Front Page Story: LA Times

[Tyrnan]

Yeah, I found that, aside from grumbling about why it can't be extended right to the start of the prior ability, I'd just like abilities to light up when they are queable and then the whole thing wouldn't be nearly as irritating.

Very much this. I really don't get why it's like this when EQ2 got it right what, 7 years ago? Trion did the same partial queue thing iirc when Rift launched but to their credit patched in a full queue very quickly. It seems even more bizarre when they let you set it in increments up to 1 second and just stop there instead of going to the full GCD time.

[Fabricated]

I don't know where people are getting the "Crafting is useless for endgame" stuff, especially if they came from WoW where it was useless unless you really liked BiS boots/belts and leggings sometimes.

I mean, if you want to grind it, you can at least reverse engineer yourself to a full set of epics. Soul crushing, but not utterly useless.

[Threash]

You can craft a level 48/49 epic with massive amounts of effort or do four easy daily quests and turn your lvl 10 orange gear into a level 50 epic.  That's why crafting is useless.

[Lantyssa]

I'm getting a good selection or orange gear I can craft though, so I can fine-tune my look.

As for combat, I really wish they had just copied CoH.  It's like some hybrid between WoW and CoH that doesn't feel right.

[Mrbloodworth]

I would craft more. But i hate the crafting list. Its so huge and unwieldy. They need to break that shit up more in the list. I would not mind if they did it down to sets.

[Khaldun]

The level 48 Armstech epics are pants-on-head-stupid to create because of the requirement for BoP materials to make an item that's not as good as things you can get easily otherwise. Don't EVER EVER make crafting need a difficult to get BoP ingredient unless what you create is pretty much best-in-slot or at least BiS-equivalent of some drop that's equally hard or frustrating to get. This is about the quickest way you can say to players, "Hey, crafting? It's another operant-conditioning timesink, we're just hoping a few of you are dumb enough to fall for it that you won't bitch about endgame content for a month or two more".

[Margalis]

I don't disagree, just curious about what you are thinking of in this statement.

In Street Fighter if I do a low roundhouse that commits me to that move to a certain amount of time, during which time I can't do anything. You can get more complicated with special move cancels and chain combos and such, but generally a move in a fighting game locks out other moves for some length of time. And this figures into the overall strength of the move - a low short kick is weaker than a low roundhouse but is also less of a commitment.

Think about it this way: in a Street Fighter game at any given point I can do any of a few dozen actions, each of which locks out other actions for a different length of time depending on the initial move, and some of which have special rules (can be cancelled or chained out of) all without any bars or visible timers or having to look at anything but my character.

[Fordel]

The number of people who play Street Fighter at that level though is pretty small, no?

Most folks are just doing their best to remember down, forward, punch or whatever.

[Margalis]

The same can be said of God of War, Smash Brothers, Double Dragon, whatever. Not as complex and not as many rules and exceptions but the basic idea is the same. In Double Dragon if you punch you can't do anything else until your punch ends, not because of some goofy meter but because your punch hasn't ended.

In fact I would say that nearly all video games involving a character who can perform actions works this way. MMOs don't because traditionally the animation is considered a layer of prettiness that just kind of half-conveys what is happening under the hood.

[Kageru]

... and the fact that in all those games your character model takes up a huge amount of screen and has relatively few unique abilities. Something generally not true of MMO's, or even the online FPS games.

[tmp]

The number of people who play Street Fighter at that level though is pretty small, no?

Most folks are just doing their best to remember down, forward, punch or whatever.

The odd part is, the mechanics used by MMO which have your character execute the move and not trigger another until the animation of the previous one ends, are pretty much what the beat em up games are doing with their "commit to the move" approach. (that in itself makes the GCD thing rather superfluous nowadays but that's another story) And yet, it's the animation part that makes people scream "yegods so unresponsive, can't cope" while they play beat em ups fine. Go figure.

[Zetor]

Because if you're going to do it that way, you need to go all the way and make it like COH: every ability is 'instant', and has a (well-documented) uninterruptable animation time. The combat definitely becomes a bit more 'murky' if you do this (due to usual MMO latency), but it works.

What TOR is doing right now is half-assing this, trying to make a WOW/COH hybrid - which ends up taking the worst of both worlds.

[eldaec]

The same can be said of God of War, Smash Brothers, Double Dragon, whatever. Not as complex and not as many rules and exceptions but the basic idea is the same. In Double Dragon if you punch you can't do anything else until your punch ends, not because of some goofy meter but because your punch hasn't ended.

In fact I would say that nearly all video games involving a character who can perform actions works this way. MMOs don't because traditionally the animation is considered a layer of prettiness that just kind of half-conveys what is happening under the hood.

When you say MMOs here, I think you really mean WoW and SWToR. Afaik everything before WoW worked exactly like other genres. You can't punch again right now because your guy on the screen is clearly still punching.

At the very least EQ 1&2, AC, CoX, SWG, I'm pretty sure UO, DAoC, EVE technically (though the combat system in EVE has managed to make all cooldowns irrelevant). People talk as if the WoW system is the only one that could work when most of the rest of this genre, and practically every other genre in gaming works fine without it.

But as above, given how WoW has reduced expectations I'd settle for abilities lighting up when I can queue them, and having the queue extended to the start of the previous ability.

[eldaec]

Because if you're going to do it that way, you need to go all the way and make it like COH: every ability is 'instant', and has a (well-documented) uninterruptable animation time. The combat definitely becomes a bit more 'murky' if you do this (due to usual MMO latency), but it works.

What TOR is doing right now is half-assing this, trying to make a WOW/COH hybrid - which ends up taking the worst of both worlds.

Instant, prior to WoW, meant abilities (often long duration cooldown or one off use) that were in fact used instantly with no follow on GCD.

CoH inspirations, DAoC used the mechanic for extreme oh shit buttons.

TOR has some near instants - the pure interrupt abilities. But once you get back to pre-WoW design you can use true instants as another design option. They are handy for making combat feel snappy, for instance I don't really see why medpacs, or some of the cooldown defensive buffs really truly need a global cooldown.

[Wolf]

Is CoH a good example of how non-gcd animation based combat works? I don't particularly remember the game's combat, might go and check it out.

[Rendakor]

EQ2 solved the problem by giving every ability a cast time; melee could move while using theirs, but there was still a bar that had to fill up before the attack landed and you could use another one. WoW just normalized the length of that bar (and hid it) for melee characters. A GCD system isn't fundamentally different than any other, except that most actions take the same amount of time.

[Zetor]

Because if you're going to do it that way, you need to go all the way and make it like COH: every ability is 'instant', and has a (well-documented) uninterruptable animation time. The combat definitely becomes a bit more 'murky' if you do this (due to usual MMO latency), but it works.

What TOR is doing right now is half-assing this, trying to make a WOW/COH hybrid - which ends up taking the worst of both worlds.

Instant, prior to WoW, meant abilities (often long duration cooldown or one off use) that were in fact used instantly with no follow on GCD.

CoH inspirations, DAoC used the mechanic for extreme oh shit buttons.

TOR has some near instants - the pure interrupt abilities. But once you get back to pre-WoW design you can use true instants as another design option. They are handy for making combat feel snappy, for instance I don't really see why medpacs, or some of the cooldown defensive buffs really truly need a global cooldown.

Do you mean off-GCD abilities? WOW has plenty of those (usually 2-3 per class)... interrupts, big ohshit abilities, CC breakers and burst damage/healing cooldowns / trinkets come to mind. There is also at least one ability that can be activated while you're casting a spell (Spiritwalker's Grace).

There are some in SWTOR as well, like the sage cooldown that makes the next 2 spells have +60% crit chance, or the vanguard cooldown that increases crit chance by 25% (I think).

[eldaec]

Is CoH a good example of how non-gcd animation based combat works? I don't particularly remember the game's combat, might go and check it out.

Yes, and also a good example of how queing should work.

It has other issues that wow or swtor do address, overlong casts, excessive grind, and too few abilities especially at low levels.

CoH also has sidekicking ofc which this game and wow desperately need. And I think it was the first aaa title to separate gear from appearance.

[Kageru]

I don't think CoH's long casts were unarguably a design fault because they fit the relatively tactical style of play with lots of strongly positional powers and meaningful side effects. Though it probably is too slow for the modern generation of gamers. CoH definitely did have a problem with stamina such that you had a lot of abilities you couldn't really afford to use often, but they've largely fixed that now. The rest of it I'll give you, though it was the time were grinding mobs was considered content.

I'd still like to see a modern MMO where instances scale with the number of players and encourage people to group because it generally ends up being more fun and rewarding for everyone. But that flies in the face of making instances "challenging".

[eldaec]

I'd really like to see swtor introduce CoH style scaling as a way to add content accessible across the level range.

All the missing companion quests would be an obvious opportunity, as they need to be playable at any level and ideally any group size.

[Sky]

Double Dragon

EQ2 solved the problem by giving every ability a cast time; melee could move while using theirs, but there was still a bar that had to fill up before the attack landed and you could use another one. WoW just normalized the length of that bar (and hid it) for melee characters. A GCD system isn't fundamentally different than any other, except that most actions take the same amount of time.

Not just that EQ2 had per-ability cast times, but that there was also a tertiary stat that affected this, and iirc you could also talent some down via AA. So you could sacrifice some power for speed or whatever.

[eldaec]

Same for DAoC, COX, EQ etc.

I do find it odd that there is only Endurance and <primary stat> to balance in SWTOR. In games like DAoC debates would rage at great length over whether dex for cast speed or Int for cast power was more effective in a given circumstance (though the dex guy was usually correct).

[Rendakor]

Not just that EQ2 had per-ability cast times, but that there was also a tertiary stat that affected this, and iirc you could also talent some down via AA. So you could sacrifice some power for speed or whatever.

WoW has this too, it's called haste. Reduces real cast time for casters and GCD for everyone.

I do find it odd that there is only Endurance and <primary stat> to balance in SWTOR. In games like DAoC debates would rage at great length over whether dex for cast speed or Int for cast power was more effective in a given circumstance (though the dex guy was usually correct).

We need a "because that's how WoW did it" image macro; the reason is to prevent stupid gear competition and things like Warriors running around in cloth. This is a good thing. Instead the gear balance can center around the secondary stats such as Power, Surge, Crit, Alacrity, etc.

[Sky]

For the record, warriors running around in cloth is fine by me. Missed the memo that said warriors should all be in big shiny armors.

[Margalis]

When you say MMOs here, I think you really mean WoW and SWToR. Afaik everything before WoW worked exactly like other genres. You can't punch again right now because your guy on the screen is clearly still punching.

Oh no, am I guilty of "every MMO is WoW" thinking? How embarrassing!

It is a bit odd in MMOs to hear people complain about things like "animation lock", which appears to be a newly invented term that means "how every other game animation system works." But I think some of that is due to the disconnect between what is happening onscreen and the underlying simulation. As someone above said you can't really half-ass it, if the animation and positioning really matters it needs to really matter. In a lot of MMOs it doesn't feel like you swing your sword, hit a guy and they take damage, it feels like they take damage while you play an animation of sword swinging. In that context I can see how stuff like animation lock would be an annoyance.

Which is why I am interested in Tera.

[Kageru]

For the record, warriors running around in cloth is fine by me. Missed the memo that said warriors should all be in big shiny armors.

That wasn't the complaint, it was the inequality in access to drops because lighter armor users where mechanically barred from wearing heavier armor.

[Lakov_Sanite]

And people wonder why I start "what went wrong" threads, we've got complaints about nearly the same issues in 4-5 diff threads now?

Drops: SWTOR is almost the opposite of wow, in that anything can be modded and unless you are a tank armor class means fuckall so you can wear what you like...which is awesome.  Being able to customize your look based on preference rather than a specific BIS item is wonderful...unless you're a tank....which I am...

[tmp]

Drops: SWTOR is almost the opposite of wow, in that anything can be modded and unless you are a tank armor class means fuckall so you can wear what you like...which is awesome.

If you can wear light, medium and heavy armour. Otherwise you're going to spend lot of time drooling over pieces which are apparently too heavy for you to wear, somehow.

[Sjofn]

It is sort of funny that the jedi knight robes are just too impossibly heavy for my consular to wear, but what can you do. :P

[UnSub]

Some people are silk bathrobe, some people are heshen sack.

[ajax34i]

It is sort of funny that the jedi knight robes are just too impossibly heavy for my consular to wear, but what can you do. :P

That's why they forced down character model resolution, even if you have it on high.  So you can't see the ugly patchwork your knight did to sew all them plassteel armoring plates onto them brown silk robes, with no thought given to how heavy they are or how the weight is distributed.

[Sjofn]

Oh, I've noticed the silly plating (it's hard to miss when you're duoing with your jedi knight husband and doing all the talky talky scenes together). It still amuses me!