Only part I really disagree with at least until armor is re-evaluated.
The rest is spot on. Stagger wasn’t broken, people just didn’t know how it worked and how to get around it and a big part of that was there was nothing teaching them how to get around it.
I hope you’re right, and that those people who believed in it are still working on the game, but the thing that would call this into question is why controllable sprint with stamina management was removed as well. That isn’t something you would expect to be associated with technical issues and yet…
Actually, sorry, that doesn’t really address your point that it was a call made higher up the chain.
What I had on my mind was people commenting that hitstun was removed for technical reasons yet there were other “simplifications” made that surely weren’t due to technical concerns.
Stagger or not I think everyone can agree on the fact the current combat system is simply not good. There far too many issues with it both PvP and PvE and would require some major overhauls.
I’m a tank main in most game and having played Tera I have expectations how tanks should handle and new world tanking sucks ass. The amount of input lag (this is also issue for may other weapons too) on block is beyond stupid. You can’t react to anything to block, you have to predict mobs and block ahead of time which is just dumb. It reward people who hold block like an idiot instead of people who properly react to the attack.
On Tera holding block drained your stam fast so you want to block as last second a possible, in fact they even added a stacking damage buff for blocking at the last second rewarding good tanks.
This applies to honestly many other weapons and the fact there so much delays, like fire staff fire pillar has this really weird delay between the circle appearing and when you can click to cast it. Same with life staff heal, my god is using the target heal the worst fucking interfact and mechanic i see. Not to mention how insanely difficult it is to find the target you want to heal there some stupid delay in launching the heal as well specially if you need to heal yourself.
All these things just add akwardness of the combat making it feel so tedious to do at times.
Is that really input lag though? I’m not trying to argue with you and you may be right; it may well be latency. But it may also be that the block isn’t considered active until the shield is fully raised in the animation, which if true is a design decision I wouldn’t agree with. I mean I know exactly what you’re on about because I’ve been maining sword and shield recently but I’m not sure if it’s latency or animation-related, because there are a LOT of animation-related DETAILS causing problems throughout the combat system.
For instance there’s the whole weapon switching problem everyone talks about, for good reason. This all has to do with the inability to animation cancel a “recovery” animation from an attack. Understand I’m not at all a fan of animation cancelling generally but it definitely has its place.
So take the Souls games as an example. When you perform a strike in those games, you’re committed just like in NW. Choosing to make an attack is important (which is why hitstun is important, but I don’t want to digress 
) and has consequences. But then once that strike portion of the animation is complete, the recovery animation is optional. If you stand in place after swinging an axe, for instance, then there’s a nice looking recovery animation back to neutral with that axe. But if instead you want to block immediately after striking with the axe, the shield goes up almost instantly. If you want to weapon swap, or move, or do most other things, it’s the same.
These are DETAILS that really matter, and I feel like part of the problem NW has encountered throughout its development is perhaps an inattention to these details. They’ve taken the broad strokes of combat systems like Souls or others, but they haven’t drilled down to the very fine levels of animation and controls that make those systems work as well as they do. These details make a game feel rewarding and most importantly FAIR, such that when you fail and die in those games you don’t feel screwed over by the game, but rather you see your own mistakes and failures.
Anyway, back to your post. I haven’t used the fire or life staff enough to comment on those observations you’ve made, but I’m curious to look more at whether these things are caused by latency or animation issues.
Ya you’re right its not input lag but more animation lag for block is just EXTREMELY SLOW and clunky. It also doesn’t cancel out of anything so you have to wait for whatever you’re doing to finish before you take out your shield which takes a few seconds.
Like in Tera I click block I block instantly out of almost every mob expect a few because it would make no sense to cancel those in mid animation. Overall lot of game clunkiness come from terrible animations.
Although I have to say for fire staff pillar and life staff target heals there seem to be some input delay or lag. Like I active divine embrace and i press ctrl to heal myself. I press it and nothing happens, have to press it again for it to heal me. Same thing with fire pillar where some time target a lock click and nothing happens. Have to click a second time, like there some really bad delays with when you can confirm the selection compared to when you cast the skills.
Overall everything just add to making his game feel very clunky.
Sadge
As someome who dumped 2k hours into Monster Hunter, I probably would have enjoyed the old system.
I totally agree.
I also called input lag ( the same when you perform an heavy Attack and want to do a light attack, pg first has to recover a neutral position and then do a light attack) but are all problem related to bad animation comnection and animation finishing and polishing.
In new world combat seems “robotic” and no so smooth and floaty;)
Ya I feel you, and I need to spend time with life/fire staff to understand those things you’re talking about more before i can comment. I don’t think you’re suggesting this but being able to animation cancel out of a committed attack is bad. You’ll have a hard time finding a non-MMO melee system where you can do that. Pressing the button is a commitment with consequences, but once the attack animation has completed - for instance once the spear has reached its full extension and if an enemy is struck, a hit value is displayed - then AFTER that time you should be able to cancel into SOME other actions. If you want to block then it should be immediate, or if you want to dodge roll it should be immediate. On the other hand if you want to attack again, that’s not immediate. That’s an attack chain animation, and this is where the whole thing is a bit nuanced.
It’s just this nuance that the game is missing. If the animation system isn’t a constraint then I don’t see why this can’t be worked out. It just requires the will and investment of time and resource.
Actually I just tested a bit more in-game and now I think I might be full of it. Because there is definitely animation cancelling at the end of these attack animations that allows you to go into blocks or dodges without playing the full recovery. It may just be that it needs tuning, idk. Or it could be that some weapons allow a lot less cancelling than others, like the spear seems to do. But maybe it’s for good reasons.
This stuff ain’t easy. If I were working on it I’d do a bunch of analysis of why it feels so different than other systems.
Anyway I’ve driven things a bit too off-topic probably from hitstun/stagger. The only thing I’ll say is that all these animation timings and cancel points have to take things like hitstun into consideration, and I’m not sure if they’ve been adjusted since the removal of it. Someone who played in alpha would have to weigh in.
Thanks,
I read and liked your first post and remembered how I loved the “For Honor for kb/m ! Yeehaaa !” feeling I had when I first played New World during first open alpha. But the hatchet stagger was a real issue. Because I also play RvR modes when I can, mainly in Guild Wars 2, I also know how how a 1v1 balanced weapon fight becomes completely nonsense when just even 3 people are involved. Being annihilated by a bus is something but it shouldn’t happen in a 1v2. In terms of design I believe many keys have been found by Ubisoft in their title. One thing I can easily see is speed. I believe many people won’t like this but I deeply believe that combat should be slow if there is stagger on all attacks, really slow.
Skill is not the base for success in combat, stats are, this is proven time and time again in both PvP and PvE. Skill is present, but it’s not a requirement for success in most situations. Often times running at a target and mashing LMB and using all your abilities is sufficient, and in many situations the most efficient tactic. You can often win fights without playing skillfully if you’ve got good gear, you can rarely win fights with a significant stat or level deficit. This would suggest that combat is more stat-based than skill-based.
I use carrots when I make beef stew, that doesn’t make my beef stew carrot-based.
Ah, the dreaded June patch. It was done because people complained about having to hold down the sprint key to get around the world at optimal speeds. This of course, paired with lack of hit-stun, screwed up combat even more which is why they “compensated” for it by making attacks and melee hits received apply a non-debuff slow.
They tweaked the duration of the slows in July, but the premise remains the same.
Ugh, all they had to do was make it so sprinting happened automatically if you were outside of combat or X number of seconds since you last attacked/were attacked.
Basically the same logic that determined if sprinting cost stamina or not should have determined if you automatically sprinted or not.
As a tank, my biggest issue PvE wise is while blocking with a shield you are pushed back and constantly pushes you out of position. Game rewards you for holding your shield high and blocking for dear life. Doing expeditions at recommended levels like the Depths facing the last boss, the boss eats through your stamina blocking while shoving you back towards a wall or allies. This as well as being staggered consistently if not blocking when being a tank wearing heavy armor wielding a sword and shield.
Taking stagger away created a slew of problems that AGS is trying to fix. They ended up taking 10 steps backwards doing that. Combat if not already needs a team testing overhauls to implement as soon as March. Everyone else has said it. They are band-aid fixing combat little by little which has a 50/50 chance of making things worse. Stagger probably won’t be coming back because of the preview impressions. If something is going to replace that and be an improvement to combat then It needs to be in testing.
Even I’ll agree with everyone here that the sprint change maybe wasn’t the best move
And the potions not slowing you down anymore, and food
Agreed during beta and still do.
I like the game, despite all its bugs, but the combat felt many times better during the preview event about a year ago.
yeah pve needs work. the combat and perks are so wonky, some perks just straight up not working, that I dont even know if the trifecta healer, tank, and dps actually matters in PvE dungeons. Ive done so many runs without a dedicated tank. PvE dungeons are a joke, there’s really no mechanic in boss fights. We just iframe dodge boss’ attacks and just hold block versus mobs.
Glad to see you alive and kicking, glad to see the post back and alive.
My opinion has not changed since alpha/beta. In fact, I think seeing where NW is at post level 60 really nails it for me.
The devs were passionate about NW, you can see it in their faces and body language around Alpha. Combat was actually much more fun than it is now, though that’s my opinion and yes there were bugs. All of us the went to beta immediately felt like combat was a downgrade.
Most felt the same way (of the people posting on the forums anyways) though there were some passionate folks that loved the changes.
What happened? Well, Amazon game studio had every game they tried to bring to the market fail and fail hard. There are ample articles by folks like Jason Schreier, etc that showed the problems with Amazons corporate culture had with their game developers. They were not meshing.
I imagine some executive saw all the money they could be making from a game geared towards casuals with a cash shop and realized that NW was not geared towards that type of player.
Boom the order came to include more PVE and make it a more casual game. Pull in the largest gaming audience you can.
So now instead of refining and polishing what they had in Alpha, Beta became the new Alpha, but they can’t call it that.
Keep in mind you couldn’t even go into some of the high levels zones to “test” them in Alpha.
So we end up with what I would call New World the pre-release. It’s not an alpha or a beta. Amazon is being completely disingenuous if they think this game was ready for full release.
Just my own opinion, I could be completely wrong.
What do you mean here? I was in alpha since November of last year and they started making changes as early as December. December removed stagger from all light and heavies, and then on PvE mobs were retouched to remove stagger on basic attacks every month for about 4 months, while iterating on combat. They weren’t good iterations but they definitely made changes and alpha definitely did test them and gave feedback.
Also every zone in the game was always available in alpha including Ebonscale and Reekwater as soon as they were ready, as well as the 3 northern unclaimed territories and all of their relevant elite zones and the highest level of content. Even the highest level dungeons were tested like Genesis and Lazarus. They made changes to them during beta but besides some new bosses and moving around some chests they are mostly the same.
Beta made minimal changes to combat and the only notable thing they added was the exhausted state, the on-hit slow and on-attack slow was added during the last bits of alpha.
A lot of feedback was given on all aspects of the game, the concerns were there. They did not purposefully limit alpha testers access to content to try to hide anything.
