the antithesis said:
Combat I had been getting a better hang of, which will happen when you don't have three NPC's who can do that work for you, so why should I let my character get killed? I thought that the combat used an area attack system where any poor sap unlucky enough to get in the way of my battle ax's arch will get hurt, but what you said about chained attacks has me thinking that is not the case. Eh, the effect is roughly similar, I suppose. Area or multiple target attacks are one thing that I've found lacking in MMORPGs, and it's nice to see it here. But, well, combat is still not all that exciting.
As I said before: Combat is using the D&D rules. Single handed weapons attack one target, unless you have a feat that lets you attack multiple targets which is a tad more advanced as you have to 1) have the feat and 2) do a lot more button mashing. Two-handed weapons attack one main target but also damage anything nearby. Many spells are area effect, but you're sticking to melee.
the antithesis said:
This is probably more a matter of personal taste than anything else. I am an old school game player, so much of the appeal of modern gaming does not work on me. For fantasy adventure gaming, my personal gold standard is Legend of Zelda. And by that, I do not mean Ocarina of Time. I mean the original NES game. Part of the reason why is the combat, which require moving around the screen to dodge or approach enemies and there was the very satisfying knock back feature where an enemy would be flung in the opposite direction when you hit them.
Ah ... the physics of things flying backward when you hit them ... It happens to my character a lot in DDO when giants are hitting me.
the antithesis said:
If you can ignore the old-school trappings and glean the core concepts in that, then compare it to most MMO combat where you stand in one place and just swat whatever happens to be standing next to you until they fall down, then maybe you can see why I'm not all that happy with the combat, in Dungeons & Dragons Online, any other MMORPG or just plain RPG for that matter. I'm willing to bet my views are colored by nostalgia. But even past the rose tinted glasses, there seems to be some core gameplay issues here. The main difference being between standing in one place and just holding down the attack button and actually moving around and hitting the attack button at the proper time to hit the enemy while not getting hit yourself. (I should probably be care of what I wish for. While that sort of gameplay works on old school 2D games, since I have trouble just moving around in 3D games, perhaps that sort of thing just wouldn't work. I don't know)
See, I have a problem with that statment because it sounds like you saying in DDO you "stand in one place and just swat whatever happens to be standing next to you until they fall down". If you CHOOSE to do that, you can (though many things will run away from if you do). It's much more effective to NOT do that though. I tend to only do that when I know there is someone watching my health bar and something big and ugly needs to die quickly.
the antithesis said:
Incidentally, is there a way to quickly drink a healing potion? Nearly every other game I've tried has this feature, and it's usually easy to spot and figure out but it doesn't appear to be here. I've had to open my inventory and double click the potion there. And since they're cure light wounds potions, they fit neatly in the drawer marked "might as well not bother." But even so, there must be a means to do this. Otherwise, healing potions are a waste of time.
I believe others have covered this but you can put them in a Hotbar. Once in a hotbar, you can click on them with the mouse to drink them. You can also set up a hot key to specific location in a hot bar through the setup. If you put them in the active hotbar (they have numbers and 1 is the defualt active hotbar), you can use the number keys (1-0) on your keyboard to access them instead of mouse clicking.
the antithesis said:
Once you get past the above issues, real or imagined, what you have is a fairly typical MMORPG. Go here, do this, kill that, fetch that. Blah, blah, blah.
I'm curious. How is this different than say Zelda? I guess I would be considered an "old-school" gamer too since I played on everything from the original Atari console forward. And I too liked Zelda. But if you boil it down to the basic elements, Zelda was just: go here, do this, kill that/those, collect things, fetch that, etc. The same goes for almost any other game I can thing of. So when you say "fairly typical MMORPG", and then elaborate with "Go here, do this, kill that, fetch that", you are really just saying, "a computer game".
the antithesis said:
Maybe now that I'm out of the beginner's area and finally into the titular Stormreach area, there will be more interesting quests, but I donut have much hope for that. Particularly since the first quest I found upon was to clear out all the giant spiders in a family crypt.
Well ... any quest that has ONLY solo difficulty is going to be a "training" type quest. The spiders quest is to train you in targeting and collateral damage. The quest objectives in that one are two fold. 1) you have to kill all the spiders. 2) you have to NOT destroy the crpyts in the process. If you destroy too many crypts, you will fail the quest.
There is another similar quest where you have to clear a dungeon of some dogs without killing any of them. Again, a solo only quest. The point of that quest is to train you in getting things attention and pulling them away. In-game, people will refer to this as "pulling" and then "kiting". Its an essential skill later in the game.
One of the nice things in DDO, is the developers put in quests for many different play styles (causing some to not get run that often). If you can give me more of an idea what would be a FUN quest for you (I guess one where you dont "Go here, do this, kill that, fetch that"), I might be able to point you to some quests that might be more to your liking. At the least, I might be able to tell you wich ones to avoid outright.
