Aquilus's page

Yes, it does make sense for all the skills derived from D20 skills (as in, the ones you spend skill points to get) wouldn't be tied to any classes.

Aren't the choices what make combat compelling? Rather than the mechanics of how you select your target, or how you activate your abilities?

This is indeed one of the points I try to make in the OP. Guild Wars 2 does indeed have tab targeting and a hotbar of abilities. But as you say, the method for activating abilities is irrelevant. It doesn't make a difference if you press "2" or the X button on a gamepad to activate an ability, the result is the same. I've explained in the OP the specific elements that make GW2 combat compelling, even though it controls like any other MMO.

The point is that hotkey bars and tab targeting aren't necessarily a bad thing, the core quality of the combat lies in how abilities work, not how the player activates them.

So, as per this post we can be certain that technical constraits and market potential makes "twitch"-based combat with manual aiming undesirable to Goblinworks. However, this does not mean that the combat needs to be as detached as what has been the standard since Everquest. The popularity of games like Guild Wars 2 and TERA show that this isn't just the desires of a small niche, but rather the direction the genre is taking.

Traditionally, MMO combat is very distant from the player. It works more like giving orders to a person than being in control of its actions, and the success of said actions are mostly based on the characters inherent statistics coupled with some randomness. The opposite of this is would be FPS games, where the player is fully in control, and what determines success is the players reactions and a steady mouse-arm, as well as skill-based movement such as the concept of "Strafe Jumping" in Quake.

So, how can combat be engaging without the concept of twitch? The answer is fairly obvious, by transferring the chance-based elements to the player. This provides a consistent behaviour that allows for both more tactical play while also providing a more engaging experience. This especially goes for the defensive aspects of combat, which is highly automated in traditional MMOs. Instead of having a 23% chance to dodge, your Rogue has the ability to Tumble out of the way. The same can be applied to blocking, parrying, and so forth. Note that this doesn't have to deviate from the "hotkey bar and tab-targetting" control scheme, it is merely about moving the defensive capabilities from the realm of chance to a consistent result based on player input. These defensive measures would of course need to be limited by a resource such as Stamina, and suffer from diminishing returns to encourage tactical and well-timed use. Guild Wars 2 is a good example of this kind of gameplay, and while the input is essentially identical to your traditional MMO, the feel of combat is completely different, just from these minor changes.

For the offensive side of combat, things aren't as bad. Players are mostly fully in control of when to execute their attacks, with even World of Warcraft moving away from the "auto-attack" mechanic that has been a staple of the genre for ages. As previously mentioned, the problematic aspect of offensive combat is the lack of player impact on the outcome of attacks. The player selects a target, presses an attack button, which results in damage being done. If no target is selected, or the target is out of range, nothing happens. Allowing attacks to be fired whether or not they are capable of hitting the target may sound insignificant, but it makes a large difference to the feel of the combat. For melee attacks, this could also include the addition of tactical depth, by adding the concept of reach (which is also a core aspect of D&D tactics), making positioning important, both because of long edged weapons being able to hit multiple foes with a single sweep, and by making use of reach to hit your opponent while he is unable to retaliate. Age of Conan is an example of this being implemented successfully. Ranged combat is more difficult to improve without implementing manual aiming, which is unfeasible as per the developer post, but solutions could include making attacks miss based on the vector of the target in relation to the shot. From my limited playtime, Guild Wars 2 seems to be based around something like this.

So, I'm curious about what you, the rest of the potential playerbase think about these ideas, especially the ones who have tried games that explore similar concepts, such as Age of Conan, TERA, Guild Wars 2, and Dungeons & Dragons Online. Do people want to see something like this in Pathfinder Online, or would you rather have the more traditional MMO combat we see in titles such as Everquest or World of Warcraft? Additionally, a system like this could be made fast-paced and exhilarating or slow-paced and tactical, simply by tweaking the pace. Which option do you think is preferable for a game like this? Personally, I'm partial to the latter, but I definitely see the appeal of both. I would also love some brainstorming about possible mechanics to emphasize the aspects I've mentioned, as this is just what came off the top of my head, so it's probably flawed in some way I haven't thought of, or missing factors which could improve it further.

Most impressive. Congratulations!

This sounds pretty amazing, the best of both worlds of theme park and sand box content. Sounds like exploration is going to be a lot of fun.

Really looking forward to seeing all of this in action, although we're obviously far off that point. My main worry for this game isn't related to the design blogs, as all of the plans sound great, but rather the game itself failing to deliver what is being discussed, or even not making it to release at all.

Hoping we get a developer blog on middleware and technology in not too long. (And on that note, that HeroEngine isn't being used)

Yes, restricting the amount of abilities you can use at a time seems to be a new wave in MMOs, with a lot of new and upcoming games opting for that route, including DC Universe Online, Guild Wars 2, and The Secret World. There's always a lot of complaining from the people who are used to 30-skill hotbars, but I quite like having to put some thought into which skills to put in my loadout.

I also enjoy more active combat, without targetting. I've found the aforementioned DC Universe Online quite entertaining, despite it the system being rather simplistic.

Well, if you consider what could be converted from the tabletop game, there's a lot of appropriate combat maneuvers. Grappling - Holding them still, Bull Rushing - Moving them away, and Tripping - Knocking them over, are the ones that pop off the top of my head. Perhaps AoO's could be implemented somehow, to stress the importance of positioning and tactics.

Control Weather sounds like a potentially risky spell, but it's certainly one way to leave your mark on the world for a few days :p

One of my favourite things about pen & paper is the amount of flavour and non-combat utility spells for casters. I mean, sure, fireballs are pretty neat for setting things on fire, but pretty much every ability in MMOs are designed for the sole purpose of combat, with a smattering of fast travel abilities here and there. Considering its background, I'm hoping Pathfinder Online will provide some greater variety in that regard. Prestidigitation is one of my favourite spells, and although its effects are rather mundane I feel it adds a lot of flavour to Arcane casters, and would be a great utility for RPing in an MMO.

The recent developer blog on player-created buildings also made me think of a certain spell. While Wizards certainly like to build towers, conjuring up a Magnificent Mansion for the night certainly sounds like it would be amazing. There's obviously several things to take into consideration here. Magic trivializes a lot of things, and I'm unsure how people feel about that. An example of this would be Mending, which would remove the need for repairs (a common money-sink in most MMOs).

I'll try to not make this too long, as I've noticed a tendency for posts on this forum to go on for quite a while, but the basic premise is this: How do you feel about these flavour spells? Do you agree? Is it a waste of developer time that could rather be spent on combat, crafting, (insert your favourite aspect here)?

Squiddybiscuit wrote:

DDO has collision mechanics only between PCs and NPCs, probably to avoid griefing. But it shows anyway that it shouldn't be too hard to implement in PFO...

Collision between PCs and NPCs may well be easier because the game client running on the player's computer can know exactly what the NPC is going to do. When I play with my wife, and one of us is lagging, it's easy to see our characters running off down the hall even though we're not actually doing that. There might be some significant challenges in implementing collision between two players.

Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and DC Universe Online all have collision between players, and I'm sure there are more games with this feature. As you say, the lack of collision between players in DDO is likely to prevent griefing. Age of Conan solves this by letting players enter a "crouch" mode in which they can bypass players in non-combat scenarios (to prevent griefers from blocking city gates and such).