11 Nov, 2009, Tonitrus wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
This has been bugging me for awhile.

To say that I'm not a fan of the diku combat system would be something of an understatement. Automated combat, on the whole, irritates me immensely. But simply removing that automation would be arguably worse, since you'd have to do the same things, plus type everything out. And you'd have to spam your melee hits as well.

Supposing you have a flexible skill system that allows for a tremendous variety of attacks which have tactical significance and power varying according to the situation at hand, it could be quite interesting, but I wonder to what extent it would be scriptable. Skill lag in the form of diku-style waitstate following the skill helps make scripting combat reactions risky if not outright dangerous. I personally would prefer a sort of backwards cooldown where a skill fires after its timer completes, but this takes a lot of the danger out of scripting. That's not to say it makes scripting easier, necessarily, since spamming commands would just keep resetting your current action and accomplish nothing but the final action, but it would be less dangerous.

Which brings me to what I actually want to talk about: Manual Defenses. I came up with a neat system for doing manual defenses one evening, when it came to me out of the blue. I was rather fond of it, but I discarded the entire concept after thinking about it for about an hour and realizing that it would be utterly susceptible to scripting.

Here's an example. Let's say we have a 'decapitate' command that will let you decapitate a foe you're currently fighting. It doesn't have a huge chance of success, and it is also very easily negated by your opponent simply ducking. Let's say decapitate takes something like 8 beats to fire. We could display a command regarding the attackers intent when they enter it again, then a different message for the actual skill firing. Then all the defender has to do is set up a trigger for the intent message that autoducks, rendering the entire thing useless. The only thing the defender would even risk in this setup is that he might override some other skill he had waiting, which probably won't even be as important.

Now if we don't display the intent message, this problem goes away, but it simultaneously impairs the defender's ability to predict what his opponent will be doing. I've been utterly unable to come up with any sort of manual defense system that won't be made completely useless by any standard mud client and a vague idea of what triggers are.

I did come up with a sort of compromise where defenses were automated and players could end up in different "stances" or "styles" which would modify the likelihood of the different skills involved and so implement a bit of strategy that would be much more forgiving and have much more grey area. I also thought about giving each attack a sort of temporary effect so that chaining attacks in certain orders were more effective than randomly. Sort of an implicit combo system. The upside to this would be that the more powerful combos would tend to be used more often, giving the defender an ability to deduce what is coming from what has already happened. The downside is the effect that would have on a game's learning curve.

Perhaps a sort of mix between automated defenses and manual defense would be better. Typing in a defense is an action that could otherwise be used to attack, but is much more likely to succeed than automated defenses. In which case, triggering them would mean you could not make attacks at all.

I don't know, though, I've not been particularly happy with anything I've come up with so far.

I would very much like to hear about any existing manual combat systems that are not particularly scriptable, particularly with regards to defenses.

Also, comments/criticisms of my above ramblings would be appreciated.
11 Nov, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I don't think you can ever make a system which cannot be scripted, particularly if it's a real time system where timing of attack and defence is important. The best you can really hope for is a system where those who script don't have a significant advantage over those who don't script.

The system I mentioned in this post is one example of how you can reduce the advantage gained from scripting and you could probably extend this to other defensive abilities.

The other thing I do is to make use of a kind of action point system for many key abilities. Each character has a power bar which fills as they take damage and once full they can discharge it to use a special power. These powers enhance existing abilities or can be used to cure injuries or various negative status effects and are designed to be more powerful than regular abilities. Your power bar will stay full for up to a minute so you have to decide not only what power to use but when to use it. The purpose of this mechanic is to give the player choices which are harder to script as the choice of whether to use a power immediately or wait relies to a certain extent on a prediction of what your opponent may be about to do.

That said, I'm not convinced that this really works to reduce scripting but I think it's neat so I will probably keep it anyway. :thinking:
11 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 3rd comment:
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The thought process you describe is pretty much exactly what I went through when designing my combat system.

In the end I settled on the compromise you mentioned - the actual defence process is automated, but specific defensive moves can increase your chances to avoid being hit. The emphasis therefore tends to be on attack, with offensive moves chained together to form combos. Moves use the backwards cooldown you mentioned, but they can be queued (so no need to set a trigger to perform the next move once the first has completed).

And yes, it has an impact on the learning curve. Although not as much of an impact as my separation of the combat moves into independently controllable body parts.
11 Nov, 2009, Dean wrote in the 4th comment:
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I think something like Kavir's compromise is the best approach to this issue.

Things like stances; offensive, normal/neutral, defensive. For example, if I move into an offensive stance, I might gain a bonus to attack but suffer penalties to defense but if I moved into a defensive stance, it would be the other way round.

Automatic skills like Dodge, Parry and Block. Where dodge might be effected by the type of armour the player is wearing (A guy in full suit of metal armour isn't going to be doing a whole lot of dodging without suffering fatigue wise anyway). Parry may require you to be wielding a weapon of some variety, (it would hurt parrying a sword with ones arms if they were weaponless. :lol:). Block may require the character to be using a shield to make proper use of it. Maybe as you train these skills, you unlock certain moves to perform in combat. For example, with blocking, you might learn shield bash or a skill that allows you to form up behind your shield effectively blocking every attack coming from the front, though unable to attack back, for a short period of time. (The enemy would then have to flank you or whatever).

/random thoughts
11 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Dean said:
Automatic skills like Dodge, Parry and Block. Where dodge might be effected by the type of armour the player is wearing (A guy in full suit of metal armour isn't going to be doing a whole lot of dodging without suffering fatigue wise anyway). Parry may require you to be wielding a weapon of some variety, (it would hurt parrying a sword with ones arms if they were weaponless. ). Block may require the character to be using a shield to make proper use of it. Maybe as you train these skills, you unlock certain moves to perform in combat.

Yes, I do all of that. The moves are tied in with the body parts I mentioned - so your feet get a 'dodge' defence, while your hands can 'parry' or 'block'. Each weapon has its own list of moves (with more unlocked as your skill improves), and different defences have different strengths, so (for example) you can't block a sword with your forearm (unless you're wearing bracers), a single sword can't parry a paired sword attack, and a shield can block just about anything.

The mud uses your highest defence each time someone tries to hit you, and it then takes a few seconds before that location can defend again. So for example if you're wielding a pair of swords while fighting an unarmed opponent, you might feint with one sword (forcing him to use his feet defence to try and dodge) then follow up with your other hand while his defence is down.
11 Nov, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
To make something less scriptable, you need to make it less obvious what the proper response is. If there is this one-shot-kill skill called "decapitate", and there is an obvious, always-succeeds counter called "duck" – and doing anything else causes you to lose your head – then there really is no question and scripting becomes obvious. In this event, I think that the culprit is really the attacking skill in the first place.

I think it would be interesting to tweak KaVir's description in #5 such that you can choose how to defend. It's not always obvious that you want to block every attack with the highest available defense. Maybe you know that your opponent has several attacks available, and uses a weak one. You might defend with a weak defense, knowing that you might get hurt but also knowing that you have your stronger defenses available for the opponent's stronger attacks.

Basically, if each attack has a variety of possible responses, and these responses each involve trade-offs, then you reduce the usefulness of scripting. Systems where each move has an unambiguous counter are exactly what scripting is best at defeating.
11 Nov, 2009, Runter wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
I don't think you can ever make a system which cannot be scripted, particularly if it's a real time system where timing of attack and defence is important. The best you can really hope for is a system where those who script don't have a significant advantage over those who don't script.


I think I could make a system that can't be scripted easily. The idea I've had for this in the past was inspired from being a long time poker player. Basically I use hidden rolls and "bidding." A simple example:

Round 1:
Heath rolls 50 for attack value and 20 for defense value.
KaVir rolls 5 for attack value and 90 for defense value.

At this point each player only knows what their own rolls were at the start of the round.
Heath is first to act. He decides to attack with a normal mid damage attack. (indicative of perhaps a mid-low attack roll.)
KaVir is told which attack is incoming. Knowing the attack, but most importantly, knowing his defense value roll was high this turn he uses a counter that only succeeds fully if defense value is dramatically higher than his opponents attack roll. Let's say the description of his counter ability is "Defends from attack if defense value is higher than attack value. Stuns opponent's next turn if defense value is 75% greater." So let's say being stunned removes your attack round in the next turn.

So in this case Heath was indeed stunned. So pretty straight forward. Yes, bots could have done most of this. But the system also implements bluffing. So still in round 1, it's KaVir's turn to attack.

He only has an attack roll of 5. It's pretty obvious that his chances for success are poor with any attack. But knowing the situation of the battle he may could use this to his advantage in a bluff. For example he may choose to use an attack that says "If attack roll at least twice as high as opponents defense roll does no damage but reduces opponents defensive roll the next 3 rounds by 25%." This would be a pretty harsh attack at this point if it succeeded.

Knowing the situation his opponent very well may believe that attack roll KaVir has is considerably higher than 5. And out of necessity after being stunned he may choose to do something like a defense that "Guaranteed to succeed but can only be used once every 10 rounds." Diverting what is actually a useless feint.


Yes, a simplistic example and sorry for the length of the post. I typically try to keep it to a few sentences at most. :)
11 Nov, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I think I could make a system that can't be scripted easily….

That sounds like a fun system. The bluffing aspect of your idea is similar to what I wanted to achieve with my powers system - the player has to gamble whether to blow the power now or hold off against needing it at some future time. Essentially you're asking the player to make a guess, albeit an educated one, and that's the kind of decision that's easier for a human to make than a computer. The more chance elements or more information hiding you do then the harder it becomes to determine the optimum choice at any given time, but unfortunately those both run counter to the goals of a player skill based system. However, your bluffing idea is definitely a good way to add chance while still allowing player skill to play a significant role.
11 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I think it would be interesting to tweak KaVir's description in #5 such that you can choose how to defend. It's not always obvious that you want to block every attack with the highest available defense.

The problem is that those sort of decisions need to be made extremely quickly if made in response to an attack, and that's exactly the sort of thing that scripts do better than humans.

There are ways to counter the tactic I mentioned though - feints tend to be easy to block (as their purpose is to waste a defence), which makes them very vulnerable to counterattacks, disarms, weapon-breaking, etc. A defensive players might also have three decent defences scores, and/or invest in cooldown defence abilities (so that they retain a percentage of their defence even while a location is recovering from a successful block).

Runter said:
I think I could make a system that can't be scripted easily. The idea I've had for this in the past was inspired from being a long time poker player. Basically I use hidden rolls and "bidding."

Although that sounds like an interesting approach to combat, it still suffers from the same problem as balance/affliction systems - players need to decide an appropriate response to each incoming attack. If you've got a normal-paced round-based combat system there's just not enough time for most players to respond quickly enough to counter everything, so they'll start resorting to scripts to do the job for them.

If you want that sort of interaction, I really think you need to use some sort of turn-based combat system (i.e., where each player has a reasonable amount of time to decide an appropriate response, so that a lightning-fast script won't gain any advantage over a human player). This can be pretty fun too, but it does result in a very different pace of combat.
11 Nov, 2009, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
If you want that sort of interaction, I really think you need to use some sort of turn-based combat system (i.e., where each player has a reasonable amount of time to decide an appropriate response, so that a lightning-fast script won't gain any advantage over a human player). This can be pretty fun too, but it does result in a very different pace of combat.


I didn't realize I specified—but yes, I thought it went without saying that the system I described would be turn based. Not real time.

In any event, it wouldn't have anything automated. Which, I guess, makes it manual combat?
11 Nov, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
The problem is that those sort of decisions need to be made extremely quickly if made in response to an attack, and that's exactly the sort of thing that scripts do better than humans.

I'm not at all convinced that it takes more time to decide if you should block, parry or dodge, as compared to deciding if you should disarm, counterattack, weapon-break, left-slow-punch, right-fast-kick, etc. In fact, I think that you would very quickly pick become quite adept at processing the information, in which case a human would do quite a bit better than most scripts.

I'm also not convinced that a script would always make good decisions if the options involved sufficient tradeoffs. Of course you could come up with some kind of general purpose decision process, but a human would likely beat it. It's worth noting that scripts are always better than humans at certain things, but that's kind of irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the script makes the decision faster, if the human can still make the decision and make a better one.
11 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I didn't realize I specified—but yes, I thought it went without saying that the system I described would be turn based. Not real time.

Fair enough then - but it's because it's turn-based that the combat system avoids the scripting problem, not because of hidden rolls or bidding. If players have time to respond manually (rather than needing to make lightning-fast decisions), then scripts are no longer necessary to compete.

But turn-based combat has a different (and slower-paced) feel that some people don't like. It's definitely a viable solution (and one which the OP might want to consider), but it represents an alternative approach to combat, and comes with its own pros and cons.


David Haley said:
I'm not at all convinced that it takes more time to decide if you should block, parry or dodge, as compared to deciding if you should disarm, counterattack, weapon-break, left-slow-punch, right-fast-kick, etc.

The counterattack is launched automatically as soon as you successfully parry. The disarm and weapon-break moves have to be executed within 5 seconds of catching your opponent's weapon, and you get a big HINT reminding you what to do - a message you'll be actively waiting for.

The offensive moves can be performed without paying too much attention to what your opponent is doing. You'll want to watch out for general tactics, and you can sometimes predict your enemy by watching out for certain sequences, but you don't need to study their every move.

But there are no "launch" messages for attacks (and adding them would effectively double the already-excessive number of combat messages), and even if there were, some attacks can be performed in a single second. In some cases the followup attack might not even be launched until after the feint had hit. In other cases, a skilled attacker might time multiple attacks to all land on the same second.
11 Nov, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
I think we might not be speaking of the same thing, probably because I don't know the details of your system and you are interpreting what I said in a context strongly embedded in that system. The point was that you can introduce tradeoffs for actions, which reduces the benefits of scripting, because it becomes much harder for the script to intelligently pick tradeoffs based on the current situation.

I think it's also worth noting that I don't intend anything to be used in a "twitch"-based system; I think that if somebody is trying to do anything with twitch in a text game, then they have mixed up their paintbrushes (as the French might say) – they're trying to do something with the genre that it's not really meant for. (For starters, we process images far, far more rapidly than text, and so twitching, assuming that one is fast in the first place, is a whole lot easier with pictures than with text.)
11 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
The point was that you can introduce tradeoffs for actions, which reduces the benefits of scripting, because it becomes much harder for the script to intelligently pick tradeoffs based on the current situation.

I don't disagree with the idea of tradeoffs, my concern lies with making snap decisions in response to moves made by your opponent. If you've only got a couple of seconds to react, and each move requires a different response, you're going to end up writing triggers. That's what happened on the IRE muds, and they've effectively ended up with automated combat. (Is that what you mean by a "twitch"-based system?)

I've created a manual combat system which automates most of the defence process, as I described earlier, and it works well. I've also created a turn-based combat system, and that works well too. But I've not yet found a way to have detailed manual defences in a realtime combat system without the solution being easier to script than to play manually.
11 Nov, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
"Twitch" is a term that some people use derogatively to criticize FPS games as involving nothing other than very fast reaction and eye-hand coordination. More generally it refers to having to move the mouse or otherwise use the input device very quickly to get an advantage. (Some people even called Starcraft a "twitch RPS" because a few seconds gained using keyboard shortcuts etc. can make a big difference.) Here I intend it mainly to distinguish games that give you less than a second to react from games that give you a few seconds (I don't know exactly how many "a few" would be). The former rely on very quick reaction times, whereas the latter give you more time to think about what's going on.

That said,
KaVir said:
If you've only got a couple of seconds to react, and each move requires a different response
I was kind of explicitly trying to avoid something like this with my comments. The rest of post #6 should explain this. Indeed, any kind of rock-paper-scissors approach will very naturally yield itself to scripting. I was describing a system where each attack can be (successfully and intelligently) met with a variety of (all useful) defenses. It might really matter to your tactics if you block with your shield or your sword, for example. Perhaps you can still script this once you've perfected your tactics. OK, that's fine, but at least now you are automating interesting combat strategy instead of following simple and obvious rock-paper-scissors rules. And, somebody might come along with a new strategy that fools your automation, so the human is not taken out of the equation.
12 Nov, 2009, Runter wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Runter said:
I didn't realize I specified—but yes, I thought it went without saying that the system I described would be turn based. Not real time.

Fair enough then - but it's because it's turn-based that the combat system avoids the scripting problem, not because of hidden rolls or bidding. If players have time to respond manually (rather than needing to make lightning-fast decisions), then scripts are no longer necessary to compete.

But turn-based combat has a different (and slower-paced) feel that some people don't like. It's definitely a viable solution (and one which the OP might want to consider), but it represents an alternative approach to combat, and comes with its own pros and cons.


Well, I disagree with that. But you can chalk it up to whatever you'd like. Avoiding making scripting beneficial is a win in my book.
12 Nov, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
That's what happened on the IRE muds, and they've effectively ended up with automated combat.

That's not quite correct. What they have ended up with is automation of the defensive side of combat, which you seem to concede is inevitable in any real time manual combat system anyway. My main complaint with their system is the huge amount of automation that is required before you can even begin to get to the interesting part of combat. It always seemed to me that you could cut away half of their combat system and nobody would notice the difference because they all automated it anyway.
12 Nov, 2009, Tonitrus wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Unfortunately turn-based combat brings up a number of issues, aside from pacing. Having all actions on a mud be turn-based would be pretty unpleasant, and if only combat is turn-based, that leads into timing weirdness when people move in and out of combat.

I was thinking of having a slower combat system, maybe using typical 3 second rounds, but with much fewer actions per round. There's a really thin line between fast-paced combat and "twitch mechanics" and between strategic combat and slow-paced combat. Ideally I'd like a sort of slowish strategic combat that still has a fast-paced feel to it. I.e., although there is less spam, the urgency of faster-paced combat is maintained.

I keep seeing the term "affliction/balance" used, and I'm not sure what that means, but my guess is that it involves impairing your targets with various skills and having your target have individual skills to remove each. I'm not fond of this approach, you see it a lot on muds with automated combat as well: A potion for every skill/spell. Too much upkeep for me. What I was favoring (with regard to afflictions) is very short duration afflictions that will lapse on their own, possibly counterable for those who don't want to wait by style/stance/posture shifts (each with their own sets of problems), although longer afflictions would need to exist and skills would be necessary for coping with them.

People have made some good suggestions, many of which I've also thought about, but I still sort of cringe at automated defenses. It's not so much that I want people to type them in, I couldn't care less about that, it has to do with actions per round. Let's say we're playing stock Smaug and I've got 4 attacks per round. I can also use a skill or something once per round, so I have a total of 5 actions per round, effectively. How many defensive actions can I take? Pretty much infinite.

I liked what someone said earlier about being able to use weaker defenses if you think an opponent is saving up an unpleasant attack, but I'm not sure how I could really implement that without going into something like KaVir's limb system, which I like, by the way, but I'm concerned about setting up too steep of a learning curve. Especially considering that any mud I were to implement would not be particularly transparent. A lot of the subtleties of such a system would be lost on players who hadn't played a number of characters, and while I like the complexity, whenever I think about implementing such a system, I feel like I'm kicking newbies in the face. I don't have a problem with, say, kicking everyone in the face, but just the newbies seems counterproductive.

I suppose if I wanted to have limited defenses I could do something like diminishing defense scores with each defensive action used, partially recovering each round. Or worse, a diminishing score that represents being off balance or some such nonsense so that if you're forced to block 37 attacks in one round, you will probably need to spend a few rounds recovering. While I'd have no qualms at all doing something like that with manual defenses, I feel a bit guilty "charging" players for defenses that they can't opt out of. Maybe what I'd need, then, are commands to control how defenses are utilized, and so that their automation is configurable?

I could also be gracious (God forbid) and just require all attacks to hit a certain target number, or else they fail, so that if a person's defenses are penalized by being swarmed or if he's used them all up (if they're limited), he still won't necessarily get hit. It can be confusing to hit people who are moving around in combat even if they aren't specifically reacting to you, for example.

But then if I give a person one good defense a round (for argument's sake) and then rely on the attacker failing target numbers for the rest, it'd still end up in the same weird situation. Manual is easily scriptable if a bit more risky since you could use your good defense on the wrong attack. And automated is automatic, meaning you can't choose when to use it. This whole issue is messy. Every possible solution I come up with to each problem generates another 30.
12 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
KaVir said:
If you've only got a couple of seconds to react, and each move requires a different response

I was kind of explicitly trying to avoid something like this with my comments. The rest of post #6 should explain this. Indeed, any kind of rock-paper-scissors approach will very naturally yield itself to scripting. I was describing a system where each attack can be (successfully and intelligently) met with a variety of (all useful) defenses.

But even then, a couple of seconds isn't enough time for most people to scan through the combat messages, make a decision, and type a response.

I do actually have sweeps implemented in this way, but you can set a different colour for sweep messages, and any of the feet commands will allow you to recover. So typically someone will set sweep messages to bright red, and as soon they see red text they'll type a two-letter command. They have 2-3 seconds to do this, depending on their encumbrance, and they don't even need to actually read the combat messages (just keep an eye out for red text), nor think about an appropriate response (because only sweeps do this, and they all work and are countered in the same way). But even this is borderline for a lot of players. I think expanding it to other moves would prove too much.

David Haley said:
It might really matter to your tactics if you block with your shield or your sword, for example.

You could instead do that through a configurable option, rather than an on-the-fly response. I would also argue that defences are based more on muscle memory than an intentional response to each attack, and I don't think it's unreasonable for the mud combat system to reflect that.

Runter said:
Avoiding making scripting beneficial is a win in my book.

You could also avoid making scripting beneficial by completely automating combat, so that once a fight begins the player has no options at all (other than perhaps setting their wimpy level in the hope of invoking an autoflee response).

But some people wouldn't enjoy a fully automated combat system - just as some people wouldn't enjoy a turn-based combat system. While I agree that it's (usually) a good thing to reduce the value of scripting, it's not as important as coming up with a combat system that your target audience finds fun.

Tonitrus said:
Unfortunately turn-based combat brings up a number of issues, aside from pacing. Having all actions on a mud be turn-based would be pretty unpleasant, and if only combat is turn-based, that leads into timing weirdness when people move in and out of combat.

These issues can be overcome, but I agree that such a combat system will have a major impact on the entire game. I think you're going to have to decide which is more important - your desire for manual defences, or your dislike for turn-based combat.

Tonitrus said:
I keep seeing the term "affliction/balance" used, and I'm not sure what that means, but my guess is that it involves impairing your targets with various skills and having your target have individual skills to remove each.

Pretty much. The afflictions are a bit like the blind/curse/poison/etc on a Diku, with the cures working much like the various cure potions, and the balance is the same as a WAIT_STATE() except that it doesn't lag your connection, but instead prevents you from entering certain commands (such as combat commands). You could achieve a crude version simply by removing the automatic attacks from a Diku.

Tonitrus said:
People have made some good suggestions, many of which I've also thought about, but I still sort of cringe at automated defenses. It's not so much that I want people to type them in, I couldn't care less about that, it has to do with actions per round. Let's say we're playing stock Smaug and I've got 4 attacks per round. I can also use a skill or something once per round, so I have a total of 5 actions per round, effectively. How many defensive actions can I take? Pretty much infinite.

Well that's just one implementation of automated defences, and it's an implementation designed to work alongside automated attacks. Attack and defence need to be designed with each other in mind, so if you've got manual attacks your defence system will likely work differently to Diku.

Tonitrus said:
I liked what someone said earlier about being able to use weaker defenses if you think an opponent is saving up an unpleasant attack, but I'm not sure how I could really implement that without going into something like KaVir's limb system

Well how will your attacks work? If I'm fighting with a pair of daggers, how will that be reflected by your combat system? Can I attack with both daggers separately, or does wielding paired weapons unlock some sort of "double strike" move? Can I knee you at the same time, and perhaps headbutt you as well?
12 Nov, 2009, shasarak wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
I think part of the problem with many combat systems is that they try too hard to stay "grounded in reality" and somehow reflect actual physical combat moves between real humans. That's limiting: in the real world if someone aims a blow at your head, there aren't all that many viable ways of dealing with it. So, thinking in terms of physical blows and realistic reponses tends to lead you along a path where the choice of any one move no longer has any significance after it is finished: there's an attack, and a defence, then we start all over again.

Perhaps instead one should abstract combat. Think of a battle as being a game of "Magic The Gathering", or a game of chess; when playing chess, if someone makes a particular move, that one move is often merely part of a longer-term strategy which persists over many moves, and a wide variety of counters is possible, each of which may also be part of a larger multi-move strategy. Have a system where players need to be thinking five or six moves ahead. Such a system can be scripted, of course, but certainly not by using simple triggers.

If you must "keep things real" then one thing that might help is if players can create and practice their own combos, and the character's skill at pulling off a particular combo varies a great deal depending on how many practice points have been spent on that specific combination. Different opponents will therefore favour different combos; so, the fact that one opponent tends to follow up a shield bash with a stab to the belly doesn't necessarily mean anyone else will. This means that, at the very least, you need different scripts for different opponents, but that experience in fighting a particular opponent becomes tactically valuable.

You might also think in terms of any given attack or defence taking multiple ticks to execute. To pull off an attack might require 4 ticks. You get a message about what the attacker is doing at each tick, but the initial messages are more ambiguous and become steadily more precise as time passes. (So many attacks have the same first tick message; a smaller subset also have the same second tick message). The defender therefore has a choice of when to begin his defence move. If he guesses correctly which move his attacker is about to pull off after the first tick and begins a defensive move then his defence will be more effective; but if he guesses wrong then he's in trouble. If he waits till after the second or third tick message before defending, then the defence will be less effective and he'll be less able to counter-attack as he'll be off-balance. Add to that the ability to abandon a given move half-way through and start a new one instead, and things are getting a bit more interesting.
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