Starr Long Discusses Chaotic Aspects of SOTA Combat

From this post.

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More than a few good ideas, from what I can see. Page 3 of that thread is where the most common idea of "have a set/subset of fixed abilities" came to the forefront, supported, expanded and liked by many posters.

 

Can't say I feel that way. When I hit the tables I pick my games - I play roulette and craps, roulette and craps don't play me. I decide my picks, my bets, how many and how. Then I play them.

SoTA will still have realtime decisions and more of them - and will no doubt be way more fun and rewarding. Sure we'll have less control predictability than some other games. But in my eyes predictability is bad. Prepare for that increased lack of foresight and we'll probably be just fine. Do it well and you can all but count on it.

It's an even playing field for everybody like any other game - it's just a different field than what we're used to. There will still be room for personal skill and competition to come into play. How much is a question for the time being, but everyone will have the same growth and skill potential and there's no reason to believe there will be strategies so clearly above all others that there will be a plateau somewhere with everyone on it and it's only the draw left that's deciding outcomes.

I don't see what the problem is. I can understand some reasons why people feel aversions toward it. But if I was so obsessed when I woke up about what I can't count on in the coming day as much as some people on these forums agonize about not having that flourish or spell at their disposal on a whim in this game I'd probably hang myself the night before.

 

I think that's the most likely solution, details to be hammered out in alpha through playing.

 

Bolded for truth.

And there will be plenty of time between the alpha and the finished product to do so.

 

True dat. There is, however, plenty of time between now and the Alpha for players to express thier heartfelt distrust of a system that puts the concept of UI controls and the concept of uncontrolable randomness together.

 

OK! So now we have repeated visuals of the card system (in it's current prototype), is it ok to comment yet?

Personally, I see the exact mechanics that I expected, and was leery of. Powers spread across ten "action bar" buttons, labeled 1-10 (is that too WoW-like, to have an action bar?), so to get a good power that happens to be on the 7-10 range I'll have to lift my hand from the keyboard, this will necessitate looking away from the interface to make sure I have the correct key, and then again, to resume my standard "strafe advance retreat" positioning. Those buttons will automatically, and in my case rather severely, not get as much use as the 1-6 range. Further, I saw unused spells being replaced in a rotating sequence, so you have to use it quick or the button will change.

I think people's posted worries about having to build limited decks to control the flow of probability, the concept of "fighting the interface, not the enemy", and the disruption of immersive gameplay are all valid points concerning this system.

The graphix were pretty though.

 

Yea, compleatly agreed on the controls. Neverwinter uses 'qer' which are easy to press while strafing. It looked like he was clicking a lot of the skills in the video, which doesn't work well with the mouse targeting.

WoW and similar games have a huge UI real estate problem and the logical use of the card system is to optimize it. To push best availible, off cooldown skills to a useful key while preserving the real choices of attack vs defence vs cc.

 

The first thing to realize when making and running a game is something that is very hard to accept, players are going to break your game. I learned this through the medium of running Dungeon and Dragons games and Old World of Darkness Games. In a computer game the scenario does change a bit. You could over time plug every trick up until it was no more, but then you would be left with only what I call the Pokemon crowd to play your game (Named for the kids who appeared during the introduction of the TCC pokemon game). They swarm they play they leave. You need to have the ability for the smarter players who spend more time on the game to be able to be better. The MTG example you gave was a good one for this. If you give a grand champion deck to a newbie he will still probably loose with it. Magic is a very complex game that I enjoyed greatly until they started spamming new editions and bringing in overwhelming powers. This being true, it is also a game where the environment does not noticably change. You will always be facing a player who starts with 20 life, he will have a deck of specific size (tournament play), he will have access to a limited selection of cards, and you will have time to think about every action you perform given what you know is coming up in your deck. This is not how a computer game works you dont have 2-3 minutes to look at what the opponent just did, think about whats in your hand, whats in your deck and what the best response would be. You have to click the response right away. Below I will list off what I saw in the interface video that I think needs tweaking.

1. Given what I saw of the video the card system starts moving when you decide you are in combat. The creatures didnt react when the cards started moving so the player got to wait for the card he wanted to come up. This kind of scenario will lead to two seperate problems. Problem A, if there is a stealth class, said class will wait until their kill combo flashes up and then destroy the targeted N/PC. The second issue is that players will spend a decent amount of their time waiting for the right combo to come up before starting an encounter leading to alot of sitting around watching icons flash until you get the set you like. The way to fix this specific issue would be to make the cards not start showing up until the combat had started and the N/PC got a notice that they were targeted. Note: I dont like this idea stealth attacks should be possible but that is the fix I see under the current system.

2. Small decks will be the norm. Similar to what has occured in magic tournaments decks will become smaller. In fact rules had to be implemented to prevent players from making their decks to small. If this game does not put a limit in then players will have there 3-5 cards and nothing else in their decks, players will always seek to avoid randomness. They want control over their actions and will do what it takes to get it. If the game does impose a limit then that limit will be reached and only just. Players will do everything they can to stack the deck towards essential powers, utility powers and situational powers will be ignored because they would interfere with the bare essentials. This will lead to extremely cookie cutter specs for both rule sets as efficiency and reliability will be essential. This comes down not only to a players desire for control but a high level of frustration of being robbed. The fact that they lost "because the stupid game didnt give me the right card" will lead to large frustration levels. Th best solution I can think of for this if you are doing a card system is randomize not the power drawn but the effect applied to it. Utilizing the fireball example: You have fireball as one of your powers (possible modifications based on how many types or copies you have?) you cast your fireball then you get a card flip. You cast your fireball and the flip is, free cost or instant recharge or double damage. Alternatively you get bungled spell giving you double recharge, half damage, double cost, backblast or any number of other effects. If you want to randomize the game try and move it away from the players. Allowing them to control their powers but randomizing the effects is a good one. An example of a extra step would be allowing someone to have just fireball (with what ever multiple card modifications that might have) and if they want its just fireball you cast it does the 10-30 damage and done. What you can do is find/buy/learn effects for your fireball that you choose. For instance double damage comes with drawbacks double cost and or backblast. Or even you add a positive and dont get told what the negative is. So you have a chance to double your damage but who knows what catastrophe that might cause. This simulates the combat concept of you can do standard swings and you will get by. You also dont forget you have a sword so you can always just swing it. If you want to get fancy though that can pay off or hurt alot.

3. Cards drop in and out wether used or not. The problem this creates is the combo problem. For instance you see your stun come up and you have your extra stun damage card available you hit with your stun which while expensive is worth it because you get that bonus damage, but by the time you go to click the bonus damage its gone. Now you have used up alot of your resource because you had the combo but the game took it away. Thats where it gets frustrating when you have to fight the interface to fight the monster. If you had a random effect like, you stun, you use your stun exploit power and a random effect of monster shrugs off stun, or attack is bumbled thats far more acceptable to a player then, your power is taken away. There are several ways to fix this, the first being that you have linked powers, your stun power procs your stun exploit. The other is powers dont drop off the bar until used. Both have issues but solve the combo problem.

4. The horde of Lorens. The system appears to be designed right now to give a chance for the level 1 guy to occasionally kill the level 10 guy because he rolled a natural 20. While this can be commical and exciting sometimes, it also leads to a very serious problem. Griefers. Imagine you are a powerful guy, you have all that nice shiny stuff you managed to earn and a level 1 comes up to you and attacks, splat, stupid person didnt he know your power. Then another one, and another one, and another one. Sure 99% of the time you will win, but a griefer, or worse yet, a group of them will spam you rolling over and over until they get that natural 20. As a less extreme example, you will get people who pvp in a potato sack and attack with a pointy stick because if they loose they lost nothing if they win they get awesome stuff. You will also see people get together in groups and swam monsters. For the raid 30 people will storm the monster and spam what ever powers come up if they loose they do it again because odds are they will eventually win, and they cant make a complicated plan about the boss because they cant count on the right powers coming up. Perhaps that is where the issue really is, in the multiplayer aspect. In a single player game if your power doesnt show up, you can adjust. In a multiplayer game if your tank heal doesnt show up the tank dies and the boss wipes the party. If you get an extra spiffy heal the groups odds go up, but players almost always calculate the lowball on things so its not likely to make the difference between victory or defeat.

Conclusion:
When you design a game there are 2 seperate populations you have to take into account.

Population A is the pokemon crowd. The larger population, these are the hordes of individuals that fill out partys and raid groups. They pick Human paladin because they want to be awesome and shiny and the good guy. They dont mind randomness because they havnt fully explored the game and therefore alot of what happens is mysterious to them. They dont know that 100 attack power is equal to an extra 25 damage assuming a weapon speed of 1.00. They know that 200 attack power is better then 100 attack power, even when sometimes it isnt. For these people a random card system will be interesting. They will enjoy the occasional lucky break and generally wont be doing anything cutting edge enough to be hurt by the bad breaks.

Population B are the munchkins, the min/maxers, and the exploit finders. These are your raid leaders, your group leaders, and your guild makers. Fewer in number they are just as vital as the masses because without them the group never gets trully organized and the large challenges have to be made easier and easier until an unlead rabble can kill it. These are the guys who have taken the time to understand not just their class and power set but everyones class and powersets. They look at a boss and figure out how many healers they need how much dps and how many tanks. They crunch the numbers to make sure they have the margin of victory on the side of the players and these people will be very upset if that magin is overturned because the powers they worked to gain they wernt allowed to use. These people will be fighting monsters several levels higher then themselves and winning because they figured out the right powers to use, the boosts randomness will give them will be enjoyed but dieing after 20 minutes of careful fighting on a much higher level monster because none of the powers you had to fix that problem showed up will really aggrivate them. These players are much harder to satisfy, they are the ones that will find out how to break the system and use it without mercy. They are also the ones that will overcome the inertia of playing a game and leave for another one if they are not satisfied. The thing about these players is they are not essential. By this I mean their numbers are low eough that if the Pokemon crowd is kept entertained they can leave and the game can go on. But the game will increasingly have to become simplified as those with the ability to deal with the complexity leave. This is the model world of warcraft now has and its why people are so hopeful about this game. They hope that despite our minority population B will be considered when designing the game.

Hopefully this comes with some useful information, and if not I have at least had my say, like voting, it is a duty that must be performed.

Tetron Firestorm

 

Well said Tetron, very perceptive first post. Welcome to the community.

 

The greater your skill, the faster your skills will come up (i.e. be dealt to you). We also don't know if there are "counters" or if you are being targetting that your skills are also dealt. It almost seems as if the game preemptively deals your skills out to you as if it knows you're going to enter combat either voluntarily or not. Unless you're manually activating your skill bar somehow that is not shown onscreen in the video.

There will be deck minimums which grow as you level. You can't artificially keep it at 10 skills to your deck permanently for example. It will become 15, then 20, etc., requiring you to fill your deck. There are also blank skill runes as you saw in the video. Those have been referred to as skill slugs and do nothing except occupy a skil slot when dealt. Those appear to be specifically designed to balance out the "domination" that can occur.

There are likely deck or skill manipulation actions they haven't spoken about much or revealed. Reshuffle your deck, drop all skills, lock a skill, bring a skill to the top of the deck, etc. This may help with enabling combos but there likely still be some randomness and luck to it.

I've yet to see anything to suggest a one-hit kill skill that a Level 1 player can attain. If the spirit of chaotic combat is to give some players a fighting second chance, that's all well and good. But to say they will implement the extreme with a one-hit kill on initial attack would be purely speculative.

Great post and feedback.[/quote]

 

1) This isn't a problem. The problem is you need more control, not less. I would propose something like TAB to reset your cards (not spamable). The card system should be intelligent anyway, trying to feed you the best skills.

2) So make cards a good thing instead of bad and not make them as random. More cards = more chance for combos. e.g. if the target is on fire and you have card <x> in the deck, it will come up. If you don't have the card, no chance for the combo

3) Cards dropping out is good. This models a missed opportunity. But yes, new cards dropping in are due to procs. That's should be the point. Think of a random card as a last resort which only happens if there's not possible better option and the system can't figure out what to do.

4) Yes, this kind of RNG is always bad, esp in PvP. But I’d rather not see two player characters with this kind of power mismatch at all. Whatever newbie story they have, make it over as fast as possible so everyone’s more or less equal power.

 

What's a Loren?

@Tetron I'd say I agree with your ideas, though you did miss a point, group PvP. Oh dear lord, with TWO people fighting both will be looking for every chance they can get, attacking as fast and hard as they can, and a missed combo, or lost attack, or having sucky cards can and will determine entire fights, but GROUP PvP, with 10 v 10, 30 v 30, that will multiply exponentially. I think we really have to consider if having a randomized interface will make massive PvP battles even possible, or will they be random deathfests with neither rhyme nor reason.

@Smack Not sure if any of your responses actually adressed the points, I mean
1 Having the cards deal out faster would just force me to respond and use them faster, which would in turn intensify the problem with watching the bar not the game. If increasing the UI speed is the effect of higher skill, I'd like to stay at very very low skill, thanks, so that I can actually use all the skills as they appear.
2 You state with some certainty that deck minimums will exist, but, SO DID TETRON. You state this as if it is a rebuttal, but the point you are rebutting assumed deck minimums would occur, and then stated the problem including that assumption, so saying that deck minimums will exist is like saying "Yes, I can clear up the misunderstanding here, you ARE definitely going to be shot. I hope this makes you feel better."
3 Deck manipulation by reshuffling or redealing the cards won't actually change much. It will still be the same random deal of cards from the same deck, thus the probabilities will be the same. Yes, it will let you clear a really crappy deal, but as with MTG, a skilled player will arrange his deck to not give crappy deals, or give them as little as possible, so being able to "mulligan" won't be a massive improvement to game control.
4 Not sure if he meant ONE HIT KILL, he said "roll a natural 20" which if I understand the reference just means to do really well on a given attack or skill, not instakill. In which case you've probably seen thousands of examples, and this system COULD produce a very very good random result for a "noob" and a very very bad result for an experienced player.

 

Point number 4 comes from a player organized assualt on Hogger. In this event dozens of level ones attacked a somewhat strong for its area named monster. They threw their corpses at it in rapid succession in an attempt to kill it. If people would organize something like that just to make fun of a mob what would they be willing to do if there was actual game profit to be made. You can find it on youtube if you wish to watch it yourself.

 

Combat
- Basic mode: a simple control scheme, similar to Chivalry and Elder Scrolls, intended for those who don't want to deal with the precision of intermediate.
- Intermediate mode: more control over your attacks like in Mount & Blade, foot movement and where your mouse is pointing relative to your characters front determines the way the they attack.
- Holding the attack makes the strike more powerful, but will exhaust your character quicker
- Skills make you more energy efficient rather than increasing your hit rate.
- Damage could be based on the part of the body being hit, the type of attack (slash, blunt, piercing), and the armor (light, medium, heavy).


Magic
- I would prefer magic was something you mold like dough until its good to go, instead of making them a mere skill that instantly gratifies, you'd actually have to learn how to do it, it should be something that's a little messy. Magic would be a learning process rather than the same as the non-magic combat.
- To cast magic, you could press a button to change your combat mode, and then you do your thing(some kind of method that maybe has you drawing symbols in the air or mashing different elements together in your hands), you left click to aim, and then release to cast. Right click would be for cancelling casting so you can move away from danger or for what ever reason.
- Any magic can be cast if you know what to do, but without formal training, the failure rate or chances of it blowing up in your face are high enough to make it only worthy as a desperate act.
- Increasing skill will very slightly help your chances at successfully casting spells, but primarily it affects your efficiency with the use of your mana pool.
- There are two essential types of magic: simple magics that you can quickly do by hand, and complex ones that require a medium like a card or a scroll. Some hand crafted spells can be put on scrolls or cards for a more effective variation. Complex magics are a tad impractical to craft in combat, but it should be possible if you have time and a cool head.


Pets and mind controlled creatures
- Controlling pets and creatures can be something like the command rose in Battlefield. You press a button to bring the menu up, and then you move the mouse in a direction to highlight one of the choices, and then you click to make it happen.


Action Bar
-The only purpose of the action bar should be for things like consumables and quick access to tools, or non-combat related stuff.

 

Ok, that looks like a completely and totally different version of the UI than Portalarium is building, I suppose it goes on the suggestion pile. My PERSONAL UI suggestion is:

Gerbils. You control your character by manipulating Gerbils that have been wired to your computer. Manipulate their legs to walk, twist to run, yank to jump, manipulate forelimbs to use weapons and other skills. But, if you break or dislocate a limb, that indicates a critical fail. There is also an element of chance, in that the Gerbil might bite you, if it does, tough. Suck it up. Now, your resource is patience, which runs out when you get fed up and intentionally injure the Gerbil, I'm sure you can think of various frustrated movements that might do this. In addition to messing up all the other controls, this can kill your Gerbil, requiring you to take the time to wire another Gerbil into the computer, at which point you can resume play. If you are constantly running out of patience, you run the risk of the Humane Society, or your local equivalent, breaking down your door and interrupting game play.

There ya go, a minimal UI that gives full, intricate control of the character, introduces random elements of the control for a sense of real-ness, and has nothing to do with any other game control ever invented, except while on drugs.

You're welcome.

 

Haha, first time I played that and walked into that scene I was like WHAT IS GOING ON!!?? AAAHHH!! up to that point i'd never played an rpg with such a gruesome image. I used to my dragon warrior and final fantasy and some others.. I think the music playing in that scene was in such sharp contrast to that and the dialogue before it felt very classic rpg to me so walking in on that, I wasn't prepared for. It was AWESOME!

 

If the Gerbil can loot me I want no part of this. 15 years ago a I was out on a boat fishing. Some Gerbil killed me, took my keys, kicked and banned me from my boat. Then gated his hamster pals in and they ate all my fish right in front of me. I never went fishing again over the trauma.

 

I'm gonna be blunt with some feedback here folks.
I was under the assumption this was supposed to be a semi classless game. Now that I fully understand what this whole "card system" is about it more or less plays down to being a gimmick to make it "different"
First off the whole random skills and car decks and blah blah blah.
MTG = stacking your deck to favorable odds.
Inb4 try it out. Played magic from launch until 2001. Started with 3 decks that were gifted to me. Picked up 4 booster packs. Those were the only card I ever purchased. I played ante and overkill. I "drylooted" opponents. Blue/Black consisting of control magics, counterspells, clones, dopplegangers (clone your dopplegangers) Fly, blue trash summons. LEVIATHAN111!111!!!11000111, Royal Assasin, Singir and Kravokian vampires, 4 nettling imps, Hipnotic spectres. Other random trash to fill in the gaps. The Rack and Black Vice. Abomination. Nightmare. Eh cant remember the rest
I was pretty much the equivalent of a red you couldn't do anything about. I controlled every aspect of the field in life AND death. I had one person break the control. It took a wrath of god and armageddon combo. I still won loolololl.
My house full of uber loot in my retirement consisted of 4 shoeboxes packed front to back with cards I would never use but took as m victory spoils. I did some damage. They were taken to a card stand/comic shop. Valuables sold with profit split. The rest were just kinda given away to anyone I met who played.
So yeah I know magic. I also know the state it's in now. It's MTG Cataclysm.
Played Pokemans, Digimans, Magi Nation, The Vampire the Masquerade card game (Baali deck ftw) Played Uno, Go Fish, Rummy with my Grandma, and once when I was 8 I played 52 card pick up with my troll uncle when he asked me. Played Spades in jail for 2 days.
Card games = way too much randomness to throw into a real time scenario.

Here's an example of how this will play out in a reverse situation to break it down to the card kids.
Go play MTG with someone. Flip a coin each round as well. This will cover "melee attacks"
Your opponent is playing a "Drake" So he has 3x more life than you and spams nothing but fireballs. And claw attacks/bites (his melee)
You set your deck as a "Paladin" or something. Regardless you have to be in range of his melee to be of any use period. Cause your decks melees and heals being a "paladin" and whanot.
It's a pretty neck and neck fight. You figure it's heal time to play on the safe side. You break off melee and switch deck.
Your opponent: you're still in range of my breath attack. Ha take more damage.
Hey it's not so bad. Got my deck here switched
Bam you just took a whole lot of damage.
WTF was that!
You turn around and your opponents older brother who calls you both dorks for playing wizard games. He's kinda like Chet off Weird Science. He's bigger, meaner, faster and stonger than the both of you combined.
He's got his "Dragon deck" which means he's a dragon and spams awesome fireballs, and load of spells too.
You die 2.5 seconds later cause you spammed 2 heals in 2 seconds and your next card was remove curse.
Then you see Belan come out of nowhere and loot your corpse.
The ppl getting all warm and fuzzy because of the psychological tie your brain put together because both MTG and UO were both good? I'm going to dig something very dark and evil from the debts of the internet for you. It's something I personally experienced. I wanted to put it behind me in the past and leave it in the dark place where it should have slept for all eternity. For you see fellow card game fans and RG fanbois. There once was a game company that dared attempt the unthinkable and go in this direction.
They combined cards and real time. The foul beast that resulted in it's union was hideous indeed! Oh yes it was.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/572398-magic-the-gathering-battlemage/reviews
The reviews don't even really touch on it. These people likely did like I did. They tried their best to drink the memories away because it was too horrid to cope with.
But hey it had a banging story to it too bad you spent too much time frustrated with the task of sifting through cards in the middle of oh I don't know.....real time combat. And there was no movement or strafing at all in the game. The government probably rounded all the copies they could and stashed them inside the vault with the real Necronomicon.
Cards do to real time what Jar Jar Binks does to Star Wars. It's amusing for the first 5 minutes but after that you just want to put your fist through the screen.
For shoots and giggles I hopped on over to /v/ and pitched this idea as a "do something different idea" It's a good general opinion because it's a very neutral audience. Results weren't good to put it mildly.

People say they don't want a wow type game but in order to even remotely do anything halfway effective you'd have to specialize in one single "deck build" It'll break the game into nothing but DPS and healers. You'll have your fighter with a deck of nothing but stuns. And a couple mages with whatever weakness the mobs have. And someone with a cure deck. Fighter keeps mob stunned. DPS nukes. You can replace mages with rangers or other warrior types. It'll all boil down to the same thing. The whole random factor will force chars to go in an extremely 1D approach to be effective in one single aspect. People say they don't watch "twitch" combat but you're going to be button mashing and jerking eyes back and forward constantly.
Screencapped for future ED article

 

I think you are making a fair number of assumptions here. You're going to have a limited number of "cards" in any given category to put into your deck, and so you might not be able to stack it with nothing but stuns. There is a lower-bound on how small you can have your deck, so you're forced to either diversify or have a deck full of "slugs". How you diversify is going to depend on what skills you have and what you think might be useful. So there is a bunch of factors: the limited number of similar skills you can get in your deck, the minimum deck size, the number of skills available, and the balance of the different skills. I don't think it's at all obvious that no possible combination of these factors can create varied and interesting combat.

 

As a trained soldier, combat veteran and a gamer since 1981 I have to say something about this approach to the combat mechanics.

I feel that the core concept to this approach cannot create the desired experience of combat because it does not truly understand the combat environment it hopes to emulate.

First off, combat is not random: When we move into any unsecured area we are as ready as we are going to get. We have trained ourselves and use our equipment to each soldiers best level. If I come under fire or move into an engagement it is not a random encounter; I am not confused about what action to take or how best to execute it. From a strictly military viewpoint, those of us trained to succeed in a combat environment ( I can only speak for myself and the ones I have had the honor of serving with) are not waiting for our Weapon to somehow become more accurate, powerful or fire faster. I have never reached for a grenade hoping it would become available. I know what equipment I have and what to do with it. Combat is chaotic and can be extremely disorienting at times but it i not random. Training, skill and experience accounts for 90% of the effectiveness and survivability of a combatant, not luck.

A little luck doesn't hurt though.