I hope it's not considered as thread necromancy, didn't have time to respond earlier.

Concerning your four points about fun in combat and which non-combat game features them, Katamari Damacy naturally springs to mind. It exemplifies all four of them. The visceral bit is that you have to restart a level if you fail, the pressure is that you have a time limit to assemble the katamari, so you have to choose the objects you aim for wisely, big enough to be a valuable addition but not too big so it can attach. and avoid collisions, the progress part is the ball getting bigger and bigger as you assemble more objects, and the treasure part is ecstatically finding out you can assimilate new objects with each augmentation in size.

Considering the hypothesis of totems, an interesting question in my opinion is where the confrontation takes place. it could be in the player character's world (having the totems fighting around in the streets and using the setting, even if they're actually mental images) or in a more spiritual plane, which will look less familiar but can provide more unrealistic settings and traps/special properties (inverted gravity and stuff like that).

If totems are tangible and big enough, they can also be used an excuse to provide special moves for characters (like a double jump that'd have the totem lift the character, or breaking doors open).

Also, while totems for the spirituals and magicals sounds natural, either the technos can't use that mean of confrontation or they manage to emulate totems through science. I guess it helps define the basic look of totems. Spirituals have ghostly beings/auras, magicals have totems that look more like animals (and/or possibly like the owner's counterpart, given the dualistic aspect of their beliefs), while the technos' totem emulators look mechanical or Tron-like in nature.

Now that I think of it, Monkey Island had nonviolent combat, carried through dialogue (well, insults...). It was kinda limited though, once you figured out waht the answers were it wasn't challenging anymore.

An idea could be, implementing non-explicit violence. No blood, no chopped body parts, no super guns. Such details score, but they aren't really innovative
( Think of 'Combat' for the Atari 2600.. )

I'm tempted to like the non-lethal variety of combat for this. It's almost more impressive if you can incapacitate but not kill an opponent, anyways. As far as actually making it, you could use the exact same techniques, and just not have it kill anyone. Weapontry could include anything from tasers to nets to rubber bullets.

Of course, there will be multiple styles of combat throughout the game, so I think it will end up well.

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Original post by Avatar God I'm tempted to like the non-lethal variety of combat for this. It's almost more impressive if you can incapacitate but not kill an opponent, anyways. As far as actually making it, you could use the exact same techniques, and just not have it kill anyone. Weapontry could include anything from tasers to nets to rubber bullets. Of course, there will be multiple styles of combat throughout the game, so I think it will end up well.

In regards to this look at Hitman3. Excluding the characters you have to 'kill' per mission objectives, you can actually go through without killing anyone. a few examples of non-lethals are tasers and tranqualizers. You are rewarded with unique weapons when you take the silent approach for it makes a challenge not to go in and blow everone away.

> so how can I put combat into my design in a way that is ethical?

Self defense.

Generally speaking the attacker is never right.

I'm not much of a philosophical person. But I tend to take combat seriously, and no offense to anybody but I have never truly understood pacifists.

In this world you have three social groups, I assume these are somewhat like nations or political parties. Conflict between groups of people is almost inevitable. This is because you will always have people like me who are willing to fight to get something done, it is a natural animalistic response. To completely do away with violence is a dream.

Duels are fine and dandy, but who makes sure the rules aren't broken? Everytime I've been involved in a fight somebody breaks the typical 'gentlemans agreement' and either gangs up on somebody or brings a bat/knife/gun to a fist fight. In order for pacifism to exist you have to have somebody willing to fight to keep it. We have police armed with guns, batons, and mace (as an example). This is something to contemplate on.

Non-lethal weapons? You ever been shot with a rubber bullet? They can break bones, especially ribs. Mace is too dependant on the circumstance and requires training. And I have played games where you only 'KO' the monsters/baddies. What about the players that want to do more (you are no longer making a statement instead you are limiting the abilities of the player)?

Conflict in the form of combat has shaped the way the world exists. Democracy would not be here if people weren't willing to fight for it, technological advances occur the most frequently during wars (especially medicinal technology), and those crack houses around the block would not be shut down if the police didn't raid them.

Perhaps you should show the player how difficult combat really is. Make it hard. I mean really hard. Let the player get frustrated when he loses every fight he is in. Then you taught them a lesson.

Alright. I am sick as a dog and having fever dreams about game design at the moment, but this has turned out not to be entirely a bad thing, because it helped me decide what to do about this combat problem. (OT- Wonder if Katamari Damacy was conceived while someone had a fever?)

I have decided to have a 'combat alternative'. Yeah, like soymilk is a 'milk alternative'. (Does that make me the game design equivalent of a health food nut? Not sure I like that analogy. Although vanilla soymilk is pretty yummy...) Anyway, the point is that the activity must feel like combat but not involve inflicting damage on opponents, ths avoidng the issue of violence entirely. But if it doesn't involve damage or opponents, what does it involve? When a session of CA begins, a stream of some sort of inanimate objects should come at the PC, who must jump and carry out arcade-style combos to deal with these objects. What are the objects? I don't know, but they should be a meterological, biological, or geological property of the game world. Something to do with earth life force or magical energy. Maybe modules which can be combined like gumi blocks or something. Anyway, the player must then either hold out for a certain length of time or create a certain number/kind of combos to win the session. Wining a CA session will give a prize which is useful in the main game, while throughout the game will be treasure which can be equipped or used during CA, to tie the two game modes together.

So... how would you implement this? What do you think about earth life force modules?

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Original post by Think128 I'm not much of a philosophical person. But I tend to take combat seriously, and no offense to anybody but I have never truly understood pacifists.

You and I need to play a game of Civilization where we both have over a 100 nukes. [grin] Pacifism starts to look like a smart option when the alternative is blowing yourself and your opponent to hell.

Of course, as you point out, there are different forms of resistance. Pacifist, in general, look for alternatives to combat because it's wasteful or destructive, not because they're afraid of it (in my experience, anyway, hanging around a bunch of Berkeley folks who can be just as fiesty as a warrior).

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Original post by sunandshadow (OT- Wonder if Katamari Damacy was conceived while someone had a fever?)

Very feasible: I've come up with my most unusual ideas when sick, but nothing as good as that.

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I have decided to have a 'combat alternative'... the point is that the activity must feel like combat but not involve inflicting damage on opponents, ths avoidng the issue of violence entirely.

Avoiding violence is fine and dandy, but avoiding "opponents" is, I think, against the spirit of what you're trying to achieve. There is a difference between combat and conflict, and conflict is essential for a game. It doesn't necessarily need to be conflict with a distinct opponent, but it must be with something: without conflict, you have no resistance, thus no struggle, thus no game.

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But if it doesn't involve damage or opponents, what does it involve? When a session of CA begins, a stream of some sort of inanimate objects should come at the PC, who must jump and carry out arcade-style combos to deal with these objects. What are the objects? I don't know, but they should be a meterological, biological, or geological property of the game world. Something to do with earth life force or magical energy. Maybe modules which can be combined like gumi blocks or something. Anyway, the player must then either hold out for a certain length of time or create a certain number/kind of combos to win the session. Wining a CA session will give a prize which is useful in the main game, while throughout the game will be treasure which can be equipped or used during CA, to tie the two game modes together.

Now, this leads me to thinking of opposed puzzle games lize Puzzle Bobble (or Bust-a-Move). If conflict is resolved by a little puzzle game like that, you can then have conflict with a distinct opponent, or face certain challenges against the game itself when the opposition is not direct. With that in mind, it's probably worth looking at Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. It's a MMORPG designed to avoid traditional hack-slash stuff, but as it's pirates you've got to have swordfighting, and this is how they do it.

Acapulco - struggling against opponents is perhaps the most basic type of conflict, but not the only one or in any way essential to a game. In the case of the CA the struggle would be against time pressure, limited resources, the limits of the player's strategy and dexterity, and unfamiliarity with any newly encountered elements. But more importantly, the main gameplay has lots of conflict, which actually is partially against human opponents - the PC must out-manuver rivals for the gettable characters' affections, manipulate the gettable characters themselves into liking and helping the PC, and try to steer the overall political stuation in a direction compatible with the PC's personal goals (like being free rather than held captive in a jail cell).