Although Driftmoon will not be a purely action oriented RPG, there will be many battles in it. This is an area I’ve given a lot of time, by prototyping and play testing. In many roleplaying games the combat is purely cosmetic, it’s actually there just to fill your time in between dialogue or looting. You click an enemy and the combat begins, and you can either continue with combat or flee.
Combat in Driftmoon will be real time, with a very simple interface. You can click on any enemy to hit them. If you have a melee weapon your character goes on to hit them, and if you have a bow, your character fires from where you are. The part where things get interesting are the various enemy types that have different attack patterns. This is true especially in the later stages of the game. I’m also hoping to have various combat usable terrain, such that you could for example hinder your enemies by moving a rock in front of them, or by placing traps.
Any wild ideas for combat? Explosive powder kegs or paralyzing darts?
There could be a key that forces the player to attack right where s/he is standing on. This might be useful for hitting moving targets with a long range weapon, or just to boast your melee fighting moves.
Also, molotovs anyone?
Hmm…. Sounds interesting. One thing that really annoyed me in Notrium was how one faced the combat system was. Click-click-click-click.
One thing being experimented more recently in games is combat stances.
I suppose the basics would be:
.:Combat:.
A stance that sacrifices movement speed and armor for damage. Useful when going all out against an enemy. Maybe some special attacks are only available in the ‘combat’ stance.
.:Defensive:.
As the name suggests, the N/PC goes into a defensive mode. Mobility and attack damage is sacrificed for high armor. A possibility is the ability to ‘parry’. Basically, completely block the damage.
.:Scout:.
This mode would be designed primarily for large amounts of movement. The N/PC has lowered armor and slightly reduced attack in compensation for lots of movement and/or attack speed. This tactic can also secondly be used for hit-and-run methods; dashing in to grab loot or kill weak ranged/caster units then escaping out before the other units can catch you. You could make that the player suffers reduced penalties from terrain and or certain effects; E.G: swampy terrain does not effect you as much.
So… That’s my two penneth.
Cheers, Eder.
That’s a good point of view. At the moment the combat in Driftmoon is quite a bit like Diablo, a lot of clicking and not much of player skill involved yet. Stances could be one pretty nice solution, I’ll definitely list these to my design docs a possibility.
Caltrops. Throw them on ground here and there, watch opponents slowly stumble through them in pain, taking minor damage. It’d be kinda cool if some monsters had immunity to some things. Like a magma creature could have a hidden stat that makes it immune to flame based weapons and traps. The guy with huge metal boots would be immune to caltrops and spikes, etc. so you can’t just stick to one attack/trap for eternity.
Ouch!
Click click click. My knee jerk reaction is that if you want to get away from cosmetic battles go for some sort of combat system that minimizes mouse clicks. The mouse should be used for movement and targeting, like a joystick, and the wider variety of controls provided by the keyboard should be used for combat.
The control in ‘Death vs Monstars’ is an excellent starting place, even if my own thoughts are a little different. I’m thinking double click enemy/ground to target for orientation, then have the character follow the mouse. Single click to change target, click and hold to hold current orientation, double click to disengage. Upon death of target… um… dance. Right click and middle click can both do similarly magical things, like hold range to target or something. That leaves the keyboard open for some of the button mashing you need to make a real time rpg entertaining instead of a grind fest.
As for attacks… well this is somewhat radical but if you are aiming for non cosmetic real time combat that requires some skill, I would emulate games that focus on that. Yup thats right, I’d aim to make attacks like what is available is standard fighting games, combos, sequences and all. (I always liked how Castlevania: SotN broke out of the platforming box with the spell sequnces.) Of course the sequences available would all be dependent on what skills you’d acquired and/or equipped. Example, no flaming sword without a fire spell and a sword that you have at least mild competency with.
I’m also wondering about the feasibility of having buttons stand for part actions and then overlapping sequences for chaining. For example, a three button spell sequence asa (swish, flick, swish) being used twice with the input asasa, or alternating sequences asa and sas (using * as cast point) asa*s*. Not sure how this would play out in battle, it might need a cast key, or limited overlap, or maybe mixing of the combo-ed attacks, but I like the idea for spell casting. The bigger the spell the longer or harder the sequence (zprj). I can also see this working for melee. Example: crouch + dodge + kick = sweep. Or maybe ditch the dodge + kick and make it low defense position + swing/slashing attack.
Thanks for the input cevgar!
I will likely try to keep the system pretty simple, so I won’t involve the keyboard in the fighting. I’m trying to make the battles a little more strategy involved than battle games which require to remember key combinations or games that need realtime fighting skills. But I second what you’re saying, I’d like to minimize the need for mouse clicking, and I would like to involve the player in the fights quite a bit more than say Knights of the Old Republic (where you just point to the target and the battle goes on until someone dies or the player retreats).
Ah, I see where I misunderstood… I think… maybe. Would I be mistaken if I were to say you are looking for simple to control yet widely varied and flexible in actions and effects, kinda like a cross between a arena shooter and a roguelike? Boxhead meets NetHack perhaps? Seems like the majority of the work for that kind of project is properly defining the complexity of the relationships between items, enemies and terrains.
I wouldn’t say you misunderstood, rather I haven’t outlined my design goals. My purpose is to find a combat system that
-requires some amount of skill, but not too much
-is interesting on its own, but isn’t the main focus of the game as to require extensive training
-is intuitive
-is not so repetitive as to become a Diablo clone
So far my system requires a lot of clicks for the more difficult opponents, so I’m not fully satisfied with it yet. I’m thinking of perhaps adding a combat mode that will be activated when combat starts.