i agree, it has been said many many times, doesnt sink in i guess

It's really not. It's been improved a lot in Skyrim, but still not to the point where it can honestly be called anything like a selling point of the game. Compare it to, say, Dark Souls, or Assassin's Creed (and yes, I am aware that AC is a third-person game and its combat wouldn't work very well in a first-person game).

Even with tweaks, I don't see this type of combat being sufficient for a competetive MMO. It is designed mostly for 1vs1 encounters, whereas in MMOs, usually groups of people fight groups of enemies. How would you tackle this with FPS action combat to allow actually fighting together, and not just side by side?

seems like you're using an awfully broad umbrella then. you are pressing buttons. in ES you press your mouse button. in ESO you press a keyboard button. both share active blocking, dodging, staggers, stamina, and no "aggro". the key difference being instead of offensive and defensive stamina being shared, they are seperate into stamina and finesse. you pool the finesse for your "power attack" instead of stamina

wow has mostly passive blocking, dodging, attacking, no stamina (only cooldowns) and agrro.

If it seems like I'm using a wide umbrella of association, it's only because WoW casts a broad shadow. I'm told that ES:O seems to be more like GW2 than WoW, so I looked up GW2. Whatever technical differences it may have, gameplay of GW2 looks just like gameplay of WoW. I would not play GW2, since if I return to WoW I can game with my RP guild that I've been friends with since vanilla WoW. The game could have a different feel than WoW, but that is irrelevant in the face of first impressions. It's close enough to WoW to invite association and comparison. That pic where someone pasted a WoW UI on top of the ES:O screenshot? No one could credibly do the same to a Skyrim screenshot.

My comment got partially censored, which I edited. Not just haters. At any rate, I accepted your challenge and posed the question to The Escapist, since I frequent that site anyway(and that's where I first heard the ES:O announcement). You're welcome to weigh in:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.374148-Skyrims-combat-and-the-action-RPG-genre#14483869

...and I just laughed because I realized that ZeniO's game dev decisions are being defended by a prophet of doom.

I'm on board with criticizing the direction of the art style. It seems like they used the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34MkAlBZp7c without spending much thought on how to make it look distinct and unique. And while it could be argued that the style is similar to certain aspects of older TES games, it still doesn't help to make the game recognizable. I really hope they will listen to some feedback to make this game look more elderscrolls-y.
However, this is a different issue from gameplay and combat.

yes I do like hotbars, I wish all TES games at least had the option instead of clicking and then using numbers to change spells.
I would have loved it if 1-5 were left hand 6-0 were right hand spells. Its my favorite RPG combat system.

Because its a MMO it cant be paused, so that's what makes me want hotbars more cause I can play it with one hand. Some times you do not get time to have a break so you roll yourself a smoke and sip on coffee and just play one handed for a bit.

well basically you're saying "it has wow mechanics because it looks vaguely like wow, even though they are nothing alike beyond said vague graphical similarity."

I think too many people are confusing hotbars with all abilities set on cooldowns. All the bars do is display abilities in an organized and easily understood format. Dark Age of Camelot came out before WoW and had hotbars, but the combat is way different from WoW (it even has autoattack).

Auto attack is an easier way of compensating for lag and makes damage calculations and balance issues much easier to control. With manual attacks the variance in lag delay (200ms is a huge difference from 20ms over time) makes user experience entirely subjective and could result in changes to feedback that further degrade combat.

You sound like a myopic hypocrite by drawing arbitrary lines in the sand about what video games are "nerdy" and what are not. You need to get over this fear that people will know you are a nerd.

Indeed. Tera and Firefall both show that the Elder Scrolls Online could have been something much more faithful to the vision of what the Elder Scrolls has been moving towards for the last ten years.

I hope to see this blocking and stamina feel fun, but it sounds like nothing compared to actually surrounding a monster with friends and actively avoiding it's attacks while weaving in and out with your magic and blade strikes.

none of which has anything to do with hotbars. The bars are not game mechanics, but they are a UI tool used to organize and visually represent keybinds and allows access to skills using with a mouseclick if so so desired.

I'm not offering this a rebuttal, so much - but I would be remiss if I didn't point out what has been the fate of nearly every thread I've seen on this forum where someone has criticized the combat system of an Elder Scrolls game and say "Well, Elder Scrolls isn't so much about the combat, anyway." :b

It is the nature of video game related threads to degenerate into repetitive banging of one's head upon a wall.

I don't agree with all the hate for the Skryim combat system. It had several features done perfectly right:

1. Movement and placement mattered. Avoid a heavy attack by sidestepping and don't get caught between multiple attackers.
2. Environment mattered. Being able to finish a fight by pushing your opponent from a cliff was pure fun. Not to mention mechanical traps.
3. Blocking mattered. If timed right, you could turn defeat into victory. Having a shield was more than just "less dps".
4. Two-Handed, Sword/Shield and Dual Wield were distinct playstyles and viable. Two-Handed 'felt' very heavy and fun.

The story is another one when it comes to fighting mages since #1 and #3 didn't apply there. Spells like lightning bolt usually hit you instantly and did terrible damage, depending on your resistances.
And what really svcked was the UI, especially when it came to placing a spell into the correct hand. Switching between powers often required you to pause the game if you ran out of hotkeys.

So, melee combat in Skyrim was great in my opinion.
Arcana combat not so much. Playing a destruction mage on hardest difficulty was amongst the most boring experiences I had in that game.

Action combat doesn't fit well in an MMO you are trying to make money off of. The hot bar is tried and true and if you don't like it you can find another game to play that has it. Show me a wildly successful MMO that has action based combat.

Played WoW for years and all of the abortions that tried to usurp its throne. No thanks. Not. Ever. Again.

Then what are you still doing on this forum?

Nope !!
happy to hear about the game but not the follow the traditional MMO thing

only if you keep telling yourself that.


in other words: no you are wrong, wrong wrong wrong but you wont listen anyway. Other games are already doing it successfully: TERA there, there it is. But if you, by wildly successfll mean "WoW succesfull" well there is no other game that succesfull, you cannot be that successfull anymore. thats what you gotta put up with you can never ever reach the same ammount of people with one game now. Its a different time now and there are more MMORPGs than ever. When WoW came around there were 2 recent mmos (as in not EQ 1 or DAOC). WoW and EQ 2 ,the latter svcked.

Tera has been out for 15 seconds. Can't call it successful yet unless you consider Rift a success. There was another MMO that maintained millions for a while too that wasn't wow, and again it wasn't action based.

did you read my post? you CANNOT be as successfull as WoW is anymore. its not possible and i explained why in 5 threads now.
TERA is already very popular and highly pesent just because of the beta tests. it wont be the next WoW, cause no game will ever be the one MMO to rule them all animore. If you dont understand that keep out of the discussion.

I used to be an avid WoW player, but I quit (permanently deleted account) last year due to not enjoying the game anymore, it's a dead grindfest game, and I dislike the expansion coming out. With all of this said, one of the many things I enjoyed about WoW was its hotbar system. With that said, I'll definitely be the first to buy TES Online ( assuming my comptuer will be good enough, getting a Radeon 7850 later this year hopefully, along with a 750 Watt PSU ). I enjoyed the Elder Scrolls because it had a unique way to cast spells, atleast on the console versions, I can only imagine how the Online will be. Do we even know yet if it's PC exclusive or not? If there is a hot bar system on the game it wouldn't steer me away from purchasing it.

Well, Tera has been successfull in Korea for over a year and it was just recently released in the USA. Too early to say if it will be a hit.
And I guess you can call Borderlands wildly successfull, even if it has more similarity with Diablo than WoW.