If you haven't heard of this new game, it came out today.
Let me start out by saying that Chivalry isn't even similar to pfo in concept: It's a non-magical medieval fighting game that pits small teams of warriors with realistic medieval weapons against each other. Still, I feel like there are lessons to be learned from the game:
1) Clicking to attack/block: One big argument among PFO circles revolves around weather attacking should be automatic (like neverwinter nights) or manual (like Dungeons and Dragons Online). In chivalry (being an action game and not an rpg) the hacking is all player controlled and it's done well. to block you have to actually aim at the incoming attack, you can jab slash or budgeon (or something like that) and combat is skill based.
-Chivalry really got down the combat aspect. It's skill based and adrenaline fuled. The lesson here is that
a) click-to-attack can work well
b) don't even bother making attacking manual and skill based unless you can really make it work WELL. In my opinion it's all or nothing- dice based combat is fun. Manual attacking can be good too, but not unless it's of a very high quality.
2) Friendly fire: This has two meanings. For one, if attacking is manual, an arrow or a sword swipe may miss an enemy and hit an ally. Secondly, and this applies regardless, "friendly fire" can occur when a projectile (a pot of hot oil, a wizard's black tentacles spell, etc.)
-Again chivalry hit the nail on the head. Friendly fire is enforced, at least from all the servers I saw. This changes the game in a few ways:
Has anyone played a game like halo where people ran around grenading their feet to kill everyone around them? Or where people shot and grenaded indiscriminately into a pile, ran in circles and blew up everything knowing they would be safe from their own men? Chivalry really cut the crap with that. Because of friendly fire, arrows and hot oil jugs (basically grenades)hurt allies. People have to act reasonably and work together in a logical way to get things done.
This greatly effects how combat looks and feels. For starters, shooting into a melee becomes troublesome: A skilled archer can still do great damage, but hurting your own men is a threat. Furthermore, AOE grenade lobbing becomes... I guess I'll say interesting. I threw a grenade today that killed one ally and five enemies. Sometimes friendly fire is an afterthought for cruel and reckless warriors.
Because in PFO characters have alignments and reputations, friendly fire could be a defining character of a character or army: Perhaps repeat teamkillers can have their alignments shifted towards the chaotic/evil axis, or a character can hold a permanent record of friendly kills that can act as a sort of resume'. No one wants to hire a deliberate team killer.
Er, almost no one.
A good aligned nation of paladins may kick out citizens or remove soldiers who hurt their own consistently, but an evil empire might hire powerful casters who shoot magical AOE spells at the front lines without thinking twice.
TLDR:
1) PFO shouldn't try to use manual attacking over autoattacking unless they are extremely confident that they can do it very well. Auttoattacking isn't boring and is easy to design, but manual attacking needs to be perfect or we're in DD0 territory.
2) Friendly fire is essential for maintaining tactics, and it can be policed through alignment/reputation effects. Keep hurting your allies and no civilized men will work with you- recklessly committing fratricide with aoe spells is fluffy for evil players, and can sometimes be a legitimate means to an end.
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I like where you are going with this. Nicely spaced out with clean words. Some spelling errors, but nothing big enough to scream and shout at. Most importantly, though, I agree with what you say. I played DDO earlier today. I'm still not thrilled about how you can shoot willy nilly at people and not worry about hitting allies. Takes the strategy out of it.
I'll check out this Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and see if it's a game I would like playing.
Goblin Squad Member
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As much as I would love to see manually aimed attacks it has been stated that that is not how this game will work. Basically it's a performance issue. In order for manual attacks to work you need very high performance which just isn't possible in massive battles.
It's a good idea in theory but it wouldn't pan out if this game ever gets large enough to see battles of 300+ players. And I know Ryan has stated as much elsewhere.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The combat has to hit a sweet spot of agreeing with all the considerations of mmorpgs eg tech, type of player of this genre, longevity of the game systems and char progression vs player skill etc.
I think if the tech is the bottom line of what's possible, then a slower-tactical/decision-making combat is a natural fit. It also might be a better fit for the broad mmorpg type of gamer, incidentally?
What also needs to be considered, is what it CANNOT be apart from tech reasons: It can't be the same combat as has already been played 000 times in other mmorpgs to yield the same experience. It's also got to become more interesting combat the more you play ie you are more skillful in more probability situations and more options emerge. That's what divergent builds should be about, the complete opposite of god-mode: There can only be one!
I like the idea of being able to slow time down in combat to have thinking time to click on decisions that are complex and tactical. That's different from the aiming of eg Tera or FPS, or what I've seen of Chivalry, but combined with the hopefully rich world of sandbox, again masses of decisions and repercussions, it fits that design also, as well as the above considerations. Seems the right DIRECTION to go.
I know a company called Subetei had a kickstarter called "Clang" iirc, where you take a kinnect controller and use that for sword simulation battles! That's the logical progression for "aiming" combat with hand-held melee weapons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally I'm not a fan of auto attack. I find combat a much more visceral experience when I'm directing each swing of my axe or shot from my crossbow. Additionally, I often find that auto attack can make for more confusing combat, especially when you're dealing with splash damage (think of a hammer using warrior in GW2). Blocking and countering becomes less useful when the opponent you're facing is continually swinging his weapon like a windmill.
Personally I prefer a slightly more tactical approach, with movement, blocking, and timing playing a bigger role.
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Goblin Squad Member
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War of the Roses is another FPS style medieval combat game that has just been released, but I enjoy it a lot more than Chivalry. If anyone is a fan of Mount and Blade, it's that exact style of directional combat (more or less). I call it Mount and Blade meets Call of Duty. I would love to see that in an MMO someday, but I can't imagine it being included in pathfinder.
Because combat isn't necessarily the most important aspect of pathfinder (so I infer), I don't care if the combat system is a little dull. I'm anxious to hear what they've got planned.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm pretty much with Avena here, as well. I DO like both "Actiony" (e.g. Mount & Blade, FPS games) combat systems as well as slower more tactical combat systems. What I don't like is most current MMO systems which are FAST but not all that "actiony" and not very tactical.
Movement in those games seem's unrealisticaly fast...If I had to guess I'd say in most MMO's characters seem to run at around 20-30 MPH, which obviously is nowhere near what a human being would move, even over a short distance and unencumbered by armor. Also engagement ranges are absurdly short... characters seem to pop into view at around 60-70 ft and bow's have a maximum range of around 30ft. Even with wanting to crunch scale down a bit for technical reasons, that's absurdly short for an open field in broad daylight.... and of course standard combat there involved absurd manuvers like running through people or circle-straffing, etc.
If I had my choice, I'd go slower and much more tactical for PFO combat. Slow movement down to a more realistic pace of 10mph at a run, and make that sustainable over a brief period only. Open up engagement ranges... make visability out to maybe 200 ft at least and archery out to 150 ft if you have LOS.
Make a collision system for combat so that you can't run through somebody that is in combat mode and actively hostile to you. Also impliment threat zones and AoO's to cut down on the absurd circle straffing.
Finally I'd like to see a pseudo-round time system for combat. Essentialy have a 3-5 second global pulse....and whatever action a player inputs within that time is what they are doing for the NEXT Pulse. So if you set Melee attack on Pulse #1, then on Pulse #2 it shows you the results of your execution of it along with the opponents execution of his and you get 3-5 seconds to input your action for pulse #3. Moving nullifies your action for the next pulse, although you could have special limited movement actions like charge, or side-step (to flank) that included an attack as well.
So effectively what happens is that the ranged guys and casters have an opportunity to fire as hostiles approach. In an open field with nothing to block LOS that can be a significant amount of time, in dense woods or indoors turning a corner there might be zero time. Once they get engaged in melee it's a fight....They can move out of Melee through normal movement but that draws an AoO (which we should probably make stronger then a normal attack) which means even with the pseudo-round time, they can't avoid an attack simply by moving. They've got to put thier target down in the time the target is spending to move to melee range....or they've got to start running before the target gets into melee range....or they fight the target in melee....or ideally, they have a front line of melee fighters that blocks the target from getting to them.
I'd impliment Friendly Fire under this system, so that you'd have to switch to different attacks (or heaven forbid start throwing support spells on your melee folks) once targets got engaged in melee. This is doable while still allowing for AOE type spells (e.g. Fireball) because there should be sufficient time to hit targets with them as they approach as long as you are operating in open terrain with good LOS.
YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Mcduff, I generally agree with you, but I also remember suffering through games that didn't have auto-attack. I think it was EverQuest that only allowed Rangers to use auto-attack with a bow - maybe WoW Hunters? There's a challenge in getting the timing right so that you can quickly engage a target and feel like you're doing something without turning it into the tedium of chopping wood.
I would like to see a relatively low-effect auto-attack that kicks in after you haven't done any real attacks for a while so you don't have to just keep hitting your low-power attack when you're trying to recover whatever resource they use to constrain your attacks.
I'd also like that auto-attack to not be something that you have an incentive to wait for in-between real attacks. I hate that in other games where I feel like I'm missing out on extra DPS because I'm not waiting a half-second or so to let my next auto-attack fire - mostly a problem for me on LOTRO Hunters. That's why I think the auto-attack should only start after a fairly significant period of not doing anything else - say 3 seconds, with 3 seconds in between shots - I mean, you're supposed to be resting/recovering, right?
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I think you're remembering Everquest more. In WoW, most hunters would "dance" by jumping back and forth between melee and long range to increase their attack output. Shotgun cooldown while I swing my axe, axe cooldown while I fire my shotgun. Personally I didn't really care for it myself. I'd prefer to be the one deciding when I switch weapons, not the game.
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I'd impliment Friendly Fire under this system, so that you'd have to switch to different attacks (or heaven forbid start throwing support spells on your melee folks) once targets got engaged in melee. This is doable while still allowing for AOE type spells (e.g. Fireball) because there should be sufficient time to hit targets with them as they approach as long as you are operating in open terrain with good LOS.
I like the idea of implementing Friendly Fire, partly as it is a good way to reduce the effectiveness of ranged combat due to context and partly because in other mmorpgs with static factions, it falls foul of griefing. With the possibility for players to betray or maybe even capture other player (?) there's the opportunity to regulate who's a friend and who's false friend. :)
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I like the idea of implementing Friendly Fire, partly as it is a good way to reduce the effectiveness of ranged combat due to context and partly because in other mmorpgs with static factions, it falls foul of griefing. With the possibility for players to betray or maybe even capture other player (?) there's the opportunity to regulate who's a friend and who's false friend. :)
This also is one I switched views on, I originally opposed it, but now I absolutely see the benefit of it when it comes to making tactical combat matter. Nuking your own position should be an obscure strategy with a huge benefit/cost estimate, not a why not the enemy is in close strategy. Plus friendly is such a grey term when talking these games. Backstabbers, spies etc... all general views of warfare, a spy stealthy or betreyer stealthy enough to backstab his team mates, should be a difficult skill (made more difficult than RL by the fact that the dead, will certainly still talk). But not be given away immidiately via a sudden "X has changed from friendly to hostile"
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(IMO) The key to making FF workable is to ensure that there is a reasonable opportunity to use those sort of attacks without a FF situation. So which attack you use becomes situational. ALOT of that is going to depend upon the other details of the combat situation.
If casters NEVER get to use thier Fireballs or Archers use thier bows without freindly fire because the 2 sides are always joined in melee 2 seconds after they encounter each other (as is the case in most MMO's) then that's just as bad a situation of them ALWAYS using them where there is no FF mechanic.
If engagements frequently start out with a 30-40 second window where the enemy is closing to melee range and the casters can let loose with thier fireballs then... then FF is entirely workable...because it becomes a viable tool in thier toolbox...and it's all about matching the tool to the job. YMMV.
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It's also a good idea to remember the blog posts about unit combat. There has been significant talk about creating various unit sizes and working in tandem with allies against similarly arrayed enemies. Whether this just means there will be bonuses for people who manage to coordinate their positions well, or there will be entirely different combat options for people fighting in a group verses solo, is still undetermined.
It could be that one of the advantages to forming a unit in combat is invulnerability or at least resistance to any splash damage from your companions.
"The first thing we knew we wanted to address in our design was the lack of any sense of being a part of a larger force. We wanted to give players a reason to form into units and to maintain unit cohesion.
The difference between an army and a mob is that the army knows how to provide mutual reinforcement to each member whereas the mob is mostly concerned with individual acts. A small army can overcome a large mob.
The heart of our design is the idea of combat power. Combat power is generated when characters form and maintain a cohesive unit. Combat power is both offensive and defensive. It is generally much more significant than the kind of attacks and defense available to individual characters.
Cohesion factors in physical location in relation to the rest of the unit's members, the need of the unit to have proper leadership, and the ability of the unit to act in concert.
Units scale from squads of a small group of characters all the way to divisions of thousands of characters.
In order to join or lead a unit, a character must have trained the necessary skills, earned the necessary merit badges and gained the necessary abilities. Being a soldier is a whole career path in Pathfinder Online. Characters will need to specialize in soldiering to become leaders of larger units, and even at the squad level, characters who are more experienced will have more options than less skilled characters."
Another cool direction taken by the Chivalry came in regards to crossbows:
First of all, they seem to fire in a more even horizontal fashion as opposed to the long arching trajectory of longbows: In other words, longbows are effective for shooting over your own men because arrows tend to "Sink" in the air whereas bolts travel in a straighter line.
It would be cool if in PFO longbows could be easilly aimed to fire over your own men and hit at distant units, whereas crossbows (with their straighter shooting missiles) would be impeded heavilly by a blocked line of sight or interfering allies.
The other awesome touch added to crossbows in Chivalry is that crossbowmen can carry a tower shield with a notch in it for shooting their bolts. Firing in this way is slow and tedious- not only to crossbows shoot significantly slower than longbows in the game, but they shoot with two hands meaning you have to find a spot to "park", slowly lay down this tower shield, take out the crossbow and get to shooting.
This is a truly awesome when way of fighting because it leads to a new tactic: The missile wall.
Usually in war you have your "wall" units with shields and swords and your projectile units, but this brand of fighting combines the two. Cool stuff to think about IMO.
Because combat isn't necessarily the most important aspect of pathfinder (so I infer), I don't care if the combat system is a little dull. I'm anxious to hear what they've got planned.
you hit it on the head. they stated that this game is more about doing what you want, not being forced into combat. they used the example of being a merchant. im assuming that this means "leveling" will not just be about grinding mobs until you get enough ep to level, and more importantly, you will be able to stay in a city for the entire time you play the game if you choose while still "leveling".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Waffleyone on this one. If they make the combat system uninteresting then they are going to eliminate anyone who is interested in combat as siginificant part of thier gameplay....which is going to include a heckuva alot of people...especialy for a game that advertsises a PvP focus. I think they are going to have to nail combat pretty well. Doesn't mean "actiony" or "twitch" or anything like that...there are alot of other ways to make combat (even more) interesting but they will have to expend resources on making it interesting to the player. YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Waffleyone on this one. If they make the combat system uninteresting then they are going to eliminate anyone who is interested in combat as siginificant part of thier gameplay....which is going to include a heckuva alot of people...especialy for a game that advertsises a PvP focus. I think they are going to have to nail combat pretty well. Doesn't mean "actiony" or "twitch" or anything like that...there are alot of other ways to make combat (even more) interesting but they will have to expend resources on making it interesting to the player. YMMV.
I think combat probably needs complexity in what contexts any one build or party of "builds" is going to experience, so skills trained are always full of possible use and possible mis-match. Which probably means a really complex array of options and counter-counter-options?! That makes being wary of what sort of combat you're getting into make combat itself much more interesting -> Did I scope them out right?
But I think maybe skill-training combat skills probably fit in the context of what is my char going to be aiming at long-term, also, perhaps if I run a merchant operation I can go big on support and healing stuff and hire other people to do the fighting... and if they fail... stop healing early, and run-away (the most under-rated skill imo!) and cut my losses!
Actually that is something I'd love to see in mmorpgs, creatures, monsters that wander around that are hugely dangerous and require a very large group of players to consider taking down. If your small party stumbles on one of these creatures it's real risk of being taken down. So some combat situations which players can decide they are just not "equiped" to deal with. That sort of negative combat is still fun component as well eg avoid detection, avoid combat this time (too much cost/risk), move on etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just lost my post as well. Mostly what I meant:-
I was mostly thinking aloud in the above, just keeping the discussion broad. Eg if you pick attributes, items, skills etc -> to a "fit" in the world: Some roads you can expect to take and go far, other roads of variable success and still many more (?) you should only go very carefully or very short way down. So your build:
1) Skill in identifying which situations you're fitted for and what extent.
2) Skill in managing your resources so that your performance over variable encounters is most efficient for cost, for risk v reward and for profit.
So the aspect of resource management comes into combat: Item state, ward durations and number of uses possibly before bonuses expended, and if negative penalties start to apply? Maybe losing combat has cost eg extreme in losing your corpse, but also perhaps injuries that slow skill-training? Idk.
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That's sketchy musings for before and after combat that has massive influence DURING combat. So what about DURING:
The only way I can visualise a more interactive system, more than tab-targetting, is for close combat to slow time down somehow so a player can use their mouse to aim for parts of the enemy to attack tactically. Also means silly movement such as running in circles is countered eg turn your back free slash on the back section = double-damage or + to hit chance etc. Maybe accuracy of mouse click itself (.5 sec?) as well as part of body hit and this "merry dance" might be really interactive and decision-making?
No idea how to combine with other player's vicinity or ranged attack vicinity. And no idea how it could be implemented.
Roughly what I tried to write before post was obliterated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you can do a lot with respect to targeted attacks and such without forcing players to aim a mouse cursor.
One reason I am so adamantly opposed to using the mouse for aiming is because I use the mouse to move and look around, and I almost never know where the cursor is because I don't use it. If I'm forced to use my mouse cursor to aim, then that means they need to give me another way to move my character and my eyes that's just as effective.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you can do a lot with respect to targeted attacks and such without forcing players to aim a mouse cursor.
That's true. I was wondering though between on the one-hand tab-target and the other FPS target on your screen. So the mouse to aim is a problem if it's also your look-at button. But if you have tab-target to select an enemy in close combat, then when you go for your skill/weapon button and get the mouse to choose a part of the opponent (arm/leg etc) and the opponent is doing the same, and time is slower, I think the clash might not be such a problem in that context?
But what I was trying to work out is a way for the player to have the variety of skill options but with the "when it comes to the crunch" have some actual decision over where to aim/what to aim on also. I think could "fit" in the above conditions and make sense as if the player is directing their attention during the battle onto hitting the current tab-targeted "thing". To remove the mouse-click aim, just untab. And if time could be slowed down all of those actions/reactions and guesses of where the opponent is aiming could all fit in realistically without tripping over your fingers and the screen going wonky... maybe. :D
Yes, perhaps another input system other than mouse could be used. But I remember in GW2 the actiony things it did as well as rolling, were AoE placement using the mouse. It is mostly tab-target though :( Whereas Tera is full aiming/dodging actiony by the players for healing etc and the player skill has an advantage if they are good at those. Oc, I don't think PfO is going anywhere near actiony combat. So I just fall back on the mouse for use in a "high player input accuracy" required category.
TL;DR: Something a bit more target-aiming than tab-target?
edit: Above just talking about a hypothetical close-combat situation. For ranged, again something more aiming/interesting than tab-target + spam skills...
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I'm not really in favor of the "actiony" combat model for PFO. I was thinking something more along the lines of the kind of depth of the tactical decision making that goes into the tabletop game....
Things like which weapon/spell you choose to use against a particular opponent. Where you position yourself for the attack or for defense. Use of flanking. Attacks of Opportunity and whether you choose to draw them or not by manuvering to attack a higher priority target. Fighting Defensively or Full Defense, Reach weapons, use of certain abilities like Cleave, Power Attack, Disarm, Advantage of High Ground, Rough Terrain, Cover, etc...
There is actualy a pretty fair amount of tactical depth to the PnP ruleset. Obviously I'm not asking or expecting a verbatem translation but it certainly should be possible to recreate that level of tactical complexity in an MMO combat ruleset. I'm not a big fan of the standard MMO hotbar combat interface...but even that COULD (theoriticaly) be used to impliment a fair level of tactical complexity in combat. In practice though, I haven't seen an MMO yet that has actualy implimented in a tacticaly meaningfull fashion. You have a set rotation of buttons that you ALWAYS use in ALL situations....and if the RNG results in something (a successfull dodge or block) that opens up a reactive change, a button lights up that you will ALWAYS press because it does more damage. Combat devolves into nothing more then a pavlovian pressing of buttons as they light up while you and your opponent try to circle strafe each other. It's all a contest of keyboard skills while the decision making portion of the players brain can be turned completely off. That to me is a crying shame, and would be doubly so for PFO.
I'd love to see a system that was highly situational. Where everything you did had trade-offs. Where players found themselves debating what they should actualy do in a given situation because it WASN'T completely obvious. Where success was NOT dependant upon a players keyboard skills but thier DECISION MAKING skills. That should include all the combat/build preperation stuff Avena talked about...but also decisions made DURING combat. I've yet to see that even come close to being achieved in a fantasy MMO.
Oddly enough the one MMO I've experienced that did achieve that was WWII Online which used a FPS model. However there the pace of combat was slower and more tactical....it wasn't about twitch...it was about use of cover, stealth, situational awareness, fire/target discipline, suppression, combined arms tactics, teamwork and picking a good approach. Especialy in the infantry game.
Actualy MOST FPS games are much deeper tacticaly then the standard MMO... but I don't really believe that is neccesarly an inherint trait of the FPS model...simply a reflection of how dumbed down MMO's have chosen (purposefully) to make the specific implimentations of thier models....it's as if they make it purposefully so that the player is never called on to make a real choice. YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll concede that my objection to mouse-targeting is largely removed if the targeting reticle is center-screen rather than on the mouse cursor. However, I would still prefer not to have to aim that way.
It will be a different world when gesture-based user interaction is ubiquitous, but we're not there yet. Right now, we have Mouse and Keyboard (or Keypad, like my Nostromo). The Mouse is an excellent tool for quickly pointing my eyes or my character at a specific point in space. The Keypad is an excellent tool for selecting from a fairly large list of options. Please don't make me use either of those tools for some other purpose that makes it impossible for me to use normally.
The reality is that the Keypad can be used to specify aim targets if the decision-making is what you're after. One way this could be done is with key sequences, where you hit one key to indicate that your next action, if it's a targetable action, should be targeted at a specific area. You can have as many of these targeting prefix keys as you want. I think people can adjust fairly rapidly to hitting keys in sequence...
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Personaly I really don't see the advantage to pseudo-manually aiming for body parts. That strikes me as "gimmicky" without adding alot of depth. If PFO was going for the full physics FPS combat mode ala Mount & Blade or Skyrim...that'd be one thing....and though I don't think that would be the right fit for PFO...I'd actualy be ok with that kind of game. Doing it half-way/sorta just doesn't make sense to me.
What I'd like to see is a sort of pseudo-round time system. Make univeral pulses at whatever interval seems to feel right for the game. You set your action via hot-bar/key-mapping and that's what you execute on the next pulse (psuedo-round). Use standard MMO controls for movement but moving nullifies most combat actions (especialy attacks/spell casting) for the next pulse...which gets rid of the absurd circle-strafe fights. Also put in collision detection (for combat at least) and threatened zones with AoO so that combatants can't just move past/through a hostile defender to get at a higher value/more vulnerable target (like a caster/healer). Then you can start layering in all the different tactical factors I mentioned earlier.
(IMO) There is nothing terribly wrong with the standard MMO UI for Fantasy/Medieval combat (for modern or Sci-Fi I'd say otherwise). It's functional. What's terribly wrong is the specific implimentation of the mechanisms/factors involved in combat.
Note, If it felt a little too UNATURAL for players to not have thier characters react as soon as they press a button to perform an action, you could "cheat" it a bit by having the character start the animation sequence as soon as the button press was recorded but not actualy execute the action until the pulse/round was up. I believe this is not far off from what many MMO's do in this regard anyway. If you wanted to introduce a little bit more of an "actiony" element, you could actualy allow the player to switch actions performed upto the point the round/pulse executed rather then "freezing" thier action as soon as selected with an animation sequence. Thus players could switch thier "queued" up action in response to what they saw each other doing.
What you'd need to do for the above is have the animations for combat actions have 2 parts...the "wind-up" and the "release". So a "wind-up" for a melee attack action could include alot of bobbing and weaving looking for an opening, maybe some feint psuedo-attacks... a spell could be gesticulating of arms, etc....bow could be slowly putting arrow to string, drawning, taking aim...
Again I don't believe this is hugely far off from the mechanics of what many MMO's do (which may be a good thing for Development) but what you are doing is implimenting a global pseudo-round (may be a few actual game heartbeats) and allowing enough time for the average person to make a quick decision rather then just pressing keys....and it removes some of the absurd movements that takes place which actualy allows things like positioning and combined arms (melee & ranged) etc to be meaningfull in PvP which is a HUGE problem if players can just move through/around melee to get at the "squishies" first. Not to mention tends to devolve combat into games of circle stafeing and who can handle thier keyboard controls better.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon: Yes, keypad could replace mouse for targeting specific body parts, so that might work better. That said I'm just trying to think of the input of waving the cursor on the screen which leads to some reaction speed to perform skills, which I think adds a direct aspect to combat: That limb you gash with your sword comes directly from the mouse scroll and click using your eyes and hands simultaneously. I like the idea of "where you touch on the screen" the key action goes (in combat time oc), is the essence of that idea, now I think about it more. Though perhaps messing around with the camera vs aiming is too inconvenient a trade-off. About as far as I can go with that idea.
@GrumpyMel: Those time pulses sound interesting, I think some way to slow combat is the way to go. I'm not sure I can fully visualise how it would look or play, very well atm, though I get the idea. Though it would depend on the speed oc of the pulses, not too slow or too fast?
With regard to aiming for body parts, tbh, that was an idea partly making combat more tactical and partly breaking it down (& your opponent) into eg LOW-MEDIUM-HIGH strikes with combination of different types of strike (depending on the weapon) eg SLASH-HACK?-THRUST for sword. So you could try to perhaps disable or weaken different parts of an opponent and/or parry/dodge their attacks etc. Tbh, I was thinking along the lines of an old beat'em up, "international karate" in this respect. It would be a way of mapping your decisions onto physical parts which represent attribute stats.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I’m not a fan of having to target different areas of the body during combat. This is an assumed mechanic of the combat system. In PnP your incredibly skilled fighter wouldn’t stand there like a robot hacking at the exact spot of his opponent. Its assumed that the two opponents would be trading and parry blows from all directions. The tactical aspect of PnP is a result of feats, gear, and positioning (flanking and such).
My favourite D&D computer game to implement combat was Temple of Elemental Evil. They used a turn-based system to fully implement the D&D 3.0 combat system. So you could do a 5 foot step away swap to a 10’ reach weapon, and they have fun with AoO. I doubt this level of complexity can be implemented in PFO.
A fun alternative would be to allow players to create macros of combat actions to speed up the time it takes to use different feats, weapons, or gear.
So you could set up various macros aka combos for different occasions.
Activate power attack feat -> activate dodge feat -> switch to two-Handed Weapon -> attack selected target ->
Switch to bow -> attack selected target -> throw bag of caltrop 10 feet in front of you -> switch to melee weapon
Active defensive casting feat -> cast web spell -> cast fireball spell
Another way of adding complexity would be via a combat pane, that allows you to quickly modify various combat options and activate various feats.
The above options would allow you to setup premade attack routines as well as to quickly modify combat actions on the fly.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I'm opposed to any system that is based around giving people with physical disabilities a direct penalty. If the game isn't about hand-eye coordination, don't require hand-eye coordination to play it. If a player is using something other than a mouse (say an eye-tracking mechanism or joystick which limits their ability to rapidly change the location of their USB pointing device, or activite button1, don't penalize them for it unless the game is largely "point and click rapidly" in nature.
By the same token, I would also advise against any system that gave an advantage to aimbots that produce believable outputs on par with the 90th percentile of players.
Yeah, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Physical dexterity should NOT be an issue of difficulty as long as this is an auto-attack game. If this were the next big FPS I'd have to sing a different tune but it isn't. Fast clicking excersizes aren't fun.
I also like the point about people with disabilities which I really never thought about before. There may be some people out there who have limited dexterity for whatever physical reason. It may be hard for games like Halo and Call of Duty to be accommodating but I'm imagining something with about as much of a physical challenge factor as neverwinter nights, IE none. If you can click a mouse and click a few keys you should be fine to play this.
I should also say I really like the idea of "battle pulses" or "pseudo turns". In my mind it marries the turn based essence of D&D with the requirements of mass combat. Then again I'm not a game designer- but I really hope Ryan Dancy reads this thread.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As much as I understand people's urge for MMORPGs to adopt more advanced forms of combat to that of older MMORPGs, I do not and never have seen combat as an element of gameplay which would keep me around for any great period of time.
WoW has tab targeting, global and local cooldowns and generally a very refined version of the norm, yet WoW arena PvP was far too elitist for me and this is coming from an old UO PvP vet who used to rave about skill based PvP, a too greater emphasis on combat can detract from the idea that you're playing an RPG. What MMOs generally have in common is a centricity around combat as the bread and butter of the game and this is at the heart of the scrutiny of it. Combat sits at the core of gameplay, finite PvP and PvE goals are completed and the romance ends.
In line with a post I made on another thread, the outcome of combat and player interactions are far superior to the substance of the actions themselves; any combat system eventually becomes boring and one can only turn to the purpose of the interaction to continue to be satisfied with participating in it.
Tera Online had arguably the most enjoyable combat system I've experienced to date, yet the game offered little to no purpose and subsequently nose dived. UO, Lineage 2 are two examples of games with long histories, UO lasting a very long time and Lineage to this day being played by hundreds of thousands of players (not on the retail servers); these games have very simple and dull combat mechanics but ones which will eternally be driven by the requirement to engage in combat for the larger social/political goals they hope to achieve and not purely.
I would even go as far as to argue that a game with too complex or purely skill driven combat system would alienate more players than it would attract through the elitist swing; bunny hopping Darkfallers I'm looking at you.
Keep it simple, smooth and well animated and very polished, but above all, give it a wide arching purpose to be defined and redefined by the player base and they won't even care what they're doing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see that combat will be the main source of entertainment for some players, namely the ones playing bounty hunters or bandits.
However I found that twitch based combat doesn't add too much to an MMO and is a nightmare when the first M ("Massively") of MMO is invoked.
Warhammer Online hat collision detection and this was hailed as the next big thing beforhand. Players fantasized about combat being completely different and new - which wasn't true. Collision detection had mainly one effect: adding a load of lag in big battles.