Combat, fun and the practice-dummy test

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by oplek, Aug 5, 2018.

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  1. oplek

    oplek Avatar

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    (I apologize if this is a longer read)

    I believe that the game feels more like grind than has needs to be. There are games out there that are little more than running around and blasting endless waves of enemies. Yet, they don't feel like a grind as much, because the combat is fun.

    I don't feel that SOTA is quite there yet, and so I've been mulling over why that is. So this are my thoughts, that are from my own perspective.

    Here's my breakdown (not necessarily addressing whether it's a grind, but whether it's "fun").

    I'm skipping "rewards" because it's not about the rewards, it's about the action. But I will say, I prefer humanoids over animals (and groan when I have to fight a number of animals) because the looting takes a very long time, compared to humanoids, and skinning animals doesn't have good loot, comparatively.

    I am not distinguishing between PVE and PVP, but more leaning towards PVE.

    1. "Tactical"

    This is the planning and "theory crafting" you might have heard about in other games - the strategy. I enjoy trying to figure out what my gear, deck, etc, will be. I enjoy the character-building.

    I'm not a role player per se, so the debates about atonement and having to train everything is not really a factor for me, but I could see how this would sabotage others' efforts.

    I feel this is probably SOTA's strongest aspect in combat. I don't know that I have any suggestions for improvement, generally speaking - setting aside bug fixes or balance issues, or even NPE issues.

    I'm not a fan of "rock paper scissors". I don't see a point in having 50 different damage/resistance types that each individually is susceptible to one other. I see "rock paper scissors" as something to avoid, not embrace. I don't find it fun to go into combat and lose simply because I chose fire instead of cold damage.

    2. "Tactile"

    For lack of a better category name - the hands-on interaction with the combat system, aiming, selecting targets, moving around, etc.

    I feel this may be SOTA's largest weakness. I find myself just mashing the "3" key while running around (and occasionally looking down at my keyboard to find another key for the heal bind, because Harry is dying, again). There's too much keyboard dependency, and when I'm down to *3* *3* *3* *3* *3* ... it shows.

    I figure at best, the game has the WASD keys, "Q", "E", "R", "3" and "4" out of me.. plus the mouse and L-Click. That's what I've got to work with.

    Some people say we should add more deck slots. Maybe we should reduce them? Though, that starts going down the road of forcing others to play my way, because I can't personally handle it.

    I think there's a couple things that could help assist, instead of restrict.

    Contextual - to consolidate commands into different actions, based on context. Here's some spitball ideas.
    • While in combat, with bow drawn, clicking on the target shoots an aimed shot, but clicking between two targets shoots a spread shot.
    • While in fire-mage mode, clicking on the target shoots fire bold, clicking on the ground near the target engages fireball, and clicking the ground near your feed engages immolation.
    Gestural - detect mouse movements
    • Click-draw circle around on the ground casts ring-of-fire in that spot (and maybe the spell will scale to the radius chosen).
    • In melee, click-slashing does sword slashy skill
    I realize that some people would be frustrated with these, which is why they'd be optional. I think it'd help myself, because I've always found the keyboard controls to be very difficult, bending and switching and tangling my fingers together trying to do multiple things. So it's more about solving frustrations.

    And we do have some contextual things already. For instance, clicking on an ore node versus a squirrel. We don't have separate keyboard commands for those.

    3. "Visceral"

    I'm not sure how else to describe this one. Have you ever seen an animated GIF (g as in "good") of something exploding, with no sound, but you can't help but hear the rumble in your mind's ear? There's a lot of neural interconnections between what we see and us "feeling" it. Immersion. I guess it's called "immersion"?

    I feel the game is hit-or-miss with this. This is the one I'd most like to see some polish on (if I had to chose between #2 and #3, it'd be #3).

    Here's the things I feel are pretty good:
    1. Fireball - I love just flinging fireballs, getting the explosion, and wreaking havoc.
    2. Ring of fire - I love the visual effects for this, and trying to gather up a lot of lesser NPCs, even if I don't get much out them, and just nuking them.
    3. Ice field - what it does doesn't impress me too much, but it's oddly satisfying to just make all kinds of giant icicles jut out of the ground.
    You see I'm going with this. You might notice something missing - melee. I can understand, because it's a lot more complex than explosions, but in so many instances, you have people with sword just swoosh-swooshing at enemies with barely a reaction from them, as though they weren't there. At best, you might get a wince out of them, as though they were personally disappointed that you just made a sword pass straight through their bodies without even a drop of blood.

    I'm not asking for full-fledged Dark Souls-style combat physics... but there needs to be some kind of "satisfying" thud or reaction of some kind. For instance,



    I like the recent addition of flaming weapon applied to bows. That's more "visceral" to witness, even if it doesn't do a whole lot of damage. The *thunk* *thunk* *thunk* of rapid fire also has some level of satisfaction to it.

    Then I look at things like "shield of ice", and it's a bit of a disappointment... there's a lot of room for improvement (and that's a good thing). If I had a coding magical wand, I'd love to see it more like this:



    I play Eve Online too, and sometimes I just love to get wailed on just for the sake of it.

    Practice-Dummy Test

    Here's my challenge for Port. I understand that some things (like advanced combat physics) are a tall order, particularly for the fundamental infrastructure of this type of game... but one way to think of this is... if you were doing nothing more than thwapping a target dummy with a particular skill (or the target dummy was thwapping you), what would it take to make that skill fun to use for no other reason than to use it?

    I'd like to see Port go through the skills one by one, and make them more satisfying. This is where I look at the game and thing that there's potential to it, and if worked on, to make this an even better game.
     
    Max Bennis likes this.
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