Combat is moving in the wrong direction

Azherae wrote: »

But I wanna confirm one thing first. You do understand that we're talking about PvE, right? Can I at least get you to promise you won't try to 'counter' this by going 'well in PvP it would be more movement!' because no one is talking about that when comparing BDO to 'old Tab Target MMOs'.

I'd still argue that L2 had at the very least as much apm as BDO in pvp, but we've been through this discussion a few times already iirc, so it'd be pointless

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

But I wanna confirm one thing first. You do understand that we're talking about PvE, right? Can I at least get you to promise you won't try to 'counter' this by going 'well in PvP it would be more movement!' because no one is talking about that when comparing BDO to 'old Tab Target MMOs'.

I'd still argue that L2 had at the very least as much apm as BDO in pvp, but we've been through this discussion a few times already iirc, so it'd be pointless

Well I'm happy to count on you to contribute whenever Mag returns, since it would probably be generally nicer for the forum if we eventually hashed this out (unless Mag and Noaani just 'like' spinning in circles, in which case we'd just be intruding).

Detailed conversation about MMO mechanics is the reason I, at least, am here. Why else hang out on a quiet-ish forum for an open development Alpha 1.5 MMO?

Azherae wrote: »

unless Mag and Noaani just 'like' spinning in circles, in which case we'd just be intruding

At this point I'm like 90% sure they do. DPS thread is the biggest example of that. They've been talking about the exact same thing, and the exact same arguments, using the exact same words pretty much every single time that thread gets resurrected.

Azherae wrote: »

Detailed conversation about MMO mechanics is the reason I, at least, am here. Why else hang out on a quiet-ish forum for an open development Alpha 1.5 MMO?

Honestly I got nothing better to do I mean, I do, but I'm at such a point of laziness that writing pointless stuff on the forums is more palatable than playing amazing games that're just sitting in my steam/gamepass

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

Oh ok, so you wanted footage of Tab Target MMO PvP?

Or did you want to have someone who is familiar with a PvE Tab Target MMO extrapolate how PvP would work and why the speed would be similar?

Or are you just, as Noaani assumed, talking about things you are making big assumptions about? Because you talked about playing EQ2 a little, but you can't know how fast or complex EQ2 PvP is from playing it a little, I would assume you also thought that.

For example, the reason I don't talk about GW2 is that I have not played enough GW2 to make comparisons, so I would leave that to someone like Arya or Blindside.

Perhaps you can bring your own videos of you doing mid-high level EQ2 PvP and explain to us how it is insufficient?

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It generally seems to me that most people who get into these things do in fact have knowledge of it, or at least come to the generally correct conclusions, I'd moreso say it's the minority (out of the already limited forum) who lack the understanding of it.

In short, don't pick on Mag7.

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

Ok, but no one was making THAT point, in fact you're right, it's 'easy' because it's the one thing that one game type has and the other doesn't.

Nothing in this thread has been about 'positioning' in BDO, because not all classes actually need to position in BDO, it's you that brought that up.

I can explain 'speed' though, so let's do that. I won't say much because I'm not yet convinced that you won't just redirect into 'positioning'.



This fight gets serious at the 2 minute mark. This player is reacting to what that boss (intended to emulate a player of the exact same class as whoever fights it) is doing faster than most people who don't play that class can even track. Note I said 'reacting'.

Compare this to PvP between two BDO classes that generally fight head on or use large dashes.



The Sage and Valkyrie are doing less, but it looks like they're doing more. The Valkyrie in particular doesn't even 'look' like that very much. It's class dependent.

And a separate comment that I think might be the clearest way I have ever summarized this (go me).

In a Tab Target game like FFXI, if you have the OPTION to cast an ability, and 'decide not to cast that ability yet so that your character does their autoattack, because it is not necessary', it is equivalent to the same situation in BDO, where you have the option to use a skill, but decide not to use that skill and instead use your Primary Attack.

The difference between these two things is that in one game you had to press a button and in the other you did not. You don't make less decisions, you press less buttons.

And here's pvp with high lvl of positioning in a click-to-move tab target game. You can hear how much he's clicking, and you can pay attention to the targetting, because he's playing a class that removes it and vs 2 classes that do the same. They're daggers, so they have backstabs, which pushes you to move to your enemy's back. You can see that they're trying to move around so that the enemy can't get behind them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH6Qts0sk8g

And I'd say this is maybe ~80% skill lvl. Retargetting could be faster and the other dudes seem to get lost with it too. And this is from an older version of the game. The newer versions have even more detargetting methods and even more movement options, so this is not even the limit to apm.

edit: oh and btw, the fact that his hp doesn't go down much is related to positioning too. The enemy class has low accuracy on their abilities if they're used directly to the face or even to the front 180 degrees, so with proper positioning you can limit the incoming dmg by a lot.

NiKr wrote: »

And here's pvp with high lvl of positioning in a click-to-move tab target game. You can hear how much he's clicking, and you can pay attention to the targetting, because he's playing a class that removes it and vs 2 classes that do the same. They're daggers, so they have backstabs, which pushes you to move to your enemy's back. You can see that they're trying to move around so that the enemy can't get behind them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH6Qts0sk8g

And I'd say this is maybe ~80% skill lvl. Retargetting could be faster and the other dudes seem to get lost with it too. And this is from an older version of the game. The newer versions have even more detargetting methods and even more movement options, so this is not even the limit to apm.

edit: oh and btw, the fact that his hp doesn't go down much is related to positioning too. The enemy class has low accuracy on their abilities if they're used directly to the face or even to the front 180 degrees, so with proper positioning you can limit the incoming dmg by a lot.

This one makes it even more obvious than the FFXI one, Mag, in case that one felt off to you.

I actually completely like and support games where you do have to make the choice to 'press the button yourself', but I'm not a person who believes 'yeah because I have to press a button myself instead of choosing to not press a different button and letting the game do it for me' that depth has been added.

I'll even add my own BDO fight for the same reasoning. Just to clarify a specific small thing, since as you pointed out, BDO PvE isn't that hard.



I consider this 'harder' than fighting a Valkyrie though, if I am trying to never get hit (which is the basic requirement of BDO PvP, right?). Nevertheless, BDO is 'making me press the button', but really I could just 'tap block occasionally' when it swings and then quick-cancel into my attacks, I am repositioning here for fun.

If I were fighting a Nova, Shai, or Valkyrie, it's the same to me, I'd reposition moreso for 'fun', they will turn faster than I could reasonably get behind them without a skill, unless of course they're not very good at all in which case they died another way. If anything, I reposition so that they think they have to and waste movement skills that I can whiff punish.

If it was a Guardian, I'd have to move, but not because 'positioning matters', only timing actually matters there, because the whole thing is the same as when Dim goes for the attack that flashes it red (for those unfamiliar). It's just a huge multihit AoE and my only requirement is 'don't be standing there while it goes off'. I die way more to those players because I can't tell that the AoE has actually ended than anything else, so at that point yeah, I want MORE flashiness so I don't have to learn the frame data on Guardian's AoE.

Other than that, fighting Guardian looks like fighting Dim except that they move more and give me more openings. I lose to the ones who know to just watch my movement and not move themselves because them trying to move just gets them killed.

Azherae wrote: »

I actually completely like and support games where you do have to make the choice to 'press the button yourself', but I'm not a person who believes 'yeah because I have to press a button myself instead of choosing to not press a different button and letting the game do it for me' that depth has been added.

If the MC of the video was a mage, it would even be "try NOT to press the button and instead press another one", cause you gotta click on a detargeted enemy, but if you then click again too fast your character will try auto-attacking that enemy. And mages don't do shit with auto-attacks, but they completely ruin your positioning and can even delay your casts. So you can't just spam click to regain the targetting.

In other words you gotta avoid pressing the button again. This also kinda applies when the dagger is getting kited by a mage. You gotta click to move, click to target and most of the time avoid clicking on the target itself because you wanna use your big abilities instead of doing auto-hits.

I haven't played enough BDO to know for sure, but that kind of decision tree and load seems more than BDO's "you use an ability that moves you in the direction you wanted and quite often that ability will be an aoe hit that will touch the enemy if direction was good enough".

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

Right. In that FFXI fight, it would in fact be possible for some people who don't read as fast or easily track everything going on while stressed, to die without realizing, because the game doesn't show you every buff that your opponent has on them.

Red Mages need to dispel certain ones or they will end up in bad situations, and Dispel isn't even your choice, so you have to adapt to 'I can't dispel because I let the mob put up 2 less important buffs already and now if I Dispel I only have a 1 in 3 chance of countering the correct one, so I have to bind or sleep them to buy time to get all the Dispels and put my defenses up.

If you lose track of this, you'll do something like 'waste a Dispel cast on removing something you could have overcome in some other way', lose your rhythm, and die.

I could detail the decisions in the BDO fight in six lines, and if the TTK was higher, those six lines would repeat (see Dim Tree fight).

It would take me at least 100 lines to explain the FFXI fight, and that's 'if I took the combat log and then just put commentary after every meaningful decision. I'd add 100 lines of commentary to the log itself just to explain it.

This doesn't compare at all to BDO's 'dodge around for 6 seconds and then die in 2 or maybe get away to repeat the 6 seconds of dodging if you're lucky'.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I actually completely like and support games where you do have to make the choice to 'press the button yourself', but I'm not a person who believes 'yeah because I have to press a button myself instead of choosing to not press a different button and letting the game do it for me' that depth has been added.

If the MC of the video was a mage, it would even be "try NOT to press the button and instead press another one", cause you gotta click on a detargeted enemy, but if you then click again too fast your character will try auto-attacking that enemy. And mages don't do shit with auto-attacks, but they completely ruin your positioning and can even delay your casts. So you can't just spam click to regain the targetting.

In other words you gotta avoid pressing the button again. This also kinda applies when the dagger is getting kited by a mage. You gotta click to move, click to target and most of the time avoid clicking on the target itself because you wanna use your big abilities instead of doing auto-hits.

I haven't played enough BDO to know for sure, but that kind of decision tree and load seems more than BDO's "you use an ability that moves you in the direction you wanted and quite often that ability will be an aoe hit that will touch the enemy if direction was good enough".

Well, I believe that Kunoichi is among the highest 'direct precision, lower AoE options' classes in BDO, so you can use the videos given as your data for that.

Compare the Sage's actionset (throwing giant lightning spears, surrounding self in AoE thunderbolts, etc) to mine (honestly still AoE but at least a few things have to be factored such as, as Mag says, getting behind the opponent, though 'behind' is like a 75 degree cone, and usually less massive).

That fight was quite automatic to me, because it's just conditioned reactions, I had to make an effort to do three specific things 'incorrectly' and to NOT just plink-block its hits and actually try to just 'dodge and usually be behind it to get the back attack damage',

And even then I still basically can 'zone out and do that'. PvP is not different, it comes out exactly the same as the Sage thing 'Did your CC actually hit me through my Evasion? Did it get through my resistance too? Ok I die, let's go again, 15 seconds!'

I cannot zone out against Maat, I'm honestly surprised that player won that, but even 'explaining why them winning was partially luck' would be like 8 paragraphs.

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

And apparently I missed this one, but at this point I don't care since we're due for another 'Combat Discussion' thread anyway I guess.

How many years are we talking 'since you played it', Mag7? I'm trying not to make assumptions here.

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Except that you can parse the BDO fights the same way, and no, it isn't actually running down like a streaming chat faster than the FFXI one, and we know this because you can just check the skill usage.

If by 'buffs' you mean the 7-10 second ones that trigger when you use abilities, i.e. Augments, it's the same. I can agree that it's cat and mouse, what I don't agree is that it is hard. You explicitly have said that it should not be very hard before.

So, no, though I'm moreso talking to Intrepid than to you for some reason. The combat log is about the same speed in BDO, unless you are counting the 'turn to face your opponent' part, which is something that happens in any Tab Target game situation where the opponent moves, and those exist, that just wasn't the first video I gave you.

I want you to understand that I am not saying that FFXI is extremely fast. I'm saying that BDO tricks you into thinking it's faster and it is not, your character is just moving faster and you are wiggling your targeting slightly more (which you don't really need to do, it's just a little easier for specific things).

From the moment the Sage gets hit to the moment they die is 2 seconds in most of the fights they lose in that clip. Their options are 'attempt a specific burst with Super Armor' and 'dash out and hope the Valkyrie's combo misses'.

Also, mostly for Intrepid I guess, please don't fall into the trap of thinking that the additional mobility is increasing the skill ceiling for most players. What they will do is 'guess-dash', whenever they think the opponent will do something, and this is also a gameplay illusion, it feels good until they get to 'above average' and then it drops off entirely as a useful thing.

You'll just get this:



To the inexperienced this looks like engaging fast combat. To me I just watched the Berserker wait for a missed movement from the Valkyrie and whiff punish it for an instant kill.

Decisions made in that first fight: 2.

Decisions made in the second fight: 4.

And the second fight was just the Valkyrie making a mistake at the beginning and committing to a string that was never going to kill, then going for the kill anyway and getting whiff punished into death AGAIN.