Combat clickfest
Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 3:51 am
I decided to start up the game again today and play a couple of hours. I generally really enjoyed it. But I definitely find (and I come to this over and over) that the combat system is very clunky and not particularly enjoyable. I think I figured out one of the root problems (for me anyway), which is that the player controlled character simply doesn't continue his attacks after the first hit. Almost universally in games, when a character or unit is ordered to attack another, it will maintain its attack until either it is dead or the enemy. In TWOM the character only attacks once, and then will just stand there. I understand there are motivations and reasons to perhaps only attack once (to injure and scare off rather than kill). However, I personally find that combat becomes very difficult to control after that first hit. Enemies run around *very* quickly, which makes it difficult to even approach them, let alone manage to click the attack icon over them. As they move around quickly and other enemies come to help them, it quickly becomes a mess of icons and I end up just clicking as fast as I can hoping something will happen.
I get the the click-fest is meant to add some kind of tension to it, with rapid clicking on the enemy necessary to overcome them, but I think the loss of this would be more than offset by just having the combat go a little smoother. You can still do the chance calculations about who its who, but just have a bit more automation in there. If you want to keep the click-fest, then I don't know... FIgure out some way of making those icons easier to click on. Heck, even some kind of animation to KNOW that they have actually been clicked, because there's no way to tell if the computer has registered the click. Some kind of noise, or a button being depressed animation.
Anyway, I hope some improvements to combat will be made in the patch. It's so high-risk and clunky that I tend to avoid it altogether in the game now.
Adam
I get the the click-fest is meant to add some kind of tension to it, with rapid clicking on the enemy necessary to overcome them, but I think the loss of this would be more than offset by just having the combat go a little smoother. You can still do the chance calculations about who its who, but just have a bit more automation in there. If you want to keep the click-fest, then I don't know... FIgure out some way of making those icons easier to click on. Heck, even some kind of animation to KNOW that they have actually been clicked, because there's no way to tell if the computer has registered the click. Some kind of noise, or a button being depressed animation.
Anyway, I hope some improvements to combat will be made in the patch. It's so high-risk and clunky that I tend to avoid it altogether in the game now.
Adam