Изменение боевой системы

Alpha-1 split-body melee weapon combat sneak peek.

I can move while swinging on this guy. I can back up then continue to attack him. Just have complete control over my character while attacking. – Steven Sharif

A revamped combat system will be rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing based on player feedback.

I just want to give kudos to the combat team, because in my opinion having played this and watched this and seen the community's response to it, they've done a great job in moving away from what was our direction prior to Alpha-1 to now having developed for Alpha-2 a significantly revamped combat experience; and I think it feels good and it plays well and it's fun. – Steven Sharif

• The goal is to give more agency to the player and achieve a more fluid flow of combat with greater mobility when using abilities.
• The current hybrid tab and action combat system will remain after the revamp.
• This revamp will not represent the final form of combat, but will set the general direction that combat will be taking.
• The revamp will be iterative and will be rolled out to testers in different phases.
• The developers will be testing whether or not to use global cooldowns GCDs on different types of abilities during Alpha-2.
  • As of July 2023 global cooldowns are not currently in the game.
  • Instant cast abilities are referred to as off-global-cooldown or OGCD abilities.

The revamped combat system will feature split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

You'll be able to move forward while swinging your weapon; and this will allow you complete control over your weapon attacks for melee. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 combat was focused on core functionality rather than combat balance. Alpha-2 combat will include archetypes, significant ability support, augments, split-body combat, weapon attacks, and many additional items, among other things.

• Changes that allow templated abilities to apply to 3D positions in the air or water will be prototyped and may be included in Alpha-2.

Hybrid combat

Ranger hybrid combat in Alpha-2.

Our desire has always and continues to be how we can create a mixture of tab target abilities and skill-shot oriented positional, directional-based ability usage and make something cohesive in that design. And I think that what we're achieving with that regard may not fully feel like an action-oriented game, but we've always intended to be more hybrid-oriented, leaning towards tab target. So you're going to see a mixture of abilities that require the targets and that don't; and then you're going to have an option as the player's perspective to utilize an action camera mode, which utilizes a soft target lock feature and our reticle. – Steven Sharif

Hard-locked friendly player target.

Hybrid combat refers to the choice between tab and action combat in Ashes of Creation. A toggle button (default Z, but can be re-bound to another key) allows the player to switch between action and tab combat modes.

• The action mode camera is tied to the to the player's reticle (crosshair).
  • There will likely be a hotkey that when held down will allow free camera movement in action mode.
  • In future the user will have the ability to choose from different reticle appearances.

• Targeted skills require either a soft or hard locked target.
  • Soft locking is when the reticle moves over a valid target while in action mode. The targeting plate will appear slightly grayed out to indicate that this is a soft-lock target. If the reticle moves away from the target or the target moves away from the reticle, the target is lost.
  • Hard locking is when the player uses right-mouse on a soft-locked target in action mode, or when the player selects a valid target in tab mode. The targeting plate will not be grayed-out to indicate that a hard-lock target is selected. Unlike soft locking, if the target moves out of the reticle, the target is not lost. Tab will still cycle between hard-locked targets in action mode based on proximity priority.

• Templated skills allow "blind firing" without a target while in action mode. If an entity moves into the path of the attack they can be struck.

Q: Is the development team moving away from action combat, or is action combat more prevalent with the melee classes, and the healing/range classes are more tab-target other than AoE spells?

A: We have not moved away from our hybrid approach to the development of Ashes of Creation's combat; and specifically to reiterate: that approach is incorporating elements of skill shots, fast and reactive gameplay that is situationally relevant, and incorporates the camera mode of both tab-targeting as well as action combat reticle. That's something that is still in progress. We haven't moved away from that however. To note, our approach of that hybridization is going to incorporate things like templated skill-shots, directionally relevant activated abilities, along with the ability to dodge to roll projectiles that can impact collision. Those are elements of action combat that are present. – Steven Sharif

Templated and targeted versions of skills will have different characteristics.

Skill progressions, skill point allocation is determined by the player. The player will be able to choose either more tab-target oriented skills or more action-based skills and customize their playable experience to what accommodates their preference. From a balancing standpoint for us developers, we need to make sure that certain abilities house certain functions so that there's a balance between skill shots and tab-target abilities. – Steven Sharif

• Targeted skills will be greyed out if the target is not within a valid range but templated skills will generally require the player to assess the correct range for the skill.

• Different ranks of the same skill can change the skill from tab to action or vice-versa.
  • Variables will change based on which version of a skill is chosen.
    • Damage.
    • Charge up time.
    • Accuracy.
    • Evasion.
    • Crowd control.
    • Cooldown.
    • Energy consumption.
    • Cost to spec.
    • Attack range will likely remain the same; as it is driven by the weapon or skill itself.

Некоторая из приведенной ниже информации не была подтверждена разработчиками и может не входить в текущую дорожную карту разработки.

• It may not be possible to be able to fully spec into just action or tab targeted skills. There might be a 75% cap on choosing skills from any one type.
• For the purposes of balance, certain skill types will be either tab or action oriented skills.
  • Hard CCs may be housed in action oriented skills because they are skill shots that are more difficult to land.
  • Softer CC's would be housed in tab-targeted abilities.

As an example: Let's say you're playing a ranged class. You could have an action-oriented power shot in your skill tree or you could have a single target power shot that ramps up and does more damage. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 combat

Демонстрация раннего гибридного боя Alpha-1.

Вы заметите, что когда я перехожу в режим действия, у меня есть сетка, и когда моя сетка зависает над вражеской целью, она становится красной, по существу показывая, что «эй, мы знаем, что вы попали в цель», которую вы можете видеть; и когда вы нажимаете Q, вы можете зафиксироваться на этой цели. Вы также можете удерживать Tab для переключения между целями. Таким образом, это важный аспект боя, который мы пытаемся внедрить, а именно смешивание и объединение табуляции и действия, поэтому у вас все еще есть этот компонент действия, но вы также можете использовать некоторые из ваших навыков, ориентированных на табуляцию. – Steven Sharif

Гибридный бой был испытан в Alpha-1.

• Кнопка переключения (по умолчанию Zно может быть привязана к другой клавише) позволяет игроку переключаться между режимами боя, ориентированными на действие и вкладку.

• В режиме действия используется прицельная сетка и очень близок к игре от третьего лица.
  • Игрок не должен находиться в режиме прицеливания, чтобы использовать боевую способность.

  Если вы используете боевую способность действия, которая будет направлена на цель, вам не нужно находиться в режиме прицеливания, чтобы использовать ее. Он будет стрелять туда, где находится прицел. Так что если вы играете на ощупь и находитесь в режиме камеры-табулятора, вы все равно сможете использовать свои навыки и способности, ориентированные на действие. – Steven Sharif

  • Прицел будет подсвечиваться/изменять цвет (на красный), чтобы показать, если текущая цель может быть поражена с помощью текущего подготовленного навыка.
  • Боевые способности в режиме действия не будут иметь функции фиксации, но нажатие Q в режиме действия зафиксирует текущую цель, что позволит использовать навыки, ориентированные на вкладку в режиме действия.

  Боевые способности действия, так сказать, не будут иметь функции фиксации. Некоторые из них будут сняты только на умение. Однако, поскольку у вас может быть сочетание способностей вкладок, для которых требуется цель, вы также сможете заблокировать цель в режиме действия. Прямо сейчас это делегировано клавише Q по умолчанию, но вы, очевидно, можете настроить это, вы можете поместить его на левую кнопку мыши, или вы можете поместить его куда угодно; и когда ваша сетка зависает над целью, она быстро меняет вашу целевую способность, и когда вы нажимаете кнопку блокировки цели, она затем блокирует эту цель; и если у вас есть навыки, ориентированные на табуляцию, вы можете использовать свои навыки, ориентированные на табуляцию, и они будут использованы против этой цели. – Steven Sharif

  • Удерживая Tab в режиме действия, вы будете чередовать цели.
  • Нажатие правой кнопки мыши в режиме действий переключит режим вкладок для текущей выделенной цели.
• Режим вкладок (режим MMO) облегчает ведение боя, нацеленного на вкладку. Способность, нацеленная на вкладку, требует цели, чтобы использовать это умение.
  • Нажатие левой кнопки мыши в режиме вкладки атакует цель (с помощью выбранного в данный момент оружия).
  • В пользовательском интерфейсе будет возможность «цель мишени».

Weapon use combo system (Combat animation montage)

Alpha-2 greatsword weapon combo animation.

Whenever you get stab hits on the third and the fourth hit, those are actually procs. So, if you connect with the second hit of that proc hit you'll receive the additional effects, but you actually have to connect with a monster or player to receive the effect; and I think the proc rate is at a static 25 percent right now. We're looking at other ways to scale that. Maybe it scales with a stat, or maybe it scales with additional nodes, but right now it's kind of low. – Brian Ferguson

A weapon combo system (also referred to as Weapon use combo, Weapon attack combo, Weapon combo, and Weapon use ability) is utilized instead of a traditional auto-attack ability in Ashes of Creation.

• The combo system consists of a sequence of combat animations based on the weapon type, referred to as a combat animation montage.
  • Combos are triggered by performing basic weapon attacks (default Q or left-mouse-click).

Let's say for example you're using a two-handed warhammer or something and you have a number of weapon combos that play animation style based on how many combos deep you go into an attack with that warhammer. So the first is going to be like a forward swing. Second is going to be a back swing. The third is going to be swing down and the fourth is going to be some twirl that you do; and that's what we call the combo animation montage. – Steven Sharif

• The number of steps and passive effects that trigger during weapon combos can be customized in the weapon skill tree.

We wanted to have a combo length progression available to players so that certain builds could have longer weapon combos and other builds can have shorter weapon combos with more passive effects.; and this has been the result of our exploration. So, when you start out you've got a pretty quick four-hit combo, but whenever you unlock the additional hits you get the fifth and sixth hits, which are at approximately 50% to the overall combo length. But we found that that gave a pretty satisfying floor and ceiling to how long the combo can be. – Brian Ferguson

• Depending on class skill choice these effects will have synergy with the combat montage.

Depending on what your class skill choice has been those are going to have synergy effects with the weapon skill tree. So my skill called spin-to-win might do 30 additional damage on a staggered target. So I see when my proc occurs with the stagger effect on my first swing, like for me as a player I might be only interested in landing that first swing, so every now and then I'm gonna swing once and then I'm gonna use a skill and then I'm gonna come back and swing again because that'll play my first swing montage, because it's been interrupted. So I won't move to the second one because I'm really just wanna hit that stagger effect. So that's going to be how my rotation lines up. However I might have some skill that on a stun target it might be an immediate cast and it's like some power you push or power hit; and that does- it knocks back a stun target. So if the target's stunned when this skill plays, it has an added effect of knock down and now they're gonna get knocked down for an additional two seconds. Now I might spec into that and as a result I want to finish through: swing, swing, and then knock down. So I get my chance at stunning that target with that weapon skill. – Steven Sharif

• Weapon progression such as set bonuses may change at what level any proc effects occur and therefore enable different combo rotations.

You may have items or set bonuses that change at what level those proc occurs. So I may have a full set of battle armor that changes all third hit combo procs to second hit requirements and now I have a chance not only on my second hit to land that tapering slow but I also have a chance to land my one second stun proc because I have the full set that changes my weapon progression. So that's the way itemization works with your weapon skill tree, is you can enhance when those weapon skill trees become available in your combat montage and that can be a relevant factor in how your skill rotations come to play; and mixes with your weapon attacks.

• Weapon skill choices and rotations will vary based on whether the player is more focused on PvP or PvE.

Right now some people might just say, "I don't care at all about my weapon attacks. I'm not going to invest a lot of points into that. And if I do, it's going to be primarily PvE focused where I'm more comfortable using just swinging my weapon, and I may not use them as much in PvP. I'm just going to be focused on skill rotations." That's okay, but the reason for those skill montages- back to your question- is they have a very relevant role in when certain procs come online from a weapons skill tree perspective. – Steven Sharif

• Using a skill/ability other than a basic attack will in general reset the combo.
  • The developers are considering specific abilities that might be able to be used without resetting the combo system.

It acts similar in the sense of the core loop of what an auto attack is so to speak; where typically your other skills have a cooldown period, they have a rotation or whatever: Our combo system is a repeatable skill effect that you can continually attack with but it's a little bit more involved than what a traditional auto attack is; and it has components from a from an advancement standpoint when it comes to the types of procs that your weapon can have during that combo system... It's not going to have the quick time event that you guys saw early on in PAX and gave great feedback on, but it is going to have development with regards to the power of the weapon the type of weapon you're using, the additional proc effects that you can skill into: Those types of things are going to make it a little bit more complex of a system capture. – Steven Sharif

Mobility

Revamped Alpha-1 Mage Fireball ability.

The general approach that we're taking based on a lot of feedback and just good combat design in general. You know philosophy is that we want to give more agency in the hands of the player and the antithesis of that is locking the player down for really long amounts of time. The sort of concept behind that is like you could make an animation effects as glorious looking as possible but if it's taking away control of the player, none of that really matters. Especially the 100th or thousandth time you're using the spell you're tired of that happening you don't feel powerful: You feel the opposite of powerful. So we're trying to like give a lot of control back to the player while they're using these abilities so they can still control their movements, they can react simultaneously while they're taking actions; and we just want to get overall more of a fluid flow, I guess, of combat. And that's the general design philosophy we're using to approach the overhaul. – Tradd Thompson

• The revamped combat system features split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

A lot of abilities you have the capability of moving while casting. It's going to decrease your movement speed significantly or depending on the type of ability. We do reserve the cost- and that's really what it is when you tie ability usage to mobility- we do reserve the cost of requiring the character to remain stationary on some big effect type abilities. – Steven Sharif

• Most abilities in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some abilities may slow the caster down during the cast, but only rarely will the player be rooted in place.
  • Movement speed can decrease significantly depending on the type of ability.
  • Weapon weight can also affect mobility.
  • Skills with the greatest power may require the caster to remain stationary while channeling them. This is a risk vs. reward mechanic.

Most abilities you'll find in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some of those abilities might slow your movement during the cast, but you can continue to move. Very rarely, and depending on obviously the importance of the ability or the power level of that ability, you might be rooted in place. So, for example, the AoE ability [Chains of Restraint] has a lot going on. It has damage ticking over time, it is an area of effect, it also has a status condition application; and in those instances the player character gets rooted. – Steven Sharif

• Ranged archetypes will have gap openers to counter gap closers from archetypes like the Fighter.

That's the cat-and-mouse of these abilities. Like we've seen with the Ranger, they have a backflip, they have their Airdrop [sic] ability. The Mage has teleportation. There are going to be abilities that are tit-for-tat; and managing the resource of those abilities and the timing of when you use them to either correlate to your opponent's use of those things, or to save them for yourself when you want to get away, that's part of what makes the engagements dynamic and different each time. – Steven Sharif

• Unreal Engine 5 has enabled improved forms of locomotion, such as crouching, tilting and mantling.
  • Crouching may or may not be in the game.

• The ability to prone is not be in the game.

• Moving backward will likely not affect block and parry.

• Player movement speed during combat is balanced for both PvE and PvP.

There's a balance in the game design between your movement speed on attack and the movement speed of your opponent. When you have a game that is both PvE centric as well as PvP centric, you have to make sure that combat is blended for both approaches; and we can always run into problems where, if you're significantly hampered in your movement speed, that has an effect on how we expect player versus player engagements to interact; and we don't want to restrict a player's ability to be mobile if they're the target of an attack. And as a result of that we need to make sure that we don't restrict the movement abilities of the player who is doing the attacking as well. So we want it to be relatively free for you to stay with each other. Your opponents move around the battlefield together and if we're hampering you on the attack action, we have to then implement some type of snare, or slow, or cc effect essentially on your opposing target; and that's not the approach we want to take for for PvP. – Steven Sharif

• Melee archetypes will offer various mobility and CC counters against ranged archetypes, such as the Ranger.

If we're talking about Fighter, they're going to have a lot of heavy gap closers. They can probably be a little bit more liberal in the use of their gap closers because they have so many of them, versus let's say a Ranger that needs to choose when to use their escape abilities, because they have fewer of them. The same would be true for a melee character like a rogue. Their approach vector is going to be more stealth-driven than it would be perhaps let's say from a gap-closer perspective. – Steven Sharif

Q: If a ranger is super mobile, what are the melee's options in order to catch them?

A: Different class kits will provide different gap closers. They'll provide different mobility skills. They'll have lockdowns. They'll have chains to pull back. They'll have a lot of different things in the rotation. That's part of what an MMORPG experience is. You're not just restricted to three or six skills, you have a rotational suite; and depending on the type of challenges you face is going to help determine which of those rotations you spec into from your skill tree. – Steven Sharif

Skill	Icon	Origin	Description
Air Strike		Ranger	Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and rooting targets hit for 3 seconds. Rotation control is enabled during cast. The root effect is nature based.
Blink		Mage	Instantly teleport a set distance in the direction you are moving.
Blitz		Fighter	Charge directly toward target enemy, dealing Physical damage to the target on arrival.
Call of the Wild		Ranger	Remove all movement impairing effects and increase movement speed by 20% for 8 seconds. Snares and Roots effects applied to the caster are ignored.
Caravan Trail Speed Bonus		Caravan	Minor speed boost for travelling on a simple trail.
Exert		Fighter	Consume your Combat Momentum rapidly, gaining 20% increased attack and movement speed and immunity to disabling effects while active. Must have at least 20 Combat Momentum to activate, and the effect ends when all Combat Momentum is fully depleted.
Form Of Celerity		Fighter	While in this form, the caster receives +2% Movement Speed per 10 Combat Momentum, up to a maximum of +20%. Shifting form costs 20% of current Combat Momentum and triggers cooldown for all Combat Forms.
Form Of Fluidity		Fighter	While in this form, the caster receives +4% Disable Resistance Chance per 10 Combat Momentum, up to a maximum of +40%. Shifting form costs 20% of current Combat Momentum and triggers cooldown for all Combat Forms.
Leap Strike		Fighter	Leap to target location and deal damage around you, snaring targets hit for 3 seconds.
Lunging Assault		Fighter	Spend 15 Combat Momentum to lunge in a direction a short distance and perform an upward swing upon arrival, dealing damage to enemies in front of you. You are immune to hard crowd control effects while performing this ability.
Recharging Lunging Assault		Fighter	Lunging Assault gains an additional charge and generates 5 additional Combat Momentum when dealing damage to one or more enemies.
Shield Assault		Tank	Bashes the target with your shield, dealing damage and applying the shaken condition. If the target is already suffering from the shaken condition, stun the target instead.
Speed Boost		Caravan	Gives the caravan a temporary speed boost.
Unstoppable Exert		Fighter	Exert additionally breaks all hard control effects on the caster, and may be used any time while under a hard controlling effect.
Whirlwind		Fighter	Channeled Ability: Deal physical damage to all enemies around the caster with each spin while channeled, increasing the spin rate the longer it is channeled. The caster is immune to hard disabling effects while spinning. Activate the ability again to end channeling early.
Wings of Salvation		Cleric	Sprout phoenix-like wings and leap to target ally, then grant a small amount of temporary health to that target on arrival. An ally is defined as any non-combatant player or non-mob NPC.

Уклонение

Уклонение in Alpha-1 early combat.

Another thing that's important about these action combats is the ability to dodge and moving out of the way of certain skill shots. – Steven Sharif

Evasion moves such as dodging and weaving will be present in Ashes of Creation combat.

• Уклонение is a universal skill that is able to be unlocked by all archetypes.
  • Dodge rolling type skills were previously housed in the action skill sets of agile classes such as Rogues or Fighters.

• Dodging will not use I-frames (invincibility frames), but it may affect accuracy and mitigation stats when used.
  • Previously it was stated that hybrid combat will likely have true evasion skills relating to action-oriented combat and also have I-frames that apply to tab targeting.

So you see an animation windup that's a telegraph on what's coming; and then you have response actions that you can take as a result of that in order to dodge, weave, move, do whatever. It is both a combination of what your rotation is but also how you have reaction abilities ready to go that you save for certain circumstances that are important. – Steven Sharif

Active blocking

Этот перевод может быть устаревшим

Клерик, использующий активное блокирование щитом в Alpha-2.

Мы играемся с идеей дать всем универсальную механику блокирования, при которой щит, скорее всего, будет лучше всего, но игрок сможет парировать и двуручным оружием и с оружием в каждой руке. – Tradd Thompson

Активное блокирование присутствовало в Alpha-2. Щиты лучше подходят для активного блокирования, но для парирования атак подойдёт любое оружие ближнего боя.

• Разработчики размышляют о добавлении активного блокирования в набор универсальных навыков, которыми могут пользоваться все классы.
  • Разработчики будут тестировать использование отдельных механик энергии для универсальных навыков в Alpha-2.
• Ранее, когда разработчиками не были завершены механики активного блокирования, они склонялись к использованию традиционного ориентированного на баффы снижения урона как в большинстве ММО, а также рассматривали возможность взаимодействия между активным блокированием и пассивной характеристикой блокирования.
• У щита «Paladin's Might» в Ashes of Creation Apocalypse был собственный хитбокс и очки здоровья, им можно было активно блокировать снаряды.

Videos

• 2022-06-30 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Basic Melee Weapon Attack Update
• 2022-09-30 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Basic Ranged Weapon Attack Update

Смотрите также

• Боевая система
• Mobility
• Universal skills
• PvP