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Question to mark.. combat system?!
Snoepie
Member UncommonPosts: 485
What kinda combat can we aspect from CU?
Traditional Tab target..?! or are you going for something new?
Games like Tera online? darkfall? Age of conan? are offering different combat systems..
I hope you offer something like Swing to hit.. ( aim based , FPS style? )
Comments
http://www.mmorpg.com/
best watch this
From watching the interview it seems combat is still up in the air, depending on feedback and what players want it can go toward more actiony player skill combat or a more traditional mmorpg hotkey style combat.
I'm hoping for Actiony player skill focused, but something good, not like GW2 or things which still rely heavily on hotkeys.
I'd love to see a melee combat system like the one used in Severance (aka Blade of Darkness), which is still the best melee combat system I'v eplaye din a game, better then Rune, Die by the sword, Jedi Knight games, etc.
Then for range/mounted combat (if it's in) mount and Blade's combat would be amazing.
This would also help in making the game "fun" and also open to mor eplayers and not as dependent on time invested vs allowing all players to enjoy rvr. To me that's 10x more oexciting then having higher lv's be a simple "I win" vs lower levels.
why does a game with traditional style combat have to be so heavily biased towards higher levels? I would like to hear your thought process on this.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
It can be worked around, but to me, an actiony style player skill focused combat, where you as the player can dodge attacks, block, learn a lot of in-depth moves, far and above helps make combat less relient on "levels" because the nature of player skill will be more imporant.
With traditional mmo combat, the balance of combat generally goes like this:
gear>levels>player skill.
Whereas with actiony combat it can go:
Player skill>level>gear (or gear then levels, whichever is more important in CU).
The main part of player skill is giving players the ability to actually aim, dodge attacks, block, and attack with how they want to.
With your normal mmo combat system that most mmo's use, you remove these things and thus bring the skill down drastically. This is what leads to (not speaking of pvp here neccessiarly) the trinity focus and balance issues around it. Since you can't dodge, you have to be able to take damage, and if you can't aim spells/range attacks, you have to rely on the computer doing it for you, and setting rang elimits, etc.
I would find it a LOT more fun for example, if I was playing an archer or mage, if I could stand on a ocastle walls while it's being sieged and actually HIT people with arrows by my own aim,a nd not have the arrows have a "magical" short-range to them. I m ean a huge line of archers firing a volley should have a longer range then most mmo's give them, and at the same time being on the other end of it as a melee fighter with a shield, it would be a LOT more fun/immersive to actually have to block the arrows rather then having to simple migate that damage because the combat system lacks the ability to allow you to physically block them or dodge.
It can be worked around, but to me, an actiony style player skill focused combat, where you as the player can dodge attacks, block, learn a lot of in-depth moves, far and above helps make combat less relient on "levels" because the nature of player skill will be more imporant.
With traditional mmo combat, the balance of combat generally goes like this:
gear>levels>player skill.
Whereas with actiony combat it can go:
ping>Player skill>level>gear (or gear then levels, whichever is more important in CU).
The main part of player skill is giving players the ability to actually aim, dodge attacks, block, and attack with how they want to.
With your normal mmo combat system that most mmo's use, you remove these things and thus bring the skill down drastically. This is what leads to (not speaking of pvp here neccessiarly) the trinity focus and balance issues around it. Since you can't dodge, you have to be able to take damage, and if you can't aim spells/range attacks, you have to rely on the computer doing it for you, and setting rang elimits, etc.
I would find it a LOT more fun for example, if I was playing an archer or mage, if I could stand on a ocastle walls while it's being sieged and actually HIT people with arrows by my own aim,a nd not have the arrows have a "magical" short-range to them. I m ean a huge line of archers firing a volley should have a longer range then most mmo's give them, and at the same time being on the other end of it as a melee fighter with a shield, it would be a LOT more fun/immersive to actually have to block the arrows rather then having to simple migate that damage because the combat system lacks the ability to allow you to physically block them or dodge.
Fixed up a part for you there, that sort of combat simply isnt feasible for a MMO that plans to have combat of 200 +players.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
Well played on words, sir :P
WWIIonlie (for an older mmo, this was in the late 90's IIRC) Planet side 1 and Planetside 2, Mount and Blade (while not an mmo, it supports up to 200 people playing on a single server online), Vindictus, Tera, Guild Wars 2.
Of course pings are important, and pings will matter regardless if it's actiony combat or traditional.
Would you rather all mmo's stick with older mmo combat because some players will have higher pings? In this day and age with broadband more and more oreadily available to many, ti'd be nice to see games take more leaps in terms of mmo's. Not to mention if they can do an amazing job with the netcode for CU who's to say it might be even better, no top of players picking servers that arie more regional.
I mean servers shoudl be open to anyone to play imo, but if you are from say, Cali, and pick a server in say Shanghai, you should expect to have naturally higher pings.
In DAoC (we're going to assume level = RR and not character level, everyone in the frontiers was 50 anyway) it went playerskill >> gear = level. It is only in the latest iteration of MMO trash that we have seen skill taken out of the picture. So no, I don't subscribe to the idea that the only thing that matters in a traditional MMO combat system is player level.
I never said it was the "only thing that mattered in traditional mmo combat" I merely said that in the majority of past mmorpgs, levels played a much larger role then player skill, and they generally did in most traditional mmorpgs that were built on a level based system.
You said youreslf, "everyone was level 50 anyway," but what about people that weren't? With this game being built around RVR you can't expect everyone to be the same "level" or to have the same time invested. So you have to find a balance some way that allows new/lower level players to actually enjoy combat and find it fun, and not allow those higher level players to faceroll them because they simply hav eplayed more.
That is why I find an "actiony" type of combat system far more suited to this, as it naturally relies less on levels and gear (but you can still balance these things apart from it) and more ont he skill of the player.
I would love to be able to see lower levels take on higher levels and actually have a chance of winning in combat, just as I would love to be able to lose in combat because of the skill involved rather then time invested.
Now don't get me wrong, you can (and should) allow players of higher levels to naturally have more things. I believe Mark mentions this in his recent interview, that he wants higher levels to stand out and such.
However I stil think it's capable to allow them to have this (IE higher levels have access to more in-depth combat maneuvers, etc) but still allowing low level players access to be able to outsmart them and win.
I just hope that they keep two of the following things that I thought made DAOC combat system unique. I felt that that it made the game require much more skill.
1. Target positional and reaction skills
2. Caster interruptions upon hit.
My point was tab targeting doesn't have too. And I gave a counter example to prove so. What most other MMORPGs is have done is irrelevent. But its clear you have not played DAoC or you would know what the people who were not level 50 did.
Second, and I think you missed my intent here, but not everyone in DAoC was the same REALM level (RR), and this was the level that actually mattered (again, because 99.98% of the people who engaged in frountiers PVP were level 50). Yet player skill still trumped realm level. So yes, lower RR could take on higher RR and win due to supperior teamwork and skill. It happened all of the time.
While I am apposed to 'actiony' combat, and would prefer a tab targeting system, that is not my point. My point is that tab targeting does allow for player skill to trump player level. To suggest otherwise is just plain wrong.
1. What counter example did you give to prove? You never mentioned anything about tab targetting in this entire thread, so I am confused here. First you talked about ping and said it wasn't feasable or capable with today's technology to have "actiony" combat, even though I proved that you can and gave examples of games that can, some of which date back to 2001 (wwIIonline) which was the same year DAOC came out.
2. I played DOAC, but this was back in 2001'ish when it came out. From what I remember about it was the RvR (which is what I assumed you were talking), but in pvp people weren't all the same realm rank as you said, I think we confused each other here (you said "assume level = RR" then went on to say everyone was the same level, I assumed you meant realm rank here). Regardless, the higher ranked players could have quite a big advantage over lower ranks depending on what skills they had. I mean things like Giant heals, immunity from attacks, AOe damage out the wazoo. Yes many of these were on higher cd then normal skills but it was still quite an advantage.
3. I never once said "tab targetting = no skill at all" I merely said it's LESS skill. There's no way you can tell me that having to physically aim your spells/bow (accounting for distance drop, leading, etc) is anywhere near the same skill as hitting tab to select a target then firing off a spell and not having to aim. If you can't see the difference then there's not much more I can say. There's plenty of skill in DAOC, grouping, tactics, what skills you build and use, but it is not the same if it had real time combat with aiming.
I was merely stating in my own opinion that I think player skill actiony focuesd combat provides a better basis in terms of balancing out how "dependent" on levels and such the combat is.
Also if you think I'm against targetting of any kind, I specifically bring up Severance's melee combat as player skill and as an example of the type of melee combat I'd loveo to see in CU. In Severance the combat is built upon a "lock-on/targetting" type system, but the key difference between it's "targetting" and your usual mmo is that it's only to help you keep focused on your enemy , when you attack, or do any kind of move, the animation plays out only in that specific direction that you started it in, so if the enemy sees this and dodges, you will miss. It's not like a "homing missle" where your attacks just follow th etarget, this is what made the combat work so well. Being able to read your enemies attacks and learning the moves, you knew what he was about to do and when to dodge/block. The lock on kept the "movement" between you and your enemy in a 360degree area instead of on a 2d plane like many combat systems (a la Jedi Knight/Rune/Die by the sword) where you have to constantly strafe/turn your mouse), this allowed for circle strafing and othero things with ease.
1) My counter example is DAoC. It's a very tactical, skill based tab targeting system. Also, I'm not sure where you are getting that I said it wasn't technically possible to action based combat due to pings, that was some other member.
2) Yes, having a higher realm rank does confer an advantage. Being a higher level always confers an advantage... if you don't like that idea then RPGs are not your game. But my point was that lower RR characters quite often beat higher RR ones. Just being higher RR didn't automatically make you win every engagement.
3) Sure I can. It facilitates a type of game play that non-tab based combat never could. How do heals work in a non-tab system? Do you have to 'aim' those as well? One of the most critical aspects of DAoCs metagame was that healers could pump out a lot more healing then any class could in damage (with very few situation specific exceptions). Also, the time to kill (TTK) was extremely fast as well in PvP, rivaling call of duty times in some cases. What PvP came down to then, and this is an oversimplification because the actual dynamics are too complicated to accurately describe without using the game, is you need to lock down their healers, cause them to run out of mana, or extende targets beyond the healers range in order to kill them. In an action based system you could not keep this dynamic... healers would simply not be able to react quickly enough or heal effectively. You would be forced to have longer TTKs as a result which would be really lame. Anecdotally I'm going to say the result would be less skill based.
Fans of DAoC's combat system are less worried about the 'skill' of what their character does in a vacuum, and more interested in the dynamic that is created when you get 8 people togeather.
As some collision detection with attacks? I could see that maybe working out.
My bad about the ping comment, I got you mixed up with skykexile.
I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree about the tab targetting. I would just find it more fun to have to ai. Healers could have spells that work in aoe where they aim the spell to go (IE place the spell on the area you want to cast it) or aim at someone for some kind of continious heal, etc.
I'd just mainly like to see combat break from the usual tab target/hotkey design of mmo's. i know some people like them and are used to them, but in all my years playing I've never heard someone mention combat in mmo's (the mechanics of tab target/hotkey spamming) as a reason they enjoy the game.
It's just my opinion though and we all have different ones, I respect yours, and hope there's a good way for both of us to enjoy CU if it gets made.
I don't think there's much anybody can say to you, in the fact that you think pressing the button is the skill in tab targeting based combat, the skill is what button to press, when to press it and who to press it on. Tab targeting take a vast knowledge of the game to be truly successful at it, knowing all the tells of the enemy, their specs and then that becomes even harder when more players are added to the mix, who to prioritize, CC, when to switch targets...i could go on for awhile...anyway, you totally missed the point, the skill set is incomparable to one another as the skill set is totally different.
And it was me that said about the pings and engines. first up Planetside 1 is clientside im pretty sure WW2 online is too...you dont want to play a mmo these days that is clientside....how they do things is irreverent.
Guild wars 2 is tab target/tgaoe and is a clunky POS where nothing renders on your screen past about 60 people.
Vindicus last time i checked is limited to 8 people or so per instance and again...plays like shit.
Tera iv not played, but given its on the unreal engine, im going to guess its unmodified hit detection and probably plays like shit, even if it is modified to be hybrid hit detection that would be worthless since you cant dodge people because they would have already you you on their screen!
Mount and blade iv never played, must be beefy private servers to get 200 players on them though!
Forgelight is hybrid, so while you dont have to compensate for aim do you know many salty american tears i would generate with this engine? I play with 200MS ping, you you will see my attack animate, you will dodge, but guess what? on my screen you haven't dodged yet, so I hit, i tell the server that and it rollsback the packets and goes, oh yes you did hit! it then rolls your client back to where i stunned you...i kill you...then you ragequit. heres a sample of the rage to come with planetsides 2 sort of coding, which is common in every modern FPS these days and people have been whining about it for YEARS... but its not like it matters in PS2 anyway...BECAUSE THEY WOULD HAVE TO RENDER FOR YOU ON YOUR CLIENT FIRST...LAWL.
I like combat where i have to aim, im far better at it than tab based combat, since i dont take the time to know every abilty in the game, but in an MMO, its just gonna be terrible, like every other one in the past.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.