I didn't like it because it was on a cooldown. And that it was easy. Granted I play action games a lot. In other words I felt it didn't go far enough in terms of reflex challenge. I'd rather have the enemies attack more overwhelmingly and I would have to dodge a lot more. Either that or no dodge. Go full action or don't even try.
The fact that 90% of what you were supposed to be dodging ended up being obviously telegraphed AoE attacks that have large red circles on the ground before they hit was an extreme insult to the intelligence of pretty much anyone with an IQ above room temperature.
+1.
Edit: Moreover it seems they balanced NPC red circle attacks around the fact that you could only dodge very few times because of the cooldown, so it was even more brainless since it happened only once in a while.
Well in general the cooldowns and the such limited number of attacks made combat even more brainless than WoW. What was it, you had like 2-3 moves that you would use 90% of the time, which you obviously used when they came off cooldown, with a few situational skills that were obvious, and then one elite skill?
Incidentally, it was the classes that did not necessarily rely on dodging that were more interesting. Like the Elementalist, I think. But I honestly don't remember because I stopped playing a while ago, due to a separate topic (reaaallly repetitive environments as you progressed, and also reaallly boring character progression).
In PVE WoW, even as a Warrior, the optimal playstyle required switching between 2 stances (I forget if using the tank/3rd stance was part of the leveling rotation). And note that I already find "MMO rotations" in games like WoW suuuuper routine and learnable in under a minute. It always pissed me off when someone said "oh my god, WoW/theme park MMOs have such complex rotations you have to relearn every time you level." My ass.
Honestly if you wanted an action "MMO" the closest to having entertaining action combat would be Neverwinter Online. NWO also had red circles, but (A) it was more fast paced (B) you could move out of them without dodging and (C) it was useful to dodge even non-red circle attacks.
Even TERA isn't that good because shitty enemy AI dilutes the point of hack & slash.
Well anyways, I did argue against you
Average Manatee that I would withhold judgment on the dodge system until release, but after release I completely agree what they did was terrible. I don't mind change for the sake of change but you obviously gotta change it to something of quality.
