Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Haven’t seen it mentioned in an official Dev blog yet, so I thought I’d throw it out there early.
I hope the engine Pathfinder licensed allows realistic 3D collision detection between characters and NPCs, not just the walkmesh and other static game objects.
Currently playing GW2. One of the common ‘techniques’ (exploits) I feel totally destroys the suspension of disbelief happens during WvWvW. The commander yells “STACK!”, and you’ll have 40-60 lethally armed players of various sizes all clown-car into about a square foot of grass for the purpose of concealing numbers and/or buffing. FOUL!!!
It will be impossible for Pathfinder to provide a realistic ground warfare experience if it behaves the same in that respect. Tanks wielding tower shields should be impenetrable walking walls, protecting their squishier squad mates. Unless under some intentional “etherealness” effect, all player avatars absolutely must have tangible substance.
It’s a fantasy game, yes. But let’s not lie to ourselves, this departure from reality is nothing more than a technical shortcut game engine makers take for performance reasons. Minimum PC specs for a game releasing in 2016 shouldn’t need this.
Goblin Squad Member
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Hmm, should have waited another day. It could have been exactly two weeks since the last time we had this conversation =P
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't recall any concensus being reached :)
Anyway, the opinions are expressed in the old thread and I have nothing new to add to that discussion.
True. We don't have a way to tally consensus. It is usually pretty evident when one position dominates the discussion, but that might only mean someone simply could not shut up and admit they were wrong.
Wait: Why is everybody suddenly grown silent gazing at me?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wait: Why is everybody suddenly grown silent gazing at me?
I love self-deprecating humor :)
It's a complete tangent, but the main reason I can't stand Sylvester Stallone is because he seems utterly incapable of laughing at himself. I remember an MTV show back many years ago where Dan Cortese, a pretty-boy VJ, was doing a segment from a celebrity party and jokingly challenged Stallone to an arm-wrestling contest. Stallone couldn't be cool about it, instead he slammed the guy's arm down onto the table so hard you could literally see tears in his eyes.
On the other hand, I really dig Duane Johnson (the Rock) because one of the funniest things I've ever seen was him in Be Cool playing a gay Samoan cowboy bodyguard, checking his own ass out in a mirror.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Haven’t seen it mentioned in an official Dev blog yet, so I thought I’d throw it out there early.
I hope the engine Pathfinder licensed allows realistic 3D collision detection between characters and NPCs, not just the walkmesh and other static game objects.
Currently playing GW2. One of the common ‘techniques’ (exploits) I feel totally destroys the suspension of disbelief happens during WvWvW. The commander yells “STACK!”, and you’ll have 40-60 lethally armed players of various sizes all clown-car into about a square foot of grass for the purpose of concealing numbers and/or buffing. FOUL!!!
....
It’s a fantasy game, yes. But let’s not lie to ourselves, this departure from reality is nothing more than a technical shortcut game engine makers take for performance reasons. Minimum PC specs for a game releasing in 2016 shouldn’t need this.
I happen to agreed with you on this a lot, but I can also see some people being jerks blocking people in narrow passages because they can't walk through them.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I happen to agreed with you on this a lot, but I can also see some people being jerks blocking people in narrow passages because they can't walk through them.
Regarding the narrow passage, yes I see the potential for abuse. But hey, isn’t that why Pathfinder is going to have this elaborate, anti-griefer / alignment-shifting / bounty system…to “discourage” the overtly obnoxious?
Even with your negative example I can see some riveting ambush scenarios that we just can’t play out in any other MMO today.
I would though slap a substantial damage and hit penalty on the characters doing the blocking, which would be realistic. Keeping the little guy from slipping through detracts from maintaining a more offensive stance.
And yes, bumbling group mates tripping over each other while fleeing from the dragon, matters. Don’t get me started on the need for friendly fire.
Back to the “suspension of disbelief”, I hope one day we have an MMO that looks, sounds, FEELS and thinks like real life. That won’t be this game, but adding more realistic physics to it would be a step in that inevitable direction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mutually Hostile : Cannot push though the other character/Mob's hit-box.
Non-Hostile : Passage is slowed to a crawl for both individuals and then they carry on as normal once their hit-boxes are no longer in contact.
So unless you're going to declare yourself hostile to half the townsfolk and play the 'Pool's Closed!' game, there's no way to blockade people from entering an area with a mass of other players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's also a legitimate reason for a GW2 commander to ask everyone to stack up: Commanders have the ability to check how much supply their followers are carrying, but it only works at incredibly close range. Asking everyone to bunch up and getting am automatic count is much better than having dozens of people spotting numbers in chat. This legitimate stacking probably gave commanders the idea for the less legitimate uses, though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I loved the lack of player collisions in Warhammer Online, Racked up so many kills on my sorceress farming keep gates in T4 RvR.
No collisions + no max target AOE abilities = no players exploiting 'stacking'
If there are player collisions, no matter the size, players should slowly push eachother to avoid jams from AFK players.
That would also mean it is possible to push a player miles away into the wilderness if they are afk for long enough. Which is a good thing, players should be encouraged to log out while not at their computer.
hmmm when I played warhammer online there were certainly player collisions. Mind you I played for about two months at launch so quite possible they took them out. But I do remember blocking people from getting through choke points on my orkie
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Goblin Squad Member
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I thought there was player blocking in WAR? The defence of keeps basis with a shielf wall of tanks being healed, with AOE'ing the hell out of the stairs for any invaders, while the invaders attempted to break through the "shield wall" and surge in.
Not sure, like the idea of "locking into combat" with a particular opponent if melee is engaged?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm bringing this back because I don't remember it being confirmed one way or the other.
It is far worse to allow stacking in an MMO, than to have collision. Stacking leads to a stupid crazy amount of exploits in both PvE and PvP. It bugs out mobs and keeps folks from being targeted correctly.
The biggest argument I've seen against collision is that people can use it to grief other players by blocking them. Age of Conan fixed this just fine by allowing a player to remove collision temporarily by crouching which caused slow movement and vulnerability, allowing them to move through a blocking player. You can't fight or do anything while crouched except move. If you stopped crouching while on someone's space you would be moved next to them instead. This was done so that you could move past someone to get into a shop if you wanted but that you probably wouldn't want to try it on the battlefield.
(This is not to say AoC didn't have it's share of exploits, but stacking was thankfully not one of them).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mortal Online handled this best IMO. Players could not be passed through but there was an option to push another player if they were in your way. If you did this too many times within too short of a period of time pushing becomes a hostile act (So you can't just grief someone by spamming push.)
Congestion really never became a problem there that I noted. Neither did push griefing. I just did my thing and occasionally shoved afkers out of my way if they were crowding the bank NPCs/doorways.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My concern with blocking collision is not just folks blocking from griefing, but general congestion in cities. I have played games with congestion on, and it became impossible to reach vendors, training points, and other hot spots for all the people just standing around. Pushing / Crouching and slowly moving through would work while the server is lightly populated. But even those options would be a major pain in any reasonably populated area.
Keep player collision off by default (though having the ability to turn it on for hostiles in combat would be cool), but provide mechanical disincentive to stacking. Formation combat already makes it a poor choice if you have a big group. Additionally, controlling buff targets to be Single Player or Single Group instead of All in Area.
Another option: Collision is off for friendlies/neutrals and on for hostiles. Standing in the same space as another friendly/neutral will provide you with a small penalty that increases with the number of people in your personal space. Such that if you have four people, they are bumping into and constraining each other's combat effectiveness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Another option: Collision is off for friendlies/neutrals and on for hostiles. Standing in the same space as another friendly/neutral will provide you with a small penalty that increases with the number of people in your personal space. Such that if you have four people, they are bumping into and constraining each other's combat effectiveness.
It'd be funny to see a group of 50 people or so, all neutral to each other, standing in the same place and then all releasing a simultaneous, low damage AoE on themselves so that they all gain collision at the same time. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Another option: Collision is off for friendlies/neutrals and on for hostiles. Standing in the same space as another friendly/neutral will provide you with a small penalty that increases with the number of people in your personal space. Such that if you have four people, they are bumping into and constraining each other's combat effectiveness.It'd be funny to see a group of 50 people or so, all neutral to each other, standing in the same place and then all releasing a simultaneous, low damage AoE on themselves so that they all gain collision at the same time. :)
Perhaps neutrals could be on. We'd have to see how that would play out and if folks would start griefing people at markets (another possibility with pushes). Start using it to push people away from vendors while their trade windows are up and force them out of range...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps 'collision' is much narrower than our character's models? Rather than the whole model, we have a solid 'cylinder' in the middle, meaning that when two characters come into contact, they will slide past each other.
Friendly or Neutral targets will 'squeeze' past each other if two of these 'cylinders' meet in an area only wide enough for one to pass.
Hostile targets won't be able to 'squeeze', but in doing so, there's a very obvious way to get past them.
Now, I have no idea if the above is actually implementable. But I think it would do wonders for stopping the idiot brigade from attempting a 'Pool's Closed' Raid on Pathfinder Online.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The biggest problem with collision is the N^2 problem. Collision requires a huge amount of overhead to be passed between client & server. I suspect that in general we won't have collision for character models because the tradeoff between speed & simulation will dictate that outcome.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Dang.
No worries, but it was a nice dream. Onwards to the damn PvPers clipping through each other to stab each other in the back of the neck like some sort of H. R. Giger homage.
On the flip-side, no 'Pool's Closed' shenanigans either.
A way to fix that is to give no mechanical advantage based on facing. Well, people could still do it, but there'd be no reason to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No, but the insanity of WoW Melee in the PvP scene is just that: Insane. People are running through each other and then either using speed-hacks or macros that auto-face them, since you can't dodge or block an attack from behind.
Maybe Goblinworks can find a happy middle-ground by allowing players to attack/parry/block/dodge in a full 180 degree arc infront of them, meaning that if you do get behind somebody, you can get a cheap shot in or two, but as soon as they turn 90 degrees or more, you're in a world of trouble.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On facing, we have this:
The current plan is that you'll auto-turn to face your target upon initiating an attack, including with bows. As long as the target is in range and line of sight, you should be able to hit it whether or not you've maneuvered your character to the right direction.
Also, there aren't likely to be any attacks that depend on your target's facing.
Here's why there's no facing in the tabletop game: How far can you turn around in 6 seconds?
For virtually everyone the answer is "all the way around". So there's no such thing as facing in a game with a resolution of 6 seconds.
If the "heartbeat" of our game is 1 second, you have to imagine how far can you turn around in 1 second?
The answer is very likely "most of the way around", which means maybe facing is meaningless, or maybe it is something like a hemisphere.
If the heartbeat is a half a second, it's probably a hemisphere.
It almost certainly won't be less than a half a second. So it almost certainly won't even be a quadrant.
This is one of those places where the "illusion" of realtime interferes with people's expectations of how they'll be playing - you might think your opponent isn't looking at you, but that's just because your client and your opponent's client are slightly out of synch.
What happens when lag interferes? Now the heartbeat might have lag spikes. What happens in that situation?
These are the reasons that most MMOs don't use "Facing" as a reliably indicator of the opportunity for one character to act against another.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It seems pretty odd to be able to stabbity stab just as well behind me as in front of me and behind you.
Should we do away with range as well?
Keep in mind that tabletop Pathfinder does not have facing either. Adding facing encourages the circle-dance of WoW that does nothing for the game except add a twitch element to it.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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There are other possible solutions to the "everyone stand in one place" problem. We could potentially have the server implement a rule that if two characters occupy the same space for longer than a server heartbeat, the characters forcibly separate (assuming they're not in a space where the environmental collision stops that. That's much less overhead than true collision detection and it only happens when a condition triggers it instead of having to be polled continuously.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are other possible solutions to the "everyone stand in one place" problem. We could potentially have the server implement a rule that if two characters occupy the same space for longer than a server heartbeat, the characters forcibly separate (assuming they're not in a space where the environmental collision stops that. That's much less overhead than true collision detection and it only happens when a condition triggers it instead of having to be polled continuously.
This is better than not having anything at all.
However, it may give players a way to move other players around against their will, "pushing" them into places they don't want to be. It could also give rise to exploiting through walls and such depending on how the environmental collision works. (Bugging through corners is the worst culprit)
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is precedent in TT for this - it's called "shunting." Whenever you teleport or otherwise find yourself suddenly inside of an object, you are shunted out to the nearest unoccupied space.
To keep people from using it to move others, only shunt the last person to move.
I kind of like the idea of there being a simple contest of sorts, perhaps where the Character with the greater Strength gets to remain in place.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still like the idea of timing it all to get a fissile effect. Ooh and in a small room if we bounce off walls then when we rebound back into the center then with enough characters we could create a perpetual motion machine.
Talk about a stress test!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do think that some kind of way to obstruct passage is needed.
Take a case of VIP target and an Assassin...
Scenario 1: Perhaps the VIP knows that someone is after him and has stationed guards in the doorway to his room. The assassin, in disguise, walks up near the guards looking all innocent. He then suddenly springs into action through the guards and kill the target inside.
Scenario 2: The assassin, in disguise, walks up near the guards looking all innocent. He then suddenly springs into action into the guards and is staved off. VIP lives to breath another day.
Scenario 3: The assassin, in disguise, walks up near the guards looking all innocent. He then uses stealth to sneak through the guards and silently kill the target inside.
In scenario 3 a stealth check would be made as the assassin tries to sneak through the guards...if failed he would be shunted away from them and made visible.
I know which of those three sounds like the least fun gameplay ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Stealth as currently defined (in the blog) would not allow you to sneak through people; the best you can get is 10% normal view distance, so you would be detected by the guards before you got into collision territory.
Bah, true true. I remember reading that as well now. Where were you when I was writing the post?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Hark, I remember that as well. I think a lot of things will be different for Mass Combat because the entire Unit is treated as a single object, making it much easier for the server to handle. Even if they use Ryan's trick of only having the server check for collision at the heartbeat, I would think any single enemy caught inside a formation during that heartbeat should simply die.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon, that seems rather extreme. Killing people instantly for just being inside the formation? Then again, real-life formations basically do exactly this, just "rolling over" the enemies. Maybe it should merely rapidly and continuously damage people inside the formation who aren't a part of it. But adding in the instant kill effect seems to be a bit much imo.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Meh. Individual Characters really shouldn't survive a direct encounter with a Formation. I can see the argument that a Formation probably shouldn't be able to instantly kill an entire horde of undisciplined Characters, so I can see there being some limits on how much damage the formation can do. But that damage should be sufficient to instantly kill any single Character that's inside the Formation enough to be surrounded by soldiers who aren't busy doing something else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If a formation can roll over someone and kill them very rapidly or instantly, I really hope even someone in heavy armor can outrun them. I know that formations are supposed to be the "end all be all" and defeat un-formationed people in much larger numbers, but being actively chased down by a moving box of instant kill doesn't strike me as particularly fun, especially when lag and such are thrown into the mix.
My apprehension also stems from the fact that I don't know anything about where, when, and how formation combat will be commonly used. The more prevalent formations are (i.e. form one up even if you're only going to raid an outpost), the more leery I am about them becoming de-facto intelligent cloudkills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If a formation can roll over someone and kill them very rapidly or instantly, I really hope even someone in heavy armor can outrun them.
I completely agree.
If it were up to me, Formations could only be established at friendly Settlements and would have to move across the map without using any sort of Fast Travel. They would also move at the normal (non-sprinting) pace of the slowest member.
I think such a system would create really interesting dynamics for logistics and would make for a lot of fun as competing Formations maneuvered strategically to cut off avenues of escape or to block access to obvious targets. It would also make it fairly easy to avoid tangling with a Formation unless that was your intent.
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Goblin Squad Member
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im not that worried about mass combat, as far as i understand it that was one of those "hmmm this is a neat thing that we will look into" type of deal.
I mean i would LOVE mass combat, but i suspect that doing that would require many many additional systems that GW isnt prepared to invest in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If a formation can roll over someone and kill them very rapidly or instantly, I really hope even someone in heavy armor can outrun them.
I disagree, not all formations can overpower all heroes (see below).
I completely agree.If it were up to me, Formations could only be established at friendly Settlements and would have to move across the map without using any sort of Fast Travel. They would also move at the normal (non-sprinting) pace of the slowest member.
I think such a system would create really interesting dynamics for logistics and would make for a lot of fun as competing Formations maneuvered strategically to cut off avenues of escape or to block access to obvious targets. It would also make it fairly easy to avoid tangling with a Formation unless that was your intent.
Troops should be able to move in column along roads or lesser rates over non-road or rough and then convert to formation on the battle field. Column is not a formation and penetration into the column by raiders to disrupt the column is a tactic. Camps into formation or column into separated formations should be allowed.
Formations should get bonus for protection of sides (since rank is a weird d20 definition).The column to separated formations is not as good as full, connected formation, but has combat advantage over loose forms and possible movement restrictions.
Those who interpenetrate a formation should 1) be warned that they are going to take excessive damage and 2)if they go take N hits equivalent to AoO for all that can reach them. It is not clear that Conan would be killed interpenetrating a formation of wererats, but would take a lot of damage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If it were up to me, Formations could only be established at friendly Settlements and would have to move across the map without using any sort of Fast Travel.Troops should be able to move in column along roads or lesser rates over non-road or rough and then convert to formation on the battle field. Column is not a formation...
I think it is.
Unit Composition
What a unit can do is a function of its leader, the abilities of its members, and the formation it has assumed. A squad in file (i.e. walking in a line) is in a great formation to move quickly in between friendly units. But it cannot project much Combat Power forward or behind itself. A unit in a defensive square is able to project Combat Power in any direction but can't easily move without losing cohesion.
I would go so far as to make the Reserves an official part of the Formation, and make it costly to add new players in the field.
[Edit] I realize I may have misunderstood what Lam was saying so, apologies if that's the case. Also, I think it should be relatively easy to incorporate units from another Formation into your Reserves; if they traveled there in Formation, it shouldn't be costly to integrate them into your Reserves.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Squad Formations - USMC Manual
I can actually see these combat formations translate well, even in a fantasy MMO.