Evran
Cadet
I was watching the cycling video on the top left corner of the official HJ home page abd noticed a few interesting things about it.
First, the words "Miss", "Dodge" and "Blocked" appear above characters heads. This implies at least two character skills: Dodging and Blocking/Parrying.
Second, if you watch carefull, the main character's animations match the words that flash above her head (they're quite blurry and very quick) She dodges and her character ducks. The monster misses and she leans back out of the way. Reactive combat animations! Whoopee!!
Third, you'll notice that the monster that melees her runs at her right at the beginning but is distracted half-way there. Simple agro/hate dynamics? But why does is stop and appear to be sizing the situation up? All other MMOs I've played it just automatically goes straight for the new object of its ire. This seems to imply a rather robust monster AI. As a side note it almost appears to be reacting to her casting of the spell. It turns to see what shes aiming at... Hmmmm...
Fourth, her spell has an interesting delayed effect whcih could make for some interesting tactics. She first targets the center of the effect, then descibes the radius of the circle. The spell starts by shooting a pillar of flame up into the sky from the center of the circle which then falls in a rain of fire in the area a few hearbeats after it finishes gushing. It seems spell capabilities have some interesting aspects to them.
Fifth, and really important to me, notice the nature of the combat as a whole itself. Its not simply peel-a-mob-off-of-a-pack-bring-it-back-to-camp-kill-wash-rinse-and-repeat. There seems to be a tactical focus involving teamwork. Notice the first character pull one monster off right as the video starts (on the left back by the houses.. its only there for a half a second or so). That leaves the girl in green to engage only a couple of monsters (the big lizardy beast eventually goes after the first character offscreen.) And instead of just one mob in a camp scenario, its like a raid of the monster's base. Much more exciting and dynamic imo. And everyone gets to participate in combat directly, there doesn't appear to be the standard "casters and healers at the bacl, please" mentality.
All in all, just from a few short seconds, I am rather impressed by the way Simu appears to be handling combat. Yay!
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Oh and check out her bionic arm!
First, the words "Miss", "Dodge" and "Blocked" appear above characters heads. This implies at least two character skills: Dodging and Blocking/Parrying.
Second, if you watch carefull, the main character's animations match the words that flash above her head (they're quite blurry and very quick) She dodges and her character ducks. The monster misses and she leans back out of the way. Reactive combat animations! Whoopee!!
Third, you'll notice that the monster that melees her runs at her right at the beginning but is distracted half-way there. Simple agro/hate dynamics? But why does is stop and appear to be sizing the situation up? All other MMOs I've played it just automatically goes straight for the new object of its ire. This seems to imply a rather robust monster AI. As a side note it almost appears to be reacting to her casting of the spell. It turns to see what shes aiming at... Hmmmm...
Fourth, her spell has an interesting delayed effect whcih could make for some interesting tactics. She first targets the center of the effect, then descibes the radius of the circle. The spell starts by shooting a pillar of flame up into the sky from the center of the circle which then falls in a rain of fire in the area a few hearbeats after it finishes gushing. It seems spell capabilities have some interesting aspects to them.
Fifth, and really important to me, notice the nature of the combat as a whole itself. Its not simply peel-a-mob-off-of-a-pack-bring-it-back-to-camp-kill-wash-rinse-and-repeat. There seems to be a tactical focus involving teamwork. Notice the first character pull one monster off right as the video starts (on the left back by the houses.. its only there for a half a second or so). That leaves the girl in green to engage only a couple of monsters (the big lizardy beast eventually goes after the first character offscreen.) And instead of just one mob in a camp scenario, its like a raid of the monster's base. Much more exciting and dynamic imo. And everyone gets to participate in combat directly, there doesn't appear to be the standard "casters and healers at the bacl, please" mentality.
All in all, just from a few short seconds, I am rather impressed by the way Simu appears to be handling combat. Yay!
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Oh and check out her bionic arm!
