From my experiences... (in depth)

In many of the games that I have played over the years, I have seen and tried every combat system in practice today in gaming.

I have been a hard core gamer since commodore 64 in the 80s and have used all the combat systems known. Live action combat such as first person shooters like Doom and Castle Wolvenstein to HALO and Combat Arms. Headshot.

Just No.

Turn based combat will also be a snooze-fest. Don't get me wrong, it was ground breaking/state of the art/cutting edge when Lord British did it on the computer and Gary Gygax did it with dice that defined combat back in the 70s and 80s for games. Basing combat on probabilities and random (RND) numbers. Then charting it. It was genius in my opinion. Nothing like that was ever done prior. But, alas, that was then.

I feel a 'twitch' style combat is not viable either though. A twitch combat system steers completely away from the nostalgia and feel of the Ultima series. None of the Ultima games were ever a Live-ACTION game. Also, if implemented a twitch system would be more about hand-eye coordination, timing, and memorization of combinations and less about enjoying the multimedia effects. Up,up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, B, Start, comes to mind (NES Contra cheat). What sense is it the have that awesome mushroom cloud in 64 million colors when casting a nuke on an orc when the player is more worried about hitting QWERTY in perfect sync for his/her next move than anything else?

Real-time combat is the most agreeable, in my humble opinion, and most popular overall because it falls back in line with SotA's RPG gaming ancestors such as Ultima Online, World Of Warcraft, and Everquest to name a few. Turn on the auto-attack key and start hitting your skills. Each skill has some sort of requirement attached before the skill can be used, whether its a timer or mana or stamina etc.

Also, when creating the combat skills, please, please, please, please, do not make the one-skill to rules them all!! Do not create a skill or skill line that is the one thing to do to be the best!! It just ruins any avenue of exploration into other areas. For example, in Diablo II, when creating your skills, everyone put the minimum amount of points into their skill tree to get to the the next tier of skills, THEN they placed all their extra points that they had accumulated into the last and top skill.

This was also a problem in Ultima Online. The experienced players that played combat in UO maxed out their taming. So, a player with 100 in pet taming would charm a Demon while the player with 100 in Melee would suck an egg.

Personally, I loved, loved, loved the UO skill system and will enjoy seeing it again. Well done on another ground breaking system by the way. I think it will just need balancing to be effective.

Whatever system you choose, please balance it. Especially if SotA will implement PvP. It is very frustrating to play other roles such as a "squishy," or a healer, or a support when 95% of the players play assassins because being an assassin is THE thing to do.

Your Knighteverlastin,
L. Pisano

 

I dont want a game that's too twitch either. Because there's always lag. I always build be character and rotations assuming that I'm playing a second or two behind everyone else. If I react to what I'm seeing on my screen, I've already missed it.

But I do want a game with the fluid feel of an arcade game. I want to fight the other player, not the UI. Realistically there's only about 3-4 skills I might actually want to do at any given time. But I have to search all over my screen and keyboard to see what's proc'd, what's off cooldown, what my mechanic is build up to...and this just no longer feels natural. It's not a realistic choice the character would be making.

The death of interesting builds comes from PvE. As soon as you have a boss that has some kind of enrage timer / dps race, everyone is forced to specialize to the extreme and min/max. And you get cookie cutter FotM builds.

 

No twitch combat = not relevant in todays market.

Back in the late 90's when UO was developed they did not have the tech and bandwidth to have real twitch combat so they put in the tried and tested standard MMO combat that you will see in all of the games previous to this year. Finally we are able to make games that involve the player actually aiming and thus bringing much more immersion into the game.

But some of you actually want the standard MMO combat?! WTF! How immersive is pressing buttons and watching your avatar hit things? When you have to aim and dodge then you are much more involved. Of course the characters skill effect when the weapon actually connects.

To go back to the WOW, EQ, UO would be a terrible mistake and would make the game irrelevant and fit only for hardcore roleplayers that have not had enough of that * combat in WOW.

Make the combat real please. Darkfall did a good attempt at this.

*edited for language - Koldar

 

On the other side of the spectrum, Indi, you have people who are no good at twitch combat (like me), or have a poor connection (like me), or simply feel too stressed out by twitch combat (like me). Even WoW is very stressfull in combat for me, because you pretty much have to use special skills at the right time to have any real effect... and as a result, I've never played more than a couple of weeks at a time. Why should only those who are good at high-speed, high-coordination combat be able to play this game? Ideally, I would think you should have an 'auto' system that is 'pretty good', or a twitch-style system you can switch to to try and squeeze out a few extra hit points if you're good at it.

 

I guess I have a question about definition and I don't really understand the discussion. There are three operative terms being used here it seems: twitch, turn-based and real time. I can understand these three but the problem comes in that twitch occurs in real time, and real time feels awfully twitchy to me. Turn based doesn't necessarily mean unlimited turns, and so can have elements of real time and twitch. Plus, when you add limits and cool-downs, twitch is also less twitch and more like turn-based.

So when you say what you like can you please make it clear what you're actually wanting?

 

I don't think a real time combat system in an MMO (or semi MMO) game is feasible. There is too much latency.

 

Just tossing in my two cents, but IF allowed, a macro system could resolve a lot of this. I agree that completely turn based, wait-for-your-opponent style combat is inappropriate, I expect that to satisfy a large part of the player base, there will have to be a fair ammount of twitch based combat. A macro system could allow players like PrimeRib, NirAntae, and myself who aren't so keen on a reflex marathon to que multiple powers and combos more easily, without requiring more dextrous and, well, twitchy players like Indi to live with a system that robs them of their speed.

The big issue will be how it works, and from MY experience, I'd say that the sooner the devs impliment a macro system, the easier it will be to make it fair. One button super commands with conditional logic and situational responses built in are bad, ability mapping that lets us tie the existing powers to any button of our choice are so weak as to not address the problem. Somewhere in between lies a system that lets me have a button that tab targets to the next enemy and casts a poison effect at them. Just that, something I could just as easily do by hitting two buttons, something that yields a little bit of tactical control (I don't get to choose which enemy it moves to, or what effect it casts) in return for easing up on how much I need twitch speed and complex button combos.

If the macro system is built right, right form the start, and applies simple rules, then it will create just enough streamlining for players that don't want to twitch, while costing them just enough efficiency to let the twitchers know that their reflexes ARE an advantage.

In the real world, planning and experience are the defense an aging warrior has against the speed and energy of youth.

 

I too have tried every kind of combat system since Commodore 64 to modern MMOs and FPS games.

I should first say that real-time twitchy systems do technically work; I've seen that playing DDO for years (on American servers which means I had a 200-400 ms latency at least) and it actually works, but you can only excel if you are very well coordinated and focused.

Now, I personally hope LB and his band will come up with something new.
I don't like twitching, but I also hate the standard MMO combat (i.e. WoW, LOTRO...) where you just sit down and hit your combo again and again. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, wait for cooldown... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... start over... yawnfest.
And I also hate the turn-based combat JRPG style (think about the old Final Fantasy games), which is just painfully slow and un-immersive.
And have you tried Cryptic's Neverwinter? Hold down left mouse button and wait: you will eventually win. Hit "1" , "2", "Q", "E" and "R" at random if you want to see more particles on your screen, but that's not really mandatory.

Yes, I really do hope they will invent something, because anything I've tried so far wasn't really satisfying.

 

Hmm, the only thing left that I can think of is VR, where you would have a virtual shield in one hand, and a virtual sword in the other, alternatively spellcasting with left and right hands, and you would have to strike and parry/dodge in virtual combat according to how your opponent reacts.
Now, if VR is implemented, and that is how combat is conducted, then you and I are going to be hearing a lot of whining on the forums from ordinary peeps crying about how they don't have a chance in PvP against those who have sk!llz. The difference between skilled players and ordinary players will be enormous! There won't be any way to "balance" PvP combat because it will be dependent upon real life physical advantages.
(PvE is just stupid to discuss because it can always be tweaked one way or another. The game has to be designed from a PvP point of view, or it will always be broken.)

Another scenario is finger sensors, but that really wouldn't be any different than mashing buttons.
If there are any other ideas out there, it would be very interesting to hear them.