Can we JUMP? (Dev) Replied

I personally cannot stand jumping puzzles. It is a waste of my time. If you want to put jump in just for the sake of being able to jump by all means do it but please don't make jumping puzzles becasue I have never found one I liked. In Asheron's Call they had a Jump skill and you could get better at jumping as you practiced it but I must have fell to my death 1,000 times trying to finish some dungeons that required jumping. This is a nightmare I would rather not relive.

 

If you read the above, you would note that no one is saying the jumping puzzles should be a requirement. An optional quest for an achievement? Sure. An alternative solution to a scenario that already has a couple other solutions? Most definitely.

 

I've read all eight pages and... jumping puzzles? I don't get it, I mean, I cannot recall any game I played recently that actually had jumping puzzles. Apart from AC (yes, the first one, yes, on PS). Maybe I'm just playing wrong games. As for jumping itself:
— I'm for situational jumping (over fences and small obstacles, gaps, brooks)
— I'm also for rooftops stalking (like it a lot, since Morrowind, I suppose)
— Climbing onto the walls, small buildings (when possible, JA2 or GTA:SA style), into the windows (Arcanum) and low cliffs, maybe. Climbing even onto high cliffs with or without climbing gear.
But I also prefer all of the said to be done in RPG-style, you know, with skill checks and so on. Like, when I approach to the 6-8 foot tall wall or to the edge of roof and then prompt appears "Climb up (or "Jump to the other side", for second example) high/medium/low/none chance of success" and then I can decide whether I want to do it or not. As for development cost, I don't think that it is any more difficult than collision detection.

However, I'm totally against combat jumping. Okay, maybe if it's a combat skill/perk/whatever that allows avatar to maneuver outta/into battle, or doddge, or to get behind his target's back. As long as it comes with cost and requires some training, I'm okay with that.

PS
Jumping, running, swiming, bha! Sailing rules!

 

ARMA (formally known as Operation Flashpoint) has a great and real implementation of "jumping" with gear and havy stuff on.


In version 3 its much better, so just give us an animation to get over Stuff that is up to 1-1.2m.

 

Guild Wars Two featured jumping puzzles, where you'd have to figure out how to jump to the top of an obstruction, and were rewarded with xp and a scenic vista (big whoop). The most annoying damn thing ever included in any MMO I've ever played.

 

@Owain
Nah, I'm affraid most of MMOs are outta my scope because... well, imagine slowest and, err, laggiest internet connection possible, well, mine is slower and, err, you know, more unstable) The only exception is WoW, but it's more like a habbit by now. Spending 15-20 hours a month. Playing with 4000-6000ms ping (which is, and that's just amazing, still enough for PvE. I do expect something like this from SotA's selectiv multiplayer), spending hours caching locations, downloading updates for weeks (and I do not expect these two from SotA). Tried D3, no luck. Others, well, with 3GB monthly traffic budget it's to expensive to try (not monetary just traffic, I could spend it for many other purposes).

 

The best part is that if they were to be in SotA, they'd be optional. Just like PvP. Just like crafting. Just like exploring. Just like the story...

 

I played GW2 up to level 45, it was a the time very repetitive and I'm not sure if any different now, but that been said I really liked the jumping puzzle, I wish they could have been harder though.

 

Ya, the "jumping puzzles" were optional, but the vistas weren't. You needed to complete them for the end game weapon. Also there was some jumping puzzle type stuff for the story quests. I couldn't do any of it at all. I had to have a friend log me in to pass the story pieces but gave up on the vistas....there were hundreds of them.

 

I know I'm late to the conversation, but I have gone over the majority of the thread and here are my thoughts:

Jumping should exist. As stated in an early post, not being able to jump ing Dragon Age made the game feel odd and incomplete. Maybe it's a bit of lingering immaturity in me, but I was the kid always jumping off the stage or ledge in real life and in a game like WoW, would more often than not see hwo high of a place I could jump from and live or jump off waterfalls (however I don't go THAT far in real life).So my notes are as follows:

- Jumping should be allowed.

Technical aspects:
- The jumps should be relatively small in general (consider between knee and waist height as average, maybe waist high at maximum). There's no need for Mortal Kombat front and back flips or any other such craziness.
- Jumping should take a small amount of Stamina (maybe scaled for heavier armor/carried weight)
- Jumping should not be controlable in mid-air (standing jumps with no direction input at jump moment go straight up and down, standing with directional input a small distance in that direction, running jump, a longer jump in the direction running)
- Jumping should cancel/take precidence over attack/defense moves.

World/Gameplay Aspects:
- Jumping should NEVER be required to complete a main quest, mini-quest or other type of quest in the game.
- Jumping could be used to travel to "Easter Egg" locations within a Scene that would have nothing to do with a quest, but may give an interesting view, have a unique point of interest, maybe have an extra Resource Node. The idea is to give explorers a tidbit for exploring that isn't required to advance the game itself or obtain something otherwise unobtainable.
- Ledges that do not have a specific blocking object should be able to be jumped down from. Unless the game is going to have a limited pathway to walk (like Dragon Age), the freer the ability to explore, the more people will enjoy it.
- The only "Invisible Wall" effect should be at the edges of the Scenes. Otherwise, they become an annoyance to the player... especially in the case of the fallen log/short fence problem.
- Objects could be coded to NOT be allowed to be jumped on. Smaller objects (like bread) could simply allow clipping through the object (stepping over) and larger objects would have to be worked with the prevent being used in unintended ways.

I understand why jumping was a problem un U VIII and UO. The isometric perspective doesn't lend itself well to the idea, however in a 3d setting, especially one that's being considered the "Ultimate RPG", my vote is for more freedom of movement without having it be necessary for the completion of the game. Yes, there will be some unintended issues, but I think they would be acceptible compared to the larger picture.

 

Free jumping should definately be in this game, should take the VR off the list & put in jumping for the 2.5 Mil stretch goal. Put it in an update sometime after release. I want to be able to jump off the roof of my knights keep, even though that should kill me.
Any game that I play that does not have it just seems wrong.

 

I've always been a fan of realistic jumping and falling, with all consequences thereof accepted by the player. I remember showing off my super jump combo on my paladin to a friend, explaining how the bubble that "prevents all damage" kept me from taking falling damage, because the game treated it as an attack from the ground, which I prevented. This friend, never one to let a pally tank outdo his prot warrior, promptly jumped from the highest place he could find, looked straight down, and used "shield wall" at the last second.

The two of us laughed about that for weeks.

 

MUST HAVE JUMP IN FULL CAPS BECAUSE ITS SERIOUS BIZZNESS!!! lol i couldnt imagine running in a medow and coming accros a low rock ridge and not be able to hop over it....

Ps: i love jumping up and down while im waiting for somone to show them im growing impatient hehe

 

Jumping and crouching are a must, makes the game more realistic. I'm all good for jumping puzzles as well as long as it makes sense in the storyline. Plus if I can't jump crouch how else can I humiliate you after I kill you!!!

 

Well I'm planning to role-play a pirate with a wooden leg so naturally I am against the whole idea of jumping. Oh, and I'm also against the idea of clapping in this game as last time I tried I did my self a nasty injury with my hook.

 

I like the idea of jumping. I want to play as an explorer and a small fence should not be an obstacle. I played SWG and there was no real jumping there except as an /emote (/jump which animated you do a straight jump). Although i really loved that game as it had no levels but only skills, purely sandbox and a player driver economy i did sometimes get annoyed being blocked by a small pebble i could not get around.

So i don't want the jumping very bad as i can do without it. But it could improve my overall experience with the game. Same goes for diving into deep water (also was not in SWG).

 

Jumping is something I'd like to see, as others have said, please avoid anything like jumping puzzles, a terrible addition to GW2. I have zero interest in swimming, every time its implemented its not fun, I like the idea of having boats or whatever at some point but no interest at all in getting in the water.

 

Just to throw in my two cents... I haven't read the full thread so I may repeat some points but I've said this before so I'm repeating myself anyway...

I am very much pro jumping, and thing it is a great asset to RPG's... IF it is done right.

Ultima 8 had a lot of faults and jumping been added to the game is often sighted as one of the faults (super avatar bros.) but it wasn't actually jumping itself that was the problem., it was how the consequences of jumping were handled.
See Ultima 8 was the first Ultima game in a very long time where you could actually die and get a game over screen, sucks to be you, hope you saved recently... This isn't a problem in and of itself except you could die at the drop of a hat, but never for a good reason. If you died, even money it wasn't because you overpowered in combat or missed a clue indicating you were about to walk into a trap... You might die two or three times of the course of the game as a result of those "reasonable" causes of death... Then 100 other times due to ridiculous stuff like slipping into a puddle or having the floor fall out from under you into a pit of lava or opening a chest that explode and knocks you off a ledge into the abyss... Stupid pointless deaths... And it made the game very frustrating... And it was compounded by the fact that on the way you had these damn sinking stone/moving platform jumping puzzles that you would die over and over on trying to pass. But it wasn't actually jumping itself or even the idea of jumping challenges that was the problem... It was the fact they were inorganic (I'll elaborate in a minute) and how they handled failure.

Ultima Underworld was actually a little closer to the mark with it's jumping puzzles (but not quite there). The puzzles were actually puzzles, figure out the right direction for jumps, not so much figure out the timings. The problem is Ultima Underworlds controls suffered from being developed in the era they were developed and it was quite easy to muck up a jumping puzzle even once you had solved it... That wouldn't happen these days but in Ultima Underworld it still wasn't as big of a problem as Ultima 8 because when you screwed up it was rarely fatal... You fell a short distance and had the start the puzzle again or occasional fell into an underground river and had to swim back to where you could start the puzzle again or wind up on a different part of the map to explore you might not have come across otherwise. So while still frustrating it was interesting and jumping greatly expanded the depth of the game (which is renowned as on of the most influential games in the industry for kicking off 3D physics engines in games like it did, amongst other things).

And Ultima 8 for all it's faults actually had the greatest senses of exploration about it of any Ultima (Just a shame 80% of that exploration was the friggen catacombs) and that is largely attributed to the flexibility of the character... It wasn't just that he could jump, he could also climb. You'd wander through a field and see a chest up on mound of stone and know you could climb up there to see what inside. You'd run through town and see a river and know you could climb down on the banks and jump across and climb up the other side. You had freedom to explore everywhere. And for all the bad jumping/climibing puzzles we remember in the game... There were some absolutely brilliant ones. What defined the difference is some where arbitrary twitch based death traps that where thrown in your way as road blocks... Some were lateral thinking puzzles that simply made you think about how to progress before you did so with no repercussions for failure... And some were purely arbitrary and of little consequence and were just their to expand the world with no means to fail. So it's not just "jumping puzzles" there's actually 3 types puzzles. Action challenges (The jumping puzzles everyone hated), Logic Puzzles, and exploration puzzles. Let me give you examples of each...

The sinking stones/moving platforms. I don't need to site a specific example in U8 we all experienced and hated them. One mistimed or misplaced step and you were lurker food. There's two key problems with this type of puzzle... 1: It's lazy. Very lazy which is coupled with the second problem, 2: It's completely inorganic... Why it the hell are these obstacles here? Who placed them here? What is their purpose? The made an effort to justify their existence in the lore by having one scholar speculate as to the nature of the magic behind this sinking stones... But the question is never answered... Because the sad fact is the answer is they are there to disrupt the player because the developer put them their because they couldn't think of anything better to put their to make the flow of the players journey interesting at that point. This is bad map design.

The logic puzzles... These were puzzles that jumping was a component of, but it wasn't the core mechanic. An example of the logic puzzle itself would be the point in the catacombs when you came across a fence... And on the other side was a platform with a switch on one end and marbles and other children's toys scattered around with a barrel full of more marbles in reach. The solution to this particular puzzle is to flick a marble at the switch, opening the gate. There several examples of this in ultima serious more famously recognised as the switch that's out of reach you need to use telekinesis on (or a 10 foot poll in ultima underworld). The problem with this one in particular is the mechanic for flicking marbles wasn't previously established and isn't used functional anywhere else in the game, so the player may never make the mental leap. But it the first of a series of these wrong side of the gate puzzles you encounter, the next has a lever that is in reach, but it seems to do nothing, until you pull it 3 times. This a subversion of the established puzzle. It's the same obstacle but with a twist. I mention this because it ties into jumping puzzle which is the third example of this same puzzle in ultima 8. You come across a scene that looks almost identical to the marble puzzle except there's no marbles, the barrel is instead filled with food and lever is out of reach again... So the player can sit their stewing for ages trying to figure out how to pull to lever (which is a lever not a switch, so going back and getting marbles wont help). The key difference to the scene is there is a crypt next to you on your side of the fence this time, but it hold no more clues (there's a hairbrush and a potion in it or something equally irrelevant)... Thing is the gate can't actually be opened, if you cheated to pull the lever it just activates some traps (or summons some zombies or something). The solution to the puzzle is to take the barrel full of food, use it to climb ontop of the crypt, and then jump over the fence. This is brilliance in game design. Setup the players expectations then subvert them creatively with the mechanics at your disposal. See the solution to the puzzle is simple and obvious, but by the time you get up to it you've been trained to think about solving them in such a way that the obvious solution eludes you. If you are going to have puzzles at all that is exactly the right to do them as it is the best way to give the player a sense of satisfaction from success without actually making the puzzles so difficult they present an actual barrier to portions the player base.

The exploration puzzles are my favourite and are the best example of the way certain map designers got the right way to use jumping and climbing to make Ultima 8 interesting (while others missed the point and made it a pain). You know the solution is jumping so I'll spell it out. By the lake on the graveyard side of Tenabre there is a lone house with a locked front door. That's the subversion you'd expect there to be a key to open the door but one doesn't exist. But someone made the house and decorated it and regardless of if you want to rob the place or not you want explore in every house in town and see what the developers did in there, read the NPC's journals, see how they live, soak in the ambience. The way in is to climb on the roof, jump over to the balcony overlooking the water and go in through the back door which isn't locked. Apart from some potions, some marbles and dart board to play with there is much there but it is probably the nicest houses in the town (and being uninhabited makes for a great player home) and having to think outside the box to get in and see it to feed your inner explorer is it's own reward. You are actually set up for this earlier by the guard towers around Mordrea's castle where you can enter and loot most of them, but the lower doors on the 4th are locked so you have to jump up and climb on the bridge between them to go in the upper level doors. There's a lot of visual queue that effectively teach you that you can do it, but by the time you get up to the lake house, you've forgotten you can and the single visible door being locked gears you up to look for the key. You really need to be using the jumping and climbing mechanics for the purpose of pure exploration to spot the back door and figure out how to get inside... Cutting out those mechanics also cuts out freedom of exploration they bring and some easy opportunities for the developers to provide those "AHA!" moments.

But as the patch for Ultima 8 proves (by adding target jumping and freezing the moving platforms), if you are going to include jumping and climbing you need to do it right. The first and biggest mistake is to include a puzzle that uses jumping/climbing as a solution on whim as an arbitrary barrier to the player. You can actually include them in that manner but if you do there has to be a reason for the barrier and it has to be organic. What do I mean by organic? It's simple, ask yourself "should" such a barrier be there, why is it and how has the player been prepared to handle it. You just need to look at what is realistic. When a person in real life goes caving or mountain climbing (scenes very common in RPGs) it is normal for them to need to be able to jump and climb to advance... But there is also usually alternate routes and when they do jump over something they never do it if there is any real risk without first taking precautions. If a person is exploring a cave or making their way around the edge of a mountain and they comes across a crevice, where they need to jump across to an opposing ledge, maybe shimmy a bit and pull themselves up... That's reasonable. That's realistic in many respects... Though not all. I'll elaborate... If the a person in real life is faced with such a obstacle and they need to do more then shimmy a little or run across a wall to make the distance or swing from multiple swinging vines in tandem... Or anything else you see in Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia or Pitfall... They simply are not going to do it, they will turn around and find another path. People are not ninjas, and unless the character you are playing is they should not be expected to overcome such absurd "convenient" obstacles (Or look, I can run just far enough to reach that broken ledge which I can shimmy along and climb up on their branch which I can jump from to reach that fine which will get me to pillar I can shimmy around and jump to that other ledge I can shimmy along to climb up on that higher platform I want to get to, good thing none of those architectural oddities are 30cm further apart or I couldn't do it) unless you are actually making an action puzzle platformer. My level 3 merchant on a quest to deliver package to a client should never be expected to surmount a series of strategically placed pillars and platforms like a level 20 gymnast just because he can in fact jump 3 feet.

The other thing to consider is even when someone does come across a simple chasm, they don't just jump across it on a while if there's any chance they could fall. Name one mountain climber, cave spelunker or similar explorer in the history of ever who has ever gone into such an uncharted environ without taking with them... A rope. When they come across a chasm they want to cross what do they do with this rope? Why they tie it to something, is if something does go wrong and they do fall they can rescue themselves and not find themselves in the belly of the lurker. Similarly there's no excuse for "career adventurers" in a game not being able to prepare similarly and avoid the game over screen and subsequent reload. That is why jumping in Ultima 8 was bad... They way it was presented was stupid.
If I'm climbing up a path around the side of a mountain and there is a chasm in the way of my objective... There better be a reason for it being there. Was their a landslide knocking out the road? It better be visible. Is the peak of the mountain only inhabited by a race with wings that doesn't see the need to maintain said mountain path? Is it actually an uninhabited untamed mountain? Then there better not be an actual obvious path and I better be able to make my way up it several ways. When I do need to cross said chasm I better be able to tie a rope to something if I'm actually expected to jump across it to proceed. If there is any source of magic levitation in the game (be in levitating books, crystal orbs, magical monsters like gazers that levitate) and I am a magic user the magic system damn well better include a spell I can use to bypass this obstacle. If these checkboxes are ticked, these set pieces are a great asset to exploration and depth to the games environments.

But what about including those actual puzzles where you have to jump from pillar to pillar. They can be okay but it's hard. First they need a reason to be there... There is no way such a puzzle can be a natural formation, it has to be fashioned by sentient beings as a deliberate barrier (or trap)... And more importantly they need a damn good reason for fashioning it that particular way... If human can cast spell that let them levitate, a mad wizard crafting such a puzzle to cover the entrance to his dungeon to keep humans out simply doesn't fly (semi intentional pun). It's got to be something the makers can bypass but don't expect whoever they are trying to block from being able to... And if a player is forced to encounter such a thing... Well he's the problem with this type of puzzle... If it's trivial, it's annoying. If it's difficult non fatally meaning you have to repeat it, its annoying. If it is fatal if you fail, trivial or otherwise, it's very annoying. So when is it good? When it's clever. When there are probably better ways to bypass it then the way the fictional makers intended. When failing doesn't necessarily set you back but may put you in a better position to proceed. Or when it's the core mechanic of the game... which for SotA it shouldn't be. So yes I obviously think those puzzles are problematic and risky and should be avoided as a rule of thumb... But I don't remotely think for a second that the potential for some map designer someone to include one because they don't know better is reason at all for people to be calling for the outright removal of jumping from the game. Especially with such a large and active community of impending beta testers who can point out to the dev team "hey this isn't good enough, you need to fix it" when they encounter such a puzzle that may have slipped in. Jumping just adds too much to a players sense of freedom of movement to exclude on that off chance alone.

I remember in one game I played a tree fell down over the entrance to the forest and the player had to go to the village carpenter, then do a fetch quest for them to convince them to come out and saw away the tree for you so you could get into the forest. The whole time I was thinking... Dude, the tree is like 4 feet thick, just scamper over it. But you couldn't jump in that game so it effectively blocked my progress. This is a perfect example of the exact same problem presenting in the opposite extreme. The designer throwing down an arbitrary barrier that doesn't make sense as they didn't put much thought into it, that forces you to go through a series of tedious actions to bypass it. Doesn't matter if jumping is in or not, that can happen.

The other legitimate problem with jumping is people bunny hopping around town. It looks silly because it is. Someone on the chat mentioned you could have contextual jumping, like you can only jump at certain locations when you get a prompt. For example when you approach the fallen tree in the above example you get a prompt to push a key to scamper over it, but the rest of the time you are bound to the ground... This is the worst possible solution. Firstly... it still leaves you open to that sequence of events, cross the pillar jumping puzzle for starters (there's just no risk of failure and no sense of accomplishment, making it even more tedious), secondly you go through the whole game not knowing what obstacles you can bypass or not... Getting stuck on puzzles because you didn't move close enough or at the right angle to trigger the prompt and spend ages pushing up against various objects looking for prompts that aren't there but you think probably should be.
Someone above me mentioned the right solution but understated it. Turn to realism. How can you jump? Actually go try it. Measure if you can. Keep trying, see how high you can get it. Keep trying, keep trying to jump as high as you can repeatedly, then come back. I'll wait...
...
Wipe that sweat of your brow. Exhausting isn't it? Even worse, after you figured out how to reach your peak each subsequent jump was lower then the last. You're lucky if you can keep this up for a minute (30 seconds is more realistic, most people wont bother trying for more 15 seconds as the 4th or 5th jump is taxing enough for them to not want to bother pushing further). It's not just draining, it's damaging. If you do keep it up for a minute you'll be sure, not just your legs, but you've got a headache from all the jostling around your brain received. What about running long jumps? Well they are even more exhausting... Because you are running, and it's not just jumping that takes it out of you, landing without tumbling over and smashing your face into the ground is taxing. If you are running through town it's one thing to do a little hop to get up a gutter or clear a rock. You certainly can jump over a waist height fence if you have a good reason to but it's not something you'd do on a whim unless you had a really pressing reason to... We'll come back to that. Anyway even masters of parkour can't keep up that kind of activity for extended periods of time... And after they do they rest for half the day... And the whole point of parkour is to plan you movements to be as efficient as possible... But it's still exhausting. Something else you might have noticed in your jumping exercise is you can't jump pop up at max heigh just like that. Doesn't matter if you are standing or running you need to take time to squat to jump with any real height.

In that you find your solution, charge jumps, have them disrupt movement while charging... Have them cripple movement once you land. Even a small hop shouldn't be just a "small" stamina drain, It should drain stamina but more to the point that disruption to your center of balance is going to slow you regardless of how exhausting it was, longer/higher you jump, even more so. Especially for an adventure in full platemail carrying a throne of bone in their backpack.
Give players the freedom to jump, but if they try to make serious jumps more the handful of times a minute, effectively immobilise them. Most people don't bunny hop around town because it annoys other people. They do it because they want to get where they are going and in most games jumping "feels" faster. Make it slower, much slower. You will almost never see someone jump without a good reason.

Think of the level of depth this adds to the game. Jumping becomes an asset. If I'm running from someone do I risk jumping over a fence knowing it will slow me? Is going around the fence faster? If I'm fleeing someone and come across a chasm do I stop to secure a rope before attempting to bypass it? How much lead do I have? It adds a lot more tension and impact to such scenes when you have choices you have to weigh up on the spot... And of course your pursuers have to make the same choices, do they stop to cast a levitation spell knowing it will give you even more lead? The game is sounding much more dynamic by the minute. Jumping... Climbing... Even swimming... Keep it real and it significantly enhanced the sense freedom of exploration in any game.
Hold on I think I spotted a treasure chest in a crevice up there... I should climb up and have a look... Maybe I'll expand on this more when I jump back down.

 

One thing that I cannot stand about MMOs that allow jumping is how stupid everyone looks bunnyhopping all over the place. IF free-form jumping were to be added to this game, it should impose a certain measure of fatigue that would make a character too tired to jump after doing it a few times in a row... This way, jumps can be used to good effect, but they wouldn't be something one could do all day long. This is not Super Mario Brothers.

 

As far as I can tell, Shroud Of The Avatar's world seems so open that jumping puzzles just wouldn't fit. At least, that's the impression that I'm getting from the videos. They could probably be in the dungeons, but even then, they'd seem shoe-horned.
For me, besides reinforcing the z-axis, jumping is mostly for going over as opposed to going around. In towns, I would be hopping fences for the sake of b-lining everywhere that I go.