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Chazz
Cute and Cuddly Coder



Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 3:09 pm      Reply with quote

So, there was a lot of good feedback on the scav/run thread. But I'd like to address combat in itself.

What are the goods, and the bads? This also includes firearms. Is it too fast, spammy, etc? I'd really like to make it more interactive, so that there's more to do than change your stance/rescue.

What about weapons themselves? Are you satisfied with how they work? Do you think there should be more 'talents' (like ward, feint)?

Stealth? Do you think hide/sneak should have some more usefulness, or is it good as is?

Really, anything combat related can be suggested here. I plan on cracking down on scavenging/combat/medical things in the next few weeks, so now is the time to throw in your thoughts/ideas.


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Hyriana
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 3:47 pm      Reply with quote

I'm probably not enough of an expert on the system to speak about balance of new talents, but one of my biggest peeves is the raw spam of combat messages. A way to tell when someone takes a big hit without having to 'set melee' and try and read and everything that flies down my screen and spamming 'group' every two seconds would be great.

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Chazz
Cute and Cuddly Coder



Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 4:55 pm      Reply with quote

That was one of the goals of making bleeding echo to the room as well. So maybe a threshhold of, say, 'moderate and above' goes to room, whereas the rest are private?

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Hyriana
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 5:05 pm      Reply with quote

Chazz wrote:
That was one of the goals of making bleeding echo to the room as well. So maybe a threshhold of, say, 'moderate and above' goes to room, whereas the rest are private?


That would be really nice, yes! Or maybe something that will show if someone takes enough damage to lose a * of health? I don't know how possible that one is.


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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
slyviolin
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Sometimes I struggle with my demons. Other times we just fuck and have cheesecake.

Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 7:14 pm      Reply with quote

One thing I love, love, love, love about PRPI combat is that I can take part in it. It usually comes down to PC's actual knowledge/skill and stats than whoever's player can type fastest/code best/Know the deep dark secrets of how combat works and exploit them.

While you make it more interactive, try not to make it to complicated that PC's aren't entirely crippled my a lack of dynamics understanding by their players.

My only other suggestion would be to make weapons a little more comparable to eachother so people don't feel like they have to choose either a) a greatsword, or b) an axe as their weapon of choice because they deal the optimum amount of damage over time. Maybe a few weapons how's man power comes from stats other than strength Examples: Knife use is tied in closer to agility for those fast strikes, Polearms tied with high Dex?


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Lowdy
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 8:59 pm      Reply with quote

I think there should be a way to have anactual RP fight. Like try to hit Spencer's face with lance!
You succeed!
MUAHAHAHAHAH!

Something like that....if you follow.... >_>


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crayon
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 8:59 pm      Reply with quote

slyviolin wrote:
One thing I love, love, love, love about PRPI combat is that I can take part in it. It usually comes down to PC's actual knowledge/skill and stats than whoever's player can type fastest/code best/Know the deep dark secrets of how combat works and exploit them.

While you make it more interactive, try not to make it to complicated that PC's aren't entirely crippled my a lack of dynamics understanding by their players.

My only other suggestion would be to make weapons a little more comparable to eachother so people don't feel like they have to choose either a) a greatsword, or b) an axe as their weapon of choice because they deal the optimum amount of damage over time. Maybe a few weapons how's man power comes from stats other than strength Examples: Knife use is tied in closer to agility for those fast strikes, Polearms tied with high Dex?


These are excellent points, and I think a bit more transparency with regards to how certain aspects of combat work, along the lines of a wiki article or a faq would help people to -not- gimp themselves as severely simply by not knowing; however, the long-term best solution would be to see to it that the different choices people make with regards to how they combat each present in equal benefits to some aspects of combat with detriments to others, so that every choice is rewarded and penalized in balance, and that trap of 'gimp'ing oneself mechanically by making such choices simply becomes a different sort of specialization.

The latter project is probably significantly more work, and it would be helpful to know the aspects and facets of it through which we can more easily make changes to make sure the changes we make are efficient.

Chazz wrote:

What about weapons themselves? Are you satisfied with how they work? Do you think there should be more 'talents' (like ward, feint)?


With regards to talents, such as bash, ward, and feint, I would say yes, we could use more things like them. But they themselves should probably be altered. At present all three function on the same mechanic: they perform some act on the opponent, while setting you off-balance. In the case of bash and ward, they set the opponent off-balance as well, I believe. With the difference that with ward, it will also make opponents outside of the one you're currently in combat with pretty much turn around and walk away (in the case of mobs) or lose out on a round of combat, in the case of players, presumably. Feint, I'm told, attempts an attack that either has a higher(?) or guaranteed(?) chance of being critical, doing Tons of Damage (TM), especially in conjunction with things like tripping and being off-balance (from getting warded or bashed).

Here's the problem: Dual-wielding presents no choice, you're given both a defensive skill that's on-par in the majority of use-cases with the other, ALONG WITH a tool for doing exceptionally high damage, and unless you have poor strength, you have every choice of whether you're dual-wielding weapons or weapon and shield with no cost. Dual-wielding presents no choices, no risk/reward, and so affords more in what it can do. Sole-wielding specializes towards that sole talent, which has a single use-case, and so finds itself 'gimped'.

Here's how I'd look at introducing new talents to remedy this problem: We don't want the skills themselves to define how you can or can't engage with combat. We want that to be a personal choice a player makes on an informed basis as they approach the game and it's combat elements, but we also want it to be a choice that has permanent effects on an upside/downside basis; if a character specializes for one thing, they ought be worse at others, if a character approaches things on an equal basis, they'll be worse at any one thing than one who specialized in it.

We can afford to make this happen through the use of talents like feint and bash and ward with the following approach. Afford each skill (perhaps including weapons skills and deflect) to offer a choice of talents or perks (passive talents, that you could probably do recycling the code for things like combination attacks while gutting the broken parts). These active and passive talents then ought be presented to the character for choice, which would need a coded backend that might be kind of difficult to deliver. At the same time, this sort of presents a problem in the case of the talents being difficult to deliver in a realistic mechanism; ideally there should be some sense of working towards the ability, rather than either just having it or not. I've got some ideas as far as ways you could probably make that happen recycling mostly existing code to support it.

This would have the effect of making all weapon and style base choices comparable in terms of skill, while still presenting opportunity to freely make choices to pursue specialization in all or some aspects equally, with aspects tending towards features like tanking, damage-dealing, or more utility-aspects (like tripping and off-balancing).

I love that there are ways that things like a trip at best, or ward/bash at worst, leading into a high-damage feint, have the potential to make the game more engaging, but the tools to accomplish it are a bit thin at the moment, and lack of transparency on how-things-work in some cases makes players feel like they're in-the-dark if those tools are made available.

Chazz wrote:
Stealth? Do you think hide/sneak should have some more usefulness, or is it good as is?


The problem with hide and sneak at the moment is that on one hand they don't synergize at all with other skills, they don't function with armor, which puts, with how combat works, a fighter who uses hide/sneak at a significant disadvantage, if they try to use them in conjunction. Some of that can be fixed with adjustments to armor if that gets looked at.

At the same time, hide/sneak on their own work on kind of a basis of: high risk, minimal reward, and that really ought be looked at on its own. Personally, this type of thing is extremely difficult to balance, especially with the code we have to work with. I'd love to hear more ideas, but I'm not sure I actually have any good ones of my own.

Chazz wrote:
This also includes firearms.


Efficient use of firearms tends to be spam-firing, which is sad. The skill-payoff, the rate at which firearms skills have an appreciable affect on your ability to use them, DOES seem low. There are some simple fixes that can be made in that direction, but if the objective is more interactive, aim could use some looking at, perhaps by slowing down the speed at which it fills to discourage spam-firing, and also increasing the effect that having a truly aimed shot has. Because of ambush/sniping cases, this would probably need to come with an effect that gives somebody being aimed on a chance of spotting that they're being aimed at, codedly. People shouldn't feel like they run the risk of dying because they don't spam-scan/watch or can't see a hidden person aiming when they're rooms away.

Chazz wrote:
Is it too fast, spammy, etc?


Yeah, pretty much. It would be nice if we could slow it down a pace, while maybe increasing the 'spikiness' of damage, if you know what I mean.

Chazz wrote:
I'd really like to make it more interactive, so that there's more to do than change your stance/rescue.


Sounds awesome to me, dude. I'd take a look at stances. Right now, the extreme ends show almost no risk->worth payoff, and the part where they put you off-balance makes them irritating if you actually want to use them in an interactive manner.

Hyriana wrote:
That would be really nice, yes! Or maybe something that will show if someone takes enough damage to lose a * of health? I don't know how possible that one is.


That one should be very possible, given that all minor, moderate, et cetera really are, I'm told, is a % of total health? Or are they flat values? The latter would seem unintuitive.

Lowdy wrote:
I think there should be a way to have anactual RP fight. Like try to hit Spencer's face with lance!
You succeed!
MUAHAHAHAHAH!

Something like that....if you follow.... >_>


I've seen these sorts of systems before, and they are pretty impressive, at first. But after a while they grow old, especially outside of serious PvP. Given that most of those systems gear around recognizing certain words, one starts to feel really irritated when they have to generate a dozen different ways of saying X slashes at gato to get the job done.

The best systems I've seen worked around a sort of timed turn basis where players emoted out what they were attempting, entered in a command or filled a prompt defining the coded things they were attempting, and then the game processes it and defines results. Those have their own problems, in the event that players disconnect in-combat, et cetera, and also in that they take a significantly longer amount of time. Time that could translate into more mobs, etc. I'm not sure that would really be a good thing.

However, I just realized that I completely misread, and that you were talking about just having it as an option, not as a replacement for. Yeah, that would be awesome Lowdy.

crayon wrote:
With regards to talents, such as bash, ward, and feint, I would say yes, we could use more things like them. But they themselves should probably be altered. At present all three function on the same mechanic: they perform some act on the opponent, while setting you off-balance.


It should be noted that having the talents cost by setting you off-balance is unideal. Especially when it's in exchange for a chance at setting your opponent off-balance. Maybe fatigue's the answer. I recall you saying you wanted fatigue to be more important in combat?


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slyviolin
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Sometimes I struggle with my demons. Other times we just fuck and have cheesecake.

Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:53 pm      Reply with quote

Ohh fatigue would be awesome.

And reinstating breaks?


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Lowdy
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 10:07 pm      Reply with quote

I have seen 2 fracture wounds a few days ago >_> AndI would be excited about an RP BRAWL in the boozer, or a sparring match that was rped within the fat lip. I think those would be excellent!

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Lowdy
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2013 11:06 pm      Reply with quote

Also! I think there should be a brawling command once you hit talented!

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