How do you attack?

[MadMinstrel]

I'm in my first fight with humans. How do you hit something? Clicking or right-clicking enemies doesn't seem to do anything. There also doesn't seem to be any kind of attack button on screen, just abilities. What gives?

[Haldurson]

You can attack sometimes, but it's not always obvious when or if you can't, why not. If you hover your cursor over a potential target, and a blade symbol appears, it means that you MIGHT be able to attack, but not necessarily on the current turn. If you cannot, It may be because you used up your actions for that turn, or that you are too far away, or even that you are not able to move, or for some other reason I'm not aware of. At least that's what I've been able to divine.

So if you did something eles first, it's possible that the game will be showing you that you can attack, but you really cannot.

[Ruinous]

If you've a weapon equipped and are close enough to make a melee attack you should see a bar appear with a series of pips in it. These pips represent the amount of 'effort' you are expending on the attack, the first being the default. Clicking on the first pip will be the equivalent of your baseline attack, clicking on the other pips along adds more 'effort' which depletes your stat pool but gives more damage / better accuracy.
If you are a nano, you can attack using abilities. Pick the ability, click the enemy and select the amount of effort you wish to use. Difference is abilities have a base activation cost so will deplete your stat pool by that amount plus the amount of effort, but tend to be more powerful.

I'm new to the game myself, so if my take is confusing or not quite accurate anyone else feel free to chime in ;)

[MadMinstrel]

Huh? There is no blade symbol, no bars and no pips. Clickong or hovering just does nothing except showing the enemy name. And none of my party can attack anyone, or use any abilities on them. It's the first fight, not counting the one against the sorrow, so it shouldn't be that complicated.

[Ruinous]

The combat system isn't complicated, just a bit different.

As to the specific problem of you not being able to interact in combat, I've had that a couple times in other combats but not that first proper combat. Have you tried closing the game and restarting? That fixed one of my hung combat issues. If that doesn't help, perhaps check over the official forums?

[nakoda]

Same issue as OP here.

First combat right outside the resonance chamber.

All I can do is talk to Qurro during the combat and interact with environmental objects.

I cannot attack, cannot use abilities, cannot do anything but walk around while the 4 humans attack me. Clicking and right-clicking have no effect on any of the enemies in any way except that I can converse with Qurro round after round until I am out of points and/or dead.

I have a save right before the combat starts, and have reloaded numerous times, tried both equipping and unequipping weapons, and have tried using objects, but nothing happens.

There is no intelligible reason for the lack of contextual controls during combat, or for the lack of interactivity.

I actually preferred the pre-update Sorrow fight in The Mind, where you had the opportunity to examine the memories of the tanked creatures before the combat started. At least pre-update, attack meant attack.

Frankly, other than the visual overhaul of the UI, I am not impressed with this update, I enjoyed the prior version more.

[nakoda]

I also sincerely hope that the next round of updates includes functioning tooltips.

[Gweihir]

Same here. I have created 3 chars, and the first one could attack. Unfortunately, I did not save it. Chars 2 and 3 could not attack, no matter what. Manifests itself already in the very first fight with the shadows and the monster. I will try another char, but unless that one works, that is it for me with the beta at this time.

Update: The 4th char can fight again. It is a Nano, like the first, and I think, second one I made.

[Final Eden]

Even before this most recent patch, I still experienced the same problem. It got to the point I uninstalled the entire game because it was just wasted space on my screen and hard drive. Honestly I am pretty excited for this game, I have been waiting for a game of this type with graphics that I feel adequate enough and gameplay/story that captivate my attention. I just wish, even though it is beta, I can adequately give feedback and discover bugs while still immersing myself into the game. Yet, sadly, I cannot even progess past the first encounter, even with the new sorrow intro, all I was able to do was endlessly pass my turn until it just fled (unless that is how it was designed) really irritates me and infuriates me.

If anyone knows a work-around instead of just endlessly creating new chars and praying it works, please post. Would be much appreciated.

[MadMinstrel]

Yep, passing my turn was also how i got past the sorrow fight.

[Arsene Lupin]

Yeah, the combat scenarios seem to be missing like 90% of the kind of visual feedback it'll need before release.

[Mephil]

Its a bug apparently. I couldn't attack either, was so confused. Restarted a couple of times and then it worked, then the bug came back again the next battle and had to restart a couple of times again.

There's no telling when the bug will hit. As it is now, the game is pretty much unplayable.

[nakoda]

I've deleted the game (again) for now, and eagerly await the next update pass.

The New UI is great (although, during Character finalisation, the "description" box that scrolls through ability text isn't usable at all, because the moment you move your mouse off of the desired ability to actually scroll the description, the description resets to whatever text was previously highlighted ... maybe make the description box "On Ability Select" rather than "On Ability Hover" for the next update?)

The new Sorrow fight is unsatisfying and feels rushed, as if it were a bandaid.

The new combat is obtuse and uninformative. I would expect a refund if this is how the game were to be on release, frankly.

[Gweihir]

Originally posted by nakoda:

The new combat is obtuse and uninformative. I would expect a refund if this is how the game were to be on release, frankly.

Well, they pushed back the release, which usually is a good thing and something that crowd-funded developers can do when they feel they need to polish/debug the thing more. I am pretty sure they do not even dream of releasing as it is now, because then they would not get anything else crowd-funded and would have to go back to the hated publisher-model to finance their work.

[nakoda]

Responses <<inline>>

Originally posted by sear:

Hey guys,

During the first combat sequence with the Sorrow, you should be able to left-click to attack the Reflections. When you do, an Effort pop-up appears and you can choose to spend either no Effort (the leftmost pip/button) or more (the ones to the right) which will increase your damage and chances to hit. With Effort, right now Edge is not being properly communicated but we will be adding that in future passes.

<<The Sorrow encounter works, but it is bland... "Click three Shadows, progress" ... there is no palpable crisis, and it is rather boring. The previous version with the Shade combat was engaging, and acted as a pseudo tutorial, I even had fun maximizing my use of the portals to zip around between Canisters and using The Spectre's knock back effeciently.

Three, side-by-side "Shadows" that are not at all threatening is just redundant and uninformative of any sort of game process.>>

...

Regarding combat rules and feedback:

In combat, you have 2 actions - an attack/ability action, and a movement action. Similar to in XCOM, you can "double move" by also using your movement + attack at the same time (represented by the blue movement line turning to purple). That will end your turn.

<<The indicator for movement range was more informative in the prior version, and the new indicator seems to stutter and pop rather than move or flow.

There is simply no option to attack during the first combat with Qurro, the cursor is *always* the default pointer unless interacting with environment or talking to Qurro mid combat.>>

Beyond that, we have plans for more feedback coming. The combat UI has seen a lot of polish over the earlier versions but still has a ways to go as far as communicating information. Some things we are considering including:

- A max range indicator for your movement distance.
- A max range indicator for your ability targeting.
- Better enemy tooltips showing things like defenses and resistances.
- Overhead popups on enemies that tell you which abilities they are using.
- An objectives indicator in more complex scenarios that gives you basic guidelines on what to do (for example, that might be "fight Qorro's thugs or escape the Reef").
- Something that more clearly indicates how many actions you have remaining.

<<All useful things which I look forward to.>>

The discussion here is valuable see what people are finding difficult to figure out, it's too bad that it seems like that has got mixed in with what sounds like a bug/problem as well.

The biggest thing for me us how little actual feedback there is during interactions with the Effort bar (Okay, one pip adds ~15% ... but why? The effort bar might even be *too* much UI for the interaction (I think Banner Saga's model handles this type of interaction in a much cleaner way).

A more context-sentitive interaction menu on enemies would be .. IMO ... a better path to explore, rather than a clunky and disjointed UI with elements here there and everywhere.

Thanks for responding, sear, awesome info. I'm still eagerly awaiting launch, despite the inability to play this version of the beta.

[DrMcCoy]

Originally posted by sear:

- Something that more clearly indicates how many actions you have remaining.

This would be very useful. In my fight with Quero (sp?), I had Callistege use a cypher that does damage (which I assume should consume the attack/ability action). But when I moused over an enemy, the cursor changed to a weapon and the "Left click to attack" thing at the top of the screen showed. Of course, clicking on the enemy didn't make the Effort UI pop up and I couldn't attack. Confused, I stupidly clicked a few more times before remembering that I should only have the movement action left and, not wanting to move, passed the turn.