Combat Mechanics Suggestions: Core Quality > Extra Quantity

[Nurvus]

Here's a more objective suggestion on Combat Mechanics.

First, I strongly suggest something WoW Rogue's/Guild Wars Energy or Warhammer Online's Action Points.

Essentially, it allows and limits your burst, and essentially is a resource you manage - not spam - for maximum effect.

[Combat Layout]

I believe that to make sure a game is on the right path, its combat mechanics should be entertaining even without special abilities.

They tried to do that in the latest Age of Conan and came up with a reasonably well implemented combat system that - in my opinion - is one just a few steps away from amazing.

Having a combat system where there is a choice on both sides, starts out as what seems to be a gamble, but upon closer inspection, there is a huge amount of latent strategy to it.

The directional attacks in Age of Conan and the special attack combinations make a wised up player able to counter enemy combos by recognizing possible patterns and anticipating the 4th (or earlier) strikes.

I won't suggest a duplicate of their idea, though...

Basic Attacks:
Some games are about hitting your target countless times.
I think it would be alot more entertaining if landing a clean hit was mildly challenging.
While still prone to some degree of randomness, you could use several different types of attacks to try and set your opponent up for a decisive attack.

Each attack has its own Swing time and a Recovery time.
Additional Idea:
Attacks have reasonably moderate Recovery times by default, but are categorized as Lead, Combo and Finish.

Lead attacks can have their recovery times cut by Combo or Finish attacks and Combo attacks can have their recovery times cut by Finish attacks at the expense of additional Action Points/Energy.
Alertness X: After being hit by your attack, enemies become alert to that attack and reduce its added effects by 50% for X seconds. It stacks. (Alike Diminishing Returns from WoW).
Certain competences may reduce this drawback (X).

Quick Example:
Feint - Lead. Swing 1. Recovery 0. Alertness 6. Attack that has double chance to be dodged. If it is dodged, adds 200% Dodge delay to the enemy (If enemy has 1 sec delay, he instead has 3 sec delay after dodging this attack).
Dummy - Lead. Swing 1. Recovery 1. Attack that has double chance to be parried. If it is parried, doubles the opponent's next Swing delay and halves his parry chance until his swing finishes.
Power Strike - Swing 3. Recovery 1. A strong, winded attack that halves your dodge and parry chances until it finishes and is 1.5 times as (50% more) easy to dodge.
Bullrush - Swing 2. Recovery 2. Alertness 10. A strong tackle that knocks your opponent back X yards, interrupts stanced physical actions, knocks down attacking foes. It's 2 times as (100% more) easy to dodge.Knockdown - Greatly reduces your Dodge chance.
Using Feint -> Dummy successfully allows you to use Power Strike with a high degree of success without fearing your opponent will Bullrush you.

The chances here are multiplicative - An attack that halves your Dodge chance, then an attack that doubles it will revert it to its normal value.

Basic Defenses:
Parry, Block and Evade - Tactical "stances" or temporary effects that represent your defensive intent.
Shield Focus - You increase your ability to block at the expense of lowering your Dodge and Parry chances - It is an improvement overall, but certain enemy attacks can temporarily reduce or deny your ability to Block.
Cunning Deflection - Increases your Parry chance by X% and adds 100% Recovery to parried attacks. Lasts for 1 parry.Another ideology would be that Blocking, Parry and Dodge have a delay.
Your character expertise in the area may be improved and reduce the delay.
Certain characters may focus on Dodging - rogue archetypes would be an example - and therefore can dodge several successive attacks with ease.

Abilities or attacks that reduce chance, increase the delay or deny the action are the counters for this.
------

This is all basic ideology. Alot can be build from here.
Specialized stances, like good block and parry but no dodge, good dodge and parry but no block, only dodge, only block, berserker stance where you take less damage but make no effort to avoid it, etc.

Making those stances easy to swap, and allowing them to give off visual clues to the opponent is one of several ways to improve the quality of gameplay.

Essentially a gameplay that plays around with hindering and goading your opponent into making mistakes, then counter attack them when their defenses are lowered.

I hope this brainstorm helps somehow improve your ideas for Kaos War.

[xXjokeXx]

In my opinion the combat put into darkfall online and oblivion are the best types of combat it takes the most skill its the funnest and it is more realistic in the sense of weapon range lets say you have little daggers and I have a longsword i can attack you from farther away but if you get close on me im more or less defenseless alsowith that type of combat you can run jump crouch and do all sorts of things to dodge your enemies attack.

[Ronin]

Hmm, very nice, I like this one. Also I just had a flashback to a game I had a love/hate relationship with: Arcanum, instead of mana/energy/rage or what have you, every player uses "fatigue". Essentially it counts as mana however every time you attack, cast a spel, use an ability, etc. a small amount of fatigue was used. A longsword basic attack would use of more than a dagger, but less than a normal swing from a claymore. Spells had an initial cost and some had a continuous drain on the character to maintain the effect (eg summons)

However one of the things I thought was the most amazing/frustrating was what happened when you were exhausted, you collapsed unconcious. Personally I would like to see this idea added in, probably not as severe at fist, start with a slowing effect when low on energy as a warning then lead into unconcousness where the player is helpless.

When down a friend could bring you back up through potions or scrolls that restored fatigue, or it would regenerate on its own. Facicnating mechanic, plus it would make characters wary about too much burst in too short time and would put a cap commonly seen in WoW's arena system(which sucks tbh) where there is too much burst to make most healing classes innefective at best.

[xXjokeXx]

Hmm, very nice, I like this one. Also I just had a flashback to a game I had a love/hate relationship with: Arcanum, instead of mana/energy/rage or what have you, every player uses "fatigue". Essentially it counts as mana however every time you attack, cast a spel, use an ability, etc. a small amount of fatigue was used. A longsword basic attack would use of more than a dagger, but less than a normal swing from a claymore. Spells had an initial cost and some had a continuous drain on the character to maintain the effect (eg summons)

However one of the things I thought was the most amazing/frustrating was what happened when you were exhausted, you collapsed unconcious. Personally I would like to see this idea added in, probably not as severe at fist, start with a slowing effect when low on energy as a warning then lead into unconcousness where the player is helpless.

When down a friend could bring you back up through potions or scrolls that restored fatigue, or it would regenerate on its own. Facicnating mechanic, plus it would make characters wary about too much burst in too short time and would put a cap commonly seen in WoW's arena system(which sucks tbh) where there is too much burst to make most healing classes innefective at best.

for how long were you unconscious for 30 seconds to a couple of minutes or until someone helped you which could be for hours lol.

[Nurvus]

There's more to it.
Age of Conan's ability to focus your defenses towards certain parts of your body is very interesting.
They offered it as an interactive combat feature, but it could also work as a pre-determined strategy.
Your limited strength, armor that protects one arm more than the other, and certain combat styles can offer alot of customization.

Grr, I have so much to say but just thinking about writing it all makes me sleepy...

[Ronin]

for how long were you unconscious for 30 seconds to a couple of minutes or until someone helped you which could be for hours lol.

Typically you would regenerate about 1-5 fatigue (based constitution) per 2 seconds, and unless it was really last ditch efforts, like casting disintegrate(high level spell, huge cost...pretty much a 1 hit kill) when really low, like 5-10 fatigue, you'd be out cold for about a minute. However in most cases you would only be a little bit under around 10 if a fight was really taking or this was the burst character of your party. So about 99% of the time when you would pass out it would only be for about 10 seconds or so.

@nurvus
AoC's combat system sounds fascinating problem is my laptop is too low tech to run it :( I'm saving up for a new one though...800 mb Ram sucks nowadays all the new stuff is either unplayable or too choppy to be fun.

[MESS14H]

Typically you would regenerate about 1-5 fatigue (based constitution) per 2 seconds, and unless it was really last ditch efforts, like casting disintegrate(high level spell, huge cost...pretty much a 1 hit kill) when really low, like 5-10 fatigue, you'd be out cold for about a minute. However in most cases you would only be a little bit under around 10 if a fight was really taking or this was the burst character of your party. So about 99% of the time when you would pass out it would only be for about 10 seconds or so.

@nurvus
AoC's combat system sounds fascinating problem is my laptop is too low tech to run it :( I'm saving up for a new one though...800 mb Ram sucks nowadays all the new stuff is either unplayable or too choppy to be fun.
In pvp and solo play this would be quite interesting but imagine it in a raid situation. I suppose it would eliminate the complaint's about raids taking too long id guess. You'd need an ability that could regenerate it effectively to counter the limited time scope on the end game content other than pvp but that would in turn bring an imbalance by providing a catch all counter mechanic to pvp. The resource a player uses to perform actions in game needs to be more dynamic not simplified so that it allows a other players a niche and an opportunity to overcome their opponents in pvp with something different every time.

[Ronin]

In pvp and solo play this would be quite interesting but imagine it in a raid situation. I suppose it would eliminate the complaint's about raids taking too long id guess. You'd need an ability that could regenerate it effectively to counter the limited time scope on the end game content other than pvp but that would in turn bring an imbalance by providing a catch all counter mechanic to pvp. The resource a player uses to perform actions in game needs to be more dynamic not simplified so that it allows a other players a niche and an opportunity to overcome their opponents in pvp with something different every time.

I'll admit to not having thinking about raids, I never really got into those in...just about any game, really. However I mentioned in Arcanum other players could restore you fatigue(normally via potion[purchased] or a "fatigue kit"[crafted by an alchemist] which could restore a set amount of fatigue per kit/potion. Now a raid which requires a stock of items is probably not all that fun, however there are mystical powers in this game and probably human "medics" why not give them the ability to enhance the fatigue regeneration of one or more characters. In PvP this would hep out pressure classes and allow heaer to become a huge boon to most characters for more than just healing spells but revitilization as well, mostly those abilities would help structured PvP teams with a pressure strategy rather than burst, and allows raids to keep key components of the raid standing.

[MESS14H]

I'll admit to not having thinking about raids, I never really got into those in...just about any game, really. However I mentioned in Arcanum other players could restore you fatigue(normally via potion[purchased] or a "fatigue kit"[crafted by an alchemist] which could restore a set amount of fatigue per kit/potion. Now a raid which requires a stock of items is probably not all that fun, however there are mystical powers in this game and probably human "medics" why not give them the ability to enhance the fatigue regeneration of one or more characters. In PvP this would hep out pressure classes and allow heaer to become a huge boon to most characters for more than just healing spells but revitilization as well, mostly those abilities would help structured PvP teams with a pressure strategy rather than burst, and allows raids to keep key components of the raid standing.
Ok you've got to remember that there aren't going to be healers in this game as there aren't actually going to be any warrior's, rouges or any predefined classes at all . Its a skill based game.
If there’s a skill that negates a players ability to debuff, drain, or inhibit them in some way then having one function to inhibit just makes it all the more easier for players to choose the easiest options for their character build and sooner or later were all going to end up with identical builds. By having more than one element for a player to choose to master so to speak, You are forcing the player to persue a niche approached to pvp which promotes variety. I understand your fears of burst tactics but im sure youll agree with me when someone trys to employ such a tactic on you and you find your able to counter it because that so happens to be what youve specialised your defence in.
It wont work all the time but you will get trends and youll get a a build that has a good defence that protects you from the most common player builds around if your clever enough with your choices of skill training.
If your even more clever you'll work your build into a team and have your team mates cover your weaknessess while you cover theirs.
there will be no more "KILL THE PREIST KILL THE DRUID FIRST!" Burst tactics used because you or one of your team mates will have counter for it. The moment you dumb down the tactics you need to kill a player because theve only one stat to consider is the moment youve made pvp easy enough for any idiot to acomplish.

[Ronin]

With the system for "leveling" as I understand it it uses the skill use vs disuse method. Some players will focus on using healing and buffing abilities (should there be any, and I am fairly certain there will if raiding is on the table) and will probably referred to as healers, that is all I meant. About burst tactics it is group play that promotes burst actually the trick with burst is to take out key players, such as the healer or the main dps character (by play style not class mind you) which creates a gaping hole in the defensive value or offensive value of the team. Single play burst is a by product which focuses on taking your single opponent as fast as possible and if your burst fails, you die, if it is successful, they die. In tremendous sizes groups burst/spiking is rather innefective as that there are redundant meanwhile in solo play burst is countered by tenacity but strong vs pressure builds. Where burst shines is in areas where it is about 3v3-10v10ish where large amounts of redundant characters tend to be few and there are a majority of utility/offensive caracters allowing burst players to shine in pvp. That is my fear.

I realise there are no dyed-in-the-wool classes like mage, warrior, thief. But there will by builds, which is just a more open ended(this is a good thing IMO) class system, which much more customizable.

[MESS14H]

Yes you are right there probably will be burst combat builds in this game but to try and remove them will only reduce the game mechanics to a more simplistic model that will end up ruducing the games apeal to me tbh as i feel it will limmit my choices I have when trying to find a play style that i feel is unique to me within the game. PVP will turn into what it is in wow atm wich has simply become a case on who gets the jump on who first that becomes the victor as there isnt a great deal of niche tactics that a player can employ due to the limitations of their class. We all know what a lock or a warrior etc. looks like in wow. We even know what kit their wereing just by looking at them Because we have the same or have had the same or want the same kit at some point. Im hoping this game will bring up some more interesting out of the box builds given the choice of what the game has to offer.