In depth Combat Intro

Before I start, if you haven't already, you should watch these videos:
Melee Combat Video
Ranged Combat Video 1
True Action Combat Trailer

As you all know, the setting of this role play is in 2051. Whilst there are reasons for having this year, there are also problems: many of us don't know how games - or their controls - will be, particularly combat wise. Therefore, a choice I've made is to enhance what is known as True Action Combat, defined by the game, TERA, and incorporate it into the combat of AoT. In any game, combat is a major influence in the game play and AoT is no exception. The reason for picking True Action Combat is how realistic it is to combat in reality; therefore, there won't be any issues role playing wise (such as auto hitting).

True Action Combat
If you've watched the video on the last link, you'll notice it mentions a few aspects. The first I'll address is skills. TAC relies on a players skill; this means, even as a game, spamming buttons will not benefit you. Instead of lock-on combat, player must aim their attacks - though this will be more emphasised on ranged players, it nonetheless affects melee players too. Aiming avoids the problem of auto hitting in role play - it allows a player to dodge. Dodging is a big aspect in combat. One cannot simply stand still and expect to be victorious. To give a beating, you must avoid a beating. AoT will have dodging skills (not too many, of course) which will be helpful in PvE, a pain in PvP and a life saver. Timing is everything. Players and monsters will move and evade, in AoT; there is another issue of cast times. It'll be hard to sort out your timing for a skill with a long cast time. The last is focus. In its game version - and definitely when the game becomes a reality - a player cannot absent mindedly fight. The game keeps you on your feet, forcing you to be aware of your surroundings, forcing you to be aware of your target, their movements, the skills they are going to use. All these contribute to skill.

HP & MP
Obviously, health points and mana points will still exist after the update. A possible concept, we were considering to go after, is for everyone to specify the mana cost of their skills. However, this would force us to add other things: the damage they'd do to monsters and players, the maximum mana and health of the character (and how we would sort this out; maximum health and mana depends on the class of the player), the health of the monsters, etc. Also, in combat, some may find it a pain to specify the damage an attack would do, the mana cost, etc.
So, we decided not to go down this route. Instead, we ask all players to be conscious of their health and mana bar. All skills require mana. You do not have to heavily rely on dodging; you can take some hits without being 'injured' as all it'd do is knock some points off your health bar. The only things we are adding are: cast time and cool down time for skills. Your post can mention your character noticing their deplenishing hp and/or mp bar, but you must stick to the cast times and cool down times. Read the previous section; combat in AoT relies on skill to win a battle.

Group
Whilst one can achieve great things with soloing, one can achieve even greater things in a group. A well skilled group will be able to accomplish many things, defeat hard monsters, kill players. I'm sure everyone knows what a good group/party consists of: tank, healer, DPS (melee & magic). What distinguishes a good group from any other group are other aspects: co-ordination, strategies, communication, team work. You don't have to create an overly OP character (we'll be sure of that), you should aim to create a character who has the skill and potential to be good, especially when with the right people.

Inventory
We recognise that all games have inventories. Though, we are more concerned about what those inventories are filled with: potions, food for buffs, etc. Whilst we encourage you to use these, we discourage you to depend on them in every fight; this means, overusing potions so your opponent cannot defeat or kill you. For this reason, we are implementing cool downs on potions. No, not in form of time, but in the form of posts. Potions will have cool downs; you cannot use potions for a certain amount of posts after use. The number of posts will depend on the greater the healing.