This might not make much sense, but trust me it's all very, very impressive.īut where Black Desert Online paves a way forward in terms of combat controls it looks to the past in a key part of its design. Or, like playing Dynasty Warriors, where heroes are superhuman fighters capable of slaughtering hordes of enemies in a storm of ridiculous power. And this is all brought to life with such heft and pace and immediacy - characters whizzing around attacking from a thousand different angles, performing extraordinary feats - that it feels more like playing Street Fighter than a stately MMO. You score more damage when you attack from behind the enemy, when they're knocked down or when you attack them while they're in the air, so you'll want abilities that trigger those things, as well as any that buff you in the process. Unprecedented!įurthermore, abilities being auto-assigned - and broadly comparable across characters, in terms of certain button combinations commanding certain types of attack - frees your mind to focus on the ebb and flow of combat. It sounds overwhelming and it does take practice to get used to, but when you get it, it almost entirely negates the need for a hotbar at all - all I have on mine are those two abilities mentioned above and my potions. Indeed, an early tutorial forces you to string together combos and they boost your damage if you can pull them off. Some attacks can be held or mashed to produce combos, like that roundhouse kick, or combined in a sequence with other attacks. And there's a whole bunch of stuff I haven't unlocked yet. I also do things like heal (Shift+Space) and use another dash (W+RMB), another stun (S+E), and I summon and detonate Shards (these are my only two hotbarred abilities!). I mix that up with a roundhouse kicking combo that boots them all up into the air (mash F), or with chain-lightning (Shift+RMB), or with a sprinting uppercut opener (Shift, then W+F). Then I carve them up with my magic claw attack (S+LMB), swiping in circles around them if I get hemmed in (S/D+LMB). Typically, I make sure to have my shield (Shift+Q) up before I knock a group back (W+F) on their bums, and then I teleport-dash into them (Shift+LMB) with an ability that raises my critical hit chance. In other words there are enough possible different combinations to keep all your abilities accessible by your rooted-in-place WASD hand, and it works wonderfully. Your basic attacks are bound to left and right mouse button clicks but can be modified with WASD directional commands, as can abilities mapped to keys E, Q and F. You can also make this.īlack Desert Online automatically maps abilities to button combinations. You can make beautiful characters in Black Desert Online's creator. It's so effective, so liberating, I'm not sure I ever want to go back. But why? Black Desert Online raises the question by giving an inspired solution. MMOs are defined by it, and contained by it.
A TALE IN THE DESERT MMORPG 2016 CODE
Ask someone who's played an MMO to write down their keystrokes and they'll methodically punch out an alphanumerical code like some kind of medium relaying a message from beyond. It's like learning a fiddly piece of music - you get there eventually, with the help of macros and user interface modifications and a lot of practice, but not without some big f***ing swearwords along the way.īut what can you do? That's the way it's always been. But there are never only five abilities, and different situations call for different abilities.ĭo I need my healing spells now or my damage spells, and what kind of healing spells do I need - group or raid? Are we fighting other players? That's a different kettle of fish altogether. What I want is my abilities available on keys one-to-five, because those are the ones I can get to quickly from movement keys WASD. I've lost count of how many times I've shuffled hotbars of skills and spells in persistent online fantasy worlds.
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