Goblin Squad Member
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Before posting this, I did a little research of prior threads, but with the debate still raging around unintentional strikes upon targets in the "I Fell into a Burning Ring of Fire" thread, I thought this might be a good time to revisit the idea of line-of-site fire.
I believe I recall reading that there will be no auto-attack in PFO - that you'll need to actually select your type of attack round by round. If that is the case, then I'm wondering how single target spells and missile fire will be dealt with when it comes to friendly fire (e.g. a team mate steps into your field of fire)or unintentional strikes (e.g. that sneaky stealther who got between me and my target).
I'm hoping that since friendly fire is possible (at least with AoE), that it is also possible with line-of-fire spells and missiles. I believe PF rules have a feat that reduces your chance of hitting allies when shooting missiles into a melee situation, so will this risk be present in PFO?
Thoughts?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If there is a skill tree for ranged attack, I think that there could be feats that improve your abilities in a specific manner rather than giving a blanket bonus as does Precise Shot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think back to most other MMOs I've been where a dozen or more people were all circled around some nasty boss, all hacking and firing away without any need for concern that someone might get hit and how unrealistic that seems. If the servers can crank all the calculations for it, I'd much rather need to be more careful with my spells, arrows, thrown daggers, etc. Come to think of it, a poorly aimed siege engine would be pretty messy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I miss UO's original mechanic for "personal space". You used to actually bump into people like they were solid objects. If you tried hard enough, you could force your way through them, but stamina took a hit to do so. True, it was often abused (people commanding pets to block doorways, thieves causing a back-up and then stealing from the trapped players, etc.), but it also allowed for things like the dropping of items on the ground that could then be stacked and make actual barricades (stacks of crates).
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I had a raging 2 meter barbarian with a 2-handed axe as a companion felling foes I wouldn't go very near him. I really like the friendly fire idea or even line of sight that can be improved through skills, but it shouldn't disappear all together. Probably difficult to implement, but would bring enormous amount of depth.
Also, can't remember what it is called but: Will the game have good "personal space" coding? You know, so you can't walk right though other toons in combat like we are all ghosts?
Would be nice if combat had it but it was suspended in doorways, indoors, and other tight spaces.
Player collision is what your talking about. It's been brought up a few times and I've not heard anything from the Devs suggesting that they won't implement it. I think it's important, especially in large scale (unit) combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes. It is indeed called collision detection. I have played a couple of MMOs that purposefully implemented it for "physically" body blocking people in PvP. Though most MMOs seem to let you just pass through eachother. While I dont see anything wrong with that for a PvE only game, it doesnt jive with me for it not to be implemented for a PvP game. Especially ones that already have things like friendly fire. Using a wall of bodies to protect a gate entrance after a siege weapon has broken through would be an awesome and very "tank" worthy last line of defense. But they would be killable, so no abuse could happen.
Sorry for the slight hijack Hobs. ^.^
Also, I like this idea a lot. Anything that makes me think more for every action I take in battle seems like a good thing in my mind. Boring tank and spank style MMO combat and jumping around eachother like lunatics has to stop.
*Official Greedalox Seal of Approval*
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Goblin Squad Member
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I miss UO's original mechanic for "personal space". You used to actually bump into people like they were solid objects. If you tried hard enough, you could force your way through them, but stamina took a hit to do so. True, it was often abused (people commanding pets to block doorways, thieves causing a back-up and then stealing from the trapped players, etc.), but it also allowed for things like the dropping of items on the ground that could then be stacked and make actual barricades (stacks of crates).
Actually Hobbs, that is a great idea. It would allow for "collision detection" programing and jerkwads could not block you from getting in the bank, etc.. Maybe a Bullrush system?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just a thought... From Dev Blog:
By removing both "you miss and do no damage" and "you crit and do double damage" from the system, we keep damage within a predictable range. A run of bad luck can only reduce your damage, not eliminate it,
In direct attacks or direct fire, if the system can not or is desinged not to detect a miss, then how might it detect hitting the wrong target (which is sort of a miss)?
My understanding of missiles, is that they themselves do not have collision detection nor do they have a trajectory that the system can track. The calculation of the "hit" and damage is done at the source and at the destination, not anywhere in between. This would make it impossible to have a target move into the path of a traveling projectile because its calculations of hit and damage were instantaneous at the point of launch and only felt at the location of impact, the middle trajectory never actually happens.
I'm thinking of all of the games I play where projectiles are used. You never actually seem them in flight at their middle range. You see them launched, sometimes you see them hit, but never in the middle.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bluddwolf,
UO showed arrows in flight, but even though UO had a collision mechanic originally, as well as a chance of missing, there was no line of sight interception.
Honestly, I forgot that GW had posted that there would be no misses, so in a system that only calculates how successfully you hit, I can see how calculating intercepted shots would be a problem. I still think that if friendly fire is possible with one form of attack, it should be looked at for others, especially missile fire where it would be far too easy to hit a friend when firing into a melee situation, but that's just my opinion. If their system won't be structured in a way to allow it, that's fine. The vat majority of the "what ifs" we banter about here aren't game changers for me...just interesting discussions.
Bringslite,
When UO went to a split world (one was open PvP and one was strictly consensual), even the collision detection was removed from the consensual side, as it was viewed as a way of unfairly interfering with another player's game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bluddwolf,
UO showed arrows in flight, but even though UO had a collision mechanic originally, as well as a chance of missing, there was no line of sight interception.
Honestly, I forgot that GW had posted that there would be no misses, so in a system that only calculates how successfully you hit, I can see how calculating intercepted shots would be a problem. I still think that if friendly fire is possible with one form of attack, it should be looked at for others, especially missile fire where it would be far too easy to hit a friend when firing into a melee situation, but that's just my opinion. If their system won't be structured in a way to allow it, that's fine. The vat majority of the "what ifs" we banter about here aren't game changers for me...just interesting discussions.
I know what your thinking of, when a group of archers fire into a crowd, without concern for friendlies in the area. See it in movies all the time. That brings me to....Here is a "What If":
What if as part of a siege skill grouping, there is a skill that converts the usual direct fire of archery into an indirect AOE attack?
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Goblin Squad Member
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When 50 archers all shoot together, it does seem more like an area of attack (especially the long distance, arching volley). They aren't' each picking their targets. Rather, their combined attack effects an area. If you happen to be standing in the area they're all aiming at, you may be hit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Formation blog, please. I would love to see a formation of archers have an AOE volley attack. As for line of sight, I am all for it, though it does present a bit of 'fun' when coding. The projectile would need to be tracked as an independent object, and its collisions checked every tick it travels. This is fine on a small scale, but when you get hundreds of these things flying through the air the computing cycles needed start to go through the roof. The other fun thing that gets introduced is the question 'Do projectiles affect each other?' Can you shoot an arrow out of the air (purposefully or accidentally)?
This discussion brings to mind a poem that I came up with while practicing archery in my back yard as a teen:
'I shot an arrow into the air,
though it fell I know not where.
Then I heard my neighbor swear.
"Ah", I said, "It fell right there."'
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Goblin Squad Member
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One might alleviate the overhead of tracking every arrow in a volley if formation volley fire were it treated as a single projectile that looks visually like a cloud of projectiles. It might strike like an AoE with the greater damage toward the center reducing toward the edges. Where formation volley fire has tiers of skill then the AoE might be more even across its spread and the unit commander could set the radius of effect to concentrate and narrow focus or widen and reduce focus. Other keywords could be in terms of suppression, snare, morale, and similar.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Arrow Volley Formation:
Step 1: Group Leader can make a special AoE "target."
Step 2: Formation Members can choose to attack this "target."
Step 3: Leader activates the AoE attack with damage based on how many arrows were loosed at this "target." I'd allow the Leader to finalize the location before activation.
This gives the leader a leader-y thing to do, it allows individuals to do something other than "give all control of their character to the leader." It also encourages teamwork since the members would need to act together to be more efficient.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Darkhan,
I definitely want to see some leadership skill that enables the formation to do it's formation thing. I also agree with your desire that not only should the leader need to actively direct the action (targeting reticles, perhaps direction arrow for marching, certain maneuver symbols that all members see like "wheel left", etc.), but I also want to see people in the formation still needing to work together to carry out those orders.
In this way, you get two things:
1. A meaningful leadership skill, since only having someone with that skill will initiate the formation mechanics. Without that leader to direct things, you're group is just a mass of independently acting fighters rather than a cohesive unit.
2. Meaningful participation in that formation. You're just not a necessary cog in the machine, and once in place, you're running on auto-pilot with the rest of the formation. Rather, training as a group will be very important to make certain that everyone moves together, fires together, etc.
This would make formation teams that actually practice together far more effective and not totally dependent on the leader's skill. A formation should be better with a better leader, but at the same time, even the best leader can't be effective if his men have no idea how to follow his directions.
Note - there have been several rather lengthy threads on this topic, but likely from a while back, since I didn't recall having seen a "formation thread". If someone would like to "necro" it up from the past, it might be worth kicking around some more, especially since several posters here have asked for a blog on the topic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...there have been several rather lengthy threads on this topic, but likely from a while back, since I didn't recall having seen a "formation thread".
Probably the best place to look would be the Blogpost thread about You're in the Army Now.
