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Erevorn

Fighting overhaul

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So, we have a cooking overhaul (pretty sure we can freely call it a total overhaul) coming soon and it made me think.

 

The devs apparently are still interested in making Wurm greater than it already is and they're doing a good job, so why not try and come up with ideas for a fighting overhaul as well?

 

Fighting is one of the most important things in the game and a rather big dealbreaker for some new people. First of all it would have to be a little bit more interesting than "stand-click-wait". Make it rely more on a person's skill and reflexes rather than the character's skill (don't make it too big of a difference or fighting skill grinds will step back into the past). Give each weapon type a special move or a special unique ability, like tripping someone over with a shaft or a spear, knocking someone uncouncious with blunt weapons etc. I believe there are a lot of ideas out there.

 

Our main goals in this should be:

1) change the fighting system to make it a bit more dynamic and player-dependent

2) at the same time hold on to the wurmish feeling of the fighting system

 

Pros:

1) new players won't get disencouraged by a boring fighting system

2) pvp may be more interesting

3) troll hunting can become a beautiful adventure rather than troll-meat-meal-ingredients-gathering

 

Cons:

1) people that don't like changes will hate

 

What do you guys think?

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What you're suggesting would only add a ton more variables ontop of the dozens upon dozens of different variables that exist in the fighting system. It would over complicate everything dramatically and cause more issues than I can imagine in regards to balance with some of your suggestions.

 

I admire the creativity and am sure you're probaby brimming with ideas that might seem really cool and would be fun to see in game, but currently the whole fighting system in the game is pretty elaborate as is.

 

Because I love metaphors, the fighting system in this game is like a dish that's had hundreds of different opinionated ingredients thrown into it by different chef players that have come and gone over the past 6-7 years since the last fight system update, known back then as the fight fix. Now it's a huge boiling pot of oh-my-god-i-dont-even-know-what-this-dish-is-anymore-what-did-we-even-start-out-trying-to-create-anyway-holy-hell-someone-help stew

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Same as I always say in these situations.

 

Go back to first principles, secure the foundations and then carefully step forwards.

 

Look at the context in which the combat system must exist and decide whether one system can be used across PvE and PvP.

 

In many games they've had to separate the two completely because balance.

 

At the same time look at the ancillary systems around combat (mostly PvP stuff like siege engines, tower/deed guards).

 

For anyone who is doing this, good luck because similar to Madt's statements, there are soooo many different viewpoints on what combat already is or should be its going to be difficult to reach any sort of consensus.

 

plus my own pet peeve, for the love of god reduce bonuses to a few mere percentage points to counter the insane level of stacking we have.

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+1 to an overhaul, but not reflex dependant, since lag is a common thing in-game, and people from diferent geographical places will experience diferent degrees of latency.

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8 hours ago, Erevorn said:

Make it rely more on a person's skill and reflexes rather than the character's skill (don't make it too big of a difference or fighting skill grinds will step back into the past). Give each weapon type a special move or a special unique ability, like tripping someone over with a shaft or a spear, knocking someone uncouncious with blunt weapons etc. I believe there are a lot of ideas out there.

Special moves excist. it's already a part of the system.

Thus suggest the actual new special moves and which should be removed/modified for each weapon.

We already got stunning "unconcious"/"tripping" moves, stamina draining moves, water/hunger draining moves, rapid light attacks, combat focus reducing moves, stance reseting moves, etc... So please be specific in terms of weapon, timer, cooldown and effect.

(3 axes, 1 club, 3 mauls, 5 polearms, 3 swords, 3 artifacts)

btw, wurm got hideous lag so you cant stear too far into reflexes due to connection issues.

Try moving around on 2 alts next to eachother and you will understand.

 

Quote

Our main goals in this should be:

1) change the fighting system to make it a bit more dynamic and player-dependent

Uhm thats some nice buzzwords, how do you plan to achieve this except special moves?

Details. Please.

 

Quote

2) at the same time hold on to the wurmish feeling of the fighting system

So a big "overhaul" while holding onto the old "boring" system... What?

 

In essence you have barely provided anything as a suggestion except literally asking for our current system to be more reflex based and "dynamic".

I'm sorry for shitting on your suggestion but there is barely any concrete changes listed.

 

I'm gonna go on an assumption here:

You essentially want the game to be more special-moves based than auto-attack based?

Similar to games such as World of Warcraft.

Edited by Zekezor

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armchair commanders that don't play on epic or chaos are pretty cool to see their completely wrong point of view on things

pvp is fun because it's 80% decisions and what you do besides the actual in-combat-range-fighting-system

stop 

 

 

that's pretty 'stand-click-wait' aint it

Edited by Cornchips

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Combat is fairly dynamic and detailed in this game.

PvE is fairly static, oh yes it is. It also doesn't need to be, as you can alter positioning and utilize the aformentioned special moves even in PvE.

 

I like the spirit of the op though. Oh man, so much could be done.

I love reflex games where i can dodge and attack on the move, aiming for specific limbs to achieve desired results in combat. Of course, the lag in wurm would make that terribad.

 

So lets not bash the suggestion, you all know something needs to be done. Being said, anything like a complete overhaul would require huge amounts of work and planning to avoid making the situation worse.

 

Fix archery, make it a balanced part of our combat diets.

Possibly animate combat different, animate those special moves. Give dodge an animation.

Improve stealth, at the core, the mechanic works alright but it seems unfinished from my experiences.

 

Feedback. In all the detail (0.000008 skill gained!) We lack in certain areas for feedback, stealth for instance could be acompanied by smoke or (spoooky lol) text saying what you have done popping up on the screen.

 

Most games have floating numbers. I like them, sometimes. Would it be impossible to add a toggle?

 

I guess my point is: lets first focus on building on to this system we have, unifying all the moving parts to a harmonious balance.

 

Are fw amulets still a thing?

Just stream of thought spewage here, hoping to spark creativity.

Going to go back to filling in the ocean, now.

 

Ps. Not trying to turn this in to warframe or something, but animations and active input go long ways for entertainment.

Edited by Makarus
spellammer cheque.
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19 hours ago, Cornchips said:

"fix archery" is a detailed suggestion yea

Corny. Lol.

 

Also, this isn't a huge discussion thread with details. I don't see much in your suggestion, either.

 

Come on, now.

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Believe a lot of Wurms problems are its poor fighting GUI and no Bowing GUI which much be done by using windows which is confusing since their is a bow and arrow on the fighting GUI

 

FightOptionsGUI.png

Even players that have played 2 + Months have have difficulty understanding this mess being displayed and what'snot being displayed

 

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An easier solution could be to put together a basic fighting tutorial built into the game, contributed to by players who understand the fight system thouroughly.

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13 hours ago, Madt said:

An easier solution could be to put together a basic fighting tutorial built into the game, contributed to by players who understand the fight system thouroughly.

Thats a bandaid at the most.

The system needs a fix, even if all the mechanics are left as they are now, the interface is one of the worst Ive seen in any game, and so are the animations. And not just the quality of the animations is terrible, the ammount of animations during combat are insanely low. People sell packs of animations a lot better and more abundant in SL for 10-20 bucks, hell, they make motion capture animations with a fricking xbox camera, why a game studio cant even match that quality is beyond my understanding. Also the fact that combat only exists in a text window is not something to be proud of in 2016.

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Text combat is a unique part of wurm, some don't like it, but many do.

 

Yes its a temporary band aid fix, because overhauling the fighting system is something that will, or atlest should, take atleast a year or so until it'd be implemented, and that's from the point of starting work on it which is nowhere in the pipeline at the moment and no word has been said on such afaik.

 

Like people said in this thread earlier, it takes years to get anything into this game, a figting fix will not be here for a long, long time as it cannot be rushed. So a tutorial to help people understand the current one better is something that can be done in a month or two with contributions from experienced players.

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Any system relying on reflexes in a game with Wurm's sort of network code will never work.

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On 10/31/2016 at 6:15 AM, Rathgar said:

+1 to an overhaul, but not reflex dependant, since lag is a common thing in-game, and people from diferent geographical places will experience diferent degrees of latency.

This 100%

 

With a game this laggy, you want as little player interaction as possible.  Really, you almost need to make fighting "turn based" in Wurm, to counter the lag issues.  But, assuming that ever get's solved, yes, better fighting would be fantastic.

 

My favorite MMO for combat is D&D Online.  Not overly complex, so you aren't at the mercy of 12yr old kids with lightning fast reflexes, but not so simple that it feels like "attack rat", "search rat" of MUD games.

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I only now realised that I didn't explain what I meant by "reflexes". Surely it wouldn't be a system like the best fighting games (M&B series etc), but there must be a way to insert timed events, for example:

Venerable troll is leaning in for a strong swig!

Then you get some more options in the fighting window that you need to click within, say, 3 seconds:

You raise your shield and block (+3dmg on shield)

You raise your weapon and parry (+2dmg on weapon)

You swiftly dodge the blow (-10 stamina)

 

Would be even more interesting if chance percentage of doing one of the above was determined by different character skills as body control, mind speed etc.

 

Just a general outline so far.

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On 04/11/2016 at 0:06 PM, Erevorn said:

I only now realised that I didn't explain what I meant by "reflexes". Surely it wouldn't be a system like the best fighting games (M&B series etc), but there must be a way to insert timed events, for example:

Venerable troll is leaning in for a strong swig!

Then you get some more options in the fighting window that you need to click within, say, 3 seconds:

You raise your shield and block (+3dmg on shield)

You raise your weapon and parry (+2dmg on weapon)

You swiftly dodge the blow (-10 stamina)

 

Would be even more interesting if chance percentage of doing one of the above was determined by different character skills as body control, mind speed etc.

 

Just a general outline so far.

 

So like QTE.

 

It is a neat idea, but as others have said, wurm is very laggy sometimes which would make QTE very annoying for many people, especially those living on the otherside of the world with high ping.

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