139 réponses à ce sujet

[Navasha]

Reduce the numbers of enemies and make them actually have defenses. Get rid of the "If you swing at it you hit it" mechanic. Slow it down again, and add in visuals that show the enemy blocking your sword with their shield or parrying your blow with a weapon.

The enemy should use tactics as well. If you come upon a room and the enemy in a dungeon knows you are coming the archers should be in relative cover. Warriors should be attempting to block your way to the archers and mages, not just blindly charging at you from across the room.

Enemies that are outnumbered should attempt to escape the area and if the situation calls for it, bring help from the next room.

Oh.... and could mages maybe help out their side this time? I feared seeing a mage in DA:O. They became priority target number 1, because they could wipe my party very quickly if I did not. In DA2, enemy mages were just a joke. They cast their little protective ball shield and did nothing while I wiped out EVERYTHING else around them and just stood waiting for them to come out of it.

I understand that many people thought combat was too slow in DA:O, but DA2 went WAY too far in making it so fast as to be comical. Please.... also end the exploding gibbage. Bodies struck by a dagger don't explode. I am sure this was some mechanic for clearing extra bodies and freeing up memory or keeping the rendering engine from choking on extra polygons, but it took away from combat too. If I stab a darkspawn through the heart, I want to see it fall to its knees, not see it explode into kibble.

[Wulfram]

More variety of enemies, that make you use different strategies. Templars should actually have anti-magical abilities.

More use of environmental factors

[Plaintiff]

Well, one thing I like about ME2's combat is that different sorts of defenses need different tactics to get through them. Maybe Dragon Age could implement a similar system. Mages in DA2 had those magical barriers, but since they couldn't attack while maintaining them, all you had to do was stand still and wait for it to fall. Not very tactical right there.

For example, maybe the Templars are immune to magic, or suppress it, and need to be stunned first to break their concentration. Maybe mage barriers need to be dispelled before you can move in for melee. Maybe blood mages take control of your companions and they need to be snapped out of it. I'm sure the developers can come up with more.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 17 décembre 2012 - 02:54 .

[upsettingshorts]

LTD wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

LTD wrote...

Combat that doesn't look and feel like lifted from average JRPG of PS2 era with COOL backflips and warriors teleporting around would make a good start.

Change the animations, receive better combat mechanics.

The BSN clearly knows what it's talking about, and can differentiate between things.

In any case my serious suggestion would be simple:  Much better encounter design.  Better?  A wider variety of tactical scenarios and mixes of enemies to kill.  In DA2 every fight was an ambush by a lot of mooks.

Animation is a huge part of any combat in game leaning as heavily on visuals as BW RPGs do.
Entire feel of  combat comes through marriage of animation and mechanics build to co-exist and support em.

You can be as boring as you like and try score them cool guy points with "Why, I, for one, would most asuredly be deeply  appreciative of  wider variety of tactical wrfijwedjxbehuojopygfh." Underneath it all, combat that looks and feels like it is the dude from Devil May Cry series being busy acting  cool and  swinging a sword shaped flash light around pisses people off. We don't have to go deeper than this. Fix this aspect of combat and theeen we can start worrying about them finer anecdotes like overall approach to tactical scenarios and DPS differentations in alignmement of holy trinity of Healer/Tank/DPS combination of factors.

I'm not buying it.

Animation is animation.

Combat mechanics are combat mechanics.  

They are different things.  If a player is put off by the animations, they're put off by the animations.  I don't have a problem with people saying so.  But claiming that the animations are a part of how the game plays?  To the detriment of its combat?  At best that's simply prejudicial.  At worst it's nonsense.

My rogue may have backflipped when I pressed R, but mechanically speaking she just executed an auto-attack on the closest opponent.  She could have sprinted or jogged, and that's still all it would have been.

That said, my opinion on the animations themselves is fairly simple:  They over-corrected from DAO.  DAO was too simple, too slow, and too subdued.  DA2 was too flashy, too fast, and too indulgent.  My hope is that DA3 animations are somewhere in the middle.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 17 décembre 2012 - 06:45 .

[John Epler]

Just to put an end to this sidebar, we define combat mechanics and behaviours long before animations are locked down - not the other way around.

The animation reflects the design, not vice-versa.

[Wulfram]

Upseettingshorts, it's you who are insisting this thread must be about mechanics and only mechanics. The question asked is how to make the combat more interesting, and changing the animation is a legitimate answer to that question. Presentation is an important part of engaging peoples interest.

And starting from the point that you need realistic combat animations would in fact require a quite dramatic change in mechanics, too, because the change to a more over the top style wasn't purely aesthetic. You couldn't have the closing attacks to the same extent, or the dramatic area of effect stuff for fighters, or the teleporting rogues. Arguably you'd need to incorporate parries and dodges, though of course DA:O didn't have that much.

edit:  I post really really slowly.  This was written without having read Mr Epler's post.

Modifié par Wulfram, 17 décembre 2012 - 07:06 .

[upsettingshorts]

Wulfram wrote...

Upseettingshorts, it's you who are insisting this thread must be about mechanics and only mechanics.  

Actually all I'm really saying is that they are different things, and vaguely conflating them just confuses both issues.

Before you know it you have people saying DA2 is hack and slash (a broad game genre with entirely different mechanics), instead of looks hack and slash.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 17 décembre 2012 - 07:14 .

[Wulfram]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Actually all I'm really saying is that they are different things, and vaguely conflating them just confuses both issues.

Before you know it you have people saying DA2 is hack and slash (a broad game genre with entirely different mechanics), instead of looks hack and slash.

The post you quoted didn't conflate anything.  It talked about the appearence, not the mechanics.

[upsettingshorts]

I interpreted "look" to mean appearance, and "feel" to be mechanics. If I misinterpreted, then it's my mistake.

It's a common argument, so I may have read it into LTD's post.

[Kidd]

Saibh wrote...

I really love the KotOR method of combat--it's just a series of blocks, dodges, parries, until you wear them out and finish them out. It looks great.

KotOR and JE are probably BioWare's most aesthetically appealing combat systems, I think. In two very different ways, however.

[hoorayforicecream]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I'm not buying it.

Animation is animation.

Combat mechanics are combat mechanics.  

They are different things.  If a player is put off by the animations, they're put off by the animations.  I don't have a problem with people saying so.  But claiming that the animations are a part of how the game plays?  To the detriment of its combat?  At best that's simply prejudicial.  At worst it's nonsense.

My rogue may have backflipped when I pressed R, but mechanically speaking she just executed an auto-attack on the closest opponent.  She could have sprinted or jogged, and that's still all it would have been.

That said, my opinion on the animations themselves is fairly simple:  They over-corrected from DAO.  DAO was too simple, too slow, and too subdued.  DA2 was too flashy, too fast, and too indulgent.  My hope is that DA3 animations are somewhere in the middle.

With regards to this, it actually varies by the game. Each team is different, and art direction (specifically the power of the art director to overrule and his/her level of dedication to animation fidelity) can and sometimes does trump gameplay and responsiveness.

Most animators I've worked with really like seeing things in motion. Their job is to make motion look both good and believable. The thing that makes them feel like they've failed most of all is when you have animation popping (where one animation switches to another, but it is not a seamless blend). You can see this in games like Assassin's Creed, where Altair, Desmond, Ezio, etc. don't instantaneously change direction when you press a different direction on the analog stick. Instead of just doing an instant turn, they actually stop, pivot on one foot, and turn either clockwise or counter-clockwise before reorienting in the direction you want. It takes a fraction of a second to turn 180 degrees. This affects things like locomotion and even combat, since it factors in as a noticeable delay, but you get to see the whole animation.

Gameplay, however, wants instant reactivity. The human brain takes about 250 milliseconds on average to process something it sees on screen, so when the player presses a button, the image on screen needs to react within 250ms to feel like it has reacted responsively. Any longer than that and it will feel sluggish. The easiest way to do this is to just interrupt existing animations completely, such as in Street Fighter. Ryu can do a low medium kick, then immediately throw a fireball, and he will literally pop from crouched on the ground with foot extended to standing up and throwing a fireball with no blended animation in between. This sort of thing drives (many) animators nuts because it is HIDEOUS, but it is necessary for the type of game it is. God of War is another game example where animation interruption happens constantly.

You can see an example of when this doesn't quite work when playing the recent Tomb Raider games. Lara only leaps when she's at the right distance from a ledge because the level designers needed to create a system that standardizes jump lengths, and let the level designers create levels based around those limits. As a result, when the player presses the jump button, Lara will keep doing whatever she was doing for a fraction of a second until she's in the right position to jump. This delay is variable, depending on how far away from the jump position she was when the button was pressed. This is the cause of the weird disconnect you feel in Tomb Raider when she doesn't always jump immediately when you press the button.

What this means for combat mechanics and animation depends on what the overall game development team values. Sometimes the team values accuracy (like in the case of Tomb Raider - you need to standardize jump lengths, so the initial jump position trumps instant reactivity). Sometimes the team values animation fidelity like Assassin's Creed, where they care more that it *looks* right than it *feels* right. And sometimes the team values responsiveness more than anything else, like Street Fighter, where the ability to interrupt animations completely is a driving feature of the game. I'm not saying which Dragon Age is, but I am saying that different teams prioritize different things depending on their priorities.

Combat animations can drastically affect combat mechanics, simply because they affect timing, and timing is a huge part of any real-time combat system. I once worked on a brawler game where the combat mechanics were almost entirely animation-driven. The animators and designers worked side by side in a proprietary tool that allowed the designers to attach hit spheres and hurt spheres to the animation skeleton in order to adjust moves. Each sphere held attack and damage data, and the designers could adjust the sphere size and attributes in order to tune each move, and the designers were also able to tweak the speed at which the animations played in order to control recovery time and such.

[upsettingshorts]

Interesting read, thanks for the post/explanation. Bookmarked!

Would you not agree, that as a player providing feedback, it is useful to be specific as to which (animations, mechanics) you had a problem with and would like to see changed?

[Arni90]

The most sensible way to make combat interesting is to make it more like DA:O, and less like DA2: More abilities to learn, less passives.

Then work on finding out what can be improved upon instead of trying to make the gameplay more "accessible." Accessibility isn't defined by how easy it is to make something happen, but how easy it is to get results.

[Arppis]

I'm only bothered by animations when I become prisoner of them. Like I can't "cancel" animation. It really sucks when your character is stuck there with no way out, when you could just avoid the comming blow, but no... you are doing animation.

And what would make the game's combat more interesting would be if I was in direct control of my character, instead of giving pointers as invisible god of 4 people.

[hoorayforicecream]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Interesting read, thanks for the post/explanation. Bookmarked!

Would you not agree, that as a player providing feedback, it is useful to be specific as to which (animations, mechanics) you had a problem with and would like to see changed?

Such decisions tend to come from the director level (technical director, art director, creative director, executive producer) since they affect huge amounts of the game. Whether they are interested in accepting feedback or not is often questionable at best.

That said, the only thing you can really do is just say what it is you prefer. Do you prefer animation fidelity and realistic motion or responsiveness and reactivity? They are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and you have to choose one or the other.

[Giltspur]

Four Kinds of Variety
Enemy variety.  Tanks that use shields.  Ranged mobs that stay at range when possible and shoot arrows (so try to get their backs to a wall).  Mezzers that mind control or fear you.  Debuffers that curse.  Buffers that make others stronger.  AoE damagers.  Mages that teleport.  Mages that summon.  Rogues that disappear.  Enemies that charge.*

Enemy positioning.  Archers on raised platforms.  Enemies in clusters.  Enemies spread out.  Enemies that only go through choke points if it's their only option.  Shield walls at choke points that protect ranged enemies.

Environmental interaction.  Cut a bridge.  Obstruct a path with falling rocks.  Set an oil slick on fire.  Electrocute a pool of water. Create a distraction to change their position.  Sneak over to a a ballista and fire.  Set a trap in an area you'll lure an enemy to.

Positional damage.  Enemies that have positional vulnerability (more damage taken when flanked, a limb or body part that's more vulnerable than another.  For the latter, you don't have a particularly granular mouse aim like in a shooter (as your perspective is different in a tactical RPG)--so you're not going to making headshoots or limb cripples in an RPG.  Maybe instead take a cue from old RPG's and target (tab) from head to arm to chest on large enemies or bosses for example.  But only sometimes--would probably get tedious on trash.

Enemy variety and positioning on maps that have obstacles create a lot of options on how to approach a battle.

Three Kinds of Monotony
The most boring thing ever in a tank-healer-dps trinity game is aoe-tanking and aoe damaging your way through everything.  Extremely monotonous.  And you could do this to your boredom in DA2.  One good way to break the ability to aoe tank everything is to have enemies resistant to clumping around a tank with aggro.  Melee mobs will always trickle towards a tank.  Ranged mobs complicate things.  They stay out of the clump (unless perhaps silenced or unless tanks melee to range).  But here teleporters (mages, stealthing rogues) and kiters (archers) cause further problems for tanks because they just break the clump again.  Also chargers that ignore aggro cause problems.  This is cool because it forces you to deal with these problem cases rather than just sleepwalking through everything with aoe monotony.  Maybe you you deal with it taking archers out out first and then tanking the rest.  Maybe you deal with it by sending your rogue to dispatch the problem cases on his own.  Maybe your mage controls the problem case as needed.

Another boring thing is attrition-based gameplay.  This often happens with, wait for it, wave-based encounter design.  Another DA2 issue.  You end up rationing out your AoE abilities since you don't know what's coming next.  How much bang for my buck does those aoe crowd-control or aoe damage spell get me?  Not efficient for this group of two? Shoot, shoot, shoot and save big guns for next possible.  There's five.  That's efficient.  Drop the AoE.  Invariably people either ration out their abilities like you do bullets in a zombie game or learn the encounters and destroy it on next attempt.  That gets repetitive. 

Another boring thing is overreliance on damage cooldowns.  When everything is damage on a cooldown, you just get people lining up cooldowns and front-loading damage which if done over and over instead of done situationally to deal with nasties can be boring.  You don't want to you don't want to fall into cooldown-dictated patterns as a gamer.  As you feel like you're following the UI's orders as opposed to using the UI to give orders.  (This doesn't mean cooldowns are bad.  It means tuning encounters too much around damage per second via ability usage can result in boring fights--especially boss fights.)

I think if you guard against letting the player fall into these ruts, it helps make combat more intersting.  And I think the four kinds of variety can help stave off the three kinds of monotony.

Modifié par Giltspur, 17 décembre 2012 - 08:06 .

[The Hierophant]

Giltspur don't forget to include enemies that use the same combat animations, abilities or skills as the party.

Modifié par The Hierophant, 17 décembre 2012 - 08:05 .

[hexaligned]

As per my taste, turn it into true turn based combat. I've never been happy with the AI in any game other than ones that were turn based. I saw X-com mentioned earlier in the thread, that would be a good place to start imo, Tactical team based combat, turn based mechanics, and cinematic animations for carrying out actions (the less cartoonaly over the top the better).

[rolson00]

 this guy rule F***in Britannia! 

[The_11thDoctor]

Said it for years... weather and level dangers. For, rain, hurricains, blizzards, floods, volcanic erruptions, ice, mud, rock slides, quicksand, etc. Things out of the players control, but fun of a pain to deal with. Things that Maker's u planned tactics of strats to use per fight. Then have ai use it in their strats as well. Horse battles, my mages getting all abilities back... healing, force, shapeshifting, etc.

[TheRealJayDee]

I'd just be happy if they decided how combat looks in the Dragon Age universe. I still would like to believe the whole asthetics of DA2 combat were a product of Varrics colourful storytelling and the next game's combat will be less flashy.