Okay let me be more specific about why I found combat in UO a lot better than most RPGs.


A perfectly balanced system would exhibit these traits in my opinion:

1. Character not tied down to one or two playstyles.
2. In a combat a player should be able to act (attack) *and* react (counter, defend)

Now UO at various stages have demonstrated these traits to varying levels. There have been times when you could quite hapily be a mage, archer or melee type and you stood at a reasonable chance of beating anyone else, regardless of their class, if you knew what to do. If you watch videos of old PvP then you'll see some crazy battles and players start getting very inventive.

Balance flucuates though as changes are made and therefore it's not the perfect example of RPG combat and I'd be suprised if any MMORPG ever cracks it 100% with such a complicated system. Even simple repeat-click and get better stuff games (e.g. Diablo 2) suffer from inbalances between the classes. This is because when you have 7 characters and 30 skills (210 total) and therefore have a lot of permutations you can't design to take in to account what happens when I cast my level 23 spell when you've got this armour and your casting spell x and y.

I realise this balance was only for PvP but the only reason PvP and PvM is different is because the monsters are inherintely dumb and act rather than re-acting. Thats an issue with AI and making sure your creatures understand the environment and dont get trapped behind a line of chairs you put in front of a door.

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Find a realistic way to make most enemies resistant to something the player is likely to be using. Natural defense, habitat, body armor, implants, stimulants. There's no need to give each enemy a weakness. Although it would be fine to do so, the resistance is the important part. Don't make it easy for the player just because he knows an enemy's weakness, else you'll destroy replay value. Just make it less daunting.

I suggest that this is the wrong approach although the thinking is along the right lines. This is exactly what they did in Diablo 2 to make things more challenging. They gave monsters various resistances so you couldn't just max out one skill. What hapend? Players either specialised in two skills or carried items to deal with akward situations. If they couldn't deal with it at all they could just run and go fight something else.

I think rather than changing the data (resist cold 50%) I'd change the behaviour (take cover if he starts shooting at our legs). Sure you'll get some creatures that are dumb but you have to have variations. If the player comes across a different behaviour can they just whip out their secondary weapon to deal with it? Do they have to adapt their tactics? Maybe the monster is so good at blocking that you'll never hit it with your sword but it's very shortsighted so you could lure it in to a pit or stake?

I honestly think it has something to do with ease of play. A lot of people are afraid of complex or twitch based RPGs. By making combat something that anyone can do, this simply gives companies more sales. Sad, but true.

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Original post by CJkaoswar I honestly think it has something to do with ease of play. A lot of people are afraid of complex or twitch based RPGs. By making combat something that anyone can do, this simply gives companies more sales. Sad, but true.

That's not how it works. If your combat system is fun, your game gets a good rep. A good rep helps with almost all sales, other than gift type situations. Smart players will not buy dumb games. I can't speak for less intelligent players, but I doubt they are as picky.

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Original post by Jiia Quote: Original post by CJkaoswar I honestly think it has something to do with ease of play. A lot of people are afraid of complex or twitch based RPGs. By making combat something that anyone can do, this simply gives companies more sales. Sad, but true. That's not how it works. If your combat system is fun, your game gets a good rep. A good rep helps with almost all sales, other than gift type situations. Smart players will not buy dumb games. I can't speak for less intelligent players, but I doubt they are as picky.

While there's some truth to this, some people think slow, turn-based, complex games are "smart", while others think they are "boring". "Dumb" players will not buy a "smart" game if it's too drawn-out and boring; they want to get to the action and the story without trying to beat the same boss fifty times in a drawn-out battle before they figure out the strategy.

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Original post by makeshiftwings While there's some truth to this, some people think slow, turn-based, complex games are "smart", while others think they are "boring". "Dumb" players will not buy a "smart" game if it's too drawn-out and boring; they want to get to the action and the story without trying to beat the same boss fifty times in a drawn-out battle before they figure out the strategy.

My crude little remark wasn't really aimed at real-time versus turn-based. I love both. But I think we should cater to intelligent players. It's great to provide alternative, less intelligent ways to do things. But I think it's much better to make a dumb player get stuck than bore a smart player to death. Dumb players can become smarter. Smart player will have a hard time reversing the process without some heavy recreational medication.

By the way, I love action games, but that doesn't mean I'm dumb. That's why I don't see the fine line seperating real-time combat from hardcore RPGs. I don't think smart players prefer slow paced action. They just like to have their wits challenged. There's been very few games that provide hardcore action with hardcore thinking. Is there a reason for this? Or is the target audience that simple? Dumb+fast or boring+smart, which should I choose? Why not fast+smart?

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Original post by Jiia My crude little remark wasn't really aimed at real-time versus turn-based. I love both. But I think we should cater to intelligent players. It's great to provide alternative, less intelligent ways to do things. But I think it's much better to make a dumb player get stuck than bore a smart player to death. Dumb players can become smarter. Smart player will have a hard time reversing the process without some heavy recreational medication.

I think it is certainly possible to cater to both. I'd make it so that the persistent player can slog their way through any battle (given enough healing potions, or after levelling up for hours, I guess), but give some opportunity for clever tactical thinking for the more strategic player.

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By the way, I love action games, but that doesn't mean I'm dumb. That's why I don't see the fine line seperating real-time combat from hardcore RPGs. I don't think smart players prefer slow paced action. They just like to have their wits challenged. There's been very few games that provide hardcore action with hardcore thinking. Is there a reason for this? Or is the target audience that simple? Dumb+fast or boring+smart, which should I choose? Why not fast+smart?

Well, at the moment there's no reason to provide something different because the consumers aren't demanding it. I personally love it in action games when I can do clever things, such as using the environment to my advantage, but most games have those things as hard-scripted events that are fairly obvious, or A.I. that can easily be "tricked" by exploiting their flaws. I guess there's more appeal to the (present) majority audience in just blowing stuff in cool ways. Maybe if something really great was created people would change their preferences?

I can't say I've played very many games where I was forced to learn something on my own. Uncovering some crazy underlying plot that changed my perspective on the game world or the hero. These types of plot breaks are always given to the player for free.

Imagine a game where the plot was never given to the player. Ever. Or at least not until he proved he understood it by taking an action that relied on it being true. Imagine The Matrix where the player is never told he's in the Matrix. Imagine Fight Club where the player is never told he's a headcase.

Sorry, I know this doesn't have anything to do with RPG combat. I just wanted to clear up that point.

The main problem with introducing tactical puzzles is that for any particular problem, a solution typically also solves a wide range of related problems. And solves them forever, killing replayability.

Diablo and its sequel work not because a variety of tactics are required, but because it's intrinsically satisfying to slaughter mindless enemies (I'd estimate most of the creature artwork went into the death animations for the monsters).

I think the reason we don't see much problem-based combat is that it's just extremely difficult to confront players with genuinely interesting problems continuously without expending a linearly related amount of effort. So at some point, a commercial game has to rely on the innate satisfaction players take in non-problem-solving activities.

In this respect, single-player RPGs have it a lot tougher than MMORPGs. If World of Warcraft was a single-player game, it would be laughable in its simplicity. The only thing which makes it interesting is the presence of other people in the game, and the difficulty in organising them.

So in single-player RPGs, the creators have to produce a system with deep game mechanics, and an adventure game to play out the story in an interesting way. I think asking for interesting combat on top of all that is a bit much, especially as they'd eventually have to (at some point) rely on the innate enjoyment mentioned above to reduce workload and provide replayability.

I'm not sure I understand your point. A lot of complex RPGs already have heavy strategy based combat. They were extremely successful. Diablo is more on the light side of RPGness. It's not because the combat is real-time, it's because there's virtually nothing in the game but combat.

The point I was trying to make was that crazy action and big explosions can happen even in a smart world. Just because it's real-time doesn't mean it needs dumbed down.