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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Lithose_sl said:
Generally, melee attacks happen in the area in front of the character. There is no hard "target". Attacks use various shapes such as: cones, rectangles, and spheres. You can optionally turn on or off a projected ground texture, if you want to visualize where your character is attacking.

I actually like this a lot more than simple FPS style targeting. If it's done like Dark Souls, where animations times, delays and all come into play--as well as range, "area" of swing and other considerations, it could make things very interesting. One of the biggest issues with games getting stale is that even in a "action" targeting game, what's best usually comes down to the numbers on the weapon vs a rock paper scissors number system vs armor or mobs (If there is even that). For example if you have a choice between a 300 damage 2.0 speed mace, and a 350 damage 2.0 speed sword; there is no question which is better, the sword is. (And rarely a game will say "Oh maces do X special effect so in this niche way they are better--and even then it often doesn't matter because you'll just take both and swap if you run into undead).

But in a game where things like length of the attack, animation "wind up" speed, "area of attack" all come into play; all the sudden the damage becomes asecondaryconsideration. This is especially true of equipment weight also affects things like dash cost and speed. Then, yes, the huge Halberd might do a ridiculous amount more "DPS" compared that rapier, but if it also makes you slow and vulnerable during a swing? It might only be useful conjoined with others who can support that kind of heavy hitter. If a long sword does more than a curved sword, but say the curved sword swings in a wider arc? It has a whole new dimension that might make it a superior weapon depending on a lot of variables.

Combined with an inventory system that presents real risk to taking "every weapon that might be useful" and it could be extremely interesting. Also, if they do have weight, combined with travel times, and maybe a supply system (Food/hunger ect, since they said they are adding survival aspects), then all those things can mix into making weapon selection an actual unique and interesting choice, rather than a "Moar DPS". Choosing a weapon that suits you and compliments a team is a lot more important when you can't just bring them all and swap between fights (Or during them). But on that note; I understand why MMO's have ditched weight, it can make things complex. But it's just one of those things that has the bad side effect of affecting other systems in a negative way.
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Mount and Blade has a combat system that uses a physics engine to calculate damage. In that if you hit someone at the start of your swing it's just a love tap. But if you hit them at the end of your swing while riding a horse at full speed you do massive damage.

My concern with taking this to an MMO scale is I don't have much confidence in a network engine handling it properly without latency. Set amounts of damage and targeted abilities are easy. Having AE with reasonably sized areas is fine for a player. Having a conal AE with a small area could be very frustrating.
 
Khane

Khane

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Tuco_sl said:
Mount and Blade has a combat system that uses a physics engine to calculate damage. In that if you hit someone at the start of your swing it's just a love tap. But if you hit them at the end of your swing while riding a horse at full speed you do massive damage.

My concern with taking this to an MMO scale is I don't have much confidence in a network engine handling it properly without latency. Set amounts of damage and targeted abilities are easy. Having AE with reasonably sized areas is fine for a player. Having a conal AE with a small area could be very frustrating.
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What if I wanted to use my club to throw someone to the ground instead of bludgeoning them? WHAT THEN TUCO?!?! WHERE IS MY REALISM?!?!
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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All games should just import the entirety of the latest UFC game!

I used to think a super-real MMO sword combat game would be interesting, but after putting in thousands of hours into M&B in addition to all the MMOs I think it'd end up being a clusterfuck.
 
Denaut

Denaut

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There are two major, mostly unsolvable, issues with doing a truly large scale M&B style game. The server itself is a theoretically solvable problem as you can scale and throw hardware at it but two things a developer can't fix are 1) c (speed of light), and 2) N^2 or to put it differently network latency and network traffic.

Even if we had perfect direct connections with perfect optical fiber there will still be subtly noticeable differences in what you see and what the server sees, even with really good prediction. This means that online action games (with untrusted clients) will always be inferior to client driven ones.

Beyond network latency (the delay) there is also network TRAFFIC, that is the amount of information you are moving between the server and the clients in a given amount of time. Because every action every players does must be communicated to the server and to everyone else (through the server) each person added to a "play area" (that is an area where players are able to interact with one another) increases the amount of traffic geometrically.

This is a major problem, especially for action games, because one solution for relieving network traffic is to slow things down so that there are fewer actions per second to transmit, but by definition an action game has many actions per second happening... which means you can handle fewer people. If it is an MMORPG and it is action based you end up having to make hard choices about just how much action you have OR just how many people can interact at the same time. Move one way and the game isn't "action", move the other and you risk not being an MMO in the more traditional sense.

I say good luck to them, and I personally hop they can pull it off, but until someone demonstrates some ingenious solution to some very fundamental problems I'll remain relatively skeptical of lofty claims.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

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Vitality_sl said:
Skills are capped at rank 5 in eve, not sure what point you're trying to get across.
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I understood his comment as refering to skill point totals, not the individual skills. Simply because his comparison makes it sound like starting EVE a while after release is a huge penalty, which doesnt make sense if he meant how hard it is to max med pulse lasers. On the other hand total skill points of veteran players vs newbies is a regular (baseless) whine on forums. I might be wrong with my take on his statement though.
 
Vitality

Vitality

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Mr Creed_sl said:
I understood his comment as refering to skill point totals, not the individual skills. Simply because his comparison makes it sound like starting EVE a while after release is a huge penalty, which doesnt make sense if he meant how hard it is to max med pulse lasers. On the other hand total skill points of veteran players vs newbies is a regular (baseless) whine on forums. I might be wrong with my take on his statement though.
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Solution here is to probably make scaling time-based skill points heavily underweighted in comparison to player skill on the field.

So not gating large build enabling skills behind time-locks is a good start.

The idea that EVE did it right isn't particularly correct with this model because even they are tweaking the system by making the skill queue non time capped. (infinite queue)

This is a tough one to mull over for me. I don't really like EVE's system at all. I'm not a fan of spamming fireball in the air to level lesser magic either.

I am a fan of gaining general allocatable skill points via pvp though in some fashion.

Infact I'd prefer this game to just adopt the DAOC RR system and call it a day.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
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Skill queue changes are new-fag stuff anyway, the real obstacles like front-loading 5mill of learning skills being the efficient long run choice really cramped a new player that wanted to optimize their advancement. That's long gone, as are characters crippled by odd stat allocation you couldnt even completely influence. That said, the core idea of the EVE skill system is great imo. Making these passive skill points into only one half and the other half being obtained through play is even better: If they can find a nice balance that is, but discussion on how they fucked up skill ratios and the like will have to wait a year or two. The core idea is sound and that's all we can go by for now.
 
Eidal

Eidal

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Draegan_sl said:
Animation lock is necessary for any decent combat system.
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I wouldn't call it necessary; its entirely possible that someone engineers something sensible without animation lock. That being said, I expected to hate Tera's lock system and found myself really liking it. As you/Lithose put it, it lends strategic depth instead of smashing keyboard as fast as possible to keep up a rotation.
 
E

etchazz

Trakanon Raider
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Denaut_sl said:
There are two major, mostly unsolvable, issues with doing a truly large scale M&B style game. The server itself is a theoretically solvable problem as you can scale and throw hardware at it but two things a developer can't fix are 1) c (speed of light), and 2) N^2 or to put it differently network latency and network traffic.

Even if we had perfect direct connections with perfect optical fiber there will still be subtly noticeable differences in what you see and what the server sees, even with really good prediction. This means that online action games (with untrusted clients) will always be inferior to client driven ones.

Beyond network latency (the delay) there is also network TRAFFIC, that is the amount of information you are moving between the server and the clients in a given amount of time. Because every action every players does must be communicated to the server and to everyone else (through the server) each person added to a "play area" (that is an area where players are able to interact with one another) increases the amount of traffic geometrically.

This is a major problem, especially for action games, because one solution for relieving network traffic is to slow things down so that there are fewer actions per second to transmit, but by definition an action game has many actions per second happening... which means you can handle fewer people. If it is an MMORPG and it is action based you end up having to make hard choices about just how much action you have OR just how many people can interact at the same time. Move one way and the game isn't "action", move the other and you risk not being an MMO in the more traditional sense.

I say good luck to them, and I personally hop they can pull it off, but until someone demonstrates some ingenious solution to some very fundamental problems I'll remain relatively skeptical of lofty claims.
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Valid points. And this game is probably going to be made for a few million dollars; not the hundred million dollar mark that most AAA MMO's take to make. Granted, you can cut costs down significantly without all the bloat, but it's still going to be hard for them to resolve all these issues on a tight budget. I wish them all the best.
 
Lithose

Lithose

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Draegan_sl said:
Instead of firing off the most efficient rotation of abilities regardless of anything else, animation lock forces you to consider positions, speed, timing and aim. If the game is well made, then this is also balanced. Going into a game like that expecting to spam your highest damage ability all day long is silly.
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Yeah, the more I played MMO's the more I realize that it's just such a massive weakness if you're able to figure everything out on a spread sheet. And while, for example, WoW's gear puzzle can be fairly complex, in the end the there is no debate about "what's best"--you can prove it through calculations. (In terms of gear, classes themselves changed drastically in specific environments because movement vs ability cool downs, cast times and resources--why it was funny in the first few wow Xpacs the biggest form of "strategy" in WoW was not individual changing gear load outs, but raid leaders changing raid load outs, heh). But in terms of gear, this always ended up making WoW such a linear grind for gear that it kind of sucked.

I love games where your entire build can change just because you found a specific piece; and while games like Diablo try to accomplish that by having pieces play off skills. It's far more satisfying when the reason behind specific items being "game changers" is due to a mixture of available skills, environmental factors and group conditions. Having animation lock, as well as a resultant penalty for swinging in a bad position, or a poor time, based on weapon and armor choices? Creates a whole slew of meta gameplay that just naturally evolves as combat/environmental conditions change (As well as strategies dealing with those combos). But yeah, long and short, the more variables you have that dynamically change with the world--the more immersive the game is going to feel.

Draegan_sl said:
Lithose, I think they stole our design docs.
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hah, when I saw their multi-world design, the survival elements and more complex spell/weapon interaction, I was thinking this. It's certainly gotten me excited to see the game, I just hope the tech is there to pull it off.
 
Lithose

Lithose

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Tuco_sl said:
Mount and Blade has a combat system that uses a physics engine to calculate damage. In that if you hit someone at the start of your swing it's just a love tap. But if you hit them at the end of your swing while riding a horse at full speed you do massive damage.

My concern with taking this to an MMO scale is I don't have much confidence in a network engine handling it properly without latency. Set amounts of damage and targeted abilities are easy. Having AE with reasonably sized areas is fine for a player. Having a conal AE with a small area could be very frustrating.
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Yeah, MB is a good example; but your right, I don't think that could be done in an MMO. However, I think a less complex system of attacks having consequence tied to them, beyond just resource usage, could be done. Right now, the only thing that really governs attacks in most MMO's is resource costs, and cool downs. Even if they added things like vulnerability windows, locking; and variable attack "boxes" for different weapons (As well as these things being affected by armor types/encumbrance of armor)? I think you'd see a huge increase in how "weighty" (Figuratively) combat feels. But it's going to be difficult to pull of, as others have said, it's a fine line to walk between actions feeling like they have consequence, and feeling sluggish.

Still, would love to see more than just either Tab Target vs FPS style combat. Even if they don't go full M/B, something like DS even feels much better, in my opinion.
 
Big Flex

Big Flex

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JTodd responding to people freaking out over no trinity

Bear in mind we're well aware what worked and didn't work with other games. I know its only natural that the first thing to do is panic and assume it will be like GW2 but as we get to show you more I think you'll see the difference and that not all is lost.

Heck, I primarily play the support role in mmos.
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So yeah.

rrr_img_89269.jpg
 
G

gogojira_sl

shitlord
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Flashback to EQN combat doc. Nobody wants to do trinity, and nobody wants to be compared to GW2. "While we can't go into details yet, we won't be as disgusting shitty shit as that gross Guild Wars 2 shit is." ArenaNet gettin' all sad in the corner.
 
Big Flex

Big Flex

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gogojira_sl said:
Flashback to EQN combat doc. Nobody wants to do trinity, and nobody wants to be compared to GW2. "While we can't go into details yet, we won't be as disgusting shitty shit as that gross Guild Wars 2 shit is." ArenaNet gettin' all sad in the corner.
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Exactly what I thought.
 
Teekey

Teekey

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I fully understand the concern over lack of Trinity in a game with PvE, but it doesn't seem like nearly as big of an issue in a strictly PvP game.


There's some speculation that the multiple worlds are going to be time limited psuedo-Battlegrounds. Still so much we don't know, but the Export conditions of Win, Kneel, and Lose indicate there's some sort of structured battle.
 
Big Flex

Big Flex

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Teekey_sl said:
I fully understand the concern over lack of Trinity in a game with PvE, but it doesn't seem like nearly as big of an issue in a strictly PvP game.


There's some speculation that the multiple worlds are going to be time limited psuedo-Battlegrounds. Still so much we don't know, but the Export conditions of Win, Kneel, and Lose indicate there's some sort of structured battle.
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I agree that a lack of healers, the trinity dynamic, etc is much less important in a PvP-centric title than a PvE one. Do I wish EQN had the trinity? Sure. But frankly, due to the testimonials of WAR players I'm glad they're going this route in CF.

Trying to siege a keep in a game with collision and people stacking tanks in a narrow hallway isn't an environment where I want healers dumping CHeals through the roof. I imagine we'll see some support classes with smaller HOT or regen buffs though.
 
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