I''m going to let this be known right now, when playing MMORPGs there can be a ping of as much as 2 seconds at a time on a 56k connection, 2 seconds is WAY WAY WAY too long to send a message to the server telling it that you want to swing a sword and then have the sever tell everyone else. WAY too long. Could you imagine how long the combat would be if only the quickest movements such as a parry with a dagger happened in less than 2 seconds? The time required to swing a poleaxe could be up to 10 seconds! how would you animate something like that? I could engage in combat and order a pizza for dinner AND eat the thing before anyone draws first blood.

~Vendayan

Vendayan has a point you know, and I''m goin to second his motion that there is no way to implement your design on an MMORPG. What''s more, I like pizza...

I''m going to bump up the idea of positional strategy again. Grandia II has a nice combat system and all, but it would have benefitted from some positional control from the player. Before anyone agrees with me and starts flaming MMORPGs for not having this sort of thing, let me say that they do. What''s more, players take advantage of it. Thieves will try to move around to the back of a large mob to backstab it while it concentrates on the bad-ass fighter of the group. That''s strategy, and it''s a start at something bigger, I guess as designers we might get carried away by all the great stuff that we can do, it''s how we limit ourselves to the medium that makes us ''Good'' designers. Knowing which elements will suffice.


- God created the world in seven days? I think I can one-up him!

I am not exactly sure what vendalaya is saying...my interpretation is that its "not feasable to do with todays technology" i guess.

Anyways, I really have to say that I heard your point hapaboy and i dont really think you are listening to what your saying.

quote: from hapaboy
When a player enters battle with mob boss or another player, battle slows down in only their view. Say I was a passerby and I looked at the other player fighting the Mob, I would see them as fighting in real time.

Question:
What the? How do you expect other players playing the game in **REALTIME** to be able to view a combat scene in REALTIME if that fight is taking place in slow motion? Mind you, this is a multiplayer "realtime" game you are "designing".

Answer:
For a multiplayer realtime game, you cant, unless you do some real voodoo with the players in the world. Such as teleporting them to some arena. Of course, this may sound cool but really makes no sense for games where groups can attack groups.

I just dont think your listening to some of what others are saying about how multiplayer games work...sorry.

I am listening to what you guys are saying, in fact, I kinda gave up on the idea after vendayan''s point. I must admit that I dont know much about the technical side but I ll try to explain further on what I meant before:

What I was saying is that once you enter slowed battle, you computer will recognize that you are in slowed mode. What this will do is make your real character disappear and replace it with a representation of that character fighting in realtime. This is what will be sent to other comps. It wont actually be doing exactly what your doing. It will just be there for show. Now again, Im not very technical and I dont know if there is a big problem with doing something like this but it doesnt seem impossible.

Well Im actually glad I posted first before going on with this, it would have been disheartening to continue with the design only to find out later.
Thanks for the feedback everyone =)

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
What I was saying is that once you enter slowed battle, you computer will recognize that you are in slowed mode. What this will do is make your real character disappear and replace it with a representation of that character fighting in realtime. This is what will be sent to other comps. It wont actually be doing exactly what your doing. It will just be there for show.

so basically the non-battling players will just see an generic icon or something of the other people fighting... then if they get real close they too will be in the slow-motion combat thing, and everyone else will see three icons of the three characters fighting...
i still think this can be done if you are careful...

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

I don''t even think you need everyone else to see it in real-time. They could walk past and watch you fight in slow-mo. However, if they get within a certain distance (it''s up to you as designer exactly what this distance is) they will be slowed too. The same thing happens if they try to fire an arrow, when it enters the ''combat radius'', it will begin to slow.

This seems to me to be quite a good idea, if you set the ''slow-zone'' large enough then people won''t be able to wait for you to show and opening and then attack, because they will have to either shoot an arrow (which will arrive too late because it will be slowed) or charge in an attack (and they will arrive too late because they are slowed).

So, I don''t think you need to worry about the time issue very much at all... Just a quick idea of mine, that''s all. I personally think this battle system sounds like it would be really cool in a MMORPG...

Rainyfrog

Black and White had a creature combat system much like you are suggesting. You could order your creature to make certain moves in a fight by clicking on the 3D environment - click on the opponent''s stomach, and your creature takes a quick swipe at it. Click on his head, and your creature gives it a strong kick. Click on YOUR creature''s stomach, and he''ll try to block in front of his stomach. It was a great idea, but it worked poorly - not because of the general concept, but because Black and White''s combat system also enforced a constantly spinning, epileptic, unpredictable camera - you may think you''re clicking on the enemy''s head, but you actually wind up clicking on a mountain in the distance, because the camera just took a 290 pixel turn to the left. Also, combat was a little too fast to manage at times.

There is no reason you couldn''t solve both of these problems. Give the user control of the camera, and slow down combat enough to give them a chance to react.

About the problems people have pointed out:
* "If you slow down combat for the combatants, you can''t have other people watching it!"
Not true. Whenever a move takes place in the battle, inform the spectators and have their clients render it in real-time. In the meantime (between moves), either show the combatants sizing each other up, or, better yet, have the clients automatically generate random moves that have no effect on the outcome of the fight, to give them something to watch - in other words, while the client is waiting for the next update on the status of the fight, they can see the combatants furiously attacking each other - and missing or being "blocked" every time.

* "You can''t possibly have that work in an MMORPG, ping times are normally around 2 seconds! There''s no way you could have a knife fight with a delay like that!"
2 seconds is a ping of 2000. I have a 56k modem over a line with a bandwidth splitter (in essence a 28k connection), and I normally ping at 250 to 500. At 2000, ANY system becomes agitating. You can''t expect a user to control a knife fight in real time, using a keyboard and mouse, even in a single-player game - the controls and visuals are too imprecise to give them realistic control over everything. So, instead, you simplify things somewhat, and tweak the abilities of the players to make it playable. You''d do the same here, and I don''t see any reason this wouldn''t work in an MMORPG - after all, in Everquest, warriors can "bash" spellcasters while they''re casting spells to interrupt them - in real time, in an MMORPG world.

* "That would give 14 year olds a huge advantage over adults!"
So? Players with faster reflexes should be able to act faster. If you remove this element from the game, why not make all equipment have the same statistics, so that even players who are too stupid to pick it out can still play with the same advantages? Or make the amount of experience you can gain depreciate with the time you play, so that players who can only play a couple hours on weekends can be the same level as the hardcore players?
Because it would be boring, that''s why. Letting players have their own unique advantages and game playing skills makes the game world populated by interesting groups of individuals, rather than "Everyone wins! Gold stars for all!"

I think the combat system the original poster is suggesting sounds interesting, and interest has been sorely lacking in RPG combat systems for a long time. It wouldn''t be easy to implement, but none of the technical problems proposed so far sound insurmountable.

of course i leave and a bunch of people reply and take all my answers away. I agree that it is totally possible for you to have a slowed combat in an mmorpg, for the several reasons posted by the many other members. The system that I had wasn''t bad, but it had a couple small loopholes in it, that had to be there, but made it agitating. Critical hits, lucky hits, and a couple other things ended up killing me too much in the end. When it was all said and done a lot of things ruin a game down the line. Look at it like this, I''ve played a game that was truly awesome, in the begining. I kept playing until I got to the ''Master'' level. It was a mmorpg, and all your experience comes from other players. The master level did have a limit though, after a while I got to it, but it was a LONG hard battle. First off everyone was stronger than me. They had more money, better items, bunches of things I didn''t. After I made it to the top, I found out that luck was the only thing that won battles. Anyhow, I sort of lost my point before I posted, can the person who started this thread please restate what is going on as of now, I''ve been away for a couple weeks...(on a side note, if people can fight people and enter battles at anytime, its gonna be a bloodfest. People will look for a fight, and wait until both people are weaken or one is killed, then proceed to backstab them. This seems to be the current trend in ALL of the online battle games I''ve played. Even in one where I have letters above my head that say ''GOD'' and the players know that I''m really high up there, they still attack me constantly, thinking that they will be the one to win. And just to let you know, I ask them after they die what they were thinking.)

I look forward to your reply...

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

I think you should look into games like Rune and Deathsword. They allowed the player to have some control over the direction of their swings. The problem with Rune was that blocking with the sword was very difficult. You would have to look further into something like that. This could provide that quick thinking you are looking for. You could slow the weapons down to a reasonable speed so that people could see them, but it would have to be relatively real time.

You could also look at games similar to Tekkan Tag Team (Probably the same on all Tekkan games, but I only have tag team). The system automatically blocks many attack if you don''t attempt to move while your opponent attacks you. This would provide a bit of strategy.

Another interesting tidbit that you may not be able to find information on anymore, was Ultima Online 2 (aka Ultima: Worlds). They were going to allow a player to execute a combination of moves that had different offense and defensive strengths. If your combo had a higher offensive rating, you were more likely to get hit in the process of executing it.

O wow this got dug up from the dead lol.

I kinda gave up on this system as I am very new to all this and I decided that doing a simpler game would be better to start off with. That is, whenever I get some free time =P. When I do return to it I do have a few changes that Id like to incorporate. I have a couple of new ideas now....

1. To get an image of what I have in mind for idea 1. Imagine Tekken as a RPG(with no slow motion), as you go up levels, you learn new moves and gain health. You also can obtain new gear just like any other RPG. Armor would decrease dmg dealt to you while weapons would increase dmg dealt to enemies. New moves would increase your repertoire and give you more choices in combat. I.E. You could start off with only the ability to punch and kick and swing a weapon normally. Achieving level 2 may give you an overhead slash. Level 3 may give you a sweep kick, ect... I know its not the level of strategy I first wrote about but read idea 2 for that =)

2. Yes Im still thinking on how to add strategy to RPG battle systems and Ive thought of yet another possibility =). It goes something like this: A player would have a certain amount of battle points that slowly regenerate during battle. Thats been done before =). Now before battle, the player has access to a wide variety of moves(This would be in the hundreds at higher levels.) A player is then able to create pools of those moves for use during combat. The number of moves in these combos are dependant on the players'' level(I.E. a 20th level char may be able to include 30 moves in his pool.) During combat rounds moves are randomly selected as options for the player to use. The player may delay to earn more battle points to use the more powerful moves or may use them right away. (Think of Magic without cards).

Well I have to go again, let me know what you guys think. Until then, the struggle for a better battle system continues =).

Alohaz all

The poetry of silence is what
my parents read to me,
perhaps the greatest verse,
for it does not bias the mind----me =)