're all 'in agreement'. If it's not too out of line, therefore, I'll ask that you generally not push too hard on Cypher's reactions to GW2 combat and discussions thereof.

We don't actually know how many of the people who say they enjoy GW2 combat are also in the camp of 'people who believe it is mostly just a decent start', as opposed to 'don't make it more strict than this', so if your perspective is 'this is good but needs somewhat less tracking', you might not actually be in line with them, and rebuffing Cypher might lead to confusions or missed opportunities for discussion.

I feel like the best way to handle projectiles is simply 'reduce the damage by some percentage based on how far off the center of the cone you are when you use it'. This also is a situation where lag can be bad but not crippling. i.e. a player who has moved away from your perfectly lined up shot, on the server side, but you can't see that, still takes damage as long as they didn't actually get all the way out of your attack cone.

If they were closer to the edge and you see that your attack missed, it's far less annoying and moreso something you could 'recognize is because of server lag' instead of either 'I have to be perfect, but my ping makes that practically random' or 'Evasion chance makes the difference here so it is actually random '.

This could also fit Intrepid's stated model of 'making RNG matter much less in Action Combat mode'.

The Combat Discussion thread should probably swing back toward Sticky Reticle discussions, this conversation has reminded me of that good aspect of Neverwinter again.

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I could be very wrong about how most games implement this, but I feel the opposite.

I feel that ranged has the advantage more when I have no good lunges in Free Movement. And I don't necessarily mean 'I don't want ranged to escape', I mean 'fine I'll just use ranged attacks instead of bothering to chase you'.

I don't really feel like it makes it easier to balance, because right now, moving backward while using attacks drops your movement speed to what looks like 66-70% (I haven't bothered to do analysis on the recordings we did for precise numbers). Forward moving attacker would therefore catch up in 8 seconds max at the current ranges if no CC stops them, leaving the question to be 'how many gap closers does this class have'.

But I can't say it makes it harder either, it's just a question of what 'balanced' ends up looking like.

Additionally, everyone can use ranged weapons, so...