The Evolution of Combat: BETA discussion

[Quyneax]

As someone who does little to no PvP but a lot of PvM I fail to see how this new system is going to improve combat. We have all these new fancy abilities yet after a few months or so the most effective hot bar will be discovered and stuck to. From here on it's back to the combat grind of using these same abilities over and over again. I don't see how it differs from the current system of pray, spec and attack. Instead of pressing F1 and F3 throughout a kill I'll simply be pressing 1-9 whenever an ability has cooled down or I need to eat. This new system just seems like a large inconvenience to me. I guess it will make PvP a lot more interesting though.

Not even that, because gear switching is much harder with action bar switching added (not to mention artificial drawbacks on switching). You lose as much as you gain.

 

The system as it stands is really throwing out the things that make RS combat what it is, that is, gear and prayer switching, eating at the right times, KO-based PvP etc. etc.

 

In my opinion, the system would be better if:

1) There were no abilities or adrenaline.

2) "Small" equipment pieces like boots, gloves, capes, amulets, rings and so on were more all-round items.

3) Overloads and other status effects were shown in real time including (crucially) the reboost time. Perhaps even an expansion in that all potions have a reboost interval and all food has a small stat drain when you eat it.

 

Currently in place that go together with this:

4) "Large" equipment pieces like helmet, top, legs, shields and weapons can be switched via the action bar.

5) Prayers can be switched via the action bar, potions drunk, food eaten.

6) Combat familiars and overloads can be used (nearly) everywhere.

 

That's the real Runescape combat, version 2.0.

[Fallstar]

The EoC is less of an evolution of combat and more of a revolution. I think I'll be able to get used to it, but I'm not happy about it.

 

That said, every time they update the beta due to feedback, they get closer and closer to the live game. Maybe they'll get the message eventually?

 

Oh, as for the tutorial, it was completely useless. Anyone who spent half an hour messing around in the DA or on a slayer task could have worked that out. I thought they were supposed to be showing us how it was a deeply tactical system, as opposed to "Use the abilities that do extra damage after a stun, after a stun." Or how about, use DOT abilities near the start of the fight? Or using anticipation when your opponents stuns are off cooldown.

 

Yeah, some real tactical genius there. I can totally see how RS combat is now deep and meaningful.

[Hedgehog]

I still don't like how levels only allow you to unlock abilities and equipment. Gaining a strength level should raise your max hit by a lot more than 1.

[Sir_Squab]

Personally I'd be happy if none of the abilities were added. Do everything the EoC offers except the abilities - keep the core of RS combat the same. Also, if they did that, they could probably get the EoC out in a month. (Also, if Bandos and Arma are level 65 armour, change it back to 75 and make it better then barrows.)

[rilo kiley]

I still don't like how levels only allow you to unlock abilities and equipment. Gaining a strength level should raise your max hit by a lot more than 1.

 

i agree, it kinda makes it so people will gain levels for equipment, rather equipment complimenting higher levels,

 

even though its somewhat like now, for example 90 att/str/def with a rapier with standard good gear will hit a 545, but 99 str and all same gear but whip can hit 531, but it isn't nearly as exaggerated in current game... but who knows nothings set in stone atm :P

[Alg]

I still don't like how levels only allow you to unlock abilities and equipment. Gaining a strength level should raise your max hit by a lot more than 1.

Maybe have your strength level be the percentage of the weapon's damage that you have access to? So at 99 strength you'd get 980 damage out of your chaotic rapier (Or whatever the bonus is), while at 80 your max would be 784 and boosting to 115 makes it 1127.

 

Or not. It would have to work differently for lower level items, like they'd hit their peak at a certain level and/or each level after that gives a smaller bonus.

[Yoko Kurama]

Apparently they have decided to move the deadline for the mad scientist outfit. I find that somewhat annoying. I have a question or two regarding it: I did 3 events, lost P2P, got P2P again, did the 4th event. Will I still get the outfit? Second, I accidentally reimported my file from the live game to the beta after I had done all 4 events, will I still get the outfit?

 

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As for the Beta, I have been playing for the last 1-2 weeks, and my goodness is the place dead. There were literally 20 people playing during weekdays. I can't help but think that interest has waned down and people aren't really to enthusiastic about it. Are there polls on this? Jagex should host a poll.

[Omali]

Apparently they have decided to move the deadline for the mad scientist outfit. I find that somewhat annoying. I have a question or two regarding it: I did 3 events, lost P2P, got P2P again, did the 4th event. Will I still get the outfit? Second, I accidentally reimported my file from the live game to the beta after I had done all 4 events, will I still get the outfit?

 

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As for the Beta, I have been playing for the last 1-2 weeks, and my goodness is the place dead. There were literally 20 people playing during weekdays. I can't help but think that interest has waned down and people aren't really to enthusiastic about it. Are there polls on this? Jagex should host a poll.

 

1. As long as you attend four "equipment" events, you'll get one. Apparently it's either all or none.

2. Reimporting your file doesn't affect your event participation. If you had it pre-import, you'll have it afterward.

 

As for the beta, this happens on all games when the beta goes on too long. I personally love the changes in beta, but considering that progress won't be saved, it isn't worth spending a whole lot of time on there. Once you get a feel for how the system will work, what's the point in staying on when nothing you do will carry over? It's a better use of time just to go and train up in live and wait for EoC to come out.

[IridiumBunny]

I still don't like how levels only allow you to unlock abilities and equipment. Gaining a strength level should raise your max hit by a lot more than 1.

Maybe have your strength level be the percentage of the weapon's damage that you have access to? So at 99 strength you'd get 980 damage out of your chaotic rapier (Or whatever the bonus is), while at 80 your max would be 784 and boosting to 115 makes it 1127.

 

This sounds like a good idea. My main concern with EoC is that levels, potions and prayers have almost no effect on your damage output. I realize they are currently far too powerful in the live game, but by tacking all stats onto equipment they are essentially doing the same thing again, but instead of needing ovl/turm to compete, you need the best/priciest gears. It might not be so much of an issue yet due to the smaller difference between barrows-GWD-Nex, but as better gear comes out (such as via POPs) it seems likely to get worse.

[Byzantus]

I still don't like how levels only allow you to unlock abilities and equipment. Gaining a strength level should raise your max hit by a lot more than 1.

Maybe have your strength level be the percentage of the weapon's damage that you have access to? So at 99 strength you'd get 980 damage out of your chaotic rapier (Or whatever the bonus is), while at 80 your max would be 784 and boosting to 115 makes it 1127.

 

This sounds like a good idea. My main concern with EoC is that levels, potions and prayers have almost no effect on your damage output. I realize they are currently far too powerful in the live game, but by tacking all stats onto equipment they are essentially doing the same thing again, but instead of needing ovl/turm to compete, you need the best/priciest gears. It might not be so much of an issue yet due to the smaller difference between barrows-GWD-Nex, but as better gear comes out (such as via POPs) it seems likely to get worse.

 

And another problem with that is that (currently) in the beta, non-nex GWD gear has exactly the same stats as barrows gear. (Apart from a very small prayer bonus ofc.)

Wich means that from lvl 70 on, the only improvement in gear you can get is Nex gear...

I really hope they upgrade GWD gear back to 75 again, cause otherwise Bandos/armadyl/robes of subjegation will be pretty much worthless.

[PumpkinPete112]

Being too busy to sit down and really play with EoC I though the tutorial was OK. It barely spoke about strategy, and in reality I just set my abilities from Lowest CD>Longest CD and just used them as they came up. Not sure whether that was strategic or not.

[Mojo_Monkey]

Is there a list of stuff that becomes useless with EoC somewhere in this thread. I do not want to look through all 2k+ posts. Or could someone make a post about it?

[muggiwhplar]

Would make more sense if they just remove the adrenaline system altogether and rebalance all of the equipment and possibly special attacks. All they really needed to do was give LP boosts to non-Nex gear and possibly keep the monster-weakness system to make certain weapons useful.

[Saradomin_Mage]

Would make more sense if they just remove the adrenaline system altogether and rebalance all of the equipment and possibly special attacks. All they really needed to do was give LP boosts to non-Nex gear and possibly keep the monster-weakness system to make certain weapons useful.

This a thousand times. They could have just rerolled the stats of every piece of armour as they wanted (move accuracy stats to weapon, put big penalties on armour, etc.) instead of coming up with a completely new system just for the hell of it.

 

I always thought that this was what they meant when they constantly referred to "rebalancing the triangle", and not an entirely different system.

[Urza285]

Nah I think specials suck. Well like special abilities, ill call them perks, like rune saving on sol and prayer droppig from dragon scim are good i mean. I feel that abilities are great it's just the system is more about combos now and they are throwing away all these perks.

[kamil1210]

I like abilites but I hope they will boost monsters helath, killing monsters in seconds and jumping from one target to another isn't fun.

[Alg]

Nah I think specials suck. Well like special abilities, ill call them perks, like rune saving on sol and prayer droppig from dragon scim are good i mean. I feel that abilities are great it's just the system is more about combos now and they are throwing away all these perks.

Similarly, I actually like some of the abilities, but more passive effects would help with the fact that a lot of combat now is mindless ability spam.

[Platinum_Myr]

The abilities are more "exciting" animation/sound wise and for newer players because you get to do all kinds of silly things. I wish a lot of abilities were more passive-auto-enable like the simple "this does more dmg wooo" things. And then you could queue specialer ones.

 

Also, I think that in part removing specials and perks from weapons is good and bad. Bad because practical value for swapping weapons is gone. Good because in effect it does increase diversity due to having more weapons to "usable" so you can pick which ones you think are cool.

 

That has both plus and minus.

 

- Jake

[Saradomin_Mage]

Well with special attacks gone they can release dragon weapons all they want now lol

 

Man, it just won't be the same, because they'll be even more useless on release than right now :P

[brunokiller]

Played beta again for a few days, still don't like it.

 

some of my annoyances:

 

imo, shields are overpowered

 

can't wear my rfd gloves

 

magic weapons have attack requirements

 

too many defensive abilities require shields to use

 

melee has way more abilities than either range/mage

 

combat level - combat prowess relation is completely broken

 

no single combat zones

 

divine/arcane/elysian are overpowered

 

the numbers are too large, can't they divide hp/hits etc by 10 just as it was multiplied by 10 years ago?

 

I click on the ground through the ability bar too often- disable this

 

magic uses too many runes

 

ice spells stun - make them not stun but freeze like they do in real...

 

There is no penalty when using armour sets of a different combat style than you are attacking with

 

remove/cap the insane deflects you can do with some shield abilities

 

remove the overload drinking animation

 

make two melee barrow sets into magic/range so all combat styles have two barrows sets

 

No real way of knowing what your opponent is doing (i'd much, much rather have my invent open than that tab....)

 

it's too easy to escape, make ice barrage freeze (NOT STUN), return bolas to how they are in live game and give melee something as well

 

it's too hard to see what your opponent is doing, perhaps add messages like [opponents name] has activated ability 'Freedom'?

 

cant switch armour/weapons while stunned

 

stuns are annoying

 

combat does not involve more tactic/skill etc than before, it is not an improvement

 

armour/shields have too much defense to the style they are supposed to be weak to

 

switching actionbars/using prayers etc has a very slow response

 

in fixed, make the action bar overlap the chat window rather than the game view

 

magic focus scroll is useless

 

allow us to sort our ability book by level, basic/tres/ult etc

 

rfd gloves are completely useless, make them offensive gloves plz

 

the possible range of combat level (4-200) doesnt match that of the wilderness (1-50ish, with 1-5 being the area people typically fight in). if you aren't max combat, have fun finding someone to fight. decrease combat levels.

 

while the action is locked, also lock the dragging of icons, it's real annoying to drag an emote/quickpray etc when you are trying to click it

 

Pures that completed the rfd quest can no longer use the rfd gloves

 

keep divine spirit shield as a classless shield, make ely/spec/arcane as range/melee/mage shields with the old ely special.Since people have been complaining about the removal of weapon specific special attacks, what about making abilities that require a specific weapon type to be equipped?

 

For example Flurry would require claws (bronze to dragon) equipped, the stun ability requires wielding a spear, berserk requires a battleaxe.

 

Obviously they would all share the same cooldown.

 

Same thing would happen with different mage/range/spells/ammo ETC.

 

About opening combat with an ability

-When we are not attacking someone and we hit an ability, make that the ability that will be cast as soon as we attack an opponent. Just like autocasting a spell, but then just once. Make a white outline appear around it to indicate this.

 

[Platinum_Myr]

I agree with Bruno on most points. It is too difficult to track what opponent is doing, and assigning slots for food and prayer to the bar seems to be difficult because switching bars is slow. and cumbersome since you can't assign abilities on each bar to different hotkeys... (12 slots isn't enough considering how many have to be abilities)

 

I don't mind HP being larger. Higher numbers means more precision. Magic weapons should not require attack, and shouldn't enable melee style effects.

 

I did a dungeon floor and the necromancer occult boss can be attacked with melee abilities and is way more easily destroyed.

 

If we could see a pop up window that is movable that showed what is going on that would be nice. Or if we needed fewer abilities somewhat less often we can have more stuff on the action bar. Also please please let us save action bar groups. There isn't enough. (even if these settings are stored client side instead of server side!!!)

[Kaur]

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

[Byzantus]

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

No....

 

Kinda sad they aren't going to improve it anymore, the beta as it is now is not really... great IMO :?

[Earthman]

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

Evolution of Combat Launches 20th November!

No....

 

Kinda sad they aren't going to improve it anymore, the beta as it is now is not really... great IMO :?

 

They did improvements from the feedback they got, the beta is not how the live relase will be. I think it's going to be great, relased just so I can finish off 99 Slayer with a more interesting combat system. :)

[Saradomin_Mage]

WTF? I thought they were delaying it till 2013!