Template:Combat
Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It's the thing you will experience most often; and outside of the systems and mechanics that are going to be present for the overarching core gameplay loop, combat needs to feel responsive. It needs to not feel floaty. It needs to feel mobile. It needs to be fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction. The audio components, the effects components, the animations themselves, the types of skills and those types of things: All of those are really our objective in fine-tuning the approach for our combat in Ashes of Creation.[2] – Steven Sharif
Combat in Ashes of Creation is focused on strategy and tactics.[4]
- Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It needs to feel responsive, mobile and fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction.[2]
- We will continue to iterate on combat until it is in a place that collectively we as a community can say 'this may not be my particular combat, but this combat is good.' That is the driving force and factor behind the development of combat; and that is how we are going to continue to iterate upon it, utilizing of course the player feedback from our community, but also keeping you guys informed and up to date as we continually iterate on combat.[5] – Steven Sharif
- Combat is animation-driven to ensure it is impactful and responsive.[6]
- VFX and sound effects are an important part of selling the weight and immersion of combat.[7][8]
- Camera effects such as screen shake and radial blur are used to "sell a lot of the weight without being too over the top".[9]
- I think one of the things that helps set Ashes apart from an effects perspective is that we want VFX to be dynamically generated. We want them to interact with the world. We want them to feel like they are part of the combat.[10] – John Kent
- We're building a singular tool that all of the teams can use to build abilities and tweak their sound effects, visual effects, animation design, engineering: All using the same tool grounded in animation to build these abilities.[8] – Keenan Reimer
A revamped combat system will be rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing.[11][12]
![[11]](#cite_note-steven-combat-revamp-update.png-11){kind=link}
- Alpha-1 combat was focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.[13]
- Alpha-2 combat will include archetypes, significant ability support, augments, split-body combat, weapon attacks, and many additional items, among other things.[14]
- The developers will be testing whether or not to use global cooldowns GCDs on different types of abilities during Alpha-2.[15]
- The game isn't focused around cover-based combat mechanics.[16]
- I might be on a rampart or behind a wall and that could be destroyed removing my cover, but not like a Gears of War or something, where I slide up to a piece of rock, or the corner of a wall or something.[16] – Steven Sharif
