Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
GamerGod Article about semi twitch combat - What about attack rolls ?
Rattrap
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,599
Article from Gamergod.com
For this, my first, article for GamerGod, I thought I would discuss something that makes Dungeons and Dragons® Online: Stormreach (DDO) standout from the MMORPG crowd. Today, I am going to be discussing the Combat system. The first we will look at is the real-time aspect of the combat system.
During combat, you can decide to attack, block, tumble out of harms way, and jump, as well as a number of other things. So how do the moves work in the real-time system? Attack's require the weapons/ammunition to 'connect' with the monster (this is determined by the use of invisible physics objects) and then the appropriate attack (and if succesful Damage) rolls. You will have to decide wether you should attack, block, or do whatever depending on what the monster is doing.
What about enemies that I know are just over that wall but can't target with spells or ranged weapons? There a number of reasons why you might be unable to target a creature, mainly they are hidden/protected by something or just too far away for you to properly target. Even with these impediments, you can fire spells/ ranged weapons off without a target. If you can aim successfully lobbing the projectile/thrown weapon/spell at the right angle, then you can still succesfully damage the monster. Here are some visual representations of this. These are not my works and are copyrighted to their respective owners.
The real-time aspect of DDO has led to a term called semi-twitch. But what does that mean and how does it relate to DDO? Let's look at twitch combat and non-twitch combat and see if we can't find a solution. Twitch combat deals with how good the player is at performing his/her combat role. The character does not have any influence on the accuracy of the attack or the damage done; it is all the reactions, timing, and aim of the player. What about non-twitch? Basically it is exactly the opposite. It is the character and the character only that determines accuracy, and the damage dealt, and usually involves an Auto-attack where the player just sits and watches the nice animations on the screen while the combat is resolved. That being said, you can still choose to disengage from combat and RUN!!! So what does that make semi-twitch? DDO melds both player skills and the characters abilities to determine combat, part of this determines when to attack, block, tumble away, etc, aims your character, and makes sure you 'connect.' It is also your characters stats and other combat modifiers that determines whether you have a better chance of hitting the monster, or if it has a less chance of hitting you, and the damage done when the character hits. Combine this with logic and other puzzles, hidden things that can only be found by a character with a decent search skill check, and many other skills and abilities of the players and characters alike.
The Real-time combat also brings up another important issue, what about latency and lag? First let's define these terms.
Latency - The time it takes for a message to go from the client to the server and vice-versa.
Lag - Due to an inordinately large amount of characters/creatures in the same area, a high latency, or having the graphics detail set too high, the client system slows down and looks stuttery. This causes problems because things are not where they appear to be, which makes it hard to fight and can cause monsters to kill you without looking like they could.
Without a totally new approach to how latency is handled for a real-time system, high latency will mean huge problems. Have you tried playing many online FPS games that nearly consistantly lagged? It usual means that you can't do anything. However, Turbine have overcome this with a unique system. Instead of the traditional system where the client sends a message to the server, the server resolves this and then updates everyone in the area, however that area is determined, for DDO. However, the server sends information about what the monsters and other AI elements are going to do to the clients half a second before it is going to be done. This allows for players to have a latency of upto 500ms and still allow everything to sync up nicely, removing lag for latency upto 500ms and reducing it dramatically for latency over that mark. How does this relate to the actual players' actions? Let's take a simple attack: the monster has attacked and has now left an opening for you to attack (thanks to the new latency system, timing of attacks and other skills can be really important, too), you attack, the monster flinches. But the actual attack and damage rolls will still have to be resolved by the server, and the damage will show up a tad bit after, but you certainly know that your attack has connected with the flinch and any resulting damage will occur. For more information on this, please visit this thread on the DDO forums, written by Jason Booth, currently an ex-developer but was still heavily involved in the project at this point of time.
As we can see, there is a lot that makes DDO standout in the way of combat: it's real-time, low latency, and strategic combat model is a different approach and something should keep many people on their feet in DDO's dungeons.
A lenghty article analysing DDO combat system
My question is if players skill is needed to succesfully connect attack with enemy "box" what is with attack roll ?!
If both "skill to hit" is needed and than standard 3.5e D&D attack roll is calculated then you have 2 miss chances in one hit statistically greatly enlarging your miss chance. (withouth reason because attack roll is made to simulate "skill to hit")
This real problem can be avoided by two things only:
1. Either making twitch combat totaly plain and easy. Making skill to hit "box" just FORMALITY. And real miss chance is calculated by D&D attack roll.
2. By eliminating D&D attack roll completely and leaving just damage roll. But then where is D&D ?!
How will my character sheet look ? Will it have attack roll modifiers that are fake and unimplemented ?
This just proves my suspicion DDO is action MMO wrapped in D&D candy wrapping. True D&D fans should stay away from this one....
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Comments
Lol, you post this article yet it seems like you didnt bother to read it
The article discusses semi-twitch combat. Both your skill and your character's skill are taken into account. Player's skill determines not only whether you hit enemy's box or not, but also if you dodge the enemy's attack. This is something we dont see in WoW and like games.
Hitting a specific monster in a group of monsters in real time may be a challenge, hitting a single monster is simple. The D&D attack roll is there to determine if you actually penetrated the opponent's armor. Sure, you can hit someone in full platemail with a sword, but you are not very likely to deal damage unless you hit a soft spot.
Pretty much players skill affects attack, defense and surviving traps - even if your character "saved" from that nasty ice trap, but you continue standing in the way, you will be taking damage until you actually move out of trap's way.
for some reason I have a suspicion that you havent played this game yet....
LOL Surelly i still didnt play DDO - I mean if i did , I would have greater understanding of its mechanic. But i wouldnt be posting because of NDA.
Anyway as you so inteligently noticed :
1. Player's skill determines whether you hit enemy's box or not
2. The D&D attack roll is there to determine if you actually penetrated the opponent's armor.
When in fact (if you understand D&D game mechanic) attack roll determines 1. and 2. !!!
So by DDO standards DC to hit AC should be halved because it means only half.
Let say i am fighting gnoll with AC of 19. My fighter has +3 on his attack roll.
I roll 1d20 getting 12+3 = 15. I miss the attack
This was in D&D both actuall connecting of a weapon and opponent and effect of his armor.
However in DDO you can have the following.
1. Miss the opponent but roll succesfull attack roll ?!
2. Hit the opponent but miss the attack roll ?
3. Double miss !! Miss the opponent and attack roll !
4. Miss the opponent but roll 20 on attack roll meaning you get automatic hit and criticall !
5. Hit the opponent but roll 1 on attack roll meaning automatic miss and fumble ?!
It is clear that come changes to how d20 attack roll actually works had to be made.
You see what i am saying here. DDO might have fun combat sistem ... Woow! how jolly Nice!
But thats not D&D
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
1. Miss the opponent but roll succesfull attack roll ?!
2. Hit the opponent but miss the attack roll ?
3. Double miss !! Miss the opponent and attack roll !
4. Miss the opponent but roll 20 on attack roll meaning you get automatic hit and criticall !
5. Hit the opponent but roll 1 on attack roll meaning automatic miss and fumble ?!
It is clear that come changes to how d20 attack roll actually works had to be made.
You see what i am saying here. DDO might have fun combat sistem ... Woow! how jolly Nice!
But thats not D&D
If you fail to connect with the opponent, there is NO attack roll whatsoever.
Once you hit the opponent's box, THEN you see the little d20 in the corner rolling and you determine whether you hit opponent's AC or not.
This is how it works: Joe the player aims at the lowly kobold and swings. His attack connects with the kobold, THEN the game determined whether you penetrated opponent's armor or not. Notice that the kobold may jump back and avoid the attack entirely.
As I said. It is a double miss chance.
You can miss or
you can hit but miss.
Originally one check to see if you miss, now there are two.
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Don't expect anything even remotely similar to a bot match in an FPS. The mobs here still just get to the proper range and basically auto attack until one of you is dead. It's not twitch, or semi-twitch. It's standard MMO combat sped up way too fast, which ends up blurring the line between fast decision making and hitting the right buttons and just randomly spamming your abilities until combat ends.
Imagine WoW or EQII combat, but with the cooldowns on abilities cut by 50-75% and a standard attack speed per swing of half a second.
Even if the mobs gave some kind of cue as to what player action may be most beneficial, which as far as I can tell they very rarely do, the combat is really too fast for your actions to be timed in a way that would really matter. I guess after playing for a while, you may learn which combo of button presses seems to work best for what type of opponent, but it's not in any way FPS twitch in even the slightest degree.
I haven't played the new "improved" SWG, but the DDO combat seems to be similar to what they are attempting there, but you don't even have to click on parts of the moster to make an attack.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Sounds similar to Game Spot preview.
They dropped line about how combat tends to get quite frantic.
(Which when read at all praise sites like Game Spot , is a bad sign.)
I even read from some NDA leaks that Turbine realising this tried to slow down combat somehow resulting in even bigger messup ..
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Rattrap,
I more or less agree with you. On this precise case Turbines didn't think much on it and want to please everyone. But they will only aggravated everyone. "skills" peoples will be aggravated to miss because of the miss roll. D&D fans will be aggravated to have to use RL skill no matter if they are good or bad at it.
Same goes with raiding, they call it another name and give very little information. However in the case of raiding they can't take such a solution, they will have to either shaft everyone who is not raiding or make raiding unworthy, either way they will angry a lot of peoples. IMO they should just remove raiding and put it in an astral world with completely differents stats and system, so peoples who want to raid can, folks who doesn't want to raid wont, and (*&$$%* garbages players who want to abuse bonus they earns in another game won't be able to.
Raiding deserve 0 group bonus, a raider deserve to be weak and lame in groups unless he goes out and earn his group bonus by grouping.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Way to base your opinion of the game ai on Beta code genius.
You all played NWN right, you remember how your character would swing a number of times for every attack roll right, and how in the PHB they kinda point out how in combat your character is said to make a number of swings with their weapon during a particular round, you know, feints and such, even though you only actually get one attack (at low level anyways). Yeah this is pretty much the same thing.