Can anyone tell he's had an adrenalyn rush while playing an MMORPG? I, for one, can't remember anything similar happening. Why is this? First, it is because there is absolutely no real time feeling. And it's been discussed times and again how it would be all the better to be able to have a real-time combat system, while in a MMORPG. ONly that there are things like technological limitations. And it's also been said times and again that it would be better to have a skill-based game, with twitch and such... So how can anyone adress both issues? I think it can be done through a stupid glitch. Slow Mo. A la Matrix, or something. Let's say you have a Slow Mo when you have an adrenalyn rush, like when in combat. You still suffer from the "press F1 and wait" syndrome, but now, this has a reason. You now can have a REAL fight going on, only that the real time is slowed down so low that it's almost paused. With this system, you could use counter-attacks, defensive tactics, and grabs, if timed right. Moreover, through such a system, you could see the right timings to perform your moves. This system could be simply made through a series of jauges, like adrenalyn jauge, slowing the motion, energy jauge, allowing for different moves energy consuming, and maybe a life jauge affecting how well you perform. Or you could even add localized damage, which would add to immersion. The only limitation I can see with this system is the "how do you want to slow the movement for people in fight while not limitating it for everyone else?" question. I can imagine something pretty simple, even close to stupid and cheesy, and still believable. Most of you, and most of ordinary Gamers have already seen animes with something akin to this, or even sentais... It's called... *ta-ta-taaaan* Limited Instancing "Wha-what? where are we? Ah-ha! I've sent you to another dimension where we can fight and destroy everything, and still, nothing will have happened in real world..." Hell, even something like that existed in animes where the fighters clashing were almost alone in the world moving at a fraction of the speed of the rest of the anime, and were still moving like a blur to the rest of the cast... What if in a limited circle around the fighters, something of a bright bubble appeared for people outside, while everything blurred to grey for the fighters? WHat if said bubble could be entered by anyone, meaning you could also enter the fight, but at the same slowed speed rate? WHat if the fighting happened at slow mo, but felt like adrenalyn pumping? I think this could avoid the technological limitations, remaining within the limits of recognized country for "press F1 and wait" addicts, and still give plenty of opportunities for the live action freaks to be happy. don't you?

it seems that you're introducing a new range of issue with your solution unfortunately.

not to be critical of your idea, just sharing my opinion.


slow-mo would tend to limit the adrenal rush anyway, and mitigate the "twitchyness" skill factor.



i still think the solution lies in pushing the hit detection client-side and devising a bullet-proof scheme to eliminate collision cheating.

an MMO is different in that it has a dedicated team of programmers well after release. im wondering if an adaptive network protocol that changes over time, both the protocol itself and the interpreter, wouldnt discourage hackers.

even if you nailed a method of cheating would it hold the same incentives if the server "broke" your cheat method every 12 hours or so?

Well, the "buller-proof collision detection scheme" is all very well, but with the lag, it won't modify the actual gameplay, I think. Unless you plan on also modifying the gameplay by creating a system in which the combat is client-side only, which excludes by definition all PvP. Whereas, on the other hand, using this slo-mo device could increase the speed rate by a factor two or three without really modifying core gameplay, only the feel the player receives from it. I that the adrenal rush comes more from the success in doing something difficult rather than from doing something simple fast. Succeeding in accomplishing a difficult series of moves, even at a slowed rate, could prove much more rewarding than succeeding in hitting seven times the F1 key in three minutes. I think the cooldown effect is dated, and could be replaced by this system with benefits. And I know for a fact that the system I envision for this kind of things would work, because the basic gameplay has been tested on paper prototype. But once again, I can't guarantee it would work over the networked MMORPG...

Actually, I remember the first time I got chased down by a poison elemental in UO. That was pretty scary. Oh, and fatal.

'What's that big green thing?'
'Poison Ellie- Ruuuuunnnnnn!'

The trick to get adrenaline pumping is FEAR. Poison ellie's always scared me after that.

You can get this in two ways, really (for a game):

1) Very immersive combat. Either real-time, twitchy with good controls (and no lag), or through good cinematics camera work (KotoR I was told is good in this regard). Or both.

2) Player trepidation. If they stand a good chance of getting killed and having their stuff nicked, they're gonna get pumped in a fight, emotionally. UO old stylee.

Both of these suck for the loser. Fights should. MMO fights these days are really non-events, nothing or little is lost (item degradation as a common mechanic aside), so emotionally, there's no investment from the player.
UO (in the early days) was more akin to a MUD (quite experimental in its own way) than a modern MMO.

Your semi-instancing idea is nice - and similar to what I have planned for the combat for Bloodspear - combats being effectively turn-based, synchronised environments (to allow some nice cinematics and synched animations), whilst the rest of the game is real(ish) time. It does also (as you've pointed out) allow a form of instancing where the combat is actually performed in an instanced environment (allowing twitch style play (perhaps tekken style)) and then the results passed back to the main game zone, where only the results are important.

Allowing clients to handle collision detection is a no-no for most types of game. One approach to handling it is to distribute the simulation to involved participants - with redundant checking - meaning that if involved clients disagree about the results of the sim, there is a problem. Personally, I think it's a little more hassle than it's worth when hardware and bandwidth to expand the cluster to cope with more traffic / calculations, or to provide local combat servers as part of a widely distributed cluster is relatively small expense compared to the overall development cost of the game and its assets.

I remember a news item about this (or similar) from last year.

Let me see...

Here it is:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=333833
"Matrix-style ‘bullet-time’ in multiplayer gaming"

But I don't see it to be very feasible. Your way seems better for that.
I just see one problem with that.
Say, you have 2 timers. One global timer and one fight timer.

When one of the players goes slo-mo, the fight timer slows down.
The global timer remains the same.
Now, say a battle is 1 minute in fight time.
In global time, this could be 5 minutes or more.
So when the players leave the arena, 5 minutes will have past while for them it would be 1 minute (well, not in real time, but for PC (Player Characer) time it is).

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Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom it seems that you're introducing a new range of issue with your solution unfortunately. not to be critical of your idea, just sharing my opinion. slow-mo would tend to limit the adrenal rush anyway, and mitigate the "twitchyness" skill factor. i still think the solution lies in pushing the hit detection client-side and devising a bullet-proof scheme to eliminate collision cheating. an MMO is different in that it has a dedicated team of programmers well after release. im wondering if an adaptive network protocol that changes over time, both the protocol itself and the interpreter, wouldnt discourage hackers. even if you nailed a method of cheating would it hold the same incentives if the server "broke" your cheat method every 12 hours or so?

I dunno, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to have the client handle collision detection and rule out cheating as well. I'd theorize that the solution is going to come in the form of a sort of hybrid client-side prediction system: the server is God and has authority over what REALLY happens, but the clients are free to share their PREDICTIONS on what will occur. So, if you attack target A, you also notify all the other clients that you're attempting to attack target A as well as telling the server your request. While waiting for the server to chew through the data, the individual local clients can be informed and update their simulations. I don't like such a solution though, and it may end up that client packet exchange is even more unfeasable and untrustworthy than other methods.

Personally, though, I can't see why there is such an issue in the first place. I'll take World of Warcraft as an example. The only locational computation performed when checking to see if an attack suceeds is a distance computation, requiring square root operations. Now, wouldn't it be easier to collide an axis aligned bounding box of the player's weapon with the enemy, based on the player's CSP'd view of their location? In Counterstrike, the server checks to see if your shot would have collided with the character you aimed at as you saw it on your screen. IMHO, this is the key. Once the player can be sure that their representation of events will be trusted, many issue disappear. Given that WoW is the only MMO I know of that has its (limited when compared to non-MMO games) level of interactivity in combat, I suppose the developers didn't bring any other "innovations" to the table. I use the term lightly - I can't see reasons for the lack of CSP in MMO's that don't have to do with cutting the budget.

Now, combat can be made worthwile for both the winner and loser. I've played many a fight of games like Tekken where I felt ok to lose the match. It's a matter of percieved fairness - did I get the chance to try my best, or did crappy controls or material differences or something else outside of my influence "lose" the game for me?

That said, in an online game, you need to make sure that the player can rely on his view of events and that other players can't manipulate their view to cause distortion. Ideally, the server will keep a store of states and try and accomodate for lag in the simulation while the players respectively play "ahead of time" - in predicted perspectives. The main failing so far with MMO's is that the player only gains awareness of his environment AND the actions of other players THROUGH the server - meaning that even the predicted view is tied to the laggy simulation it's trying to avoid. Give the players a more reliable way to see the actions of the players around them, maintain server authority, and you've got yourself a solution.

Your adrenaline rush will come after you have skill based and reliable fast paced gameplay. There is no substitute for twitch - the other methods will get you a different kind of excited reaction but twitch is the maker of the adrenaline rush. The issue here is getting around the technological hurdles, which, IMO, is more a question of "doing" than "figuring."

I beleive Planetside is somewhat relevant to this topic, as it uses Clientside hit detection, and is a MMOFPS environment with twitch gameplay (without good system specs though lag is quite horrible). I know they have anti-cheat systems in place, along with report toggles players can use.

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Original post by Gyrthok I beleive Planetside is somewhat relevant to this topic, as it uses Clientside hit detection, and is a MMOFPS environment with twitch gameplay (without good system specs though lag is quite horrible). I know they have anti-cheat systems in place, along with report toggles players can use.

Heh, SOE has basically abandoned PS. It has a skeleton crew maintenance team now. Technical issues go unchecked for days. /report is no longer useful, as there are no employees to handle any situations. I've got to give PS a hand for the technical feats it accomplishes, though. Client side hit detection + pure twitch in MMO environment = win.

While this had already been touched upon, I think that the problem with MMORPG combat being boring isn't related to the actual combat model, more related to the content, the duration of the combat, and most importantly; the likelyhood of losing or gaining something.

I found that in World of Warcraft, I was less likely to get adrenalin rushes from combat, because dying meant very little. I got worked up in instances when I had a serious chance of scoring phat lewts, but for the main part, combat was very boring, very repetitive and not involving at all.

In Everquest, combat is just as boring and repetative, maybe even more so. it truly was the first game to have nothing beyond "auto-attack and wait" style combat. However, I remember getting trains, running towards the zone, screaming, frantically trying to hit the correct macro keys, trying to heal, watching my health degrading, the zone coming up and as everything got closer and closer, my chances of surviving got slimmer and slimmer, I took more damage, ran towards the zone and hoped to high hell that I would make it.

I only cared because I had something to lose. Hard earned experience. Items, perhaps there was a chance I wouldn't be able to play next week. Gods! I could lose everything if I couldn't get a chance to loot my corpse in time. Seriously, running from a train of mobs, or even fighting a monster and a couple of adds, seeing my health going down, lower than theirs, calculating the chances of survival. That was adrenalin, and that was fun. And with such a crappy turn based combat system.

So really, the secret to success as far as making the player enjoy combat seems to be creating content that creates fear. Making sure that they are real consiquences. Losing has to suck. If every battle is "win or lose, it doesn't matter", then there is never going to be that pumping adrenalin that appears when you aren't sure whether you will get that item you have been griding for, or lose everything.

That's adrenalin, and that's where MMORPGs should be.

While playing both SWG and EVE I personally got an adrenaline rush from pvp. In SWG it came from preparing for the eventual stalk and kill of tracking down jedi (bounty hunter ruled). In EVE pvp is exciting because there is alot going on and so much to keep track of in serious engagements (especially duels). The key similarity is the penalty of losing.

In SWG when you lost it meant your equipment took unneccesary decay, you lost your buffs, and didn't get paid. All the time and money you put into preparing for the fight was lost, plus the winners would talk smack alot of the time to make you feel even worse.

In EVE you lose your ship which takes alot of money and a fair amount of time to get setup right. Not only do you lose your stuff, the winner can grab it so you are feeding the enemy when you lose.

The steeper the penalty for losing a fight the more into the fight you are going to be. You can bet that in SWG back when jedi permadeath was on the jedi got pretty psyched about each fight. In planetside I never got that pumped about normal fights simply because dying meant nothing at all. That made it so I was more inclined to take stupid risks, but did cheapen the average fight some. It's all a tradeoff.