you don't need a PHD to know that 1 solid hit from an axe is pretty much going to down you if not outright kill you.
This is why i am in favour of a parry/block system rather than an (ancient) smack each others health til we drop style of combat. A parry/block style of combat allows for far more interesting moves and would feel far more realistic. Does that mean as soon as 1 person is hit that it is over? no, some people (or creatures) should be able to withstand more hits based on their toughness.
That system in my mind should replace the current beat the crap out of each other system.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Total realism would make for a very unfun game for most. Even a shallow cut could turn septic and get you a few weeks later due to infection (on the other hand there WERE people back then that suffered some pretty amazing injuries and lived to take the field again).... and half the time you'd be fighting diptheria and dysentry as much as the enemy.
On the other hand, alot of MMO combat is saturday morning cartoonish enough to be comical. I think there is room for some mid-point. The poster who mentioned the movie sword-fight had the right approach I think. Essentialy rather then "hitting" 50 times and wearing down your opponents HP.... you be basicaly attacking to reduce your opponents footing, positioning, balance, and maybe stamina.....each "near hit" making it more and more difficult for your opponent to defend until you finaly got through thier defenses and the last few hits would be doing actual damage until they were down. You probably could allow for a couple of "glancing hits" or light slahes before then....at least if the opponent was wearing armor....as that CAN realisticaly provide protection against some weaker hit from weapons.
That'd probably how you'd have to deal with ranged hits as well....either turn them into misses...or have them glance off shields & or armor.
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?
I've heard they were tested on criminals. The nastiest of the lot got strung up by their wrists and were cut in half by a katana. Sometimes, two or three criminals were hung up together. The katana was judged based on how many it could cleanly cut through (a one-body blade would be able to cut through one person, a two-body blade would cut through two, etc). There have been records of four or five-body blades. That's why you wear chainmail if you're going up against a katana... ouch.
Edit: Agree with Grumpy above. That system is similar to what's in place now, but it's much more realistic.
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?
Hit points, in the D&D sense were never to represent just the health of a player. They were to incorporate so much more.
For instance, in any of movies you will see some people go down quickly and some have a prolonged fight. Of course, a good reason for that is story but I imagine that the prolonged fights in game terms would be the hit points going down until eventually they were at "0" and the fight was over.
Interesting enough, and I applaud this decision, in Dragon Age If one's hit points go down to 0 there is a possibility that it is defeat in the fight and not death. I know of two different times this happens in the game. Actually more if one wants to count npc's.
Yet, in one of the larger battles, the enemy is one shotted right and left. I realize some didnt' like this but I found it very interesting for the very reason that the dev's were trying to create a more cinematic large battle where the protagonist and his/her allies go from enemy to enemy in a fast paced action packed battle.
A sense of drama must be included in a battle and that drama must play out appropriately depending on the circumstance.
With mmo's the stories, especially between players (if there is even some of that left in these games) needs to be a bit more fair and needs to allow the player some chance of fighting or escaping. ONe of the reasons I like Aion's fights is because players of about equal level can actually fight as opposed to being one shotted all the time. Warhammer is a bit like this too.
It would be frustrating to players, well, many players, to constantly be one or two shotted, only to have them respawn and run back in to do it all over again. Some semblance of narrative needs to be maintained in order to make it more interesting than running back in every few swings.
I think even with an fps game one can get hit a few times before they are downed. So that type of system can work as well as long as their is some way for the player to get out of the way. But there should at least be a few shots allowed before the player is overwhelemed.
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Well if you look at the big daddy of 'hit points' gameplay - Dungeons and Dragons (early versions) - they clearly describe a system that allows for the pace of heroic combat rather than a direct chart of bodily health. You might assume that the hero by getting hit in the head or in a vital area should outright kill him/her but that would still kill a 'hero' in the hitpoint system it just requires you to get through all of that hero's arsenal of abilities before such an attack is actually registered. Hitpoints are actually a gauge of overall ability; nicks and cuts, luck, footwork, magical ability, heightened senses, help from the gods, etc. All the various factors that enable a hero/villain to survive in the thick of things unlike a lesser character adjacent to the story who might be killed by any offhand attack. A 'red shirt' if you will.
The actual ability of the body itself to sustain damage and endure is limited to a very small number of those hitpoints that is increased by your Constitution. Those final, last points are the final dagger thrust or the arrow to the head. In the D&D system there is also still the concept of instant death, as you describe, through the failure of a saving throw. That is another discussion entirely however.
Of course this all goes hand in hand with the concept of the combat round. It isn't a swing by the hero and a swing by the opponent where you trade blows until one falls. It is a series of feints, blocks, withdrawing and engaging within a certain time frame that allows for one or two (or more depending on level) real striking attacks that then base their efficacy on hitpoint damage.
If you look at the land mass of most mmorpgs it is also simply a representation of landmarks and general feel of the landscape where an icy mountainous country can be accessed through a nearby swamp realm which is within walking distance. Similar to chess pieces representing armies with a convenient icon.
These rules/game mechanics simply exist to create a story (hopefully an epic one) rather than a strict depiction of reality that can't be determined by modern computing. If the story can be told in a better way with twicth mechanics then so be it but it will still never be an actual representation of battle. Get the mud under your feet, the blisters from a weary sword hand and sweat in your eye in the equation and you are 1% there.
Many people over estimate the effectiveness of melee weapons. The amount of effort to deal enough harm to make someone go down and stay down is a lot more than most people would think. Realize that long ago, most deaths from battles would occur days if not weeks later due to bleeding and infection.
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.
There is a way to balance it. Make everyone have magic. That way you can customize the magic to balance all the rest of the combat. For example Ranged is super powerful, so make some magic abilities that nullify it enough to make it balanced with Melee. And the part about "most of your attacks will get parried, dodged, or blocked" should actually be based on players skill in other words the player has to physically parry, block, or dodge (yes i know requires massive bandwidth) and of course, as a result, that also means player attacks have to be physically aimed at the opponent and if a player gets hit at a certain part of his body, that part will get injured or even get cut off. Then you could have the player bleed to death, or if you want to make it more fun you can cast some magic spell to make it so he stops bleeding. Theres alot of things you can do to make combat more realistic and still have it balanced.
Basketball isn't played "first to score wins" because it wouldn't be an interesting game then.
For games to be fun they need to be a series of interesting decisions. While the decisions don't have to be perfectly balanced, they have to have some reasonable semblence of rhythm.
A game can have good rhythm with one-hit-kills, but I'm not sure I'd trust just any random designer to implement it in an enjoyable manner.
POTBS's swashbuckling combat is a nod towards the OP's desired system. The amount of hits to kill something is low, but most of the swings taken at someone are attempts to reduce the target's Guard so that near-lethal blows can be dealt when their Guard is gone.
POTBS's swashbuckling wasn't fun, but this was more a failing of trying to be too innovative than a problem with the core approach. Innovation is cheap. Good innovation is not. It takes time/energy/money to take a new idea and forge it into something worthwhile, and swashbuckling didn't ever shape up in my time playing POTBS.
Things which make one-hit-kills a more viable idea:
It takes skill to land the hit.
Combat involves lots of enemies.
Respawn/reinforce time is very short.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I liked Bushido Blade alot. I'd like to see them do a new one with updated gfx.
That said, it(or a similar machanic) would make a horrible MMO. You'd spend most of your time hoofing it from the respawn point. BB works because a rematch occurs pretty much instantly.
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.
Are you referring to Die by the Sword, sir? It was otherwise fun but I thought parrying was wayy too hard which lead to a huge swinging hacking hacking fiesta. Fun game. I would like to see more of something similar.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
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.
Are you referring to Die by the Sword, sir? It was otherwise fun but I thought parrying was wayy too hard which lead to a huge swinging hacking hacking fiesta. Fun game. I would like to see more of something similar.
Yes, indeed. I liked it because good players would hone to the point of parrying, etc. Nowadays with stuff like Nintendo has on the Wii with the advanced controller sensors, you could really make an interesting game and get some exercise to boot! I continue to be amazed by the lack of avenues that are explored with the Wii's unique features just to stay in the "kiddie" pool.
Well I am not bothered by my character taking a bunch of hits.
But if you were to make a game where one goood hit could kill you then you would need a rediculous number of ways to counter each other, better than Bushido Blade has. You would need blocking parrying, dodging in varous ways, grappling, counter grappling etc.
Ultimatly I don't see a good way to balance melee, ranged and magic. Ranged trumps melee unless you are right next to the guy and magic techinally beats everything. The only way around this would probably give everybody magic, but that is just lame.
Maybe if you restricted it to melee only then it could work. And it had a pretty forgiving death penalty, because with a game like that death would probably happen often.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I usually relate it to theories behind finding the sweet spot between "how long it takes to get there / re-outift" and "how long it takes to die". I dream of a game where a few waps to the arm will lop it off, and I even tried applying the idea to a GDD of my own - but the end results in my head is that;
Took 10 minutes to get there
Took even longer to make the gear I just lost (full-loot example)
Took 10 seconds to die
This is currently something that is ever-obvious in true FPSMMO-types like MAG and WWIIOL. You spawn, run out into the woods, get sniped, repeat. The fact that there is so much space to cover makes trying to get someplace an utter nightmare when you can be killed just as realistically. If there is no lenience on respawn locations, it's a recipe for disaster IMO.
Still trying to work with the idea though.
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I usually relate it to theories behind finding the sweet spot between "how long it takes to get there / re-outift" and "how long it takes to die". I dream of a game where a few waps to the arm will lop it off, and I even tried applying the idea to a GDD of my own - but the end results in my head is that;
Took 10 minutes to get there Took even longer to make the gear I just lost (full-loot example) Took 10 seconds to die
This is currently something that is ever-obvious in true FPSMMO-types like MAG and WWIIOL. You spawn, run out into the woods, get sniped, repeat. The fact that there is so much space to cover makes trying to get someplace an utter nightmare when you can be killed just as realistically. If there is no lenience on respawn locations, it's a recipe for disaster IMO. Still trying to work with the idea though.
Yeah, but what about the good MMOFPS?
Planetside.
Death in 5-10 sec (although the actual length of a given bit of combat could be much longer.)
Respawn in 10-50 sec (dependant on gameplay factors.)
Re-equip is instant and free.
Reinforce in 0-5 minutes (dependant on how close the battle is to your chosen respawn point; mostly ~30 sec reinforce I'd guess.)
But yeah, that's definitely a crucial thing for games to get right so excessive time isn't wasted doing boring activities.
It's a strong point of failure for sandbox and open-PVP games; perhaps one of the biggest things undermining their popularity.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
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?
Prob not. In fact, games are designed to have artificially longer fights so that you can put in scripted events & cool abilities.
If it boils down to either the enemy die or I die in 5 sec, it won't be fun.
OP, did you also inquire to your PH D friend about the use of lightning and fireballs, healing spells and sending your fucking pet into town to sell your items and what his educated opinion was on the realism of that? Did he talk about how Napoleon could have won at Waterloo if he just had more Health/Mana Potions and had his alchemist summoned more Nether Imps, just like in Torchlight?
Why do people complain so much about the "realism" in "fantasy"?
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
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?
I think the only GREAT melee combat is that of Mount & Blade, if you haven't tried it, do!
This is the kind of combat i've always wished an MMO would have, its just the greatest! specially the mounted combat and ground combat is truly challenging even without 1-shots
Realistic wounds would only be practical if you could model the fear that comes with it. Now fear would be an interesting attribute to model in an MMO. Fear can affect a person in 1 of 3 ways, fight, flight, or freeze. Training to face combat reinforces the fight instinct. Lack of training will usually result in freeze, followed by flight if the person has a chance to comprehend what's happening to them.
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you don't need a PHD to know that 1 solid hit from an axe is pretty much going to down you if not outright kill you.
This is why i am in favour of a parry/block system rather than an (ancient) smack each others health til we drop style of combat. A parry/block style of combat allows for far more interesting moves and would feel far more realistic. Does that mean as soon as 1 person is hit that it is over? no, some people (or creatures) should be able to withstand more hits based on their toughness.
That system in my mind should replace the current beat the crap out of each other system.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
yeah, I love M&B...can't wait for Warband.
Yeah, multiplayer M&B will own.
Total realism would make for a very unfun game for most. Even a shallow cut could turn septic and get you a few weeks later due to infection (on the other hand there WERE people back then that suffered some pretty amazing injuries and lived to take the field again).... and half the time you'd be fighting diptheria and dysentry as much as the enemy.
On the other hand, alot of MMO combat is saturday morning cartoonish enough to be comical. I think there is room for some mid-point. The poster who mentioned the movie sword-fight had the right approach I think. Essentialy rather then "hitting" 50 times and wearing down your opponents HP.... you be basicaly attacking to reduce your opponents footing, positioning, balance, and maybe stamina.....each "near hit" making it more and more difficult for your opponent to defend until you finaly got through thier defenses and the last few hits would be doing actual damage until they were down. You probably could allow for a couple of "glancing hits" or light slahes before then....at least if the opponent was wearing armor....as that CAN realisticaly provide protection against some weaker hit from weapons.
That'd probably how you'd have to deal with ranged hits as well....either turn them into misses...or have them glance off shields & or armor.
I've heard they were tested on criminals. The nastiest of the lot got strung up by their wrists and were cut in half by a katana. Sometimes, two or three criminals were hung up together. The katana was judged based on how many it could cleanly cut through (a one-body blade would be able to cut through one person, a two-body blade would cut through two, etc). There have been records of four or five-body blades. That's why you wear chainmail if you're going up against a katana... ouch.
Edit: Agree with Grumpy above. That system is similar to what's in place now, but it's much more realistic.
Hit points, in the D&D sense were never to represent just the health of a player. They were to incorporate so much more.
For instance, in any of movies you will see some people go down quickly and some have a prolonged fight. Of course, a good reason for that is story but I imagine that the prolonged fights in game terms would be the hit points going down until eventually they were at "0" and the fight was over.
Interesting enough, and I applaud this decision, in Dragon Age If one's hit points go down to 0 there is a possibility that it is defeat in the fight and not death. I know of two different times this happens in the game. Actually more if one wants to count npc's.
Yet, in one of the larger battles, the enemy is one shotted right and left. I realize some didnt' like this but I found it very interesting for the very reason that the dev's were trying to create a more cinematic large battle where the protagonist and his/her allies go from enemy to enemy in a fast paced action packed battle.
A sense of drama must be included in a battle and that drama must play out appropriately depending on the circumstance.
With mmo's the stories, especially between players (if there is even some of that left in these games) needs to be a bit more fair and needs to allow the player some chance of fighting or escaping. ONe of the reasons I like Aion's fights is because players of about equal level can actually fight as opposed to being one shotted all the time. Warhammer is a bit like this too.
It would be frustrating to players, well, many players, to constantly be one or two shotted, only to have them respawn and run back in to do it all over again. Some semblance of narrative needs to be maintained in order to make it more interesting than running back in every few swings.
I think even with an fps game one can get hit a few times before they are downed. So that type of system can work as well as long as their is some way for the player to get out of the way. But there should at least be a few shots allowed before the player is overwhelemed.
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Well if you look at the big daddy of 'hit points' gameplay - Dungeons and Dragons (early versions) - they clearly describe a system that allows for the pace of heroic combat rather than a direct chart of bodily health. You might assume that the hero by getting hit in the head or in a vital area should outright kill him/her but that would still kill a 'hero' in the hitpoint system it just requires you to get through all of that hero's arsenal of abilities before such an attack is actually registered. Hitpoints are actually a gauge of overall ability; nicks and cuts, luck, footwork, magical ability, heightened senses, help from the gods, etc. All the various factors that enable a hero/villain to survive in the thick of things unlike a lesser character adjacent to the story who might be killed by any offhand attack. A 'red shirt' if you will.
The actual ability of the body itself to sustain damage and endure is limited to a very small number of those hitpoints that is increased by your Constitution. Those final, last points are the final dagger thrust or the arrow to the head. In the D&D system there is also still the concept of instant death, as you describe, through the failure of a saving throw. That is another discussion entirely however.
Of course this all goes hand in hand with the concept of the combat round. It isn't a swing by the hero and a swing by the opponent where you trade blows until one falls. It is a series of feints, blocks, withdrawing and engaging within a certain time frame that allows for one or two (or more depending on level) real striking attacks that then base their efficacy on hitpoint damage.
If you look at the land mass of most mmorpgs it is also simply a representation of landmarks and general feel of the landscape where an icy mountainous country can be accessed through a nearby swamp realm which is within walking distance. Similar to chess pieces representing armies with a convenient icon.
These rules/game mechanics simply exist to create a story (hopefully an epic one) rather than a strict depiction of reality that can't be determined by modern computing. If the story can be told in a better way with twicth mechanics then so be it but it will still never be an actual representation of battle. Get the mud under your feet, the blisters from a weary sword hand and sweat in your eye in the equation and you are 1% there.
(essentially a repost but I was having fun)
Many people over estimate the effectiveness of melee weapons. The amount of effort to deal enough harm to make someone go down and stay down is a lot more than most people would think. Realize that long ago, most deaths from battles would occur days if not weeks later due to bleeding and infection.
There is a way to balance it. Make everyone have magic. That way you can customize the magic to balance all the rest of the combat. For example Ranged is super powerful, so make some magic abilities that nullify it enough to make it balanced with Melee. And the part about "most of your attacks will get parried, dodged, or blocked" should actually be based on players skill in other words the player has to physically parry, block, or dodge (yes i know requires massive bandwidth) and of course, as a result, that also means player attacks have to be physically aimed at the opponent and if a player gets hit at a certain part of his body, that part will get injured or even get cut off. Then you could have the player bleed to death, or if you want to make it more fun you can cast some magic spell to make it so he stops bleeding. Theres alot of things you can do to make combat more realistic and still have it balanced.
Exactly.
Basketball isn't played "first to score wins" because it wouldn't be an interesting game then.
For games to be fun they need to be a series of interesting decisions. While the decisions don't have to be perfectly balanced, they have to have some reasonable semblence of rhythm.
A game can have good rhythm with one-hit-kills, but I'm not sure I'd trust just any random designer to implement it in an enjoyable manner.
POTBS's swashbuckling combat is a nod towards the OP's desired system. The amount of hits to kill something is low, but most of the swings taken at someone are attempts to reduce the target's Guard so that near-lethal blows can be dealt when their Guard is gone.
POTBS's swashbuckling wasn't fun, but this was more a failing of trying to be too innovative than a problem with the core approach. Innovation is cheap. Good innovation is not. It takes time/energy/money to take a new idea and forge it into something worthwhile, and swashbuckling didn't ever shape up in my time playing POTBS.
Things which make one-hit-kills a more viable idea:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I liked Bushido Blade alot. I'd like to see them do a new one with updated gfx.
That said, it(or a similar machanic) would make a horrible MMO. You'd spend most of your time hoofing it from the respawn point. BB works because a rematch occurs pretty much instantly.
Are you referring to Die by the Sword, sir? It was otherwise fun but I thought parrying was wayy too hard which lead to a huge swinging hacking hacking fiesta. Fun game. I would like to see more of something similar.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Are you referring to Die by the Sword, sir? It was otherwise fun but I thought parrying was wayy too hard which lead to a huge swinging hacking hacking fiesta. Fun game. I would like to see more of something similar.
Yes, indeed. I liked it because good players would hone to the point of parrying, etc. Nowadays with stuff like Nintendo has on the Wii with the advanced controller sensors, you could really make an interesting game and get some exercise to boot! I continue to be amazed by the lack of avenues that are explored with the Wii's unique features just to stay in the "kiddie" pool.
Well I am not bothered by my character taking a bunch of hits.
But if you were to make a game where one goood hit could kill you then you would need a rediculous number of ways to counter each other, better than Bushido Blade has. You would need blocking parrying, dodging in varous ways, grappling, counter grappling etc.
Ultimatly I don't see a good way to balance melee, ranged and magic. Ranged trumps melee unless you are right next to the guy and magic techinally beats everything. The only way around this would probably give everybody magic, but that is just lame.
Maybe if you restricted it to melee only then it could work. And it had a pretty forgiving death penalty, because with a game like that death would probably happen often.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I usually relate it to theories behind finding the sweet spot between "how long it takes to get there / re-outift" and "how long it takes to die". I dream of a game where a few waps to the arm will lop it off, and I even tried applying the idea to a GDD of my own - but the end results in my head is that;
This is currently something that is ever-obvious in true FPSMMO-types like MAG and WWIIOL. You spawn, run out into the woods, get sniped, repeat. The fact that there is so much space to cover makes trying to get someplace an utter nightmare when you can be killed just as realistically. If there is no lenience on respawn locations, it's a recipe for disaster IMO.
Still trying to work with the idea though.
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Yeah, but what about the good MMOFPS?
Planetside.
But yeah, that's definitely a crucial thing for games to get right so excessive time isn't wasted doing boring activities.
It's a strong point of failure for sandbox and open-PVP games; perhaps one of the biggest things undermining their popularity.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Prob not. In fact, games are designed to have artificially longer fights so that you can put in scripted events & cool abilities.
If it boils down to either the enemy die or I die in 5 sec, it won't be fun.
OP, did you also inquire to your PH D friend about the use of lightning and fireballs, healing spells and sending your fucking pet into town to sell your items and what his educated opinion was on the realism of that? Did he talk about how Napoleon could have won at Waterloo if he just had more Health/Mana Potions and had his alchemist summoned more Nether Imps, just like in Torchlight?
Why do people complain so much about the "realism" in "fantasy"?
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
I think the only GREAT melee combat is that of Mount & Blade, if you haven't tried it, do!
This is the kind of combat i've always wished an MMO would have, its just the greatest! specially the mounted combat and ground combat is truly challenging even without 1-shots
Realistic wounds would only be practical if you could model the fear that comes with it. Now fear would be an interesting attribute to model in an MMO. Fear can affect a person in 1 of 3 ways, fight, flight, or freeze. Training to face combat reinforces the fight instinct. Lack of training will usually result in freeze, followed by flight if the person has a chance to comprehend what's happening to them.