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More Towards Action Combat

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Darcueid
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More Towards Action Combat

In my humble opinion, I feel that City of Titan's combat should be more evolved from CoX's combat; something leaning towards action combat. However, I do acknowledge that there are many people who prefer traditional tab target, automatic hitting, purely stats based combat. The debate on which combat is better for MMORGPs will probably go on forever.

In the past, the gaming industry didn't really have much choice, because tab targeting/auto hit was pretty much the only viable combat system for MMORPGs because of technology constraints. However, recently we are seeing more and more MMORPGs be developed with action combat. The most prominent action combat MMORPG imho, is probably TERA.

The following is a list of features that I hope will be included in CoT's combat system.

1. Targeting: Have both (3rd person) reticle targeting, with the option of also letting you tab targets as well.
2. Hit location: No automatic hits. One thing I hated about traditional MMO combat was that no matter where you moved, you couldn't dodge any type of attacks. For example, a bad guy npc shoots a handgun at my character from long range, and I try to move out of its path, the bullet would basically curve ball its way to my location like a heat seeking missile. With the exception of FPS I think there are only maybe a few MMORPGs out there where you can actually move to dodge range attacks are: TERA, Vindictus, Dragon Nest, and Black Desert, Skyforge, BLESS, and Asker. The last 4 are still in beta so I'm not 100% sure about them.
3. Precise combat: I would like to see abilities activate immediately after tapping the key to activate them. Alot of times I've played MMOs and instead of instant abilities going off right away, it usually goes off about 2s later. This is not because of latency.
4. Fluid combat: Make the animation more fluid so that when moves are done in combination they don't delay the combination of the attacks or seem awkward.

I can't think of anything else at the moment, so maybe I'll add more later when after I get some sleep.

In the end, my ideal City of Titans game would have good Combat similar to TERA, good Storytelling similar to Star Wars: The Old Republic, and good Character/Build/Costume Customization similar to CoX and Champions Online. If they could get all that in to one game then I think that game would do super fantastically, since no MMORPG out has something like that.

Maybe there's some way to incorporate Action Combat with Traditional Combat into a Hybrid Action Combat system. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to reply and tell me about them. Thank you and stay frosty. :)

Hybrid Action Combat Feature List (WIP)
Targeting: Make cross-hair cursor targeting and tab targeting both available options for players.
Hit Location: When a character moves out of the way of an attacker's attack path the chance of the attack hitting decreases. This allows "dodging" (just moving away from the path of an attack) to have some benefit. I feel that it's a nice compromise between traditional auto-hitting and modern non auto-hit combat. Thanks to alienmafia for mentioning this idea.

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This is not happening. I

This is not happening. I understand the desires for those kinds of games but it's just not what CoT is trying to create.

More than that That is not a game that I would like to play. I love Wildstar's combat style. I really do love it.. but that's what they built the game around.

I think it's time to accept that the game is past pre-production and they are using an action based, tab targeting system.

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I can not tell you how much I

I can not tell you how much I loathe Twitch Mechanic combat! Thank God this debate has already happened and they have decided on Tab Targeting.

I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!

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Try playing Elder Scrolls

Try playing Elder Scrolls Online if that's the kind of gameplay you're after.


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I think twitch gaming works

I think twitch gaming works better on a playstation or Xbox anyway, and I don't know if this game will ever be ported to those.

Edit: It's also more first person shooter than MMORPG to me to have that.

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I wish I had a better

I wish I had a better understanding of exactly WHY CoH combat was so fun. By all rights it seems like it shouldn't have been, right? It was the much-maligned and "so 2004" tab-target-autohit-stat based combat. And I play first person shooter games with my son and have played Champions, DCUO, and The Secret World with and without crosshair targeting mode.

But the blocking in Champions ends up feeling out of place, like a contrived addition to the combat, DCUO seems like it SHOULD be really fun with it's block/dodge and combo attacks, but it's just ok, and poor old Secret World is just as boring as watching paint dry when it comes to combat--which is tragic because the game is just genius and beautiful in other ways.

And of course first person shooters can be really fun for a bit, but they can get old too and can become more stressful than fun to play, and they definitely don't have a Superheroic feel in combat. I commented one time that CoH almost felt more like you were making decisions for your hero than controlling every movement like a marionette, which allowed it to be fun and relaxing at the same time, and to feel almost like spontaneously choreographing a Superhero movie.

I don't know if that's what made CoH combat so fun, but, while I am a little concerned about CoT possibly being viewed as "retro" with it's fighting style as far as marketing the game--especially when the rest of the game looks like it will be very progressive--I'm happy with the choice MWM made to keep a CoH feel to combat. Even with keeping rooting! Sometimes it just felt POWERFUL to have to dig your feet in because of what you are about to unleash.

Man, I miss being over my head in a group or solo, with bad guys just flying everywhere, and digging my way out of the mess.

Maybe MWM can take CoH combat to the next step? But what would that be if not twitch combat?

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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From what I've been hearing

From what I've been hearing from the beginning is they are going Tab target but they are allowing some powers to be able to fire while moving. Not every power will be that way (based on the mechanic of the power and type), but with this change alone, it will make CoT a little more fluent and "main stream" for younger players like my self. It is still tab target and just like CoH with the exception as above. Which i do believe will satisfy a greater range of ages and play styles.

I personally do hope their will be some mechanic that will decrease chance to hit of a melee attack when moving away from a target so that "dodging" (moving away from a melee attack) has some benefit.

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

This is not happening. I understand the desires for those kinds of games but it's just not what CoT is trying to create.
More than that That is not a game that I would like to play. I love Wildstar's combat style. I really do love it.. but that's what they built the game around.
I think it's time to accept that the game is past pre-production and they are using an action based, tab targeting system.

Never say never is what I say; anything is possible.
"The following is a list of features that I hope will be included in CoT's combat system.
1. Targeting: Have both (3rd person) reticle targeting [cross-hair cursor targeting], with the option of also letting you tab targets as well."

oOStaticOo wrote:

I can not tell you how much I loathe Twitch Mechanic combat! Thank God this debate has already happened and they have decided on Tab Targeting.

Well, if they've already decided on Tab Targeting, then maybe they can add an option of cross-hair targeting (reticle targeting).

Redlynne wrote:

Try playing Elder Scrolls Online if that's the kind of gameplay you're after.

Tried ESO, and the precision is alright for some things, but needs more work imho, the cross-hair targeting works fine, but the combat animations overall feels very clunky, even with fast light weapons. The dodging maneuver is not very precise, and doesn't prioritize and cancel combat animations - so, imho, it feels like you have less control over your characters actions during combat.
I think it still has the mechanic that I hate when an NPC shoots something at you, and you move out of the way, it follows you and hits you.
Then again, I haven't played ESO since near the time it launched, so maybe the combat has improved over time with updates to the game.

Empyrean wrote:

I wish I had a better understanding of exactly WHY CoH combat was so fun. By all rights it seems like it shouldn't have been, right? It was the much-maligned and "so 2004" tab-target-autohit-stat based combat. And I play first person shooter games with my son and have played Champions, DCUO, and The Secret World with and without crosshair targeting mode.
But the blocking in Champions ends up feeling out of place, like a contrived addition to the combat, DCUO seems like it SHOULD be really fun with it's block/dodge and combo attacks, but it's just ok, and poor old Secret World is just as boring as watching paint dry when it comes to combat--which is tragic because the game is just genius and beautiful in other ways.
And of course first person shooters can be really fun for a bit, but they can get old too and can become more stressful than fun to play, and they definitely don't have a Superheroic feel in combat. I commented one time that CoH almost felt more like you were making decisions for your hero than controlling every movement like a marionette, which allowed it to be fun and relaxing at the same time, and to feel almost like spontaneously choreographing a Superhero movie.
I don't know if that's what made CoH combat so fun, but, while I am a little concerned about CoT possibly being viewed as "retro" with it's fighting style as far as marketing the game--especially when the rest of the game looks like it will be very progressive--I'm happy with the choice MWM made to keep a CoH feel to combat. Even with keeping rooting! Sometimes it just felt POWERFUL to have to dig your feet in because of what you are about to unleash.
Man, I miss being over my head in a group or solo, with bad guys just flying everywhere, and digging my way out of the mess.
Maybe MWM can take CoH combat to the next step? But what would that be if not twitch combat?

Champions Online is probably the only tab-target, auto-hit, stat based combat MMORPG that I still enjoy, but I'm not sure why. The huge amount of customization for costumes and character building is probably a big factor in why I still like Champions Online. DCUO is a nice looking game, and while the combat is more fluid, it's not very precise. The key pressing combos to initiate special attacks are bothersome imho. The dodging maneuver isn't precise and I think the range attacks still follow you. I agree that the The Secret World is a great game in many of its aspects: the story, graphics, and customization are fantastic imho. But the combat is pretty much the same auto-hit and stat based combat. You can do some dodge maneuvers, but other than that all attacks pretty much automatically hit you. Which, I concur, is tragic because it excels in many other aspects.
I'm not sure what the combat will be like in the end for CoT, and maybe I'll like CoT regardless. Guess we'll have to see.

AlienMafia wrote:

From what I've been hearing from the beginning is they are going Tab target but they are allowing some powers to be able to fire while moving. Not every power will be that way (based on the mechanic of the power and type), but with this change alone, it will make CoT a little more fluent and "main stream" for younger players like my self. It is still tab target and just like CoH with the exception as above. Which i do believe will satisfy a greater range of ages and play styles.
I personally do hope their will be some mechanic that will decrease chance to hit of a melee attack when moving away from a target so that "dodging" (moving away from a melee attack) has some benefit.

From what you're saying, maybe I will end up enjoying CoT combat more than I initially thought. Your idea about decreasing chance of hit from an attack when moving away sounds like a good compromise between traditional auto-hit and non-auto hit combat. I like it! Thanks for mentioning that. I'll add that to my suggestion in the first post.

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Tannim222
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Our base game play aims to

Our base game play aims to emulate much of what is familiar from CoH. Tab targeting instead of aiming rectical, no targeting body locations, no move to dodge. There will be differences on other aspects of the game but the way it plays will be familiar. An example on a mechanical level is that we can implement charging - that is holdinng down a power icon for an effect. Even that is something we intend to apply with care. Another example is the inclusion of lunge attacks, an attack that moves the attacker at a distance to a location or to its target. Again if used it will be sparringly.

There are other ways powers will differ mechanically from CoH but I can't disclose them at this time. What will be very new is the animation customization. It is like the costume creator for powers. That melee weapon AoE attack can have the avatar spin in place, or super speed around the area of effect returning to the starting point, or maybe it was your flock of summoned birds that swooped in.


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Empyrean wrote:
Empyrean wrote:

CoH almost felt more like you were making decisions for your hero than controlling every movement like a marionette, which allowed it to be fun and relaxing at the same time, and to feel almost like spontaneously choreographing a Superhero movie.

I think you've hit it on the head there. When CoX was still live, I'd often spend an hour or so playing a more action-oriented game in the evening and then switch to CoX to relax and feel more "super" for a while.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Our base game play aims to emulate much of what is familiar from CoH. Tab targeting instead of aiming rectical, no targeting body locations, no move to dodge. There will be differences on other aspects of the game but the way it plays will be familiar. An example on a mechanical level is that we can implement charging - that is holdinng down a power icon for an effect. Even that is something we intend to apply with care. Another example is the inclusion of lunge attacks, an attack that moves the attacker at a distance to a location or to its target. Again if used it will be sparringly.
There are other ways powers will differ mechanically from CoH but I can't disclose them at this time. What will be very new is the animation customization. It is like the costume creator for powers. That melee weapon AoE attack can have the avatar spin in place, or super speed around the area of effect returning to the starting point, or maybe it was your flock of summoned birds that swooped in.

I respect that the aim is to emulate much of CoH combat, but I'm a little sad to see that there won't be an option to cross-hair cursor target. Charging power attacks and lunge attacks is great, can't wait to see what else there is. The animation customization sounds fantastic! More freedom to customize is usually a big plus in my books.

If there's no cross-hair cursor targeting and no move to dodge, then maybe just points 3) and 4) on the list would be possible: more precise response and more fluid combat animation. Sounds like those can be possible to upgrade those yet still keep the way it plays familiar to CoH combat. I dunno, I guess what I'm hoping for now is at least some kind of improvement in combat, compared to the combat in CoH and Champions Online.

However, in the end I'll just have to try it out and see, and I'm definitely eager and willing to give it a good try. :D

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Another example is the inclusion of lunge attacks, an attack that moves the attacker at a distance to a location or to its target. Again if used it will be sparringly.

Huh. I can understand using charged attacks sparingly because there is a bit of a twitch element there, but I'm curious why be sparing with lunge attacks? Lunge attacks are still click attacks, and no more twitch than any other attack that I can tell. And they were becoming more and more part of the game in CoH with things like Shield Charge, Lightening Rod, and Spring Attack.

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The reason is that different

The reason is that different sets should play differently from one another. We won't put a lunge attack in every melee set just like we wont have damaging effects in every defensive set.

A out points and 4, point 3 is not planned for at all. We have been quite clear on the non-twitch element of game play from early on in development. The closest we are getting to it is probably our charge effects even then we won't split hairs with per second a different effect occurs and have to put in some safe guards to avoid possible latency issues.

As to point 4, the engine does provide some nifty tools for animation blending...


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This stuff Tannim222

This stuff Tannim222 mentioned, charging powers up (like the gun the ship had in the arcade game R-Type) and lunging combined with some things mentioned in the "stealth versus perception" thread already has me feeling like this game will fee a lot like Cox, only very "next-level" technologivcally. It sounds like good innovation and progress without resorting to all-out "twichyness", which sounds good to me.

The reason I dislike twitch mechanics in general is related to a purchase I made some time ago that felt good at the time but which I feel was not a good idea in retrospect. I bought a ping-pong table. You know what happens when you have a ping-pong table? I can tell you. It ain't a whole lot of ping pong being played. What happens is, since ping pong is a game where skill dominates, like your twichy video games to some extent, you end up finding out very quickly who's better than you and who you're better than and very soon nobody wants to play anybody because we already know who will usually win, barring unpredictable accidents and unforced errors.

I like the randomness of tab targeting mechanics because hope springs eternal for the players that they might win via having a good build for their toon and a little luck, as opposed to getting to a point where you KNOW you won't be able to beat the Archvillain by yourself because you're not twitchy enough. It's one thing to say "i need to respec into more Dark-resist if I want to defeat the Ghost Pirate Captain", but going in KNOWING you will 99% likely get beaten by him every time, no matter what you do, just because he's a little too fast for you is frustrating to the point of making me quit a game. I don't want to turn this game into my next ping pong table where I either destroy or get destroyed by everyone I play, I want there to be tab targeting.

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I havent tried it myself, but

I havent tried it myself, but i remember wanting to play The Legend of Korra, since some players said it actually Made you Feel Powerful, even though there werent many earth shattering attacks.. just well flowing attack chains. :)

http://youtu.be/iottjK_eH1Y?t=11m14s

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Tannim: Aaahhhh... limiting

Tannim: Aaahhhh... limiting lunges to themtically appropriate sets. I see. That makes perfect sense.

Radiac: That is a very good and important point about twitch vs non twitch. I never thought of it quite that way.

Izzy: Anything we can borrow from to make CoT combat feel POWERFUL is good!

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One of the factors involved

One of the factors involved in the City of Heroes combat system that made it feel more ... orchestral ... was the fact that you could cue up Powers. You didn't have to wait until the last Power finished animating and then do an instant key click to initiate the next thing you were going to do. Instead, whatever you clicked was just cued up to happen next. You could even change your mind by overwriting your last key click if the current animation hadn't finished yet. This produced a "One Move Ahead" style of gaming that sat very neatly between pure Tactical (or "twitchy" as some people tend to think of it) and Strategic (where you're deciding many moves in advance). Most animations were 1 to 4 seconds long, creating a rapid turnover phenomenon that allowed Players to be "involved" without necessarily feeling "pressured" to take actions every split second.

Overall, the user experience then was something that was more "relaxed" simply because there wasn't a demand for hyper-vigilance and fractions of a second split second timing. What the Player "did" was more a matter of directing the actions their character performed, rather than doing every action the character did. That whole "One Move Ahead" system made it very easy to settle in and enjoy what was going on ... in part because Animations couldn't be "aborted" (except for Interrupt Powers) once they'd begun. Corpse Blasting was merely a side effect of this phenomenon.

This also created the necessary space for a wide variety of equally viable playstyles ... including the "Buzz Saw Builds" that used the shortest possible animations to cram as many attacks (and chances to Proc things) into as short a window of time as could be managed. Being able to build a repeatable Attack Chain with your available Powers (and how it fell apart when you Exemplared!) also entered the "meta" of the gaming experience, becoming yet another challenge to puzzle out and "succeed" at.

One of the major things that people complain about with City of Heroes ... how projectiles could "chase" you around corners and so on ... had very little to do with the Tab Select Target system at all. Instead, the fact that projectiles would "pursue" their targets was a function of how the game engine worked. There are two ways to do things in this regard (and yes, I've brought this topic up before):

  • Resolve First / Animate After
  • Animate First / Resolve After

City of Heroes used the former system, while many (most?) first person shooters use the latter. In City of Heroes, all of the "dice chucking" for attacks and so on happened first, and then once the game mechanical determination of "what happens" was made the game engine then just animated it out. Needless to say, the time delay on the movement of projectiles made this rather corny, with projectiles "chasing" moving targets in unrealistic and sometimes immersion breaking ways, but that was just the nature of the beast.

Unreal Engine 4, however, is ... at its core ... a first person shooter game engine. It is perfectly capable of doing all the heavy lifting math needed for Animate First / Resolve After.

The thing that gets underappreciated though is that when you have projectiles that move "fast enough" (bullets, lasers, etc.) relative to PC avatar movement(s), these two systems can become substantially interchangeable. However, at the game mechanical level, rather than this sort of thing being a two way street, it's really more of a one way street. What I mean by that is that it is perfectly possible to design a User Interface for a first person shooter game engine that BEHAVES LIKE a Tab Select Target system ... all you really need is an Aimbot.

Quote:

Aimbot (auto-aim)
A first-person shooter cheat that lets players shoot other player-characters without aiming. In most cases, the reticle locks on to a target within the player's line of sight and the player only has to pull the trigger. Aimbots are one of the most popular cheats in multiplayer FPS, used since 1990's Quake.

So a first person shooter, that can support ---> but declines to make use of <--- "twitchy" gameplay mechanics, can in effect emulate a Resolve First / Animate After type of gaming experience ... even though what is actually happening under the hood is Animate First / Resolve After. The REVERSE however is completely unworkable. You can't be running on a Resolve First / Animate After system and prevent bouncy grenade projectiles that "chase down" their targets.

In other words, you can take a first person shooter game engine like Unreal 4 and make it FEEL LIKE you're recreating the City of Heroes gameplay experience by being (very) clever in how you structure things. AND you'd still be able to "disable the default Aimbot" functionality and play that game using First Person Shooter control methods (including "leading your target" when sniping a moving Foe at long range). But with a Resolve First / Animate After system like City of Heroes had, you're "stuck" in terms of how things not only CAN work but also in terms of how they HAVE TO work (if they're going to work at all).

Needless to say, I fully expect this explanation to be misinterpreted (again!) and misunderstood (again!!), but ultimately it comes down to the fact that there's more than one way to Raise The Roof ... and some ways offer extra flexibility and opportunities than others, even while accomplishing the exact same goals.


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I can't take it any more, I

I can't take it any more, I need to rant.

You know, I'd really like to find the person who first applied the word "twitch" to mean any sort of active combat in a video game and punch them in the face. Twitch gaming means something vastly different from how it is used here on these boards.

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This is why I use the word

This is why I use the word "twitch" to mean a very specific thing ... namely split second timing of Player interactivity. Needless to say, such finely grained timing is highly dependent upon connection speeds and network/server latency issues because it's all about fractions of a second.

Requiring the Player to actively "do something" such as Camera Control is not what I'd consider to be "twitchy" by any meaningful interpretation of the word ... not when you've got Tab To Lock Onto Target functionality to engage an Aimbot that does the "work" for you.


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There are some excellent

There are some excellent points in this thread about how and why the CoH system was as fun and playable as it was.

I know that I and my characters would die, just... die without tab targeting, especially good ol' target_enemy_near (though I would have paid real money for a target_BOSS_near command).

After reading the discussion about charging, I wonder if a small amount of customization could be added to the attack powers without losing their basic one-step-ahead flavor of combat. Something like this (just spitballing here):

Concentration: trades interrupt time for to-hit %; something like 1 sec for +3%, 2 sec for +6%, 0 sec for the base to-hit - just three options

Exertion:: trades endurance cost for damage; same kind of thing: +5% endurance cost for +5% damage, +10% endurance for +10% damage

These could be pre-programmed as macros or keybinds, or activated on the fly by tapping selector keys ('C' and 'V', say) once or twice before executing the attack. I know that changing the default values of damage and accuracy is what enhancements are for, but this might allow a little flexibility on-the-fly and give us players another means of expressing a distinct fighting style.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Needless to say, I fully expect this explanation to be misinterpreted (again!) and misunderstood (again!!), but ultimately it comes down to the fact that there's more than one way to Raise The Roof ... and some ways offer extra flexibility and opportunities than others, even while accomplishing the exact same goals.

Well, if people can't follow that logic, I blame Verbogeny for distracting us by gratuitously shaking her creatific thinkerizer in our faces like that :)

But seriously, I think I get what you're saying. I think the "animate then randomize" sounds like it has some abilities that the old CoX system didn't have. For example, you could have a power where you choose a place to toss a grenade to (like choosing a spot for TP or powers like that) then animate it so that the toon throws to that spot, but then the physics and randomization etc kicks in and you miss the area you aimed at, but the grande lands someplace else close by. The affected area of damage is now not right where you placed it, but maybe still hits SOME of the mob you were trying tog et, just not all of it, etc. Sounds like that might be good. I don't know. On the other hand, you could have guns that fire projectiles that are so "fast" that you don't even animate the bullet, you just have a gun barrel flash and a hole appears in the target at the same time, all of which happens after the randomization has occurred. I still don't ever want to have to reticule-aim anything though.

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Redlynne's mention of the

Redlynne's mention of the queue-up of power activations in CoH reminded me of how much I treasured that feature whenever my net connection was lagging. Sure, the on-screen action would look delayed or jumpy, but I could still fight at near full effectiveness since my keypresses were being sent early enough to still reach the server before the previous power had finished executing, thus absorbing all but the worst latency (which would desync and eventually disconnect me anyway).

Darcuied, you might enjoy Neverwinter Online's combat style, which has similarities to TERA and the ability to dodge many attacks. The other thing to keep in mind is that while several aspects of "action combat" that you like aren't launch day features due to limitations (resources, time, and desire to focus on delivering combat with a CoH feel), those features are not inherently impossible to add later. CoH started and ran for years without any combo chains, then added a powerset (Dual Blades) built around it. Animation customization? Added later due to popular demand. Something similar could happen over time in CoT, if the team wants to eventually provide more combat style diversity and enough players request it.

A powerset built around manually dodging or at least one where different movement keys buff various defensive stats? Other games have done it.
An alternate combat mode or powerset that relies on the player to aim at least partially with their cursor, or a tertiary "sniper" power that has a manual zoom and aim? STO shows that it's feasible to have both in the same game, though I could imagine several improvements in the actual implementation. Manual aiming was already something we had in CoH for a subset of powers - location targeted AoEs, and later Vorpal's untargeted cone - so it's not at all strange to consider at least some manually-aimed powers for CoT.

So long as we maintain the focus on CoH as our style guide and keep the more noticeably "twitch" or action features as optional or powerset-specific, later additions once the game is established, we're not in danger of losing the elements we liked from CoH or altering the overall pace of combat. On the plus side, we'd gain some variety and extra attraction of players who seem to enjoy several parts of the spectrum between action and strategic combat.

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@Redlynne, I love your post

@Redlynne, I love your post on explaining the details of different types of combat systems and the mechanics on how they are implemented from a game engine. It helps showing that it is possible to have some elements of traditional combat with action combat in one game. Thank you for sharing that. :)

@Scott_Jackson, I played Neverwinter Online for a while and I really had fun playing a ranger for a time. I agree that the combat was more fast paced and actiony than traditional combat, and that you are able to perform dodging maneuvers. However, I think it still had that issue of attacks still following you around and automatically hitting, which is still a pet peeve of mine. I think one of the major reasons I stopped playing it was because I disliked how the economy worked with the Astral Diamonds and such, but most of Perfect World Entertainment's games have in-game currency like that, and that's a whole different animal to talk about some other day. :)
I'm glad that you're open to the idea that some action and/or other targeting features might be able to be added later on as options in City of Titans. Can't wait to see how the game turns out in the future. :)

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Empyrean wrote:
Empyrean wrote:

I wish I had a better understanding of exactly WHY CoH combat was so fun. By all rights it seems like it shouldn't have been, right? It was the much-maligned and "so 2004" tab-target-autohit-stat based combat. And I play first person shooter games with my son and have played Champions, DCUO, and The Secret World with and without crosshair targeting mode.
But the blocking in Champions ends up feeling out of place, like a contrived addition to the combat, DCUO seems like it SHOULD be really fun with it's block/dodge and combo attacks, but it's just ok, and poor old Secret World is just as boring as watching paint dry when it comes to combat--which is tragic because the game is just genius and beautiful in other ways.
And of course first person shooters can be really fun for a bit, but they can get old too and can become more stressful than fun to play, and they definitely don't have a Superheroic feel in combat. I commented one time that CoH almost felt more like you were making decisions for your hero than controlling every movement like a marionette, which allowed it to be fun and relaxing at the same time, and to feel almost like spontaneously choreographing a Superhero movie.
I don't know if that's what made CoH combat so fun, but, while I am a little concerned about CoT possibly being viewed as "retro" with it's fighting style as far as marketing the game--especially when the rest of the game looks like it will be very progressive--I'm happy with the choice MWM made to keep a CoH feel to combat. Even with keeping rooting! Sometimes it just felt POWERFUL to have to dig your feet in because of what you are about to unleash.
Man, I miss being over my head in a group or solo, with bad guys just flying everywhere, and digging my way out of the mess.
Maybe MWM can take CoH combat to the next step? But what would that be if not twitch combat?

Combat actions and animations in CoH were -fast- and had reasonably short refresh timers. Not absent entirely but short enough that you never felt you were waiting for something to do. Even if you were just pushing down 1-2-3-4 it executed a lot of fireworks in short order.
By contrast DCUO, Champions and Secret World with their 'two mouse buttons' systems (yes, I know it is not strictly true in all cases) have you waiting between each action. Waiting is never fun. And with only so few limited actions you really -feel- the time you spend waiting too.
An MMO is not really a type of game that translates well to consoles.

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NW thoroughly frustrates me

NW thoroughly frustrates me although I still play it. If there's a touch of lag you get hit by red circles you're a long way outside or they appear after the associated damage. Also if a small monster is within the targeting reticle of a large one, good luck targeting it.

CoH had a different older demographic than most MMOs and it was many peoples' first and only MMO. As a spiritual successor, we need to appeal to those people and that means that tab targeting needs to stay and combat doesn't need to be too twitchy.

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Darcueid wrote:
Darcueid wrote:

Redlynne, I love your post on explaining the details of different types of combat systems and the mechanics on how they are implemented from a game engine. It helps showing that it is possible to have some elements of traditional combat with action combat in one game. Thank you for sharing that. :)

Well ... that's one. Do I win my very own internet?

But seriously, it's actually really hard to convey the ... totality ... of this stuff when communicating purely through text. It'd be easier if I had a white board, facial expressions, hand gestures, pantomime, and of course, could convey nuances and details using the tone of my voice to help fill in the gaps. It's just one of those wibbly wobbly ... things ... that's just ... hard to explain.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Darcueid wrote:
Redlynne, I love your post on explaining the details of different types of combat systems and the mechanics on how they are implemented from a game engine. It helps showing that it is possible to have some elements of traditional combat with action combat in one game. Thank you for sharing that. :)

Well ... that's one. Do I win my very own internet?
But seriously, it's actually really hard to convey the ... totality ... of this stuff when communicating purely through text. It'd be easier if I had a white board, facial expressions, hand gestures, pantomime, and of course, could convey nuances and details using the tone of my voice to help fill in the gaps. It's just one of those wibbly wobbly ... things ... that's just ... hard to explain.

And hand puppets. Everything is easier to explain with hand puppets.

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Nadira wrote:
Nadira wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
Darcueid wrote:
Redlynne, I love your post on explaining the details of different types of combat systems and the mechanics on how they are implemented from a game engine. It helps showing that it is possible to have some elements of traditional combat with action combat in one game. Thank you for sharing that. :)

Well ... that's one. Do I win my very own internet?
But seriously, it's actually really hard to convey the ... totality ... of this stuff when communicating purely through text. It'd be easier if I had a white board, facial expressions, hand gestures, pantomime, and of course, could convey nuances and details using the tone of my voice to help fill in the gaps. It's just one of those wibbly wobbly ... things ... that's just ... hard to explain.

And hand puppets. Everything is easier to explain with hand puppets.

Not necessarily better, though.

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