Constructive Criticism of 6 month demo Combat Card System

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by Bubonic, Oct 31, 2013.

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  1. Mishri

    Mishri Avatar

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    A more realistic comparison is the automobile or airplanes. They were slower methods of traveling than what was available(horses were still faster and much more reliable), airplanes obviously dangerous.. People back then thought they were absurd. But once they got over the initial issues and they became better than what was available nearly everyone switched as soon as they could afford to. People said there was nothing wrong with horses, why use this unreliable and slow machine?

    Also, you can program AI to absolutely destroy you without special abilities. Even in UO. I know someone was, I think it was darkblade, talking about how he made a bot on a UO shard that killed everyone. I think he said it used archery and bolas... it just reacted instantly and instantly targeted so it was better than a human can be. Obviously in shooting games its even easier to make AI instant headshot anyone.
     
  2. Sir Seir

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    So there was a suggestion (fireangel and adiun) in another thread (I'll let author present the full scope of it) but basically the idea was that the card deck wasn't used to determine which skills become available (all skills at a basic level are usable anytime w/cooldowns) but rather the decks will control when special moves, bonus moves, combo moves become available for your skills.

    This way, you can fire off the base level, boring fireball whenever you want BUT if you have the fire circle or the even the fireball spell card in your bonus deck, there will be times when your fireball will do 2x or 3x damage or maybe 2x area of effect or whatever the bonus is for each skill. The mechanism is basically the same where your hotbar key will glow when it has a bonus attack applied to it; it will reamain active for a short period of time and then fade away as the next bonus is selected. Number of bonuses at one time? not sure, need to work on that.

    Now, there is much, much to work out about this kind of a system but I think it gives us the best of both worlds (access to any skill any time AND bonuses to those skills based on your deck build). Hopefully, we can flesh out the details in the coming days and have something that we can present back to the designers.
     
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  3. LoneStranger

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    Now gather round, kids! I have a story to tell you.

    Fifteen years ago, back in the ol' Quake 1 days, there was a bot named Reaper Bot, written by a regular guy named Stephen Polge. Computers weren't what they are now, I can tell you that. We had things called Pentium II CPUs. Slow beasts by today's standards, but at the time, they were the king of the jungle! Anyway, back to the bot. It learned the level, learned player behaviors and was considered one of the best bots created for the game. It only made it to version .81 because, well, the guy was hired by Epic to head their AI team on some other game called Unreal.
     
  4. Sir Seir

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    *jumps up and down on LS and others*

    Can we refocus on the whole "Constructive" part of this thread?
     
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  5. anubitis

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    Neat story. But most games don't focus on AI. The most advanced AI I've seen in the last five or so years... was what, the AI for F.E.A.R? It's also pretty unlikely this game will have advanced AI either, developers just don't invest in it.

    Also, computer AIs cheat, since they have an intimiate understanding of the mechanics of the game. In FPS games, they can immediately detect the region of your head and fire in that direction when you come into their line of sight. Humans have to 'indirectly' interface with a computer game.
     
  6. LoneStranger

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    I agree. Portalarium probably won't focus on AI like that. That wasn't what the conversation was about, though. To bring it back to the original splintered conversation, someone who is just a player could decide to script a bot that does have advanced AI.

    I also agree, some game AIs cheat. That's usually used as a crutch by developers so they don't have to program a smarter AI. If it was an official company bot meant to behave like a player then there could be some kind of fuzziness to the calculations to approximate a hand trying to move the mouse to the head. In the case of a player scripting an AI to play PvP with the explicit goal of being the best that it can be, he isn't going to put this fuzzyness in. They are going to want to remove any of the flaws and delays of a human using a keyboard and mouse.
     
  7. MalakBrightpalm

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    Once again you practice your nonexistant powers of prophecy. For every car or airplane invented and mocked, there are a thousand "instant weight loss" machines made, which people have HONESTLY BELIEVED were going to work.

    We cannot know which this system is till AFTER it's run, as I said, I WILL try it, but my money is on scrapheap.
     
  8. Mishri

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    Now you are comparing a product that doesn't do what it is advertised to do and sold to unwitting consumers who need what the product advertises and are trying to do it in the easiest way possible. Bit of a difference there from the original point about inovation isn't necessary unless there is a need. Now we have a need that innovation hasn't been able to solve yet. :D

    On the other hand, you could argue that current/existing combat methods are the instant weight loss machine, easy and fast, and not challenging the user. This system could be the diet and exercise we need but aren't getting right now. It might be harder and more challenging. But some people enjoy it and thrive on that. I can guarantee one thing, this system wont just boil down to luck. If you are playing properly and equipped properly with the right spells/skills/gear it isn't going to be a coin toss. It's going to be your strategy and skill win out 99.9% of the time, if you die due to you getting shafted on your skill/spell draws it should be a very rare occurence. That system is entirely possible to work with and implement. Because once again, this system would be similar to having random cooldowns 1-30 seconds on your abilities that you can alter by putting points in them so your favorite/best skills will have the shortest cooldowns. I wouldn't believe you if you claimed that system wouldn't work in a pvp game. And it isn't that far different from what is being proposed. (differences being after 10 seconds they go back on cooldown and they start on cooldown with every second one comes off, and you only see the abilities off cooldown). So once again, if they advertised it like that, instead would people still have the arguement that they should have full control of their character? well your abilities are on cooldown in other games too and you don't complain about full control.
     
  9. Ashlynn [Pax]

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    Well they have just posted the alpha/beta release schedule and it seems they aren't changing direction on the card system anytime before march so I guess you all get to try it and tell them how much you hate it then. =P
     
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  10. Sir Seir

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    /snickers
     
  11. MalakBrightpalm

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    No. No you can't. Unless you are in fact the entire dev team and are actually programming the combat system, you can't guarantee diddly. And that's the issue I take with your arguments, you keep making promises that you cannot keep. *I* didn't say that innovation wasn't necessarily a good thing, though I agree with the poster who did. My point has always been that we should be free to voice our concerns, and that those concerns are utterly valid, and that this is in fact the place FOR those concerns to be voiced.

    Every post I've seen from you has been saying "Guys, relax, it's gonna be great!" but you CAN'T KNOW THAT. Promising people a rosy future is chicanery. Pure and simple.

    Oh, and just so you know, 90% or better of diet and exercise plans are doomed from square one, just because you exercise and change your diet doesn't mean you are doing it RIGHT.
     
  12. Isaiah

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    Since we are bing constructive, has anybody proposed any improvements or changes to the delivery system for the skill system?

    I've heard some place someone mentionn something about having there be icons around the target instead of a tile bar.

    Since many people have dual monitors or really large monitors, could it be something we can organize on a separate window?

    I'm also thinking third party apps here... What if somebody created an app that recognizes the pixels of the card we want, then we could set up hotkeys for each skill we have in our deck. The app or other window could just highlight the icon as it comes up (but always in the same order as we specify so we get both location and visual recognition of the card).... also with it being the same order on that view screen you can push your hotkey for that skill when you see it highlight.

    I only bring that up because it might simplify the skill selection for us while the cards are appearing on screen. Also if we want to use a particular skill we can just push the button pertaining to that skill wheather or not we know it shows up because sometimes we might miss the fact our skill is available. Having a key that always represents the same skill helps resolve the issue of clicking the wrong skill on your list.
     
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  13. Ashlynn [Pax]

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    To be critical!

    Icons Around Target: More workable - the problem is if they are too big they block the view, if too small it becomes difficult to tell what they are (it becomes more of a problem as the number of different skills/spells and therefore icons increases). Using transparency can also cause similar identification problems.

    ...I guess you could make people get google glass for a probably more workable Augmented Reality overlay solution but lol@ the increased hardware costs for players. =P

    Dual Monitors: If paying attention to the bottom of the screen is an issue, having to glance even further away at another screen is worse.

    Third Party Programs: These have their place but addressing a fundemental issue with the UI isn't one of them. That should all be naturalised into the client.

    The last solution appears to be little more than button mashing.... which I suspect is a solution most people would just make do with. It's simply easier to just keep hitting buttons until something fires off I guess.
     
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  14. vjek

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    There is no UI layout, with random hotkey placement of skills, that will not pull attention away from combat, and require focus on those random-hotkey UI elements.
     
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  15. PrimeRib

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    Yeah, two problems with the UI.
    1) Randomized hotkeys
    I need to have attack, cc, defense, etc. on separate buttons and always in the same place. Even if not always available. And you really don’t want to use any key right of the ‘f’ key unless it’s sort of a long cooldown / out of combat type thing. E.g. in Neverwinter my mount is on ‘6’. You could put buff, resurrect, summon, light, etc. off to the side if needed.
    2) Too many uncategorized skills
    The last thing I want to see is 6 dps skills. I’m willing to have some kind of a stance shift or use a modifier (shift, crtl). But there should be logic to these. E.g. shift is the AoE version of a skill (or the over-time version). Stance shift being a weapon swap or changing from fire to ice attacks.
     
  16. MalakBrightpalm

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    A personalizable layout, with the ability to put the buttons where you want them, virtually solves this part of the problem. Each of us wants to see the buttons in a different spot, and there is no one configuration, or group of 20 sample configurations, that will please everyone. Config-it-yourself exists, isn't that hard, and DOES solve that part of the problem.

    Several times people have proposed a method of organizing the skills as they come in. I am definitely in favor of such suggestions. Of course, if you go far enough in that direction, then it's really just semi-random cooldowns on your powers, which I think isn't as random as LB wants.

    Any program that "finds" your buttons for you, while immensely useful to those of us who want more control, will ultimately begin to undo the core point of the random draw system.

    THE best way I know of to do this is to let players build macros. A normal/shift/alt macro would let PrimeRib put his skills together in a way that made sense to him, AND let me put mine together in a way that made sense to me, and still have an enormous amount of room for everyone else to do thier own versions.
     
  17. vjek

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    This is one of my primary concerns with what has been described and demonstrated to date.
    Such "Hotkey Finder" programs will be developed in alpha/beta, and will be sold to completely bypass the whole point of the system.
     
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  18. PrimeRib

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    I think that's what they may end up with. That was RIFT's answer. Build a big mess of 100 skills that make no sense...then let people build a macro system around it. But it would need to be really powerful. I had some very long RIFT macros.

    I guess my hope was that the stack of cards could effectivly act as a macro system.
     
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  19. Sinclair

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    With the knowledge and respect thats really an early, early stage of the game (in terms of the 6 month demo):
    * The run animation of the avatar could be polished. It looks like the avatar is running on rails. There is a "disharmony" between avatar and the ground
    * A RPG lives also from fighting and the sound of fighting. From my pov, the current fighting animations and the fighting feedback system is/are not really good and should be reworked. A couple of month ago, i compared it with the Diablo gameseries which has (from my pov) one of the best fighting feedback system. You "feel" the hit. I personally love it. For me thats part of immersion. "Feel" that you are in the game.
    * Please, make a "living" environment and no sterile instances (incl. the dungeons). Simply an animated mouse on the ground could change the atmosphere. I have seen birds in the sky..thats what i mean.
     
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  20. rild

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    great feedback sinclair, but i think your post should be under the demo thread. lil confusing i know, there are a few. this thread is (ostensibly) about the combat system specifically. i suppose the devs will prolly read it either way, but just sayin' :D
     
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