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AudioGames.net Forum → General Game Discussion → Let's Talk Combat
I want to see more games that do realtime combat right. The only rpg that tried this was shadow rine, and planet saga will have a similar system, whenever that comes out. But everything else is bop it style. The enemy just attacks left, center or right, and you have to block or dodge the attack, then wale on the enemy yourself based on where he is and what he's doing. zzzzzzzzz...
I'm afraid I don't agree with those who tend to think turn based combat is dull, if you've ever played a tabletop rpg with real humans, then you can see how much fun turn based combat is 
.
What is dull imho, as I said, are combats where you as a player don't need to really interact with what the enemy is doing. I don't even mean major boss transformation or slay the spire style changes in effects, I just mean things like Kerkerkruip's system where enemies would concentrate for a turn before attacking, or games like smugglers battle effects where both you and your opponent could be prevented from doing something and would need to find alternative strategies.
i also agree completely with Dardar that thus far, the acctive time battles we've seen have tended to just revolve around attacking as soon as your attacks are full, other than in Breed memorial, however, this isn't necessarily the only way active time battles can work at all.
for example, imagine a really simple system where your character has three options, windup, attack, and block.
Hitting windup for a second and then attacking does additional damage, whilst hitting windup and then blocking parry's an opponent's swing and stuns them temporarily. Hitting attack just attacks the opponent, whilst hitting block enters a blocking stance for half a secod.
So, if your fighting a barbarian with a dirty great axe who swings powerfully but not too often, your best off taking the time to wind up, parry the axe, and then wind up again while your opponent is stunned and attack.
if your fighting a swift assassin with a dagger who attacks more often, your best using basic blocking stance, and then attacking when you can, since windup is just going to get you stabbed.
this is the sort of thing I mean, situations where you need to actually assess what you are fighting and adapt your strategy to that threat, rather than just hitting attack constantly and relying upon your preconfigured setup of gear to just carry the day for you.
It is true that since the majority of accessible rpgs have been turn based, the majority of uninteresting instances of combat we've seen have been turn based, but I don't personally see that as an inherent lack in the system, so much as just the slightly skewed availability of what is around so far.
This isn't to say I'd be against a real time combat scenario either, although the problem there would be to give enough complexity to qualify as an rpg, spells, abilities, lots of ground to explore, character levelling and so on, rather than just an intensive action game, although I admit that games like Swamp do rather blur the lines here a little.
Making actually intelligent AI is supposedly quite difficult.
However, making scripted fights difficult is far less finicky. I can tell you from experience that even when you know what certain turn-based bosses are going to do ahead of time, because you've fought them before, that doesn't automatically mean you're safe and you're going to win. It will never be as hard as the first time, obviously, but it's not just a guaranteed win either.
Also, you can always add in a random factor. Attacks don't automatically hit, do a diceroll in the background.
Personally, I like the real time combat. However, Dark has a point about being able to determine if you can win a fight or not based on your gear and abilities. Still though, I do not like that most often these games allow you to use the same attacks repeatedly. Games like AHC and Manimon and pretty much any other game, the concept is figure out what the best attack is, and spam it until the target is dead. What's the point of having 5 different attacks, if you're just going to use one of them. Or two leading, and then one the rest of the fight. The only game where I felt that having multiple different types of attacks was one Chinese RPG I played. Unfortunately, the game world itself wasn't very well done, since it was just an open world, with no walls, terrain, or anything other than different ambiences. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying, is that I don't like it when games introduce new spells or skills to the players just in order to replace old spells and skills, rather than building on those old spells and skills. Take Alteraeon for example, if you're a mage, you get access to spells like blue dart, fireball, greater fireball, fire web. However, you'll never really use blue dart at higher levels, since the idea of a mage is to deal the most amount of damage as quickly as possible. They have been getting better about drawing in affects from lower level spells to improve higher level spells, like static blast decreasing a mob's resistance to zapping damage, but it's a pretty common thing I've seen in RPGs. You're given a huge list of skills and abilities, but only the highest level ones available are any good. It seems like a gimp thing to do, and reflects the forethought put into the skills and spells for that game IMHO.
I haven't seen enough of the third one, sadly, so I can't comment on it. The other two I'm very familiar with... Too, familiar with, in fact. I honestly wish pure realtime were easier to put together, particularly as it pertains to the blind/VI/audiogaming community in general. As it stands, I can't think of any games I've played where I've actually seen it properly used.
@Berenion, I don't personally mind if higher level attacks are more advanced versions of lower level attacks since that does give you the idea that your character is improving, however as Sneak said, if you are only spamming one attack irrespective of what the enemy does, it doesn't matter what that attack is.
In terms of randomness, again, it depends upon the situation and the options involved, since generally attacks that have a poor chance of hitting are not worth using unless you can increase that chance, whilst the random damage of a single attack matters less over all if your using that attack constantly.
I'd myself prefer systems where enemies change range or defence, or where you had more combo attacks to use, thus meaning your not just doing the same thing in combat again and again.
Actually, it's been interesting playing some of Ertay's adaptations of dice board games on Alexa, since those are great examples of simple systems, which at the same time, require far more in judgement and engagement from the player than simply making one or two dice rolls to see what happens, indeed I don't think it would require too much in terms of complex programming to just give players a little more option at the start of each battle.
This is one reason I was so sorry the web game uncharted peak closed down, since that used grid based combat, with need to move, attack, and even find random orbs on the battlefield for each fight.
combat was relatively simple, but just giving players the need to move, pick up items, occasionally take cover or move out of the way added so much more in terms of choice, making even generic fights against mooks much more interesting.
Speaking for myself, if I ever get my RPG off the ground, I've planned for this.
On normal mode, the classes are fairly straightforward, but there is still synergy between attacks. For example, my thief has a Conceal+Ambush synergy, but later on also gets a passive skill that adds extra damage to a foe if that foe has a status condition, so the MO becomes "try to inflict a status condition, hide, then hit for big burst damage". On hard mode, classes are a bit more complicated; for instance, that same character is now an illusionist, and has a new resource, Shadow, to govern his attacks. There are different ways to gain more shadows, and they're expended using certain attacks, so you absolutely cannot just fire off your strongest skills over and over again.
I agree completely that if all your skills consist of are Fireball, Greater Fireball, Huge Fireball and Firebomb, or some variant thereof, the only thing really holding you back is MP consumption. For instance, if Firebomb does three times the damage of Fireball but costs four times the MP, it's a short-term nuke unless you never run out of MP. The aim is to make it so that, while you definitely may outgrow some of your skills, that isn't the everyday run of things. It's difficult though.
Soundrts is not mainly for playing against computers, but against players.
Because playing against the players can completely reveal the charm of this game.
I'm in love with Dissidia Final Fantasy because of the active combat. No using one attack in Manamon 2 and just spamming the enter and arrow keys and just going on and on until you fall asleep. No. In Dissidia, you bring down your opponent's defense, BRV in game, to do much more damage with HP attacks. You bring down defends with BRV attacks, while trying to avoid your defense being brought down to zero. You do this with close, mid, and long range attacks, and you can block and dodge these same three kinds of attacks, all with different effects, like wall rush, basically being slammed against the wall for even *more* damage, or chase, where you enter a mode where you're chasing or being chased through the air, delivering BRV attacks, and dodging your opponents in a boppit style thing with also some guessing involved, and then you're able to also finish the chase with an HP attack! So you can widdle away at your opponent's defense, then deliver a big amount of damage at the end! But the chase doesn't go on forever, the opponent can hit a wall, or hit the ground.
You also can get ex-cores, and our opponent can get them too. So when one appears, you have to chase the opponent for them! And this allows you to build up your ex-gauge, and when full, enter ex-mode, where your attacks are more powerful for a time, and you can perform an ex-burst, an ultimate attack that can finish your opponent... or not. Your opponent can block some of it if you have enough ... BRV or ex-gauge, can't remember which, and if you don't have the auto-ex-burst skill, you have to do a quicktime event thing.
So yeah, very active, very engaging, and very fun! I mean, in Dissidia, even grinding story mode or quick battle is fun! In Manamon 2, it's just boring to me.
@35: Where can I get this for PC and is it playable or accessible? THat combat description made me salivate. LOL
@35: Isn't that game more a fighting game with RPG elements due to the source material? Nothing against fighting games being shifted into that state, there was an entire game series (tales) whoh initially started using side scrolling fighting-game style combat as the base for their first RPG.
Anyway though, let's not entirely claim that real time rpgs aren't excluded from eventually turning predictable and boring, and they're even more vulnerable to crumbling with bad AI. Ignoring the entire problem with scripted events limiting options, players routinely break the Ai of games to have them do what they want, rather than the Ai be inteligent and perform actions in their best interest. baiting is the usual term for getting enemies to do what you want in a predictable fashion, to initiate the same counter attack over and over until you win. And it's really hard to design an AI complicated enough to avoid falling into the bait trap as millions of players playing a game with different ideas is more creativity than a small team of developers can match. With turn based RPG's, it's a lot easier to work an AI there as players are limited to a specific set of choices they had developed their party with. You don't have to worry if your player takes out your elite mooks here with a series of chain backstabs just because they know how to force an enemy to do the same attack over and over.
though, pleanty of devs have created real time systems with a terrifying amount of depth, and awareness by their AIs to try to blunt these attempts to criple their capabilities.
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