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Why can't we have more "visceral" combat? (Not 1000 blows to kill)
Archaegeo
Member UncommonPosts: 233
With more and more computing power, combat in games/mmo's doesn't seem to be getting better, it's getting worse, imho.
Skyforge for example has little boss mobs with 17k hp, time TEN, that you are expected to whack for 3-5 min to kill.
Its not challenging, its not hard, its just time consuming.
Maybe I am missing it, but I want a MMO that has realistic combat. You know how a fight lasts for longer than 30 seconds? If no one gets hit.
If a sword hits me, or my opponent, that should have serious consequences barring armor. Same for an arrow into some body part.
I know it comes down to Time To Kill, but why must TTK be long? To prolong a fight, that you are just going to rinse and repeat and do over? How mind numbing.
And they wonder why people keep moving on to the next game to come along when the current one offers no risk vs reward, no strategy to avoid death, just mindless button mashing till the requisite TTK has been met.
Again, just my 0.02.
Explorer 73% Achiever 53% Socializer 53% Killer 20%
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Player 3: Thanks.
Player 2: Its over.
Player 1: what? How?
Player 2: Yeah Player 4 came in rushed the boss. Rolled a 20. Instant death crit.
Player 1: So we won?
Player 2: Yeah...guess.
Player 3: Yeah for loot.
Bad example, a boss fight would have other elements to it of course, assistants, traps, boiling pits of lava, good armor, etc.
And of course it could just as fast be over for the party. No reason a boss fight should last 30 minutes. Let it take 5x a TTK even, but still, lets have real combat.
Explorer 73% Achiever 53% Socializer 53% Killer 20%
First PC Game: Pool of Radiance July 10th, 1990. First MMO: Everquest April 23, 1999
Yeah, you rush in and you see this giant... your sword is about the size of a small needle to him... stabbing at his foot a thousand times should kill it... yeah right. Then of course it never once stomps you flat as a pancake. It's foot could flatten your entire raid in an instant, but noo, it just stands there and randomly tosses fire here and there and roars a lot.
Now player versus player is another thing... you should be able to decapitate your foe... I mean really, you're swinging a sword that could easily divide a player in two... your hitting them time and again... them mind you, not getting parried... there is no sword to shield blocking going on here, you're actually hitting the person with this great sword and that flimsy mail, cloth, or thin layer of plate isn't even getting a dent. What about archers? Those projectiles pierced armor back in the day, so even if you did have on plate, you were defenseless against an archer. And casters? When was the last time you got lit up on fire and lived to tell the tale another day?
Yeah,
My ideal was to be able to cut a guys arm off with my sword, then pick it up and beat him to death with it <grin>
But yeah, players fighting these dragons the size of small cities and it never once steps on anyone, much less its tail knocking anyone hit into the next zone, mashed and mangled.
Explorer 73% Achiever 53% Socializer 53% Killer 20%
Not crossbolts. Crossbows were the reason plate armor went away really. Why suffer all the encumbrance if some peasant is just going to lob a bolt straight through it.
Ahh, the days when only peasants died and knights were captured and ransomed off properly <grin>
Explorer 73% Achiever 53% Socializer 53% Killer 20%
I don't disagree.
There is something to be said for turn based games. A lot of the older ones had things like a knockdown where a large mob stomping you would incapacitate you for a few turns. Even Divinity Original Sin has game mechanics like this and it's a new game. Most RPG turn based games don't though. This gameplay is only good if you make the abilities vary and make the monsters difficult enough that you have to perform your ability rotations fairly accurately.
On the flip side Dark Souls is pretty fun combat. The difficulty would be balancing things in such a style of combat. The focus would be less on your character progression and more on how skilled you are. Someone who can dodge well and perform attacks accurately would likely be able to beat the game at level 1 with a bad weapon. It would take a while to kill things, but people have done it. You would need to be quite skilled to beat Dark Souls at level 1 and have a lot of patience. Personally I have trouble winning fights even when I am equipped with pretty good gear and have leveled up.
One thing that isn't mentioned is that internet connection is probably a big problem. Having accurate combat with the lag between transferring data from remote locations of varying speed is hard in a game that requires precision and many people are on the screen at the same time.
Yes and the reason sword and shield wasn't used a whole lot after a certain point was because of plate armor. Most people needed a two handed weapon to cut through the armor and the Plate Armor provided enough protection that you didn't generally need a shield from what I've read. It seems that many things have been made obsolete by some new weapon or armor that comes out. I find it interesting that the European Barbarians had so much skill with blacksmithing, but were in fact considered brutes. The church sent them on crusades to reclaim the holy land to get rid of them. The Israelites didn't want them either so they started leaving the country at the time. The most civilized people for a time were actually the Arabs. They had gained a lot of knowledge from the Greeks and had many scientists who studied in places like Alexandria Egypt. I don't know what happened after that. The medieval Barbarians of Europe had lost most of the knowledge that Rome and Greece had provided at the time. The only knowledge they had was of making weapons and armor from Iron (which is pretty impressive I admit). They had to relearn things at a latter date. It's all kind of interesting to read about.
Mount and Blade
I know its not an MMO
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OP wants BAMs with interactiveness and terrain and armor that can play a role in the outcome.
That is what he claims he wants, but when presented with it, and notices that getting multiple people to coordinate something like that is very hard, they would complain and the game would go bust.
If you want a small taste of what something like that looks like, watch some Monster Hunter videos. Many of what you would find are 4 people that already know their skills finishing in 5-7 minutes, or 1 highly skilled individual doing all their jobs in 15-30 minutes (less for those overgeared).
What most people truly want is something different from what we have now. The world is ready for an MMORPG based on virtual reality with new methods of playing. Come on people... the iron is hot and it is ready to mold... STRIKE!
No,
I coded the Hardcore Ruleset for NWN1, I enjoy a game with consequences and risk vs reward.
Part of that is that combat should be dangerous, such that you don't jump into a fight just because its in front of you, but only because there is some gain worth the risk of death.
Its what made the Pen and Paper Rolemaster so nice, anyone could get in a lucky shot through that kink in your armor and poof, dead man walking. (the crit descriptions were hilarious).
That said, it has to have a death system like Eve, where dying is ok, it cant be about losing your stuff. You can get more stuff, it has to be about avoiding death because it hurts your otherwise.
That's the whole.
But in the interim, just having a combat system where taking an arrow to the knee means you aren't walking out of there right away without healing or a litter, etc, is what I would love to see.
Explorer 73% Achiever 53% Socializer 53% Killer 20%
well I am not sure such a game would go bust but it would be very niche. Mount and Blade is somewhat of an example of that.
Regarding VR...its coming..I think 2016 is the year it will be more widespread but I also think MMOs will be the last game type to implement it.
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the problem is the though that end game content HAS to be raiding, ie. large groups of people taking on a boss. This is BOOOOORRRRRIIIIINNNNNGGGGG.
Get rid of that type of content and just balance around small groups and you can tailor difficulty better and come up with more interesting fight mechanics. I blame wow squarely for the whole raiding mentality and nothing is worse than raids, absolutely nothing. I hate being 1 of 40 or 1 of 20 and MAYBE if i'm lucky getting a piece of loot after killing the same boss 30x while doing the exact same thing because there are 39 other people there as well so the boss fight always has to be a big AOE fight which limits the types of encounters you can make.
Give me a challenging boss fight for 4-6 people and make it interesting and just do away with raids.
the ENTIRE concept of 'end game' is faulty and misguided to its very core.
people should not be focused on getting to end game and developers should not be making it easy for them to get there.
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Or how about not having end game and you know you actually play the real game from the start not filler to get there.
The holy grail of course as far as gameplay is the experience you get with a live Dungeon Master (Game Master) and pen and paper adventures, but in a AAA graphical quality world with the game systems you love (for me, Rolemaster)
Barring that though, and back to the OP subject, Id just love a MMO with realistic combat. Eve is good, but I want a fantasy eve (and Pathfinder Online really isn't hitting the mark yet)
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I've never been a fan of big battles. I like the more personal stories of small groups and solo adventures, but I also like having everyone together in the same world instead of instanced off into small segments. Raids have always been a bit mind numbing to me. Sometimes you need a lot of strategy, but everything takes a lot of time and there is not much gained for the effort. It's not really an enjoyable experience for me. I guess other people like it though. Some people like the challenge of commanding a large group of people I guess.
I am thinking about Darkfall warfare at the moment. Large battles in that game was always a lot of fun however such large scale battles had something for everyone to do regardless of level and people who like to manage really had something to work on from day one.
I think a good game structure could make large scale battles something that is more of a choice and not something one has to wait for so called end game
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Agreed and disagreed at the same time.
I think Skyforge solo dungeons are a good example of where the devs went at it the wrong way. As you said it's just tedious to whack away at those bosses while you have little risk of dying.
But lowering the TTK significantly has a host of negative effects too. Especially when you get into PvP.
My main game is Planetside 2 atm, and the TTK when you're going up against an enemy zerg can be as low as a couple of hundreds of a second when mutliple dudes are focusing you. Even against a single opponent, more often than not the one who gets the jump will always win; as the TTK against solo players is still less than a second.
Honestly, though there's still skill evolved in positioning and approaching the enemy and having steady aim, it gets super tedious at times to get shredded faster than the blink of an eye.
So, while I'm definitely for dire consequences of being hit and for stronger and more challenging mobs. At the same time, combat in an MMORPG should still allow you the time to think it through, to devise some clever plans. It shouldn't ever enter into the realm of the modern FPS.
Finally, burst in PvP should always require a deft and clever set-up, it should never come up-front imo.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
If fights were as realistic as you make them out to be, fights wouldn't be fights. The world would be full of griefers. Here's what happens.
Player A walking through the woods.
Player B shoots player A with arrow.
Player A is so wounded that it's near impossible to fight back.
The only way to make it even remotely acceptable is if player A and B are both aware of each other without engaging. Otherwise, your fights are going to end very quickly, and it will happen quite often. And even if you get into a fight that seems fair. Here's what will happen.
Player A and B see each other and decide to engage.
Player A and B are both very skilled and are blocking, parrying, avoiding each others attacks.
Player C drops a hail of arrows on players A and B and both die or are too wounded to fight.
Let's be honest. You don't want realistic. You just don't want 5 minute long fights.
Gloria Victis - though it's in Pre-Alpha - already has this kind of combat without tab-targeting, milliards of buffs/skills icons on GUI or 5min lasting fights with simple mob. What's more interesting - although PVE (PVP too) fights are dynamic and quite short, they are challenging - few stupid mistakes or mindless spam attacks and you are dead. And, though it's in early stage of development to be honest, with very simple AI, higher level mobs and bosses are a challenge by themselves, even if they aren't much stronger than a player.
I'd suggest to check it's early access out (10 bucks, imo not much comparing to immersion and fun this game gave me) if you would forgive some bugs that occurs in early stage and you are not very affraid of their partial-loot - one of the best PVP looting systems I've seen so far, just enough to make risk vs reward but not scare casuals at all). They removed NDA some time ago so you can watch gameplays/streams.
Theoretically this type of system would be possible. You would just have to have less of a focus on equipment so that it's not that difficult to replace if you lose it. I don't think dying would be much of a detriment unless there was a big penalty for doing so. It sounds fairly realistic to me and that's likely how a bandit attack would progress.
With that in mind I wonder if there could be real banditry like someone who just wants your goods, but doesn't necessarily want to kill you. They are pointing and arrow at your back, but wound you first and then ask you for a toll or something of that nature. It would be a good mechanic for roleplaying possible.
Well, archers oneshotting / twoshotting people has kinda been tried. DAoC at release. I played scout back then, crazy times.
Unsurprisingly, people didn't like it, thus Bladeturn got added, archers saw several rounds of nerfs, etc.
Quick kills are very hard to balance in a way that PvP remains fun for all participants.