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The combat system?, idea's/thoughts (Long post).
Stiler
Member Posts: 599
Sorry if this has been talked about, I searched for "combat" and it came up with 0 results.
I am wondering what the combat system is intended to be in CU? Is it going to stick with the usual mmo style hotkey system or something new?
I have played most mmo's, starting out from UO, to EQ, AC, DAOC and more recent ones a la Tera/TSW. When it comes to pvp in traditional mmo's, especially those that are level based (I'm not sure which CU is, Mark Mentions how you level up doing things, which sounds a heck of a lot like a UO style skill system, but he says it isn't a skill system...) PVP generally boils down to "who's played longer wins" and this isn't that fun. Just because a player is higher level shouldn't give them an "I win" button. Combat should be challenging at all levels or skills imo, if people are to focus solely on it then one would imagine a player skill focused combat system would fit it a lot beter.
There have been a few systems that have worked around this a bit, such as the "tier" system (which was in both Warhammer online as well as Guild Wars 2). Which bascially brings a players level up to an average for the battleground or area they are in for pvp, though they do not get any of the higher skills which you get by normally leveling to that level. This allows for both new and higher level players to be on a similar playing field, but still not as good as a skill based combat system to me.
Apart from this, shouldn't combat simply be......fun?
In all of my years playing mmo's, I have never once heard someone say, "I enjoy playing this game because of the exciting and fun combat system." Most people play mmo's (at least from my experience) because of their friends playing,t he sense of community, the raids, the "loot/gear grind" and other reasons.
The usual mmo combat boils down to hitting hotkeys, over, and over, and over, in the same order, again and again. Once you play a bit you learn the best/highest dps order for your skills and generally just do the same formula of hotkey pressing. It takes little skill and in the end feels very repetitive and monotonus.
So I wonder, why don't mmo's try to think out of the "mmo box?" Why have they not really tried something different for mmo combat? I know a few have in some smaller ways (Tera/GW2 still both focus on the hotkey style of combat though) but nothing big has really changed.
AS a gamer I have also played many good action-adventure games throughout my life. From classics like Die By the Sword, Rune, the Jedi Knight games and newer games like Mount and Blade, which mixes both real-time skill based combat with rpg elements. I also played a very little known gem of a game called Severance (aka Blade of Darkness), which to this day has imo the BEST melee combat system of any game, even compared to the others I mentioned.
I wonder why mmo's can not have combat similar? Is it not possible? Does no one think it can work? I know if there was an mmo with combat as fun and skill focused as that, where the actual "playing" of the game was the point and fun o it, I'd be there playing it.
Comments
This is a bit of a double edged sword, and can lead to the "Trinity" class foucs which leads to pigeon holing people.
On one hand you do want class diversity, different playstyles, etc. Variety is important, classes need to "feel" different and unique.
On The other hand, do you want people of a class to be viable at only that specific thing? (IE healbots that heal and watch lifebars without doing a lot of combat, Tanks that do little to no dmg and buff people, etc, dps that do massive dmg but can't defend themselves from a faint wind killing them).
i find most of what you described way more interesting than everyone complaining about class balance. certain classes should excel at certain things (healing, cc, dmg, buff/debuff, etc.). in recent games it seems a lot of spells and mechanics are the same for many classes. the developers just use a different skin and call the spell something else. people calling out for "balance" helped lead WoW down the path of cookie cutter classes and took a lot of choice away from people. "why do mages do so much dps? nerf mage buff shadow priest" (not a perfect example.)
i also think that focusing more on class roles and less on balance will help bring back the mmo part of games. if you want to play support and cc while healing a little bit, you'd better find someone that kill things. you shouldn't be able to do it all.
I always thought devs were really lazy with class design / customization in mmorpgs and hoping CU will improve on that. Some inspiration could be taken from mobas.
I always liked the idea of having many masteries (Fire, Earth, Holy, Might, Nature, Alchemy etc.) and you could combine 2 of them to create your own class, your own playstyle. Each mastery comes with strengths and weaknesses, and they all have counters. Kind of Magic the Gathering i've heard. Lets say you could chose 6 Mastery Skills total (each Mastery could have more skills to chose from tho).
You could further combine this with all masteries being able to equip all weapons and armor (and belonging skills). Of course different weapons would have strenghts and weaknesses (like crossbow & spears strong vs heavy armorer, but weaker against light armor). Again counters. Maybe you could equip a maximum of 2-3 weapon skills.
This together with strong passive skills that really lets you define your character; what you wanna be good at, but also what you might not be as good at. On the battlefield you would carefully have to chose your targets and who to really stay away from.
I also always loved the idea of housing being a part of your character progression, sort of like your own training grounds. You could see what requirements there are for certain weapon skill / passives, gain building options when you gain a new skill / passive etc.
This also gives a nice mix of replayability / staying with one character at the time. Since you can gain all weapon skills / passives with any mix of masteries you could experiment for a long time with one character (gaining all weapon skills / passives would take a loooong time). But if you wanted to try a new mix of Masteries you would have to reroll.
Crafting skills could be accountwide.
Give me traditional combat with half normal classes abilities, every game that has tried something modern has sucked or is incredibly clunky, so pass on that shit.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
There hasn't been a single mmo (that I know of) outside the free vindicitus and Planetside that have went for anything REMOTELY modern as far as real time player controllered combat.
GW2 was no where near that, Tera's was part of the way (in terms of being able to dodge attacks), but there realy hasn't been a big full-action based system in a game.
I mean look at a game like Mount and Blade, they have melee combat, range combat, MOUNTED combat, and can have 200+ people in a single server and it works great. The melee combat isnt that good imo (would much prefer if it was like Severance's) but it's still 10x better then your usual hotkey spamming.
GW2 was no where near that, Tera's was part of the way (in terms of being able to dodge attacks), but there realy hasn't been a big full-action based system in a game.
I mean look at a game like Mount and Blade, they have melee combat, range combat, MOUNTED combat, and can have 200+ people in a single server and it works great. The melee combat isnt that good imo (would much prefer if it was like Severance's) but it's still 10x better then your usual hotkey spamming.
feel free to call me on this, but im pretty sure Darkfall did, dragons nest is about as actiony as vindicus, probably moreso. id take WAR's combat over all of them and PlanetSides 2.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
I don't mean to imply that you are not telling the truth, but from those two paragraphs it doesn't look like you played DAoC at a high level ( I mean player skill, not character level). The PVP combat system was amazing, nothing released sence has even come close to capturing how dynamic the system was. No other game has come close to makeing my heart race and hand shake like DAoC did. Sure, spamming 1111111 for a melee style isn't exciting in and of itself, but add 8 man groups, interupts, CC, pain trains, bodygaurd, kiting, extending, and positioning and the game was far from boring. I'm quite certain I could create a few one hour lectures alone on proper character positioning during combat, to say nothing of the host of other tactics good groups employed. To call DAoC combat simple, and equate it to just spamming the same button over and over and over again, is to just examine the most superficial aspects of its combat system.
As for gear grinds, no one in DAoC played the game for that reason. It was generally hated and thankfully drastically scaled back as time went on. I suspect that CU will follow a similar approach. But the best part was you didn't need uber gear to pwn face, you just needed good teammates.
I don't mean to imply that you are not telling the truth, but from those two paragraphs it doesn't look like you played DAoC at a high level ( I mean player skill, not character level). The PVP combat system was amazing, nothing released sence has even come close to capturing how dynamic the system was. No other game has come close to makeing my heart race and hand shake like DAoC did. Sure, spamming 1111111 for a melee style isn't exciting in and of itself, but add 8 man groups, interupts, CC, pain trains, bodygaurd, kiting, extending, and positioning and the game was far from boring. I'm quite certain I could create a few one hour lectures alone on proper character positioning during combat, to say nothing of the host of other tactics good groups employed. To call DAoC combat simple, and equate it to just spamming the same button over and over and over again, is to just examine the most superficial aspects of its combat system.
As for gear grinds, no one in DAoC played the game for that reason. It was generally hated and thankfully drastically scaled back as time went on. I suspect that CU will follow a similar approach. But the best part was you didn't need uber gear to pwn face, you just needed good teammates.
Yea i dont think and of the traditional targeting MMO;s iv played have been just as simple as learn your rotation and win, all to play at the highest level require something atittle more than knowing the best DPS rotation...These game require you to know all the abilties and then know your best abilities to counter them, at the right time, what to do when you face a certain class or group makeup and sooo many more strategies, tactics and how to communicate as a group.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
YesI understand tactics change in pvp, but combat in of itelf still is fairly simple apart from knowing what button to press to counter "x" ability vs who you fight.
As far as CC, in my opinion, and I know this isn't univerally shared, I'd say get rid of cc/roots completely.
The whole idea of rooting/stunning people and attacking peopel that have 0 way to defend themselves while cc'd just completely goes against skill imo.
I don't not have any sense of "fun" when fighting vs someone when I can simply stunlock them and do massive dps while they just simply stand there, unable to defend in any way.
Just not a fan of any cc in many mmo's, that's also a bane of getting in Range vs Melee characters and balance issues.
Mount and Blade handled it fine imo as far as combat goes with range vs melee, both are extremely deadly, but range takes aiming and skill, landing those perfect headshots from a bow took skill and when you did hit someone charging at you it provided a sense of accomplishment seldom found in mmo style range combat, where range players generally have some form of "cc" to counter melee's rushing at them.
All in all this is why I wish the combat would move toward an "Aciton" game and less o an mmo. In Action games DEFENSE is important. Knowing how to dodge (or block) and knowing what your opponent is doing are keys. This eliminates the need for all of this "cc" you generally find in mmorpg combat systems, because there's no magical homing missles, people have to actually aim, an dyou have to pay attention to what enemies are doing, try to read their movements and skills to know when to dodge or block.
This is something that made the combat in Severance so much fun (melee combat at least). You could not win by "button mashing," you HAD to know how to defend yourself, either through dodging (sidestepping attacks, etc) or blocking with a shield (which could get damaged/broke). Reading your enemies attacks was important to surviving and winning combat, and your enemies could do it as well.
The offense portin of combat in Severance was a lot more in-depth then most melee action games, it wasn't a simple "attack left/right/up/down" system or such, but more akin to a fighting game, you had a LOT of different moves that were dependent on both your weapon and the character you were playing (there were 4 different playable characters, each that had specific weapons they were better with). Once you picked up new weapons they opened up different combat moves. This meant that using weapons each had their own strategies to learn and use.
That's the kind of "depth" I would like to see in CU, depth that is more foused on both skill and the sheer fun of combat, rather then going toward traditional mmo tropes.