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The number 1 complaint im seeing on various game sites about NWO
gadzewks
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
Ive read a lot of good, and bad write ups about this game. Watched a ton of play through videos, and been in more forum discussions that I like to admit about the game.
Out of it all, the number 1 gripe about the game seems to be:
1. Animation/Combat lock, preventing you from moving while attacking.
Was this "Feature" intentional? Was it an attempt to mimic the "Move, then attack" rules from the pen/paper game? Is it a technical roadblock that prevents it from working different? Was it a design decision to prevent abuse of the more action oriented system? Maybe Cryptic has spoken up about this already, I havent been able to find anything regarding it.
It does seem like a feature that will drive a lot of potential customers/players away from the game though. A Free 2 play games main goal should be to make players WANT to keep playing the game, not to have elements that frustrate and annoy them making them want to stop.
Id be interested in hearing peoples opinions who actually got to play and experience this mechanic, and how they felt about it.
Out of it all, the number 1 gripe about the game seems to be:
1. Animation/Combat lock, preventing you from moving while attacking.
Was this "Feature" intentional? Was it an attempt to mimic the "Move, then attack" rules from the pen/paper game? Is it a technical roadblock that prevents it from working different? Was it a design decision to prevent abuse of the more action oriented system? Maybe Cryptic has spoken up about this already, I havent been able to find anything regarding it.
It does seem like a feature that will drive a lot of potential customers/players away from the game though. A Free 2 play games main goal should be to make players WANT to keep playing the game, not to have elements that frustrate and annoy them making them want to stop.
Id be interested in hearing peoples opinions who actually got to play and experience this mechanic, and how they felt about it.
Post edited by gadzewks on
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I've saw video where they explained it to Total Bisquit about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0E6Yw-M1YY
31:10 hope that helps.
I've hated this "feature" in every other action-combat MMO I've tried. TERA, Raiderz, Dragon Nest, DCUO, Vindictus, all had it, and I'd have gladly traded away the fancy animations for freedom of movement. DDO is the only MMO I've played with both action-combat and full freedom of movement, and I played it for three years. I've heard that GW2 doesn't have rooting, but I haven't played it.
Now, I haven't played the beta, from what I've seen, people do seem to not mind it much. I'm certainly going to give Neverwinter a shot, but the rooting is my #1 concern. #2 being the lack of character build options.
Actually you don't feel very grounded, even with this mechanic in place. If you have to block or dodge, your combat action is interrupted immediately und you can get away at once so you don't actually feel "rooted in place".
Because of the "rooted" mechanic combat don't feels too floaty and hectic. It adds some commitment and weight to your strikes. I think it feels very good.
Naturally. But given that almost every action-combat MMO has rooted combat, this could have been a way to differentiate and attract players turned off by those other MMOs.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
To put it simply, because I don't find it fun.
When I think of action combat, I think first-person-shooters, where you have fluid and natural control over your positioning as you fight.
I also think of fighting, in reality, where movement is hugely important in melee combat, especially vs multiple opponents.
This is what I've heard, so why I'm holding out some hope for Neverwinter. Hopefully, they've done something to improve over the other games I've tried.
I've not found "dodge" actions sufficient because there's so little control involved, and because they often have annoying pauses at the beginning and end of their movement. If I could fluidly roll through a dodge and into a swing, I'd probably like the mechanic a lot better.
Personally, I think hectic is good. It's supposed to be action, right? The floaty, well, I never really felt that way in DDO, so can't speak to that.
There is some value in having commitment play a role in making tactical choices, but I think it would better if only some, especially powerful attacks rooted. Then you'd have even greater depth of tactical choice between weaker, mobile attacks, and more powerful attacks that leave you more vulnerable.
As is (or at least, as is in the MMOs I've played), I feel like rooting just adds challenge by making the controls harder to use effectively, not by making the game more interesting. That's not the good sort of challenge.
I also expected it because they said we wouldn't be rooted. Of course, that was a while ago (but after the switch to MMO), and I'm certainly not calling them liars over it, but it was an expectation that they created, not one I imagined.
And besides, whether or not I should have expected it, doesn't change whether it "should" be an issue for me. I took issue with it in all those other MMOs I played, so I stopped playing them. What my expectations were going into them are irrelevant.
I personally feel that the rooting gives a lot of weight to the attacks of the characters and does a great job outlining the importance of positional tactics. I also think that unrooted combat leads to silly looking animations and techniques and what has already been described as a "floaty" feeling to combat.
That's disappointing. That's something that really annoyed me about TERA, and something I hoped Neverwinter had done to address.
Perhaps they could at least allow us to adjust facing some during animations? That could help prevent this sort of issue.
I also don't see why certain abilities shouldn't slow you down instead of stop you.
GW2 was a great game in almost every respect except for the combat. If they make this game more like that, I probably wont play this one either.
This was a design choice not a design flaw. You say they will loose people if they keep it this way. I say they will loose people if they change it. In the end it is a preference, a choice.
All die, so die well.
I feel that rooting makes positional tactics largely irrelevant. If you have aggro, it doesn't matter much where you're standing. If you are attacking, you will be attacked by anything that has aggro on you.
In contrast, in DDO, I can take on a dozen trolls and continually position myself so that only a few of them can actually hit me. Which, incidentally, is proper real-world, multiple-opponent tactics for melee fighting. With rooting, as soon as I attack one, they would surround me by the time the animation is over.
This could be addressed by having initial tells that a monster is starting to attack, but let them adjust their targeting until a few moments before the attack goes off. E.g., that red circle shows up 2 seconds before the attack, follows its target, then freezes in place a half second before the attack goes off, meaning that a dodge is needed to actually avoid that attack, you have ample time to prepare, and your movement is unhindered. Or, another example, a monster winds up a big melee attack, starting 2 seconds before, but continues to move with its target until .5 second before actually attacking.
And even more tactical if you can do at least some useful things while moving, but even more useful things if not moving. I did actually feel that movement was a bit too powerful in DDO, and that stationary attacks should have been more potent in comparison.
Movement is important but then so is knowing when not to move and when to plant yourself even for a moment. Do you strike with your fist when your feet are off the ground? If you do you will have little power. You have to know when to connect with the earth. Have you ever tried to shoot a handgun while walking transversely to the target? Takes a lot of practice to do even moderately well. You loss a lot of accuracy when moving.
Real combat happens at a much faster pace than in a game but you still have to know when to move and when to not.
All die, so die well.
DDO imo is the best example of a ruined combat system. The combat feels floaty and uninspired. You see the damage the character is doing, but you are not "feeling" it. This is to a large point because of ddos abysmal animation system. But combat itself also plays a part in this.
You can do the same you do in DDO in Neverwinter. With the exception, that you have to hold your attacks to move. You can move, attack, move some more etc. Some skills are exactly made for this kind of gameplay especially when you alternate at-wills with encounters. You are trading dps for incoming damage. And that helps a lot in making the system not so "floaty".
But there is no such choice at all in exclusively-rooted combat. If you move, you have zero power and accuracy because you can't attack at all. If you attack, you have zero mobility, except whatever is scripted into the animation, and thus is usually useless, or worse, detrimental when it puts you past the monster and you start swinging at air.
I'm entirely OK with there being a tradeoff between mobility and attack effectiveness. That's just, really, the same as the tried-and-true tradeoff between defense and offense.
And as far as training, well, aren't we playing bad-HAMSTER heroes? Whatever a real person can do with a lot of practice, should be just baseline for any class built around doing that thing.
If you are going to have the mob simply start sending the tell 2 seconds early but still not have where he will land that attack fixed then you are stuck simply having to wait until that last .5 sec to move or change direction anyway. You also need to take into account that the average human reaction time is about 250ms. add to that some network lag and time to actually traverse the distance needed to get out of the attack's area of effect and you really don't have any time to actually avoid most attacks. .5 sec is not enough time. You will only avoid attacks if you are already in motion which is why in GW2 you have to circle strafe constantly to simply avoid a portion of the normal attacks.
All die, so die well.
You were making an argument that in reality movement is hugely important to support your argument about the game. I was simply pointing out that in reality both movement and knowing when not to move is important. I was making no claim that game combat should be made more realistic. Real combat doesn't make for a very good game in any way. I don't think a real person's abilities, bad-HAMSTER or otherwise should be the baseline for anything in a game. They should design the combat to be fun, not realistic.
All die, so die well.
Animations for abilities make sense. When executing attacks the developers know exactly what animation will be played, and they don't have to script or make new animations for every possible variation. Anyone here play Champions Online and remember the legs flipping through torso acrobatics glitch? Or how weird some of the animations look while running because of the disconnect between the upper and lower half of the body? With rooted abilities those problems disappear, and allows the animators to make great looking animations for the powers that tie the upper half and lower half of your character together.
Easier and (hopefully) better balance. Rooted combat means the developers know the player will take combat damage, and can balance the game with that in mind. If everyone can move at all times then to make the game difficult the mobs would need to be balanced assuming players rarely get hit. This would likely lead to tanks being able to take 1-2 hits and everyone else getting 1-shot in boss encounters; healing would either be completely useless or vastly overpowered, with no real middle ground; defensive statistics, and maybe some utility statistics, would be mostly useless and dropped in favor of damage. Not to mention it makes ranged vs melee easier to balance.
The numbers were just examples of the top of my head. I don't see why it couldn't be tweaked to whatever parameters would work in practice. That would just require some playtesting to get right.
The point is, this would allow for long enough telegraphs to be useful, without them being trivial to avoid by just using continuous movement.
As an alternative, it could also be setup that a dodge used as soon as the telegraph starts breaks the targeting "lock-on", but normal movement is followed up until just before the attack happens. Then dodging and blocking is just as useful as it is in a rooted system.
Oh, I agree that gameplay comes first, before realism, and am not intending to suggest otherwise. But even real-world combat is, in a broad sense, a "game", just one with very high stakes. There are inherent rules (based physics, biology, and psychology), obvious objectives, and tactics matter. It's thus an example of tactical "gameplay" where movement is important. I'm not suggesting that Neverwinter should model reality for the sake of reality, but that in this case, reality shows examples of tactics and hard-choices that could make for interesting and improved gameplay.
Of course, there's also martial-arts combat, which also bears out my point, and being a sport, is clearly a form of a game.
The only time I ever saw anyone go down was during the battle with the main boss of the Cloak Tower, and I never saw a party wipe there.
I don't think I ever saw anyone die outside of that one battle.
All die, so die well.
guild wars 2 combat is not rooted, and hte game is easy as HAMSTER.
They clearly explained why they added rooted combat, the game was too easy, they couldnt design a single challenging encounter because you could always get away, especially the ranged classes. they were never in dangerous when fighting.
The rooted combat forces you to choose between finishing tat attack, or blocking/dodging/blinking out of the enemy attack.
Its called strategy, perhaps its time to embrace it as a pro, instead of a con.