I think GW2 and BDO are much better poster boys for what MMO action combat can be.
ESO’s combat is… well, let’s say that outside of obvious lemons like Bless Online and Perfect World I think it’s the worst MMO combat I’ve ever tried. You need to animation cancel (and look like a glitchy mess on screen) to play well, it’s not very responsive for action combat and the skills aren’t satisfying to use.
Don’t get me wrong ESO is an awesome MMO and I wholly recommend it for lore nerds, role-players and Elder Scrolls fans, but it’s good despite its combat, not because of it.
But in general action combat MMOs tend to have pretty terrible combat. It’s not an ESO problem. They’re harder to do well than tab-target and they aren’t necessarily more fun.
I agree with you on this. I didn’t mean ESO was noteworthy FOR its action combat , just that it’s one of the only MMOs with action combat that might potentially be competing with at least FFXIV, if not WoW.
Tangent, but this bit right here has me wondering how the game is going to do once TES 6 comes around. Basically, what percentage of ESO’s players are only there because it’s technically the most recent TES game?
I disagree. I’ve never had more fun with just pure combat in an MMO than I have with BDO’s take on action combat. Wildstar was also really fun for me when that was new (but I quit because I had no desire to raid in both that AND WoW).
It depends on the person of course, but I personally have more fun with action combat. I think probably the biggest hurdle for devs with action combat is making classes distinct for reasons other than aesthetics. As much as I LOVE BDO’s combat, it definitely has trouble with that for classes within the same general role. Wildstar handled that particular quirk better.
It honestly shouldn’t be far from XIV if it’s not already ahead. Every time I look at Twitch ESO has double the viewers. I can accept that MMOs with decent PvP modes naturally attract more viewers so Twitch probably doesn’t correlate to a more popular game, but that’s still a LOT of people interested in ESO daily.
I dunno, the most fun fighting I’ve had in an MMO would be WoW from 3.0 to 5.3, or otherwise FFXIV from 3.0 up to today. (Obviously because of encounter design and class mechanics, it’s not the tab-targeting by itself that is fun, but still…) And those are the antithesis of real time action. So I roll my eyes every time a studio gives themselves the trouble of adding action combat to their MMO thinking it will immediately make it better, especially when they don’t have anything else that’s interesting about it. /coughnewworldcoughcough
But yeah BDO and GW2 are the rare action combat MMOs where I found combat entertaining, as I said above. I never played Wildstar, (I hated the cartoon look) but most of the action combat MMOs I’ve tried felt clunky and the action element got old after a few hours.