Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Making tab targeting combat interactive without twitch

    • 16 posts
    June 13, 2018 2:32 PM PDT

     

    I've read a little about the abilities and resource types for classes as well as the devs hinting at the possibility of putting in vulnerabilities and I'd like to make some comparisons to other games to discuss how this can be done.

    First I'd like to set up the most negative example. This is handled absolutely horribly in WoW. In order to attack a mob effectively in WoW you have to repeat a certain chain of commands over and over again so that you cycle through their relatively short cooldowns. This sequence didn't change between encounters and was extremely short and simplistic.

    In my opinion this is pretty much the worst case scenario for a tab targeting system. A WoW DPS played like a non-interactive script and was about as challenging as cowclicker. This lead to WoW relying enourmously on the mechanic of forcing players to move around by telegraphing various areas that would be hit by damage as there was little room to put challenges in the use of combat abilities.

    Next up I'd like to talk about Vanguard as I guess the type of vulnerabilities that are being considered for Pantheon are similar to those that existed in Vanguard.

    Vulnerabilities in vanguard was mostly a miss. The reason for this was that the rewards for exploiting them were simply too weak. Each class had a few abilities that would apply various vulnerabilities for a short time. A vulnerability was a short debuff that did nothing except make a different attack ability from another class slightly stronger. In both group and raid settings with great variation in the availability of these ability boosting weaknesses the reward was simply too weak to be worth deviating from your standard rotation to get.

    Vanguard did however do some things right. It did have long recast abilities that synergized so that you needed to time them together. My class had a 2 minute recast debuffing melee ability that made all attacks against the mob for the next 6 seconds criticals. Timing this attack with my abilities that had bonuses for critical strikes was pivotal for optimizing DPS. It wasn't terribly hard but it certainly broke away from the standard rotation.

    I would like to see some reliance on longer reuse abilities in Pantheon too. Another thing that would be nice was conditional abilities such as the Dread Knights finishing blow ability that did great damage but only worked on mobs that were almost dead.

    On to a game that did vulnerabilities right, FFXI.

    You can just google "FFXI + skill chain" if you'd like to find out how it worked. It was essentially similar to the weakness system in Vanguard except it worked. What made it work was primarily a greater reward. It would add a significant amount of damage.

    It also had a rather small window of opportunity as the abilities had to be between 1 and 6 seconds apart forcing deliberate cooperation. You were also able to link multiple skills into long chains with a greater reward on every added step.

    It also had other advantages such as the fact that most melee abilities in that game being charged up by the TP resource which worked pretty much like the planned Dire Lord Essence resource. This meant you had to interact with other players in order to plan when it was possible to pull it off as the resource was unevenly generated.

    This system is one of the things that was mentioned a couple of times in the post asking what feature from another MMO people would most like to see in Pantheon and I agree. You can of course not rip it off exactly as it was but at least in some way be inspired by it because it was game defining in FFXI and pretty irrelevant in Vanguard.

    Lastly I'd like to mention Guild Wars, which was of course a very fast paced PvP centric game where a cooldown of a few seconds could be huge deal, so it was hardly what Pantheon is looking to emulate. It did however have some interesting situational abilites. For instace it had abilities that would get bonuses when cast on an enemy above half health and others that were better below half health. This made you need top adapt to the situation in a planned out tactical way without really relying on twitch. It's similar to the Vanguard Dread Knights finishing blow ability although that was much more restrictive. I would like to see such conditional abilities in Pantheon.

    Other things that could make combat more tactically interactive is having bonuses to abilities depending on other factors. For instance flanking, which DoTs or debuffs the mob has et cetera.

    Maybe an ability from a class that could not normally cause bleeds but would do so if the mob already had a bleed. This could be mimiced for other DoTs and debuffs, abilities that are stronger against diseased, poisoned, weakened, slowed or snared mobs maybe.

    Slightly twitchier but also options would be abilities that are better when the mob uses a certain ability such as casting a spell.

    I like the idea about certain spells being stronger while moving that seems to be in Pantheon.

    In short I'd very much like Pantheon to avoid the issues WoW had by using standard rotations to have many situational and reactive abilities with various cooldowns. This would allow for tactical choices without standard rotations, twitch or aiming.

    What ideas do you guys have for making the combat more tactically engaging? In a way so that it isn't the slow drudge which let EQ be so easily multi boxed or a twitchy reaction time mess relying on actions per minute and absolutely not a dull, monotone cycling of the same abilities.


    This post was edited by DonRight at June 13, 2018 2:44 PM PDT
    • 1921 posts
    June 14, 2018 6:20 AM PDT

    DonRight said: ... What ideas do you guys have for making the combat more tactically engaging? In a way so that it isn't the slow drudge which let EQ be so easily multi boxed or a twitchy reaction time mess relying on actions per minute and absolutely not a dull, monotone cycling of the same abilities.

    Personal Environments and/or relying on co-ordination with your groupmates to create vulnerabilities/weaknesses and exploit them on the targets, or positive group effects coupled with negative target effects.  Never gets old.  Synergy by role.

    • 16 posts
    June 14, 2018 2:56 PM PDT

    Cool idea, but very unique and complex. I wonder if it's easily implemented with this engine.

    • 1921 posts
    June 17, 2018 7:23 AM PDT

    It's technically possible in every modern engine, and given the spell & ability descriptions so far, would be trivial to do in Pantheon with Unity.
    The only thing you need is the ability to parent (for motion) a sphere trigger region/volume or item to a player, which has been possible since Quake.

    If you set appropriate caps to start (as with all balancing of items, spells, abilities, healing, dps, duty cycles, etc) then such a system is no more complex than any other, but does offer tremendous flexibility regarding emergent solutions for player behavior.

    • 1860 posts
    June 17, 2018 8:46 AM PDT

    I was expecting a post about "Making tab targeting combat interactive without twitch" as per the title but it's all about skills chains and abilitity usage. 

    OP, do you understand that tab targeting is simply using the tab key to cycle through targets?  You don't seem to mention targeting at all and just talk about skills.

    For example, you use the term "tab targeting" in this paragraph below but you don't actually mention targeting at all.  It doesn't make sense:

    First I'd like to set up the most negative example. This is handled absolutely horribly in WoW. In order to attack a mob effectively in WoW you have to repeat a certain chain of commands over and over again so that you cycle through their relatively short cooldowns. This sequence didn't change between encounters and was extremely short and simplistic.

    In my opinion this is pretty much the worst case scenario for a tab targeting system. A WoW DPS played like a non-interactive script and was about as challenging as cowclicker. This lead to WoW relying enourmously on the mechanic of forcing players to move around by telegraphing various areas that would be hit by damage as there was little room to put challenges in the use of combat abilities.

    Am I missing something?  That doesn't have anything to do with tab targeting.

    • 16 posts
    June 17, 2018 8:57 AM PDT

    philo said:

    I was expecting a post about "Making tab targeting combat interactive without twitch" as per the title but it's all about skills chains and abilitity usage. 

    OP, do you understand that tab targeting is simply using the tab key to cycle through targets?  You don't seem to mention targeting at all and just talk about skills.

    For example, you use the term "tab targeting" in this paragraph below but you don't actually mention targeting at all.  It doesn't make sense:

    First I'd like to set up the most negative example. This is handled absolutely horribly in WoW. In order to attack a mob effectively in WoW you have to repeat a certain chain of commands over and over again so that you cycle through their relatively short cooldowns. This sequence didn't change between encounters and was extremely short and simplistic.

    In my opinion this is pretty much the worst case scenario for a tab targeting system. A WoW DPS played like a non-interactive script and was about as challenging as cowclicker. This lead to WoW relying enourmously on the mechanic of forcing players to move around by telegraphing various areas that would be hit by damage as there was little room to put challenges in the use of combat abilities.

    Am I missing something?  That doesn't have anything to do with tab targeting.

     

    They're examples of systems used in games with similar fixed targets.

     

    As opposed to games like Tera in which your attacks actually hit an area which may or may not coincide with the hitbox of a target.

     

    As the tabbing around to find your target isn't in itself very difficult and this game is backing away from more twitchy targeted abilities that newer titles the challenge has to come from elsewhere.

     

    Thus the post is written from the perspective that the targeting system is a given as it is stated to be in Pantheon and looking for other ways to make combat more interactive. One of those is skill chains.

     

    But if you have ideas for making the tabbing itself challenging I'd be interested to read them too.

    • 1860 posts
    June 17, 2018 9:23 AM PDT

    The explanation above explains targeting better and gets away from skill usage.

    Tab Targeting a whole mob vs specific area hit box areas on the mob still doesn't necessarily get away from tab targeting (hitbox locations on a mob can still be cycled through using tab targeting).

    I tend to enjoy the simplicity of tab targeting and am drawn to games that use it most often.  I don't know if it needs to be fixed.

    I'd be fine with hit boxes on larger mobs but hopefully it isn't very common.  It seems excessive to have to cycle through various hit location for every trash mob we fight.  But that's still tab targeting anyway in many cases. 

    I don't have a good solution that doesn't require using the mouse (which isn't a good solution), but I don't know that there needs to be one.  I'm a fan of tab targeting. 


    This post was edited by philo at June 17, 2018 9:28 AM PDT
    • 3237 posts
    June 17, 2018 12:53 PM PDT
    The skill chains and XP chains were both amazing from FFXI. Best PVE combat I have seen in any MMO, hands down.