Basic Attacks Suck! A Rant… (ARPG)

[Scryer]

So I was thinking about game-play in the Action RPG genre, and an idea snapped in my head, basic attacks really suck.

I understand the purpose of a basic attack – you’re out of mana and so you need to do a little basic hand-to-hand combat or maybe shoot a measly arrow or two before you get your mana back. Also, what a better way to show how much your characters’ progressed through the game than to show them the difference between a basic attack and awesome abilities that cost some mana? Mana is a resource don’t you know?

But is that fun? Is it really fun to be forced back to your measly basic attack at higher levels? I don’t believe it is… in fact it’s a little frustrating. You have to manage your resources in a frustrating way because if you run out of it your back to the boring basic attack. Alternatively you can find some passive ways to regenerate mana. + Mana steal, + mana regeneration, which are very much passive game-play elements, they’re not engaging except numerically, which isn’t relatively fun compared to the shear game-play of active combat.

So what does a game designer do when given this very noticeable issue? Well, my solution, which may be different from yours or anyone else’s, is to just make the game more active and synergistic.

Maybe it’s not surprising but I believe that an action game needs to have action, and basic attacks are sort of less ‘actiony’ then they should be. So my solution is a simple one.

Add skills that recharge mana, give the player choices between mana recharge skills and mana spending skills. No longer are we slaves to mana potions, though as an emergency we could easily add mana potions with a significant cool-down attached to them.

Keep the player moving; give players interesting choices between their mana recharge skills and their mana spending skills and design for synergies.

I know, a lot of you are going to be like “Well, isn’t that what Diablo 3 is doing?” and the answer is yes, that is what Diablo 3 is doing. But it’s not a bad concept, in fact it entirely makes sense, the player should have more active skills at their disposal regardless if they’ve run out of mana or not, because basic attacks are boring! Especially at higher levels when you don’t want to be using a basic attack when you’re surrounded by 30 deadly level 80 monsters, you want to have abilities you can fall back on that don’t require mana.

This concept not only allows the designer to make more interesting enemy encounters, it also allows them to play around with boss encounters, the designer knows that the player is not limited by a mana potion, but by certain skill sets.

Basic attacks suck! It’s about time this genre grew out of them to make more engaging action encounters and interesting non-passive resource management.

[Roros]

I've seen a few games lately do the "build energy/spend energy" skills. I'm a little mixed about that system in particular, I remember in Champions Online especially I'd just hold 1 while glaring at my bars, before doing my "nuke", then repeating until the target was dead.

I think how Guild Wars does it is actually one of my favourites. There's a basic grunt attack, but the mana/cooldown costs of the skills are *just* so that you are constantly using them while still having to actually manage and get a good feel of their costs and cooldowns.
The only downside was 'weaving', where it sometimes became beneficial to weave in a basic attack between each skill to get the most dps per buck. Disregarding balance and whether it's intentional or not, it was just a hassle and a headache to do, and made the combat less fun and more routine.

[icedmetal57]

I suppose you could just have multiple mana-recharging abilities that may have some pros to them but are a bit weaker than what a basic attack might do. For example this "basic" attack ability recharges some mana but you deal less damage than what you'd expect a basic attack might do and also applies an armor reduction debuff to the enemy. Another "basic" attack ability also recharges some mana, deals a bit more than what you'd expect a basic attack might do but has a cooldown, possibly longer than the previous ability mentioned. You could have a few "basic" attack abilities rather than just a regular basic attack and it's based off the character being played or maybe the weapon they're using or class or whatever else.

Even though they may deal as much damage or less than what you'd expect from a basic attack they're more interesting and having a few of them would add some variety. Then when it comes to mana using abilities they're stronger and so using mana on them would be worthwhile, not that I've ran into the problem much where abilities aren't worth wasting mana on.

[Dejnov]

TQIT already has this built in. There are a bunch of default attack skills that drain little to no mana that for all effective purposes are a replacement to the default melee skill. Why would you think that Crate won't do that for Grim Dawn?

If you're playing a dedicated melee class in Grim Dawn, you (probably) won't be making basic attacks ever.

Dejnov.

P.S. The only reason for the probably is because the game isn't out yet and we can't definitively say yes or no, but if you look closely at TQIT more than half of the melee classes had an upgrade basic attack that was a left click. Those that didn't had passive buffs that resulted in cool attacks.

[NZSpy]

Isn't that what mana potions are for? Keep enough of them so you don't run out for more than a few seconds. TQ/TQIT had plenty of ways to keeps your mana pool from running down too low. If you never ran out of mana. I fear it would make things a little too easy. You have to manage your attacks and mana pool. Besides that using an ultra cool staff weapon or bow isn't exactly what I would define as boring, which after all would be your default attack. I'm all for innovation and different systems but not to the point where it makes things easier or too easy.

[Executioneer]

as scryer, the D3 idea is not bad at all, but on the other hand, i had some toons in TQIT namely, my best conqueror, who attacked with onslaught while doing charges and so on, and even when in colossal form, my mana would not go below half. i also had a diviner who managed to beat the game @ xmax no deaths by utilising almost only ternion, and guess what? her mana was not a problem. you know who the problem is... spirit empusas that drain you dry of every living source you have without proper resistances. but as soon as you manage to obtain those, you're good to go again.

in my experience, the basic attack was only relied on in the begining where skills aren't abundant nor deadly.

maybe combining these ideas could really lead to an enhanced gameplay experience, like considering a warrior:

he would have attacks like onslaught that require him to use some stamina thus mana, and others possibly passive skills that return mana every time the player criticals, maybe variant according to equipment.

and to keep it realistic, how could a character not have a basic attack??
else he would start naked, weaponless, and knowledgeless = pure suicide!!

[DeAdOne]

Originally Posted by Scryer

So I was thinking about game-play in the Action RPG genre, and an idea snapped in my head, basic attacks really suck.

I agree with you on this and hopefully in GD like with TQ melee classes we will be able to level up passive skills to increase attack damage, antimations, AOE attacks,type of damage,etc of basic attacks. Hopefully all classes of GD will make use of these skills and to a greater extent.New gameplay mechanics would keep the game play from feeling generic,because so many games use the same gameplay now days.To me it just gets boring.I am hoping that GD will have new interesting additions to gameplay just as TQ added.