Goblin Squad Member
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Ah! I always figured the titles had some literary background, but it was Rock lyrics.
I have never listened to rock so that probably explains it. :)
Could we have a batch with 80's disco lyrics next, please?
"Heaven must be missing an Angel" sounds like it could apply to something(blog about resurrection and bindpoints?).
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Goblin Squad Member
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All y'all are contemporaries of it so you're going to have to fill me in on most of them.
I was 3 or 4 when the original song came out, so I wasn't exactly aware of music trends at the time. The cover version with the altered lyric was more recent, but what I remembered most is the title. I always liked the title because music videos did indeed seem to cause a shift in the way (pop)ular music is produced. Looks come first, music training second. Consider the lip-synch controversies around performers like C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli.
It's rather ironic, because while this blog post was mostly about showing off a video, the discussion has led to explanations of why things don't look as flashy as some would expect.There's also this amazing oracle you should check out...
Ah! I always figured the titles had some literary background, but it was Rock lyrics.
Not all of them are music-related, but they did a couple, and it became popular.
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Goblin Squad Member
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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.
There are some retired military and years-of-martial-arts people in the forum that watch the video whose inner voices are screaming, "You're so off balance! No don't swing that mace yet you're going to die!"
The following is a non-joke serious thing. Avatar: The Last Airbender may be "only" a cartoon from Nickelodeon (NOT the movie) but it is better artform and storytelling than 85% of any tv or movies ever made. A good chunk of the reason is they matched up extant martial styles to the 5 or 6 different ethoses of combat found in the story (air is circular and evasive ba gua, earth is grounded and direct hung gar, etc). Even though it definitely isn't a series about hi-ya chop chop, during the parts of the story where confrontation and combat WERE the current meaningful events they were authentic to the whole characters overall and visceral which gave a lot of power to the investment the audience feels in those characters.
I hope that when the eye candy is put in, the same level of attention to the natural rhythm of motion matching the weapons and magic casting is cared for. So the game doesn't get reviewed like The Secret World - "The actual combat sucks but I can get past that because the other parts of the game are really neat" (which is 100% true).
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CEO, Goblinworks
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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.Would you say that this illusion is important to the player experience?
Yes, I think it affects many people very strongly. If we were trying to get a million people to like our game on the day we shipped it, we'd be fools to ship anything other than really high fidelity graphics and a lot of eye candy.
This is one of the tradeoffs of the MVP approach to development. We trade speed and lower cost against the risk that some people will hear the game has "bad graphics" and will never consider it an option to play as a result.
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Goblin Squad Member
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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.There are some retired military and years-of-martial-arts people in the forum that watch the video whose inner voices are screaming, "You're so off balance! No don't swing that mace yet you're going to die!"
The following is a non-joke serious thing. Avatar: The Last Airbender may be "only" a cartoon from Nickelodeon (NOT the movie) but it is better artform and storytelling than 85% of any tv or movies ever made. A good chunk of the reason is they matched up extant martial styles to the 5 or 6 different ethoses of combat found in the story (air is circular and evasive ba gua, earth is grounded and direct hung gar, etc). Even though it definitely isn't a series about hi-ya chop chop, during the parts of the story where confrontation and combat WERE the current meaningful events they were authentic to the whole characters overall and visceral which gave a lot of power to the investment the audience feels in those characters.
I hope that when the eye candy is put in, the same level of attention to the natural rhythm of motion matching the weapons and magic casting is cared for. So the game doesn't get reviewed like The Secret World - "The actual combat sucks but I can get past that because the other parts of the game are really neat" (which is 100% true).
Hey, I'm a vet and I can tell you from experience that the US ARMY does not teach proper mace swinging techniques. It must be the martial artists doing the critiques.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hey, I'm a vet and I can tell you from experience that the US ARMY does not teach proper mace swinging techniques. It must be the martial artists doing the critiques.
The Navy focuses more on the 9mm and shotgun (in bootcamp) and other firearms. The Marines have MCMAP, but I doubt the mace is covered. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sounds loud and very messy. :(Maybe this is a bit naive, but what's with the shotguns in the navy? I thought they were only good for short range.What range are you going to be at in the narrow passageways on board a ship? :)
Spoiler alert: firearms are loud and messy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm more of a knees-and-elbows person with some grappling. Walking around with rifles isn't much of an option as a civilian nerd, even if I was beefcake strong punching people with a closed fist is just trouble, and good maces are hard to find*.
On that note, I think muay thai would be an awesome base style for eventual monk eye candy.
* - I've only found one company that could make a good mace that's light, pretty, and actually functional as a mace.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The stances between strikes are also very individuated from each other and distinctive from stereotypical kungfu-ish show fluff so I think it would be a whole fountain of eye candy flowing out of monk combat.
(If anyone is wondering what we're talking about, the movie Ong Bak is good as a story, shows you a lot of muay thai (aka thai boxing), and some freakin amazing stunts.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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For anyone interested, here's some attack animations based of muay thai for the game League of Legends. As you can see it's a lot of hard strikes with knees, elbows, and legs, but at the same time it can be animated for a game without having the characters so close that you can't actually see the attacks happening. There are likely a lot of examples to be taken from fighting games as well, but this is the example I was thinking of with the above post.
(I'm trying to pull examples from video games because it is more relevant than linking videos of real muay thai fights. Most of the hard hits in the real fights are from clinches, which can't really translate well into a video game. Especially if you are trying to clinch and elbow a ten foot ogre!)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Very impressed at how far along this game looks! I can only imagine what amazing things are yet to come for PFO. I want to play this very badly!
That being said, I do have some constructive criticism:
Like other people posting here, I find the stamina/hp/condition effect displays quite distracting... Hopefully they will discover some other way to convey this information, tone down the current HUD, or at least allow the player to hide/minimize it.
Same goes with the fly text... Very immersion breaking! I've played the beta for Elder Scrolls online and have to say that they definitely got the minimalist HUD perfectly right! Would love to see something similar for PFO.
I'm pretty tired (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) of cutesy graphics, flying damage numbers, and flashy abilities cluttering up the view. And besides, since when would you know exactly how much stamina or hp someone you are fighting has? I've never liked that. More realism, please!
Daz
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well, what I mean is "realism"... as in, no numbers flying in the sky, no bars with hp and stamina floating above a characters head... etc, etc.
By all means! Bring on the halflings and orcs!!
And how are you supposed to know how effective your attacks are? Should we all just fight blindly and not know if we're getting hurt?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Allowing the player to move the information to a less obtrusive location is a big part of UI design. Personally, I want all of the information I need in a visually compact area; I'm not sure if the numerical value of the last hit is information I need often enough to put it somewhere that it takes up visual space and brain bandwidth.
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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.
That's an improvement over wow combat. Flanking is a hallmark of pathfinder combat and you should have poll's to see what we want.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And how are you supposed to know how effective your attacks are? Should we all just fight blindly and not know if we're getting hurt?Well, what I mean is "realism"... as in, no numbers flying in the sky, no bars with hp and stamina floating above a characters head... etc, etc.
By all means! Bring on the halflings and orcs!!
THats an easy fix have an option to display or not display various UI indicators
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@Deianira - the objective of putting the UI in the center of the screen is to allow you to focus all your attention on the indicators showing what effects are on your target and not have to keep changing your focus to things on the perimeter of the screen. The intention is that when you fight, you pretty much see everything you need to see without having to move your eyes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's an improvement over wow combat. Flanking is a hallmark of pathfinder combat and you should have poll's to see what we want.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.
There's Opportunity in this blog described (so far) for Role Features: You've Got the Brawn, I've Got the Brains
Ryan Dancey discusses some of this in that blog's discussion thread in connection with the blog and the PF-TT and PF-O:
-snip-Rogues in Pathfinder tabletop primarily inflict Sneak Attack damage by flanking. They rarely engage in ambush Sneak Attacks against Flat-footed opponents. They are designed to work in tandem with another character. This is strongly in keeping with the mechanics we're building for the online game. Primarily you will inflict Sneak Attack damage by taking advantage of conditions inflicted on your targets by your teammates.-snip-
For more on how combat will develop: Expectation Setting
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have a simple critique and I will title it "Where the trees hit the ground". One of my biggest pet peeve's is when there's a tree or a rock or a wall and where it meets the ground there's this flat edge no moss no dirt no leaves just this weird transition to the ground. Now seeing as the ground is a different object type can you not build a few simple effects "moss grass tufts debris dirt dust to smoothen this transition????
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Deianira - the objective of putting the UI in the center of the screen is to allow you to focus all your attention on the indicators showing what effects are on your target and not have to keep changing your focus to things on the perimeter of the screen. The intention is that when you fight, you pretty much see everything you need to see without having to move your eyes.
Maybe part of the distaste is that it changes your depth perception being bright? I'm not sure, it's a bit glaring. GW2 used a highlighted outline for targetting that was a luminous colour and again that seemed to take the depth out of the model.
I suppose we'll have to see how it develops with how it plays.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@Pyronous Rath - you are talking about a piece of technology called a "shader" which is a little program that is used to blend two objects together.
This is the kind of thing that gets incrementally improved with each milestone, and yes, we will use this technology extensively. But it takes time to get them to work correctly and there are lots of things on the "environment to-do" list.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have a simple critique and I will title it "Where the trees hit the ground". One of my biggest pet peeve's is when there's a tree or a rock or a wall and where it meets the ground there's this flat edge no moss no dirt no leaves just this weird transition to the ground. Now seeing as the ground is a different object type can you not build a few simple effects "moss grass tufts debris dirt dust to smoothen this transition????
Not a bad idea. A few more trees for a old-growth forest also. Hopefully more vegetation to come too for all those botanists out there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I haven't crunched the numbers yet on all the combat we've seen. Having the extra numbers on the screen does make it easier to do that, so I have to go against the crowd and say to keep them. Also I'd like absolute numbers somewhere on the health/stamina/power bars if possible.
For those that want a slightly higher resolution version of the video try a youtube downloader. It's a 91.6 MB download. At least my downloaded version looks clearer than it does on youtube as the numbers are much easier to read as compared to watching it on youtube.
I'm rather surprised by one of the numbers we see around the 2:15-2:16 mark when one of the characters aoe's everyone else with what looks like a cone of cold. The number is 150, which seems rather large for a level 4 to be doing. (I assume they're level 4 since that's what the Jan 22 blog says.) So is that an expendable, ie. a spell as opposed to a cantrip, or is wizard damage higher than fighter damage in order to compensate for their squishiness?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Pyronous Rath - you are talking about a piece of technology called a "shader" which is a little program that is used to blend two objects together.
This is the kind of thing that gets incrementally improved with each milestone, and yes, we will use this technology extensively. But it takes time to get them to work correctly and there are lots of things on the "environment to-do" list.
Cool man.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have a simple critique and I will title it "Where the trees hit the ground". One of my biggest pet peeve's is when there's a tree or a rock or a wall and where it meets the ground there's this flat edge no moss no dirt no leaves just this weird transition to the ground. Now seeing as the ground is a different object type can you not build a few simple effects "moss grass tufts debris dirt dust to smoothen this transition????Not a bad idea. A few more trees for a old-growth forest also. Hopefully more vegetation to come too for all those botanists out there.
Yeah I live on Vancouver island and an old growth forest is a beautiful and dense creature.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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I'm rather surprised by one of the numbers we see around the 2:15-2:16 mark when one of the characters aoe's everyone else with what looks like a cone of cold. The number is 150, which seems rather large for a level 4 to be doing. (I assume they're level 4 since that's what the Jan 22 blog says.) So is that an expendable, ie. a spell as opposed to a cantrip, or is wizard damage higher than fighter damage in order to compensate for their squishiness?
Almost certainly a bug. Programming has been alerted :) . (That attack should have been doing at most around 60.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm rather surprised by one of the numbers we see around the 2:15-2:16 mark when one of the characters aoe's everyone else with what looks like a cone of cold. The number is 150, which seems rather large for a level 4 to be doing. (I assume they're level 4 since that's what the Jan 22 blog says.) So is that an expendable, ie. a spell as opposed to a cantrip, or is wizard damage higher than fighter damage in order to compensate for their squishiness?Almost certainly a bug. Programming has been alerted :) . (That attack should have been doing at most around 60.)
Crap. Did I just nerf wizards?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Crap. Did I just nerf wizards?I'm rather surprised by one of the numbers we see around the 2:15-2:16 mark when one of the characters aoe's everyone else with what looks like a cone of cold. The number is 150, which seems rather large for a level 4 to be doing. (I assume they're level 4 since that's what the Jan 22 blog says.) So is that an expendable, ie. a spell as opposed to a cantrip, or is wizard damage higher than fighter damage in order to compensate for their squishiness?Almost certainly a bug. Programming has been alerted :) . (That attack should have been doing at most around 60.)
Haha,classic! First nerf in the history of PFO is on Nightdrifter, let it be written in the books!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Haha,classic! First nerf in the history of PFO is on Nightdrifter, let it be written in the books!Crap. Did I just nerf wizards?I'm rather surprised by one of the numbers we see around the 2:15-2:16 mark when one of the characters aoe's everyone else with what looks like a cone of cold. The number is 150, which seems rather large for a level 4 to be doing. (I assume they're level 4 since that's what the Jan 22 blog says.) So is that an expendable, ie. a spell as opposed to a cantrip, or is wizard damage higher than fighter damage in order to compensate for their squishiness?Almost certainly a bug. Programming has been alerted :) . (That attack should have been doing at most around 60.)
Not only first nerf, but first person to nerf their favorite class. :(
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Goblin Squad Member
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On the HUD
I'm pretty okay with the self-HUD having my character's own information where my eyes are instead of having to glance down with hummingbird eyes to look for loss of hp. I wouldn't raise a fuss if the umbrellas over targets were half that size. :)
I see red and blue question mark icons pop up on the recording character and gold ones on targets, what are those representing? And the icon beside the hostile character's name?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suppose the bug would explain the huge discrepancy in damage done by that spell around that time. The other numbers look something like 38 and 15.
We see similarly large damage around the 1:15 mark when the wizard kites the skeletons. There's a 138 and a 100, along with a 45, though there's a single target spell thrown in there so it's hard to tell which numbers come from which spell. Most likely 138 and 100 are single target.
The only other large numbers I can see are the 71's at the 1:52 and 2:03 marks. 71 seems reasonable for a level 4 against a target with zero resistance, but both are against someone in what appears to be heavy armor. So assuming 3 minor keywords on the T1 weapon and armor, assuming that 71 is a full hit, and assuming damage factor 1.4 that means 71 ~ 1.4(B+15-36), ie B~72. So is that ~32 bonus to base damage due to sneak attack damage or another bug?
I should also point out the impressiveness around the 0:59 mark. Instead of the goblins sitting around like idiots waiting to be pulled like in most MMOs they actively start attacking. (Unless someone shot at them first and I didn't see.)