pressing 1,2,3,4 is original?

Originally posted by tares

If you can only auto attack in other MMOs, it is doubtful that you have developed "skills" in AoC.

Took me about 30 seconds to develop the "skills" for melee AoC.

Originally posted by xKingdomx

pressing 1,2,3,4 is original?

Pressing 4,1,3 is leet man. 

It takes real skill to press 4,1,3

Only a real man can press 4,1,3

All the 1,2,3,4's are noobs.

The combat system i AOC is more complicated than what is posted in some posts here. It's not correct that it's just about hitting 4,3,1 instead of 1,2,3,4 as in other MMO's, I'll try to explain. I played WoW for 1.5 year back in 2005-6, since then I've played a little here and there, I have a active subscription in AOC and have played for about 2 years since launch.

Many guys posting here havent spent much time with the combat system before concluding on it. I'll try to explain a little more detailed.

In melee combat you hit the mobs infront of the character, wheter the mob is "tabbed" or not. If you dont want to you dont have to tab a mob to kill it, but usually you do ofcourse tab the mobs to see HP and buffs etc.

Players have combos that do extra damage(compared to white dmg), but to get the damage you have to hit in specific series ie: 4,3,1 as someone have mentioned earlier. But what they're not mentioning which is extremly important is that each combo attack from a direction too: Left, middle, or the Right side of the mob.

The mobs have shields that they move around, if you hit a side with 1 shield up you do normal damage, if you hit a side with two shield you do less damage (I think it's -25%) and with 3 shield up (-50% I think). Anyway you don't want to hit a mob from a side with 2 or 3 shields. If you hit the mob on a side with zero shields you do increased damage(+20% I think), so obviously you want to hit on sides with 0 or 1 shield up.

So unlike Wow or Rift, you have to think which combo you want to use, depnding on the shield placement on the mob. Your not guaranteed you will be able to use your best DPS combo once it is off cooldown.

In Wow or Rift you usually use your best abilities once they are off cooldown. In Rift which I currenly play I have made a macro with my best single target combos which means that most of the time I just Hit "1".

But that's not all, some combos debuff the mob, others increase damage on other combos. If for example your "increase critt chance combo" is available and you use it, you need to follow that up with combos that are affected by it, and at the same take consider the shield placement on the mob that means  you dont always follow up with the same combo. 

I hope that made some sense anyway, the combat system is much more comlicated than WoW and Rift type combat.

Originally posted by paul43

The combat system i AOC is more complicated than what is posted in some posts here. It's not correct that it's just about hitting 4,3,1 instead of 1,2,3,4 as in other MMO's, I'll try to explain. I played WoW for 1.5 year back in 2005-6, since then I've played a little here and there, I have a active subscription in AOC and have played for about 2 years since launch.

Many guys posting here havent spent much time with the combat system before concluding on it. I'll try to explain a little more detailed.

In melee combat you hit the mobs infront of the character, wheter the mob is "tabbed" or not. If you dont want to you dont have to tab a mob to kill it, but usually you do ofcourse tab the mobs to see HP and buffs etc.

Players have combos that do extra damage(compared to white dmg), but to get the damage you have to hit in specific series ie: 4,3,1 as someone have mentioned earlier. But what they're not mentioning which is extremly important is that each combo attack from a direction too: Left, middle, or the Right side of the mob.

The mobs have shields that they move around, if you hit a side with 1 shield up you do normal damage, if you hit a side with two shield you do less damage (I think it's -25%) and with 3 shield up (-50% I think). Anyway you don't want to hit a mob from a side with 2 or 3 shields. If you hit the mob on a side with zero shields you do increased damage(+20% I think), so obviously you want to hit on sides with 0 or 1 shield up.

So unlike Wow or Rift, you have to think which combo you want to use, depnding on the shield placement on the mob. Your not guaranteed you will be able to use your best DPS combo once it is off cooldown.

In Wow or Rift you usually use your best abilities once they are off cooldown. In Rift which I currenly play I have made a macro with my best single target combos which means that most of the time I just Hit "1".

But that's not all, some combos debuff the mob, others increase damage on other combos. If for example your "increase critt chance combo" is available and you use it, you need to follow that up with combos that are affected by it, and at the same take consider the shield placement on the mob that means  you dont always follow up with the same combo. 

 

I hope that made some sense anyway, the combat system is much more comlicated than WoW and Rift type combat.

 

Unfortunately the shield system has nothing to do with where the enemies shield actually is.  You look at these vertical and horizontal bars that seem to change randomly with no other visual cues such as oh, "heck the enemy is wielding as hield on his left hand so if you swing on his left he's going to bring his shield up, or he just moved his shield near his head to block."

Originally posted by Nerf09

Unfortunately the shield system has nothing to do with where the enemies shield actually is.  You look at these vertical and horizontal bars that seem to change randomly with no other visual cues such as oh, "heck the enemy is wielding as hield on his left hand so if you swing on his left he's going to bring his shield up, or he just moved his shield near his head to block."

There's a couple situations possible.  It's usually best to keep your personal shields balanced.  The only time I found it helpful was in a 1v1 PvP situation where I knew the heavy-hitting combos that my opponent would be using and could quickly stack 2 or 3, then re-balance (if I recall only really helped vs. rangers).

During PvE fights, if you land a hard shot the mob will usually stack shields where you just nailed them, so its pretty easy to follow-up with a combo ending in the other areas which are then unprotected.  Understanding this you can see the mob doesn't "randomly" change its shield stacks, but just reacts to incomming damage.

Originally posted by paul43

The combat system i AOC is more complicated than what is posted in some posts here. It's not correct that it's just about hitting 4,3,1 instead of 1,2,3,4 as in other MMO's, I'll try to explain. I played WoW for 1.5 year back in 2005-6, since then I've played a little here and there, I have a active subscription in AOC and have played for about 2 years since launch.

Many guys posting here havent spent much time with the combat system before concluding on it. I'll try to explain a little more detailed.

In melee combat you hit the mobs infront of the character, wheter the mob is "tabbed" or not. If you dont want to you dont have to tab a mob to kill it, but usually you do ofcourse tab the mobs to see HP and buffs etc.

Players have combos that do extra damage(compared to white dmg), but to get the damage you have to hit in specific series ie: 4,3,1 as someone have mentioned earlier. But what they're not mentioning which is extremly important is that each combo attack from a direction too: Left, middle, or the Right side of the mob.

The mobs have shields that they move around, if you hit a side with 1 shield up you do normal damage, if you hit a side with two shield you do less damage (I think it's -25%) and with 3 shield up (-50% I think). Anyway you don't want to hit a mob from a side with 2 or 3 shields. If you hit the mob on a side with zero shields you do increased damage(+20% I think), so obviously you want to hit on sides with 0 or 1 shield up.

So unlike Wow or Rift, you have to think which combo you want to use, depnding on the shield placement on the mob. Your not guaranteed you will be able to use your best DPS combo once it is off cooldown.

In Wow or Rift you usually use your best abilities once they are off cooldown. In Rift which I currenly play I have made a macro with my best single target combos which means that most of the time I just Hit "1".

But that's not all, some combos debuff the mob, others increase damage on other combos. If for example your "increase critt chance combo" is available and you use it, you need to follow that up with combos that are affected by it, and at the same take consider the shield placement on the mob that means  you dont always follow up with the same combo. 

 

I hope that made some sense anyway, the combat system is much more comlicated than WoW and Rift type combat.

 

This is the best explaination of the combat I have read so far here, and the shields on npcs do seem to move to where you hit more.

Sorry if I offended any AoC fans with my 1,2,3,4 comment

What I meant is that, even tho that combat system provided options and faster combat. The controls are still extremely NOT user friendly.

For a combat system that doesn't need to tab target, their controls is extremely ill designed. If you don't need to particularly target anyone in order to start attacking, you should take advantage of that and be able to move while you combat, so you can engage more than just one enemy at the same time.

But having the all controls to the keyboard (which presumably is your left hand only) your left hand is significantly doing more task than your right hand. You right hand is simply dumbed down to just control your camera angle, when you don't need to target. Your left hand is doing, movement combat hotkeys, interface keybinds, typing, etc

You also can't move when you are pressing 1,2,3,4, which contradicts with the whole you don't need to target to attack. Not mention in AoC, you still have other skills needed to hotkey.

Of course this probelm extends much beyond AoC, most MMO if not all MMO suffers from terrible controls, especially with MMO with 3+ bars of combat hotkeys, how are people suppose to keybind 36 hotkeys to their keyboard, while still making it user friendly eg: not having to jump over to the other side of the keyboard half the time

Combat 101 will always be user friendly controls, easy to use, difficult to master.

Especially when MMO is in the mainstream territory, not everyone is born with 10 fingers on each hand or a mouse with 10 hotkeys to use. The greatest combat in games in the past, never required more than  the use of 5-6 buttons, because that can also keep combat balance and user friendly. 

I have absolutely no clue why MMO likes to have so many hotkeys, in my view, thats just complete bad design. Even WoW is changing, with its new talent system. MMO designers need to understand that Less is more, customisation isn't just about having options, but also about having the choice to choose between. If everyone needs to use all the skills in order to be great, in the end, no one is unique. I like games with limited skillbar because they force you to make a choose, to truly customise how your character engages in combat.

I quit AOC because of the combat system. I just couldn't keep up with the ever expanding key combinations.

Sure its cool and feels like you have more input into the combat then other MMOs but in the end it makes my head hurt, along with my fingers.

Originally posted by korvass

Originally posted by Tjommis

The melee combat system still has 5 attack directions, but  you wont unlock the last 2 directions until midlevel. That said, I think the melee combat in AoC is the main reason I keep myself sticking with this game - no other game gives me the same rush as when my dual wielding conqueror starts slicing and dicing.

And, even after a few years, watching those fatality animations STILL doesn't get old for me!

Dunno if the combat system is entirely unique. D&D Online featured a hack&slash system, but AoC's is more refined.

But yeah... watching my Guardian gut some poor fellow, then kick him onto his back, stand on his chest and then skewer him again with a blade.. never gets old. :D

Just dropping my opinions here!

I bought AoC when it came out and played for three to four months happily (stopped there, then picked it up as this freemium a few months ago, played for a month and again - then it just hit me like any other MMO.) The combat was dull and boring, even with the combo system and the active blocking / shields were a joke. No reason to ever use active blocking on a DPS class, and the shields? No point in adjusting, best to keep them 1 on each side.

You speak about fatalities being beautiful, but hell - I say completely the opposite! They were horribly animated and badly done. The characters slide in most curious ways while performing fatalities, and the blades don't even connect and if they do, it looks like there is no weight what so ever behind the weapon.

Most of the combat animations look like a joke too, I was expecting them to be far smoother already, and the horrible flashing lights with every combo really ruins the feel of dark, brutal world when you see flaming blades leaving red lines in the air and big blue flashes as your combo finishes.

And the dodging was a joke, sure you can hit A or D twice, but all you get is a passive 50% dodge chance buff which lasts for 3 seconds or so. I would say DDOs combat system is far more better, with it having manual blocking which makes sense, dodging and even manually leading targets with ranged weapons. But if we look away from MMOs and want something unique, then we can all happily go to Mount & Blade -series and enjoy directional melee combat with manual parries, chambers and even physics behind the weapons? I would put Dark Messiah second, best singleplayer ever, but it's a shame that the devs took the game, bent it over and handled it with a hammer until they could fit it into a horrible multiplayer which didn't work at all.

Of course - in the end this all comes down to personal opinions, likes and dislikes. Some people like Vindictus while I could never get into it because of the over-flashy anime feeling, and I know just fine that Tera won't be my thing either. I even see very bad decisions in Guild Wars 2 design, even though from all the MMOs with "traditional" combat, Guild Wars (1) is the one which holds my interest even to this day, indeed -  I still play it almost daily, trying to finish the last campaign with a friend (However, this thread is not for talking about GW, so I won't go into details of it's combat now.)