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I'm pretty sure that swords and axes are more deadly in real life...
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
So I've been talking with a friend of mine that has a PH D in military history. This person specializes in medieval history and has an excellent grasp of the casualty rates of even small military actions in the periods between 500 and 1400 A.D. Interestingly, this is the level of technology that most MMORPGs are set in.
We normally don't talk about his trade, but it came up while I was playing Torchlight. It was the sheer number of slashes that my character (berserker, lvl 30) was dishing out that caused a comment about how the guy mush be wielding a wiffle bat for all the damage that it was doing. Even with a hickory axe handle, most of the enemies would have fallen much sooner. The conversation ended with me digging up my old copy of Bushido Blade and spending an afternoon in fighting game land.
What I'm wondering is whether or not an MMO could be made with more realistic combat and still hold an audience. Considering that the average knife fight in real life only lasts about three seconds, I find it hard to imagine that a similar level of lethality in MMOs would have mass market appeal. On the other hand, it's really ridiculous to see someone in KOTOR get hit with a light saber and just shrug it off like they've just been swatted with a newspaper.
So what do you folks think?
Comments
one shotting everything is boring
Sure you can make any MMO system as lethal as you want.
You end up with the following:
(1) Bows are about as lethal as it gets. There is NO balance between ranged and melee combat. Ranged wins, hands down. If there is traditional fantasy based magic, then it wins, hands down.
(2) You don't hit a lot. Most of your attacks will get parried, dodged, or blocked with a shield. So most of your clicky attacks aren't the useful since they'll have to be about feints and positioning.
(3) Get rid of the stun mechanic. Get rid of the Aggro mechanic. Neither would work in a realistic combat simulation.
(4) Permadeath is the only way to run such a game. Otherwise you defeat the whole point of the system.
I don't think that makes for a good game, personally. An on line fighter, sure, but a game, probably not.
Orcs and elves don't walk around in real life either...
Yeah stabbing a zombie 30 times isnt realistic, but neither is the zombie in the first place so...
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
Not a bad idea for those making mmo's to consider. Maybe the folks at Darkfall with the 1st person perspectve could do it.
Long time ago I took some courses in medival warfare and learned alot. I learned alot such as a Sword hitting a shield isnt as bad as a say a mace or a morningstar impacting the shield (My arm hurt that day) and how to properly parry with a shield and how to use a shield based off its shape! Digging up some great and educational memories and sometimes painful ones too!
(DDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Raving Rabbid scolds everyone for not trying the plunger as a more fitting and honorable weapon!)
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
Nah that doesn't work.
Many people play MMORPGs because they are there superheroes, not mere feeble humans. They don't want to die because a lousy goblin wacks them on the head with a stick, or some peasant-boy shoots them in the eye with a sling.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Yes and no.
Yes, it would be possible to make a "more realistic" combat model for MMOs than the current games have, but no it wouldn't be able to be nearly as lethal as real combat was / is / would be.
Basically the best approximation that balances the ability to react and enjoy the process of combat would be something like a movie sword fight. There would have to be lots of attack-parry-counterattack-parry actions that preserve the length of combat while dispensing with the D&D trope of "hitpoints".
Real combat isn't fun precisely because it's usually so fast. The holy grail for all game combat systems is that win or lose it was fun and engaging for both sides. Generally the closer it gets to "realistic" the less fun combat becomes. As an example, take modern flight sims - I can spend an hour prepping to fly, navigating to the target, setting up a bomb run, and an unlucky burst of flak ends it all in about 3 seconds flat. It's part of the game - but flight sims aren't very widely appealing partially because of that dynamic.
For a system with broad appeal you'd need to have enough time within combat to be able to plan, react, make mistakes and try to recover, and so on.
I don't know, some of the best times I had was playing Fatboy Instagib in Unreal Tournament. Likewise, I think it would be awesome to run UT3 Battle Team Arena with instagib turned on. The matches would be short... but intense.
I've been wanting a hyper-realistic game for a long time now. It doesn't need to have "Mass market appeal"....it just needs enough subs to make a profit.
The focus of the game would have to NOT be combat, though. And really, isn't it time we had a game that got out of the "kill everything you see" mentality, anyway? Make combat MEAN something.
I think it could be done, but it would have to be totally differant from any MMORPG we've seen so far.
NEWSFLASH, its a game, repeat again its A GAME. IT is NOT, i repeat NOT real life. If you want to go test the results of what does more dmg i suggets u go take a knife or an axe and do it urself. Bloody monlkeys trying to turn everything lifelike, when all wei want are bloody fun games. If u want a simulator i suggets u go play miscrsoft lifgt simulator there u cna have hours and hours of boring as hell stuff to do.
I'd like to see some sort of RTS mmo where there is a real political system. Perhaps something like Total War but as an mmo. Not sure how feasible that would be but I'd like to see someone try something like that.
As for the OP, I don't think you could really make an mmo as a real combat simulator. These are games and most people would not want to play a game where a stomach wound is a death sentence two days later.
I think you make a lot of sense.
STO has humans and klingons who take nearly a dozen blasts to drop, and it sure looks (from demo videos) that lightsabres and blasters in SWTOR won't be any more lethal than that.
It is a symptom of just re-skinning a standard MMORPG combat system. It kills immersion in the IP for me, personally.
There was a discussion a while back about this issue and a pretty clever poster suggested a kind of 'luck' system for STO which would turn hits into near-misses as long as the character's luck held out. Once that was up, then a hit would put him down. That would have been a much better way of handling individual combat in both games.
Sometimes, forum posters have much better ideas than people who are paid to come up with this stuff.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Not nearly as boring as 12-shotting everything. It's also not boring when your enemy can one-shot you.
I believe paintball is a fairly popular sport.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
What enchants did they have on their armour in the 1st century. They were scrubs.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Truthiness abounds.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
edit: never mind....I'm gonna be good.....I'm not going to scream at the x-box boi.....gonna take a deep breath, and go play some Darkfall....
Yeah... I'd probably just use a heavy crossbow and instakill your feeble ass. See how fun it is to play then. Realism is fun to a point. After that it just becomes a bad game.
But I agree with you... Beating someone hundreds of times is kinda silly. Simpler mechanics.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Age of Chivalry is a pretty popular half life 2 mod that utilizes this increased fatality setting. A player can only sustain 1-2 swings from a melee and 1-3 shots from archery depending on the classes. Instead of just being able to absorb hits to stay alive, you have to block, parry and strafe. I could see this system being successful in an MMO if it was set up right.
Just pray you don't miss. And pray your target doesn't have a friend. You know how long it takes to load one of those things? You get ONE shot, and then you get a cold steel prostate exam while you try to load another bolt.
Realistic damage would necessitate a method of demonstrating realistic skill; not just statistical models like virtually all MMO's are today.
Years ago, I played a single player fantasy game (swords and orcs, etc.). I can't, for the life of me, remember the name, but you swung your sword with the movements and position of the mouse. The mouse buttons dictated how your hand held or extended the sword. If you left your mouse in the wrong spot, you ran around with your sword stuck up in the air, etc. With this system, you could one-shot stuff, but it relied upon carefully timing the swing and lining it up just right. Otherwise, you end up banging the sword off his shield and back at yourself, or just overextending with a complete miss. Sometimes with just a nick or a bleeding wound that could eventually kill them. If you timed it right, you could lop their head off (and vice versa.) or a sword arm, leg, etc. It had LAN play only; really before 'teh interwebz'. I really enjoyed playing against friends in that one. Today, the internet is high enough speed to be able to send/receive data for such a game with a certain number of players. Sadly, macros and whatnot would easily ruin it.
Mount and Blade has awesome gameplay.. watch.
www.youtube.com/watch
yeah, I love M&B...can't wait for Warband.
I believe you're talking about Die by the Sword. It was definitely fun (and hard) as hell.
I believe you're talking about Die by the Sword. It was definitely fun (and hard) as hell.
LOL, that's it! :-)
I think it's like talking about permanent death. Perhaps a real combat system with a high critical chance will make things more interesting and specialists like your friend should enlighten designers in order to implement more complex situations like wearing armor, riding a mount etc.
I just imagine a player having just a couple of hit points maybe just one or 2 more more than a new one. It will be very interesting to see if all the gankers and grieferes in pvp will be as daring as they are now. I think it will work especially in pvp mmos.
P.S: BTW is it true that katanas were tested on humans?