[MUD-Dev] Better Combat

[Brendan O'Brien]

cruise wrote:

> This thread is a spawn of the Level Grind discusssion. However you
> look at it, the overwhelming majority of MMOG's use combat as the
> primary means of advancement. Yet for the most part, combat is a
> matter of typing <kill rat> or clicking on a mob with your mouse.

> The most entertaining combats are those which take a long time,
> which require every bit of ingenuity to emerge triumphant. So why
> do most games require several thousand odd mobs to be slain for
> the higher levels? Replacing 1000 easy fights with 5 or 10 hard
> fights could produce the same levelling rate, with a much greater
> entertainment value.

> Or would it? This could be done, simply, by increasing HP by
> x100. But that doesn't make it any more entertaining than killing
> 100 basic mobs. The fight is harder, as you have to survive longer
> without a break, but it's still just a time sink. What is the
> fundemental difference between combat that is fun, and combat that
> is trivial, apart from time?

I think you are hitting the majority of my issues with the current
combat systems pretty squarely here.  I'm going to focus primarily
on melee combat, since it is by far the most lacking in the majority
of games I have played.  Watching melees fight in most any MMOG is
really quite silly.  I really do think they look like lumberjacks
now, chopping away at a foe until they have done enough damage to
knock it down.  There's little to no play back and forth between
fighters.  Instead, they both keep swinging away to see who can do
more damage faster.

> It seems obvious to me that the actual player skill required is
> the determining factor. Or at least /a/ determining factor. FPS
> deathmatch style twitch gameplay is obviously impractical for the
> moment, but a more strategic version of combat seems possible.

> Puzzle Pirates' success seems based around this concept. It
> obviously is attractive to players. So why don't we see more of
> it?  Complexity I presume is one answer - trying to keep the game
> intuitive and easily understood. I'd argue easy-to-play and
> complex are not mutually exclusive however. So what ways could
> depth be added to combat?

Again, I have to agree with you.  I was amazed when I actually
played Puzzle Pirates and saw the way they handled combat.  I had
not been expecting a game based around puzzles to have one of the
better combat systems out there.  Sure, it doesn't present itself as
a visually appealing 3d motion graphics, but the players really do
get to use their skills in every fight.  I doubt most large MMOG's
would want to break away from their pretty graphics to some
arbitrary puzzle to resolve conflicts, but the concept is still
sound.  Combat needs to involve players countering the moves of
their opponents, finding and exploiting their weaknesses as the
fight goes on.

What I would like to see is a system where instead of constantly
hitting your opponent for 15 damage each swing until he dies, the
whole point of combat becomes a match to try to land a hitting blow.
I think when most of us picture two master swordsmen going after
each other in a fight, the last thing we expect to see is them
standing there, slugging it out toe to toe like the end of a "Rocky"
movie.  Instead, I envision the fighters parrying and dodging most
attacks, using their skill, speed, and strength to find a way
through the other's defenses.  It should be a much more fluid
combat, making use of obstacles and other warriors around them.

For what I envision, warriors would have a variety of moves they
have learned over time (though there should be enough of a selection
with limits on how much each character can learn, so that you do not
know exactly what a given opponent will be able to use against you
every fight).  For example, you could have an overhead slash
maneuver, designed to raise an opponent's defenses and make use of
superior strength over a weaker foe.  As a result, this move could
be used to finish off someone too tired, slow, or weak, to get their
defenses up in time (more likely at the end of a drawn out fight),
or to manipulate and fatigue your opponent to make it easier to find
a future opening.  In other words, I swing at you from an
advantageous posistion, having done a better job directing combat up
to this point.  You manage to block the blow with your sword,
although my superior strength allows me to drive you back and tire
you out.  You will need to come up with some way soon to swing the
fight back into your advantage before I break through your defenses.

Or, considering the same situation with a different possiblity,
perhaps you were merely using an ability you learned to feign
fatigue.  Thinking I had you on the ropes, I risked the chance to
use this powerful move in an attempt to seal your fate.  However, as
my swing comes down, your follow-up on the feign skill was a
side-step swipe, allowing you to dodge quickly to the side and slash
at my flank.  Feeling the bite of your blade on my side, I would be
weakened and hurt, resulting in sloppier fighting techniques, loss
of strength, and increased fatigue.  The severity of the blow
(determined by a multitude of factors, including random luck) will
determine how bad of a situation I am in, having fallen into your
trap.

Hopefully, this concept is making sense, as I have been toying
around with it in my mind for a very long time, but had yet to
actually set it to paper.  This is a fairly simplified example, but
it should be enough to get the general idea across.

Now, another aspect I would like to include is a type of
aggressiveness rating to tie in with the moves made during combat.
What this entails could be as simple as a 1-5 rating determining how
aggressive your character will be with a given move.  In other
words, if I really thought I had you close to death, I could go all
out with my attack, leaving myself very exposed but much more likely
to break through your defenses if I can land the attack.  Or, if I
am more worried about a counter-attack, perhaps I will be a bit more
conservative in my selection, as there is no need to let my
advantage slip away so soon.

Things get much more complicated when dealing with multiple
attackers, but I still feel this would be a lot of fun.  A superior
fighter facing two foes would still be able to win, but he would
need to fight intelligently, using moves more suitable against
multiple opponents.  His attackers would also have many different
options available to them.  They could risk being more aggressive,
hoping that the partner would keep the warrior from retaliating, or
they could try for a longer fight, knowing that the single warrior
is likely to tire faster against multplie foes.

This is certainly a complex system when taken as a whole, and a lot
of testing would be required to balance the various combat moves.
However, I honestly believe it is worth it in the long run.  I think
most players are dying for challenges in a game (such as combat) to
make use of skill and strategy.

For mages, there are already several decent examples that can be
found in previous games.  They key is to have the majority of spells
be about controlling the situation and the environment around you,
instead of being all about damage.  Otherwise, it tends to boil down
to a very short combat with the first one to get a spell off being
the victor.  One of the best PvP games I ever played was actually
the original NWN on AOL, where the PvP was an accidental development
that came about because of the ways spells were handled.  The combat
was turn-based, and it was all about controlling the envirnment to
force your opponent into a bad situation (i.e. a spot where you
could trap him with a cloud spell, or bounce a lightning bolt off of
a wall to hit him twice).  It was actually a fairly simple system,
in that virtually all characters were the same and there were a
small number of spells.  Of course, the different spells were
actually *different*, not just enhanced versions of former spells.
What made the fight enjoyable was the simple fact that strategy
actually mattered.  Good players with a lot of experience were very
hard to beat, but they had no insurmountable advantage over the
newer players.

For any type of combat, the basic idea tends to be the same.  Every
fight should feel a lot more like a chess match, and a lot less like
chopping down trees.  Just because you don't want the game to be a
fast-paced twitch fest, doesn't mean you need to take player skill
out of the equation.

One more thing I thought of while writing this...  I think a lot of
games today are trying too hard to force diversity among characters,
without considering the effect this can have on their options in
combat.  If the result creates very specialized characters, such
that player A can do one thing, player B does another, and player C
has his own niche too, it seems like a healthy system to encourage
grouping.  However, if the only thing player A can do is that one
thing, and it essentially comes down the hitting one or 2 buttons
over and over, how fun is that?  You might be able to get some
strategy at a group level, but the options presented to an
individual player are really quite limited.  Some of the best games
I've played for PvP combat ended up with some very boring character
templates, but the templates had such a variety of tools at their
disposal that each player could use them differently.  While on the
one hand it is boring to have a world where everyone is the same, on
the other hand, the combat is a lot more fun when you have more
options to work with.  I'm sure there is a better balance in the
middle, and one day I hope we find it.  I merely wanted to point out
that diverse characters can also be a negative thing if you don't
give each character enough variety of options to work with.

> Of course, though combat is the major activity addressed, these
> questions and answers can (and should) be applied to all
> skill-based activity - constructing one hundred swords is no less
> mind-numbing that slaying one hundred orcs, without some kind of
> depth to the process.

Agreed.  I've often thought that some of the puzzles from Puzzle
Pirates would have also made decent methods to use in a crafting
system.  The carpentry one in particular seemed like it could have
been a natural fit for a smith to make products with.  Heck,
anything has to be more fun than what we are faced with in a typical
game today.

- Brendan
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