I think I've whittled it down from some earlier ideas.
You basically need this:
1. Queue-able attack buttons, at least one deep, more than 3 may be of limited use. (not always standard)
2. Tab targetting of some type (fairly standard)
3. Combat-usable, bindable /follow
The first is the exact opposite of button mashing. It takes you out of the twitch moment, and activates some planning which, when successful, is very rewarding.
I am not button mashing in the immediate -- I am fast-queueing attack ***plans***, not attacks. Some may succeed, some fail, but the plan goes on.
2. Tab target -- This isn't so much tab per se as rapid target selection. I never did get the hang of setting up "nearest next minion" or "nearest minion or lieut" or "lieut only", "boss only", etc. If we could set up those and swap them in as what tab does, better still.
But I will settle for a next nearest simple tab, with shift-tab reverse.
3. Some games disable follow in combat, or use it as travel assistant where it does not guarantee melee range (or deliberately stop outside it.)
But this should work at your current combat speed and mode, including transitions between run, fly, and jump.
A typical scrapper sequence for me:
- Attack (queue main haymaker) something. Leap into air and hit follow (typically 'g' bound) and land right at it, attack fires.
- meanwhile have queued next one.
- follow attack cycle
- as creature's "arrest" nears, hit tab for a new target when next swing, which you guess will probably kill it, goes off, and do not wait to make sure. Leap simultaneously if next target isn't right there.
That's it. On the rare case your final hit was insufficient, just go back, oh well.
It's shocking no other game has come close to this, button masher or not.
Any one of those three things out of kilter or missing, and the whole thing collapses.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
Sounds good, as some ppl need an alternative to carpal pain inducing button-smashing/mouse-clicking... Martial artists IRL have Katas they train with for muscle memory/reflex actions/responses, and will often tend to use a sequence unconsciously... This would make it easier, and, the trick to preventing botting would be how you respond to a broken sequence (Target locked onto goes down before you hit, need to restart the sequence then to continue fighting)...
I loved combos in Dual Sword. I've long since lost them, but I used to have three separate /binds files for Dual Swords: Scrapper, Brute, Stalker. The Stalker combos were the hardest to plan out and use well. The differences between the Scrapper and Brute combos were sometimes silly, but nonetheless different enough that mixing them up was trouble.
I used the NumPad keys for my binds. 7-8-9 was the fastest cycling combo. 4-5-6 was the secondary effect combo, 1-2-3, was the max damage combo. One of the sets happened to work out so that when /bind was arranged in this way then 7-5-3 was also a combo, making me sometimes wonder if it was designed that way intentionally.
I loved using the combos. Dual Swords was fine set all by itself, but the different combos created the need to think about which situations would be best for which combo, adding a layer of strategic planning and tactical execution that normal melee sets just did not offer.
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In the Melee pass of Champions the Brawler "role" received an automatic crowd control that slowed the enemy when being attacked by melee powers. It WOULD have worked if not for the Champions Online freeform system where many exploited it.
I don't know if it's still there but in CoT it would make more sense because people who choose to be melee DPS are doing so very purposefully
Crowd Control Enthusiast
As long as I don't have to waste a power choice on taunt or other cc (unless it's a freebie) -- that should be the realm of controllers and tanks (pseudo-controllers in melee wrappers).
Certain auras might be useful, but I'd hate to fall into a raid role where I was expected to waste half my mana on slow cc or other debuffs. That's not what my little spitfires are signing up for!
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
I will suggest an improvement, if that's even possible!
Let queued powers be attached to the monster under target when queued. Then you can tab to next monster and start queueing before those attacks fire.
So, if monster dies, attacks go off on new target.
Flow something like this (assume queue size 4, includes firing attack).
1. Target first. Queue 4 attacks. First is firing while other 3 are queued. Keep queue full.
2. As death of monster nears, you have a feel for how many attacks are needed. When this drops below (your next) 4 (in your rotation), tab to next monster and start queueing.
3. As long as you remain in range of first, queued attacks on former target continue.
4. If first dies, queued artacks for second monster start.
5. Allow powers to be queued even if not recycled yet. Even if not fired from earlier in queue yet (quick powers, or round robin single-target dot.) As long as it is recycled by the time it is its turn in queue, g2g.
6. If not recycled by that time, what to do? Skip? Stop and wait?
There is room for exprimentation, but the key is you can tab to next monster and start queueing before first dies.
Questions and experiments for fun factor:
1. If first dies before last power queued for it fires, do those queued attacks apply to the next monster or do they just drop? Player settable/hot keyable to apply to next target or drop them?
2. You will need a hotkey to clear whole queue.
3. Queue more than two targets? A round robin sort of thing to apply dots would be a fantastic fun gameplay element!!!!!!!!!
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
One other thing, quite apart from powers and game mechanics, CoH had wonderful, visceral sound effects. The feeling of the claws slices, or broadsword.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
The odd hum of a kinetic melee punch, the resounding smack of an electrically charged fist knocking a Hellion a country mile...
One of the things that stuck with me was how certain powerful melee attacks would play some sort of wind-like sound effect when your toon was mid-swing. It almost sounded like the wind was saying, [i]"YES!"[/i] Or maybe that was the character saying it through his/her teeth. Listen closely, and try to ignore the BG music... https://youtu.be/ZrvHWmDJOQs?t=45
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I'll offer a bit of a counter point. If you allow too much automation it gives you time to sit back and think. Which dispels the scrapperlock. By only being able to que one attack (or two if you have an attack set to auto (I usually used auto for hasten or a heal)) you have to constantly be watching what is going on and actively queue the next attack. It keeps you in the moment only giving the player enough time to check health bars and nearby targets. It therefore constrains their worldview to a few things because there simply wasn't enough time to look at anything else.
If a player can que 4 attacks on a target and then do the same for a secondary target even at one second per attack that would give a player 5-6 seconds of breathing space which, in a game where a heck of a lot could happen in only 2-3 seconds, is a lot of time to look around at the sights.
I even noticed on slower sets where animation times were longer that I had a harder time falling into scrapper lock but with set like Katana where the longest animation weighed in at 2 seconds or less it happened a lot. Or with dual swords where the set had more moving parts to keep track of in the form of combos. When I was deep in scrapperlock I'd become so focused on maximizing survivability and damage output that I would hold my breath. Longer fights would find me suddenly sucking air as more base neurological processes kicked in. I think that if you let me que more powers I'd simply let those run and look at what else was going on. At that point I'd only drop into a lock if I screwed up my setup cycle or had to massively refocus my efforts mid fight where I fell behind.
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Oh yes, absolutely this. Claws were amazing - had so much fun with them! There was a sense of impact as well, you need to feel like your attacks are connecting to make combat satisfying.
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Warcraft allows a 1/2 second pseudo-queueing. Whatever might be too long, that sure isn't it.
As for paying attention, queueing is the exact opposite of "action MMO" design. You are not furiously button mashing, and responding to immediate, sub 1-second developments. That is what is wrong in the "action" design. I am not even sure if there is a real definition for that or if it is a buzzword, but a detractor will have a mighty road to haul to define it in a way that excludes scrappers, w.r.t. the meaning of action.
By no real queueing, you are artificially forced to be constantly pressing buttons -- ON TOP of adapting to the changing battlefield situation. Queueing per scrapperlock allows you to do more, not less, of this adapting, so it is wrong to view it this way. You have more time to study instead of bashing buttons, said mashing absorbing, stupidly, a good chunk of your "cognative load".
It is like a movie or TV show doing quick, half-second cuts, not for artistic reasons, but for the known phenomenon of triggering emotional feelings of importance by denying you the chance to focus on stability.
It is cheesy in movies, and cheesy for the equivalent in an MMO -- the forced immediate button mashing independent of situational adaptation.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
I mained Dual Blades, it's what I even soloed ITF with, and I never once found the need to switch combos.
The first two combo's just weren't good in the end levels. The PBAOE KD combo, started facing to many enemies that just wouldn't get knocked down. Was best to just use the +DMG combo (which had an AOE Cone) and take everything down with that (though, I did keep PBAOE just for the animatio, myself :) )
So, not sure those combo's really gave a feeling of some situations needed a different combo.
Even Dual Pistols change ammo didn't really make that big of a difference :(
Never used the change ammo stuff. I didn't spend enough time studying the weaknesses of each individual enemy group to be able to fully utilize it.
Build Up worked differently for Stalkers because of how it had to interact with Stealth. Also, the ability to disappear in front of an enemy had a few quirks in how it interacted with combos.
For example, Placate-Build Up-Assassin Strike was not actually a combo (as I recall), but in the right conditions could be devastating so I had it as a special addition to the binds for Dual Wield Stalkers.
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I tried to make the Change Ammo stuff work. It was just too much trouble, and the effects just didn't amount to enough to make a difference.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Wasn't that one of the things they were working on fixing before the game got shut down and we never got to see it?
Not that I heard. The thing we were waiting for was an enhancement to snipe mechanics, making them work better for DPS-intense AV fights. Something involving gold rings appearing around some of the powers in your tray.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Yeah, I recall that, and Dual Pistols lacked a snipe but I could swear they were talking about looking into Dual Pistols and the other sets that lacked a snipe.
Wasn't the idea, to do with Snipe something akin to Assassin Strike?
Oh yeah, Dual Pistols didn't have an actual snipe but pretended to have one that was actually a really narrow cone. It was harder to use than Shadow Maul/Sands of Mu, which had a similar mechanic.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
IIRC - the idea was to eliminate the interruptible "charge up" the Snipes had if the character had a certain amount of To-Hit buff/bonus.
As for Dual Pistols (and other ranged power without a snipe) they were eventually going to get buffed. DP in particular would probably have seen it's animations sped up to boost effective DPS.
Oh yeah! So people could use Build or Aim or use IO set bonuses/Powers to get an instant Snipe.
Instead of a Snipe, I'd prefer a charge-up power instead where up to a certain max value, the longer it goes uninterrupted the more damage it does. You could always pop off a quick shot for some decent damage, but if you have the situation where you can use it like a Snipe, you could do that too.
And also so those To Hit bonuses wouldn't be wasted on a cap. With AR/Dev, there was no Aim power, just a Targeting Drone toggle, and you could get some goot To Hit buffs on it via IOs... for your non-snipe powers. Snipe was pretty much at the cap.
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