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Twitch Combat - Can This Be Good For Wurm?

Twitch Combat  

177 members have voted

  1. 1. Should wurm feature "twitch" combat (see thread for explanation)?

    • No - I do not like aiming
      70
    • No - I have too much lag to European servers
      36
    • Yes - I enjoy twitch style combat
      71


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From yesterdays Q&A

[20:17] <@Wossoo> Now that 1.0 is out and there is an increased amount of players, where will the dev team be focusing next? What types of things are seen as the next major update?

[20:18] <&Rolf> i think we'll be focusing on bridges, better ui and hopefully maybe some twitch combat version

... edited

[20:21] <@Wossoo> Could you clarify a little bit what you mean by "twitch combat" in a Wurm context?

... edited

[20:21] <&Rolf> i'm imagining some sort of basic aiming with pressing the mouse button a while deciding if you want to swing quick or hard

[20:22] <&Rolf> like aiming at the 9 regions we have

[20:22] <&Rolf> and then server calculations take that into consideration

[20:22] <&Rolf> possibly shield with the right button

[20:22] <&Rolf> or block

[20:23] <&Rolf> but it's just speculations until it's discussed more and basic tests are performed

[20:23] <&Rolf> next

For those unfamiliar with the term:

Twitch gameplay is a type of video gameplay scenario that tests a player's reaction time.

This means aiming and positioning and having to do things like block manually. It tests your hand-eye coordination rather than the skills you have built up in game. No auto-attacks normally

Now this can be developed in a lot of ways but...

Personally, for me this is a "what is he thinking?" moment.

If I wanted twich combat I would be playing tera or another game that features it already in an engine designed for it.

For me, Wurm is not designed for this, and given the enormous lag I experience on occasion, could not support it.

And given that the one thing that makes Wurm unique is its terraforming, and more so, the extent to which you can terraform, for me that should be where all development focus should go.

In the Q&A Rolf said things like: Ship enhancements have been down prioritized, that interior mine doors are a someday thing, that a UI overhaul is way down the line, etc, things that should really have priority over such a fundamental change to combat.

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Depends how well implemented it is. For example, I wouldn't mind a mount and blade style, but I wouldn't want something like Mortal Online or Darkfall where melee combat is just a slash and hack.

I would love the combat to be updated, I would also love some form of twitch based combat and it would bring in a lot more subscribers, I could probably get my PvP guild playing this if it was implemented (50+ guys and gals).

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It tests your hand-eye coordination rather than the skills you have built up in game.

No, it will not ignore skills at all.

I first heard about this mount&blade combat style in Wurm about 3 years ago, so I won't hold my breath.

I suspect it won't be fast paced, but just like a pretty version of the aiming we have today already. Personally I like the combat in Wurm as it is now.

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Would be incredible with mount&blade combat

(if you can actually see which way they are hitting before they attack that is, and that you have stamina instead of 100% spamming)

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No, it will not ignore skills at all.

I first heard about this mount&blade combat style in Wurm about 3 years ago, so I won't hold my breath.

I suspect it won't be fast paced, but just like a pretty version of the aiming we have today already. Personally I like the combat in Wurm as it is now.

There is nothing terribly wrong with the combat we have now. But it is a little boring, I spend more time watching the logs then what the other character is doing...

I heard that too, but it went quiet again. I honestly cannot see twitch combat being implemented, but I'm still hopeful. I just hope it doesn't turn into a hack and slash and instead a co-ordinated, active response type system where parrying and blocking is critical and aiming for somewhere other than just the head is necessary.

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When I read it I also thought "hmmm, is that what the playerbase wants?"

Personally, twitch combat would be the end of my time in Wurm.

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Would be incredible with mount&blade combat

(if you can actually see which way they are hitting before they attack that is, and that you have stamina instead of 100% spamming)

Agreed, it shouldn't be spam able.

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If like M&B ~ Good

If like Darkfall ~ Bad

If like TERA ~ Good

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  1. No - I do not like aiming
  2. No - I have too much lag to European servers

I'd vote for both of those if I could. Just a moment ago everyone in our alliance chat was complaining about lag and we all temporarily experienced lag up to 1000ms for at least 30 minutes. I wish I could say this is a rare occurance but quite frankly it's not. Wurm is a terribly laggy game and anything that involves near realtime reaction is not going to work whatsoever.

Personally I think Wurm's fight system was at it's best prior to any of these new changes that added all sorts of random factors into it, Wurm is not a FPS and I don't think it should ever try to be one.

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Lag can be worked on, and would of course have to be for this to work.

Twitch combat is (begin James Earl Jones voice here) ~The wave of the future for MMOs.~

The other thing I see with it is non-combat potential.

Twitch combat would also allow the door to open for other things based on the idea of targetting, such as perhaps mining by hitting with a pick, chopping by hitting with an axe, bashing being hitting a wall, leading shots with archery, and a million other things. Assuming no changes to the flexability of what we can make, this could certainly reduce the amount of timebars we have to watch and promote a more active game, rather than hitting the bound mine button 5 times and waiting through some timer bars while I surf the net.

Especially if you are a pvper this could be a ton of fun. Since it is ftp I'd say if you are a pvper go download TERA, skip the tutorial, spawn on a pvp server, and challenge random nubs in the safezone to pvp. Even with no powerful abilities and uber gear its a merry little chase mixed in with jumping and dodging and blocking moves while you try and bait your opponent to make a mistake. <--- this will really give you a solid primer on how twitch can be done

Edited by Elen

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Given that Rolf leans heavily toward the PvP end of the game, i'm surprised this wasn't part of the 1.0 requirements.

I mean how can you claim to have some sort of PvP game where all that players do is look at a text box while the game does 90% of the job, you just select stances, and activate half a dozen skills, that you really can't call a tactical decision since given their cast time, and fully automated hit/miss system, you can't really claim any strategy in using them.

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I love mount and blade combat.


/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F6oE0pwd50

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Unless we get a 3rd person view, this probably isn't going to work - and I also believe that 3rd person view has been counted out - correct me if I'm wrong.

At the moment we're able to turn to see what's behind, another enemy and such, yet still battle on. If we have to keep facing the enemy then things could get tricky.

I guess this could be avoided by having a mouse-look where you only move your head when using the mouse, and your body remains. Effectively like riding a mount.... having to use WASD to move/turn.

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The term "twitch combat" is a bit misleading as there are some pretty slow versions around.

In Wurm the fastest fight actions are four seconds I think.

So it could be something like:

PlayerA chooses s direction of attack.

PlayerB has two seconds to choose a response.

The Game has two seconds to finish the actions.

While the ctions is finishing, PlaserB can choose the next attack.

That's leeway for some pretty big amount of lag.

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I don't see this mashing very well with how Wurm plays currently.

Also, I'd rather the game be taken off the Java platform and rewritten in something more suitable for the scope of Wurm, in that case a more active combat mode would be a possibility.

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Also, I'd rather the game be taken off the Java platform and rewritten in something more suitable for the scope of Wurm, in that case a more active combat mode would be a possibility.

Yeah 2 minute job, Rolf can whip that up over a weekend ...........

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Anything is better than reading "blah slaps you hard in the crotch"...."you slap blah lightly in the crotch"...etc etc until one person insta-falls to the ground. I haven't touched combat in forever because of how utterly boring it is, terraforming is almost more exciting than the text spam. Big yes to any combat change.

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Yeah,

I cannot see Rolf every jumping platforms or creating a new engine. That will come when one of the upcoming games puts in terraforming (EQNext I hope)

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I'm very skeptical about "twitch" combat in Wurm

It has great potential if implemented correctly, but Rolf doesn't have a good track record on these kind of complex changes. Combined with Wurms lagginess and the great loss of gear compared to other games, a -1 from me.

(Yes I know a thing or two about programming and QA, wurm never left early Alpha in that regard)

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The term "twitch combat" is a bit misleading as there are some pretty slow versions around.

In Wurm the fastest fight actions are four seconds I think.

Thats how I would imagine it too, but how would that work with players moving around a lot during pvp combat and not just standing still like creatures do?

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Way to go derailing the thread!! Move the platform discussion elsewhere.

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I like the idea of the more interactive combat, but not yet.

I get lag pretty often while playing wurm and so do tonnes of other players, 2-4+ seconds of lag during a fight could easily mean you die and lose all your stuff due to a few seconds of lag. I personally think there are way more important things for the devs to be working on. So many things are supposedly planned and it just seems like rolf and the devs keeping adding to that list without ticking many of the items off. When they do manage to tick things off the list they take 5 steps back due to unexpected bugs caused by an update. They need to fix multiple things BEFORE adding anything else, I would prefer to play the game for 2-3 months without anything new being added knowing they're going to fix some major bugs properly instead of a shiny new model.

TLDR - I want the new combat system AFTER lag is reduced considerably and some major well known bugs are fixed.

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