I still believe that adrenalyn coming from the risk of loss is all very well, but it shouldn't amount to that only. People feel adrenalyn from playing poker because they thik they might loose everything they brought to the table. But some only play for fun, with chips and no money involved. Sure enough, the thrill isn't the same, but I wasn't talking about the thrill you feel when you know you're going to loose everything. I am a lawful advocate of generalized permadeath, but this seems to be a little too extreme for the majority of people.

What I was adressing was te lack of involvement of the "almost auto attack" present system, which can be found in almost any MMO. You press F1 and wait for the animation to end, and then you wait some more before cool-off effect is gone. There is no involvement. I think involvement is the key to get SOME excitement. I'm not saying you're gonna feel the "win-all-loose-all" kind-of thrill, I'm just saying you might feel a little bit more concerned by what you're doing, and that it would be enough to interest more people into fighting roleplaying, since it would rely more on the character's skills and on the player's wits than on sheer raw power, and on time spent on character building. But I can easily understand why it might not interest many people...

EvE PvP gets my blood pumping. The permanent loss of assets and the high degree of skill in combat removes the irrelevance and inevitability that makes MMO games boring.

Also, it's nice to have fights last long enough for the prospect of reinforcements to be a factor. If I'm just doing maintenance on my research alt when a distress call is made, I can often log in my main and get to the fight in time to make a difference.

i agree that two key components are having death be meaningful and also having player skill be a larger component in combat resolution.


where i disagree is in the implmentation of slo-mo and how it changes the challenge.

if you look at CS:S its all about accuracy and speed. it uses clientside detection and it also has an issue with cheaters.

but source wouldnt be the same game in slow-mo.

you can inject a greater need for player skill by having a complex and tactical form of combat resolution but without the onus of the need to do so in real time then you move slowly towards the game of chess and less from a real time simulation.



i think everyone has their "uber game idea". mine requires counterstrike style hit detection on a massive scale, so im completely interested in the problem set you're trying to tackle. i also can see an advantage to your solution in that a lot of MMO players arent "twitch" players at all, and aren't attracted to twitch style games. so you'd probably be keeping with a good portion of the subscriber base.


my problem with your solution is the further abstracted combat resolution is the larger the balancing issues become.

I dunno about you, but Gunzonline (google it) really gets my adrenalyn pumping at times. It's freaky intense when you meet someone your skill is fighting you one on one when your teams are dead. It gets more so intense when you're the last surviving member and you have to fend of 5 people, and you already got 3 down.

This game is skill intensive and has a matrix like system minus the slow motion. If a person is really good, you can hardly keep your screen on them they're moving so fast.

Also, there's a matrix online game somewhere out there. Heard about it about a year ago but I have no idea how far it's progressed. They said they would have a slow-mo like thing in the gameplay with it's own special moves and all. I'll google it right now. Ah, it's an actual commercial game. Had no idea. :P

Dredd>> The problem I was trying to get rid of was that in a MMORPG, you shouldn't have to introduce player's skills, where only the character's skills are supposed to show. If I want my character to be able to cut a bird in perfect halves when it swoops over his head without me having to noe MY particular reflexes for a good dozen of years, then it has to rely entirely on my character's skills.

But How can the character's skills intervene in the actual fight without remodeling the entire system?

So far, the skills were used in an almost turn-based system where you used your energy to do something, and then had to wait to have enough energy to do something else (maybe you won't see it this way, but mostly, in DAoC, AO, AC and EQ, that's basically what happens. You press a key, and wait until you are allowed to press it again.) WHat I was trying to add to the system was a way to NOT have to wait before doing something else, which means that the stream of the fight should be continous, but make it so that the player's skills were NOt used at all, except in a strategic sort of way. Which means that, if the fight relies on the character's relative speeds, and you don't want the player's own speed to play a part, then you have to slow everything until player's speed is irrelevant, but characters' relative speeds ARE relevant.

Hence, the slow-mo.

With the slow-mo, it is quite easy to play with relative speeds AND the continous stream of information, since the computation can be quite slow without impending the playing, since, well, the stream of action ITSELF is slow. The added bonus is that graphically, it doesn't consume much of the video card's memory and proecssing time, on the network app's it won't require much except when in massive scale fights, with more than a dozen chaacters and mobs onscreen at the same time, and even that can probably be tackled, and the fact that the stream of action is continuous (which, as far as I know, has never been done in MMOs, except in EVE and some obscure Asian aliens) makes the fighting both more enjoyable and more believable. I have never seen a fight going "you hit, then it's my turn. then you hit again, and if I'm still standing, I'll take my turn", except in the more severe cases of alcoholic friendly poking fun.

I believe that making the fight going slow when it is supposed to pretend to be very fast isn't really an issue, since it happens in many movies and animes, without anyone even raising an eyebrow and saying "hey! even I can dodge a bullet going as fast as a charging farting snail! Why is Neo called a Chosen One for doing so?" I believe it will ultimately rely on the FEEL the implementation will give.

By the way, have you noticed "V for Vendetta"'s last combat scene? this is exactly what I was talking about. Moves happen at slow speed, while the deaths happen at normal speed. And this sort of things happen also in reverse in many Hong Kong movies, with the fight going noprmal speed, but the fall of stuntmen being slowed down somehow. Anyone think they are NOT cool?

How about a system of enforced lag? Let the player queue up to three or four commands, and then have them happen at the game's pace, based on character skills. A good player will use a sequence of moves that will maximize his character's potential, and character skills will unlock new tactacal options and serve as tie-breakers when two players are so evenly matched that an extra few damage per second makes the difference.

Of course, let them adjust their queue at any time, so they aren't locked into a sequence and hosed if something changes.

if you can change the whole sequence at will, and preferably your next move, I am okay, since I can't see any real difference between that and what I am proposing to evaluation.

I definitely like that idea...

Adult Swim has a turn-based Inuyasha game made with Flash that actually has a system fairly similar to what I'm thinking of. Check it out.

The problem I see with this system is that you are locked with your tactical choices, which are not relevant anymore after your opponent's first move. You can start planning things if and only your opponent is static and willing to die. Anyone with a strong desire to live or at least move out of your path makes all your moves useless. And then, you're just spending your energy. With just a slowed pace, you could keep using the cards and moves in "real-time" and have the sensation of REALLY dodging the slashes, or blocking them for a reason, which is your tactical sense, not the luck to have chosen the good move at the good time. Strategy only uses luck when forced to. Usually, it merely relies on the tactician's skills.

Unless you make sequences the tactical choice, with bonuses for appropriate choices, taking some inspiration from 'Die by the Sword':
Consider 9 move start/endpoints:
TL, TC, TR
ML, MC, MR
BL, BC, BR

If the speed and damage of an attack are dependent on the start/endpoints, then the selection of endpoint sequences becomes very tactical - to make many fast, not very damaging moves on one side (perhaps unshielded on the opponent), or to concentrate on trying to cut the bugger in two. By fast / slow here I mean some kind of initiative order and / or attacks per round. If at the point a move finished, an opponent has a blocking item (sword, shield) in their corresponding location (mirrored from their PoV) then the move is parried.

Adapting this with different limitations for weapon or fighting style works well - consider two opponents with swords (right hand) and shields (left hand).

The shield on the opponent covers two vertically adjacent points (TR&MR) making it a good blocking item and can be moved faster than a sword.

The sword can be moved anywhere, and occupies only one location.

Neither item can be moved more than 1 square from ML, MR, depending on which hand they're held in - since this is a front-to-front fighting style. Fencing might have a much wider range of move locations, but only expose one side of the characters to damage.

The interface for this is the fiddly part - really speaking I guess the best way is to have it mouse-driven (left click for left hand, right for right), clicking on locations on your opponent.