To fight or to watch the fight?

[Berzerk]

95% of non-textbased MMORPG combat systems these days are just watching the fight go on. What I mean is you start the combat and than your character starts swinging away automaticly in a timed system or something like that, you don\'t actualy fight yourself you just watch the fight and hope you win.

I remember playing Draken a long time ago and fighting with it\'s system online, was the greatest sword fighting game online that I had ever seen. you actualy swung and blocked yourself in realtime combat, was totaly immersive, super intense fights and utterly awesome. it was about both about a strong character and your battle tactics, Currently how PS is, the strongest and best equipt person is basicly gonna be the winner everytime unless the other player gets lucky. Also its really retarded to see your blade obviously go strait through it and not do any damage. I don\'t expect this to chage at all but it just sucks that no good MMOs use a REAL fighting system instead of the standard watch and pray style.

Most people might disagree with this but thats because they\'ve never felt what its like, Why?, because theres nothing like it. Every single MMORPG fighting is a watch teh fight style game, Project Entropia has a click and attack style sure but it costs money to play that game and in a bad way too. (Uhh unless you plan to dump money into play the game don\'t even bother to look it up though it is free to play), it was really fun and cool but the money issue totaly screwed it up.

Imagine, a newbie with no weapons or knowlegde in the world could come and beat the greatest warrior in the world becasue he is so skillful in fighting that he can beat that other player, sure that possiblity is practicaly impossible but its still possible. lol

Basicly if a MMORPG ever came out and used the click to swing yourself style of combat, I would dump any MMORPG I would be playing at the time. its a incredible system just no one uses it, but the first to use it will get TONS of attention because its the only of it\'s kind so there would be no competition for a long time. There I have thourghaly wasted yours and mine time by complaining about something thats not gonna happen for a long time. (Sigh)

[Efflixi Aduro]

this isnt what the combat will be like. this is just temporary. wait till the devs give us the exact last combat system then complain

[Berzerk]

Bah, they\'ll keep the current system of combat, why change it after so much work was done on it?. Besides I HIGHLY doubt they will dare to venture into a new realm of MMORPGing thats not the traditional stuff you find everywhere else, besides they wouldn\'t want to go through all the trouble of building a combat AI for the Enemies in the world. But if they do make it like I hope, that hot dang this would probably be the best MMORPG I will ever play.

[Efflixi Aduro]

OK theyll keep the system. Ur right, im wrong. They said they will change it but there lieing.  Why can\'t you jus accept what I said and belive tha they will change the system.

[Berzerk]

Heh, totaly missunderstood what I just said. I ment, I doubt they will change it to a fighting system I described, but they could change it to be like that. Never said they won\'t, I just said I doubt they will is all. lol

Doubt means \"don\'t expect\" not \"never will\".

[XpYtZ]

I understand what you are saying Berzerk and I agree that the common system is boring.
The Developers have said repetedly that they are planning on developing an indepth system. You should also know that they have planned and programmed a lot of things that either will not stay or are only a basic rendition of their eventual system.
This is still (contrary to the current, common thought) a Technical Demonstration, not an Alpha or even a Beta of a final product. That means that they are demonstrating some possibilities of their product and yes, they care greatly about the bugs even at this stage.
I would expect a well thoughtout and dynamic combat system to be down the road a ways, but not as far off (or improbable) as some might beleive.
This system seems more focused on the calculations (mainly damage, miss/hit, point_gain) than on the animation or user dynamics but I am sure that it will not always be that way; considering the number of Fans that have voiced their hope of a dynamic system.
They are just focused on the bare basic stuff to make this version a good representation of their \'planns\'.

[Foresteer]

Originally posted by Berzerk
 95% of non-textbased MMORPG combat systems these days are just watching the fight go on. What I mean is you start the combat and than your character starts swinging away automaticly in a timed system or something like that, you don\'t actualy fight yourself you just watch the fight and hope you win.

I remember playing Draken a long time ago and fighting with it\'s system online, was the greatest sword fighting game online that I had ever seen. you actualy swung and blocked yourself in realtime combat, was totaly immersive, super intense fights and utterly awesome. it was about both about a strong character and your battle tactics

I know i said i would never take up combat agin no matter the advancements as i had been playing combat style since 1988 but that is one advancement that would temp the forester to pick up his battle-axe once more

Originally posted by Berzerk
Currently how PS is, the strongest and best equipt person is basicly gonna be the winner everytime unless the other player gets lucky. Also its really retarded to see your blade obviously go strait through it and not do any damage. I don\'t expect this to chage at all but it just sucks that no good MMOs use a REAL fighting system instead of the standard watch and pray style.

Realise CB is at the very best an \"E3 demo\" of sorts.. so not even %5 of whats going to be.. is... plus since creation and ideas can be added exponentially i bet *hope* something like that gets added

[elscouta]

This is way i always play a mage. Because it\'s the less boring combats...

But the fact the hits mention the bodypart affects makes me hope there will be something like Vagrant Story combat system. It was quite good imho.

[Monketh]

Need I remind you of modern computer capabilities?
It\'d be near-impossible to implement it fairly at this point.

[dragonfire999]

i think you should be happy there even IS combat

[Myrtl]

Ya im just happy we have combat. Its good enough. We dont need any more system for it but i wouldnt mind it.

[diabolus]

I agree. Ever since i\'ved played a game called \"Blade of Darkness\" , i\'ve noticed the tendencies of RPGs to be so focussed on \'damage calculations/rolls\' that there\'s never actually any gameplay. This is why i got bored with NWN combat really fast.

If you haven\'t played BoD, combat can be summarised as follows:
 Swing from the left, Swing from the right, center stab, overhead cut , high cut, low cut, kick , shield block .

On top of that you get your mortal combat style of of \'combos\' like \'spinning stab\' , \'center stab, spinning slice\' etc etc.

From the looks of PS, i seriously doubt they\'ll go in that direction. Also, just because the current combat style of mmorpg is to let the PC \'do if for you\' like KOTOR doesn\'t mean everyone else should.

Anyone played Daggerfall? Compare it to the dumbed down combat system of Morrowind. Something tells me Elder Scrolls IV will take a look at Daggerfall\'s combat system again.

[Vengeance]

RPGs are RPGs because they emphasize your stats--statistics--not your own personal ability to click the mouse or push the right buttons.  In the dev team we refer to this as balancing character skill (stats of your char) with player skill (your personal skill).

Fighting games are all about player skill, to the extent that they (with a couple exceptions probably) don\'t even have progression at all.  I\'m thinking of Mortal Kombat and Tekken, Soul Caliber, etc.

RPGs emphasize character skill, because the idea is that the more you progress in the game, you are able to do more.

MMORPGs emphasize character skill for 3 big reasons: a) They are RPGs, like I said above.  Without this emphasis, character progression is meaningless.  b) Network lag means that it is really almost impossible to have a fair real-time fight.  c) People play MMORPGs a LOT--8-12 hrs a day in many cases, and carpal tunnel syndrome is a big problem when you have to push buttons continuously in combat all day long.  Ask any EQ Bard about this.

Generally though, elscouta is right--magic has more optionality in it and thus has more advantage to player skill even though stats still matter.  If you think you are a smart player and want that to give you advantages, use magic and you will find it more challenging.

- Venge

[diabolus]

Network lag means that it is really almost impossible to have a fair real-time fight.

Indeed. That is certainly a problem, and my knowledge of networking is limited, but some of the most popular online games are not exactly statistics driven [i.e. counterstrike]. So i wouldn\'t bargain on networking being the limiting factor for designing a combat system for long. (Although currently it\'s certain an issue)

The continious button mashing issue, again true, but imho it\'s a design issue. The right interface will make huge differences here, you have to press forward,left,right in any case. Further i\'m not sure whether designing a game so that people that wants to \'idle\' and do 2 other things [i.e. writing emails] at the same time is such a good idea --> This will result in a rather boring game for those actually paying full attention. At least combat should not be designed that you can actually sit back and make coffee.

Either way, i\'ve been mostly playing MUDs/MUSHes and the   interesting thing that popped up in my endless xp\'ing sessions was that it was alot more engaging to fight 1 strong mob that requires a variety of tactics during combat  rather than 50 weaker ones which do not require any strategy. [Btw PS showed xp gain based on damage and not on the actual kill, which means it\'s quite foreseeable that a variety of mobs can be used to please the different types of xp\'ers. [extremely strong ones which takes ages to kill vs 500 small ones easy to kill].

RPGs are RPGs because they emphasize your stats--statistics--not your own personal ability to click the mouse or push the right buttons.

I personally like to think RPGs are RPGs because of the variety [and freedom] of roles you can play. Some believe putting the focus on a point-click combat system wil boil down to \'less intelligence\' because you won\'t need to calculate statistics. In \'reality\' though, you don\'t actually have the ability to calculate your odds of winning a tennis match by multiplying your forehand stat by 1.618 etc etc.

It\'s true though that \'old school\' or our current rpgs basically means everything is based on stats you can fully control and build up PRIOR to combat/action , which is why the actual combat/action is basically a diceroll. I don\'t know for how long that AD&D type of recipe can be used like that though. I predict the game [mmorpg/rpg] that manages to combine user interaction ability with statistics to such an extend that someone who has never entered combat [but have perfect stats] won\'t win against someone with weaker stats but alot of experience in combat.


Anyway i\'m not really disagreeing with the points made. It makes sense. I would not expect an open source project to actually rewrite the books on mmorpg systems, although i the longevity of it might become limited.

[Kramy]

Originally posted by Berzerk
I remember playing Draken a long time ago and fighting with it\'s system online, was the greatest sword fighting game online that I had ever seen. you actualy swung and blocked yourself in realtime combat, was totaly immersive, super intense fights and utterly awesome. it was about both about a strong character and your battle tactics

That sounds awesome, but the first thing I thought was \"oh, the lag...\". Then Vengeance said something about that too. If you\'ve ever fought PS monsters currently though, they lag and \"run away\", while actually staying in the same spot. Fools lots of newbies.

Personally though, I\'d love such a system. Just make sure PS favours people on ADSL/Cable. Total Annihilation made a HUGE mistake there - HEAVILY favoured people on 56k. While I suppose that was fine back then, it\'s not now. I got slaughtered several times multi with my ADSL vs 56k people, but dial up my 56k modem and play the same people and I was the one doing the slaughtering.

Edit: I guess it\'s not really possible for this type of game, but I just thought I\'d mention that I also really like fast-paced RTS games. None of this slow stuff like WC3....can\'t even go to 10x or 16x speed. ;(