Fully Operational: Not-So-Auto-Attacks

“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!” — There is no better example of damage in the Star Wars galaxy than the scene attached to that quote. Each week in Fully Operational, join Kray as he takes a look at the damage dealing role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. And yes, we’ll blow up a planet if we get the chance.

Welcome, dealers of damage, DPS machines, pew pewers and stabbity stabbers! It’s that time again, time to kick back after a long work week and join me on a magical adventure through The Old Republic. I’m in a pretty good mood right now, so today’s listening music reflects it.

So far we’ve gone over class playstyles, hybridization, and group dynamics, all speaking in general terms. Now, my friends, it’s time we start getting into the nitty-gritty. Our topic of conversation today will bounce around a bit, but I promise it’s all linked together — let’s talk about the absence of auto-attacks for ranged and melee, and how it’s going to affect our lives in the DPS world.

White Damage

BioWare announced many moons ago that the beloved (or hated) auto-attack system would not be implemented in The Old Republic, and has since developed on the concept further, detailing how the basic combat system will flow both visually and technically. For those of you unfamiliar with auto-attacks, it refers to the concept that during periods of downtime — i.e. when the player is “in combat” but pushing no buttons, executing no commands — his character will automatically slash and shoot with a basic attack. These attacks are often referred to as “white damage”, a term pulled from the fact that auto-attack damage numbers are typically non-colored to help differentiate from vibrant special attack numbers. In some games, auto-attacks make up a large chunk of damage dealt, especially over time; they’re free and relatively quick, giving a nice easy boost to your damage done. What a fantastic feature!

BioWare disagrees, and let me tell you why.

You Are in Control

I’d like to refer you to the chart below to help make my point. This is a damage parse from a top Rogue in World of Warcraft, in arguably the best guild in the world.

Interesting part highlighted in red. The rest of it is BORING. (Click to embiggen)

As you can see, a whopping 23.5% of this player’s damage on the fight came from Melee, which is the basic, auto-attack strike. Now, there is a caveat that this particular class has a few buttons they click to increase their white damage, but the fact remains that those 268 hits made required absolutely no input from the player. In fact, if you want to get into the meat of it, Instant Poison, Deadly Poison, and Main Gauche are all damaging abilities tied directly into those auto-attacks, meaning that roughly 45% of the damage this character did required almost no input from the player. This is a bit of an extreme example, but you can see the issue that arises: nearly half of what this rogue did was controlled by the computer.

The Old Republic approaches damage from a different route: all offensive (and most defensive) actions your avatar makes should be a result of direct input from you – auto-attacks do not exist!  Principle Lead Combat designer Georg Zoeller chimed in back at the beginning of the year with some official commentary on the issue:

• Basic attack sequences in Star Wars: The Old Republic generally consist of multiple blaster bolts or strikes, so you don’t click-spam attacks. We call these attacks ‘flurries’.
• The actual number of flurries during a basic combat cycle against a normal creature is generally low, we try to put an emphasis on special attacks instead.
• As a result, an auto-attack feature becomes unnecessary, since you chain few flurries together and often switch up your combat routine to deal with emergent issues during a fight.
• You can definitely shoot on the run (or backpaddle and shoot on those following you).

… and later in the thread …

 Combat in The Old Republic allows for a lot of dynamic movement on the battlefield (force jumps, grappling hooks, people being sent flying in ballistic arcs), so the ability to perform your basic melee attacks while moving is important for the game to feel correct.

You are never idle in combat – there is no situation where you just stand there waiting, unable to do anything (unless you are stunned that is.)

Since I mentioned you can shoot on the run, I should clarify that you can also perform melee attacks on the run.

Worry not! White damage will not be missed!

The How and Why

The removal of auto-attacks makes sense from a technical and storyline perspective — you’re the hero or villain, you should be the master of your own actions — but that’s not the only reason white damage has no place in The Old Republic. Take a look at things from an animations point of view and you’ll see what I mean. Read most any quote about combat animations or watch any gameplay video and you’ll see that in between combat actions, your character will be doing a LOT of other things! Between shielding and parrying attacks, dodging or deflecting blaster fire, and of course player-controlled movement, there’s a lot of animation going on. Having no automatic strikes in-game gives the graphical team more freedom to make an entire combat sequence flow together smoothly; TOR will be devoid of the awkward “interrupt myself mid-strike to do a different type of strike then restart my old strike because I sure do love me some strikes!” scenario (see, it was even awkward to read). Each action is fluid and melds together with the overarching combat animation seamlessly.

Pictured above: not an auto attack

The final hurdle BioWare had to jump in the excision of white damage is the fact that, well, this is an MMORPG. Being an MMO, there will be periods of time where you won’t have enough resources to perform an attack, or just need to do a little bit more damage to take down an enemy. Well, being the solution-factory they are, BioWare implemented a free, basic attack to all classes. Whether or not you use this attack is completely up to you, it merely serves as a filler while waiting for an ability to proc or some resources to recharge. BioWare goes so far as binding this default attack to the right click action on an enemy target (in addition to its slot on your action bars), to ease growing pains of people used to auto-attacks in previous games. Keep in mind, you’ll have to click it each time for it to go off, but with the wide range of abilities you’ll have by the time you hit level cap, don’t expect to be hitting your basic attack too often.

I love the lack of white damage in TOR and I hope you do too. If you disagree with something I said or would like to pick apart my analysis of a Combat Rogue, please post in the comments. As always check out the other Fully Operational articles here on Ask A Jedi, and follow me on Twitter: @kraybaybay!