The Combat System is Lackluster

Wicked Feedback
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So I’ve logged 76.3 hrs in this game now, beat the main campaign, crucible multiple times, I believe every single pestilence boss on max difficulty.

I want to start by saying I really like what the team has done with wands. It’s the first game for me that makes mage gameplay feel right, it doesn’t feel campy like a lot of others. I especially enjoyed using the fused coronet for its unique effects and animations during its standard attack combo. The levitation during attacks is a unique and really nice touch and makes you feel like a masterful battle mage unlike a lot of other games.

There’s also a solid variety of utilities added to the various focus attacks, like repositioning, element procs, i-frames, AOE etc. Also just wanna say I hope wands get some unique animations for some of the staff attacks they can use, primarily inferno, it would be cooler if you could channel it with 1 hand.

That being said, I feel that the focus attack + resource concept as a whole is very lackluster, and applies to some extent to mage builds but much more to melee builds.

The issue of the game is, it wants to follow that souls-like formula and tack on ashes of war (focus attacks) in an unsatisfying way and still label itself an ARPG. Before I get into why I think this is, I think it would be a lot easier if you analyzed the Khazan: First Berserker combat system. I think that’s one of the few souls likes that successfully expanded that initial formula to allow for more combos and customization:

Now I’m not saying I want wicked to play like this, and most people can’t even play at this level but the idea is that after going through an extensive skill tree to add new modifiers and abilities, you can seamlessly integrate all of it into your gameplay. You’re not adding an extra ‘I win button’ that takes ages to channel. This is my issue with the focus system, it’s not adding to the core gameplay in a meaningful way, its just adding am extra animation that does the same thing as your basic attacks and more often than not is not even cool which I’ll get into later.

I feel like instead of every weapon contributing one more meaningless focus skill, we should get fewer, tighter skills that we can integrate into our combos or vice versa. One idea off the top of my head is the classic 2H whirlwind ability. A lot of attack chains ending with sweeps for example could go straight into this, and a perk that could be unlocked is the ability to parry during whirlwind for example.

Focus as a resource also doesnt feel right for 2H, because you need to put points into it to get more out of it, but as I was saying earlier, you want those additional skills to become core parts of your combat, so having to spec into a mana stat as a fighter to perform extended combos doesn’t feel right. I know that in other games with class based systems, each class generally uses their own resource, so a fighter would have a rage type resource that unlocks and modifies abilities. Although at first thought that doesn’t seem too different to focus currently, it could scale with stamina, strength etc. I also think something that could be unique to wicked is there were multiple resources like mana (mage resource), focus (dex), rage (strength) that were available to any base character, and you could create hybrid classes around them, like a berserker mage for example (idk didnt really think much about this part tbh but sounds cool)

Another thing I want to comment on is the animations themselves. As I said at the beginning, I like the wand animations because they actually make you look like a competent battle mage. I can’t say the same for 2H.

The thing is, although its not realistic (and ironically kind of is), taking 5 business days to swing a massive sword around isn’t cool. The appeal of that archetype is the idea that the character is powerful and competent enough to wield it as if it wasn’t a massive 40-100kg sword or whatever (see Berserk). Its not realistic that anyone would even use such weapons if they can’t wield them effectively. So in the context of this universe, it would be realistic for our uber powerful cerim to wield them with more speed and accuracy. Of course they still have to be one of the slowest weapon types but not to the degree they are currently.

So why would you use a 1h? Offhand + more mobility, and probably some other reasons. I just don’t agree with making 2H lame just for balance reasons.

Going back to wands and mage combat, I think it would feel a lot better if you could chain some of the lighter focus attacks, like fireball for example. I think you should be able to recast and not have to go through the whole initial animation but continue from the end of the first. Kind of similar to what I was asking for for 2H but, smoother. seamless transitions between spells if applicable. Also, being able to use flash during spells like you can in league would be cool. I don’t want to be too nitpicky but i also don’t really like how outstretched the characters arm is while casting fireball, holding the staff so far away makes it look like they’re charging it up with their physical strength rather than magical. It goes back to what I was saying about making the character look more competent through animations.

I kind of just dumped a lot of my thoughts here tbh but I hope someone finds some value in them. I also want to finish by saying I really enjoyed this game and I think it has a lot of potential.

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personally I do think it is cool, as long as the risk reward ratio is good. I played DS1 with the Zweihander (classic) and that animation takes ages compared to other weapons, but it feels really satisfying and cool because the wind up time is offset by the pancake effect and the reach

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Wands!? I think they have some of the least usable moves in the game, the only one I like is the one shaped like a key.

Well, I’m going to write a review for each weapon’s moveset and I’ll talk about it in detail when I look at the Wands. I generally find that the attacks are too slow for the damage and range they have and that they last too long, especially the double attacks, the only thing that saves them are the running attacks.

This is true the “battlemage” is always ignored but in NRFTW it is done very well.

I like it a lot, and if you find the right runes it works great.

There are runes of different costs and with different functions, I usually find 3 that are complementary to each other and the result is that each has its role and that all are used.

The reason they seem “I win buttons” is that the game is unbalanced.

It already exist.

Focus doesn’t feel right for 2H, because the game is not balanced, If all the weapons had the same Focus per Second it would be balanced but instead because the focus is on-hit the slow weapons do not gain focus compered to the fast ones.

Agree, but this doesn’t mean the concept of focus is off, it’s just an indication that the game is unbalanced.

If you’re not talking about the specific weapon, this criticism doesn’t make much sense since all weapons have their own moveset, but if you’re talking about the Claymore, I don’t agree, it’s very fun and intuitive to use, and if you think all slow weapons are not very fun, then it’s a matter of personal preference.

I think two-handed weapons could have 8 runes, half of them are accessed by clicking LT, the other half by clicking RT like when using a one-handed weapon with old bows.

Agree.

It would break the game xD, but I understand the intention.

If you look at all the animations in the game they all stretch out in that weird way it’s done on purpose, I don’t think the fireball is particularly more exaggerated than the other animations.

I don’t think there’s any need to add a new melee resource, but it’s true that runes and focus aren’t implemented in the best possible way at the moment. There are many redundant runes, and for some, simply changing the cost and damage would make them quite different.

There are also the runes that cost Stamina but they are too few, there are the runes that cost Health but they are too few, the runes that cost 25 focus are too few, the runes that cost 50 focus are few, the runes that cost 75 are too few, the runes that cost 100 are too many, the runes that cost 125 are too few, the urns that cost 150 are too few, the runes that you can Charge are only for mages, they should also be for other weapons, the Runes that you have to hold down are only 2 (the ice beam and the fire beam) and maybe 3 (the repeating arrows) if I want to be kind.

Since you are interested in discussing the combat system, I think you are also interested in the moves of the animals. Check out this topic if you want: Critique of Weapon Movesets

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I think you missed my point in general. I have two issues with the combat system right now: How it looks visually, which I think for wands the team mostly nailed that (besides some overexaggerated animations like that of fireball that makes the user look less competent)

The other is how the focus moves system doesn’t add anything meaningful to the gameplay for melee skills, which leads to less meaningful expression in build making and provides less true variety.

Its not about if the attacks are good and make it easier to win a fight.

I recommend you look at the Khazan skill tree and see how good players utilize it. They’re transforming their combos.

The issue with wicked combat is, its got that souls-like foundation of 3-x hit regular combos and movement based variations, but then the focus attacks are just an extra button you can press to do a slightly different regular attack, but you can’t even do this seamlessly with your current combo, you have to go through that entire initial animation. It just feels off. Yeah some of them have some positioning element, give you i-frames etc. thats not the only thing I’m asking for. I want to be able to expand on the base combat rather than just tack on something assigned to 1 button you press independently of a combo.

It’s not about balance

I know it exists, I’ve used it. Btw I think the spinning is too slow and looks a bit silly. But my point here is that, instead of a classic ability like whirlwind being independently cast and offering nothing but damage (and yes aoe and whatever else), It could be activated at the end, beginning or middle of the combo depending on the moveset of an appropriate weapon, as a kind of reward for being able to squeeze it in, and provide additional utilities like being able to parry during it. Maybe also activating elemental effects easier? Idk. But rn, as with all other focus attacks, it just exists independently as 1 button you press. It doesn’t feel unique to a weapon or move set.

One idea for blunt weapons like a great hammer I was thinking of as an example, was a variation of an overhead smash that activates different elemental effects. If you have fire infused into that attack, it brings flame pillars from the ground, if you infuse with Ice, it could erects an ice wall that you or a party member could take cover behind to block one attack or just a ranged attack, and if you attack that ice wall it explodes or shoots ice shards to deal damage. There’s lots of possibilities for integrating signature attacks that can be modified with elemental or other effects.

Giving the player more options also gives the team more options when designing the bosses. If you can get access to more damage negation than just parrying and dodge roll, then the bosses can push you harder.

Take a look at Khazan greatsword gameplay. You can still charge your attacks and make them look powerful monster hunter style, and visually its not all hinging on “This attack is so powerful because the attacks are so slow my character can barely use the weapon and is barely swinging it around” Idk, its hard to express my point here, but I think some might get it. Different weapons have different M1 movesets which is fine if that meant you would integrate focus abilities differently.

For the remaining part of this post I want to add to my original post some things I think I should have included.

I think 2H should also get the ability to perform a weaker block than shields.

For elements, I think there could be room for one or two more like air and ground. I love the current elemental effects and I think these should be something you can infuse into not just basic weapon attacks (yes I know a few focus skills also proc them) but also into some melee focus skills like I mentioned earlier about the hammer overhead smash.

One thing about elements though, is that I know this is supposed to be a low fantasy game, not sure why, but I think there should still be creatures that have developed affinities to these elements, like dragons for example. I think you’re severely limiting options for enemies if you’re not incorporating magical creatures utilizing elements already in the game.

In response to @balrogslayer’s comment, I think more ways to significantly increase attack speed and focus skills animation speed could be a solution (if you think there’s even an issue rn). If you wanna go for slow attacks to make them seem more powerful, thats one option, but if you want the weapon to behave realistically (in the game’s context) then you can master that big weapon and achieve more realistic attack speeds by increasing your attack speed through dex or strength or some attribute increase.

My main issue isn’t really this though but mainly focus skill integration.

I want to reiterate that I think a lot of the base systems and the game as a whole is solid and I had a great time with it but there’s just some elements like focus that could take it to another level if done right.

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I agree that there are problems regarding the “fluid combination” of animations.

And here I disagree, runes that give you dashes, give you AOE, an extra attack to do when you run out of stamina, I-frames, enrich the player options and change the approach to the fighter are not all the same and they are not boring.

Watching the gameplay of the skilled guy using all the combat systems one after the other doesn’t tell us anything if we don’t know anything about the game. I have no intention of studying this game to understand your points, I’m sorry. I haven’t played it, either you explain from scratch or I won’t understand anything.

For example how many weapons are there in that game? because from the way the combat is made I think there are very few. (I only count different weapons as those with unique movesets. If there are two swords that are only aesthetically different, one has a status effect and the other doesn’t, they are not as different as different weapons.)

You criticized the fact that slow weapons don’t combine well with Runes/Focus, and this happens for two reasons.

The first is that slow weapons gain less focus, so it’s partly a balancing issue. If slow weapons gained the same amount of focus over time that a fast weapon does, runes would seem more natural for slow weapons since you use them more often and you can integrate them more freely, instead of being an “I Win button” so for this reason the game balance contributes to the problem.

And this is the second reason, the end of the weapons attacks always have a little bit of Recovery, The part of the animation where the actual attack has finished but you still cant’ control of the character (lifting the greatsword off the ground after attacking) and at the same time many runes have a very long Windup, The part of the animation where the actual attack hasn’t started yet but you’ve already lost control of the character (a charged attack increases the duration of this phase).

To get a result similar to what you’re looking for, you should be able to ignore Recovery when using a rune, and at the same time use players who have little Windup.

And it’s a nice idea but I don’t know if this is feasible in the context of NRFTW, which is a bit slower compared to the game you’re referring to.

If we have to do this kind of discussion, I like Sekiro’s combat system more than NRFTW’s but I don’t think it makes sense to make NRFTW like Sekiro.

Agree, I think it would make more sense if it was a skill that uses focus over time that you can cancel at any time, and it should also be a bit faster.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but most of the weapons are incomplete and not balanced at all. The devs are barely managing to keep up with the system they have right now, and you think it makes sense for each weapon to have unique attacks that can only be used at a certain point in the combo. You really think they’re able to do this for every weapon they’ve made, when they haven’t even managed to give all the weapons charge attacks, running attacks, or Roll attacks?

When many weapons have an attack that’s so out of place or slow that simply using it is a trap, when the knives have an one attack animation in the combo that lasts twice as long as the other attacks but only does about 10% more damage?

They are made to be moved freely from weapon to weapon. If they were unique, it wouldn’t be possible, and the fact that you can move them is something that I really like.

It would make sense given how they changed the perry/block.

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My point is not about what’s currently viable and if something would be viable with some stat changes. Its about a system that as a player I can meaningfully customize and learn and something the devs can meaningfully expand on.

Every weapon having a unique moveset. Great. But those combos are made up of vertical and horizontal slashes, lunges, overhead attacks etc. What I’m saying is, instead of focus attack being an independent move that has nothing to do with the base combo, different focus skills, based on what kind of attack they’re based on or start with, could be a follow up of such an attack from a weapons moveset.

For example, a whirlwind begins with a horizontal slash, so it could start as an extension to a greatsword with a horizontal slash.

Thats just 1 idea to incorporate them more, make them feel more earned and not just indepenendent win buttons. If you nerf their damage so that they dont just 1 shot everything 90% of them would be useless.

So my point is, the runes system doesnt work well in parallel to the base combat system, especially because of focus as a resource that you have to build up but dont want to spec into (for melee) which just hurts 2h as I mentioned in my first post.

Yeah a few runes have dashes (actually realistically how much positioning do they really provide), AOE, I-frames etc but thats a big reason for why they’re OP lol. I’m asking for more of that but something you earn from executing combos and not just a mana based spammable 1 button move.

I explained above why my point about how weapons having different movesets isn’t relevant. I’m not going to explain this game for you though but watching the skilled guy make use of the combat system, seamlessly integrating different attacks is exactly my point. its not something we have in wicked. you could see from the video the variety of different attacks he’s using at a very high frequency

No I never said that any weapon type combines well with its rune abilities. All of them exist independently from the base moveset. but another good way to explain what I mean is, if you try some of the want movesets, some of them fire fire, ice etc bolts at the end of their combo. Thats exactly what I’m talking about. That bolt could be replaced with a rune with a similar attack type, like fireball, which is charegable. That’s a way to be able to customize your base combo.

What I mean by “I win button” is its just a button you press to literally just win the fight lol.

I have the legendary ring that let you use health instead of focus and have used a greatsword with it and destroyed max pestilence difficulty bosses with it quicker than with the wand 1 because the runes are broken, the ring is broken and they take zero skill to execute, and I was using cloth armor too lmao which makes it harder to tank during their animations.

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I think you’re ignoring the most important question I asked.

Do you think the Devs are able to implement what you’re asking?

I don’t think so, since with the current system, which is much simpler than what you’re asking, they can’t implement half the staff correctly.

Then I also think that Runes should be relanced, some more than others, but obviously the runes that cost Focus are Skills, they are not part of the moveset, they are separate and it’s correct, but they still offer options in combat and require the player to manage resources, and using them at the Right times.

I would like to point out that runes that cost stamina in a certain sense are part of the moveset, since they are not “spells”, but unfortunately they are very few.

I know, and I don’t care how it works, maybe I’ll play it in the future and I don’t want to spoil it, but you can’t take it for granted that I know the game and that I understand the things you do with a game I don’t know.

That Ring is OP and breaks the game and everyone knows it.

If the developers focused on making the runes more diverse instead of making yet another rune that costs 100 and deals a ton of damage, the game would be much better.

Then, after they’ve fixed the systems they’ve already implemented, it makes sense to propose an idea like yours, but in the current state of the game, where half the runes are repetitive or useless, and half the weapons are incomplete, I don’t think it’s likely that the developers would conceive of adding a new mechanic that they’ll then clearly fail to fully implement.

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Yeah, I don’t see why not.

I’m not sure what you mean here, and what I’m taking for granted. I interpreted what you could take from the video though in my previous reply

My whole point is that, they should make fewer runes, that you can integrate into a combat system, for true variety and player expression. This is after identifying that there’s a lot of redundant runes, and that they’re (sometimes spammable) 1 shot nuke buttons (yes some of them give you iframes and reposition slightly as an added bonus) that make the game what Thomas was trying to avoid like what’s in POE and diablo.

We need a more elaborate customizable action combat system. It sounds like I’m asking for a lot but I’m really not. Maybe this is coming with the class update. Maybe we’ll just get more passive effects from class choices. idk

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The more I read and play the more I realise the combat related mechanics are a hidden mess.

You can change runes, buffs on any gear and any gear can have almost everything from other gear that you eventually have a soup and nothing tangible.

The devs had an idea, started the EA and now players/devs are trying to find out what might work while drowning in the soup and some players dont want to look into that mess and say it’s great. At the same time the devs limit players. Getting respec option is well hidden and not cheap. RNG buffs that leave you half disappointed, debuffs that can “destroy” your armor build. make you waste time on spending materials on teleports.

I dont think you can fix much here. Just fix the slow weapons because fast weapons have no drawbacks compared to slow weapons