Dauntless – Upcoming Combat Changes Detailed

If you’d like to learn how the Phoenix Labs team plans to gradually evolve the combat system of their co-operative action-RPG Dauntless over the course of its ongoing open beta, then you should check out this article on the game’s website that promises more variety, flexibility, and utility. An excerpt:

Change is inevitable. In life and Open Beta. As we start to experiment with weapons and combat over the next several months, we ask that you keep an open heart, mind, and browser window pointed to the Dauntless forums. Your feedback during this period will help inform and shape the future of combat. (And we always like hearing from you.)

Here are some of the areas we’ll be focusing on as we revisit our combat system:

WEAPON CHOICE

Every weapon in Dauntless should feel unique. As we move forward, we’ll be revisiting the role and actions of each of our weapons to ensure that each one feels special. When you pick up the sword, for instance, you should feel like you’re making a specific, strategic choice – not just grabbing your favourite blade.

Our first set of experimental weapon changes went in with Patch OB 0.5.7. We removed the war pike’s sidestep entirely, changed its secondary attack type from piercing to cutting, and increased its damage across the board. You can look forward to similar reforging in the future – not just for the war pike, but for all of our weapons.

COMBAT DECISIONS

Mastering combat in Dauntless requires both strategy and skill. You need to choose the right gear, master your combos, watch your stamina, and time your movements. By improving on mid-combat decisions – like which attack to use at any given moment – we’re taking that strategy even deeper. You can already see some of this at work in the OB 0.5.7 war pike changes.

In that same patch, we gave Slayers the option to dodge cancel out of the war pike Aether Harvester combo finisher. What does that have to do with combat decisions? Instead of being locked into a single outcome (“Finish the combo”), war pike users now have a strategic choice (“Finish the combo but risk taking damage” or “Cancel the combo and play it safe”). There’s more flexibility, more choice, and more ways to play the way you want to.

STATUS EFFECTS

Ever wished you had more control over status effects? Same. That’s why our third area of focus is on damage types and statuses.

The war pike’s wound damage is a good example of something we might revisit. Right now, wounding a Behemoth feels a little too random. You don’t have a ton of control over where the wound lands, it’s tough to aim at the wounded area, and it’s just all around difficult to see when a Behemoth is wounded. By improving audio and visual cues – larger and more visible wounds, special sounds that indicate wounding – we can make wounding a Behemoth more useful and satisfying.

And then, there are the latest patch notes.