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And now we can get to the rampant speculation: Of the seven characters, one is played by Mike (Hines), one by Lisa (Stevens) {from chatter}. I bet Ryan Dancey is Red Rogue, because I think he's the one that set up the overlook cuts with that character just prior. (also, RHIP)
Based on the back-forth exchange, Lisa is Hurlaka, and Mike is He Who Shall Not Be Named. I figure Red Rogue is Sassssy (because the charge started when he arrived last because he was delayed getting the establishing shot of the stone from the battlement, and Sassssy also gave the cry of LRJ.), while HHSNBN is the green rogue
Pretty dead on! Nice deduction work. I really wasn't using the chat channel much because we set up a Google video chat and were talking to each other that way. An early version of the video had an ogre battle featuring Ryan and I talking. We thought it was funny, but folks who weren't there found if confusing when voices came out of nowhere, so Mike cut it.
Lisa
Goblin Squad Member
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The key thing about the combat system as it is currently envisioned is that your goal is to maximize the combos not worry about position and facing. You can see various indicators blinking on and off in the UI as the fights progress. What we want players to do is think about the various attack options they have to inflict a condition on a target or benefit from a condition on a target.
Instead of having a pre-programmed order that you use your attacks you should be choosing moment to moment what the most effective option is based on the conditions affecting you and your target, and your knowledge of what your allies can do based on what conditions you can inflict on a target.
So its more strategic and less tactical than WoW style "run the macro again" combat.
Am I right in thinking that a melee "circle-strafing" will not be an efficient technique in PFO? Because that would make me very happy, I always hated that sort of combat. I guess it can still throw off your component visually and I realize that opponents will move.
I was wondering about gap-closers for melee when they want to get in range of that pesky archer that keeps circling around them: will you need to face him for it to work or will having him targeted be enough to close in on him no matter how he is facing you?
I am not a twitch person at all and therefore I love the "condition-based" route you are taking with PFO.
Landscapes look good, mobs look fantastic!, I think the towns could use a little more atmosphere and credible architectural design (a bit haphazard, also with all the random pieces of stone ledges.
Is it possible to enter those houses? That would certainly add to the fun when a town gets overrun by the enemy and fighting will occur everywhere.
Great video, thanks.
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Sassssy: LEEEEERY JEEEEEENKINS!!!!!!
I suppose "Leery Jenkins" would be rather opposite to what Leeroy Jenkins did.
leery (adj.): cautious or wary due to realistic suspicions.
But come to think of it, that fits the surname better...
http://www.houseofnames.com/jenkins-family-crest/EnglishMotto: Perge, sed Caute
Translation: Advance, but Cautiously
So basically, "proceed with caution". My family motto is on signs for icy roads and wet floors all over the place... :P
I just watched the video and I what I like the most is the endless space to explore. It really look like a huge virgin area to explore. I'm not worry that much about the characters or monster skins, 'cause as Ryan says, they would re-skin them.
It feels as a solid work, and I will back PFO as soon as the store is up (can't wait to give away my money to GoblinWorks xD).
The only thing that looks a bit weird to me is the bars around characters and enemies. Hmmm... I would say that their design are not cool enough for PFO... Yet. I guess. Would that be redefined too?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The more I hear and see from the game, the more skeptical I become. When I read Ryan Dancey's post on what they're trying to achieve, a nightmare scenario of QTE combat immediately came to mind.
I've no choice but to like this game since I've already pledged to the Kickstarter, but I secretly hope that they realize how boring auto-aim combat is compared to the modern MMO style where controlling your character and thinking on your feet is promoted over gear and statistics.
Hopefully I'm wrong and this turns out to be a deep and rich strategy experience where player agency decides the outcome more than how long you've played.
This post about combat ?
Is QTE = Quick Time Event (combat)?
Are you saying you'd prefer more actiony, manual aiming combat?
=
I've decided I like actiony combat too but in mmorpgs if I can't get that then I like much slower and thoughtful approach of action counter-action, predict action, force action, make the most of a bad scenario etc type of combat. I think that could be up there with actiony combat but for different reasons.
Not saying the above is anywhere near that, yet, but I like the slower pace the slow strikes - it just needs more reaction to actions as cosmetics to the skills visual cue of success vs failure of your character skill chosen.
The other thing is as with graphics finessing towards a style again for tons of players on screen and for tons of different systems as well as combat, I think I'm happy with combat being abstracted. For games where I'm in the sound and fury of combat, I don't know that mmorpgs are my top option for that experience.
Tbh, I like the sound of what Ryan mentions above there. I have no idea if it's related to QTE however; it does sound related to the 6-second turn that's been described to make your moves to gain condition advantages. I don't think it necessarily falls into the longer you play more uber you are compared to anyone else forever, bar a new player as per Nightdrifter's tidy analysis previously.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Since I know nothing about programming coding, or any of the other things you dag nabbit kids are goin on about these days...those graphics looked pretty good, far better than I was expecting at this point. So great job. Are graphics usually pretty defined at this point of development or are we going to see even further improvements by launch? Regardless, I like what I saw.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The key thing about the combat system as it is currently envisioned is that your goal is to maximize the combos not worry about position and facing. You can see various indicators blinking on and off in the UI as the fights progress. What we want players to do is think about the various attack options they have to inflict a condition on a target or benefit from a condition on a target.
Instead of having a pre-programmed order that you use your attacks you should be choosing moment to moment what the most effective option is based on the conditions affecting you and your target, and your knowledge of what your allies can do based on what conditions you can inflict on a target.
So its more strategic and less tactical than WoW style "run the macro again" combat.
The problem with not worrying about facing / positioning can be seen in the combat sequence around 02:04 wear the fighter is killed while his opponent is facing the opposite direction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan, you must be getting pretty fed up with our misunderstanding your wording. :D
An important part of my job is wordsmithing for myself and others, mostly converting math and statistical data into approachable information for presentations to non-mathematicians and non-statisticians. Discussions about the meanings of words and sentences, such as we're seeing these last few posts, remind me how vital it is to get everything right the first time; I often don't get a chance--unlike the opportunities we have here on the boards--to clear up mis-understandings and confusion once I've blown the first impression.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Was wondering about a few things I saw in the video, I keep thinking this has been addressed somewhere else but cant seem to locate the thread.
I was paying attention to the wizard characters, and watching for the effects of friendly fire and ae spells. I thought this has been addressed but wanted to ask for clarification as I cant seem to find the thread/ post that I thought existed.
Around 1:40 a wizard appears to use a cone and hits a character that is standing there and they draw a sword, was that a pc or npc? Is that ae hitting everyone?
Around 2:15 the settlement pc fights show a wizard hitting everyone with a cold cone based spell , it appears to hit everyone, then right after that with fire based cone comes from someone else in the back and it appears it doesn’t affect everyone ( could also guess you cant see other peoples damage to targets).
So my question is has friendly fire been settled? ( thought it was addressed but can find the info)
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's way easier to code combat if you don't have to worry about facing, but it has to be communicated to the player somehow that an opponent is targeting or able to target you.
The problem with not worrying about facing / positioning can be seen in the combat sequence around 02:04 wear the fighter is killed while his opponent is facing the opposite direction.
That may be true, but it is well worth the effort and even the development cost so as to avoid the image that you can hit targets behind you with a forward swing.
The casual viewer is going to label the combat system with "craptastic". MVP should require that you are facing your target in order to hit them. We are not talking about advanced collision detection, real world physics and particle effects..... Simply facing the target.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So my question is has friendly fire been settled? ( thought it was addressed but can find the info)
I Fell into a Burning Ring of Fire explains the bulk of the Friendly Fire / AoE design.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That may be true, but it is well worth the effort and even the development cost so as to avoid the image that you can hit targets behind you with a forward swing.
The casual viewer is going to label the combat system with "craptastic". MVP should require that you are facing your target in order to hit them. We are not talking about advanced collision detection, real world physics and particle effects..... Simply facing the target.
That doesn't require facing the camera to the target, only the character model.
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I hope we never get this:
From what GW has planned, movement in combat will expend action points. So if you wanted to circle strafe you could, but at the expense of getting more attacks in. If overall it balances out to the same as just squaring off, then the circle strafe would become an unnecessary tactic. If circle strafing proved to be less effective, than it will obviously fall out of use.
The same goes for jumping in combat. Combined, the bunny-hopping circle strafe will be fail strategy, as it should be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope we never get this:
From what GW has planned, movement in combat will expend action points. So if you wanted to circle strafe you could, but at the expense of getting more attacks in. If overall it balances out to the same as just squaring off, then the circle strafe would become an unnecessary tactic. If circle strafing proved to be less effective, than it will obviously fall out of use.
The same goes for jumping in combat. Combined, the bunny-hopping circle strafe will be fail strategy, as it should be.
This makes me very happy. The bunny-hopping circle strafe sounds *horrible*, did not even know that one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's way easier to code combat if you don't have to worry about facing, but it has to be communicated to the player somehow that an opponent is targeting or able to target you.
The problem with not worrying about facing / positioning can be seen in the combat sequence around 02:04 wear the fighter is killed while his opponent is facing the opposite direction.That may be true, but it is well worth the effort and even the development cost so as to avoid the image that you can hit targets behind you with a forward swing.
The casual viewer is going to label the combat system with "craptastic". MVP should require that you are facing your target in order to hit them. We are not talking about advanced collision detection, real world physics and particle effects..... Simply facing the target.
Yeah I noticed that on the first watch. It's better if there is the "locked-in" sense to melee. Breaking that "lock-in" to go "free-style" could be an option. I do not know. Perhaps the indirect regulation works ie action points expend and backstab option comes up?
So I had another look at the combat, and grows on me even in this basic state, slower is better I think. I can see more, consider more and perhaps ultimately choose more.
The defining feature at least in melee is reacting to what your opponent is doing instead of most mmorpgs I find it's all about knowing my own skill slots and maxing them out as fast as possible.
It's widely regarded as bad game design, because the player is more immersed and entertained by the experience if they get to directly control their character instead of just making a simple A, B or C choice (where one is wrong, one is sub-optimal and one is optimal).
That could be true, but doesn't it allow for a sort of "battle-chess" experience and those options become more complex over time with more choices possible, more changes per round and so on and not knowing fully what your opponent is going to pull but knowing after they pull it on you and responding appropriately?
I prefer this to the usual tab-targetting Ryan mentioned in his post.
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Thanks Nihimon! Knew I saw it somewhere, just didn’t go back one more post( stopped looking at the spell blog from the week after that one /sigh.)
Guess my observations was mainly the small burning hands cone compared to the large cones the 1:40 mark. And later on when they charge the skeletons a wizard shots this off as everyone arrives.3:22), the ring of fire blog suggested, “Melee-range and some other point-blank AoEs may not have friendly fire (as it's hard enough to deploy them and hit a lot of people anyway), but most AoE attacks will hit any target regardless of friendliness.”
I was wondering how this was working in the video, if they had made a decision on this , it appeared the AoE hit everyone, even if it was short range, so safe to assume they are going with FF no matter the spell area. Or is this still being worked out?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Nihimon!
Glad I could help :)
I was wondering how this was working in the video, if they had made a decision on this , it appeared the AoE hit everyone, even if it was short range, so safe to assume they are going with FF no matter the spell area. Or is this still being worked out?
Watching the video again, a few more things stand out:
1. Around 1:15, Green Wizard uses Cone of Cold (?) that seems to hit 2 of the 3 skeletons.
2. Around 1:55, Warrior seems to be using Stealth. It's hard to say for sure, but it seems like Blue Rogue (?) doesn't notice him until he bumps into him.
3. Around 2:14, Green Wizard again uses Cone of Cold and you can see damage numbers over several enemies. When (the same?) Green Wizard uses some sort of Fire spell around 2:25, I think the only reason we don't see damage numbers over anyone's head is because that's not the character capturing the video.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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What you are seeing in this video is how most MMOs actually work before the illusions of animation and interactive facing are applied. As I've said before, MMO engineering requires a "heartbeat" of several hundred milliseconds. Action is not real-time in any MMO because the N^2 problem of distributing synchronized information to all the clients prohibits it with current technology. Instead the game client implements a wide array of techniques to hide that fact from the player so the game "looks more realistic".
Once we get the combat system working the way we want it to work we will begin the fractal process of filling in the visuals to increase the simulation of real-time actions. Things like rotating the character models so they face the things they're attacking, having some visual effect on a successful attack, establishing some fluidity to transitions between attacks and movement, etc. The degree to which we invest in such things will be Crowdforged.
The heartbeat you're seeing in this video will always be present. But in the future it may be obfuscated by investments in eye candy. I know that seeing this stuff stripped of the eye candy can be disconcerting if you didn't know this element of MMO design. Welcome to the era of seeing behind the curtain.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Yes, the AoEs should be doing friendly fire at this point. As I mentioned previously, the particle effect is very big and impressive right now, so everyone that's inside the graphic isn't necessarily inside the effect as far as the server is concerned. We'll get them synched up.
We don't have auto-turning toward target set up yet. Ultimately, you shouldn't see yourself attacking one way and hitting someone in a different direction.
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...if it's not based on what is realistically possible it draws me out of the immersion very quickly.
Then Amiri, while the favourite of many (including Lisa), must drive you *insane* with her manga-sword.
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...if it's not based on what is realistically possible it draws me out of the immersion very quickly.Then Amiri, while the favourite of many (including Lisa), must drive you *insane* with her manga-sword.
I think ideally, for a high fantasy game like Pathfinder, the T1 weapons/armor would be very "realistic", T3 would be pretty fantastical and T2 somewhere in between.
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Thanks Stephen!
I was just curious about the short ranged AoE’s, I think originally it was stated some short ranged ones would not be friendly fire, but from what you said and how the video looked it appears you guys decided even short range things will hit friends as well.
Hopefully start hearing about divine magic soon, am super curious if things like holy smite make it in the game( ae effects that harm folks of certain alignments and do nothing to good aligned folks..or the inverse), or channel abilities(healing and harm) and the selective channeling feats all make it in… /em waits patiently.
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From what I could see, the combat seemed fairly MMO standard except for some of the 'interactive' visual effects that Ryan mentioned would be coming later and the lack of 'circle straffing bunny hop' nonsense... though that could as easily be because the players just didn't DO that as that it was impractical.
Ideally, I'd like to see it be possible for someone to move around in combat as much as they want... but for running and jumping in circles to be just as foolish as it would be in actual combat. If there are 'action point' and/or 'attack of opportunity' mechanics in place to discourage this sort of thing then it should work nicely.
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I've never watched a MMO being made but compared to the 5-year-development ones this looks to be moving along really well. I eat up every new element when another video comes out.
I want to confirm that this
Once we get the combat system working the way we want it to work we will begin the fractal process of filling in the visuals to increase the simulation of real-time actions. Things like rotating the character models so they face the things they're attacking, having some visual effect on a successful attack, establishing some fluidity to transitions between attacks and movement, etc. The degree to which we invest in such things will be Crowdforged.
The heartbeat you're seeing in this video will always be present. But in the future it may be obfuscated by investments in eye candy.
is directly addressing that aspect of the video where every attack looks the same. Smaller or bigger motions, the amount of oomph on impact, changing levels and stances with different attacks, that is all encapsulated in "eye candy" correct?
P.S. I must register a complaint about the blog post. I didn't see a single supernova in the sky during the whole video. Does Golarion even have a solar system or is it heliocyclical?
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Goblin Squad Member
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From what I saw, there is an ability for some maneuver. "Target is out of range" popped up a few times in the fights.
Yeah, I've been wondering how much people will switch from the bunny hop to just breaking contact repeatedly - if that can be twisted into a maneuver. For example, two rogues doing sneak attacks (whatever the technical name for the rogue special attack is); whichever is targeted tries to keep "target out of range" going while his partner lands sneak attacks because *she* isn't targeted.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Smaller or bigger motions, the amount of oomph on impact, changing levels and stances with different attacks, that is all encapsulated in "eye candy" correct?
Yes that's exactly right. The stuff people often think is meaningful is really just visual effects and has no relationship to the underlying combat mechanic or the heartbeat. It's an illusion.
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Yes, I am still wondering about the title. Did something go /whoooosh over my head here?
It's a line from "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.
Or a cover version with slightly altered lyrics by The Presidents of the United States of America, rather. It's been a while.
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Yes, I am still wondering about the title. Did something go /whoooosh over my head here?
Blog posts are traditionally named with old rock song titles or lyrics that somehow relate to the topic. All y'all are contemporaries of it so you're going to have to fill me in on most of them. The only one I remember recognizing right away was Pet Shop Boys.
