Quote from Syliara;1298007:
First, what you posted was basically an extremely low level character using 0 equips and an incredibly basic weapon along with the most basic of close combat skills at their disposal against an incredibly basic AI. This is an incredibly unrealistic situation as no one is going to be in that situation willingly in normal circumstances
Oh yeah, when I make a new account I always tick the checkbox that starts me off with 500 base stats and all the learned skills so I don't start from nothing. Wait...
Power gained in Mabinogi is gained very slowly, fractions of damage points at a time. Because of this, people often don't notice themselves getting stronger over time. If you make a new character and actually try to do things, you'll find you don't have room-wiping AOEs at your disposal, you'll need to use normal combat and can't just ignore it by being a lot stronger than the enemy (like pretty much all the established players here can).
Here's an older Warframe video of mine, where I place limits on my gear/stats (details in the description) in order to lower myself down to the expected level for the enemies I fight. This is possible because in Waframe, most stats come from mods and mods can be freely changed around between missions (so I can effectively lower my strength on demand).
[video=youtube;Q-65tTh3bHU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-65tTh3bHU[/video]
And in the video, I play it safe. I use cover, I try to limit the number of enemies I engage at once, I retreat, I use my abilities sparingly, I aim for weak points, etc. It's slow, I have to pay attention to the enemies, and it's pretty much the most you'll bother to see people do for tactics.
And then in this video, I do the same type of mission, but with maxed-out character.
[video=youtube;MRHwjwDFPuU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRHwjwDFPuU[/video]
And there's a very large difference in the required amount of skill, reactions, and tactics needed to complete the mission. I barely use any. Hell, the most complex stuff I do is specific movement patterns to get around quickly.
And to take it even futher, check this out. I took a tricked-out character (so to speak) to a lower-level area. I focused on the use of an ability that automatically damages nearby enemies... and the normally-weak "set everything near me on fire" ability is strong enough to kill everything due to the strength differences.
[video=youtube;9bg4yx1U5BQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bg4yx1U5BQ[/video]
I activate the ability and then run through the level. And I win. Everything dies without me even looking at it. This is because I'm much stronger than the enemies, so I can simply ignore tactics. Hell, a lot of the time I was just following the minimap, making sure I got near enough to the enemies for them to die.
This is a problem most games face. If players can keep on scaling, they'll outlevel the enemies, and when they do they no longer need to use tactics, even if the game was built with them in mind. How is this prevented? Games either prevent the player from leveling past a certain point (Archeage/Tera/Wow/Whatever), or they make gaining strength a slow and involved process (Runescape/Mabinogi).
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
I would like to point out that anyone can be lazy as all hell in that situation and basically spam windmill or counter until the mob ends up dying, though Im guessing one of the other points you were trying to make is that if you were in that situation but also wanted to create the most optimal damage dealing while not dying that you could it can turn interesting.
Versus one enemy sure, but even two can distance themselves so you can't hit them both at once (especially with a lower-ranked windmill).
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
In that specific situation with those limited abilities and stats
I.E. the game before players get too strong for the enemies to handle.
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
however in regards to the majority of the game
Read as "my personal experience as a strong player"?
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
This can be true, but the fact that the game is beyond repair in the sense that skills and gear and stats allow you to bypass that ENTIRE basis to me makes your point moot. Sure if you strip away basically 99% of the content of mabi it has an interesting combat system but when you put it all back together all you get is nuking and set up.
Only a few skills are OP to the point of breaking the combat system. Lullaby and Bash are the two biggest ones right now, and this could be fixed if the devs would fix it.
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
Now perhaps our definitions of "tactical" are a bit different in terms of gameplay. I like a game that challenges me through mechanic based combat
Like having the right skills loaded at the right time?
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
and real time reaction to situations that can go almost anywhere at a moments notice.
Like how I had to change skills around depending on what the enemy was doing in order to avoid dying to it?
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
I also like a game where even though you have a clear set goal in mind and a specific job to do, you have a lot of freedom and space to both accomplish that job and goal and other things along the way.
Runescape's pretty open-ended like that, there's a lot to do in that game and very few things need to be done in any specific order (outside of certain quests to unlock new areas, which happens like 4 times at the most).
Problem is "skilling" in Runescape is boring grind, one of the simplest and most repetitive crafting systems I've seen, even Smithing. There's so much to like about the game, but the standard skill usages and combat are simple to the point of automation (partially why it had such a huge bot problem in the past).
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
The way FFXIV (sorry for using this game so much its what im most familiar with in this situation) works is that fights have you as a specific role (tank, dps, healer) and as long as you fulfill your duties in that role and perform well enough you can clear the content you are playing.
That's not uncommon, and I don't think it's inherently a bad way to do things (dividing a group task into specific roles has lots of benefits).
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
Well theres instances where you wont really have to heal at the time, and then what do you do... Well you can switch over to your Cleric stance which transfers your stats temporarily into the damage dealing variant and start attacking the mobs or boss. This allows both tanks and healers to go above and beyond their basic roles and step into the domain of a dps.
That doesn't sound bad, a lot of the reason I like Mabinogi (and Runescape) is because my character is not limited in the role they can take, I can put more effort into the ability to take multiple roles.
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
Now the point of me saying this all is because you cant just do one or the other the entire time, you have to make split second decisions based on the current state of the party and the fight if you want to even think about turning on your cleric stance or going out of your tank stance because you could end up wiping the party.
An understandable compromise.
Quote from Syliara;1298007:
In the end what I'm trying to get at is, its enjoyable to do a fight that has you dealing with the mechanics of the fight itself, the phase shifts of the boss, the mechanics of your skills and how they actually work, and putting that all together in a dps optimization.
And that's nice, if it's how the entire game is. But unfortunately, more often than not, it's a relatively small percentage of the game that plays like that.
To show what I mean... The most recent "big boss" added to Runescape is Telos.
[video=youtube;Lv6QRSgBY5w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv6QRSgBY5w[/video]
Telos has a number of attacks that can be responded to in multiple ways, which includes well-timed abilities to move out of the way in a single game tick (5:20, though a game tick in Runescape is 0.6 seconds), a move which requires the player to break free and move out of the way (5:55), another attack you can use multiple abilities to block or lessen the damage of if activated at the right time (6:41), and other such mechanics you'd expect from a high-end boss (including additional mechanics that show up the more you've killed the boss).
Problem? It's a high-end boss and this is in no way indicative of normal combat. In fact, normal combat in Runescape
is basic to the point of automation. Even without a healing ability, I only have to check back to avoid auto logout and clicking to eat some food now and then for the vadt majority of monsters in the game. So here's a video of me killing a bunch of monsters... while not touching the mouse or keyboard.
[video=youtube;OEESBRa3TwY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEESBRa3TwY[/video]
(Excuse the low audio levels, didn't realize my settings were wrong.)
And these standard types of monsters are the ones you'll be fighting until you get your combat stats up to like 80 (out of a max of 99) so that you can actually do the bosses that have all these unique mechanics...
This is an example of why "look at this interesting raid" alone is not convincing to me. I don't want (yet) a(nother) game that has an interesting endgame raid that I powerlevel through most of the content to reach. I want a game with interesting combat all-around, at the core.
That's why I'm asking for some personal examples of basic combat with normal monsters.