I didn’t make mention of specific other MMOs combat in the video. Feel free to do so below.

In the past, the game WAS figuring out optimal stats. Now with information being shared on a scale we've never seen that game is solved almost instantly. It's great that Intrepid are ensuring there is more than just solving the stats and positioning for boss mechanics. I can't wait to play around with both forms of combat.

The reason tab targeting is so popular in MMOs is that tab targeting uses turn based mechanics, which is easier for servers to handle, reducing server lag. Twitchy-trigger shooters are hard on servers because they have to calculate the various moving body parts of each character, players and npcs, for where and when someone is hit and how that relates to everyone else using the server. This can create load demands and lag spikes from servers.

I REALLY enjoy guild wars 2 combat and if feels kinda similar to this, it's based on tab targetting: - melee skills always have cleave, and some ranged skills as well - AoE skills obviously hit everyone in the circle and you have to aim it - almost every skill can be used while moving, which makes combat feel more dynamic - the roll/dodge mechanic also helps the dynamic feeling - terrain can cause skills to miss because of "out of sight", you can use them, but they won't hit and you will spend your cooldown - and if you a targeted skill without one selected the character will just throw it on the ground or in the air, and you will again spend a cooldown for nothing

The cameras seem to work exactly like Guild Wars 2 so unless I'm missing something there is no reason to play action cam outside of comfortability and convenience. If you are proficient with tab cam its just strait up better and can do more.

I think a hybrid system is the best over just tab or action combat.

1. In Soulsborne games aiming is used for specific things like shooting a tail of a dragon, for example. 2. In God of War, you aim your axe to hit switches to open doors or cut something that opens up next stage of the game. 3. In some games where bosses are gigantic and they have weak spots you shoot them with the bow. Thats what you could use action camera for...

Various telegraphed skill shots could bridge those two types of gameplay in my opinion.

Gw2 Dose this really well. Having both action and tab. From my experience once you start enjoying action mode you will never go back. It gives so much freedom.

Action targeting would be nice for rooting abilities trying to CC the nearest enemy without target managing.

Man, I love this video so much! Great explanation of what tab and action combat are and why ashes is going with a hybrid system! I think its the best of both worlds...

I would love to test a damage increase for action combat in alpha 2, I just want both styles to be on an equal playing field

Great video. This really should put all the questions people have to bed. Perfect blend of both systems and features/styles of combat IMO

I'll have you know that there is, in fact, a lot of skill that goes into pressing tab.

Very well done! 🙏

Thank you for doing these videos! Speaking of everquest, I hope they have something like the epic class quest chains in ashes. The satisfaction from completing my ranger epic was, well, epic!

I love the flexibility of being able to do both, especially being someone who mainly plays melee characters. I know this sounds stupid but action mode feels like there’s a lot more action going on compared to tab. 😂. It gives everything a different feel. Having the ability to switch between the modes opens up a lot of gameplay choices. Great video man. Keep it up. Love the content.

I came from playing Elder Scrolls online which is basically action combat but it does have some tab effects where ranged projectiles are concerned you don’t have to actually aim like New World. I didn’t think I would really enjoy tab targets games until I started playing Guild Wars 2 recently and I am loving it. Low barrier for entry but extremely high skill ceiling. If Ashes combat is anything like GWs 2 I think it’ll be super fun.

Please link this to all your friends that are Tab Target boomers, or Adderall addicted Action Combat Andies! Great job on showing why Intrepid is not fully making Ashes of Creation one or the other, Dr. Bucky, but instead bringing the best from both worlds!

I wonder if you guys'll add companions like the ones in Archeage, my favourite build back in the day consisted on tanking damage, debuffing the enemies and buffing my pets, the robot one in particular, it was surprissingly effective and fun. + You looked really cool doing all that with a badass lute for extra swag. I just now heard of this game and it looks like a dream come true, great job with the systems, looks fun.

7:32 "Where are youuuuuu" 😂

Awe rangerhood didn't use the short bow and put 12 rapid fire arrows in the target.

Great showcase video! May the algorithm carry you far on its black, leathery wings.

Since I discovered action combat in MMOs (which is so great), I don't know if I could go back to a tab-targetting mmo again. Hopefully this MMO could also give a proper action combat gameplay for all classes.

After playing New World, I'm all for a hybrid system. Melee is a mixed bag. If its action combat, then you will probably be blocking most of the time unless there is a footsie system built in where the tank is to continuously be on the move looking for attack opportunities rather than turtling up.

just going to say if they keep the action tab as described in this video every one is going to use auto hot key or Gkeys or something like that so its always a 1 button press to aquire target and use ability in 1 press of a button.

Feels like you just described Guild wars 2 combat which has even extra layer of combat. Combining spells together. On thing which seems common for ranged class in Ashes is that casting of lot of spells makes you stop moving which is meh... Also do you know about future classes or weapon proffesions?

So is there soft lock action combat similar to eso. Like if I'm aiming in their direction the attack hits? As of now it seems like 2 hard choices of either tab or pure action like new world where if your a millimeter off you miss. That middle ground was hit imo with esos combat. Fluid and felt good.

Personally, I like the ESO system when you simply aim close to your desired target to fire at it. Still not sure whether there´s gonna be smart targetting for healing in AoC. Do you know?

I do think heavy impact skills should be aimed, like a realy big nuke or like a displacement skills like a pull to you, these skills can be instant death in large scale so there should be some skill elements involved like the aiming to pull them off. Yoinking somone to you in a seige right next to your 20+ players just makles them get focused so these kinda of skill should have some element of skill such as aiming involved since they are very impactful to an engagment. the grapple shot for example as it stands now will be instand death 90% of the time for anyone hit by it in large scale pvp and since it a tab target skill it garanteed to work basicly, the best pull abilities currently in game would be new world scorpion sting javelin throw, thresh and blitz pull from league of legends and so on all have an element of skill involved with it being aimed and travel time

so it will use the guild wars 2 combat targeting ?

Outstanding.

As much as new world sucked I really enjoyed having to aim and being able to miss, it was more immersive for me. A dam modifier based on armour and type of attack would be good to see a minor increase in dam based on the hitbox hit from using action combat, regular attacks ie a headshot using normal attacks (not skill attacks) in action should have more of an impact IMHO. This hybrid system is going to be real interesting to test properly in Alpha 2. :)

Happy they are doing the hybrid system but wish they had a head shot for at least pve, would make the ranger much more interesting if there was.

Can we just call it Action Tab Combat already? 😋

Great video, it made me hype about UE5.

What a perfect video!

I hope the game will get gamepad support beause pain in some of my fingers .

There doesn't need to be an increase in damage in action/skill mode that is how it works. If AOC changes that dynamic it would be a decrease in damage to skill abilities.

So when i bodyblock a Tab target attack from a melee Player that should hit my cleric mate, there will be no damage taken for none of us?

still think that eso has some of the better type of tab where you can hover tab you can use tab but its slower. hover tab allows you to dodge and evade shots though roll dodging.

(for the record, I believe games such as FPS games are action combat. when I talk about action, it isn’t specifically MMOs) My hot take is that targeting doesn’t actually matter very much if at all, stemming from my belief that targeting does not affect how good the actual combat mechanics are. Break down combat into the base parts that make it whole, the concepts you need good to make combat good. Things such as Balance, Smoothness, Punch, whatever you’d like. I would say that you could find one action game AND one tab game that has any one specific quality (given you don’t have a quality like “tab targeting” to make a game good, then you’d just argue over that). The question I posit would be, if given tab target AND action combat can both produce the same qualities, What difference does tab target/action ACTUALLY have? If it isn’t combat, what would it be? I would say preference. And if it’s preference, given that it isn’t combat the ONLY preference is aiming or not. I treat that preference similar to if somebody ate some specific food (like pizza) poorly made and concludes they don’t like the food itself. There’s obviously gonna be people who dislike that food, but there’s a lot more people who say they don’t like it but would like it if the food was made correctly/to their tastes. So I would say to people who go either way, whether completely action or completely tab target, to try some other games. Try the food a bit more from different chefs. See what you’d like. A game with “bad” combat isnt gonna be because of tab target or action combat, it’s gonna be because the execution on game mechanics was poor.

Sounds like what DDO has had for 18 years. Its a good system

min 8:28 - that sounds really bad to be honest. Having to spend more points to make a skill be able to tab target. That should not be a thing. It's just wrong. They need to rethink that a little bit. Unless it applies to only 2 skills out of the entire arsenal. There are other things they need to consider because most of the time when you do a hybrid gameplay, while it does look good for now, range classes will have an advantage over melee since they can kite you with the tab target skills and by the time you get to them ure already half HP. Look at GW2. Range have insane advantage while melee struggle more.

I don't know i still think hybrid gives a lot of space for the devs tk have a way harder time balancing stuff specially when they are literally associating the possibility to morph skills into action or tab based on skill points... We will end up with players simply choosing what the meta/cookie cutter builds tell them to do and it's more often then not going to be tab for simplicity basically removing the need for action mode all together... I think mmos need to stick with either one or the other and not go hybrid, hybrid for me as always either fail to actually feel action and feel more like tsb with smart target (this is not the same as true action) also action combat in MMOs has a lot to explore yet, think of other non MMO with action combat that we can draw ideas from... Imagine having a for honor system and the combos are the skills you can make or characters have, like a fireball could be a heavy cast + light cast Combo etc... there is a lot to explore outside the typical tab/dark souls combat or hybrid of two

If any MMO dont have tab targeting system i wont even play that lol

This poor little boy.... 😂

i miss the combat of TERA, BDO have something like it(the bad part is grab), i skip a lot of new games because of this tab target combat

i play over 24 years mmorpg,but let be honest tab is shit compare to action for reason,but let see how hybrid combat will work in AoC!I like dinamic combat,fast movement,and combo skills like in BDO!For now what ashes show us looks really good i hope cast spells wont be too slow bcs we talk about PvP game!

Sooooo it’s like the elder scrolls online? lol

After playing MO2, I really have no desire to play tab combat. Even though I'm quite terrible at the combat in MO2, I'd rather continue to die horribly than go back to a no skill tab target system.

7:50 (ish) This is not actually correct, you can only have up to 80% of your selected abilities be action, or 80% tab, but never 100% of both.

I play a variety of games that are tab or action. None of them put a sour taste in my mouth. What does is gameplay that does not feel smooth. If intrepid does tab I will play. If they do action I will play. They choose the hybrid.... I will play. Just make the combat feel smooth and polished

6:03 Pardon my French, but fuck no.

I really like GW2’s action tab system. It feels very fast and responsive. That being said, AoC is already looking like an old game

Its infuriating when people say actioncombat is better than tabtargetting in an MMO. If this game wants to have any semblance of PvP, it MUST lean heavily into tabtarget ofcourse with a healthy amount of skillshots. Actioncombat PvP has always, without fail, produced the most degenerate combat patterns imaginable. Take a long hard look at Dark and Darker and the degenerate defying of physics, impossible gyration and contortion of models, and how unimmersive it is. Yes, tabtargetting has less skill expression, but it has been tested and proven that a game can be balanced around it. It is very understandable to have melee be action-combat when its basically a wide swing, cleaving and not being able to miss a target, that being said again, take a look at how Dark and Darker handles it with melee classes playing limbo at the knee with each other and covering their stomachs with their shields to become virtually immune, which is the form of gameplay u do not want in a game as immersive as AoC hopes to be. There is a really satisfying combat pattern that u can unlock by pressing the right buttons at the right time, despite being a tab targetted MMO. If the devs tap into that properly, the cleric and ranger spotlights seem to indicate they have, I seriously doubt anyone would have a problem with their decision on making it a hybrid.

For PVE, action combat creates a static stale, stand in place attack for melee players. Super boring. For PVP there is a benefit for being able to dodge range attacks when the game lacks skill to quickly close the gap onto them. Tab target, is fun for moving and jumping and just getting used to you button rotation. I prefer a tab target for pvp IF the game proves more than 3 buttons to mash. Games like WoW and Aion, had a heavy list of skills and the winner was typically the person who knew the correct rotation of skills. If you just stand there and don't move and button mash, on tab target, then your a bot

this is better than most, bad as always for me. Even new world had a actual aim and shoot system. Games like Conan, Rust, Ark, etc have better bows than most mmo, and games like Mortal Online and dark and darker have the best

Interesting this is treated as such a big deal. "Action gameplay," i.e. aiming, has been used in most tab target mmos since the internet got decently fast. Try an AoE in most of them. I predict this will be a minor blip in terms of drawing new or pleasing multiple players and demographics. Bottom line, RPG players like non skill based gameplay and so won't like this, action players will.

any game with tab target is boring as fuck, thanks for saving me some money on this trash game

tab target has no reasom to exist....get better internet, its an ONLINE game... CSGO doesn't have tab target

the combat just looks so bad

The option to switch skills from tab to action is not a thing anymore. Enveus scribes are gonna scold you for spreading missinformation.