20 réponses à ce sujet

[telephasic]

It has long bothered me how untrue to real life combat RPG battes are.  To summarize:

Real World: Most of your time is spent trying not to get hit.  You parry and dogdge blows, and your armor, if you have it, absorbs slashing (but not crushing) attacks.  If you're hit, you're generally in big trouble.  You're either dead, dying, or handicapped enough by the wound to have your fighting skills *severely* hampered.  Or, you might get a glancing enough blow that, with combat training, you can ignore it for some time, although you'll still be bleeding and weakening. 

RPGs:  You have "hit points"  You can take dozens of direct hits, even with something like a claymore or a sledgehammer, before dying.  Once you are hit, you take no additional damage past that wound, and in most games (DOE an exception thankfully) you don't recieve any real crippling damage.  

Now, I know the roots of this.  D&D's original combat rules were imported from a WW2 battleship game, and battleships can take a ton of direct hits before going down.  But it seems long since due to go to something which resembles real combat.  

Do you think this would be too "unfun" to play?  Having your enemies go down within one or two blows, and having to make sure you essentially never took damage in combat?  

[Grimpeaper]

It would be cool in the right game. But having hit points also makes your characters feel a lot more epic.

[SardaukarElite]

telephasic wrote...

Do you think this would be too "unfun" to play?  Having your enemies go down within one or two blows, and having to make sure you essentially never took damage in combat?  

No, it would be great.

The advantage of an RPG for this, is that the computer determines whether hits will connect, not the player. So it's relatively straightforward to set the game up so that most blows will be parryed and give everyone a lot less health. You could also make the game a lot more tactical, giving attack bonuses for flanking or multiple allies attacking a single enemy at once, requiring the player to much more carefully use formations.

However if you were feeling less adventerous you could replace health with some other depleteable measure representing your character's defensive ability, which goes down with each enemy blow parried. When it is emptied you character is struck and incapacitated or killed. Gameplay wise it'd be exactly the same as health but cosmetically you wouldn't have the lame being struck over and over again look so prolific in games.

Technologically there is a challenge in getting animations between combatants to match up though, which of course gets much worse when more than two combatants are considered.

[Darpaek]

Gothic was pretty good about this, particularly your armor complaint. There are several NWN mods that give penalties to your character if you take damage. Fallout 3 was pretty good about affecting you as you took damage (more shooter than RPG style though)



As per the meaning of hitpoints, that's been debated for decades. Hitpoints are an abstract reflecting your character's ability to take damage. A level 10 character "rolls with a hit" better than a lvl 1 character, etc... the level 10 character is still hurt when stabbed with a dagger, but that dagger stab hits square on a level 1 character, whereas it glances/hits a non-vital bodypart on a lvl 10 character.

[Panderfringe]

Yes, I would enjoy having my gut slashed and then dying of some infection.

[Ponce de Leon]

Will we see? I don't know, possibly yes. Would I want to? Of course, anything new is welcome. But why wouldn't I like it? Because in games you can make what you can't in real life.

But again, I'd rather see one game trying than nothing at all, so heck yeah for the one that does so.

[Laxon]

If you want real life simulation, you would get in a maximum of 2-3 parries and dodges. Then you are dead. You would also get exhausted from a single enemy, you would lose your strength with each blow you make.

And that results in you having to run back to the 'inn' after every victory.



You could only do 1 on 1 fights, 1 on 2 at most and even that is pushing it. Statistically you would die every other battle. Since a lot would depend on random chance of the opponent fooling you.

You also would have to eliminate any enemy that has any superhuman element. ie a dragon, a giant, a zombie. Because you would not be able to take them as a human. A zombie feels no pain, and would be relentlessly attacking. No exhaustion. A dragon wold just roar and your eardrums would start bleeding. A giant's single blow will crush half the bones in your body.



That is why RPG games right now have the 'dice rolling in the background' because those dice give you the ability to actually fight something that no human would be able to. It also removes a lot of the real combat frustration from the player. Without that, you might enjoy a few fights but after your 20th consecutive reload you might start snapping the keyboard.



As much as I would love to have realistic combat, it would lose its fun. Just like it does in real life.



Plus this is an absolute coding nightmare.

[Beechwell]

I would love it if they could also make such a system fun to play. But that seems difficult. As Laxon said, just using a system of attack rolls against a set defense value would make this system extremely reliant on pure luck and involve a lot of dieing and reloading.

Maybe a system where the defense of an enemie first needs to be overcome over several attacks before you can deal any real damage could work. That way you could withdraw fighters that are close to being hit from the fight to keep them alive.



Actually some rpg systems already go a little in taht direction of makeing single hits count more. In TDE (and subsequently Drakensang wich is based on the system) hitpoints are always relatively low and heavy hits cause wounds that affect your attack end defense abilities. Other systems like Kult have a pure wounds system instead of hitpopints. In the case of Kult at least this leads to very lethal fights, but characters get "fate" points to avert heavy or deadly wounds.



In computer games this works better with games that give you direct control over your character's actions. In Mount&Blade for example each hit you take is basically your own fault for not parrying correctly, and 1-3 good hits can easily knock you unconscious.

[GhoXen]

You see, traditionally RPG does not have realistic combat system.



In order for a RPG to have realistic combat, as you name it, the RPG will have to become an Action/Shooter RPG.

[DaemosZythaer20]

You should play Mount & Blade. Has one of the best combat systems i've played in an RPG.

[Icid]

One of the main reasons for not doing a realistic combat system has been technical limitations. Altho as computers get more powerful it could happen. In real life there are no dice rolls, so those would be out the window. You would also need a pin point collision detection system in order to properly calculate hits/misses. Without any dice rolls, the system would become skill/twitch based, which a lot of traditional RPG fans dislike.
The downfall of a realistic combat system however is that in standared RPGs you are generally fighting mass quantities of enemies, and in real life, being outnumbered usually means your death. Also, once you throw magic into the mix, real life kinda takes a back seat.

[Sebiale]

Laxon wrote...

If you want real life simulation, you would get in a maximum of 2-3 parries and dodges. Then you are dead. You would also get exhausted from a single enemy, you would lose your strength with each blow you make.
And that results in you having to run back to the 'inn' after every victory.

You could only do 1 on 1 fights, 1 on 2 at most and even that is pushing it. Statistically you would die every other battle. Since a lot would depend on random chance of the opponent fooling you.
You also would have to eliminate any enemy that has any superhuman element. ie a dragon, a giant, a zombie. Because you would not be able to take them as a human. A zombie feels no pain, and would be relentlessly attacking. No exhaustion. A dragon wold just roar and your eardrums would start bleeding. A giant's single blow will crush half the bones in your body.

That is why RPG games right now have the 'dice rolling in the background' because those dice give you the ability to actually fight something that no human would be able to. It also removes a lot of the real combat frustration from the player. Without that, you might enjoy a few fights but after your 20th consecutive reload you might start snapping the keyboard.

As much as I would love to have realistic combat, it would lose its fun. Just like it does in real life.

Plus this is an absolute coding nightmare.

/sign

[Sebiale]

Laxon wrote...

If you want real life simulation, you would get in a maximum of 2-3 parries and dodges. Then you are dead. You would also get exhausted from a single enemy, you would lose your strength with each blow you make.
And that results in you having to run back to the 'inn' after every victory.

You could only do 1 on 1 fights, 1 on 2 at most and even that is pushing it. Statistically you would die every other battle. Since a lot would depend on random chance of the opponent fooling you.
You also would have to eliminate any enemy that has any superhuman element. ie a dragon, a giant, a zombie. Because you would not be able to take them as a human. A zombie feels no pain, and would be relentlessly attacking. No exhaustion. A dragon wold just roar and your eardrums would start bleeding. A giant's single blow will crush half the bones in your body.

That is why RPG games right now have the 'dice rolling in the background' because those dice give you the ability to actually fight something that no human would be able to. It also removes a lot of the real combat frustration from the player. Without that, you might enjoy a few fights but after your 20th consecutive reload you might start snapping the keyboard.

As much as I would love to have realistic combat, it would lose its fun. Just like it does in real life.

Plus this is an absolute coding nightmare.

/sign

[Sheylan]

DaemosZythaer20 wrote...

You should play Mount & Blade. Has one of the best combat systems i've played in an RPG.

Agreed, their mounted combat is quite simply the best I have ever seen. You can run over infantry, when you hit them while moving it gives damage multipliers based on relative speed. If you have a lance equiped it will couch it at high speed so that if it strikes someone they generaly die instantly. Horse archery is loads of fun. Crossbows are downright lethal.

[OwenM]

This is something that has always intrigued me as an aspiring game designer, and I've given it some thought.



From a 'real' standpoint, Laxon is 100% correct. Aside from the technical limitations, there is a reason we play 'games' and not 'simulations of our own death'.



However, this does not mean that games could not go through a major overhaul in the way that their combat systems work.



I for one am not a fan of the 'health' system, nor its associated bar/regenerating screen effects. So that can get thrown out the window. Rather like has been mentioned, I'd prefer a system where your character takes wounds - and I had high hopes for DMM to allow simulation of this, but it's still a ways off, it seems - and in some cases (such as a sliced throat or similar mortal wound) your character would die instantly (or, hopefully, your opponent).



However, in order to stop this being incredibly dull and short lived as an experience, you would put much higher emphasis on skill in combat - not player skill, but character skill. This isn't a shooter we're talking about.



Because you'd be dealing with a fantasy world, you can have abilities that are still more than natural, but keep them within reason. As a starting point, you could have your character able to take on one person at a time - that's the baseline. Over time, and becoming more experienced (levelling up, say), you may be able to fight two people at once.

Truly god-like characters could perhaps tackle four at once, but this is more determined by your constitution (perhaps magical elements), rather than directly on your skill.

What this leads to is a need for supporting characters.



Take also, the idea of creatures - your main opponents would be people, of different skill levels. The creatures would be few and far between, as they are either easy to kill, or would avoid people, or they are nigh upon impossible to kill - like dragons or demons. Of course, once you get really good demons are still flesh and blood, so you can perhaps beat them if you're skilled enough/fast enough.



Magic then comes into play - mages would be required in your party not to provide magical waves of death, but to counter other mages, who could normally kill your entire group in one move. Magic does not take into account armour, nor does it wound - it merely blasts you to pieces (or burns, melts, freezes...etc), for the most part, that is. It's a scary thing, magic. But that's why you keep your mage around, and try not to exhaust him on minor enemies. Of course, his ability to protect you depends on his own skills, and such.



The only problem is that this is all very hard to code in practice, and would be a hard game to play. I mean, this is just an overview of the idea, but with appropriate balancing and story and so on, it could revolutionise games. The key is that while combat is more based on parrying, dodging, and blocking, it is still not 'real' in terms of fatigue - that is what kills the game.



I just get tired of seeing characters spewing blood on every strike and not dying. So replace those hits with blocks, and make it more based on skill (and luck - that adds a random element so it's not a forgone conclusion), than on hit points. Combat would also look more awesome if you could pull off the animation.



Otherwise, I cannot see 'real' combat being fun at all, nor could I see the point. As it is, such a system is incredibly hard to implement, anyway. XD

[Ninjaphrog]

I think it would be great to make RPGs more realistic in combat.



You're absolutely right, it's rediculous that you can get hit by a massive axe and not lose an arm or leg. in Fable II they had something 'LIKE' it...meaning that if you went to 0 HP you got a scar on a randomly picked spot on your body, which stayed with you forever.



It would be awesome if you could in combat get a wound that cripples you, and you need medical care to heal it(not just some ****ty first aid pack, but an actual hospital). How I don't know, I'll leave that to the game devs who can see the value in a realistic fight.



This also means that you can't really have the combat system they have in DA:O, with the pausing and such...it'll have to be for real time hack n' slash RPGs.(Kinda lame to control an entire party of people who're limping).

[Panderfringe]

all of you are ignoring that this would be incredibly annoying to deal with in a game, and probably the least fun experience..

[OwenM]

Except for everybody who said that, which is like at least a quarter of the thread, and the most detailed responses?



>.>

[Ninjaphrog]

I disagree with you Pand...a more realistic game would really be entertaining.

[l0calh05t]

Tactical shooters often have a more realistic damage system and they are still fun. Same goes for many stealth games in which enemies can kill you with one or two bullets (giving you an extra reason to be stealthy). It really depends on how well the rest of the game fits into this. Obviously, the whole "Epic battles where one guy kills 100 orcs" doesn't fit well with such a system. Although even in real life the ratios can be quite surprising http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Winter_War