Can we JUMP? (Dev) Replied

One thing left off the OP list, which I would be interested in seeing is CRAWLING. It would be nice to have some crawlspaces in dungeons that are difficult to move through unless you're small, and which offer limited range of motion, making it difficult to attack or dodge.

Brought to mind is Prince of Persia 2, which had these type of crawlspaces.



There were also occasions where you had to crawl underneath traps.



I also started a thread proposing acrobatic skills such as agility (including running and jumping), balance, evasion, and climbing. For balance, there might be occasions where you have to balance yourself in order to walk along a narrow walk space or in order to prevent an unstable platform or bridge from collapsing underneath you.

Jumping between roofs of houses would be a nice added skill for acrobat type rogues, that would be unnecessary for another class of player, so not a jumping puzzle per se.

 

Im all for crawling, climbing up and down ladders, jumping ability, walking across a tightrope. My preference though is they are just ways to get from point a to b to mix it up a little bit, and not used for challenges or puzzles. Dex puzzles usually just annoy me (One of the things I hated about the now not so new star wars right off the bat). More importantly though is a lot of people that are going to be interested in SotA are beyond their dexterity prime.

I can say dex puzzles in the games, would loose 4 players right off the bat because my mom, dad, wife, and daughter will cease to have any interest in the game the moment any dex puzzles are implemented (unless they are very simple for flavor only). Id rather not see that happen, but more importantly out of 5 potential gamers it drops down to 1 player. I don't know if that statistic is fairly common but I've gamed with a lot of top notch raiders that cant handle dex puzzles and I think it would cause us to loose a lot of potential community. I think Richard would agree with this to a certain extent as I have heard him say he is not the most dexterous player

Not that your asking for them, just putting a disclaimer

All that said, id rather see swimming over all those options. Swimming can open up a lot more game area that otherwise is useless. Not saying all the water mass should be developed into something right off the bat, but having it in place for future growth would be nice. Also having just a little open water option right off the bat shouldn't be to hard if swimming itself isn't hard to put into play. Just near the shore sort of thing to do things like harvesting various water materials from reagents to cooking.

 

Yea, although if there are obstacles that require dexterity, I'm sure there can be a way to implement them where they aren't arcadish, and wouldn't depend on perfect positioning.

For jumping, you should know whether you can make a jump or not, based on some agility skill. There would be a base distance for jumping, and then the distance would become extended when your skill increases. They should also be relatively safe jumps in most cases. I remember in Skyrim, there are places where you need to jump from ledge to ledge, but you don't hurt yourself that much if you miss and fail because the ledges aren't high enough to be fatal. It should not be like Pagan, where you have to target very tiny platforms, where you could be one pixel off and sink into a puddle of water.

Tightrope walking, climbing ropes, and cliff faces, and so on, the same thing. You should know whether or not you'll succeed based on your skill level, and the fall should rarely have heavy penalties. Exception would be climbing high cliffs and mountains, or castle walls for which I'd ideally like to see grappling hooks also, so the risk could be mitigated. It would also be nice to be able to throw a rope down, so your party members that aren't so good at climbing can follow you up.

Crawling wouldn't really be a dex skill at all, except that you might crawl faster if you have higher dexterity, or might get up on your feet faster; everybody can crawl.

 

Does having "dex puzzles" as an optional (you don't have to do them to progress in the story, perhaps to further explore some areas) event really bother you and your family that much? And gamers in general? I understand the Pagan fear, trust me. It's even in my original post, and I seriously doubt that'll be the route. I've seen my "twitch reflexes" drop dramatically over the years but it doesn't stop me from trying. If it ends up being frustrating... I move along. Especially if it is optional. But we're not talking about "twitch 3d jumping fps headshot mode".

What we are talking about has already been stated by Richard Garriott.

A "dex puzzle" in this sense would not actually be a dexterity test... it'd be more observational (by the player). Meaning, the player gets to a point at a ledge and instead of aiming, running and jumping by hitting the spacebar key (ala almost any modern 3d game), the player instead will get to that ledge, not be able to fall off(?) eww, and either the game will show a *press spacebar to transverse* message or it do it automatically for the player.

After writing that last bit, I'm truly not a fan of that. Where's the immersion banner at? *looks for it* If there's one thing that drives me mad in a game, it's invisible walls. If I get near a ledge, I better be able to regret the decision during a sudden wind gust and be blown into the abyss.

 

I also completly agree. Skyrim for instance is using jumping to discover the world, jump on boxes and so on. I don't like it used by a puzzle, but when i need it to jump over a hole i am also fine with it.

 

must have 60 dex to jump how about that!

 

Now why on earth do you want to get into a window???? I think I smell a burglar.

 

Just look at the Zelda games. I think that they had used the jumping feature perfectly! Most of the game you cannot jump, but when the situations call for jumping your prompted to push a certain button in order to jump. Or in the old old Gameboy Zelda you only could jump wearing Roc's feather or something, and there were limitations, since you had to actually equip the item to use it, and if you equip rocs feather you might not have a free hand for the ice wand or bow.
Now, what about swimming! Should we be able to jump into any water in the game and swim?? Will we drown if we swim too far out without a ship? I could start a whole new thread on that!

 

Jumping should simply allow the player to move throughout the world in a more fluid and dynamic way. Real-world logic should also apply because, let's face it, even parkour experts cannot jump off a four storey building to the ground and survive.
Basically what I want to see is a world that doesn't always have a defined "path" that the game is forcing you to stay on. That you are free to trudge through a wilderness that FEELS like a difficult place to explore without the Invisible Walls of Destiny that proclaim THOU SHALT NOT PASS and prevent you from falling to your clumsy death.

Of course there are issues with jumping as well. Are players 'locked' to the ground so as to avoid being knocked by other players? (ie. potential griefing) or should the system be more open to that kind of risk? Just like in real life, should we avoid standing near a giant cliff next to someone of questionable morality?

If RG is intending to remove the constraints of cluttered UIs where the player is left to their own intellect, then I think it would contribute to that philosophy that players should not be constrained to a given path if the dungeon/level can allow for free movement. Why not allow free jumping so players can be strategic about enemy confrontations? If I can sneak (ie jump lots of obstacles) through a dense, rocky forest to ambush a group of enemies while my friends confront them in the open, then that would only add to the excitement of the encounter.

 

This does matter and is important. Personally, I liked the jumping in Ultima IX for example. It wasn't a gimmick where they included platforming elements with deadly pitfalls that would cause you to die all of the time if you missed by a fraction. It was mainly an additional way to traverse terrain. What do you do if a log is right in front of your character? Some rocks? A dead giant blocking the trail? Garriott doesn't want a game that's linear where you have to go a certain direction to further the story, so the natural solution would be to jump over those things.

Also, this isn't an MMO and thank god for that lol

 

One thing I liked about Pagan was being able to jump and climb into people's houses through their windows. Its too bad the game misused jumping in so many other ways.

 

Not having the ability to jump feels strange in 3D-games. You have the, already mentioned, "stuff in the way tm", that you could walk over in real life, that stops you in those games. I also love that its possible to make stuff bridges, why shouldn't that work, as long as it works in real life, why not here, the game boasts that it's going to be interactive and all that. I understand the ramifications, though I do not know what numbers we are taling about here (extra dollars and time it takes to make this not broken), so I do understand that it could be unfeasable with what they got.

 

/Le necro thread bump

You should be able to jump. Whenever and wherever you want. Lots of games don't have it; Hitman, Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Dragon Age... Some of these attempted the contextual vault-over-objects approach. But that work-around doesn't feel clean. If you don't hit the timing right, the vaulting doesn't happen. Most times the character stands up from cover instead of vaulting and gets shot in the face.

When a game doesn't have jumping it feels limiting. I feel like I have less control over my character. Why would my character's feet be rooted to the ground?

To those that say it looks silly if a player is jumping all the time, everywhere: Get over it. I agree completely, it does look silly. But I'm not their mom, I can't tell them what to do.

Detractors who say it's distracting in PVP: It is. It distracts the heck out of me, too. A possible solution is to make combat abilities be canceled by jumping (I think Dark Age worked that way). Or leave it in, and learn to jump-circle-stafe yourself.

Climbing onto objects where you are not meant to go: Colliders. It's a bit more work, but if you don't want a player on top of something, throw down a collider, or build it into the prefab. I personally think you should be able to travel across rooftops. If the concern is being flung through walls and across a level because of sarcophagus surfing, then drop a tall collider on it. Maybe loaves of bread don't need to have colliders themselves, so that they can't be used as steps. But boxes? Heck yeah. If you don't want a player jumping over the Serpent Spine Mountains and forever glitching the game, put a collider on the mountain to stop them.

Now swimming is a tough one because there's a whole host of assets which would need to be added. Underwater terrain and plants, animals, etc. Then you'd have to create caves and since there's no holes in the terrain at the moment, I don't see it happening in Episode 1. But I remember when Dark Age added swimming and it was like a whole new world had opened up. I hope swimming makes it in, maybe Episode 3? I can wait for that. But jumping... please.

 

/me looks longingly at the Ultima 9 box on the shelf. His face softens and his eyes glaze over, as if remembering something from long ago. A single tear slides down his cheek, and he snaps back into the real world, stone faced, with nary a trace of the previous weakness.

 

Bringing LB's comments back to the top of the NecroThread...

I agree with everything he says. Contextual jumping is not something you would trigger so no timing is involved. When you try and get someplace, and it is reachable, you will jump over passable objects to get there. Free jumping is just not necessary as exploration will not be as vast as a seamless world. Scenes will be smaller and more constructed than most MMO maps.

 

My another friend comment when i sayd that most likely there wont be jumping was: Why make the game in 3dimensions if you cant use the 3rd one.

 

I thought I might copy my comments in the Combat, etc thread here so that those interested could see them if they haven't ventured into the other thread. Sorry it looks like kinda of like a wall of text, and thanks for taking the time to read.

Regarding getting stuck by jumping to a location no one designed to be accessed and designing around it in general:

In response to jumping being a 'twitch' mechanic:

Thanks again for reading!

 

Question! Um, why is there an option to report LB's posts? Who would be stupid enough to do that? I mean, the target painted on his face is one thing but reporting posts? Really? For the guy running the project?

 

My two cents: If we are going for realism; real people can and do jump. It should be added along with sheathing your sword and swimming across obstacles, if not down under the surface of the water.

 

Yes please to jumping for navigation. No to jumping puzzles or have any effect on any other system in the game. Just let me jump over that log, on top of that rock, etc.