Souls or Diablo Combat? You can't do both

Wicked Feedback
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You fail to understand what i am saying most probably intentionally since you seem to only reply to certain parts of my post while the elephant in the room is the disingenuous marketing that Moon Studios deployed while promoting this game prior to EA.
I genuinely do not care what other people like, nor is it relevant for them what i like or hate, as my gaming experience is a personal as is for everyone.

Also I don’t understand how you gathered that i am trying to take others down since I made a post referring specifically to the game and its mechanics without naming other people on this forum which i don’t even know or haven’t interacted with…
As for the game yeah, i can take it down for its flaws, i paid 36 euros for it, i am entitled to do it based on my purchase, its a public forum and the primary way of giving feedback and i am not satisfied with the product i bought or with the false advertising.

I am sure this game has a demographic and which ever that is I am not part of it and that’s fine because we all have different standards and expectations.
I am simply saying that the game was marketed in a way and the delivery was not what was promised. Just like they made sure to market precision based combat, or the handcrafted world or the “hundreds if not thousands of animations” as well as that butter smooth original engine, they could have also marketed the mobile game mechanics, time gated challenges and crafting/gathering system. Sadly such valuable information was omitted in order not to influence the purchase decision during day 1 EA. Otherwise we wouldn’t have this conversation, I wouldn’t have bought the game and I wouldn’t be here. Because i would have made the informed decision that Hey this game is not for me but I’m sure its a ton of fun for others who appreciate such things.

As i said in my original post i supported the devs out of goodwill based on what was publicly discussed as the vision for this game. As the game presents itself now I am not interested in 1.0 nor do i want to waste time watching content creators. So in my position your suggestion has no value.
What this basically means is that i should assume all devs are deceitful and I should do my homework before buying which ironically and sadly is true:))))

I expected the devs to be upfront in regards to what the game will be, my bad. A lie is a lie regardless of how it is spun it and sadly EA is very easily exploitable and the people that exploit it are covered legally and the buyer is the one that takes most of the risk.

As for the roadmap it should clearly state the vision of the game and core mechanics. When i said they would change large parts of the game i meant fix the combat, add better level design, add complementary systems that enrich the player experience.
What did you understand? That tomorrow they will make this game a shooter? Because hey there is no clear roadmap so they might as well. I wonder how the ppl that bought it thinking they bought a arpg would feel. This is sarcasm by the way although as i said there is no clear roadmap so who knows what they will come up with :)).

So no, that doesn’t reinforce your point because if the premise is that the game can change its core concepts all of a sudden then what am i buying in the first place?
“The agile approach” :)))) - that’s some corporate lingo there. Just because its standard practice doesn’t make it the right or ethical practice. But as long as money flows i guess its ok. What i find baffling is that people defend these kind of things which would have been frowned upon in the past. But i guess common sense is not so common anymore.

In regards to the steam reviews argument that’s a very unreliable metric since very few are actually well written and have enough hours invested in order to be taken seriously. What i find more relevant is the amount of players currently playing. And that indicator is steadily decreasing as per steam charts. Meaning there is a problem with player retention. Probably because the game is so fun and engaging and people are flocking to interact with its mechanics.

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No no, you are totally right, no one else in the entire gaming industry ever tried “hand crafted”. Every game until now was procedurally generated. Wicked is truly original in that department and a trend setter. Same with the runes and enchantments. Ground breaking, all never heard of concepts in games ever. All other game studios are bashing their heads in frustration because they never thought about these systems before. Totally radical, out of the box thinking. You are witnessing the invention of a genre. Definitely Game of the Year material right here pffffs:))))

Btw i said Fable had more innovations and was more original than Wicked 20 years ago but you misread that :slight_smile:

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Edit: I just realized after I posted how many replies there were and I’ve missed a bunch of posts.

If increased character power results in EITHER the option to lessen the friction of combat fundamentals OR increased killspeed, people have a choice.

Are you suggesting that gear progressions should allow for either easier play by bypassing combat complexity or more effective (damage) coupled with combat complexity? If so, that’s the first take I’ve heard that actually bridges the gap (in theory) and sounds quite interesting. Now, as far as implementation goes, I’m not sure how you’d do that, but I like the idea.

I like the idea that people with poor mechanical skill can roll effective items to keep up with those with effective mechanical skill, and those who don’t have a good grasp on itemization can muscle their way though. But, as you said, ultimate spam is the issue.

But I also don‘t think the Git Gud aspect should gatekeep the game.

This is ill-defined. Any skill based game will have barrier(s) to entry based on skill. Wicked is no different. Like with any skill based game, there are many people who complain about how hard it is and there are those who got better, beat Warrick, sunk more hours into it and now they ‘get it’. They are eager for more.

The same is true for knowledge heavy games. I am not someone who plays very complex games (I can do moderate complexity). Or turn based games either. I enjoy active skill based combat. I make no demands for those games to cater to someone like me.

There is just the „Hardcore Soulslike - Camp, that want the Game to be more Souls Like than Elden Ring“ (sorry it appears, that’s you), and the people that want Character power progression and play style variety.

To be clear, I consider Elden Ring (and From’s library from Demons’ Souls) to be “Souls” while games that seek to emulate and evolve the forumula are “Souls-likes”. Also, I’ve not once said I’m against power progression and play style variety. I want those things. To put it simply, my concern is basically rune spam.

I think basically noone here thinks the Game should peak in endlessly spamming ultimate abilities.

Actually a few were defending this position or a very similar one.

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Supporting the diablolikers would mean adding more toys expressing the different builds for the theorycrafters and synergyfinders

You’re mispresenting the side of the Souls player, or at least my position. Nobody is against itemization or toys. Play style is a big part of Souls, of course. The issue is after itemization diluting the combat into rune spam, or some equivalent.

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So basically people are pissed because they cannot label the game? Is it ARPG like Diablo or is it souslike is that it?
Did you guys play the game? Like the combat and the story? The setting? Are the bugs game breaking?
Here on my end i liked almost everything, i have a little gripe with the whole ichor drinking to get more inventory space and thats it, no CTDs, no major bugs, the combat is great and the setting too.
Im sorry but since i dont build my character to break the game i fought the Echo Knight many times before beating him with my sword and board char, no humungous focus bar to spam skills either.
You can break every game if you go in with this mentality right? Even Elden Ring had some nerfs to builds that were too powerful, maybe those issues will be adressed, as they should since some people said there will be PvP.

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People are just getting heated. I think the game overall is really good, even though I’m going on about Souls vs Diablo or whatever. My main issue is the combat becomes over simplified by itemization. We can already see that with the so-called rune spam builds. I’m not against itemization, as some have mischaracterized.

I want:

  • Good combat (always, first and foremost)
  • Itemization
  • Customization
  • Cool stuff
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Very good write up of the issue, I also 100% agree with your wants.

Rune spam should not exist, remove focus gain on rune usage. Another issue is people sticking to 1 or 2 runes and not using all 4 slots.

I have been playing V Rising a lot and it made me put my foot further down on how I think Wicked should handle their combat and power fantasy progression.

In V Rising you start out weak without a lot of tools and enemies are simple. Then you get better gear, skills, crystals that enhance skills, passives etc. And you are fighting more mobs, and they are more dangerous. Boss fights remain the same, you need to adhere to the mechanics of the fight. Albeit a lot more easier than Wicked.

Trash mobs: let players live out their power fantasy against the mobs. Just add more mobs or create specific encounters with dangerous mob combinations. Make the mobs more deadly.

Bosses: the player should adhere to boss mechanics predominantly, some mechanics should be able to be overcome through skill, runes and talents.

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Thank you for the thorough answer and your perspective. :pray:

Yes, that is exactly what I was suggesting. My simplest approach would be to focus many of the ARPG attributes that increase damage on Souls Likes aspects, that require skill (for example „increased damage dealt after parrying an attack“), but I am sure that there are many other approaches. Balance would of course be finetuning.

Thanks for agreeing with the true issue atm. Focus Gain on damage dealt shouldn‘t be a thing.

Sorry, i try to clarify:
I am not trying to say that there should not be a skill barrier or that it has to be really low.
What I was trying to say was, that the pure mechanical Skill and „training“ necessary to progress through the game should not be as high as to alienate too many people. Here are some options:

The Mechanics approach:
For example I think parrying and defense is a bit too unintuitive. I don‘t necessarily want huge red circles on the Ground (though that can be a solution), maybe give some consistent visual or audio cues, people can learn instead of being forced to learn every possibly whacky animation of every single enemy.

The Systems and variety approach:
Give players enough options to modify their experience and point them towards those. This goes back to efficiency and play style variety. Let them discover something that works for them, don‘t force them into one single do or die approach.

Warrick is a great example! I beat him first try and overall discovered that there are multiple approaches that work. Also most of his mechanics felt somewhat intuitive. Some of the side-encounters not so much.

I actually think most of the bosses seem pretty well designed. Deaths against them never felt truly cheap for me.

Sorry for making wrong assumptions. Thanks for the clarification🙏

Glad to hear, that we are on the same page!

I would make a clear distinction there. We should make sure the discussion doesn‘t get too polarized.

Also I think a lot of defending similar positions comes down to polarization. What is meant by Diablo Like combat is a bit unclear. The ones that do are also few and far between.

Not trying to make wrong assumptions again, but I think those that do simply want to have more speed and/or control in the Endgame, not „not playing the game anymore“.
To not play the Game anymore should never be an approach to any Endgame (at least imo).

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Yes. I remember Diablo 1, combat involved choosing chokepoints, making tactical use of doors that you could close (that some enemies were capable of opening by themselves, but others were not), luring melee enemies past bars that they couldn’t pass through but arrows could, etc.

I don’t want to be just spamming a single rune, the way in later Diablo games you might spam a single spell - but I don’t want all of my characters to be blocking, parrying and dodging all the time either.

If I’m playing mage, I want to cleverly choose and combine different spells, and be great at taking on multiple enemies on the battlefield.
If I’m playing a duelist, I want to block, parry and dodge, and be great at taking on dangerous individual enemies in confined spaces…

I see no reason why I can’t have both.

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We have access to chapter 1 in early access.

I imagine the devs wanted to get something solid out to see how we interact and how we fight

based on the data collected - there will be changes coming in later chapters.
Nerfs / buffs / stamina & focusing planning

lets see

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I’m one hundret percent on your side. I would not like to see the game changes into a Diablo-style combat game!

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Is this still going? Let me try and define the differences between the 2 designs so the people coming from opposing perspectives can understand each other better:

Games are about making interesting decisions
A decision is interesting if gets your noggin joggin. If it makes you actively engage with the game, makes you mull over all of the variables and makes you care about your choices because they matter a lot within the context of the game.

Diabo-like ARPGs are about making decisions on the equipment / character build screens
The variables you need to consider are the affixes on your gear, the talents on your PoE tree, the attributes on your character, all of the little stats and bonuses displayed in the user interface while you are Building your character.
While you do actually play the character in real time combat afterwards the game has no qualms about allowing the decisions made on the equipment screens to trivialise all the mechanics of combat and allow you to win by smashing your face on the keys providing you made the correct decisions in the user interface before you started.

Souls-like ARPGs (Yes I’m using the term Action RPG) are about making decisions in real time combat
The variables you need to consider are the current states of everything on the screen. The animations the enemy is currently performing, your spacing relative to them, the start up and recovery times of your own animations, the poise damage of your hits against enemy poise, the stamina cost of your attacks against your current stamina, the angles of your attack against the arrangement of multiple enemies in front of you and so on. The decisions are made in real time and the better and faster you can consider all of the different variables to make fast decisions the better you will perform.
While you do actually build and equip a character from a paper doll before combat in the same way you might in Diablo the impact of decisions made on this screen is reduced, as the game has no qualms about allowing the decisions made in combat to trivialise the choices made on the equipment screen. This allows you to kill the hardest bosses while naked with a frying pan if your in-combat decision making is on point.

What is the difficulty of combining these types of games?
The difficulty is that if you are a player who wants to engage with all of the systems which the game provides then the ability for the Diablo-like build decisions to completely remove or invalidate any decisions you make in combat ruins the Soulslike aspect of the game. It’s mostly a one-way problem - So long as the game emphasises decision making in combat it’s possible for decisions on the Equipment screen to still be relevant because they can allow you to kill faster and make more mistakes, but if you allow those decisions on the Equipment screen to remove decision making in combat (ie. You get infinite Stamina, you get infinite Focus, you don’t need to worry about being hit any more, you stunlock the boss infinitely so you don’t have to dodge) then you have completely ruined one aspect of the game. It is much much easier for the Diablo equipment game to ruin the real time combat than for the reverse to happen and when character building is pushed to its limits this is exactly what happens with the current build of the game.

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I sometimes have the impression that “soulslike fans” tend to have a very exclusive attitude.
“There must not be another way for X but ‘this’, because ‘this’ is how ‘I’ had to do it, and where do we get when everyone can do X, and by the way the youth of today…”

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It is essential to understand that Time is a relevant metric for all players of all videogames in all situations. If you present players with a goal, then whichever approach achieves that goal in less time is Better in all cases for all people. This shouldn’t need an explanation, spending less time to achieve the same thing is superior.

Unlike a lot of action games which may put the combat emphasis entirely on the player’s offensive options, Soulslikes put an emphasis on the back and forth interaction between player and enemy, where as much of the gameplay is defensive as it is offensive. As a result your ‘reward’ for engaging with Soulslike gameplay in most cases is NOT that the enemy dies faster, your reward is that you kill the enemy while taking less damage, or that you kill the enemy at all instead of dying.

A Diablo-like ARPG on the otherhand is heavily focused on offensive output because the character building game deals with Damage (Which achieves your goal faster) as well as the ability to ignore incoming hits without having to dodge them (Which lets you deal more Damage which achieves your goal faster).

If you mix options from these two genres and allow either of them to completely overshadow the other, on the assumption that each player will simply “Choose how they want to play”, the result will be that everybody will choose the approach which achieves the same goal in less Time, because Time is a relevant metric for all players in all cases. And this is where the quote about players optimising the fun out of the game comes from. You cannot present these as equivalent choices if one of them is objectively better than the other from the perspective of all players.

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As an old school gamer I think difficulty levels would help fix a lot of problems. And I don’t mean hardcore vs softcore. You could simply put in options where T1 difficulty you have higher focus regen and higher health regen and T2 it goes down. T3 goes down but there are now 2x the number of enemies on screen and so on.

There are other options but I think you can achieve something more or less for everyone by going down this route.

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Idk. This somewhat exactly proves my point i think :wink:

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I like your definitions of the two genres (though i don‘t think everyone agrees). It‘s at least very helpful to think of the combat design in this way.

If as you say time is a relevant metric for everyone (I agree mostly - i myself tend to prefer to relax and don’t rush even while playing Soulslikes), then isn‘t it possible to balance the two approaches through efficiency?

Faster Kill speed through engaging the Souls likes mechanics, but resulting in higher risk of dying → Balance Systems in a way, that it is possible to reduce the amount of decisions/reactions necessary in Combat, but at the cost of speed?
→ Choice of Speed VS Consistency

Wouldn‘t that satisfy both audiences?

I myself would prefer to focus on more synergistic builds and consistency rather than maximum damage … Which is also possible in most Soulslikes to some degree btw.

What do you think? :thinking:

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The more i read comments from soulslikers the more i think they will never be fine with anything.
This is now my personal opinion: trigger warning

  • I think they want to use a game as a badge, like “I am so great, i did beat X”
  • they want to finish it one time and never touch it again
  • for any means it must not get easier in the future, because that would reduce the worth of their badge. If anything, it must get harder and harder, so that it inreases in value instead
  • they do not really care about fun/replayability/build diversity, they only want to brag about how wonderful they are because of their badge
  • and the most important, they dont want others to have fun, or the game to be successful. they want others to suffer and fail, so they can feel better
  • and they want to shout it into the world “git gud”
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So the game currently works in the opposite way, which is the problem.

If you spend time waiting to respond to the enemy, dodging/blocking attacks and hitting during windows where you can press safely then you will take longer to kill anything. The “most efficient” way to play the game currently is to build a character which doesn’t have to do any of this because they can endlessly mash Focus attacks to stunlock anything in front of them and can tank and lifesteal through any incoming damage so they don’t have to care about avoiding hits or playing safely.

It would be sensible to invert this situation by changing how gearing works in a way which makes players give up significant damage if they want to ignore all of the game mechanics. You can do this with curated negative affixes so that certain types of positive bonus always have an associated negative bonus which reduces how quickly they can mash through content. So yes as you worded it, Speed vs ‘Consistency’.

Or to put it another way, you CAN let players build a character which is invincible and has infinite focus and endlessly lifesteals and can Twirl Dash forever to clear the game by mashing their face on the keys. Go ahead and make that possible, and make sure it’s the SLOWEST way to kill anything.

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i like the mix. difficult combat, and rng loot that boosts ur stats. the chest and enemy resource respawn is also arpg. i got my ass kicked in at level 26 because I was spamming mage and runes all the way up until then. now I have learned the halberds and spear move set, because there is no way i can bring cloth armor into the crucible. that is souls like. btw, for a non parry player, the halberd is the world’s greatest keep away tool!