Starr Long Discusses Chaotic Aspects of SOTA Combat

The best combat in any game I have played that is most like real combat that i did in Karate is Dark Souls, You practice your strategy and try to implement it but the chaos comes from the opponent, You try to guess the moves but then you have to gamble and make your move, Throw your feint and hopefully take them down, Striking first was always the most important because they were injured or winded and you were not.
Covering the distance between you and your opponent was always hard work, and foot sweeps and striking to the lead arm was mostly a given lead to a further combination, Well practiced combinations of strikes always paid dividends.

 

Conceptually this sounds INTERESTING, but there is a slight problem with the developer trying to make an INTERESTING combat system. Developers try to imagine themselves in combat, forgetting however that the character their playing is in fact a trained warrior/mage - that is their career. They are more skilled at it than you can imagine.

A couple of additional points, if you will.

In the RPG and MMO genre, there is a huge deficit of real-time fighting mechanics. Something the Ultima games brought to the table years ago. Why don't we simply improve on that wonderful evolution of gameplay? Seems like a good time to strike - no pun intended!

Also keep in mind that a real-time fighting system inherently contains all that chaos, and unpredictability that you're trying to conceptualize. Simply because it is an active system, requiring full player skill/timing. The MoB AI could also be highly randomized.

 

Although the point has been made before, by many, including myself, I have to say that I think @TitusPrime nailed it.

In battle between trained and experienced warriors or teams of warriors, combat is not random.

Therefore: adding random elements to a combat emulator, especially where that random element overrides something that would have been an actual decision and not an outcome of decisions, decreases realism. While there is no standard of realism to hold say, a mage casting a fireball up against, we CAN hold the fire itself to a standard and we can hold the mage's choice up to a standard. Thus a situation where the fireball might randomly ground itself into a passing area of ice (because fire and ice are elemental enemies!) or wherein the fireball bursts out but only damages the primary target in the exact spot it struck (because it was discharging all it's energy there!) will meet a similar lack of acceptance. We all know how fire works: it radiates, it spreads, and it does not ignore potential vessels for the heat it is dispersing. Thus, we unconsciously want to see the fireball scorch everything it passes, and blacken everything around the place where it hit. When we see it fail to do this, we automatically think of the fire as weak, having little damage potential, because that is the kind of fire that would fail to spread, fail to burn.

This psychological mechanic is creating most of the displeasure surrounding the proposed rune ability system. The idea that a team of seasoned, experienced, and highly skilled adventurers, if moving against any enemy at all (even a collection of mannequins set up to demonstrate their abilities) could subsequently fail to execute their battle plan because individuals on the team were waiting for random skill procs to allow them to act is repulsive. Anyone with real fighting experience or even an appreciation of war and tactics will find an itch forming in the back of their mind, telling them that this is wrong.

As I've said before, and no doubt will say again before beta 4 rolls around, I WILL TRY the rune ability system. I will seek to get as many of the proposed locked skill abilities as I can, I will develop my character around using them, and I will then seek ways of balancing the random section, making it useful. I will not, however, get my hopes up.

What *I* would like to see is a system that lets us design our characters and their strategies in a limited resource system, be it skill level or point buy or some new concept, such that each player is introducing to the world their own unique strategy, tailored to what they think is best. This would allow for a very diverse field of strategies, including teams that operate in a focused and pre-decided manner (as TitusPrime's unit would), stand alone unique builds that seek to deal with all threats using a complex set of overlapping and self reinforcing tactics (as I and others like me would), hyperspecialists and teams of hyperspecialists who do the one thing they do really really well (as the standard MMO 'holy trinity' would) and bizarre outliers who seek to define a totally new way of playing the game (flying pirate ship with trained attack weasels...). Yes, it will also include copycats too lazy to design their own build, and yes they will seek to emulate the 'best', most efficient build posted online. Unfortunately, that is not a symptom of build your own character games, it is a symptom of modern online gaming. Even Mario Bros. I had strategy guides, and there have always been those who would rather just be told what to do to win. Should such a system be implemented in SotA, however, I feel that good judgement by the dev team could prevent 'flavor of the month' builds, or a single OP class (you know what I mean) that dominates with ease.

 

I won't defend the randomness of the UI as far as positioning of skills, mixing offense with defense, etc. I really hope the rethink all of this.

But RNG for skills and effects is normal and part of any simulation. Basically luck is involved because you simply don't have that kind of precision in the simulation.

1) If you have an enemy targeted, you can't lead the target, account for wind and gravity, aim for a body part, or 100 other factors. It's simply not that twitch a game. (I'd prefer a mouse targeting system, but even then, there's still a lot to simulate.)

2) On the other side, your opponent is doing things and they may represent an opportunity to you. Because you see that he's holding his shield wrong, you can go for a decapitate finisher. Again, it's not that twitch. Your opponent is pressing maybe 1-2 buttons / second on a keyboard...we're simulating here the hundreds of things he may be doing wrong and the skill is coming up to show this.

In either case, real combat would involve many, many decisions per second made consciously or sub consciously. The RNG is to give the player just enough choices that player skill wins combat, without being overwhelmed by the hundreds of decisions the character (who's presumably a skilled swordsman) is making.

 

If they made the abilities robust and were designed well they wouldnt need to be random as when to use an ability in pvp usually isnt and shouldnt be a memorized keystroke sequence

Detracting your attention from whats going on in no way enhances combat

 

LIES! GARBAGE... DARK SOULS IS A TERRIBLE GAME!!! I seriously have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good game. Challenge has nothing to do with it. I grew up playing atari games that had no end, ghosts and goblins, battletoads, etc. There is simply nothing enjoyable about the game. I'm pretty sure people claim to like it, because they think it makes them seem "hardcore".

 

Everybody calm down. We're going to give the combat system a fair trial before we hang it.

Role playing games I liked, we rolled dice for combat. We rolled for initiative, to hit, and damage. We rolled saving throws, and for picking locks. Finding and removing traps was determined by dice. Even the treasure we found was sometimes decided by rolling dice.

I'm willing to give a random element a chance.

 

Disclaymer: I have not read the whole thread.

For PvM this might be quite entertaining. I do however feel that people who seek to PvP will not like such a system.
A number of PvP games (an example where I have witnessed this since the game came out is League of Legends) are purposefully removing elements of chance that had been introduced.
Going the exact opposite route will probably make this game less attractive for the hardcore PvP crowd.

To me this is no real loss but I am sure some will see that differently

 

If this combat system makes so we don't have a system where folks just spam a few skills or primarily based on managing cool downs ... I'm more than willing to give it a try.

 

If this was even remotely close to the random elements outlined for SotA combat, I would be the first zealot cheering from the parapets.
Every post that has been made outlining a completely random combat experience (except for the UI) I support 100%.

It is possible to logically assess a described system, of any kind, real or hypothetical, prior to implementation. It has been done for thousands of years by very smart humans, using their hulking mammalian brains and their imagination.
People do it now, too, even without knowing it. How? Here's a case in point:
Should the design philosophy of a random UI (similar to what has been outlined and demonstrated for combat) be applied to the in-game mechanics for travel, vendor purchase, vendor selling, decoration, housing purchase, lot selection, death, chat, harvesting, and crafting?
What is your first reaction to such a suggestion? Why? Behold, the power of imagination. You can "see" in your minds eye, why such a suggestion is good or bad, immediately.

 

It will be different from spellborn. There wont be a wheel of abilities, there wont be cooldowns unless you use the locked abilities, which basically makes them like abilities in other games.

Combat will be quite a bit different. for reference, this is combat in spellborn:




One of the key differences that I believe is important is your abilities will come up, and you can decide to combo them, use it now, save it, discard it. It's just different on many levels, you can also get a bunch of the same ability to come up. this will support a lot of play styles allowing people to develop different tactics, from the people who save up for devastating combo attacks to people who use things asap to a more middle ground, to using locked skills so it isn't random and feels more like a wow style rpg/combat.


If anything killed spellborn, I'd bet it was Acclaim. (who wants wow competition eh? Since they owned wow).

This is why Portalarium doesn't need/want a publisher, I hope we fans can support RG's dream.

Another key difference here is that need to stay facing enemies and dodging attacks made combat more difficult. The need to pay so much attention can be alleviated through locked abilities so it can appeal and cater to a more casual gamer.

 

Have Chronicles of Spellborn been mentioned at all?

They tried this system and I remember not liking it all that much or really loving it (edit), but it was a different game and failed for other reasons which may have affected game play.

Chronicles of Spellborn: Anatomy of a Failure


Edit: I would use this company as an example of what NOT to do hehe. I did get use to the system when playing it and got some exposure to it. It may have been that they couldn't fix it after a certain time and it just sucked because of that.

It's also possible I might have just bad feelings about getting my heart broken on this game because I loved it so much and wanted it to succeed. I think I still have something to cope with.. sigh, now I'm depressed, thanks for bringing up bad memories Starr! Cake anyone?

 

Nothing wrong with what's shown of Spellborn combat. It's one key difference, compared to SotA, was that the UI was entirely predictable/learn-able. There was no random UI like what SotA combat has been demonstrated to have. The rotating "barrel" was created entirely by the player.

That article is extremely interesting. Both the analysis/retrospect as well as the comments are very enlightening and relevant to the topic at hand, and the goals Portalarium is apparently trying to achieve, with SotA.

 

--hmmmm. I have often enjoyed playing a stealthy rogue. As a rogue I had three choices when initiating an attack:
a) Attack from behind while in stealth
b) Attack from in front while in stealth
c) attack when unstealthed.

--In each case I opened with a different attack; a different "card" if you wish. I fail to see how I could do this if I am drawing a random "card" for my opening attack.

 

Yeah, from what I remember, I think it was just mechanics behind it that made it tough to play the game.
There was a problem with randomizing and numbers when fighting that left a lot to be desired and it was beta.

Then the game kinda dissappeared and left a bad taste, but I'm still intrigured by the system
I think it can be a game changer (pun intended, giggity), but it has to be done right and I think these are the guys to do it

8)

 

YeH good luck waiting on that backstab

 

Hmm. At first I was thinking "wtf, that sounds ridiculous" but the more I think about it, the more I think it could be a cool thing. If its implemented right (big if) and I am able to have access to my favorites more often than not, I think it could be an interesting spin on traditional RPG combat. I am curious to see how this pans out!

 

Ah, but your choice of action or tactic was NOT decided by dice (unless you were under GM control or some manner of curse effect, generally considered a bad thing), you could PLAN to charge, bull rush, sunder, flank, etc. Maybe your attack or defense didn't work out as planned, but you could choose which actions you were attempting without rolling dice.

 

Exactly. At least let me choose the right ability for the situation instead of it being oh well im screwed my abilty didt pop. There is enough randomness with dice rolling

What decides if a player is good is if he chooses the best ability for a given situation now that you take that away from a player and they become forever beholden to random whims

I want to win because im good not because the other guy got lucky pops and i got screwed

 

But being able to use the exact ability you need at exactly the moment when you need it would be uninteresting, predictable, and bland. Having the chance of something random happening is much more immersive, adds character, and separates SotA from other generic MMO's. I for one am super excited for the unpredictability of the system.