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Motivation & Goals
Overall, the majority feedback we've collected from the boards and elsewhere suggests that combat is currently perceived to resolve too quickly, thus leaving little room for strategic choices or meaningful attacks beyond the standard left-click shot. With the GCW becoming a major factor in our game within the near future, we want to make sure that the core combat system is enjoyable for most players as combat will be a major aspect of the war.
The goal of these rule changes is to
- Bring strategy back into combat
- Decrease default attack speeds to possibly allow for more natural looking animations while at the same time keeping the overall "laser shooting", action-paced feel that combat currently has.
- While not immediately part of this change, these changes lend themselves to bringing back the combat log so players can once more track combat in greater detail.
- These changes also directly play into the upcoming Expertise system where players will be able to permanently modify some of their combat "variables" by spending points in some of the Expertise trees. A player might increase her chance to land "critical hits" for instance. Read on to get some details about crits and glancing blows at the end of this comlink.
Base Combat Changes
- Weapon damage will be adjusted upward (this is what we've been calling the "weapon retrofit", i.e. we're retrofitting the weapons for more damage) to account for the damage we are removing from combat caused by being a particular level. Currently a player does most of her damage based on what level she is. This will no longer be the case.
- Damage against an unarmored opponent (all non-elite, non-boss npc enemies) is expected to be within a couple of points of the listed weapon damage, barring any damage modifiers the player might have gained from various sources (loot perhaps, or an Expertise for instance).
- All actions have 2 timers. An execution timer (during which no other action in the game may be executed, because you are "busy doing something else") and a cooldown timer (during which you cannot perforam that particular action again, but you can perform other actions). This is currently the case in the live game and will continue to remain true.
- Currently, primary left click attacks (also know as default attack) have an execute time of 0.25 seconds. After this change, default attacks will have an execute timer of zero (0) but will gain a cooldown timer that is determined by the weapon speed (i.e a weapon that has a 0.4 speed will only be able to shoot the default attack every 0.4 seconds). This change shifts the primary combat strategy from "left click until it dies" to making more meaningful special attack decisions, given various variables in any given combat, since default attacks will not always be available.
- As mentioned, default attacks have no execute time. In practice, this means that specials can be executed immediately following or during primary attacks. This will fix the issue of attacks firing visually on the server and in the UI (cooldown starts counting down) but not on the server (you don't actually get healed, for instance).
- Considering the control scheme in SWG it will be difficult to execute a variety of specials AND run around at the same time ( movement being the primary left hand responsibility while the right hand is busy aiming with the mouse). This means that moving in combat actually becomes an "action" (conceptually speaking) you take to effect the outcome of a fight (much like executing specials). In other words, a player now chooses whether to stand and fight (increased DPS through more criticals and use of specials) or run around to be harder to hit because of the targeting scheme as well as the increased chance of glancing blows (see below). Running around becomes a defensive action that one does instead of offensively using specials.
- AI Creatures will once again change weapons if they have a secondary weapon to switch to.
Critical Hits
- Attacks now have a chance to be "Critical Hits" that do additional damage in addition to a special effect if you are using a weapon with a heat, cold, electricity or acid elemental damage property.
- Critical Hits are indicated to the attacker by differently colored fly text and words such as (Critical Hit) displayed next to the damage caused.
- The chance to critical hit is influenced by the Agility and Luck stats at X % for every Y points of each. In addition, there is a bonus to score a critical if you are not moving. Additional modifiers due to posture may be added added if posture use in combat makes a comeback. We'd like to hear your feedback on this, especially.
- Critical chance may also be modified by buffs and eventually by the Expertise System.
- If the player is using a weapon with one of the aforementioned elemental effects the critical will have an additional effect. Heat criticals set the target on fire for a short period of time, cold criticals snare the target, electrical criticals cause the target to have an increased chance to do a glancing blow attack and acid criticals cause the target to become vulnerable to additional criticals for a short period of time.
- Cold, electrical and acid critical secondary effects last for about three seconds. After this time the target is immune to those secondary critical effects for about six seconds. Any criticals scored during that time with a cold, electrical or acid weapon are reduced "normal" criticals that just do increased damage.
Glancing Blows
- Attacks now have the chance to be "Glancing Blows" which do trivial damage to the target, currently 1/25th of their normal damage.
- Glancing Blows are indicated to the attacker by grey fly text with the words (Trivial Hit) displayed next to the damage.
- Glancing Blows are indicated to the defender by green fly text with the words "Glancing Blow".
- The chance of scoring a glancing blow is modified by the Agility stat at a rate of about X % for every Y points and the Luck stat at the rate of P% for every N points.
- A moving attacker using a ranged weapon has an increased chance to be land a glancing blow attack. Additional modifiers due to posture may be added.
- Glancing Blow chance may also be modified by buffs and eventually by the Expertise System.
Helios Titan
Lead Designer, SWG |
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Comments
Like acmtalk said.
Only, we do have to give it to them: they've taken a move in the right direction. Interesting point about "run OR shoot specials" though. I guess it makes sense, but I still think they need to wholesale go back to the old UI and make it (the UI) as much like City of Heroes as possible, especially where combat is concerned. That "wanna-be first person shooter" system they have implemented is really aggravting to me.
"Please keep in mind that although we have this
prototype working internally it's entirely possible that nothing will
be like it is described here or we may end up not adding this to the
game at all. You guys wanted to get more of the behind-the-scenes
scoop on development and here it is. "
(My emphasis in bold)
Original Article in full
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So, you all sat in camps and that was fun?
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Believe it or not the population is starting to pick back up. I jumped back in about three weeks ago to see what they're up to these days an within two weeks at least a dozen of my old friends reactivated their accounts, not to mention some of the old places that used to be populated, but sadly were barren as of late, were once again BOOMING with people. As far as I understand it they're putthing things back into the game little by little in order to give old players what they wanted in the first place. Their old game.
Besides I've played it and it's not that bad. A lot of people are just being a bunch of winey fanboys. My opinion anyways. ::shrug::
It is really sad. SWG had so much going for it...now it is just another piece of pooh.
Maybe they can change it around. I do not think so, since they just go with their hopes to make newbs happy.
All I ask, is that if one of you Pre-NNGE Vets try this out, please write a review on the SWG forums to let us know how the changes stack up. A thorough test would be ideal and fair before reviewing it.
Thanks,
Past SWG player
Man i'm so glad i cancelled like 6 months ago !
Who wants to play a game that keeps changing its rules over and over again ???
As soon as you get used to a way of playing, boom, they change it !
And i heard the very bad news that SOE would be in charge of Vanguard finally, instead of Microsoft, too bad, i would have given this game a try for sure, but now, there's no way on earth i'm gonna give a single more euro to these stupid dudes !
Indeed this is fairly close to what SWG use to be... but NGE
isn't all that bad it has its good points, which I myself enjoy.
As for SOE, At least they are starting to listen to people
Now if we can only get our old profession system back,again ...somewhat... by bring back things that made the old system enjoyable.
and have the crafter profession a little more exciting....
I would like to christen SWG with its new name "EverChange" If you don't like it , just wait for the next patch.
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I am from sweden and I never had any problems under Pre cu or cu time to get players to play whit.. i played on wanderhome so it was mostly US players on that server. but players where there 24 hours. now when i logon on. All server are whery light !!!!..
Soe are out on deep water the only way to get up is to give us player the right. and give us 1 or 2 PRECU server to play on.. and i know NGE fan boys will not be far behind..
Sorry about my bat english
PRE CU FTW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'd love to go back and try the game out.
I used to have three accounts, all fully developed on Sunrunner.
I was not going to pay to support even one account when I don't kn ow when SOE wil pull it's head out of its Uranus. I have no desire to start all over again.
They could roll the whole thing back and I wouldn't go through the grind again.
They killed me off and I'm dead.
Ultimatum is right, they keep changing things all the time and you loose what you worked for.
Star Wars is a terrific license, but no matter what they do with this game, it just doesnt work out. They should admit defeat, scrap the whole thing and come back with something completly different in 2-3 years, that seems to be the only way it can be saved.
Why does SOE insist that the NGE was a good thing when they are slowly putting back the features that the NGE took away in the first place?
I think its only a matter of time before SOE creates a pre CU or post CU server.
It's called a "hat trick" (with CU and NGE being the first two components). They are putting "old" things back in and calling them "new" to make new subscribers feel like Sony listens to them and cares about the game.
It's interesting that the "Combat Revamp" (that turned into the "Combat Upgrade") that was supposedly being working on back in late 2004 was ostensibly in answer to the imbalance that they had introduced into the game. Now each of these "updates" has introduced major oscillations and bugs that they must then "correct" with new "updates". The whole thing, from a game-mechanics standpoint, seems to be swinging wildly.
(And before you jump in here, Obraik, just keep in mind that it's a lot harder to tell that something is swinging wildly when you're riding on it than when you're standing on the side watching.
[ edit: spelling ]
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As ye SOE, so shall ye weep.
i'm a 2 yr vet of swg, but i quit a couple of months before the NGE hit. with this comment you might never even see it in the game. i feel really bad about the people that still PAY to play this. there is better stuff more worthy of your cash.
They should kill the game ... they lost many of is hardcore player's .... im one of them.
I start to play this game since beta phase 3. They star to kill the game since they mate the modification of the party ... the money think. i leave the game since them SWG was an unice game but they what to put the game like every mmoprg on the market and they lose it that
P.S. Sorry about my english =P
*sarcasm*
Keep up the good work SWG dev team! Maybe after 100-200 more revamps you'll be down to zero users and be even further away from making a game people wanna play!
Seriously, can these bone-heads get anything right? Whoever is leading (Koster?) this joke of a dev team, has to seriously take a look in the mirror and do a gut check. When you're revamping major game systems every publish you gotta take the hint that maybe you don't have a clue what you're doing!
Such a promising franchise Star Wars was for a MMORPG and this dev team has turned it into a laughing stock. This game has been messed up since it's record setting disaster launch and has never shown a single glimmer of hope! From bad to worse every single publish...
Rumour has it, Bioware/BlackIsle/WhoEverMadeKOTOR is making a MMORPG based on Star Wars. Fans of the genre can only dream...