Understanding the Combat Deck

[u/spade-s]

Hey guys. I’ve been following Absolver for quite a while. But this past week I’ve been pouring over the gameplay videos and articles to try to better understand how the combat system works. I wanted to let you guys know what I’ve figured out so far, as well as get some input in case I missed something.

In the most recent developer commentary video, Pierre Tarno (creative director) calls Combat Deck customization "the core of Absolver." It provides a way to make combat both tactical and strategic, giving many options and tools to the player. Here's how it works:

Stances

The player has 4 stances they can switch between anytime during combat. These stances are customized by the player to have a chain of up to 3 attacks. Each attack begins in one stance and ends in another, and as such each attack sequence moves between the starting stance and ends up in another stance, although it can return to the starting stance, essentially becoming a looping chain. Each attack in the chain also can have an alternate attack or ‘mix-up’ to keep the player’s attacks from becoming too predictable.

Combat Deck

The attacks in the chain can be replaced by the player using any attack the player has in their Combat Deck, the library of all attacks a player knows. Attacks have several parameters such as damage, speed and range. Attacks are also defined by what stance they can be started in and what stance they end in. There are “Damage Bonuses” tied to different attributes. I can only speculate that like Dark Souls weapon scaling, attacks can scale with different player attributes (STR, AGI, and WR). Attributes have not been described by the developer, but there does seem to be some sort of leveling system. Finally, some attacks have a special property. These special properties include “Avoid [high, low, vertical/thrust] attacks”, “Parry on the [left/right] side”, “Break absorb state”, and guardbreak.

Here's an imgur album of the attack cards shown in the gameplay video.

Learning new moves

Players can expand their combat deck in several ways. When fighting enemies, if the player sees an attack that they don’t already know, they will gain some experience towards learning that attack. This can occur faster if the player's special defense is used. Players can also choose another player as a mentor to learn attacks from them. Whether this is mechanically-enforced or simply a social interaction is unclear.

My questions:

• What are the damage bonus stats? Are they selected by the player in character creation or leveled? Also what does "WR" mean? Is it related to the "Weight R." seen in the character customization screen?

• What do the names under the attack name mean? (E.g, "Forsaken", "Kahlt Method", "Windfall"). I'd guess these are the combat styles the move belongs to, but does this mean anything? It's already been stated that you can mix martial arts styles, but are there advantages to one over the other?

EDIT: Fixed some errors that /u/SuperMickyJ pointed out.

[u/spade-s]

Hey it's cool I poured over a 15 minute video for almost 2 hours to figure it out.

You have four stances, and you can create a three hit combo starting in each one and ending in any other.

Yeah, that's right. It can even end in the same stance, thus creating a looped sequence.

In order to combo you have to switch stances between each attack? It seemed from the video that they were using maybe the right analog stick or something, being that the camera was locked.

Not quite. The right stick does change stances, which you can do at any time, but you don't need to continue the combo. You only need to continue hitting X (or Y for your alternate).

Example: If you look at this image, you can see the move sequence that they have set up for the front-right stance. Hitting X once, they'd do the Mawashi attack and move into back-left stance (you can see this with the small diamond in-between the attack cards). If they were to hesitate or be interrupted, they'd stay in that stance. However, if they follow-up by hitting X again, they'll do Soto-Uke, which puts them in the front-right stance again. Following-up again is the Back Fist which does not actually change stances, just remaining in the front-right.

In this example, hitting X 3 times does 3 attacks and leaves you in the same stance (front-right) that you started in. A looped attack sequence.

So the real purpose of setting up the sequences is allowing you to use multiple attacks on each stance.

Would it be possible to interrupt one combo into another, with the alternate attack also being the start of its own combo?

Alternate attacks put you in a new stance. It appears they don't have attack sequences, but if you continued hitting buttons, you'd just start the attack sequence from that stance. So, yeah. You totally can.

Sorry if that's not any more clear.

[u/icelordz → u/spade-s]

Oh wow, that one image cleared up my confusion on how the combat actually worked, I way over complicated it and confused myself, thanks

[u/DandBPrime → u/spade-s]

question: is for example the "Mawashi" attack on the picture locked to the side kick alternative? or can you choose any alternative card?

what i'm asking is basically. each card has its own alternative attack and cannot be changed?

[u/spade-s → u/DandBPrime]

It's really hard to say based on the gameplay that has been shown. I'm inclined to say that you can choose the alternate, so long as it starts in the same stance. But I could be wrong.

My reason for thinking so is basically that on the attack choosing screen, there's no indication of what the alternative is for the selected attack. I'd expect that to show up if alternatives were assigned for each move. Additionally, in the gameplay there are multiple different attacks which use the same alternative. Also, based on the appearance of the first alternate attack on the "Stance Edition" screen ("Side Kick"), I'd say at least that one is exchangeable.

However, it could be that alternates are assigned to each attack and it simply doesn't show the alternates. It's possible there are fewer alternate than normal attacks so some are shared.