Combat ideas

[ekzarh]

It's not smart of me to put and idea without trying the new combat system.
You may throw some rotten tomatoes at me for that.

But still.
Idea #1 - elevation should matter. Calculating the Z-delta between chars is easy for you as hell. Adding it as the combat modifier - too. It shd be involved in lots of aspects - attack power increase, defence increase, part of special moves decrease (you cant hit person's leg while staying higher). Move speed decrease, stamina drain increase.
Reasoning - it adds 'skill' part to both chasing and fleeing. And to combat also (will be explained below). Meaning - more fun. Meaning - more value of human skill. Meaning - more chances for skilled players with weak characters.

Idea #2 - orientation matters. This is done AFAIK. But maybe to some less extent like 100% defence front 50% sides 25% back

Idea #3 - strafe moves and walking backwards. You shd' be able to choose - walk back slowly while keeping your defences up, or running away being hit in the back.

Idea #4 - Each attack shd have pre-delay, actual move time and post-delay. Like a heavy overhead chop should be slow both before hit and after hit. Thrust should be fast before hit and slow in after hit in case of miss.
This opens a big thing - when attacker initiates a Chop - defender has a small timeframe to.
a) use a fast hit and with some chance stop a chop,
b) walk behind an attacker
c) run

Idea #5 - After pre-move phase attacks have fixed hit coordinates (no auto re-aim). So after move started it may be cancelled (with small post-delay) completely or missed.

Idea # 6 Attacks have checks like:
chop misses if enemy moves in any direction.
thrust misses if enemy moves to the side
swing misses if enemy moves back or behind an attacker
spin misses if enemy moves back

Idea #7 Varitey of 'simple' attacks, debuffing attacks (debuff move speed, debuff atk speed, debuff blocking in some way, impact stamina, focus on armor penetration, focus on armor damage. More variety is harder to balance but meh, weekly skill buffs and nerfs is the fate of most MMOs - everyones's used to it already.

Idea #8 I am not 100% sure, since i did not spent enough time to think about it deeply, but I think combat calculations may be completely moved to another physical server. Meaning that when the combat starts - "Combat" instance is created on combat calculation server and char info, obstacle map and elevations map is copied there. After that poor overloaded game server just relays all the players input there and relays calculation results back to client. There may be difficulties in adding new participants to a combat, but that seems solvable. Anyway - it's the solution to make complex position and elevation based combat mechanics without performance issues.

Idea #9 Drinking during combat makes you vulnerable (very). Meaning - unmovable and defenseless some time before, during and some time after drinking.
Good example is - when climbing up the mountain stat-330 character stops to drink - he can be damaged by stat-100 character who will then run down the hill and avoid counterattack completely. So who wastes his stamina not carefully - suffers.

Idea #10 AFAIK irrelevant now. Deck size should be proportional to moves variety. Old system was oriented to 5 move decks (relying on random was always dangerous). Move slots shd be 30-50% of total moves IMO

All that works bad ony-by-one, but if done as a complex - can work out well
Feel free to criticize.

[shubla]

Feel free to criticize.

Some idea s are not that good because custom clients give huge advantage. Such as orientation thing.

[Zeler]

Too complicated. Sry. Think of the newbs!

[ekzarh]

Too complicated. Sry. Think of the newbs!

Most of it is stolen from L2, WoW, Age of Conan. Newb somehow managed to learn it there. It's same here - don't let you hit in the back, stand higher and break slow moves with fast moves. Easy

Some idea s are not that good because custom clients give huge advantage. Such as orientation thing.

You mean badcam or something else?
Although I basically agree - with open source client I can write combat assistance which would make perfect move selections and perfect timings instead of me.
But that is related to any combat system more complex than 'rock-paper-scissors' (which is absolutely balanced and absolutely boring).
Even for complex, rich and well balanced fighting games like Mortal Kombat you can do that given client code is open source.

And to defend my idea - in cases where proper character movement gives you advantage - custom client advantage would be less important because right now writing movement assistance for haven is rather complicated thingy.

P.S. Right now I'm thinking that on one hand - custom clients are good. On the other hand - it is bad when some custom clients are not publicly available. Maybe some mechanism with Jorbtar signing and authorizing the custom clients is possible to make it that only public available client can connect to server. Will think of that later

[Kaios]

You have some interesting ideas here, I do think some of them make sense. Elevation could and should be taken in to consideration especially with regards to archery combat. I like your suggestion regarding orientation and I remember something similar from another game I played before. Attack checks and the like sounds rather similar to how combat already works in Salem in which attacks have to actually be aimed precisely or strategically in order to hit the target and I'm not against that.

[Zeler]

No guys, it will be too inaccesible for poor hermits. I can't allow such combat into the game.

[Kaios]

No guys, it will be too inaccesible for poor hermits. I can't allow such combat into the game.

excuse me sir but I am a legacy combat veteran with 1000 confirmed kills and if I say something is good then it is definitely good

[ekzarh]

You have some interesting ideas here, I do think some of them make sense. Elevation could and should be taken in to consideration especially with regards to archery combat. I like your suggestion regarding orientation and I remember something similar from another game I played before. Attack checks and the like sounds rather similar to how combat already works in Salem in which attacks have to actually be aimed precisely or strategically in order to hit the target and I'm not against that.

As for achery it may be interesting to do a thingy which may be explained but next 2 cases:
a) if player is running away directly from archer - accuracy decrease is minimal
b) if player is running away in zigzag manner - accuracy decrease is essential.

first of all this is logical.
Secondly it opens a good strategy of chasing in pairs - one archer to block straight line running away. And one meele who can move in straight line and so can decrease distance between him and zigzagging prey.

[MrPunchers]

What if the archer shoots his team mate on accident? Than the method is bad em'k.

[ekzarh]

What if the archer shoots his team mate on accident? Than the method is bad em'k.

Any tactics has failure chance =) If 2 ppl are in Teamspeak - that's hardly possible. Prey doesn' know when archer would actually shoot, while partner does. So while prey is enforced to zigzag all time it doesn't mean that archer would shoot anytime.