Game Development: Loose Ends

[loftar]

Is there any chance I can ask you to clarify in what ways, more precisely, the new combat system is better for PvP? You know, somewhat concisely and to-the-point?

It seems we can more-or-less agree that neither system is a lot better than the other in terms of PvE, correct? On the whole, that is.

[shubla]

It's impossible to make anything good if only tests are done on test server.
At some point you have to push partially incomplete and not perfectly working system to the main server in order to properly test it.

[Pan_w_okularach]

The card system is bad.
There is a block called parry, that protects from all the melee attacks(the only ones that can deal damage) it costs nothing and it's cooldown is lower than it of any attack except for steal thunder which has equal cooldown. Everyone who is fighting in this game have parry in their decks. The only practical way to overspam parry (if stats are equal) is to use zig-zag + steal thunder, if you're not using it you will never win against your parry spamming opponent. But if you're using it, your opponent has a very little chance to survive. I think everyone will agree that it's broken. The question is how can this system be possibly fixed? If there are only attacks, blocks and cooldowns and nothing else, it's always going to be about which one is faster: attack spam or block spam. What possible new moves can be added? Sure you can increase the number of cards in the deck or add attacks with different combinations of colors but what will it really change.
While in the experiment combat, there is a whole new dimension you can play with. Moves/maneuvers that take defence, moves/maneuvers that give defence, moves/maneuvers that trade defence for offence etc, it can be instant or gradual or triggered by opponent. There is clearly more potential here. The only complaint i've heard untill now is that the new combat is too complicated is it really a bad thing that comabt system has some depth for change?
Lack of dynamism though? Maybe if you didn't have to get 40 coins before you can start fighting because everything costs a ton of coins and maybe if every maneuver didn't have a duration just slightly longer than the cooldown .

[joojoo1975]

not as experienced as most of the other players. but I will give my short feelings on the subject of fighting.

i'm not a fan of the card system. I like the idea of new attacks and whatnot as well as gaining them from animals, but the overall fight system seems to dependant on" hand eye coordination" rather than stats.

do I think 2 combantants should just stand and fight toe to toe and that's it? no, but at the same time I feel this game has adapted the FPS game style of "sprint and jump towards your attacker and then use the game mechanics to get the hit" that is totally just wrong.

I also think you took a lot out of the aspect of the game when you removed the defense bar. the attack bar I can understand, but not really the defense bar(I always felt like the defense bar was like your general toughness as well as your consciousness)

as with your aspect of 3 quality system I also think the 3 "layered" combat system is somewhat clunky and unnecessarily needed.


overall I feel that you tried to involve "chess tactics" into a first person shooter frame of combat. but then I could be totally off, so take this with a grain of salt.





how would I fix?

first off, bring back the defense bar.

Second, bring back penalties to movement combat, it doesn't have to be every time, nor does it have to mean you don't use your defense, but if you are constantly running and gunning, how about a fall prone stance(cant move for 5 seconds) or something along the lines of either a combat or movement penalty

I don't know. it seems to me that after world 3, the exploits and just overall general abuse of game mechanics have seem to run rampant. though I really don't know how you can change that in a FTP game, and we all know what happens when you don't make this a FTP game. if it was up to me, I would probably devote 75% of your schedule time to cracking exploits and bugs. can a FTP game not be riddled with bugs and exploits?

I really don't know, I started in world 2 and maybe there has always been rampant abuse.

[loftar]

I just restarted the test server with some minor changes. Primarily, we nerfed ants pretty hard, and some other animals too though less hard; and we also increased damage numbers from various attacks all over (mostly unarmed attacks, but some increases for all the melee weapons too).

first off, bring back the defense bar.

That's exactly what we've done on the test server, though. Have you actually tried it?

[strpk0]

Have you guys considered implementing a combat system similar to salem's? I know it's certainly not perfect, but I feel like with enough polishing a system like that could become something interesting. I just think that perhaps the issue with all current combat systems is that regardless of what extra additions you "cling" on to them (namely defence/offence bars, cards, etc), they always end up boiling down to attacking and defending until either combatant screws up or loses due to being outstatted or outnumbered.
There's also the issue from the development side of things that it could become increasingly difficult (dare I say exponentially so) to implement new moves/attacks and give people a reason to use them at all without simply making them OP and therefore rendering all other previous attacks/defences useless (or making combat so unnecessarily complicated that not many people will have the patience to learn the tree of attacks they should use against each particular situation). Like I said, in the end all current combat boils down to is breaking someone's defence by spamming the OP attacks and keeping yourself alive by spamming the OP defences, regardless of how many moves there are to choose from.

I think in that regard salem's combat system allows for more flexibility by doing away with any defending/attacking, and instead turning the combat into a game of strategically using the right moves at the right times to land a hit on an opponent, and relying on character movement to dodge incoming attacks. (for the people that don't know, in salem the only way to block an attack is to actually move and dodge it, there's no defence moves or anything of the sort, so it ends up being a game of skillfully dodging people and outsmarting them, rather than spamming defences to render all opponent attacks useless. There's also stuns, dashes, dodge moves and whatnot). So in that sense one could (theoretically) add as many different combat moves as necessary, since the combat isn't so heavily reliant on numbers, and rather requires players to be mechanically and strategically skilled in order to win fights.

Just to illustrate a bit, here are a couple of videos that summarize the way I see salem vs haven combat (bias/rudeness not intended, I'm just trying to express my view of both systems)
Haven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzavftr0Bz4
Salem: https://youtu.be/Hm25hssGPzM?t=48s To clarify a bit, the monster being fought in this video is easily able to knock even the highest statted characters out if you mess up at the wrong time (even in one hit in this particular case), this person manages to kill it with a relatively low-statted character due to being very experienced at the system. Pvp works very similarly to this. Again, it's not a game of numbers, but rather of being skilled at the game and taking advantage of your opponent's weakness (which is just a relatively dumb monster in this case, but I'm sure you get the point).

I also think this is one of the things people loved so much about the legacy haven combat system (movmant kambertz and whatnot), in that you could easily take out a much stronger character if they moved at the wrong time, and you weren't instantly screwed just because they had better numbers and spammed abilities better than you.

Now, I'm sure you guys (the devs) are by now growing a bit tired of working on the same combat stuff, but I'm just dropping this post here as a suggestion incase you ever decide to give combat another swing, maybe it could even lead to an even better result.

[joojoo1975]

That's exactly what we've done on the test server, though. Have you actually tried it?

tried it earilier, didn't see it then, but I must have been doing something wrong as I just tried it again and it's there.

Thank you

[dzielny_wojownik]

here, we made a video showing why horse combat is bad, because many people have no idea what we are talking about and have a hard time understanding the horse posts.

we tried to do it as realistic as possible. a classic gank scenario: we meet a enemy in the wild, one of us sprint after him while my friends stay on second speed so they don't lose pony power as much as the enemy will do,
now there are 2 options: 1. if he has a lower q horse he will get dismounted and killed 2. if he has a better q horse he will run out of pony power anyway and my friends will catch up to him and dismount him, because they haven't lost much pony power since they have been going on second speed and the chased one will be going on the first speed. this case in video is number one
once he is dismounted, he's literally being raped. this is as realistic as it can get and we know what we are talking about since we have actually ganked people like this in real combat but in real combat its usually way faster to dismount the guy since they don't expect to be ganked any time. once you lose your horse you're dead, it is too OP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGRc4EebNJc

[jorb]

Thank you. Much appreciated.

[shubla]

Thank you. Much appreciated.

Also signblocking should be nerfed.
As you can see from video he has rowboat and knarr on hotbar.
Only reason for that is to block enemies with signs.
Which is just stupid mechanic overall...

In short, he places sign between him and enemy.
Enemy will be confused.

Fix is simple.
Dont allow placing building signs while in combat.