There’s a lot of polarizing opinions regarding Throne and Liberty’s auto-combat (Astral Hunting) system. AFAIK, it really isn’t the biggest issue to me because of how it works with the game design being one centered around mob grinding to level up (XP grinding can also be supplemented with logging, mining, gathering, etc) since it’s a very old school slow grind (the beta has a 200% XP boost and even with that, it takes a lot of grinding to ding a level when you are in the 20’s [cap for beta is 30]). Majority of early green and blue skills are also single target (purple skills likely will have more AoE options that also interact with environmental factors including weather since there is supposed to be a skill that allows lightning during a rain storm, to proc/hit targets multiple times; rain as it is can reduce combat damage on some skills).
The auto-combat is therefore meant to supplement that boring grind (the 8 hours of offline play with the battle pass is a hat tip to the mob grind botting that occurred in Lineage II). I’m therefore sort of ambivalent about the system since it isn’t the most effective way to play (plus you need a lot of consumables for auto healing by your pet since you really don’t want to die due to the punishing XP loss). I view it as a system that allows you to take care of other things while it does that mundane grind. And it’s not going to be the primary way to play when doing actual meaningful content (the focus of which is larger scale sieges and GvG).
But yes, I do get why a lot of people (especially the opinions coming out from western content creators) are absolutely negative about it since “auto” is viewed as a mobile game mechanic (and in the western market, there is a very distinct gap between PC and mobile gaming unlike in Asia where mobile gaming is much larger compared to PC/console since a lot of this demographic does not own either of those devices). I also don’t see this system being removed for AGS because it’s core to the games design (we’re talking about how quests work, mob aggro, loot tables, etc).
Furthermore, there is also a distinct grind element in KMMO’s that doesn’t resonate with the western demographic (similar to how the “P2W” argument always comes into play in the west, versus how convenience items are readily acceptable in Asian regions). Throne and Liberty as is, will be a turn off to a larger segment of this western demographic who don’t like old school KMMO style grinds, don’t like straight up cash shop mechanics, and don’t like mobile crossover systems like auto combat. And this being mostly a PvP centric design, will further limit the reach. But the design of the combat is what will be a major turn off since it feels bad (especially melee; range is a bit better since you can begin moving after casting, though kiting isn’t always going to be a play style conducive to many mob types). I guess we will need to see how AGS decides to proceed with getting NC to make changes to the game outside of the usual localization and cash shop changes.
