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Now that the general “fluff” is dispensed with, it’s time to get to the real meat of the interview: the skills you’ll find in your new avatar combat system. Although Kevin noted that finishing moves would be removed in his blog, the Ten Ton Hammer staff was immensely curious what kind of skills would be added in place of these showy attacks.

Want the details to the system? Keep on reading!

“I’ve removed the concept of different ‘flavors’ of attack – there are no more prep attacks or finishing attacks, as they were defined in the initial system,” Kevin said. “ There are still, however, ‘epic attacks’.  These are generally the final attacks in a given chain, and are designed to be powerful and effective.  The biggest difference between these and the old-style ‘finishing moves’ is that there isn’t a penalty for using them, particularly.  They cost a lot of Initiative, but you won’t die because you used one at the wrong time.”

“I’ll briefly give you some specifics (although, of course, these are subject to change and might be different in the released version),” he continued. “The final skill in the Dirty Fighting Offense chain is ‘Overwhelm’, which is an attack that inflicts +100% damage, cannot be parried, and hits all targets in a 90 degree arc in front of the character.  At the end of the Florentine Defense chain is ‘Untouchable’, which gives a 50% damage reduction buff for 3 minutes.  The top skill in Fencing’s Control chain is ‘Lightning Thrusts’, which inflicts +80% damage and hits all targets within 4 yards of the character.”

In essence, Kevin hopes that “players feel super powered.” Players should feel like heroes in an grand adventure novel, taking their rapiers and stabbing their enemies while blabbering witty quips that would make Jack Sparrow or Dread Pirate Roberts chortle. According to Kevin, in the new system grunt enemies are more of a road bump with players easily chopping through anywhere between three and six enemies at a time. Boss enemies, however, will be much more dangerous and in line with your increased power level.

Thankfully, the PotBS developers have also eased some of the “growing pains” a number of us felt when we first jumped into the avatar combat progression system. With the new “skill chain” set-up, players will now have a direction that they can head in without making our heads twist around Exorcist-style. New players can “simply buy all the skills in a chain all the way down to its end and be certain they’ve created a functional, effective character.”

“One of the problems we faced in the more open-ended initial system is that it was far too easy to create a character that was incapable of winning even moderately difficult battles,” Kevin explained. “We saw a lot of people hit the first of the ‘hard’ fights in the mid-levels and get slaughtered, and eventually give up on avatar combat entirely.  My approach for combating this was to explicitly design each chain to be a self-contained complete toolset for winning avatar combat fights.  In my testing, I only take skills from a single chain at a time, and I make sure I’m able to win fights with only those skills.”

To the death! No, to the pain!

“This doesn’t mean that all chains are created equal, of course.  Each school has its own particular emphasis, and each chain is very distinct in its approach to winning fights.  For instance, Defense chains tend to work best by ‘turtling’, triggering all their defensive abilities, and then whittling down one or two targets at a time.  Control chains use AOE debuffs to minimize their incoming damage; Florentine Control can even use movement-impairing effects to ‘kite’ groups of enemies, keeping only a few in range at a time.  Offense chains focus on quickly killing the most dangerous enemies first, and then overpowering the others before they can inflict too much damage.”

Of course, with any new system the entire world around a player will change, because NPCs that a player encounters will need to echo these new iterations to the combat system or the game will feel like midnight run to the local Wal-Mart: disjointed and full of crazies. Kevin explained that enemies will now have distinct archetypes and that the content team has completely revised their approach to NPC factions. There are now various “themes” and “every faction is designed with interdependencies within the typical encounter group.  For instance, some factions may feature ranged support characters who will use firearms to cripple you at range, keeping you away from them while their allies butcher you up close.”

“I’m not sure exactly how many archetypes there are; I’m going to guess close to 20 different NPC ‘types’, and then variations within factions,” Kevin continued.  “One faction, for instance, includes enemies who will fill their mouths with alcohol and then breathe fire at you.”

“The intent is that you’ll be able to learn the attack patterns and interdependencies of a group of enemies, and plan your strategy accordingly; some enemies should be killed first to prevent them from buffing their allies, for instance.  At the same time, as you encounter a new faction, you’ll always be facing something slightly different and challenging.”

At the conclusion of our interview, Kevin encouraged everyone to either play the new combat system when it came out on the live servers or even to jump into the test server and give the developers suggestions on the system. As always, the Ten Ton Hammer staff would like to thank Kevin for his time, and then we’re off to sail the high seas. I hope I don’t get stuck with the dingy again…