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No damn boring Melee combat

Started by August 10, 2002 12:50 PM
19 comments, last by Furion 22 years, 4 months ago
i disagree with your idea that melee combat is inherently boring. granted, it is not for everybody, just as playing as a solely spell casting wizard is not for everybody, but if you take some time to implement interesting skills for the warrior, combat very quickly ceases to be just ''point click, u hit some, u miss some''.

all of the references i have seen here deal with original diablo, and nobody has mentioned anything from its sequel. think of the barbarian for a minute. some of his combat skills are leap attack, which allows him to jump large distances, and land with a very powerful attack, whirl-wind, an attack which deals out a large amount of less powerful attacks, and frenzy, which causes the barbarian to attack faster and faster with each successful hit. all of these attacks have their pros and their cons, and forces the player to pick an attack which best suits the enemy they are fighting. i played diablo 2 for quite a long time, and while i played all of the classes up to high levels, barbarian was always my favorite. another interesting melee class introduced in diablo 2 was the assasin. the assasin had the ability to charge up certain skills each time she successfully hit an enemy, and release them all at once with an incredibly powerful finishing move. between all the choices of charges one could use (elemental damage, health regeneration, mana regeneration, etc) and the various finishing moves, the assasins fighting type was imo, the most intricate in the game. there were many more things to consider while fighting enemies with her, than with any of the spell casters in the game.
I know Diablo2 was an AWESOME game. But ppl eventually caught on to the fact that the main, best barbarian skill was whirlind. Amazons all used guided arrow and multiple shot, the best Sorceresses all used thunderstorm and frozen orb, bla bla bla...

But do u think with very careful design that kind of stuff can be avoided? Like, so there will be no "best spell?"
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My personal combination is a mix. Imagine this:

You swing your enchanted runesword at the enemy, and he throws a fireball as he leaps back. You cast a jump spell on yourself and do a flying jump over him dodging his fireball. In midair over his head, you throw a fireball. He throws up a shield spell to block as you land with an upstroke of your runesword, slicing him from groin to forehead.

Sword cuts: 2
Spells: 4

Not a bad mix, though the enemy was nothing but a spellcaster.

I feel like pointing out that you like spellcasting because a)you like spellcasting because it looks cooler, and b)because it allows more strategic options.

A: In Diablo II, there is one animation for each spell. There is one animation for each class of weapons(though sword''s and axe''s animations are very similar). Seems like the melee gets shortchanged. Perhaps that''s why you think magic is cooler than melee.

B: Disregarding superhuman feats, what can you do as a melee character? Hit, block, or dodge are your options. With the convoluted spell systems in many games, your options are:
Try different spells until you find one the enemy is weak to.
Cast a scanning spell to find your enemy''s weakness
Use your most powerful spell repeatedly.
Cast a spell on yourself that makes you faster
Cast a spell on yourself that makes you stronger/a better spellcaster/use less mana/etc.
Cast a spell that improves your strategic position(firewall)
Cast a spell that changes your enemy''s status
Cast a spell to remove your negative status.
Cast a spell to heal a character
Cast a spell to revive or resurrect a fallen character

Let''s reinvent A, with the idea of doing two things at once
A2:
Hit/dodge:
Hit the part of the enemy that''s attacking you(cut off their arm)
Leg sweep
Somersault over their heads and punch them as you go over.
Kick them as you do a backflip.
Disengage from one enemy as you hit another
Block/dodge:
Aikido throws fall into this category.
Use a block that moves with the attack(block a haymaker by taking your opposite hand and sweeping it to the opposite side of the haymaker arm
Block/hitthis is a really fun category)
Block a punch with a punch(can be done)
Strike them with your block(something like lifting up their punch, and continuing on from there to hit them in the jaw)
Hit/block/dodge:
Everything in the block/dodge category, plus counterattack.

The reason that this hasn''t been done is because it requires a knowledge of the enemy to animate, but this is the ideal.(my ideal, anyway)
I agree that the reason melee is thought of as "boring" is because it''s left oversimplified, while magic(and projectiles, depending on the game) are generally kept at a more complex level.

Think about this: If the game left you with three options, period: Fight, Magic, and Run, and the only sub-level of those options is to select a target, you would be bored with the combat of the game unbelievably quickly. Melee and magic would be the same thing with different names. The only things that would spice it up at that point would be for random things to happen with each option(like with the Chance spells or magic cards of many RPGs, only used to represent all of magic) and for some enemies to be weaker/stronger at one or another.

In my opinion, the best way to improve melee without allowing for direct control of the character, cool abilities etc., is to allow the choice of multiple fighting styles, each with a different set of animations and properties, and possibly to allow adjustment towards one end of the scale(Defense/Speed/Power...) Some styles will work really effectively against some enemies, just like magic, and others will be defeated easily.

How is the original concept different from any other RPG game other than the fact that the combat system is different? What you describe reminds me of Master of Magic, only that one was a combination of Civilization-type strategy, a tactical battle sequence, and the spellcasting element, and the ultimate goal was to research and cast the "Spell of Mastery," which would give you complete control over everything(therefore, a victory.) While you had diversity of spells through picking "books" of spell types chosen at the start and rarely found during play, there were several universal spells, and gaining new ones was a product of having a high mana income, something which required building armies to control magic nodes, and therefore building an empire of cities as well.

Even in MoM, though, non-magic combat played a role, since it had the armies and hero characters as units to control, and while you and your heroes could affect battles through spell casting and enchantments, a lot of it was eventually decided by projectiles or melee, and this ended up making the game more interesting than having a bunch of spellslingers duking it out all the time.

Making the world furry one post at a time
The melee in Diablo is boring because the melee in Diablo consists of "left click x infinity." That is a problem with Diablo, not with melee combat.
In a turn-based game like FInal Fantasy, it would be easy to add in a bunch of extra melee options, since all decisions are made through menus anyway. You could add stuff like guard a specific player (take their hits), jump and attack (which could do more damage but take longer to recover from), and a choice between parry and defend (where defend lets through a bit of damage but always works, parry blocks all damage but has a chance of not working), etc. THis would work even better in a system like the one used in Grandia 2 where the focus is also slightly on the positioning of your characters throughout the battle.

Adding more options would be harder in a real-time game, since to use stuff effectively, you would need another button on the controller for every action you wanted the player to be able to perform. Any thoughts on how this could be made efficient? I was thinking that maybe including a sort of "shift-key" on the controller that allows the player to use a second control set on the same buttons, the problem with this is that some may find it hard to use.
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Hmmm....I''ve got some flaws I see...

I''ve thought of another class of magic that might make things better in the melee department: Druidism(er something like that; the idea of changing forms)

Maybe in the Druidism class of magic there would be 2 different things you could change into(let''s say a salamander and a bear.) Both classes would be melee, and the ability to cast spells would be lost if you took on one of these forms(Except auras.) Once in one of these forms, you could learn skills in the Druidism skill tree to make things more interesting. For example, if your in the bear form, you could learn the ability "Berserk," which would steal life. And then there would be the usual super spells and the one ultimate(the ultimate would affect both both animal forms most likely.)

The point being, you could experience melee combat, and you could change back into your "old wizard" whenever you want.

Good or bad idea?

(Note : the names I''m using aren''t permanent, like "Berserk")
A few recent games have brought melee combat a long way, but are not in the RPG genre. Oni is a game where you have multiple styles of attack and they are not all about left mouse click over and over. While it doesn''t involove much in the way of melee weapons, the idea could be adapted. Another game with better hand to hand fighting is Jedi Knight 2. You do use a sword in it and again it''s not point click point click. Maybe the way games like this do the action could be adapted in some ways to an RPG?
I have to disagree with a few people here. First, I believe that Jedi Knight 2 and Oni, it is pretty repetitive. Melee combat in JK2 is pretty much a click fest, the only thing is it goes at a slower rate and there is occasional change of lightsaber styles. If I included force powers that would go into the spellcaster side of things.

Oni the only difference is you punch and kick and there is seldom reason to try and do all the special combos. Guns in Oni are relatively pointless seeing as much people use up a whole clip of ammo before they go down. You pretty much run, jump-kick, then press kick kick kick a lot until their dead.

I can''t really see a way for Melee combat to be less than repetitive unless you make it more interactive. Psionics is a good idea but it goes more into the spellcasting area. A game totally without special abilities would turn out pretty boring in real time.

Let me clarify, by without special abilities I mean anything beyond normal human capabilities. I would accept Max-Payne bullet time but I wouldn''t accept "jump spells" and "fireballs."

You can disagree with me but please provide some insight as to how it could be more interesting over the span of a 20+ timeframe. Any bright ideas people? I personally am looking for solutions in the melee department while I sciribble little ideas for games I have.

Bleu Shift - www.bleushift.tk
I fully agree that melee combat is repetative, but is it any less repetative than spellcasting? Even if you were able to mix spells for special "combo" attacks, the player would probably end up using a certain few of these. Was your game going to be turned-based, RTS, first-person, or some type of combination? I like the idea of doing something new, just need more info on the base style of the game before getting any new ideas.

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