Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Variable and non-lethal Damage?
savarage
Member Posts: 17
Firstly will there be variable damage to enemies based on where you hit them and different effects on the enemies behaviour. An example of this would be the ever popular Head-shot which makes sense because most enemies keep their brains in their head so if you shot them there they recieve more fatal wounds. The problem is that most games don't go far enough with the concept, for example if in a game I shot someone in the knees they would just keep coming like their knees are made of steel (even when they are ordinary humans) this is annoying because you would figure that they would at least slow down if not fall to the floor only able to crawl useing their arms. So what i mean is will there be a reasonable effect on the npcs if you shoot them in places other than their head or chest.
Secondly can we please have non-lethal takedown methods when appropriate (i.e not against the undead, the highly magical, or colossal monsters). Now I know that mmo's and generally every other mainstream game in the world is about killing shit but sometimes I want to play a game and not feel like a rampaging pychotic sociopath that wants to kill every animate or inanimate object in existance. Thats one thing that always confused me you would figure a hero would at least care a little bit about life but no in every game the enemy is evil and must be destroyed. I've always felt that yes some enemies should be morally easy to kill (skeletons, zombies, evil robots) but in most games it not even the slightest moral blip to kill the guard thats is just doing his job. I feel that killing sentient entities even the truly insane super villian that kills and eats puppies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner should pose a moral sense of ethics too a hero but most of the time it's just: kill bad guy dead period no morals, no ethics not even a single thought that the hero might be more capable of justice than that.
Sorry for the rant it's just that I hate how games don't even let you have a choice to knock out your enemies or kill them all even in so called roleplaying games.
I'll end my post by saying that no matter if this game has non-lethal methods of dealing with enemies or not it still shows more potential than other games in its genre and i will happily wait for it because I know game designers can't a please everyone and it would even be a really bad idea for them to do so.
Comments
Unfortunately, the answer to the first part of your question will be as unsatisfying as a Oreo cookie without the filling. We aren't releasing detailed information on the combat system quite yet. So you'll have to wait to get your answer about 'targeting'.
However, that being said, I will try to give you a little more satisfying answer to the second question. You wanted to know about Non-lethal take downs. With Citadel of Sorcery being so heavily designed for in depth and interesting quests, and not just kill grinds, we HAD to have non-lethal take downs. These come in three varieties.
The first is that when an opponent gets down to a certain percentage of their remaining health they will be disabled. This means they are out of the fight on the ground, but conscious. They can still try to do something for themselves (like a healing potion, or certain types of magic healing) but... their active defense is gone (they still have passive or course, you know, their armor, etc.), and they can't do any offensive combat. If their opponent decides to finish them off there is not a lot they can do about it.
The second state is Unconscious. This happens when a opponent takes damage up to and beyond their remaining health. They are, of course, disabled, but in addition when unconscious they cannot do anything for themselves... and worse they are dying. The blow that did this can cause various types of ongoing damage and they will 'bleed out ' eventually. How fast depends on how much damage they took beyond their available health and this could be a few seconds to a bit longer, depending. There is an opportunity here for someone to heal them and stop them from dying. This can be done by their group members, or their opponents. If an opponent wants to capture them, then they can bind them and heal them enough to keep them from dying.
Third... there is the choice to Surrender. Before an opponent actually gets knocked unconscious ,or becomes disabled, they can choose to surrender. This is an obvious state, because they drop to their quivering knees. At that point their adversary can decide what they want to do... kill or accept the surrender.
It should be noted that fair is fair... so PCs can also be disabled, knocked unconscious, surrender and be bound.
There are times you're going to want to just kill your opponent, and you can. But it is critical to our game to have these non-lethal outcomes to combat available for the right circumstance. Since you are in a REAL story during a quest, and what you do next will change the course of the quest, you often need information. Questioning a defeated opponent is one of the best ways to get information, and yes, threats can often be employed. But be careful, information gained under duress is not always accurate, you'll have to decide. Is this bastard telling me the truth or only what I want to hear? Hmmm. The game play in CoS is about player decisions, judgment calls and following your 'gut'.
The idea of 'personal' property does seem to be missing in most MMO games. However, in CoS this is not true. In fact, we go even further. You cannot just walk into anyone's house without being invited, or you will suffer the consequences of your actions. Our NPCs live lives, have property, develop relationships with the player (good or bad). This is all part of the non-static world system we are creating, where time moves on, people (NPCs) live lives, have friends and family, go out to pubs, etc.
Players are not gods in our game, they are people, part of a complex society wth pecking orders, laws, police, jails, courts and lots and lots of bad guys. Certainly players are given a lot of leeway to do their own 'thing' in the world... but, unlike other games you may have played, you WORK for somebody. In Tier One your direct comander is Faceless, who is one of the 'Bondead', a lieutenant under the Sorcerer Shadowlord. Faceless is assigned as commander of the Fallen Heroes (which is what you are as a player). Therefore, you will sometimes get called in and assigned some task, duty, quest, mission, etc. Failure to follow orders has punishments, and Faceless is NOT a nice guy. He might even lend out your services to one of the other Bondead. You might have to do something for Whisperer, head of the Citadel Spy Corp. Or Cyclops, commander of the Citadel Infantry.
The point is, this is a world with a level of reality that includes personal possessions, punishments, commanders, jobs, and a full on war that is transpiring between the Citadel and Morphael. When you enter our world, expect something different.
First refer to my above post for the pre-requsite cheers.
Secondly I'm glad to see that your making effort to make a virtual world and not just a endless hunt kill game i can also see why it is takeing so long to create the game from what I can see your working off of the old engineer's dilemma do you want it fast, cheap, or high quality pick two and you seem to have chosen cheaper moneywise (or at least finacially flexible) and quality gameplay and design features at the cost of a long development time for which I'm glad of because if more companies followed that concept we would have better games in the long run.
Thank you for all your great communication I truely appreciate it.
CoS sounds so fucking great.....
What do you mean they have lives?? Shouldn't they stand forever in the same spot with a ! over there head?
Sounds fantastic, a bit more in depth and realistic akin to Fable and Fallout. I like this Faceless guy already. Speaking of realism (or lack thereof)... What of townsfolk and shopkeepers? I like in Fable that your hero is far tougher than anyone in town as it should be... that's why they are in town, not out heroing (is that word??). In other games shopkeepers provide a service to all players and some townsfolk are quest givers(another service). Therefore, they ALWAYS must be available to provide service and maintain the static nature of the world. What I'd like to see in CoS (like unto Fable) is that townsfolk are squishy and dynamic.
Example:
Bob the Baker runs a bakery that provides breads, pastries and bob's special apple pie (tastiest in the kingdom). MinMax teh Dork doesn't like Bob so he smites Bob. Bob falls to his knees to surrender, but MinMax finishes him off well before guards arrive. MinMax is arrested and pays fine/does community service.
Timmy PieLover returns to town later to find that Bob's Bakery has been closed. "NOOOOOO!!!" Timmy cries, swearing vengance on MinMax. Several days later the Bakery reopens, but Bob is gone and so are his pies. Unfortunately, the new owner Mrs. Lovet's meat pies are less than satisfactory.
I love your example, very amusing. The fact is that Citadel of Sorcery fully supports this type if NPC interaction... and more. There are, in fact, NO static NPCs that are required or stay in one place at all times. Let me give you an example, our stores close, the shop keepers go out to do the things all people must do when not at work. While the shops are closed PCs can't shop at those stores. (But... we do open up the Black Market in the Underworld during the opposite hours, so there is someplace to do business, if a bit shadier in nature).
NPCs have relationships with other NPCs, they go out for a drink together, get in arguments, get drunk, stop and chat, have family, pretty much anything you would expect in a real world situation.
In CoS there are no quest givers that give out a particular quest to each player who talks to them. You therefore cannot tell another player to go talk to the guy on the corner and he'll give you a quest to retrieve Maxwell's silver hammer. When you need a quest, the game knows it, and circumstances will lead you into a quest. This is part of the personal story system of the game. Your story is different than another players because of how the quest system looks at your past and present and creates the ongoing quest/mission/story that comes next in your adventure. Though again, don't read 'solo' when we say 'personal'. Anyone can group up with you and while grouped your personal quests merge and the split off again when you part.
Anyway, to conclude, NPCs lead their lives in the game, and you are part of those lives. Your interactions with them will impact both your lives as well.
The NPC A.I. net is one of the areas that is currently under heavy development. It's an exciting time in our NPC's lives
I'd love to be able to work on the AI! it sounds amazing. Unfortunately, dropping what I'm currently doing to go intern is probably not a good choice
Really the first thing that skipeth brought up is exactly in RE4, which is one reason i loved it so much, and as you can imagine i hear that an MMO will do this just puts me in awe.
but when i was reading about how the NPC's will have a heavy impact upon yourself, i thought "Hey, what if NPC's could go on quests with you!" take for expample that a travaling merchant is having trouble with bandits stealing all his goods, he hires you and you travel with him.
it could also work like this. A guy witnesses a crime done by this large orginization, and hire you, now you can do several differant things, you could
A: protect him in a secure area
B: have him ID the guy who did the crime
C: say its none of your bussiness (this of course would be a boring choice)
also i thought, what if every NPC had its likes, dislikes, prejeduce, and other things like that making them seem more human for example
Farmer Ned Likes watching duals, Dislikes Peaple that are Gruff or mean, and is Prejeduce against Gargoyles.
Hey Noobz haven't heard from you in awhile
I haven't played RE4, but in Fable 2, when you select an NPC it provides information on their personality. For example, both of my children were Aggressive, Childish and Evil. Oddly enough, when I returned to town one day, my wife had mysteriously died and no one had any info on cause of death...
Resident Evil 4 is a either or, either you love it or you hate it. I love that game because how the damage system works, say there is a Ganado (zombie like person) villiger holding an ax, you can make him drop the ax by shooting him in the arm. or make him fall on his face by shooting his ankles, they are also stuned by a shot to the face, and they writhe in pain for short period of time making it hard to hit them again. its a very entertaining game until you unlock everything then it gets kinda boring, BUT YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT. and im glad that someone missed me; one of the reasons that I stopped posting is I was getting tired of being ignored, but now i realize that im not so YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think your kids killed your Wife in Fable.
that was completely off topic of course i dont have anything to add on topic.
heh, That's what my wife(rl) said.
OK, I'm going to play devil's advocate here...
(but before I do, let me note that I like the idea of these NPCs who live their lives and don't stand around in one place all day)
...however, from a game play side, isn't it going to be rather difficult and confusing when I need to talk to a particular NPC and they have gone off somewhere? I mean, if they have a life, won't they be off doing things, which makes them hard to find? I think the reason that most games keep an NPC standing in the same place all day (and night, don't they get tired?) is that it makes it easier for a player to find them when necessary.
I guess from a gameplay perspective you get some. Static NPCs are the same as whack a mole no gameplay complexity or depth .... depends on what you like I guess.
The COS method requires some thought when developing the NPCs the other doesn't
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
This is indeed an issue that we had to resolve, but our goal is to bring the game world more to life, and to do that we had to make our NPCs act more like real people. So we developed a system to help you find things and people when you need to get there. Players will have a personal Dixie (a directional Pixie). When they are having trouble finding someone they needs to speak to, they can let their Dixie loose and then ask the Dixie to take them to the person or place they are seeking. Then it's just a matter of following your Dixie's magic dust trail. Don't worry, if you stop and want to do something else, the Dixie will just wait for you and even come back and show you the way from where you are now. And, you can always recall her and put her back in her container.
Now, it is important to note that Dixies can't take you everywhere. If you are out tracking a bad guy, you'll need to rely on your own tracking skills. The Dixies are really only for certain key NPCs and places in towns, villages and of course, the Citadel of Sorcery.