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Real-time combat vs. semi-turn-based ( w/auto attack)
joeballs
Member UncommonPosts: 163
IMO, after playing the newer games with real-time combat, it doesn't feel like I'm playing an mmo. For years I've heard people complaining that click and auto-attack sucks and that they want real-time combat so that it's more realistic. But guess what, it's not more realistic. It feels like an arcade game, and after 4 -5 sets of mobs, buttom mashing your mouse to death, it's not very ergonomically pleasing.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm happy with semi-turn-based, being able to strategically plan your next move, and then watching it unfold. IMO, I feel that to be more realistic than button mashing. Think about a real-life battle. You're not flailing repeatedly without any thought. You and your enemy size each other up in between each and every move. That, to me, is strategy, and semi-real-time. It just feels more natural.
Who knows, maybe there will be an implementation that feels more natural and life like. But clicking the mouse button 500 times during a battle makes no sense to me at all.
My 2 cents.
Comments
Well, we each have our own opinions and likes. There really are some people who prefer battles which look as realistic as possible. You, on the other hand, prefer the middle ground or the semi-turn based system that you are referring to. Even I, have my own opinion since I prefer the other extreme, which is the turn-based system. Atlantica Online, the MMORPG that dragged me into the industry, was my first love because it resembles the turn based system of classic RPGs in consoles like Playstation which I loved.
So really, it's just a matter of preference.
Played: Runescape, Adventure Quest
Currently playing: Aika Global, Atlantica Online
Waiting for: Cardmon Hero, Dynasty Warriors Online
I'd even go for turn-based over button mashing.
Like I said, real-time is so extreme; it doesn't feel anything close to "real" to me. It's just the opposite.
I just love both.. honestly i'm into real time game before and back to final fantasy which i enjoy much... ofcourse all depends on each person's preference....
The problem with real-time combat is that it tends to clash with the repetitive nature of the handful of MMORPGs that have since implemented it. I'm not saying real-time combat couldn't work in an MMORPG environment, but I am saying that it would require a reinvisionment of the way MMORPGs are played.
I suppose if I used a gamepad it would be much more fun. But still, I'm not looking for arcade like action from an mmo. I've got Fighting games for that.
I agree 100%. I think by just adding real-time combat and leaving everything else the same is part of the problem. Maybe if they changed the way mobs respond to attacks and vice versa. The problem I'm finding is that I'm clicking my darm mouse button hundreds of time for one group of mobs, then another group, then another.
My mouse click finger is becoming buff.
I agree, I think fast paced gameplay kind of takes away from the strategy involved in playing a semi-turn based mmo. It's a cool feel though because sometimes the faster pace is a breathe of fresh air. I think Tera's going to do a terrific job with the fast paced style/mmo feel but we'll see how that turns out.
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
On the opposite end, I love real time combat. I will always love Star Ocean's combat more than Final Fantasy's combat. Secret of Evermore, and Grandia style combat is also fine. I find turn based to be a snooze fest.
People can call it button masher. But if you're mashin, you're not going to get very far. Placement and timing are just a lot more important in real time combat. I love the fact that skill can triumph over stats even when stats are important.
Real time combat is the way I lean.
Actually, I have to say that turn based combat or semi turn based combat works finewhen limited to games where movement is also limited such as a grid system. In those cases, moving and attacking can be worked in to a neat package of strategic thinking where the one who wins is the one who uses what he has the most effectively.
Now, obviously, I say that I like real time more, and that is simply because I like games with a more open sense of movement (WASD vs. P&C). It is also much faster paced, which is great for me because of my desire for the game to take up my attention as opposed to being something I can easily do while watching TV or something...
Also...The game I am currently most looking forward to, GW2, has this real time combat. It has an optional auto-cast instead of an auto attack, as well as a huge focus on positioning and strategic teamwork with those around you. What is your opinion on the strategic and streamlined combat of GW2?
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I dunno. Autoattacks are rather boring and I don't think that the semi turnbased system we had since M59 in 1996 is the best way you can handle things.
On the other hand do twitched based combat take out some of the strategy out of gaming and easily becomes a clickfeast,
The problem with the common MMO system is that you always use the same attack keys and combat gets rather boring and repetetive. There is no feedback from neither what you or your opponent did last. If the semi turn based system are to work the alternatives will have to change depending on the situation, and you need to think what alternative is the most tactical, you can't just click your fast keys in the same order every combat.
Guildwars 2 seems to mix both types of combat, that might or might not work but I have to admit that those thief videos looked a lot more exciting than any other MMO combat I seen, even if the question still remain how fun it really will be.
There is the possibility of adding something similar to the Wii controller to the games as well, with good collection detection that might actually work but the question is if it wouldn't be too much for a long game as a MMO.
Anyways, either alternatives as they are right now isn't a good option for me at least. The classic combat mechanics have been the same for 15 years, I am sick and tired of them and they just isn't as tactical as they should be. I don't mind a few games that mixes FPS games and MMOs but I don't want all games like that, it just works for some settings, for others it is even worse than the classic system.
I haven't played the game yet, so I couldn't tell ya. Hopefully they improve on what I've seen for real-time combat (RTC). I think that some of the stuff that you mentioned will be an improvement.
What would you say about a slower paced game with real-time combat? I think that if you had several types of defense systems rather than mostly offense, it might make things more interesting.
Take this and slow it down to the point where any player can control the moves. Probably with a touchscreen system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAxi38FE8xo
That's what I'd like to see. Where there are characters in combat, there's a slow motion field. As you approach combat, you begin to slow down. By the time you reach combat, you're at the same speed as the combat. The speed of combat, the range of slowdown and such are all subject to tuning. If you can conceive of an implementation of this that has a glaring flaw, then that's not how I'd approach it.
For those interested in the player skill version, you'd have very simple building blocks of character abilities that you'd combine in any way that you choose to fight an opponent.
For those interested in the character skill version, there would be standard moves that characters could 'learn' and then players would chain those moves. If you don't have a certain move, you improvise with what you do have.
The hybrid is to give basic skills to the characters, and then let player skill determine how those moves are applied. For example, the character may have the One Hand Overhead Strike ability, but the player would determine the plane and strength of that strike. The player could use one character skill to strike the head, shoulders, left or right arm. Or to part a rope (sword), smash an object (mace), hit someone over the head in a bar fight (bottle) or whatever.
This would require something like the Euphoria engine applied to an MMO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae3fgj2x1aI
Someday...
Could we maybe agree that you meant to say "like I'm playing an RPG" there? The acronym MMO doesn't indicate any specifics towards combat mechanics. Strictly speaking, RPG doesn't either, but at least there's a connection with that genres history and development.
I think the semi-turn-based systems we're seeing now are leaning too much to real-time systems. As such they're losing what makes them diffirent.
I'd like to see a semi-turn-based system that starts borrowing from some of the older real turn-based systems.
For example a semi-turn-based card system. Each character collects a deck of cards that represent all his learned abilities. He's got a hand of several cards that represent the abilities he's thinking of right now. You'd have several resources like stamina, mana and concentration. Each card costs some of these resources which regenerate slowly over time and can have a lot of diffirent effects. It could raise another resource, damage the enemy, heal yourself, increase the regeneration of a resource for a limited amount of time, drain an enemy's resources, cause the enemy to loose his entire hand etc. The possibilities are near endless. When you play a card you draw a new one. You can play one card every 2 or so seconds.
A player would start off with 10 or so cards. Each card has a limit on the amount of times it can appear in your deck. The starter cards would all be able to appear a few times so you can fill an entire deck at the start. Later cards could only appear once or maybe twice in your deck.
In the mean-time your character should probably auto-attack so that you're still doing something if you've got a hand full of high-resource cards and your resources are empty but the real focus would always be on the cards. And each battle would be diffirent as you'll never know which cards you're going to draw.
Plus you'd get interesting tactics like using weaker cards on weaker mobs so that you can keep strong cards in your hand and save them for stronger mobs. But at a certain moment your hand would be full of strong cards and you'd be forced to start playing them. Hard combats could suddenly turn a bit easier if you get a few very good cards. Weak combats could become a lot more interesting by a streak of weaker cards.
The game would of course have to have a lot slower combat then we're seeing now. Getting 3 weak cards in a row and losing because of that isn't any fun. But if combats lasts longer then such things could be countered by smart play.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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I can completely see your side of the coin with real time combat. However, still with auto attack I get the same button smashing and spamming abilities when I played Wow. Making combat fast paced to ensure button smashing is not the way to go. I think combat pace should be medium or slower to have real time combat. I can see the good and the bad with auto attack, but with the combat mechanics I have in mind, auto attack wouldn't work well. And it is real time combat without button smashing persay..
I play both types and enjoy them, but if I had to choose, I'd choose real-time combat. I think it sucks you in more than sitting back and pressing buttons with slow reaction times.
The OP brought up a real fight and likened it to strategy, but thats not really the case. While you do size up the other person, and you do decide on a strategy to win.. you aren't hitting them pound for pound. "You hit me, then I'll hit you, then you hit me." There are a lot more factors that go into it, and if fighting were a game (not..like a fighting game, or boxing... or.. like.. fighting games..) , it would play more like a real-time one than a turn based, or semi-turn based.
As much as I love a time delay from pressing the button to what my character might do next, I love even more to see an enemy, attack it in real-time, and make changes on the fly as the battle unfolds. I'm pretty good at quick thinking, and keypresses, regardless of platform, and, especially in PvP, it plays to my strengths. I like turn based games too, but I rarely if ever PvP in a turn based system. Mostly, the turn based combat is based too heavily on time-spent and long term goals, whereas real-time combat plays to the players skill and knowledge of technique. Thats why DCUO and PSU were some of my favorite games (especially DCUO when exploits weren't so prevalent). I could be level 15 and fight someone twice my level and win. In a turn based game, you usually know up front whether or not you have a chance in battle, whether its levels, gear, class, it takes away all the mystery of the game, and that in itself is no good.
The games I'm most looking forward to are SWTOR (because it has active blocking, cover, and hybridization meaning any class has a good chance of fighting and winning against any other class depending on the skill of the player) GW2 (for obvious reasons in the combat department) TERA ( like PSU in a larger open world) and TSW (again, more real-time than turn based).
I'm all for the combat system of Guild Wars 2, which steers clear from the static, predictable, auto-attack of most MMOs, whilst not becoming a click fest like the newer action orientated MMOs (e.g. DCUO). It puts a lot more thought into what skills you should use and where, rather than what skill rotation should be used. Also a lot more focus is on the actual movement of your character and that movement & positioning actually matters (e.g. dodging).
So yeah, it will be interesting to see what kind of PvP community such a game will foster.
real time combat is not extreme, its just more suitable for console gaming... real time combat is the main reason i wouldnt sub for an mmo like DCUO, TERA, and other games like those..... for a computer mmo i go for turn based (atlantica online) or standard mmo combat (target + skill, w/ auto attack) unless a company comes up with a new and better combat system taht is NOT real time combat... i have a 360, psp, and ps2 to play realtime combat games... and some pc mmofps also.... i dont really need mmorpgs with real time combat, it just kill the mmorpg feel from the genre. Therefore, killing my personal fun time
This...
This is what happned with SWG NGE vs SWG pre-NGE.
Pre-NGE SWG had many factors to take into account when engaged in either PvE or PvP combat. These would be various damage types effecting different health pools (pre-NGE had what is know as the HAM - which stands for health, action and mind). Some armors and some creatures were immune / impervious to different damage typpe.
Also, you had different ways to apply the damage (bleeds, stuns, dizzy, knockdown, posture change, poison etc...)
The above mentioned damage applications and damage types / resistances were all coordinated via a turn based and macroable combat chat box known as the combat queue.
Combined with healing and TEF (temporary enemy flag), combat was in depth and interesting.
Change that with the NGE twitch style / FPS like combat style and the combat aspect of SWG became un-interesting.. they went from 7-9 damage types to two.... Buffs are now the "interesting" and controversial part of PvE and PvP combat... ala WOW.
Pathetic.
Sorry... my Bias is overwhelimg sometimes.
there is hope (:
RPGs tend to do better with a plodding combat pace where you don't need much twitch skill and strategy/tactics are rewarded (but not necessarily that a lack of tactics is penalized -- you would simply advance slower.)
The trick is that Action RPGs can be viewed in a similarly positive light: they're action games which tend to do better when RPG elements are added to the mix (because even twitch gamers enjoy permanent progression.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I'm sure a lot of people here know of Mount & Blade, right? If not, just about everyone in this thread should give that game a try. A lot of devs since AoC have claimed it as their inspiration... but they've only scratched the surface. It goes beyond manual swinging and aiming.
What a system like this would need is a complete scale-down of the numbers. Instead of having hundreds, or thousands of HP's, NPCs, mobs and Players should only have a fraction of that. Weapon damange should be scaled down, but not by as much. Armor should also have a noticeable effect in the protection it provides to certain areas.
In that game, it's rare to see a cahracter with over 60 HPs. Weapons vs. a naked target do 30-40 points of damage depending on other stats. Do the math and it may only take 1 or 2 hits to drop an opponent. As you increase skill and armor, that number goes up by a few hits.
This is what MMOs have missed. They still structure thier battles to last several hits or rounds. An even level mob can take up to 10 hits, which means if you need to kill 20 of them, you'll be mashing a whole lot of buttons! If they reduced that to 3 or 4 hits but also made you just as vulnerable, the battles woudl still be even but last much shorter.
Another thing M&B does that other MMO devs have ignored is "friendly fire". Not just in terms of projectiles and spells like some MMO's figured out to add, but melee as well. At best, hitting an ally negates your attack - at worst, it damages them. How many times have you played an MMO where 10 people were all bunched in one squeare foot all attacking a mob? If they implemented "friendly melee fire", then there would be a lot less button mashing and a lot more tactics at work.
One last thing would be blocking. In most MMOs, this is simply a skill that happens randomly. Again, look at M&B for a different example. Even on the easy mode for "automatic" you have to physically click the block button to block an attack. Factors determining the success of this would be weapon stats, speed and weapon and shield skills. You still have all the MMORPG elements, but the physical act comes down to the player.
As they stand, I prefer the pre-determined attack skill over the real-time combat. Mainly because there has yet to be an MMO that's understood what it takes to make real-time combat anything but a button mashing fast. I enjoy real-time a lot more overall, but the game mechanics need to support it for it to hold up to its potential.
If real time combat is done WELL then I think it's about 28937289374x more fun than turn based done well...
The problem I think we're encountering is that most MMORPGs as a rule have shoddy combat PERIOD. If you take that as a given then I think I've found (and apparently most other people have as well judging on player base sizes) that MMORPGs have come much closer to getting semi-turn-based "right" (IE marginally playable) than they are real-time.
If you take it out of MMO context though I think you'll find that the comparison between turn based and action is real simple.
Let's take a list of some really fun, highly rated games and partition them up.
Group 1:
Final Fantasy
Dragon Quest
Civilization
Planescape: Torment / Baldur's Gate
Group 2:
Street Fighter (2, AS, 4, whatever...)
Soulcalibur (1-4)
Devil May Cry/God of War/Bayonetta
Monster Hunter
Call of Duty / Halo / Unreal / Quake / Bioshock / Half-Life / Doom / whatever...
When you think of group 2 what would you say all of these games have in common? They're all games who's "fun" is derived almost explicitly through their COMBAT SYSTEMS. I would argue not only that "group 1 games" are NOT defined this way but in fact they can rather accurately be described as games which "are fun in spite of their combat systems".
Opinions differ. Haven't played most of the games in your group 2 but Soulcalibur bores me in a few hours. Bioshock was fun because of it's amazing setting and unique way of telling a story. The combat was meh.
Combat in turn-based games is more then the actual turns. It's about gathering options for your turns. It's about planning in advance. In turn-based games combat is often already decided before the combat starts.
Let's take EvE as an example. The actual combat is horrible. You basically activate your modules and wait for either one of you to blow. There's some minor management in what direction you're flying, how fast you're going and some modules that you must manage but there's not a whole lot of involvement going on.
Yet while EvE may not be to everyone's taste you can't deny that it gets the blood of thousands of players running. That's because EvE's combat isn't about the actual shooting. It's about your fit. About the ship you chose. About the allies you gathered. About the enemy you engaged etc.
EvE's combat would be the worse if you made it some sort of real-time shooter. It would greatly decrease the influence of all those factors that make EvE fun. EvE's combat is great because you can't compensate for poor choices in fit, ship and allies by having a high speed connection and great twitch skills. It's a numbers game.
Numbers combat is great fun to some of us. And games that use it well are fun because of it, not despite of it.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\
( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o)
(")("),,(")("),(")(")