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Y-Axis
Jenuviel
Member Posts: 960
It's probably a bit late in the design stage for an engine issue like this, but I'd really like to see a true Y-Axis (at least as I understand it) in the game. The ability to move up and down, even to the point of taking damage by jumping off a cliff, is a major issue for me. I never thought it would be, but I found myself having a very hard time "believing" the Star Wars: Galaxies game world simply because it lacked that very element. Jumping seems like such a minor thing, but it really does have an impact, especially when one can sustain damage from using it. In a game without vertical movement and its consequences, the world is like the canvas upon which your character is painted; in a game with those things, the world becomes a character in that painting. Knowing that characters will be able to affect the environment in strategic ways (collapsing cliffs on groups of enemies) goes a long way toward reassuring me that this has already been considered. I wanted to stress my feelings with regard to its importance in case it had not, however.
On a side note, thanks for being so actively involved with the community. I hesitate to speak for everyone (or be thought of as a suck-up), but it's nice to know that our ideas are being heard, even if they're not always used for one reason or another. The sense I get from the MMORPG.com and Simutronics boards is that you have a clear vision of where you're going, but you're not married to one particular path of getting there when others may work better. Flexibility combined with talent, skill and intellect can accomplish just about anything, so thanks for keeping that first concept alive in addition to the rest. It's a rarity. Cheers.
Comments
Interesting. May I ask if you are allowed to say which ones? Or maybe just one of them to tease us?
lol, devs are teasing us! like dog they let us smell the jucy steak, but we cant get to it!
Id like to ride a bird, or a class that can fly and drop stuff -- if thats what your meaning by the y-axis
Tatsit
Tantus Games
COO/Game Director
Not so much. In a lot of recent games (SWG for one), you can't even jump over a pebble. "Jump" was basically just an emote that made you appear to leap upward while, in fact, your character was still firmly rooted in the ground codewise. Movement in an environment like that is all horizontal, so there's really no geometrical depth. I'm assuming they coded the space expansion to allow ships three-dimensional movement, but the same was not true of the characters. Movement was forward, backward and side to side, but no true up and down. The terrain did have slopes, but your character was firmly affixed to it; you could walk up the side of a mountain...until you reached a small seam of rock that was a centimeter high. That tiny little ledge would be impassable because it prevents forward movement. In a game with a Y-axis, you could just hop over it. All in all, it makes for a much more realistic environment, though also an environment that's more difficult to regulate; players have a tendency to jump into places they were never intended to, which is why most games with a Y-axis have a command like /stuck or /unstick to get you out of that pit you accidentally stumbled into while looking for a shortcut.
To be able to physically make your (NPC) opponent take small steps backwards as you get the upper hand in combat (and vice versa) until you back them up to a cliff, and with a fierce blow send them hurtling down to their death.
Unlike *some* MMOs where you pull a mob and it scuttles straight up a verticle cliff to attack you... The reason being so you can't stand on the clifftop and arrow them to death etc I guess, so:
How do you alleviate this?
"(The) Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude." - George W Bush.
Oh. My. God.
In Asheron's Call 1, that was initially a problem as well. Their ultimate solution had two parts: 1) if a monster tried to engage you in combat but was unable to, it would switch to missile combat (if it had missile capability) or you would receive a vastly reduced amount of experience for it. 2) They removed every "perch" they could find from the game. Since people without missile skills couldn't benefit from perches anyway, they tended to report the perches they saw being used. The xp/missile solution was a pretty quick fix, but the removal of perches was a much slower process. Ultimately, it was fairly successful, though.
In a newer engine, a third option could theoretically be exercised as well: improved pathing. A creature might not be able to climb a cliff to reach you, but it could run around the back of that hill and climb up after you if its pathing and AI were smart enough. You'd gain some time to feather the thing with arrows while it ran around, but that's just the result of strategic thinking.
Dynamic spawning would also help prevent possible exploitation of particular areas. Something along the lines of: everytime a creature is killed, a new location on a grid is randomly determined, along with a randomly selected creature from a list of creatures flagged for that terrain. That way, if you were sniping at things in the mountains, you'd be able to take advantage of the terrain, but you'd have to move around from hill to hill instead of just standing in one place firing arrows at a static spawn.
I'm really not sure what the HJ engine is capable of, though, or even what the limits of current technology might be. I'm not even sure what the Code of Conduct or EULA are going to look like, so some of the exploits I'm thinking of might not be against the rules. I guess we'll see. I still really hope there's a Y-Axis, though. It'd mean more work, but I really find it to be worthwhile. I never really forgave the SWG team for their decision to skip that particular feature.
Just an FYI, the vertical axis in 3d games is the Z-axis. X and Y are 2d planes on a flat surface, and z describes depth. That's why in a 2d drawing you have the coordinates x, y, and in a 3d drawing the coordinates are x,y,z.
And I agree, having a z-axis makes the game so much better. (Although it wasn't just lack of a true z-axis that killed things in SWG. Shooting through the terrain and walls was pretty immersion breaking as well...)
Agent_X7 AKA J Star
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Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
Shows you how much I know. Oh well, I'm not afraid to be wrong. Thanks for giving me the information I needed to be right next time, though.
I see nothing particularly bad about perching. Call me over-realistic... But if I can find a location that a monster can't immediately get to, and I start shooting it with a bow, its choices should be:
Pull out a ranged weapon and start attacking
Use smart pathing to find a way to get to me
Flee/find cover
I'm personally pretty sick of games that not only don't reward players who use strategic positioning to their advantage, but in fact punish them for it.
I like the idea of random spawning forcing an archer to move from perch to perch.
PS: This topic has been answered in the latest Q&A. Yes, there will be a Z-axis, and jumping, and falling damage. It's suggested there will also possibly be limited flight spells, and controllable flying mounts. OMGZ.
Now my question will be... Can you jump off your flying mount?
I also really hope now that there's an "overworld map" and not just a bunch of linked zones... Flying about just wouldn't be fun without a huge few continents to fly through.
If you saw the E3 movie you saw them using a combo attack that involved jumping. There are also a series of screenshots here on MMORPG.COM that show this feature:
Shot 1
Shot 2
Shot 3
Will there be falling damage in HJ?
From the unofficial HJ Faq archive;)
Visit the Unofficial Hero's Journey FAQ http://www.kmtdesigns.com/hjfaq