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Mob/Boss Combat Interaction (plus a compromise for hybrid combat)
Cypher
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Greetings,
With all the talk about the player's movement and mechanics for combat, I had a realization that we also need to talk about how mobs (and bosses) will interact with the player in combat.
Currently, mobs will make a straight line toward you until in range, where they will stay firmly planted and swing at you. The server, as far as I can tell, always calculates whether or not you were hit based on RNG and stats rather than looking at whether or not the enemy strike made contact with your hitbox. It appears that strafing in circles around a mob for example has no effect on whether or not it hits you. If you’re near it, it hits you unless the server says you “evaded”. Gross. This leads to walking up to a mob, and doing exactly what it does: standing still and holding the attack key (and throwing some abilities at it). This is mind-numbingly boring.
Additionally, this results in a contest between who can withstand more damage. Plenty of examples of this exist but what sparked this thought was the intro to this video. Look at the very beginning, where he’s fighting a boss called Jermaine, Torment of Illwind. The fight takes place standing still, until the player realizes he is going to lose based on which health bar is going down faster, along with an AOE from the boss, and only then does he use any movement, to turn and run. Movement is pointless in combat currently (except for a few telegraphed AOE attacks shown on the ground).
I propose some solutions to counter the issue above, that I feel are very necessary for a good PvE experience:
1- The mobs should have some variety with how they engage the player (maybe they rush you, maybe they try to get around you to attack from the side or back, etc) including strafing or even dodging (some mobs maybe, not all) rather than sitting still and attacking unless the player steps back or turns to run.
2- The player's hitbox should matter, just like the mob hitbox should. I believe we saw Steven demonstrate that when swinging a sword in a horizontal arc, all mobs within the arc are hit. This is good. We need the mob's attacks to operate the same way. If you’re in their attack arc, you’re hit, if you step out of the way of the swing, you’re not hit. Same goes for bosses. Imagine the fight I mentioned above (which you can witness with the video link), with the boss "Jermaine" but with the ability to side step the those sword strikes. Now you have a reason to be moving around AND actually watching what the boss is doing rather than mindlessly staring at both health bars and spamming all your hotkeys. If you could see the boss is winding up for an attack, you know it's time to dodge (and based on what type of attack is coming, you know whether to step left, right, back or dodge roll).
*And finally, a few things I thought of later in this thread that would be enough for me, and probably many others to feel good with the combat:
- Dedicated block (assigned to RMB for example) for weapons that make sense
- Light and heavy attacks for basic attacking. Click for light, hold and release (or use a modifier like shift+LMB) for heavy.
These add enough depth to combat, and enough player-choice in between ability cooldowns to be engaging for most players whether action or tab. It’s a little more than what tabby players are used to but not hard at all, and a lot less than what action players are used to. It’s a good compromise. Help me get this in front of intrepid if you agree.
I'm open to a better title for this thread by the way. Hard to come up with exactly what to call this specific topic.
Please share your thoughts and feel free to either agree with the points I made or completely rip them apart.
With all the talk about the player's movement and mechanics for combat, I had a realization that we also need to talk about how mobs (and bosses) will interact with the player in combat.
Currently, mobs will make a straight line toward you until in range, where they will stay firmly planted and swing at you. The server, as far as I can tell, always calculates whether or not you were hit based on RNG and stats rather than looking at whether or not the enemy strike made contact with your hitbox. It appears that strafing in circles around a mob for example has no effect on whether or not it hits you. If you’re near it, it hits you unless the server says you “evaded”. Gross. This leads to walking up to a mob, and doing exactly what it does: standing still and holding the attack key (and throwing some abilities at it). This is mind-numbingly boring.
Additionally, this results in a contest between who can withstand more damage. Plenty of examples of this exist but what sparked this thought was the intro to this video. Look at the very beginning, where he’s fighting a boss called Jermaine, Torment of Illwind. The fight takes place standing still, until the player realizes he is going to lose based on which health bar is going down faster, along with an AOE from the boss, and only then does he use any movement, to turn and run. Movement is pointless in combat currently (except for a few telegraphed AOE attacks shown on the ground).
I propose some solutions to counter the issue above, that I feel are very necessary for a good PvE experience:
1- The mobs should have some variety with how they engage the player (maybe they rush you, maybe they try to get around you to attack from the side or back, etc) including strafing or even dodging (some mobs maybe, not all) rather than sitting still and attacking unless the player steps back or turns to run.
2- The player's hitbox should matter, just like the mob hitbox should. I believe we saw Steven demonstrate that when swinging a sword in a horizontal arc, all mobs within the arc are hit. This is good. We need the mob's attacks to operate the same way. If you’re in their attack arc, you’re hit, if you step out of the way of the swing, you’re not hit. Same goes for bosses. Imagine the fight I mentioned above (which you can witness with the video link), with the boss "Jermaine" but with the ability to side step the those sword strikes. Now you have a reason to be moving around AND actually watching what the boss is doing rather than mindlessly staring at both health bars and spamming all your hotkeys. If you could see the boss is winding up for an attack, you know it's time to dodge (and based on what type of attack is coming, you know whether to step left, right, back or dodge roll).
*And finally, a few things I thought of later in this thread that would be enough for me, and probably many others to feel good with the combat:
- Dedicated block (assigned to RMB for example) for weapons that make sense
- Light and heavy attacks for basic attacking. Click for light, hold and release (or use a modifier like shift+LMB) for heavy.
These add enough depth to combat, and enough player-choice in between ability cooldowns to be engaging for most players whether action or tab. It’s a little more than what tabby players are used to but not hard at all, and a lot less than what action players are used to. It’s a good compromise. Help me get this in front of intrepid if you agree.
I'm open to a better title for this thread by the way. Hard to come up with exactly what to call this specific topic.
Please share your thoughts and feel free to either agree with the points I made or completely rip them apart.
6
Comments
Hopefully, the combat AI will be closer to the complexity of New World mobs by the time we reach Beta.
Absolutely! No better time than now to voice these things though! Especially because I've seen finished products that come out looking basically like this
(This issue is partly about hitboxes and standing still not just AI by the way)
Regardless of even the outcome of any disagreements on Split Body and Root Motion as combat for players, I feel Mobs need the three.
Lunge, Strafe, Standing.
For big enemies, Strafe should probably just be 'a big side swiping attack they do when they turn', instead of actually needing to move their bodies much. With the important part being the damage, damage type, and recovery time from this attack.
Dragons and similar could Lunge with 'long neck extended bites', again without moving their bodies much, but still long recovery. Griffons dive, most other things do leaping bites or whatnot. Sometimes they do it, sometimes they don't (to close distance).
Standing attacks could have slightly less angle on their hitboxes so that players could sidestep these at least some of the time. A good timing for this would be 'enemy lunged, player moved to the side and kept moving'. If the enemy does the Standing attack at this point, they probably miss unless the player was also swinging their weapon immediately.
I'm sure we could come up with any number of other really cool things, but basic barebones system, is this a problem for anyone?
Flee, Dodge/Evade, and some range of leash.
I agree. And with the leash specifically, I believe the consensus is that mobs will generally aggro you from a variety of ranges based on the type of mob and your level compared to it, and should generally have either a very long leash or no leash at all depending on the mob. I could be wrong, feel free to correct me.
But...if the mobs move during combat similar to the way the mobs move in New World - that forces the players to adjust and move as well. You can't just stay in one spot because the mob will no longer be there and will eventually end up attacking you from behind.
My favorite NPC in New World ran up for melee, attacked and then back-flipped out of melee range.
Yep, I agree - it sounds pretty reasonable, and I don't have any information to change how you framed it.
The game cant just have action combat defenses of tab target defenses, it needs both or it is not a hybrid.
However, implementing this is a far bigger challenge than implementing hybrid attacks.
Without a defensive system fully implemented,
a mob attacking me with a tab target ability while no detailed action or tab defenses are present i would assume would result in the same basic behavior described in the OP.
Since the mobs attack is tab based, just moving out of it's way isnt going to stop it from hitting. In order to stop it, you would need either an active ability or defensive stats, which is as described in the OP. Specifically, in this scenario, hit boxes are simply not a factor for NPC's hitting players.
However, the current game doesn't have the deeper defensive syatems of a tab target game either.
You know I have been extremely vocal on this in the past year. If I had a bigger ego than I do, I might say I have been the MOST vocal on these forums about action combat.
I am not sure Intrepid is the studio to pull off hybrid combat anymore.
As much as I know, action and tab-target could work together the way Intrepid initially proposed. I just don't see the evidence than the good folks at intrepid are passionate enough about action combat to pull it off well in their hybrid combat. That Jahlon video really put it in my mind.
It breaks my heart to say this after a year of following this game. The iterations of hybrid combat we have seen so far lack the passion that intrepid puts into its other systems. Yes, action combat has gotten better, but I think it would have started better if they were more passionate about it.
Wildstar and Tera never had these early problems with making action combat fun and feel right because the design teams were passionate about action combat. Action combat seems like a side gig for intrepid. I would love to be wrong about all of this.
It is super painful for me to say this. "If" they don't have passion for action combat, then they should not make hybrid combat. I love intrepid so far. I can forgive them for making a tab-target only game, if the game is better in the long run.
I say all this to say. A lot of OPs issues would be resolved if they just did tab-target.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Then, NPC abilities can effect either a target or they hit enemies in an area, just like player abilities do either or now. I do not think they have developed enough into the combat of NPC AI, so I expect it to improve before we hit Alpha 2.
I really like where the split body animation took the combat. And with the ideas like the ones presented in OP, I really think they can make the combat feel more engaging.
We should let the team start developing more on AI combat and let players spend more time testing before we call it quits.
True most of the time, but not for everything. The frost dragon is one example of a basic attack that can be avoided. So it appears that unavoidable attacks are there by design since they are clearly willing and able to implement avoidable attacks.
We've always known they'd default to tab if they couldn't get hybrid to work. But I didn't think we were anywhere near "welp that's a wrap, we tried."
The general idea was some skills would be tab and some would be action right? And you can pick up to 75% of one type, action or tab, to put on your bar. The remaining 25% would have to be of the other type. Well we don't even have all the classes much less all the skills to see how the hybrid system more fleshed out would feel.
What am I missing, is it a time thing? Alpha 1's ending and we don't even a concrete combat direction yet?
It's not a time thing. As I said, it is a lack of passion for action combat that makes me worry that Intrepid might not be the best studio to take on the challenge of good hybrid combat.
As a former L2 player, I know Steven knows what made L2 good, and I know he is trying to recapture some of that magic with Ashes. There is a level of passion and understanding that comes off when he speaks about both Ashes and L2. That passion is not there when Steven or anyone from Intrepid talks about action combat.
I feel like a higher amount of passion for action combat would have given us better iterations of combat so far. The current state of things seems to be "Let's throw combat styles at the testers and see what sticks". Which is fine for some things, but does not come across as having the passion and understanding that I feel may be required to pull off good hybrid combat.
Not saying they can't do it. Just saying, their heart does not seem to be in it. Maybe we would all be better off if they did the combat system that they know they can do.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
But I still don't see the basis of all these people giving up on hybrid right now. It might be there, but how do we know Intrepid is actually struggling with hybrid to the extent that it is becoming detrimental to the game as a whole?
Yeah, and I will be the first to admit that I could be connecting dots that are not there.
When they talk about risk vs reward, pvp, and the node system. Their excitement gets me excited. Not only because I want those things, but because hearing them want those things too. Makes me feel like they are going to do it in a want that pushes the genre forward.
Action combat might be the only thing they ever talk about that doesn't make me feel that way. Which is hard because I love action combat.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Gonna create a shitstorm if it goes full tab. Wow will view it as even more of a threat. Then it'll have a bunch of Wow tabbers who weren't interested before coming over trying to change the game again with pvp toggles and hearthstones. And action players will rage. At least you're not raging about the possibility brother haha. But I think it's still just that, a possibility.
lol, after this month, even a game as microscopic as GW2 is a threat to WOW.
We already have care bears asking for hearthstones and PvP toggles weekly on here. I guess that would bump the threads up to daily...
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I don't think about hitboxes and root motion and floaty and splitbody.
When I think of what I liked about Action Combat in NWO and Wildstar, I think about how the ground telegraphs forced me to dodge/roll/blink/block.
It felt like my peripheral vision caught some movement and I had to scoot and re-orient rather than sit in one spot and slowly hammer away at the target. Steven doesn't want ground telegraphs, so we're not going to get that.
New World has Action Combat without ground telegraphs. The New World body telegraphs work well enough to allow players to know when to dodge/roll/block. And the mobs move around enough that it pushes players to adjust and move with them.
Valheim is similar. I love the active block in Valheim, so I don't even remember if Valheim has dodge/roll, but, the body telegraphs work well enough that I know when I'd want to block/dodge/roll. And the mobs move around enough that it pushes players to adjust and move with them. The Deathsquitos will try to strafe you.
I prefer the combat in NWO, Wildstar, New World and Valheim over Tab Target, for sure, as well as what I've experienced so far in Ashes Alpha One.
(Of course, Ashes is in Alpha One and the other games I experienced first in Beta.)
Anyone able to compare root motion and split body in those games with Ashes Alpha One combat?
Doesn't have to be super-technical... I just don't know if those games had root motion and split body.
Ashes mobs don't have decent body telegraphs, imo.
(Ashes Alpha One is the first time I've experienced that extra move forward after killing the mob - which I think everyone hates.)
So friends, let’s not lose hope on having a good combat system that lets action and tab players have a good MMO to enjoy. I know I can’t lose hope, I’ve sunk too much money, sunk too much time on here, talked for too many hours to friends about how good this game will be, and followed for too many years to just let it go full tab.
The optimism warms my heart. I'll try not to lose hope.
I know it can be done.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Even with one, and the passion shown by people who want it, they're limited by the community's strong opinions in specific ways.
A single cohesive Hybrid Combat system variant would fill a whiteboard, but 'one that players won't constantly ask you to erase things off that whiteboard' followed by 'other players asking you to put those things back' is probably impossible.
That being said I actually think where we are now (while nowhere near completion) is on the right path, minus the free motion.
If the fixes in the original post are implemented, along with a dedicated block like RMB for weapons that make sense, and just a little bit more love on the basic attacks such as light fast attacks by just clicking LMB repeatedly or heavy attacks by holding and releasing LMB or pressing a modifier key along with LMB, either works, we’ll be in a great place.
If you agree, if everyone else here can agree with these simple things, I think Azherae can help put it all together in a neat little package for intrepid as what could make this thing work. These things wouldn’t harm the tab experience, and would have enough action for us. It would truly be a hybrid.
NWO has unfortunately been reworked recently so it'd be more difficult to discuss it. Every single part of a combat system matters. Every incredibly tiny intricate thing, and it's worse in MMOs than it is in fighting games. To put in perspective how precise it is in fighting games:
One character in Street Fighter a while back had a low attack that was slightly advantaged when blocked. This made them almost universally accepted as one of the best, if not the best character in the game. This was changed along with some other things about this character, to make it very slightly disadvantaged. This was accepted as a balanced change that affected the whole meta.
Neverwinter's Combat is good because of many very tiny things like this interwoven. That's why I'm still just following my 'instincts' with the way I interact while here, poking for every little bit of data. The designer has to know every little bit of what the player wants, to fill up that whiteboard.
Neverwinter is Root Motion, Medium Ground Mobility. The player hits the enemy, sees an attack telegraph coming, stops attacking and moves out of the way. The enemy's animation is long enough for the player to feel rewarded by getting a combo by being unafraid of being damaged until the animation ends.
The player's movement speed is tuned exactly right for these interactions. The animations are tuned almost exactly right in most encounters (they were when I played a while back, for 90% of enemies). I'll give the video for one I know is tuned right because I used to fight it on Rogue for fun. Imagine that. Fun! In this day and age!
New World is this, but not tuned right. It's not trying to be this either because it wants to give a 'less clunky' feeling. And it could, but it still needs the tuning. It does a lot of other things right, though. The hitboxes are better than a lot of actual Action focused games, but off relative to the move speed. New World is also Root Motion, and it is the correct amount of Root Motion for New World.
It's problem is that the movespeed and the transition-to-move tech space is wrong. They can fix this easily. I haven't played New World but I know it is wrong because you're supposed to base it on the one handed sword and the one handed sword transition-to-move is wrong.
New World will continue to work for most people because the TTK masks the transition-to-move problem well. New World is wrong via tuning specs, or berated by people who don't like the style of Combat it offers, but they're doing good for now.
I can, as always, go on and on, because this is what I do.
Ashes is tuned wrong for what it is. It's a bunch of dials you have to turn to get to somewhere, and you have to know the output you want before you start turning the dials. That's why some form of consensus is so important. If we can't agree on one whiteboard, we still need to 'fill up three separate ones'.
There's a build where Ashes would do best with Ground Telegraphs, a build where it would do best with 'the enemy glowing in a specific animation to tell you that it's charging up', and a build where enemies have combos and every enemy has a defined Archetype and some weapon-restricted abilities so you know what to expect without any telegraphs at all by just looking at what they are carrying and the first ability or two that they do.
I think the last 'consensus' was that only the first two were preferred, and we only went with the second because the 'no Ground Telegraphs' was a thing Steven said, but we didn't discuss it for long due to that. (I believe you, @Dygz, were the main person who wanted that, my group prefers the glowing form or the Defined Archetype-Weapon form).
Opinions are like butts, everyone's got one. I DO NOT want a light and heavy attack, i just want one basic attack. I do want an active shield block tho. I feel like the 2 different attacks lean too heavily towards an action combat system, but I don't want to completely get rid of the idea of action combat.
Well, that's another 'derail', but it can be worked in here.
Let's assume that everything has a heavy attack or a combo that leads into one (depending on whether you want a glow system or a Defined-Archetype system). Now the player can sidestep or move out of the way of this attack because they can see it coming. The player can 'punish' harder in PvP, increasing the skill ceiling.
This isn't really the thread for this specific debate type, so I'll pull it back. Would you mind if they gave nearly every Mob a heavy attack that you could see coming, but that the AI would prioritize whenever it noticed you trying to use one of your own abilities while in range of that attack?
That’s just the thing. With only 1 basic attack and currently no block, there isn’t much in the way of action. Having a dedicated block helps, but that’s not enough to make for a system that will be fun and engaging long term. If most of your characters kit is on the hotbar waiting for cool downs, you need enough to do in between to be engaged and have fun. Simply clicking versus holding based on whether you have time for a heavy or light attack isn’t much to ask for.
I don't think the weapon attack needs to be a large part of the gameplay. IMO, you shouldn't just use all your abilities when they are off cd. The typical fight for me would be to use a gap-closing ability if you are melee, or a stun or slow if you are ranged, then apply a buff or debuff, then use weapon attack or basic spammable spell till you get a proc of some type, then use another ability that does a lot of damage. Then reapply buff or debuff, or teleport away, or maybe something else, and then back to weapon attack or spammable spell.
Edit: Maybe the weapon proc will occur at the end of the 3 or 4 weapon swing combo? And maybe you can have multiple different conditionals that lead to different abilities or the proc will lead into multi-abilities combo? The example i give is very fundamental.
The problem with this concept is that you have 'basic spammable spell' as an idea. Ashes already is 'telling us' that what you are thinking of is not how it will work. Cooldowns for some abilities are between 10 and 20 seconds, because the abilities are allowed to be quite powerful. So your preference leans away from what it is now, and from 'Hybrid Combat' in general.
Therefore one would have to assume, 'on the whiteboard', that this should be 'ignored'. Similarly, Clerics are OP right now partially because the thing you mentioned doesn't work on them, and can't work on them without making the group gameplay terrible.
"This request does not fit within the ranges of the dials we are working with right now." would be my answer to this if it were up to me.
But as I said before, the bare minimum for good player engagement long term would be the use light and heavy attacks, a dedicated block and telegraphed attacks that can be dodged from mobs and bosses. That’s it. And tab players give up nothing. I’m literally arguing for bare minimum action here so we can give intrepid something to finally work towards.