Hi everybody!

One of the things we've noticed recently is a fair amount of concern over the combat pace and cooldown of weapons. Masthead prides itself on listening to its community and we are committed on making Earthrise a fast paced RPG game that many people will enjoy. One of these things we are doing behind the scenes at present is fine-tuning the combat as a whole to make it faster and better. You'll no doubt notice this means things will be faster as you experience them for yourself than initially demonstrated. We may slow things down a little bit in our demos and footage for illustrative purposes on occasion to highlight systems and features, though, but this is nothing to worry about. As we proceed through beta, is important for us to know what the community thinks overall about Earthrise because we want to continue to make Earthrise an unforgettable experience. We appreciate and thank everyone for their honest opinions and candid feedback.

See you on the forums!

From: Nova

If you manage to make Earthrise faster than Tabula Rasa (which was already REALLY fast paced for an MMO) then Il be very excited and probably want to play it any time I can. I know you said weapon modes would be locked in combat, but I reccomend instead that You get penatlies depending on your "weapon stance" and the distance. The weapon stance would be the weapon you had equipped when the fight started. There should be a meter that goes down over time that would let you change your weapon or equipement without penalty when it went to zero. The meter should have a lower base penalty and time limit if you are better skilled with the equipment. If you so choose not to change to the item, then your skill with it in the combat would improve, and the items effecitveness and all relalted stats, items, talents etc, get a bonus for as long as you kept the equipment active in combat, the overburst meter would be able to be 3x as long as your regular meter. This would give players bonuses for getting in on the action while they are playing Earthrise, and encourage th PvPers to enage each other for combat bonuses, and temporary skill bonuses (even if in some abstract manner such as crafting), and make all the menus easy to understand, voice chat (both shortkey and actual talking), and combat controls all integrated into one main system. And add some variety to that combat, it neds a little work. Make attacks change animations depedning on enviornemnt, number of enemies, recoil effects, angles, and there should be variations anyway. Just a reccomendation, and even though earthrise is an MMO, recharging slows down the game, I would reccomend expading on the equipment/ammo/stances to make it more aobut the choices you make and your innovation/adaption to your enviorment in combat than about waiting for your powers, talents, items etc to recharge. And make sure that there are incentives for pursuing all kinds of builds (combat, crafitng etc.), not just the mainstream ones, or ones that dont seem to work well or contradict. All builds should work well. The targeting system in itself was cool though, and I really liked the speed of that sprint system. Oh yeah, and if its a combat based MMo, things should attack you and each other, not always, but I say, 70% of the time NPC/creature in poitencial hostile cirumstances attack you, 15% they attack each other, 15% they dont attack to give players a break so they aerent always overwheelmed. They played this game to get into a fight. I like the whole political/criminal/alignment system in earthrise that doesnt always easily define right or wrong. This kind of alingment system sould somehow affect your talents and offline benefits, I believe, so it changes the manner in which the factions/alignments do things, but not thier power level, more thier playing style. All the while, your skill system helps make sure every faction has access to equal resources, heck your fighting over territrories, so the crafters can make some sweet epic gear. Thanks allot good work, but thier should a major haul on the accuracy, speed, variation, and responsiveness of that combat system. Please post on the site on what you think on the feedback you recieve. Thank you.

From: Riterdando. zip

The combat shown in the video was far from "fast-paced". I'm sure the final product will be a lot more polished than the alfa version demonstrated, but frankly, from what I've seen I don't think you developers will manage to fully deliver on your promises for exciting fighting mechanics. And this "Community thanks", which is actually an excuse, has not reassured me at all. Anyway, I hope you guys do your best and wish you luck!

From: Actrazor

Thank you thank you thank you!, I was so scared that ER was going to be just another MMORPG where simple combat took forever and you slept through half of it, I'm thrilled now combat will be more intense and fear inducing like I originally hoped. Go dev team!.

From: Seero

This is good to hear. I was a bit worried that things would be a bit too slow in the combat department, but this puts my fears at ease a bit =)