Battle System

[Kakoii]

I haven\'t played planshift yet so i don?t know the battle system but i would like to see something like this.

you control your character with the keyboard or gamepad so you could dodge the attacks of your oponents. Like in Ultima online,  you must raise your combat skills from 0 to 100%. if you have 0 to 10% you are quite slow and permorm just one attack, above 10% you learn a new combat move, about 20% another, and so on.

  This way a player with 20% if is smart and good dodging attacks could beat a player with 100%, so your chances of winning will depend of your skills and the skills of your character

[kyalin]

I haven\'t played planshift yet so i don?t know the battle system

Well i have played it, and i still dont konw what the battle system is like, because there isnt one yet.

[Abemore]

I agree that certain elements of the game should have dependence on player skill rather than everything being random or calculated.

[arccorbis]

Look at most commercial mmorpgs around in the newer generation: EQ, DAoC, AC2 - whatever.  Most of the time in these games is spent fighting monsters, and in all honesty it\'s boring!  People will still have plenty of time to socialize within their groups given a group which must exert some respectable human effort to play the game (not to mention that players who are awake are more likely to talk anyways).

[Fanomatic2000]

Right, if the chance to win just depends on what level you\'re in, it\'s boring X(
Fighting should have a lot of skill involved. In most other MMORPG there is no skill involved. It all depends on what level your character is in.
I hate the \"target system\" where you just click on an enemy to make your character fight him.
When you fight with sword for example it should be  a cross between\"jediknight 2\" and \"Zelda: ocarina of time\".

[Kakoii]

yeah guys =) it will be great if the chances of winning depent both of the Character skills and your player skills.

For example, an archer must have a high skill on archery to raise the chances of hitting the target and the player must aim well.

An archer with 10% archery could only fire arrows standing

An archer with 30% could fire arrows walking

an arecher with 50% could fire running

an archer with 70% could fire riding a horse

an archer with 100% could fire Riding a flying creature


 Well that\'s the idea, same for a Swordsman, as he raise his skills with the sword he can perform new attack moves

[Rakeleer]

I think one of the original reasons for the turn-based-realtime hybrid combat (click, then attack on timed increments) was it was an equalizer for those with differing bandwidth connections, or when the server was lagged.

The promise of skill winning over level is very cool, but I\'d hate to get into the \"My bandwidth is superior\" contest.  Perhpas modern architecture makes that mode obsolete?

I have a few friends in the shadowbane beta, and I must say that they\'re making my mouth water over PvP - and I didn\'t see a lot mentioned about that in the various PS faqs.

[Fanomatic2000]

Bullseye Kakoii )
A player should also get more steady with his arm when he gains xp.
If the player is a low-lvl the target should be almost impossible to hit, because the bow/crossbow/sling should swing a lot when he aims.
In the first level you should have the ability to train on targets until he gets good enought to practise on real foes.

[Wormtail_]

I\'m afraid I will have to bring this thread back to the top, as I have an idea based on this topic, but it would be better if I did not create a completely new topic based on the idea of this thread.

Anyways, I agree that people should be able to \'participate\' in choosing where your character will attack. Also, your skill and the opponent\'s skill will affect whether you attack successfully or not. For more lazy people, there could be an \'auto\' option that does the fighting for you. Anyways, with the \'body-zones- idea implemented into choosing where your character would like to attack, then things get very interesting. This is so because you can choose which body part you want your character to attack, and whether you succeed or not. Basically, both skill, level, and your involvement with your character attacking should influence the battle system.

Another idea for the battle system would be special abilities. As said before, skill should \'open up\' new combat tactics you can use when fighting. However, you should have learned about that tactic, first. Otherwise, people will be using tactics that mysteriously appeared out of thin air. You can learn from reading books, seeing it in action, or other things. This might be difficult to implement into the game, though, but I might just be ignorant.

More special abilities would be based on skill and strength, intellect, wisdom, agility, and so on. For example, a Kran that is very strong and skilled might be able to either pick up and throw or just bash a weak, unsklled Dwarf into the air. Stamina, if in the game, could probably limit the \'really\' special abilities. I might just be stealing ideas from Age of Mythology, though...

My last idea on battle systems is morale. Basically, morale should influence how well your character fights, and of course, the factor of running away. As said before, low skill will make an arm shaky, thus reducing the effictiveness of ranged weapons. Morale should influence that, too.

Anyways, those are just my ideas on the battle system.

[Kahlisi]

Wormtail - I tend to agree with the \"learning skills from books\" idea, it is quite inventive and forces a player to interact more with the gaming enivornment instead of hacking/slashing along.

In addition, one might suggest a randomness to where the books are in the Library and so on, say it changes each time you enter/exit.  (Of course you could have generalized sections, albeit Magic/Crafting/Weapons/Attacks/Tactics/etc.)  This keeps people from telling others exactly where they found such a valued skill.

Secondly, one must read the text and answer some questions toward the end (randomly generated questions each time) to gain the skill instead of clicking through to the end and WHAM you have it.

The idea sounds rather plausable and should work with the correct permutations/combinations.  However, I\'m not a coder so that is where my input ends and another\'s begins.  

[Mindfish]

Originally posted by Kakoii
yeah guys =) it will be great if the chances of winning depent both of the Character skills and your player skills.

For example, an archer must have a high skill on archery to raise the chances of hitting the target and the player must aim well.

An archer with 10% archery could only fire arrows standing

An archer with 30% could fire arrows walking

an arecher with 50% could fire running

an archer with 70% could fire riding a horse

an archer with 100% could fire Riding a flying creature


 Well that\'s the idea, same for a Swordsman, as he raise his skills with the sword he can perform new attack moves

IMHO there should be no mechanical can/can\'t. In computer games the rules can be as complicated as the programmer likes them to be because players don\'t have to mess with the rules like in pen and paper rpgs. So I think the rules should be made as realistic as possible.
Any creature should be able to fire from anywhere like in real life but there should be for example a \"distraction rate\" depending on how difficult the situation is to fire and archer would have less chance to hit with more difficult situation. On the other hand of course the character\'s skill with bows and attributes affecting the skill should be added to the chance to hit. Wouldn\'t that be much more realistic that way?

No simple rpg-rules in computer games! The best thing would be a real physical modeling engine that would model the weapon impacts. (btw my friend was developing that)

Here\'s a my idea for weapon attributes: the weapon attributes shouldn\'t be simple damage rating like 1d6+3 but instead the attributes should have:

Weight: a character with more strenght would be faster with heavier weapons than a character (with little strength) that can barely lift them would be slower and less accurate.

Sharpness: the sharpness of the weapon. sharper weapons would cut deeper (more damage with less weight) and affect differently on armors

Hardness: How much the weapon can take before it breaks or bends. (and for example if you hit iron sword with a diamond sword the iron shord could break)

The damage would be calculated of the attributes and of course character attributes (a strong character would do more damage with a hammer which has sharpness 0 and weight 10 than with a knife of sharpness 10 and weight 1 but a weak character would do more damage with the knife compared to what it would do with the hammer).
Attributes would also affect to how an armor would protect agains the weapon (a chainmail wouldn\'t protect much from a bone crushing warhammer, but would be as good against knives as a heavy mail)
The weapons would not be classed as different types but rather the weapon attributes would affect the used skills.

There should not be skills for every weapon type but instead main types (for example: smashing weapongs, piercing weapons, etc).
The skills should affect on each other so that if I\'d be a mighty barbarian sword master and for some reason lost my sword I wouldn\'t be a total wuss with an axe for example (nor any weapon eather). A good idea for that could be for example a melee fighting skill which would affect fighting with all melee weapons and get better with fighting with any at the same time as the weapon skills get better. Or maybe as a tree.. something like this:

melee
---piercing
-------spear
-------sword
---slicing
-------axe
-------sword
---bashing
-------axe
-------hammer
missile
-------shooting
-------bow
-------crossbow
---throwing
-------knife
-------stone

so that melee would be a skill, piercing would be a skill and spear and sword would also be skills and if I for example fight with sword, melee, piercing, slicing and sword would all be used and they all would get better. Or even a more complicated way... every attack style would get better with every weapon but relatively more in other skills and less in others.

that would maybe be complicated in a pen and paper game but in a computer game it would only be useful and realistic and make sense. So no AD&D-rules in computer games, thankyou!

A bit messy text sorry... :p What do you think about my ideas?

And developers pleeeeez listen to my ideas and don\'t make another stupidstupid game. Thankyou. :p

[Grey]

I think most of the player involvement should not be based on things like ability to click fast or run around a lot.  It should be based on experience in the game.  Knowing which attacks are effective at certain times against certain enemies.  Perhaps the enemy misses and leaves himself open to attack.  A trained and experienced gamer knows exactly the kind of attack or magic to use to devastate his opponent.  Likewise, a better experienced person knows movement patterns that will help his chances of not leaving himself open to an enemies devastating attack.  I believe that turn-based fighting is great and can still be practiced for the most part if you are a smash and bash kind of character, but as an incentive for the faster, and more experienced (controlled) character to make a show of beating the piss out of an opponent.

[Shaded]

like in daoc as your skill advances in a weapon type u learn new movements. put them in the quick bars as combos and then use them depending on yar opponents blows. some r good for attack some r good for defense some r good if u struggle some r good if the enemy struggles. but not round based in a world that reacts in real time. the speed u fight depends on the dexerity and speed of yar character. only skills like blocking take effect automatically with raised skills.

[Pheonix]

You know I think Ive seen this topic on the forums before.

[Tiraid]

There are some pitfalls to this idea. This is a mmoRPG. Emphasis on role-playing game. It\'s the skill of the character that matters, not the skill of the player. In a real rpg, a 10th level character would in almost every case beat a 1st level character. It has nothing to do with the player. Everyone here thinks this would just be the greatest thing because *YOU* would always be the first level character beating the 10th. That may be true if you don\'t have a job or a life and decide to live exclusively in PlaneShift. If you do lead a healtly existence and allow the light of the sun to periodically grace your pasty white flesh, you will always lose to those who don\'t.

Having the skill of the character dependant upon the skill of the player just doesn\'t make sence. For example, a player has a 50th level fighter who dies. The player makes a new 1st level fighter. The 50th level fighter and the 1st level fighter, in the game world, have never met. They have never spoken. One never knew the other existed. Yet, this brand spanking new 1st level fighter has the skill of the 50th. Where did that come from? That isn\'t how it works. Characters need to be dependant only upon themselves. If they all run together, that kills roleplaying because they are all the same.