The Importance of "Tactile" Feeling in a 3D Game Engine

I'll start this off by saying that I am neither a programmer nor a developer. I'm just a player. Furthermore, I'm fairly new to this pre-alpha, having just contributed a week or so ago. Keep or toss this long bit of feedback, as you like.

In my foray so far, there are a great many things I've liked. Most of it, really. I like the potential for richness that the world has, I like the focus on exploring and talking to generate "quests" (rather than mindlessly following arrows on a map to the next objective), I like the sand-box nature of the game systems and the diversity they potentially offer, and of course I like the fact that the player-base seems built out of the role-playing stock that these games were originally designed for.

But I feel like all of that is icing on the cake, and icing is irrelevant if the cake beneath isn't also high-quality.

This will seem like an unreasonable sticking point, but hear me out. At the core of this game - at the core of every 3D RPG - is the player's character and his physical interaction with the game world. The very first thing you do is move your character. Every action requires movement. Every step of combat requires movement. If that movement doesn't "feel good", if the character doesn't feel like he is impacted by the world he inhabits, everything starts to fall apart.

This is the one area where Shroud falls short for me. Moving my character around and interacting with the world doesn't feel fluid. It doesn't feel impactful. Although it may be considered heresy, I'm going to use World of Warcraft for comparison here. Not because WoW is a great game. WoW has extremely limited diversity within its character classes, has not an ounce of story diversity or choice, and generally has an antagonistic, unruly, and anti-social player-base. But what it does have is a simply fantastic 3D engine.

When I move, jump, or emote in WoW, I feel like my character is actually gaining traction with his feet, actually landing on the ground, and actually dancing in place. This is especially true in combat. Hitting the enemy feels and sounds "actual". The enemy knocks back when hit hard. *I* knock back when hit hard. Shroud feels very different in this regard. My weapon clips through the enemy and a sound is made. There's nothing that makes me feel that my weapon really hit that enemy.

The reaction of the engine to player commands is also very important. Although WoW is full of quality movement animations, these do not prevent the engine from responding immediately and accurately. Starting and stopping the character happens instantly. There's no brief "ramp up" to top speed in order to facilitate an animation, nor is there a delay in stopping motion when the keyboard is let go. Again, this feels to me like a problem for Shroud (as well as a host of other MMORPG's out there). I feel like I don't have good control over my character. He sort of "kick starts" when I press forward, and he skids a bit when I stop doing so.

Even little touches go a long way towards making the engine feel fluid and tactile: the Warcraft enemy NPC's move back a step or two if you are fighting them too closely to prevent the player model from clipping into their own. It makes a huge difference in making the combat look and feel impactful...and tactile. This is definitely missing in Shroud, at least as of this build. Most of my combat interaction takes place with the enemy and my character standing close enough to kiss and regularly clipping through each others' models.

There is a very tactile nature to the way a Warcraft character interacts with the 3D world he inhabits. It feels.....good. Shroud, conversely, risks that feeling of the world moving around the character, rather than he moving through it.

Now, all that said, Shroud is far from the first game I've seen with these problems. Nonetheless, I rarely see them addressed. Perhaps the only place I saw this issue actively discussed was in The Old Republic development forums, and though they did a good job making that game feel tactile, they otherwise delivered (yet another) on-the-rails Warcraft clone.

I will try and intercept one potential counter-argument: "But this isn't meant to be an arcade game." But there I disagree. Every 3D game is an arcade game. It needs to be. The core engine has to feel good. It has to feel GREAT. It is the interactive GUI on which the entire game is built. Its the only platform through which the human player can interact with the virtual world, and therefore it has to be the most solid, most well developed part of the game.

Why do people endlessly return to World of Warcraft? The great community? The exciting and unpredictable progression grind? The brutally limited, decision-free questing system? Well, maybe some go back for those things. But those aren't the sort of players the SotA community wants, anyway. Let me ask this differently: why do *I* go back to Warcraft? Because that engine truly feels great to play on. Every spell I cast, every weapon I swing, every jump or dash I make: I feel like I'm rooted into that 3D world and in race-car-accurate control of my character, and that feels great. Despite the otherwise cruelly limiting crafting, questing, and social systems in the game, I still go back. That's how good it feels.

At the heart of every game, 3D or otherwise, is the basic engine on which the game runs. For SotA, that's the interactive 3D world that the players inhabit. I love the systems that make up the secondary framework of this game, but without a serious investigation into how to make the engine, itself, more fluid and tactile, those great systems will simply be incredible icing on a second-rate cake.

I have high hopes for this game. I wouldn't have contributed money if I didn't. I've been an Ultima player since Ultima III: Exodus (even through the dark days of Ultima VIII: Pagan!). I was a die-hard Ultima Online player. I almost failed out of college because of it! I definitely lost my girlfriend of the time to it. (Hah!) I'm so very, very ready for this game to be great. Its just not quite there yet.

And for the record, I've never written a post like this for any game I've played or tried to play. I wouldn't do it here, either, but for the fact that this seems to be a truly player-sourced and funded venture. This is one of the few times I've ever felt like designers and other players might actually listen to and consider feedback like this.

(In the event that all manner of changes are already scheduled for future builds of the core game 3D engine, please ignore my post and/or reply to it in as derogatory a nature as warranted.)

 

Welcome Corlane! I think after the Unity 5 upgrade, most of these conerns may be addressed. Sound effects and visual quarks have been mostly on hold waiting to move to Unity 5 because Unity changed they way it is done.

Very thoughtful post!

 

Ah, thank you Tahru! Glad to hear that this is not the mostly-final version of the 3D engine.

I'm such a novice in technical terms....do you know if there are currently any games out there that run on Unity 5? I'd love to take a look at them and get a sense of what Unity 5 is capable of.

 

It is my understanding that Unity 5 is just now being released. However, there are a bunch of youtube videos showing it off.

 

I actually like the delays in combat, gives it a more realistic feel with weight and momentum buildup. You cant instantly be moving full speed, nor can you stop immediately . It takes a few milliseconds to get that sword moving or to stop from a full run. I like it. When you give a command, it will be executed as soon as physics allows, this feels much more right to me than instantaneous actions. This is not so much an arcade style game as a game based on tactical actions and as such it feels good go me.

At any rate, animations and sounds are far from complete for sure and I'm looking forward to the updates in these areas as they come.

Just my .02

 

Agree. I expect if SotA had a cross-heir for precision targeting/movement (with Skyrims jumping)- it would be better. Even an Ultima Underworld style cursor that moves along the ground around the Avatar.