Combat is my number-one greatest gripe about modern MMORPG''s. It''s been a long time since I''ve played Everquest, but I''ve got a friend who continues playing the game religiously, and other than the newfound emphasis on player-killing, the game is just as terrible as I remember. Maybe even worse, considering Verant has had a few years to work on it. I bought Asheron''s Call expecting something different. Hell no. It''s the same mindless fighting as in its predecessor. The whole purpose of these games is to kill things until you get to a high enough level to kill bigger things. I haven''t played Ultima Online, namely because I''m very afraid to waste money on it. There''s no demo. So, what''s a guy to do? I sat down with a couple friends and discussed the situation, and we came up with a solution that I would like to present. Before I begin, let me also add that the visual effects in both EQ and AC completely and utterly suck. The designers must have a really bad particle fetish or something. This will come into play during my rant. I propose implementing a system of turn-based combat nearly identical to that of Final Fantasy 7/8/9, but incorporating movement as an action. When combat begins, everything within a certain radius is locked into the fight, and turns are taken (according to initiative scores) by each participant. Each player should be given a brief time limit in which to select an action (ten seconds is fair), or his/her turn will be passed up. Anyone outside combat will be able to look in and see the battle taking place. If they approach within the predefined battlefield radius (which should be visibly marked), they will be prompted to join. If they choose not to fight, they will be pushed out of the radius to continue about their business. Otherwise, they will become part of the action. Combatants can flee by moving outside the radius of battle, but they can be chased by other combatants and drawn back into battle if they''re not quick to escape. Graphics have to be much improved before I''ll be impressed by an MMORPG. Designers aren''t utilizing the hardware at their disposal to present their worlds as the truly-marvelous places they should be. Spells in FF8 are gorgeous, and I think more people should take some pointers from Squaresoft. You could certainly sell more games that way. I plan to implement this system sometime to test it out. It''s my guess that players would be very satisfied with it, but we''ll never know until we have a chance to try it out. Personally, I''d give body parts just to play a decent MMORPG for a change.

Um, okay no offense, but you lament the emphasis on combat but propose a solution that is just another way to do combat?

Maybe I'm completely missing the point. To me, these games are lackluster not because combat isn't flashy and exciting enough. It's because, as you said, the whole point is to kill and advance ad naseum.


.... hmmmm... I don't think I'm understanding the intent of your post (maybe the combat idea should have been seperate?)

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on April 13, 2001 4:32:29 PM

In addition to what Wavinator has said, you also seem to not understand how long it takes to make a game like Everquest or Asheron''s Call. It''s not easy to predict what hardware will be capable of in 3 or 4 years. You''re also forgetting that Everquest and Asheron''s Call are fairly old so comparing their graphics to Final Fantasy 9 (which came out about 1.5-2 years later)isn''t fair. making a console game like the Final Fantasy series is different because the hardware doesn''t change. And let''s face it, Final Fantasy doesn''t exactly push the hardware envelope either. It sounds to me like your real problem with Everquest and Asheron''s call is that they''re not Final Fantasy.

Ummh... and isn´t your proposed combat system nothing else than another turn-based combat system? Nothing really new there. And in an MMORPG you´d have the problem of the time lag. If you make it turn based the combat time will move much slower than the rest of the game, a lot of people will have the chance to join, things might get crowded...
Sorry, but IMO turn-based will never work for MMORPGS, at least not the kind we´re talking about. Cause the only thing that works well with turn-based combat is a turn based game, and no one really wants to go back to good ol´ MUD, right?

And don´t, please, EVER criticise graphics in a game. The drive of the industry to constantly produce flashier and more hardware-intensive game has not really done anyone any good. Games are not any better because of better graphics. Sure, your friends will be impressed when you show them what you new PC can do, and they will envy you because it won´t run on their PC.... until half a year later your machine is old again and you realize that Ultima XXIII needs ten times the ram you have.
Focus on gameplay, story and user interface, everything else is secondary.

Hi,

You may not realize this, but a system very much like the one you described has already been implemented by Sierra in their "The Realm" game. It was a precursor to Everquest about the same time 3DO was running Meridian59.

Personally, I thought the system failed pretty badly but then again I considered the whole game pretty darn bad (me and a friend at high school used to joke that Sierra had a shortage of programmers and had to have the janitor program the Realm. ;-) ). The game was based on a King''s Quest style engine with, if you can believe it, worse graphics quality than the latest KQ game at the time. In the end it was just a fancy graphical chat room. The combat scenes were actually worse than the normal world graphics. On top of that, the whole concept of disconnecting battles from the rest of the world presented problem like limiting the number of people that can be in a given battle and the time issues that have already been mentioned in this thread.

As far as EQ goes, I''ve always thought the based the game on a mediocre 3D Engine even for the time it was created. The guys that made it were old-school MUD gamers that really didn''t care as much about the graphics. This can be seen in the distinct lack of unique textures, unique icons for different spells, unique animation sequences, sound effects, etc. Any of those things could have been added to the game without increasing the system specs but they chose not to. That was one of the things I liked about UO2 before they canceled it. If you ever saw the E3 video they distributed on the net it showed a martial artist doing stop motion animation capturing for sword techniques. Then they showed the finished animations applied to the models in-game. The effect was awesome.

The only thing I can think of that''d be better than that is to actually create a combat AI that takes each creature''s (including the player characters) speed, strength, skill level, weight, etc. into account and uses it to on-the-fly choreograph fight sequences. The nice thing about real-world martial arts is that most of them are made up of clean strikes, blocks and counter-moves. There shouldn''t be a problem creating a finite-state AI system that takes all the moves a player/monster knows, figures out which ones can physically be applied for a given situation and then picks one to use at a given time.

This paired with a better particle system for magic effects could add a cinematic effect to battles that’s missing in the, repetitive, wooden hacking motion found in EQ and AC.

As for the problem of making games less combat centered, there are a number of things that can be done to fix that. Some of these are:

- More emphasis on. non-combat, trade skills that allow a person to actually advance their character.

- More emphasis on puzzles and riddles.

- More emphasis on player-NPC interaction so that players have a chance to talk their ways out of battles some times (and this means that players should, very often, get _more_ experience for finding a peaceful solution to problems rather than killing everything).

- More quests in general that involve more than just "kill this monster to retrieve this item then the quest is over"

Well, thats my rant for the day.

-Daedalus

First of all, let me apologize for sounding like an idiot. It''s obvious that I introduced my discussion on improper ground. My friend and I have discussed a lot of things since then, and we''ve already established the framework for a killer MMORPG idea that would solve a lot of the problems I presented. Now if only we had the budget to create it.

But my original intent was to discuss a better combat system, because I''m not stupid to the fact that combat is integral to any good role-playing game. Most games take place in a fantasy setting, which equates to Medieval in 99.9 percent of cases, and Medieval Earth was a time of great violence. And besides, players like to waste things in neat ways.

I can understand why a lot of people put gameplay before graphics. I do the same. One of my favorites games of the past is Tempest 2000, which of course has pretty crappy graphics. (We''re talking back in The Day when gouraud-shaded polygons would blow somebody''s mind.) But in the era of Unreal and Diablo II, why shouldn''t we concentrate on making our games look as nice as they play?

I have to be honest, one of the reasons I don''t want to play Ultima Online is because the game''s graphics were apparently drawn by a three-year-old with some kind of visual dysfunction. If you''ve seen a screenshot, you''ve noticed how the tiles and sprites use completely different aspect ratios. It''s not that the graphics are bad so much as they''re not even physically possible. It destroys the game''s plausibility and thus my interest.

Hase: Of course I would forget to mention one of the most important pieces to the equation. You''re right: in a conventional first-person MMORPG like we''re used to seeing since the days of Meridian 59, maybe this system would not work so well. However, I wasn''t thinking first-person. I''m thinking of Diablo II with hundreds of players and turn-based combat, with the battlefield highlighted so non-participants can avoid accidentally joining the battle (which would be difficult anyway because of the prompt I mentioned.)

Daedalus: I like your combat ideas. This falls into a system I was developing for my own project that used real-world martial arts for the basis of combat. Seeing something like this in any game would be cool, let alone an MMORPG.

quote: Original post by Hase
And don´t, please, EVER criticise graphics in a game. The drive of the industry to constantly produce flashier and more hardware-intensive game has not really done anyone any good. Games are not any better because of better graphics.

I disagree with this statement. Everything that needs improvement should be criticised. Without criticism progress is slow. Most would agree that gameplay is the most important aspect, but many people still look at graphics as a key feature. Myself included.

For example, Diablo II was a wonderful game, but the lack of color depth (256 colors) was annoying at times (to me at least) and distracted from the gameplay. Dithering can only do so much. Black & White on the other hand (which I haven't played yet) looks absolutely marvelous in the screen shots. The colors and blends painted by the texture artists are beautiful.

In addition to being attention grabbing I believe good graphics can improve games. Look at car racing games. More detailed courses and 3d graphics help give the player a sense of speed. When I play Need for Speed High Stakes I really feel like the car is screaming down the road. Older games do not get the adrenalin flowing like this.

In the end though it is personal preference and depends on the style of game.

Daedalus, I agree that on-the-fly choreagraphed fight sequences would be cool. I've recently started writing down ideas to test this type of system, but since I'm not a full time game developer it might take a while to iron out my system. Hopefully someone develops something similar soon and takes combat to the next level. I think this would apply really well to RPGs.

--
Todd
http://www.3dcgi.com/


Edited by - 3dcgi on April 15, 2001 11:44:45 PM

I can relate to that ... lol

I got the game about 2 years ago (EQ) and I told 3 of my friends... 1 of which has a 52 necromancer and a 23 druid. my other friend has a 24 necromancer. I stopped playing when I got to 14. Why? Well first of all, ALL Jake (24 necro) ever talks about, and has been talking about, constantly, for 2 years STRAIGHT, is his GOD DAMNED necromancer, how many platinum he got last night, how many hours straight he played, who he sold his Chitin Leggings or other to, and all of that shit. That kid is gay. He doesn''t have a life. Back when we started ALL over on a new server, I got to lvl 14 in 5 days powerleveling and he was only level 8, with a 2 level headstart. He got into some wierd kind of ''your char is higher than mine and you are better than me'' mood and he was literally screaming how I didn''t ''have a life'' in the freakin lunchline! Everyone was looking at me and I just punched that fucker in the face. Then I quit EQ, hoping he would stop calling me and stop talking about EQ. That was 1.5 years ago. Just 3 days ago at school he was STILL talking non-stop about EQ. I don''t even listen.

Games like Everquest were fun at first, when the game is just ''fun'' and not ''obsession''. I played on PvP for a while, and it was great. Then I played on a carebear server and it got so gay. LEVEL UP 24/7 is not what I consider fun. Some people do, I suppose, like that gay kid Jake. But Everquest was probably the first game he ever got for computer after Baldur''s Gate. He played Baldur''s Gate for 2 hours and said that it was dumb. Everyone knows that Baldur''s Gate was a great game. And now Jake doesn''t even listen to anyone else about anything. I told him that Tribes 2 was sweet and that he should get it. He didn''t even let me finish and he said that EQ was better... he IS GAY, I guess.

Everquest is only popular because the obsession factor is high and because they have lots of money. The models are ok, but the effects are textures plastered onto spheres and stuff like that. Half of the effects are FLAT, 2D bmps! The trees are VERY cheap, the top of the trees ROTATE when you move around them... lol. And the customer service sucks, the game is down 50% of the time, the lag is CRAZY on the bigger servers, and the load times are 5 MINUTES on a 400MHZ computer with 56K! The only reason people love it is because they are 1. Gay or 2.Obsessed, or maybe both (like Jake).

Also, the battle engine is dumb. To attack with your melee weapon, you stand next to the opponent, hit the ''A'' key, and wait... and wait... and then you RUN because you can''t kill something that is 2 levels below you when you have the best stuff in the game. (lvl 35 warrior) Warriors are considered to be ''tanks'', but they should really just be called ''damage dolls''. The casters then stand behind the warriors and blast away, never getting hurt, yet doing over 5 times as much as the warriors... And to cast a magic spell, you click on the target and hit a button. That wouldnt be so bad, if the spells didn''t look so CRAPPY.

Neverwinter Nights (3D Baldur''s Gate Engine) will BLAST away Everquest. Even Baldur''s Gate 2 magic looks better than EQ''s!! But I do disagree with the FF style fights. The Final Fantasy fights can''t be used online. It has to be real time or nothing. You would have trouble with people going AFK and you would get stuck in a fight, you would drag newbies into fights, it would just be dumb. If EQ had a fighting engine like Unreal Tournament, like if you could left click to swing your first weapon and right click to swing your second, EQ would be the BEST. But it isn''t. I am personally looking forward to Neverwinter Nights a LOT. It looks great.

That''s just my story, I''m sorry I brought Jake into it, but it is hard to put ''EQ Obsession'' into 2 words.

Your story is funny. I''ve got a friend who plays Everquest pretty much all the time. He''s owned the game for a while and just recently picked it back up for lack of anything better to do. I can sympathize with him inasfar as there''s not a lot to do in my town, especially when you''re a recluse with social anxiety disorder. But I still don''t like the game.

You''ve used the word "gay" in your post more than I''ve ever seen anyone use that word in my entire life. It''s a good thing my friends and I came up with that word in its present context (actually, it started as "queer") or I might give you a lecture about discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.

I didn''t think about the AFK scenario. Thanks for pointing that out. Then again, I can''t really see anyone going to the bathroom or answering the phone or whatever in the middle of a fight. Somebody might, and they''d be the exception rather than the rule, so I don''t think it would really matter. I''m still pondering online turn-based combat. You won''t sway me quite that easily, because I''m just goddamn sick of the present state of the industry.

I like Diablo II. Maybe that would be a better approach. By the way dark_stalker, if you really want an online game with Unreal gameplay, check out PlanetSide. There''s also another one called Neocron that should be out this year.

The simple answer is to stop rewarding players for combat.

No experience points for slaughtering, no levels for carnage.

Combat is a damn dangerous way to make a buck. Old school RPGs such as Runequest limited hitpoints and armor capabilities and used a skill based system. A highly skilled warrior had a better chance to hit and parry, but they were not walking tanks or damage sponges.
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TAZ