Battle Mechanics (What do you want to see?)

[Scryer]

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the importance of battle mechanics - how your character can strategically maneuver through the action-field and find fun ways to play the game rather then simply using an old formula of "Attack and heal."

Maybe you have a lot of ideas on how to improve the attack and heal formula, or maybe you have a lot of ideas on how to create a new formula that is more strategic in nature.

Well, let me just start the thread off by giving my own suggestions about battle mechanics that I know I would enjoy.

- Health Potion Cool downs - I actually liked that TQ had a cool down on health potions, and actually would have preferred a longer cool down, but obviously that was hard to do because later in the harder parts of the game enemies could deal enormous amounts of damage to you - I would have preferred health potions have a greater cool down and enemies deal much less damage.

- Buff Potions or Buff Scrolls (or both) I think this would be an awesome battle mechanic! Rather then simply relying on health potions to stay alive, you'd have buff scrolls that activate a temporary buff for the player. This would cut down on the monotony of always using health potions to stay alive, because if your potion was on a cool down you could strategically pop a buff scroll and survive an encounter.

- Ability cool downs - Now wait! hear me out on this, ability cool downs may seem at first like a huge limitation, but what's important with battle mechanics? Making the player think strategically is a good challenge to give the player! Obviously even with cool downs the player will blow through normal mode, but lets say Medium difficulty, will it be as easy? not at all, because the player will have to think strategically about his / her abilities. I'm not saying every ability should have a cool down, but the more that do and the more varied they are the more strategic the player must think.

- Health orbs - I know a lot of players may have these negative thoughts about them, however, if your health potion is on a cool down, and a health orb drops, this is actually a pretty interesting scenario, versus - your health potion is on a cool down and a health orb doesn't drop but wait, you still have a buff scroll! So hopefully you can see, these 3 mechanics fit very well together.

Obviously the developers my not like any of the mechanics I've mentioned. So, if you have more battle mechanics that sound fun or interesting lets hear them.

I know some people have mentioned out-of-battle health regeneration, I've always thought that was a farce. Why should my hero be forced to sit out of battle? You know, why is it good to keep the player out of action.

Anyways, what suggestions about battle mechanics can you think of?

[ExNomenDei]

Erm, Buff Scrolls were already in TQ: Immortal throne and Ability cool downs were in TQ if I understand you directly. Everything you did was paired with a cooldown of x seconds (Like Phantom Strike, as overpowered as it is early on, having a 20 second cool down iirc)

Why would we need health orbs, exactly? I don't get this mechanic myself, especially not if you retain potions. Why do enemies that die need to drop health? Does that somehow make the game more fun? Does the extra health make you experience something new?

With the speed of Titan Quest, there would have been no room, or so I feel, for implementing this. Enemies run fast at you and with a lot of builds, you're depending on your DPS in some form to keep you from dying before the enemy does. The split-second action, to me, is more fun than slowly whittling away at your opponent and picking up dead opponents' blood of sorts.

[Scryer]

Well, my personal thoughts on health orbs was this -

You have health potions and buff potions and buff scrolls, all with their own cool downs right?

No I suppose you could make a game that utilizes those 3 mechanics alone and be done with it, however those are simply 3 ways that the player interacts with the game.

If you add a health orb that has the chance to drop from an enemy it adds a 4th aspect of the game, a 4th game mechanic that the player can interact with. They are all used to achieve the same goal, but they give the player a sense of strategy in how those mechanics are used together. A skilled player might not want to use their health potions until they are starved with health orbs, and if the player's health potions is on a cool down and there are no health orbs then the player has the option of a buff scroll and buff potion each with their own cool downs.

By making some of these items more scarce then others it creates a sense of challenge and gives the player more choices in terms of how they want to go through an encounter.

Those are just me thoughts though.

[yerkyerk]

- Buff Potions or Buff Scrolls (or both) I think this would be an awesome battle mechanic! Rather then simply relying on health potions to stay alive, you'd have buff scrolls that activate a temporary buff for the player. This would cut down on the monotony of always using health potions to stay alive, because if your potion was on a cool down you could strategically pop a buff scroll and survive an encounter.
Nah, that won't work. Titan Quest had scrolls, nobody used them. D2 had all kinds of potions, nobody used them. It just doesn't work.


- Ability cool downs
You're suggesting buff scrolls, ability cooldowns, no repairs, infinite townportals, no ammo... have you even ever played Titan Quest?

As for the health orbs; though I'm sure it'll work in D3, I think it's too dangerous a mechanic for GD. Don't get me wrong, I hate the disadvantages that balancing health potions in the game brings, but health orbs seem like a cheap, untested D3 trick. And the untested part is the reason you don't want this...

I prefer quick out-of-battle regeneration above health potions. Players should battle enemies with the health they have, without relying on a permanent healthbuff. This allows the devs to better balance the game and I believe, make it more fun. It does have some disadvantages though.

Perhaps the best option is to let the hero actually drink the health potion through an animation; this way, the hero is usually unable to dish out damage and enemies get a free shot at hurting him.

[Scryer]

I actually prefer limited town portal access.

I just like that sense of danger...

[Malpheas]

I want animations for things that represent combat mechanics.

I personally think diablo II ( and even D1 come to think of it ) had it right:

Show a hit recovery animation, a block animation and such.

One thing that drove me NUTS about Sacred was that Hit was calculated at the start of the attack frame and if you were in range of the start of the attack animation and it succeeded you were damaged even if you were out of range at the end of the attack. Sacred 1 and 2 did this.

Blocking: I would like to see blocking cap out at a percent of damage mitigated (perhaps 40% - 50%), but that the block timer was reduced and a close to zero timer was achievable. This would go hand in hand with animations. Give the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Um... what else...

Monster immunities. Definitely make some monsters immune to certain types of damage; or at least cut out 90% of damage of a type. Oh and display what type of immunities a monster has. Please.

Reduce the amount of damage types in the game; I felt, sometimes, in TQ:IT (which is what I played mostly in the end, instead of classic), that there were too many resistances to keep track of and that they weren't shown properly or the correlation of certain types of attacks to resistances wasn't understood.

Which leads me to character sheet properly display damage. Please display the damage is done by spells; and specifically DoT perhaps in the form of DPS.

More as I think of it.

[alexei]

i think battle animation is good but for TQ engine that might seem a bit much. I don't know.

damage bubble text might be good. with option to turn on/off (like crit in tq, with on/off feature). and not just a simple text floating upward and disappear. i think the one like torchlight or ragnarok online.

[Roros]

Above all, I just want it to feel responsive and be easy to read.

While I loved torchlight and it does a lot of things very right, one thing I find really jarring about it's combat is the time it takes between pressing the button and for the action to happen on some skills. This is mostly an issue for me on the guns, as it will take something that feels like a full second for the character to raise the weapon and fire off a shot. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I'd far prefer to have the animations "cheat" a little and have the actions be more immediate.

Keep in mind that this is completely irrelevant from cooldowns and attack speed and things like that. The wind-down can happen after the action, just not before.

And as for being easy to read, I just want to be able to see where the monsters are and whether they are alive or dead at a glance. Same goes for skills and things like that. Sometimes in Titan Quest it could be hard to spot an off-white skeleton in the tan grass unless it was moving, which wasn't a huge issue but something that can be a little annoying.

[eisprinzessin]

Monster immunities. Definitely make some monsters immune to certain types of damage; or at least cut out 90% of damage of a type. Oh and display what type of immunities a monster has. Please.
Be careful with what you wish for. ;) If your build focusses on a specific damage type (let's say fire) and some monsters/bosses have very high resistances against it, then you can hardly proceed.

[Scryer]

Here's an interesting exercise to do with your suggested battle mechanics - Scenario simulation.

Essentially you give the reader a chance to see the logical actions and reactions of the player and the enemy. Doing this we can see if a mechanic will help make the game-play feel more fluid and visceral.

I'll first apply this to a typical ARPG of this genre like Torchlight, TQ, or D2.

Typical mechanics given to the player - Health Potions, Buff Items, Mana Potions, Ability Cool downs, Attack abilities, Escape abilities and town portals.

Typical ARPG situation - The player is surrounded by many enemies and must use the above mechanics to over-come the onslaught.

- Typical Battle -

- Player uses attack skill to deal damage.

- Enemy responds with another attack, lets say they slow the player with ice and deal some damage.

- player's health is not damaged too badly, but the situation looks tough as there are many enemies.

- Melee enemies close in on the player.

- Player uses a cool down ability to knock them back.

- Enemies not killed in the above ability close in on the player.

- Player uses health potion to heal damage from melee then deals an attack.

- Ranged attacker casts more ice spells at the player.

- Health potion is on cool down so the player switches to a potion that buffs his defenses.

- Melee enemies attack.

- Player responds with another close-range attack and uses a potion to heal himself.

- Player runs out of potions.

- Player uses town portal (thus breaking the battle) to retreat to town to buy more health potions.

If the player had other escape abilities it might look like this -

- Player uses escape ability to retreat, then uses town portal to retrieve more health potions from town.

So, all this fuss about health orbs, if you ask me, is a little unwarranted, saying that it hasn't been tested isn't true, there are plenty of games with this mechanic, however there are not many current ARPG's that combine health orbs and health potions. I know that this may be the staple of Diablo 3, but I ask you, what can health orbs do that could have helped the above imaginary scenario? They would have kept the action flowing and visceral.

But how?

Alright here's another imaginary scenario. (Obviously these are highly situational scenarios but they hold true for most players).
Imagine all the steps of the previous combat have happened, the player is now out of potions and needs to get more or he'll be SoL. Instead of using a town portal this happens.

- Player attacks the enemy and a health orb drops. Player uses health orb and continues to battle.

I think what people expect from Health orbs is that they "always" have to drop when something dies. That is not the case. Developers have enough technology to tell the game to have a % chance to drop something if it is simply attacked by damage. This much I know is indeed possible.

So, if an enemy has a 40% chance to drop a health orb when it dies, maybe to balance that we could say that it has a 10% chance when hit to drop a Health orb.

In this way the player does not have one option when running out of health potions he has 2 options - health orbs or a town portal.

I know that health orbs will not be implemented in this game, but you know, I will always do my best to show you why they are so fun to have in an ARPG game.

Unlike mechanics like, quick health regeneration out of battle, which are the opposite of health orbs. Health regeneration out of battle promotes lethargy, that is, it breaks the player away from combat often to heal back to full health. Health orbs promote visceral game-play and keep action flowing.

I can also imagine interesting encounters based off of health orbs.

[Malpheas]

Be careful with what you wish for. ;) If your build focusses on a specific damage type (let's say fire) and some monsters/bosses have very high resistances against it, then you can hardly proceed.

Which is why you're build would have the ability to branch out and be more than a one trick pony. The game would get boring if you always used the same damage skill or damage type to kill things.

I would imagine that this would also not appear until later in the game, as you proceed to tougher and more resilient enemies. Either way, it would hardly be used to punish the player until later for overspecialization. Besides, it's logically sound that there would be fire monsters that would not be hurt by fire.


@ sCRYER - how many times have you posted about health orbs?

[Renevent]

You're suggesting buff scrolls, ability cooldowns, no repairs, infinite townportals, no ammo... have you even ever played Titan Quest?


:D

I swear, I'm starting to think the exact same thing. Whatever the case, if you are in one of Scryer's threads, you know you're reading some suggestion that's pretty much anti-tq.

[Iceciro]

:D

I swear, I'm starting to think the exact same thing. Whatever the case, if you are in one of Scryer's threads, you know you're reading some suggestion that's pretty much anti-tq.

And I thought I was the only one.

[Malpheas]

And I thought I was the only one.


Nope, he's just a fanboy of a different stripe, that's all.

[Scryer]

Yeah, I happen to have different opinions about what is fun.

Anyways, I've never liked full-immunity enemies I've always thought that they were pretty cheap mechanics. Any ability that the player has invested time in getting should be effective at all points in the game. Rendering a skill that the developer has spent time making worthless later in the game is to me a waste of development time.

I'd rather see them come up with creative enemies that cause the player to think about what skills to use. Rather then be forced to use a skill the player may not like. If a player likes to use fire skills only, that player should not be punished later in the game for this preference.

Also, I'd prefer you guys stay on topic and discuss battle mechanics rather then discuss me, make a thread to discuss me if you like, but don't do it in this one.

Also, I have played TQ, but the battle mechanics of TQ are still something we should discuss. Were the battle mechanics in TQ the best mechanics or could we improve them?

[yerkyerk]

Also, I have played TQ, but the battle mechanics of TQ are still something we should discuss. Were the battle mechanics in TQ the best mechanics or could we improve them?
Well, you're suggesting to implement a bucketload of features that are already in TQ (which GD is based on), without even referring to them. Than you expand on those (obvious) subjects, which causes your topics to bloat unnecessarily.
If it's already in TQ, you can just refer to that. Discussing a whole amount of topics per thread isn't really good for the lengthy posts either.

Anyways, I've never liked full-immunity enemies I've always thought that they were pretty cheap mechanics. Any ability that the player has invested time in getting should be effective at all points in the game. Rendering a skill that the developer has spent time making worthless later in the game is to me a waste of development time.

I'd rather see them come up with creative enemies that cause the player to think about what skills to use. Rather then be forced to use a skill the player may not like. If a player likes to use fire skills only, that player should not be punished later in the game for this preference.
That sounds rather contradictory. You want all skills to be useful all the time, but you also want the players to think about what skills to use? Why should you bother coming up with a strategy, if all skills are useful all the time? You just hold the button and obliterate everything in your path.
With immunities, players' skills aren't useless - but players will be forced to make diverse builds and use the rights skills at the right time, because sometimes a skill won't work. Overspecialization can render your build useless through immunities, yes. But that's not a negative thing per se.

[Scryer]

Well, try not to over-simplify what skills a player might get, just because the player might want to focus on fire skills does not mean that all fire skills should always be attack abilities. There could be skills that the player uses that have a fire-elemental to them that do other things.

Here's another way to think about it, lets say the average player can max out 8 skills and 4 passives once he reaches a high enough level. If all 8 skills are fire based, then we should not also assume that this means that they are all attack abilities.

There could be 4 situational fire-based skills, like Disintegration field, a fire based skill that causes ranged attacks to be obliterated.

There could be another fire based skill called molten earth that traps enemies in the ground and deals fire damage.

You see, just because there might be skills all based off a particular element, that does not mean the player choosing those abilities should be punished later in the game for taking that preference.

Lets say the player can use these 4 situational abilities at any time, they all have a cool down, so what helps the player make a strategic choice if they are all fire abilities? If they are all fire abilities then the choice that the player makes should matter on his skill as a player and how he turns the encounter to his favor.

Developing a skill, just to render it useless later is not fun. I think what is more fun is having a good variation of enemies that the player has to decide what abilities are best to use and when. This is better then forcing the player to take abilities he may not enjoy.

[yerkyerk]

It's not rendered useless at all. It's just useless against immunities; and most monsters won't have that immunity.

Anyway, what you suggested still leaves the player do the same thing over and over. Since he can kill everything with his fire-based attack, there's no need for him to adapt his strategy. He'll be using the same tactics throughout the game.

[Scryer]

Not really, I mean yes the player has 8 fire-based abilities, but the developer does not have to make all 8 of those fire based abilities effective 100% of the time, and does not have to make them useless 100% of the time.

For example, if the player is fighting ranged damage dealers and melee damage dealers, he has 2 cool downs to stop them, but if there are immunities to his preferred abilities then all it means is that he now is forced to pick skills he doesn't prefer just to over-come the exact same situation.

What should matter in the above scenario is player skill and if the player knows what skills to use and when to use them.

However, saying a player should be "forced" to pick other skills because of immunities is like saying "The player does the same thing over and over but with skills that the player does not prefer. The only strategy the player adopts is being forced to use skills he doesn't like to kill everything."

It's up to the developer to make interesting enemies that the player has to think about how to over-come them with the abilities they've chosen, immunities are just a cheap trick to make the player think that he is employing strategy. But it is only forcing the player to use abilities they may not prefer.

This is only in the case of full 60%+ immunities though.

I think that enemies that have higher resistances (50% or so) then others is better then full on immunities. Then at least the player that chooses to use fire-based attacks is not entirely screwed out of formulating a plan to beat the encounter.

[Malpheas]

Seriously? Why not just diversify your play style a little bit? I imagine that's a little inconvenient, huh?

Man, every time you comment, Scryer, you come off more and more myopic about what you want GD to look like specifically for you and hang everyone else.

[Scryer]

You mean get other spells and abilities with elemental damage I may not prefer?

I'm simply trying to put forth the argument that all abilities should be useful to the player, even if the ability comes across enemies that have some resistances to them.

However, the response that I get is that it would make the game-play mundane and uninteresting if all the abilities that a player has chosen work all the time. I think I get that response because people believe that the player will 1-hit kill everything in sight.

Obviously that's not the point that I've been trying to make, I've been trying to show that if the player has situational abilities and they all happen to be fire-based he should not be penalized for having that preference in game play. If immunities cause the player to have to re-specialize into other skills and abilities just to beat an encounter then the game is not really challenging the player's skill. Challenging their pocket book maybe but once the player does re-specialize we're back to the same argument that Yerkyerk made - The player will beat the encounter without any problems.

So what's better is to make a healthy back and forth between player and enemy. Maybe create enemies that have different types of attacks and don't die in one hit. A developer can do that without creating immunities of any kind. Some small resistances maybe, but full on immunities not at all.

[Malpheas]

I think that having a variable challenge, one which includes immunities, makes for a more rewarding experience. One which I enjoy. It would be a lack of foresight to expect that all damage of a single type would carry you through the game without any hangups.

I encourage the immunities because it would force a little more creativity, one which I did not have to do in TQ; in terms of monster resistances... there were other things that had me being creative with.

Survivability wise, the few things I had to worry about were resistances, defense and DA; perhaps block depending on build.

Did you ever play Diablo 2: LOD Scryer; or for that matter, Diablo 1?

[alexei]

Opposing to Scryer point, I agree that monster should have immunities, like water monster is immune to fire. It just make sense and more challenging to player who choose only fire spec. If you say it is punishment for only max up the fire spec, i think he should be punished. heheh..

In TQ I max out only Poison skill, because I accidently choose nature skill which is not powerful to adept to monster that strong/immune to poison like rocks and construct. Because of that, my char is really powerful again flesh but really weak again monster without flesh like skeleten. Undead give me hell! That punishment. And very challenging indeed.

Well for scryer point about having player to think "what skill of fire spec to use in this situation" when he only max fire spec, is not all useless I think. For example, if you have skill like fireball which attack one enemy only, but when the monster zerg him he might want to change to skill like "stomp the ground and the fire come out from the earth, making all the enemy around us fall". and different skill to adapt to different situation.

But that just completely what we all been doing in ARPG. Of course we need to adapt to different situation. Like in D1, playing as warrior, holding monster at door is on tactic to fight many monster one-on-one :)

For this thread topic, I really don't know what to discuss, what battle mechanic. At least not until medierra give any thought here :) I'm clueless about the topic. seem to broad.

[yerkyerk]

water monster is immune to fire
Nonono, water monster is immune to ice :)

Anyway, with a lot of immunities you could go both ways, so players would definetely be able to know what the monsters are immune against, as seemingly logical things aren't always that logical.

I do think there should be more ways to let the players think about creative approaches, giving monsters immunities is just one of them.

E.g. monsters with a very high chance to block, which need to be either destroyed with spells, or be stunned before you can hit them with ranged/melee attacks.
Monsters that cast a blood mana curse on you, which causes you to use health for spells instead of mana.
Tamers/charmers/turncoat spells, which have high chances at turning your pets against you.

[Renevent]

Nononono no no nonono, water monster immune to water. Ice freezes him and fire turns him into steam.

[alexei]

:rolleyes: wow confusing

water monster immune to fire - wrong since fire turn him into steam
water monster immune to ice - wrong since ice freeze the water

it is resistant actually lol :p my mistake
so water monster actually immune to what?

nonononono and no

[Malpheas]

Their own damage type, they're immune to.

[yerkyerk]

Water - but it's questionable wether water becomes a resistance at all...
Why not do this with ice monsters :) They should be immune to ice.

Skeletons should be resistant against poison (unless it's corrosive) and highly resistant against piercing (or very susceptible, depending on your point of view). Ghosts immune to physical damage, etc..

[Malpheas]

And display under the health bar as well. PLEASE.

[Jimbot]

Depending on the rating Crate is aiming for will determine the viability of the first paragraph's suggestions.

On the aesthetic side of things, I think critical hits that result in a monster's death should have a special overkill animation. It'll add to the kinetic feel of combat to see the enemy you just vanquished explode into a fine bloody mist. On that side of things, boss battles should get a unique kill animation, like in Dragon Age when you defeat an ogre or a dragon. Especially if it's one of those annoying bosses you want to see die in the worst way.

If there's a WIZARD class, I believe the more spells the better. Titan Quest was ok in this regard. My still favorite class to play in that game is the Conjurer (Spirit/Earth), but the spells were pretty unspectacular. Functional yet bland, there was no oomph to them nor did they dazzle you. I believe they should do this in Grim Dawn. It adds much needed flair to the caster's combat. Oh and don't neglect the MAGIC damage type. We all like Fireballs but sometimes we like to use Magic Missiles too.

[Malpheas]

I liked Dungeon Siege II for this:

Supeeeerrrr special KA BLAAAMM. Everything gooey gibbey goodness.

[Roros]

DS2's thunderous shot is one of my favourite rpg skills of all time. It's no exaggeration when I say I picked the ranger class every single time because of it, and it alone has made me install the game on several occasions.

I think the only thing more satisfying than setting it off down a corridor full of mini-bosses and minions, is my friend going "holy sh*t!" on vent shortly thereafter.

[alexei]

I liked Dungeon Siege II for this:

Supeeeerrrr special KA BLAAAMM. Everything gooey gibbey goodness.

Very true. I also like the thunderous effect of DS2 skill. It is soooo satisfying!

[TheRani]

Developing a skill, just to render it useless later is not fun. I think what is more fun is having a good variation of enemies that the player has to decide what abilities are best to use and when. This is better then forcing the player to take abilities he may not enjoy.

It reminds me of the poison and bleeding damage skills in TQ. A rogue might have fun with them in Normal for a while there, but it would ultimately be necessary to respec and focus on physical and piercing damage instead for Epic and Legendary, as bleeding would be useless, and even poison would be relegated to a mere debuff, rather than a viable form of damage. That made me sad, because it rendered something like half of the rogue skills pretty worthless past Normal. Just because you're including the ability to respec in a game does not mean it's cool to put spells or skills in a mastery that will be rendered mostly or completely worthless later. Please, please don't create skills that will not be useful at all in Epic or Legendary. Find a way to make every skill and damage type useful long-term, even if it's only situationally.

[Scryer]

Well, I have played Diablo 2 and Diablo 1, and one of my biggest gripes about them is that some skills simply did not scale with the player and quickly became worthless altogether.

That's just one thing I hated, I also disliked immunities - they are a cheap ploy if you ask me.

First of all, it would be better if what "carried" the player through the game was his skill and not simply his choice of spells. Like I said, the game mechanics don't have to be so boring as to force a player to switch skills simply because an enemy can't be harmed with that skill.

Saying things like immunities foster good player skill just can't be true. To me it fosters useless abilities.

Having fun battle mechanics like enemies with unique abilities, and giving the player useful situation abilities are far superior to a simple immunity.

I can understand enemies with higher resistances then normal, but not so much that they become impossible to deal damage to.

I don't think immunities should be in any ARPG, they cut back the action too much really, if the player is going to die, it should be because they didn't use the skills they choose to the best of their abilities and not simply because they lacked the "correct" type of spell.

[yerkyerk]

I guess we should view monster immunity as a personal preference than, not as something that's either good or bad, rather good for some people and bad for others.
At any rate, most people in this thread seem to agree with immunities and think they add something to the game.

[Scryer]

I just wonder exactly what they add other then anti-customization of skills and possibly skills that become useless altogether.

[Roros]

It's not like once you run into a fire immune monster at one point, your fireball becomes useless throughout the game. It can be a good way to make you have to mix up your routine, find value in your less used skills, or promote interdependency in a coop game.

[Scryer]

The problem I have with full immunities in coop is, what if everyone has the same skill set as you and all use fire-based attacks?

Same problem, I think just because this is a small game that it doesn't mean that a situation like that will never happen.

I do like the idea of higher resistance monsters at least then the player might have a chance at killing the monster. But not full-on immunes.

The thing is, you don't see immunities until late in the game, so a player that wants more depth in his game-play is forced to use skills he may not enjoy using, like ice-bolt instead of fire-ball.

Anyways, the main point I'm trying to make is that all skills are better off left useful at all times, making enemies harder because they have different and unique abilities is much better for game-play.

Alright, the main argument for immunities is that it forces the player to use skill.

My argument is that forcing the player to take an ability because they "have to" is not as fun as playing with the skills they prefer to use. If a player wants to use all fire based attacks he should be able to over-come any encounter with those abilities. That doesn't mean he will always live, it just means that, if the player has enough mad skill then he will live. But if the player is not skilled in his choices of abilities then he'll die.

If the same situation were applied but with fire immune enemies, then the player above that prefers all fire-based attacks would never have a chance to live. I would prefer that he had a chance to live using his preferred abilities and skill as a player and not just because immunes clobbered him.

I'm just not being clear enough in my posts I guess.

[yerkyerk]

I just wonder exactly what they add other then anti-customization of skills and possibly skills that become useless altogether.
That's been argumentated numerous times, you just don't want to accept others POV's on that matter. That's why I said that it's a personal preference.

One more time than;
It forces the players to rethink their winning strategies. The player will have to come up with creative and diverse means to battle his enemies.
Skills don't become useless altogether, they just become partially useless for certain encounters. And still part of the skills can be used. If a fireball stuns, they can still use the stun feature of the skill. A firewall could still block out enemies, a Blizzard could still slow enemies, etc...
Skills that do nothing more than tons of specific damage are boring anyway (like Diablo's Fireball, Firebolt and Fire ... another such thing - they're all the same and very uninspiring), so I expect skills to be more than one trick ponies.

[Scryer]

Pretty good idea about giving skills alternate mechanics that can help the player, but if that player had all fire-based attacks he's still be dead in the water.

Yes, it is preference, at least as far as I can tell we both have interesting arguments.

I guess a lot of this could be avoided if the developers just gave all classes varied skills with different elemental types and not focus too many abilities on one elemental type.

Then at least most players would not have to go through the frustrations that a Diablo 2 hell mode game would be like.

If all abilities scale with the player this would make the game even more fun.

[Malpheas]

What, like storm had both lightning and cold? How about Hunting? Poison, bleeding, piercing and physical. Dream had, what, vitality damage, physical, total damage% and electrical burn? To add to this, the amount of skill points that you had available in TQ almost demanded specialization into different skills than just what you wanted. Given that the most you could put into a skill was 16 points, there were perhaps 4-5 of these at most in any mastery.

Like yerk said, did you actually play TQ?

And on the topic of diablo III, you know that there will be immunities. As far as Diablo II: LOD, each class had access to multiple damage types, but people didn't use them. This wasn't because of lack of tools, but poor planning.

Pretty good idea about giving skills alternate mechanics that can help the player, but if that player had all fire-based attacks he's still be dead in the water.

This has been the case in TQ for a while now. Again, Scryer, you're too myopic to see the entire picture here; continually arguing your repeated point because you feel that people just don't understand you.

[Malpheas]

Well, I have played Diablo 2 and Diablo 1, and one of my biggest gripes about them is that some skills simply did not scale with the player and quickly became worthless altogether.

As some modders have said, namely BrotherLaz, why should a level one skill take you through to level 120? They are just not meant to play the game for you. *Keep in mind that level 120 was the max level for Median XL Diablo 2: LOD.

[Scryer]

Well, Diablo 3 will have "Partial Immunities" but not full-out 100% immunities to your abilities. The developers want to give the player a sense of depth with Diablo 3, none of your abilities will be made worth-less and all of the abilities you've chosen will be needed to over-come an encounter. The thing that will give the player the depth is the way the player will be using his skills he's chosen to over-come the encounter.

Diablo 3 will be about customization and for that to work that can't simply make a skill worthless to use once you get into hell mode. As for adding a secondary effect, well, then you're talking about primary attack abilities that have situational uses to them. They aren't making primary skills useless against any enemy.

Making any skill that becomes worthless later on, to me, is a total waste of development time.

[Malpheas]

Making any skill that becomes worthless later on, to me, is a total waste of development time.

I guess we're all lucky you're not developing this game or we'd all be powergamers.

[Scryer]

I don't think because a skill scales with the player that it will make them a god, what ever happened to player skill? Does player skill not exist in the ARPG genre?

[Malpheas]

Look you were just complaining that you should be able to power through hell in Diablo II with one element. Where's the skill in that?

[Scryer]

I think you miss the point of my arguments.

Well, I honestly hope I've made my points more clear then that.

I've explained my points many times over and in many different ways, I'm starting to think people just want to argue with me because I'm persistent.

Anyways, all of my posts explain what I'm saying about making skills worth-while for the player, but that does not mean that they will simply destroy all of the content, there's much better battle mechanics that come from a player's skill rather then from forcing a player to play a specific way.

It's your preference, I understand that, I just hope that you understand that just because a game doesn't have immunes doesn't mean that the player is going to always live.

I'm done arguing my point if you can't at least see my point then there's no reason for my to continue, especially after making many elaborate posts trying to explain it.

[Malpheas]

just because a game doesn't have immunes doesn't mean that the player is going to always live.

That's assumed; but I stand by preference for immunites as a challenge.

I'm done arguing my point if you can't at least see my point then there's no reason for my to continue, especially after making many elaborate posts trying to explain it.

Ah, irony.

[Jimbot]

I sort of agree with Scryer, no skill should ever be made obsolete due to player progression. I believe it should have some function or other the more it grows in power, either through a proficiency system or character advancement. I'm not saying a level 1 spell should insta-gib a monster, but it should have a practical application in a strategy with other skills/magic obtained in the mid or late game.

Say the most basic level 1 Fire spell is Fire Arrow, it would be illogical for this spell to ever become as powerful as, say, Fireball you get at level 10 (if it does, why even bother with fireball?), but it should have a practical application later on. Maybe at higher levels it lowers a monster's fire resistance upon a successful hit or something.

It won't ever be as powerful as Fireball, but it has an application that has long-term benefits to mid/end-game strategies. I think of it as a way for people to continually use the abilities given to them instead of having these short term abilities you never touch after a certain point, it's just a horrible waste.

[Scryer]

I understand some people have reasons for preferring immunities. I believe they give the player a false sense of player skill, sure. I'm sure a better argument could be made for them that I haven't heard though.

Yerkyerk at least was able to suggest something - secondary mechanics to a primary attack.

But all I get sometimes is "In my opinion - no." Which is not a very good argument.

[yerkyerk]

I agree that skills should remain useful throughout the game. This was already the case with TQ I think.

This was an issue with Diablo 2 pre1.10 though. Most skills were useless - and the more powerful spells seemed to be more of a visual upgrade of the weak skills than anything else. In 1.10 this was partially fixed by giving them synergies (though the balancing wasn't done well enough, so a lot of skills are still useless).

EDIT;
they give the player a false sense of player skill
Now that comes dangerously close to instigating, especially since you keep bringing up the same subject over and over again. Just drop the immunity ball already and let it be.

[Malpheas]

On skills, I think that skills that should be effective all the way through are tactical skills; and non-damage augmenting but attacks that affect the area.

An example of this would be the shield bash tier 2 skill (I think); it was effective all the way through, but the emphasis was on it's effect rather than damage.

I think the skills that are dumbfire damage should not scale with a player when they are low tier. Their effects should remain... well, effective. At least for my wishes.

One thing that I really liked about TQ was that the skills were not upgrades of previous versions, but that they had alterations at higher levels.

[Adidasimus]

Would be cool to see blood in fighting. Blocking or parry and of course jumping. The last is not really for fighting but it gives you the feeling your hero is a person and not a train. Also the animation if you attack an monster and he is not simply staying there and attack you but shivers from hitting or recedes or even falls.

That would be a truly action rpg but that's only my dreams=) but who knows;)

[jiaco]

How about a skill for a Vampire class where all the blood in the target is animated to burst out and wisp into the toon. The toon could absorb an increasing percentage of the monsters health and at higher levels, blood burst could work on mobs.

[Scryer]

Now that comes dangerously close to instigating, especially since you keep bringing up the same subject over and over again. Just drop the immunity ball already and let it be.

Well, honestly, if you look at the string of posts you'll see that I was the one being pushed here, but I did do a lot of pushing back myself. I don't like being called a fool. When people do that, I like to make it pretty clear why I believe what I'm saying.

Anyways, I don't mean to instigate fights, so I'll slightly change the wording of that phrase to make that clear.

[Megika]

This was an issue with Diablo 2 pre1.10 though. Most skills were useless - and the more powerful spells seemed to be more of a visual upgrade of the weak skills than anything else. In 1.10 this was partially fixed by giving them synergies (though the balancing wasn't done well enough, so a lot of skills are still useless).

Woah. I just want to say that this didn't in any way fix the problem - all it meant is that you need to invest 80 points to max out your Meteor, instead of 20. This doesn't work as a solution - the only good Fire Sorceress spells are still Fireball and Meteor, Lightning is the only good one in that tree and so on.

Regarding skills within trees - within a single skill tree, say, a fire spell tree, if different skills share purposes only one will be used - the better one. An obvious example would be the Fire Arrow/Fireball comparison mentioned earlier on. However, you can get around this by, say, giving Fireball larger area of effect, a cooldown and stun, and letting Fire Arrow reduce resistances and pierce one or two enemies at high levels. Then players would cast Fireballs as often as possible, and fill up the gaps with Fire Arrows.

You could take this further with a Molten Earth/Lava Pit/Fissure type skill, which will deal fire damage to enemies in the area over time and slow them - you could use Fireball and the slow effect combined to keep them trapped in the area, and kite around.

[yerkyerk]

What about weapon swapping? I found that mechanism always rather... strange

[Malpheas]

I think it's an interesting idea. But one that might be seldom used. I never relied on it unless there was some gimmicky proc that went with it.

You know what... I'm just going to play median XL again. LOL

[yerkyerk]

Myeah, I guess it could at least stay on the account that it doesn't hurt. Still think it's a bit of a goofy out-of-place mechanism though.

[Malpheas]

Or that spell scroll wheel discussion about assigning RMB skills: You could have a couple of swap slots for items in inventory as a separate character page and use a variant of a (button + mwheel) to quick swap between items in that page.

That way you could stack items that are needful and swap during combat a little easier.

[Azrael]

Please allow me to throw in a few ideas regarding immunities before we move on to another topic.

I for one am in favor of keeping immunities in the game. Not only do they keep the game challenging, they also make sense from a realistic point of view. For example, it would make sense for a fire spirit to be immune to fire but susceptible to ice.

I believe that there are other ways to keep the game challenging without forcing the player to resort to using skills that they do not like. Let us assume for example that I want to have my build use only fire-based skills, both offensive and defensive. Now, if I were to run into a bad ass Fire-Spirit or something, most or all of my skills might be rendered useless. Should I be forced to use my Ice-shards? No! That would totally break the believability of my build as being a Fire Mage! So what are our options in this case?

Items

- Perhaps I have a scroll that I can recite which would lower all the resistances of highly resistant monsters around me for a certain amount of time. Then I can start spamming fireball until all that remains is ash. It might still take me a long to kill the guy, but at least it's possible!

- Maybe I could equip drink a potion that would drastically increase my Defense Rating while also increasing, say, my Physical Damage of my weapons (for a limited time). This would allow me to dodge attacks while I come in close and deal some Physical Damage to that pesky Fire-Spirit.

Notice that these will add some sense of 'strategy' in that you have to make/find these items. This will help make scrolls and special potions more useful than they were before.

I also want to say that by keeping immunities, yes your character might have a very hard time killing a certain bad guy, but that can make the game more fun provided there are other ways to deal with them (like the items mentioned above). For example let's say I run into this Fire-Spirit but I don't have that special scroll with me, well I will have to retreat and go fetch one. In my opinion that adds a certain sense of adventure and challenge to the game and it builds up my anticipation for the coming battles.

I have a few other ideas that I will try to post later but I have to wrap things up for the moment.

[nighteyes]

...
And as for being easy to read, I just want to be able to see where the monsters are and whether they are alive or dead at a glance... Sometimes in Titan Quest it could be hard to spot an off-white skeleton in the tan grass unless it was moving, which wasn't a huge issue but something that can be a little annoying...

I found this too, My biggest trouble with it through was more on selecting the monster to be able to attack it, I reckon a system like they used for showing items, ie the press 'x' to show all magic or special items, was really good and could be modded to do the same for monsters, that way you just hold down the button and then click and hold on the enemy you want to kill, also give a faster overview of the levels of the monsters.
This would save me at least form always moving towards an attack I would of been safe from otherwise, when I miss the monster due to the animation during their attack.

[Void(null)]

I want Titan Quest with a Victoriana Skin and pistols. That would make me happy.

I think TQ had some really great battle mechanics, that the design decisions for game flow were spot on and I just want to see more of the same.

I don't want to see convoluted game mechanics, I don't want to see Titan Quest as a RTS/FPS/aRPG combo... I just want my fast paced, high powered and addictive aRPG that touches upon all the points that made TQ such a fun game.

[TQIT]

I want Titan Quest with a Victoriana Skin and pistols. That would make me happy.

I think TQ had some really great battle mechanics, that the design decisions for game flow were spot on and I just want to see more of the same.

I don't want to see convoluted game mechanics, I don't want to see Titan Quest as a RTS/FPS/aRPG combo... I just want my fast paced, high powered and addictive aRPG that touches upon all the points that made TQ such a fun game.


Void, you said it! :)

TQ was (and is still) the best, we should not change a winning formula!

[mamba]

My first advice would be to make it real clear what type of damage is being dealt by each weapon / spell, what resistances affect it and what skills etc. boost it.

In TQ there was a lot of confusion about what =% damage is, is it all damage types, is it physical ? It was used interchangeably which did not help arrive at a clear picture. Same for elemental damage (I am not talking about cold, fire or lightning but the actual type 'elemental').

Along with this, it has to be clear what resistance is used for which type of damage (if any) and it has to be clear a) what my resistance level is (in TQ I knew this about the primary resistances but not so much about the secondary ones) and b) what the monsters resistances are (not necessarily to a percentage point in precision, but I should know in rough terms whether it is slightly / medium / mostly / totally immune to a damage type).

I am not sure I would reduce the number of damage types, if so, I probably would do so only slightly, e.g. burn is simply fire DoT and so on, no need to have a new 'type' (basically, if they are resisted by the same resistance, they are the same type of damage) and would get rid of 'unclear' types like elemental altogether.

[medierra]

I want Titan Quest with a Victoriana Skin and pistols. That would make me happy.

I think TQ had some really great battle mechanics, that the design decisions for game flow were spot on and I just want to see more of the same.

I don't want to see convoluted game mechanics, I don't want to see Titan Quest as a RTS/FPS/aRPG combo... I just want my fast paced, high powered and addictive aRPG that touches upon all the points that made TQ such a fun game.

Man, I tried to play a bit of TQ:IT today just for reference after having not played in in many months and it was grueling. After playing Grim Dawn I have to say, the gameplay in TQ felt so slow and unrewarding it was tough to play.

It's sort of funny since nothing is radically different in Grim Dawn but I think there are just a lot of little improvements that add up to make the gameplay feel much better. Killing enemies certainly feels much more satisfying and the character seems more responsive, although I don't what we might have done to cause that other than perhaps the new pathing system and new animations. Whatever the case, I think we're doing something right.

All in all though, don't worry, it will be the same but better. Nothing we're doing will radically change the game in any way that diminishes the original formula. We're not adding any ridiculous complexity and we're not dumbing anything down. It is all good stuff that fits very nicely on top of the previous mechanics.

[Scryer]

It's pretty cool to see this thread kind of take-off without me making any wall of text posts, I hope I didn't crit anyone with my earlier responses.

Killing enemies certainly feels much more satisfying and the character seems more responsive, although I don't what we might have done to cause that other than perhaps the new pathing system and new animations. Whatever the case, I think we're doing something right.

Awesome to hear, yeah having a responsive model helps to suck you into the game-play pretty well, I'm glade you're adding more animations to the player's character, that always makes it more enjoyable to watch while your playing.

[MadWasp]

:rolleyes: wow confusing

water monster immune to fire - wrong since fire turn him into steam
water monster immune to ice - wrong since ice freeze the water

it is resistant actually lol :p my mistake
so water monster actually immune to what?

nonononono and no

nonon....water elemental immune to poison it's so simple. :)

[MadWasp]

Man, I tried to play a bit of TQ:IT today just for reference after having not played in in many months and it was grueling. After playing Grim Dawn I have to say, the gameplay in TQ felt so slow and unrewarding it was tough to play.

It's sort of funny since nothing is radically different in Grim Dawn but I think there are just a lot of little improvements that add up to make the gameplay feel much better. Killing enemies certainly feels much more satisfying and the character seems more responsive, although I don't what we might have done to cause that other than perhaps the new pathing system and new animations. Whatever the case, I think we're doing something right.

All in all though, don't worry, it will be the same but better. Nothing we're doing will radically change the game in any way that diminishes the original formula. We're not adding any ridiculous complexity and we're not dumbing anything down. It is all good stuff that fits very nicely on top of the previous mechanics.

I wanted to hear the same!
Go ahead make my day! :) You are king among developers!

[mamba]

I don't think because a skill scales with the player that it will make them a god, what ever happened to player skill? Does player skill not exist in the ARPG genre?

Actually player skill should have very little impact, this is not an FPS. If all that mattered were player skill, why do we even need to level up ?

Obviously a player who is active in attacking and evading potentially has an easier time than someone just standing there and hitting anything that comes his way, but in the end it is about char skills and gear, not player skills.

[cel]

Actually player skill should have very little impact, this is not an FPS. If all that mattered were player skill, why do we even need to level up ?

Obviously a player who is active in attacking and evading potentially has an easier time than someone just standing there and hitting anything that comes his way, but in the end it is about char skills and gear, not player skills.

Lets get over with the formalities quickly so we can get down to business; no one said that player skill is all that should matter while you are making it sound as if there was nothing between your "skill should have very little impact, level and gear is all that matters" and "all that matters is player skill so the concept of leveling up is unnecessary", so this argument is a fallacy - a false dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma).

You can ignore the above in your reply, it is only there so that people might avoid making such arguments in the future.

The existance of such a system (where skill doesn't matter much) in a game like this is completely absurd; It's impossible to give the player both a huge load of different kind of skills and playstyles to choose from and at the same time make using them require no tactical skill whatsoever (or in other words, to make it impossible to use them to gain a big tactical advantage). Completely and utterly impossible I say. The same applies to the opposing system.

In reality, the game offers the player multiple ways of solving the problem related to the slowly-raising difficulty of the game: Players with superior tactical skills can choose to omit the "grind" and progress with the use of intelligent tactics instead, while players with lesser skills can choose to omit that and just grind a little to make their character more powerful.

Which one of the solutions (with the amount of grinding and leveling up that can be done being irrational, the actual solutions span in steps between the two options) the player chooses however, are based on his personal preferences and have nothing to do with anything else.

[mamba]

The existance of such a system (where skill doesn't matter much) in a game like this is completely absurd; It's impossible to give the player both a huge load of different kind of skills and playstyles to choose from and at the same time make using them require no tactical skill whatsoever (or in other words, to make it impossible to use them to gain a big tactical advantage). Completely and utterly impossible I say. The same applies to the opposing system.

In reality, the game offers the player multiple ways of solving the problem related to the slowly-raising difficulty of the game: Players with superior tactical skills can choose to omit the "grind" and progress with the use of intelligent tactics instead, while players with lesser skills can choose to omit that and just grind a little to make their character more powerful.

The game offers different skills and different sets of skills with which you can win the game, so the tactical skill required from the player imo is figuring out combinations of in-game skills which work well. Beyond that no particular 'manual' or tactical skills are required.

I am a casual gamer and not particularly 'skillful', i.e. I get my butt kicked majorly in multi-player FPS if there are some decent players around. Yet I have no problem finishing TQ without any grinding or twinking. Yes, I die a few times along the way, but that has next to no impact.

The 'manual' skills which you need to move troops around in CIV are pretty much equivalent to the skills you need to beat TQ (or most other ARPGs for that matter).

Granted, you should not be completely braindead and just stand still and hack away in all cases, but it certainly does not require skills beyond what the most casual players have to complete the game successfully (and trouble free, if a few deaths do not matter to you).

There certainly are no tactical skills involved as you would need them in a FPS, beat-them-up or sports game. For all those it is the player skill that matters, for ARPGs its the chars skills which matter (almost exclusively).

imo a 'skillful' player with a bad char and gear will have a harder time than an 'average' player with a good char and gear.

[Scryer]

One could argue that part of the "skill" of ARPG's is knowing the right combination of player abilities and equipment to overcome even the hardest of game difficulties. (Like Legendary Mode)

[medierra]

There certainly are no tactical skills involved as you would need them in a FPS, beat-them-up or sports game. For all those it is the player skill that matters, for ARPGs its the chars skills which matter (almost exclusively).

imo a 'skillful' player with a bad char and gear will have a harder time than an 'average' player with a good char and gear.

I'm going to have to chime in and disagree here. I think there is virtually always room for player skill in any real-time game, although perhaps it depends on what you define as player skill... I think, as cel was saying, that ARPGs are great in that they cater to both types of players. The game can be won at varying paces with different ratios of player skill to character progression. TQ is designed so that casual players moving ahead at a normal pace can progress through the game without too much difficulty. However, hardcore players can rush ahead into more challenging areas of the game at lower level and compensate for lower character level and gear through human skill.

Even though it doesn't seem obvious that there is a lot of room for player skill in a game like TQ, I think you'd be amazed at how far a highly skilled player can push those little advantages. Having been forced to playtest with other people's horrendously configured embarassments of a character, I can tell you that a highly skilled player can easily out-perform an average player even with a rather sad excuse for a character.

If you think about it, RTS games, especially the old-school ones, do not have much in the way of "twitch" mechanics like aiming and reaction speed. I got into the game industry after rising to the top ranks of the competitive ladder in Age of Empires and being noticed by people at Ensemble Studios. There was next to nothing in the way of unit abilities in AoE, so you didn't even really have that to deal with. However, it was amazing how far you could push your advantage by just using little tricks and efficiencies. When I wasn't up to a real game with an evenly matched opponent I'd go into the "intermediate" lobby on the Microsoft game zone and try to get a 5 on 1 game going. Usually people would say that it would be a waste of their time because, obviously, it was impossible for 1 person to beat 5 other people. A lot of those guys would even think they were pretty good players. I'd usually have to mouth off to goad them into playing me - to teach me a lesson in humility. However, almost without fail I would destroy them. Usually after I'd wiped out most of the players the rest would quit calling me a cheater on the way out.

Often times I'd then get angry messages from people asking why I bothered to play if I was just going to cheat. I'd try to explain that I wasn't cheating but usually no one would believe it. They'd tell me that it was totally impossible to do the things I did in that game and there was no way I could not be cheating. To them it was just inconceivable that the game could be played that much better. They couldn't even imagine that there was that much more they could be doing in the game to gain an advantage.

The players at the top of the ladder were just exponentially better than those at the bottom, or even the middle, or really even 90% of the way to the top... Same game, same units, no aiming, no real timing. Micromanagement wasn't even nearly as effective in AoE as it was in Starcraft or most later RTS games. There was a certain knowledge of the game that gave top players an edge but a lot of it was also unit control, macro vs. micro management, situational awareness, adaptive thinking, and being able to make good decisions quickly. A huge part of the last skill came down to practice. Not actually sitting down and practicing (some players did that but it was too boring for me) but just playing a lot. If you played enough, you started to just react automatically and instantly to certain situations without having to stop and think about it.

I'd say a lot of those same elements are mirrored in their own way in ARPG. You don't have mass unit control or macro-management issues but there is more of an element of speed, timing, and skill ordering. Tactical movement is also pretty big.

Think of it this way. If a highly skilled player and a casual unskilled player were both given an identical TQ character with identical gear and put into a PvP match against one another, do you think they'd both end up winning a roughly equal number of matches? I don't think the casual player would ever win a single match. In some ways I think RPG and RTS are worse than FPS. In an FPS there is always the possibility of taking out a much more skilled opponent with a lucky shot when they don't see you or are in a fire-fight with a 3rd person. You usually can't 1-hit kill opponents while they're back is turned in RTS or RGP.

Oh - almost forgot. Another key component of these games is psychological. Keeping your cool when things are going crazy and remembering to think is crucial. A lot of times when the shit hits the fan people just start doing stuff without really thinking about the best course of action. Knowing when to retreat and when not to. One of the worst things I see people do is try to run away from enemies after there is no hope of escaping when if they'd just stayed their ground they might have won. This is just as true in FPS and RTS as it is in RPGs.

I remember we used to play WC3 a lot at Iron Lore. Because of the limited economy in WC3 (only being able to put so many peons on a gold mine, having to make a big and risky investment to tap a new mine) and the early onset of hostility, it just wasn't possible to win against overwhelming odds - UNLESS you had the psychological factor! When we first started playing WC3 at Iron Lore people were afraid to attack me and would just leave me to my own devices - which of course was the worst thing they could do. I would try to see how absurd of a victory I could pull off by going straight to tier 3 and making massive chimera-only armies or an entire army of sorceresses with polymorph just to give myself a challenge and make defeat for everyone else that much more humiliating. Sometimes I'd play EQ with my heroes (WoW wasn't out yet). I'd just run around leveling them up and win the game with nothing but 3 heroes. Mind you, the other people at Iron Lore in the early days weren't very good. The moral of this story though is that I eventually yelled at them for not attacking me early. I explained that if they just all ganged up on me early on, there wasn't much chance I could defend my town against 3-4 people's armies. It wasn't like AoE where you could overcome that by building all over the map and booming your economy. So basically, a lot of the time my victories were much more the result of psychology than actual skill. The same thing can happen in ARPGs, even when you're only fighting AI enemies. I see people get surrounded by some nasty monsters, freak out, and die or teleport away needlessly just due to panic.

[eisprinzessin]

I see people get surrounded by some nasty monsters, freak out, and die or teleport away needlessly just due to panic.I wish that GD will give us frequent encounters to hone our player skill. Butchering hordes of weak TQ mobs lures you into a false sureness and lowers your concentration, so that you panic on any freak challenge.

[mamba]

I'm going to have to chime in and disagree here. I think there is virtually always room for player skill in any real-time game, although perhaps it depends on what you define as player skill...

ok, I guess I was somewhat misunderstood / did not make myself clear enough.

Clearly skill always matters, otherwise results would be just random (or completely deterministic). However, of all the genres (e.g. Jump&Run, FPS, Sports, ...) Turn Based Strategy and (A)RPGs require the least 'joypad-skill'. For ARPGs it is about the right char-skills and gear, not player abilities.

Skill in coming up with a good build is still required, much like in TBS you also need a decent strategy. Quick button-reflexes are of very limited use however, the right skills and gear are far more important.

Case in point, I can Phantom Strike myself through all difficulty levels without using any other skills (only having additional passive and one-time-activated skills only, like the auras). Just run in circles until it has recharged and strike again. Not very skillful, but sufficiently effective to work.

Even though it doesn't seem obvious that there is a lot of room for player skill in a game like TQ, I think you'd be amazed at how far a highly skilled player can push those little advantages.

Agreed, I saw a video in which someone killed Typhon with no gear, just skills. Certainly impressive display of player skills, but imo somewhat misguided ;)

While I agree that not everyone could do it, this is actually making the game artificially hard for the player to show off his 'joypad-skill'. Such skill is certainly not required nor really of use if you play the game the 'regular way'.

If you think about it, RTS games, especially the old-school ones, do not have much in the way of "twitch" mechanics like aiming and reaction speed.

yes, they are more like herding cattle. Group and move you troops fast enough and switch back and forth to not forget your production either. A computer will always be better at that than a human, thank god for stupid AIs. RTS definitely benefit from 'joypad-skill'.


When I wasn't up to a real game with an evenly matched opponent I'd go into the "intermediate" lobby on the Microsoft game zone and try to get a 5 on 1 game going. Usually people would say that it would be a waste of their time because, obviously, it was impossible for 1 person to beat 5 other people. A lot of those guys would even think they were pretty good players. I'd usually have to mouth off to goad them into playing me - to teach me a lesson in humility. However, almost without fail I would destroy them. Usually after I'd wiped out most of the players the rest would quit calling me a cheater on the way out.

RTS <> ARPG, I did not say that no game requires skill, I specifically said (or at least meant to say) ARPGs require less skill than pretty much every other genre (which is not the same as saying skill does not help you, it is just less important).

Also, interesting that this is how you got into game development ;)

Think of it this way. If a highly skilled player and a casual unskilled player were both given an identical TQ character with identical gear and put into a PvP match against one another, do you think they'd both end up winning a roughly equal number of matches?

The skilled player, never debated that. However, if the chars were different, gear and skills would have a huge impact on that outcome, moreso than that is the case in most other genres (probably because in the others the gear / units are rather uniform / identical for all players)

I don't think the casual player would ever win a single match. In some ways I think RPG and RTS are worse than FPS. In an FPS there is always the possibility of taking out a much more skilled opponent with a lucky shot when they don't see you or are in a fire-fight with a 3rd person.

Hehe, take this as an indication of my suckiness then, when I played (very casually) FPS online with some friends, I kicked some peoples asses but there were two guys (who were way less casual about it) I played with one time, when I saw them in game I *knew* I was dead (learned from experience...), the question was : do I manage to take him down as well or is it just me ? 95% of the time it was just me, there was no time I ever managed to escape those guys either, so running away did not work either, face them, go down and hope to take them down while doing so.

Oh - almost forgot. Another key component of these games is psychological. Keeping your cool when things are going crazy and remembering to think is crucial. A lot of times when the shit hits the fan people just start doing stuff without really thinking about the best course of action. Knowing when to retreat and when not to. One of the worst things I see people do is try to run away from enemies after there is no hope of escaping when if they'd just stayed their ground they might have won. This is just as true in FPS and RTS as it is in RPGs.

In RPGs I usually do get away though, if only because the enemy cannot follow past a certain invisible border. I pretty much never died from running away in TQ unless I was real unlucky, usually I died from not running away but thinking the other one would go down first.

In RTS this is maybe different, because losing a unit is not losing your one char (the game) as in an ARPG. There I rarely retreat, I try to stick it out and inflict as much damage as possible even if I cannot win (that battle).

I explained that if they just all ganged up on me early on, there wasn't much chance I could defend my town against 3-4 people's armies.

Agreed, if they work together they should attack you early on, so you do not build up way faster than they do, making you even more difficult to overcome later on. If no such agreement exists, I can understand why everyone would be hesitant, noone wants the first to get a counter-attack ;)

PS smileys should not count as images

[medierra]

I think then that you are talking about difficulty balancing. I believe there is plenty of room for player skill to be exercised in most ARPGs but that it isn't as necessary because the games are not balanced to be challenging enough to require it.

I think the element of player skill only really comes to the forefront in PvP. Here you can see the measure of how large a role human skill plays vs. character building. In TQ the balancing mechanics are rather soft and it is quite possible for a lower level character to defeat a significantly higher level one, although it certainly may not be easy. In WoW, for example, due to hard balancing mechanisms, it may not even be possible for a low level character to damage a higher level one due to misses and resists.

So I wouldn't say that ARPGs are more lacking in opportunity for player skill than FPS, RTS, etc. I would only say that they are typically balanced so that skill is not mandatory to progress through the single player campaign. This is because the gameplay is more focused on the work / reward feedback loop than competition and challenge. However, you take a game like the Defense of the Ancients mod and I think there you have an example of game with RPG mechanics that is highly focused on competition and also involved a significant amount of player skill.

[mamba]

I think then that you are talking about difficulty balancing. I believe there is plenty of room for player skill to be exercised in most ARPGs but that it isn't as necessary because the games are not balanced to be challenging enough to require it.

I think the element of player skill only really comes to the forefront in PvP. Here you can see the measure of how large a role human skill plays vs. character building. In TQ the balancing mechanics are rather soft and it is quite possible for a lower level character to defeat a significantly higher level one, although it certainly may not be easy. In WoW, for example, due to hard balancing mechanisms, it may not even be possible for a low level character to damage a higher level one due to misses and resists.

So I wouldn't say that ARPGs are more lacking in opportunity for player skill than FPS, RTS, etc. I would only say that they are typically balanced so that skill is not mandatory to progress through the single player campaign. This is because the gameplay is more focused on the work / reward feedback loop than competition and challenge. However, you take a game like the Defense of the Ancients mod and I think there you have an example of game with RPG mechanics that is highly focused on competition and also involved a significant amount of player skill.

I agree to this, from a balance perspective char skills, stats and gear are rated a lot higher than player skills.

Never played Defense of the Ancients, so cannot comment on that. It is a Warcraft mod, so again it goes the RTS route rather than ARPG (even though they may have introduced RPG elements as you said). In RTS player skill clearly matters more than in ARPG (which does not mean it does not matter at all).

Personally I think player skill should play a less important role in (A)RPGs anyway. Balancing an ARPG to make player skill the dominant factor over gear / stats / char skills is breaking the formula from my perspective.
By 'breaking' I do not mean that the game necessarily has to be bad, it just is not what people expect from an ARPG. There might be a different crowd liking that (from RTS or FPS backgrounds), but it is not a traditional ARPG any more.

[medierra]

It is a Warcraft mod, so again it goes the RTS route rather than ARPG (even though they may have introduced RPG elements as you said). In RTS player skill clearly matters more than in ARPG (which does not mean it does not matter at all).

I don't think it is accurate to say that because DotA is built with an RTS toolset that it therefore is an RTS and has different game mechanics than an RPG that make skill a greater part of the equation. This isn't the case. The characters vs. character combat mechanics in DotA are virtually identical to those of TQ. I'd actually say that level and equipment play a bigger factor in DotA vs. player skill than they do in TQ.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that ARPGs should require a lot of player skill, I'm merely stating that the opportunity for it exists in the combat mechanics. Primarily player skill isn't a huge factor because there is virtually no penalty for death and if you're unskilled you can just keep leveling up until you're finally able to defeat enemies.

Have you ever tried beating D3 on hell difficulty in hardcore mode? It takes more than just the right gear.

[ASYLUM101]

Have you ever tried beating D3 on hell difficulty in hardcore mode? It takes more than just the right gear.

WE ARE JUST CIVILIANS WITHOUT TIME MACHINES OR EVIL MEDIERRA CONNECTIONS! D3 is out of our reach!

[medierra]

WE ARE JUST CIVILIANS WITHOUT TIME MACHINES OR EVIL MEDIERRA CONNECTIONS! D3 is out of our reach!

Hah, damnit, you know what I mean!

[Scryer]

A good mantra to have sometimes is easy to learn - hard to master.

That means, player skill is not the most important factor, but it can make a big difference.

I'm almost positive (99%) that D3 will come out late next year, the only reason it won't is if something "unexpected" pushes it back.

But seriously, I have to add you all as my friends list when it comes out.

We know what you mean Medierra.;)

[medierra]

I'm almost positive (99%) that D3 will come out late next year, the only reason it won't is if something "unexpected" pushes it back.


Do you have some information I don't? ;)

I'd be quite happy to play D3 in 2011 but based on what I've heard it, I wouldn't hold your breath. Evil Medierra does in fact have connections...

[ASYLUM101]

Lol, it doesn't take connections to know that....

Knowing Blizzard, they'll wait til that 12/21/2012....or maybe 12/20/2012 to give you a day to play it.

[mamba]

I don't think it is accurate to say that because DotA is built with an RTS toolset that it therefore is an RTS and has different game mechanics than an RPG that make skill a greater part of the equation. This isn't the case. The characters vs. character combat mechanics in DotA are virtually identical to those of TQ. I'd actually say that level and equipment play a bigger factor in DotA vs. player skill than they do in TQ.

Interesting, as I said, I never played it, so I do not really know what it is like first hand.

Have you ever tried beating D3 on hell difficulty in hardcore mode? It takes more than just the right gear.

I wish I had played D3 already :D and no, I never played D2 in hardcore in any difficulty. Yes, as soon as one death = game over, player skill in ARPGs becomes way more important. Which is precisely why I do not go for such modes, I try to stay alive as long as possible anyway, but I would hate to loose a char to a stupid mistake (or to play more carefully to avoid making them in the first place).

Enforcing hardcore (non-optional) would certainly make player skill an important factor, it also would break from ARPG tradition.

I am not saying there is no potential for player skill in ARPGs or that it is of no use today, just that the very mechanics of (A)RPGs work to make these a smaller impact compared to the mechanics of most other genres. Changing the mechanics to make player skill more important pretty much invariably makes the games less ARPG as well.

[Scryer]

Do you have some information I don't? ;)

I'd be quite happy to play D3 in 2011 but based on what I've heard it, I wouldn't hold your breath. Evil Medierra does in fact have connections...

I would be happy too, I guess I should just be glade they want to take so long to make the game, they do have some tremendous pressure to make it great.

Grim Dawn will probably be out before D3 if that's the case. I know that SC2 is due out the 1st half of this year, and Cata is due out near the end of the year.

D3, next year, would just complete the cycle.

[Fortuitous]

Personally one of the things that bothers me about some RPG games is how unclear combat mechanics can be presented to the person playing the game; I think a few people have mentioned that here as well, it's nice to know exactly what resistances do what, what damage types do what and to give an accurate summary of the actual damage being delivered as well as any DOT's. I know Titan quest isn't the worst...for example I have recently finished Mass Effect 2, which I was alt-tabbing out of to check out the damage characteristics of new weapons on the Mass Effect wiki site. I think this is pretty damn lazy on Biowares behalf, and really frustrating when I want to figure out what weapon is best for me.

Why can't the facts be there in the game rather then some useless text description? grrr

I would love to see an ingame tooltip wiki to describe the special abilities that loot gives you. Wishfully I would also like a pop up showing the actual overall effect to your character, eg a Helmet has an ability called "Fire mastery cooldown 20%" if you moused over that it would tell you a nice little description so there is no confusion (and no alt-tabbing to your Grimdawn wiki (sorry wiki owners, I do still love you guys!) like "Reduces the amount of time by 20% that Fire mastery active abilities take before you can use them" followed by a list of the abilities...and a before and after for that specific armour piece (ie the time before takes into account modifiers of other pieces of armour before hand) eg
Fire ball 3 seconds -> 2.4 seconds
Flame wall 10 seconds -> 8 seconds
Big Archdemon of the 9th level of hell 120 seconds -> 96 seconds

I love loot so much that I need to know every little thing about it :D

[ZZSmufa]

I agree, there really is room for improvement in this regard from TQ. The actual mechanics were left pretty muddled if one relied solely on in-game information. A Grimopaedia where various terms and mechanics were explained à la Civilopedia would be quite awesome, even if not exactly necessary. :)

[medierra]

Arg... don't get me started...

This always bothered me about TQ but the directive I was given early on was that the game had to be "accessible to casual players" and that too much information would just confuse them. So the decision was that we should just hide information... I was also told that presenting too many numbers to the player made the game feel like "playing a spreadsheet". Personally I love playing spreadsheets when it comes to ARPG. I mean, if you don't care and just want to run around and kill stuff, you don't need to look at it.

However, this information should ideally be there for the hardcore players who are trying to put a character through legendary difficulty - even more so given that we will offer hardcore mode in Grim Dawn. This is especially bad given that some of the combat mechanics are more complex than your average ARPG. Many people may not realize that when you get hit it actually rolls to see what body region you get in and that it is your specific armor for that body region that absorbs the damage, not your overall armor number, which is just an abstraction to approximate how armored you are.

Armor also has two numbers - protection and absorption. In the original system different armor would have both different protection and absorption rates. This was deemed too confusing though so we gave all armor a universal absorption rate. But all the player sees is an armor number and doesn't really have any idea what it does unless they look in the database.

All in all though, most of the time you don't need to know the specifics, so it works out alright so long as players know more armor = better, which is fairly easy to convey.

So the problem with Grim Dawn is that we're building off these old systems. It will take time to revise them so that we can provide more information. It also may not seem like it, but it can actually be tricky sometimes for us to figure out how to gather all the right variables from the code and put them together to produce accurate display information on damage and such. Finally, perhaps the biggest issue, is that someone has to write hundreds of tool-tip descriptions and create formats for them so they can display game numbers properly and be localized.

The conclusion unfortunately, is that we're sort of stuck with this for now. I think we can make a few improvements to the worst cases - like OA / DA not giving you any idea of your effectiveness against recent adversaries. However, revising the whole system is a lot of work and though it is something I care deeply about as a player, I'm fairly sure the vast majority of the audience couldn't care less. So I think I will make it my mission to fix this in later releases but I'm not sure we can get it in for the initial release.

[yerkyerk]

Unlike casual players though, hardcore players can have a big advantage as to how a game is perceived by outsiders as well as insiders. They make (huge) mods, write guides, answer noobs, tell others how awesome the game is, make youtube vids, build up the community, etc..
The more casual players will just play and forget.

So I think there's even good financial reasons to cater to a hardcore audience (aside from the fact that casual aRPG's are abundant).

[mamba]

This always bothered me about TQ but the directive I was given early on was that the game had to be "accessible to casual players" and that too much information would just confuse them. So the decision was that we should just hide information...

I am all for simplicity and accessibility, but you get that through a limited number of mechanics and using them very clearly and consistently not by sweeping some of them under the rug.

I believe this type of information scales well, casual players just ignore it while hardcore players will analyze every little detail to optimize their build.

However, this information should ideally be there for the hardcore players who are trying to put a character through legendary difficulty - even more so given that we will offer hardcore mode in Grim Dawn. This is especially bad given that some of the combat mechanics are more complex than your average ARPG.

the more complex your mechanics, the more the player needs to able to learn about them. Easy stuff (more armor = better, more damage = better) does not need documentation, but if you introduce a complex mechanic it sure needs enough detail information imo. I probably would rather reduce complexity to avoid having to have all the information over simply not providing that info but leaving the mechanic in.

Many people may not realize that when you get hit it actually rolls to see what body region you get in and that it is your specific armor for that body region that absorbs the damage, not your overall armor number, which is just an abstraction to approximate how armored you are.

Are we talking GD or TQ here ?

How do +% armor and + armor affect this ? Each item only counts towards its own armor rating or every item counts towards every other items armor rating as well ? By this simple decision (each item protects a single body part) you open up options which would not exist if armor were cumulative.

Armor also has two numbers - protection and absorption. In the original system different armor would have both different protection and absorption rates. This was deemed too confusing though so we gave all armor a universal absorption rate. But all the player sees is an armor number and doesn't really have any idea what it does unless they look in the database.

It is confusing ;) While I understand the concept there no longer is a clear cut better armor unless it is better in one value and at least equal in the other). Which armor is better then depends on how hard you get hit (low armor high absorption should be better for huge hits while high armor low absorption should be better for small hits).

I am not sure this really adds much to the game, other than complexity, so that would probably be one of those things I'd sacrifice for simplicity.

Out of curiosity, what do you think this will add other than less clear cut choices ?

However, revising the whole system is a lot of work and though it is something I care deeply about as a player, I'm fairly sure the vast majority of the audience couldn't care less. So I think I will make it my mission to fix this in later releases but I'm not sure we can get it in for the initial release.

I share this view, at least you will try to fix it later on, most never even try.

[Fortuitous]

I'm kind of curious as to why these casual ARPG fans would even be interested in an RPG; after all loot is only great if you know what all those great abilities do. Unless they just put on armour that looks the best to themselves and continue on?

I don't know, I would like a casual RPG fan who doesn't care about the battle mechanics to chime in and explain what it is that makes a game like this appealing to themselves, after all we hardcore guys/gals can't compete with them in terms of fan numbers.

I think your opinion on game mechanics Mamba echo's my own; rather then hide a mechanic because of complexity, simplify it but make it obvious and dependable. In saying that, I love how Titan quest did break up armour into portions of the body...a very interesting game mechanic in my opinion that makes you think twice about using armour with great abilities but poor armour. The combining of 2 masteries was a unique idea as well. I would like to see Grim Dawn add some more unique gameplay mechanics to make it stand apart from more well funded games like Diablo III.

YerkYerk, I think this is what happened with Windows Vista; the geeks didn't like it so recommended against it...and for those who didn't care, whenever they needed help with vista they would talk to a geek who...guess what?...didn't like windows vista.

In saying this though, I'm mightily pleased that Medierra is concerned about this being a problem; as a spreadsheet numbers fan I have quite a bit more confidence in this game now. :D

[ASYLUM101]

The conclusion unfortunately, is that we're sort of stuck with this for now. I think we can make a few improvements to the worst cases - like OA / DA not giving you any idea of your effectiveness against recent adversaries.

Ohhh, ala D2 Attack Rating/Defense? I always thought that was pretty useful, it was funny seeing my necro's 15% chance to hit Baal.... :)

[Confuted]

perhaps we could see a 'body throwing' skill. When a lone enemy humanoid is running towards the player, the 'throw' skill will have your character grab the enemy and throw them over the character's shoulder...finishing move could follow. Certainly if the skill worked 100% of the time it would be 'overpowered' so there should be some repercussions of a block or evade by the enemy.

Now throwing for a humanoid over the shoulder is easy to visualize but an extra legged creature would be difficult. Perhaps some sort of evade/sidestep and a grab of a leg and swing the creature around (kinda like Mario but more realistic).

*idea point of origin: Grim Dawn IRC Chat*

[ASYLUM101]

*idea point of origin: Grim Dawn IRC Chat*

YEAH! So maybe you hippies should join the chat and brainstorm with us!

[medierra]

I'm kind of curious as to why these casual ARPG fans would even be interested in an RPG; after all loot is only great if you know what all those great abilities do. Unless they just put on armour that looks the best to themselves and continue on?

Ha, exactly. I think the poor early sales of TQ was partially a result of the fact that the ultra casual audience isn't interested in this kind of game or, at least, even if they might like it, they wouldn't think to buy it unless someone else introduced them to it.

I think ILE was sometimes too concerned with appealing to this mythical consumer while not focusing enough on appealing to the core ARPG audience that we knew existed and would buy the game if we positioned it right.

Of course, a little marketing in North American would have been good too... sigh...

[medierra]

I am all for simplicity and accessibility, but you get that through a limited number of mechanics and using them very clearly and consistently not by sweeping some of them under the rug.

Well the problem here is not limiting the number of mechanics but rather that the mechanics themselves are complex. Simplistic mechanics don't always make for better gameplay. Sometimes you need more complexity (at least under the covers) to create a better feel, better balance, or more interesting gameplay. The important thing for accessibility is that the high-level concept is simple. Higher armor number = better. That may be all the casual player needs to know and it works fine for them. However, behind the scenes there may be a lot more going on and this add complexity, or should I say - sophistication (see now it sounds good!), can make the game more interesting for the hardcore player that understands it. Of course, to understand it you generally need to expose some of it somewhere in the UI. For the casual player, you can display the base armor number while including a mouse-over for the hardcore with the additional details.

I think part of the problem with TQ is that I began designing it with the hardcore D2 player in mind but then was constantly being fought to simplify things, hide numbers, etc. At one point I was told by one of the owners that playing TQ felt like playing a spreadsheet - why would players want to look at numbers? There was even a suggestion that the next game should do away with all the numbers and depict everything in-game through visuals. I guess that is sort of the direction of Fable. I think that is all well and good if that's the kind of game you set out to make but the initial vision was to create a game that would appeal to the Diablo audience and, being a pretty hardcore D2 player myself, I'm fairly certain that audience wants to see numbers.





Are we talking GD or TQ here ?

How do +% armor and + armor affect this ? Each item only counts towards its own armor rating or every item counts towards every other items armor rating as well ? By this simple decision (each item protects a single body part) you open up options which would not exist if armor were cumulative.

Yes, that is how armor works in TQ. If you mouse-over armor in the char info screen it will show you the breakdown, however, it doesn't show you the % chance of being hit in any given location. If a piece of armor has +% armor, then it adjusts the armor of that particular piece. If a skill has +% armor it adjusts all your armor. If an item or skill has +armor, then it is global and gets added on top of the armor of whichever part of your body gets hit.


It is confusing ;) While I understand the concept there no longer is a clear cut better armor unless it is better in one value and at least equal in the other). Which armor is better then depends on how hard you get hit (low armor high absorption should be better for huge hits while high armor low absorption should be better for small hits).

I am not sure this really adds much to the game, other than complexity, so that would probably be one of those things I'd sacrifice for simplicity.

Out of curiosity, what do you think this will add other than less clear cut choices ?

I think when I started working at Iron Lore, which was ... 9 years ago now? Wow... anyway, I was a little overly focused on creating highly complex nuanced mechanics that I don't think the average player would give a crap about. I'd like to believe I've settled back a bit in my "old age" and found something of a happier medium. I think many designers tend to be sort of self-indulgent in their designs early in their careers and this is perhaps one of those cases.

My plan though was to create heavy, light, and caster armor with similar protection values that were differentiated by their absorption. I was playing Dark Age of Camelot at the time, so was inspired by their armor system, which worked in a similar fashion.
[/QUOTE]

[Scryer]

That's not to say that hidden values are a bad thing, a game can have the basic stats for casuals and more complex stats for the hardcore.

Though, I've always enjoyed the idea of - Easy to learn, hard to master, like chess.

[medierra]

That's not to say that hidden values are a bad thing, a game can have the basic stats for casuals and more complex stats for the hardcore.

Though, I've always enjoyed the idea of - Easy to learn, hard to master, like chess.

Yes, well, we could always get rid of equipment and refine the combat down to "if you can move into your enemy's square on your turn, you kill them". Different classes can have different movement patterns that may be more or less effective against different enemies depending on what color square they're in. ;)

Although, I think chess is actually more complicated to learn than TQ. Before a beginner can even start a match of chess they must memorize how each piece moves and may be rudely surprised if they aren't also made aware of various other rules such as castling, en passant, and pawn promotion.

In TQ all you need to know to begin playing is that pointing and clicking moves your character and attacks enemies.

[Scryer]

I don't expect a modern day chess game when I play a game like TQ or D2 or Torchlight, but it's nice to have that extra bit of complexity in later difficulties. Torchlight didn't really have extra difficulty even on it's hardest mode, D2 got more difficult and even impossible in it's later difficulties, TQ was fairly fun in it's later difficulties but was either too easy or too hard or just right depending on your class combo and gear / skill setup.

I do wonder how you can bring a sense of challenge into the player without creating sort of overburdening systems, though from everything I've read about GD, you're trying very hard to introduce new challenges and even spice up the game-play with new mechanics like orbs, I'm glade you guys decided to evolve!

So, when Alpha finally gets released, we the community will make sure the game feels and looks right, and do our best to give you some awesome constructive feedback, which I can't wait to provide for you.

There was an article I read the other day, and I kind of wonder what you might think of it... crazy, or just different? I think you'd say it's just different... I'll post it in the appropriate thread too. :)

[Furycat]

This post may be a longish one - this is one thing that interests me in games immensly.

I am a huge fan of mechanics in games (long time WoW player and DnD dungeonmaster (20 years!) . I HATE the fact that most ARPGs are basically tank and spank fights where you and a boss essentially beat on each other until one of you die, perhaps with the occasional 'move out of the fire' moments.

TQ had some clever fights, but in general was tuned a little too easy for the best builds and pooptardedly impossible for weaker ones. Hades and Typhon were interesting, as were the Cerebrus and Charon (although these were way too simple, even on Legendary). However most bosses were 'oh this guy has a mean telegraphed strike/breathes a mean cone/poops a mean nova).

Yes, a lot of people respond to this sort of thing with 'but a game should not be too hard for us casual gamers!'. I agree...to a point. But don't get me started on 'casual gamers'...I'm going to toss a thread up about this in a bit.

There are tons of interesting mechanics that can be used to spice up a game and make it challenging without simply throwing big numbers at you to check your gear/class/build. Here are some common, interesting mechanics.

Tank and Spank: A period where the boss and the player simply trade blows with little movement or thought.

Damage race: A period where the player needs to inflict a certain amount of damage on a boss within a certain amount of time. A bad consequence results if this is failed (for example a boss has a phase with an energy shield that must be broken down before a stacking aoe DOT gets strong enough to one-shot the player)

Dodge attacks: A powerful attack that must be avoided or a lot of damage will result. Can be differently shaped. TQ was good at these.

LOS attacks: A powerful attack that covers such a large area that it cannot be dodged. Thus a physical barrier must be used (pillar, wall, giant asian love doll) to block the player from the boss.

'Clear Zone' attacks: A massive AOE attack that leaves a small (usually randomly placed) area where the attack will do less/no damage. The player must reach the zone before the attack activates/too much damage is taken.

Adds: The boss spawns smaller enemies which do something. TQ did this...but generally not very well (adds died to incidental AOE without ever becoming a problem except for one fight). Fun things can be done - 'adds must be killed before boss can be damaged', 'damage adds do to players can heal boss', 'add A must be kited through boss attack B to kill it' etc.

Pursuits: The boss temporarily chases the player around, killing them very quickly if they try to go toe to toe. The player must use every trick available to evade the boss for this time, slow the boss down and survive until the phase ends.

Minefields: The boss uses an attack that rapidly creates 'damage zones' and 'clear zones' in random places. The player must stay in the clear zones as much as possible and move to a new one once it becomes a damage zone.

'Fire': An attack that leaves behind a stationary (or slowly moving/spreading) damage zone. Lots of fun can be had with these. If the zones are permanent, they act as a sort of Damage Race (kill the boss before you have nowhere left to go). They can be used to kite adds through, as a 'Risk or Reward' buff (places a stacking DOT on player when inside the damage zone but also increases damage done) or even as an LOS point for another attack.

There are tons more I can think of, but let me give you an actual example of a fight in an RPG (well it had ARPG style real time battles) that I remember having really fun mechanics.

I don't recall the name of the game, but the fight went like this:

There are these two mages:
- One has fire abilities, one has ice abilities.
- The Fire guy lobs fireballs at you. If they miss, they leave a patch of fire where you were standing when the fire was aimed at you. It hurt when you stood in it and hurt more the longer you remained.
- The Ice guy summons blizzards - slow moving patches of high damage. These were permanent and once you had 3 or 4 of the bastards floating around, you were pretty much dead.
-You could 'kill' a blizzard by kiting it through the fire. This would put out the fire.

Once you did enough damage you triggered the second phase which was really fun and frantic.
- Every 30 seconds or so the Ice dude would 'freeze' the area, meaning you would stop moving and be killed pretty fast by the next fireball/blizzard.
- The only way to survive this was to deliberately stand in the fire, timing it in such a way that you stayed in long enough to avoid the freeze, but not long enough for the damage to ramp up enough to one-shot you.
- Every 30 seconds (alternating with the Ice guy) the Fire guy would 'lock onto' the player with a sort of beam. This would hit you quite hard until you got out of range. However if you were to stand in a way where the Ice guy was between you and the Fire guy it would hit him for a lot of damage.

There we go - a nice, complex little boss fight that shouldn't be too hard to script, has a nice learning curve without being ZOMFG impossible.

[Drogirant]

This post may be a longish one - this is one thing that interests me in games immensly.

I am a huge fan of mechanics in games (long time WoW player and DnD dungeonmaster (20 years!) . I HATE the fact that most ARPGs are basically tank and spank fights where you and a boss essentially beat on each other until one of you die, perhaps with the occasional 'move out of the fire' moments.

TQ had some clever fights, but in general was tuned a little too easy for the best builds and pooptardedly impossible for weaker ones. Hades and Typhon were interesting, as were the Cerebrus and Charon (although these were way too simple, even on Legendary). However most bosses were 'oh this guy has a mean telegraphed strike/breathes a mean cone/poops a mean nova).

Yes, a lot of people respond to this sort of thing with 'but a game should not be too hard for us casual gamers!'. I agree...to a point. But don't get me started on 'casual gamers'...I'm going to toss a thread up about this in a bit.

There are tons of interesting mechanics that can be used to spice up a game and make it challenging without simply throwing big numbers at you to check your gear/class/build. Here are some common, interesting mechanics.

Tank and Spank: A period where the boss and the player simply trade blows with little movement or thought.

Damage race: A period where the player needs to inflict a certain amount of damage on a boss within a certain amount of time. A bad consequence results if this is failed (for example a boss has a phase with an energy shield that must be broken down before a stacking aoe DOT gets strong enough to one-shot the player)

Dodge attacks: A powerful attack that must be avoided or a lot of damage will result. Can be differently shaped. TQ was good at these.

LOS attacks: A powerful attack that covers such a large area that it cannot be dodged. Thus a physical barrier must be used (pillar, wall, giant asian love doll) to block the player from the boss.

'Clear Zone' attacks: A massive AOE attack that leaves a small (usually randomly placed) area where the attack will do less/no damage. The player must reach the zone before the attack activates/too much damage is taken.

Adds: The boss spawns smaller enemies which do something. TQ did this...but generally not very well (adds died to incidental AOE without ever becoming a problem except for one fight). Fun things can be done - 'adds must be killed before boss can be damaged', 'damage adds do to players can heal boss', 'add A must be kited through boss attack B to kill it' etc.

Pursuits: The boss temporarily chases the player around, killing them very quickly if they try to go toe to toe. The player must use every trick available to evade the boss for this time, slow the boss down and survive until the phase ends.

Minefields: The boss uses an attack that rapidly creates 'damage zones' and 'clear zones' in random places. The player must stay in the clear zones as much as possible and move to a new one once it becomes a damage zone.

'Fire': An attack that leaves behind a stationary (or slowly moving/spreading) damage zone. Lots of fun can be had with these. If the zones are permanent, they act as a sort of Damage Race (kill the boss before you have nowhere left to go). They can be used to kite adds through, as a 'Risk or Reward' buff (places a stacking DOT on player when inside the damage zone but also increases damage done) or even as an LOS point for another attack.

There are tons more I can think of, but let me give you an actual example of a fight in an RPG (well it had ARPG style real time battles) that I remember having really fun mechanics.

I don't recall the name of the game, but the fight went like this:

There are these two mages:
- One has fire abilities, one has ice abilities.
- The Fire guy lobs fireballs at you. If they miss, they leave a patch of fire where you were standing when the fire was aimed at you. It hurt when you stood in it and hurt more the longer you remained.
- The Ice guy summons blizzards - slow moving patches of high damage. These were permanent and once you had 3 or 4 of the bastards floating around, you were pretty much dead.
-You could 'kill' a blizzard by kiting it through the fire. This would put out the fire.

Once you did enough damage you triggered the second phase which was really fun and frantic.
- Every 30 seconds or so the Ice dude would 'freeze' the area, meaning you would stop moving and be killed pretty fast by the next fireball/blizzard.
- The only way to survive this was to deliberately stand in the fire, timing it in such a way that you stayed in long enough to avoid the freeze, but not long enough for the damage to ramp up enough to one-shot you.
- Every 30 seconds (alternating with the Ice guy) the Fire guy would 'lock onto' the player with a sort of beam. This would hit you quite hard until you got out of range. However if you were to stand in a way where the Ice guy was between you and the Fire guy it would hit him for a lot of damage.

There we go - a nice, complex little boss fight that shouldn't be too hard to script, has a nice learning curve without being ZOMFG impossible.

Oh man, I just want to say that I completely agree with you and thoroughly enjoyed reading the Boss fight you described. :)

[eisprinzessin]

Furycat - I like your ideas. But some of them require precise micro-movement, which I find is not well supported by TQ's point-and-click system. I at least end up in messy battles quite often.

Moving to avoid attacks/mines or to reach clear zone works best on scale like when fighting Typhoon. Just move into his back, when he casts the molten(?) rocks from the sky. But I easily end up over one of the cracks in the ground when fighting Cerberus ... usually the death sentence for me.

[Furycat]

Furycat - I like your ideas. But some of them require precise micro-movement, which I find is not well supported by TQ's point-and-click system. I at least end up in messy battles quite often.

Moving to avoid attacks/mines or to reach clear zone works best on scale like when fighting Typhoon. Just move into his back, when he casts the molten(?) rocks from the sky. But I easily end up over one of the cracks in the ground when fighting Cerberus ... usually the death sentence for me.

Oddly...I find these point and click games wonderful for micro-movement (compared to things like WoW/bullet hell games) since you can basically click where you need to go. You can see a lot of what is going on and react fast to it.

Personally I never had a problem with cerberus or Charon at all. The only fights I found a bit frustrating were the Manticore, the Trogg dude in the snowy mountains in act 3, the Bone Dragon and the miniboss before Hades. All of these fights had nasty tricks that could basically one shot you with little warning/chance to react unless you stacked a lot of specific resistances.

I'm not saying it should be crazily hard. Safe zones could be big and give you a while to get there (at least on Normal). Burn phases could be generous unless they were serving as a gate/gear check.

However, a bit of precise movement and attacks that require you to move differently or even use a bit of lateral thinking (add management, burn, move quickly to a certain area) add a lot of variety.

[medierra]

Oddly...I find these point and click games wonderful for micro-movement (compared to things like WoW/bullet hell games) since you can basically click where you need to go. You can see a lot of what is going on and react fast to it.

I'm not saying it should be crazily hard. Safe zones could be big and give you a while to get there (at least on Normal). Burn phases could be generous unless they were serving as a gate/gear check.

However, a bit of precise movement and attacks that require you to move differently or even use a bit of lateral thinking (add management, burn, move quickly to a certain area) add a lot of variety.

I've been thinking along similar lines, which is why I am very interested in adding channeled skills. I think there are definitely right and wrong ways to implement these kind of additional tactical elements to the game. The controls are indirect and by no means precise, so you have to accommodate for that. In thinking about this, I've thought a lot about Warcraft 3, which had some very cool dynamics like this when it came to the hero / armor interactions. I'm especially familiar with this because most of the people at ILE were RTS n00bs, so when we played WC3 in the office I'd sometimes just "Everquest it" and try to win the game with only 3 heroes and no army to make things challenging. I really enjoy those elements of tactical movement and having to react to shut down enemy's channeled spells though.

[Renevent]

That fire/ice witch battle sounds like the twins from Zelda: Ocarina of time.

[Furycat]

A friend and I just finished designing a boss encounter for our NWN2 campaign (WTB the NWN 1 editor :/ ). Took us around 3 hours to script, but quite happy with how it came out (was meant to showcase some interesting boss mechanics designs). I'd love to see something along these lines in GD (not exact mechanics, just a general idea of what I <3)

Boss is called Calibraxis: Carver of Souls.

Mechanics are quite simple.

- You fight the big demon in a large pentacle with a cultist at each point.
- The 'arena' is divided into 6 sections with invisible triggers like the slices of a pizza.
- At any time a 'slice' can become active and animates with a number of swirling blades. If a player stands in the slice for more than 2 seconds they take damage, are slowed and spawn a Soul add which needs to be killed fast (has very little health but hits hard).
- There is always 1 'slice' active and it changes every 10 seconds or so.
- Every so often the boss animates an attack and players need to move away from him asap or have a similar effect as he sets off a nasty nova.

The main fun is in how you have to kill the boss. He can be burned down like a normal enemy but it would take a long time. However, once he has taken in a certain amount of damage, he runs over to a cultist..

- He animates and begins draining the cultist's soul. He is invulnerable while doing this.
- Draining takes 10 seconds. If he successfully drains the cultists soul, he heals for quite a bit of life.
- The cultists don't have much health, but have enough to make it a challenging 'switch to the add and burn it hard' moment.
- If a player kills a cultist while Calibraxis is draining it, the boss takes a huge amount of damage.
- Cultists respawn after being drained.
- Every time a cultist dies, the boss returns to the centre of the arena and casts a big attack, calling in a mass of blades from the outside of the arena in. The player must stack on the boss to avoid taking huge damage.

- One boss is at around 25% health he enters phase 2.

- This is a survivability fight. The boss constantly haemorrages souls (loses health) for 1 minute until dying.
- He moves fast and hits very hard in this phase. Players need to slow him down and use any way they can to survive.
- Inflicting damage on the boss will stun him briefly (if enough is done) but he cannot be permanently damaged by player damage.
- There will be 3 'pizza slices' active in this phase. The slow they inflict will be very dangerous.
- If the boss can be positioned in such a way that a 'slice' will trigger with him on it, he will be briefly slowed.

Fight is simpler than it sounds and a lot of fun :P There we go, that is my 'ideal' fight.

[Furycat]

Finally back after a good six months with no PC - really wonderful to see this game going. Sorry for the Necro Just wanted to bring this post back rather than starting a new one (as this thread had some nice ideas), as a place for people to plan out their dream boss encounters.

LOVE the sound of multiple player tuned bosses - since this can add a whole new level of complexity to stuff.

[Dracaena]

On the topic of monster immunities...

..they are good, they add variation and force you to not just use the same ability throughout the entire game. HOWEVER if they are going to exist at all, they should be present from the very beginning. If you will need to diversify damage types to succeed late game, then the same should be true early game.
It's no fun thinking you're onto a winning strategy and then suddenly finding you have to roll a new character once you get to the late game.

[wsensor]

I would like to see ammo. (Even if most people would probably want to have it set to off.)

I know that most people do not like that kind of restriction. However I hate how it seems like you have unlimited ammo in games.

I would at least like to have the ability to add in ammo and such in mods. (With reload times and max ammo per gun before reloading. Along with multiple ammo types.)

[eisprinzessin]

There will be unlimited ammo. We will probably have "ammo" as a type of add-on that you can attach to ranged weapons that works like the relics in TQ.
ammonition will be unlimited, but you can modify/enchant it
This character has skills from the "demolition" mastery. In the screenshots you can see two skills currently named "canister bomb" and "thermite mines". Also, as a main attack the character is using "ammo modification" with "explosive rounds".

[hooby]

I would like to see ammo. (Even if most people would probably want to have it set to off.)

I know that most people do not like that kind of restriction. However I hate how it seems like you have unlimited ammo in games.

I would at least like to have the ability to add in ammo and such in mods. (With reload times and max ammo per gun before reloading. Along with multiple ammo types.)

Do you really believe that this does fit into a Hack&Slay type of game?

I'm not against ammo restrictions. I believe they are very essential and enriching to certain types of games, especially the survival horror genre, which would just loose many of it's thrills had you unlimited ammo.

But in a typcial ARPG...
Diablo2 had ammo for Bows and Crossbows. What did it bring to the gameplay? Absolutely nothing I believe. You had to be able to carry so many arrows, that you could just shoot as if they were unlimited, but from time to time you had to teleport to town to replenish them, and they did always use up some space in the inventory.

I can fully agree to ammo restrictions if the gameplay does gain something from doing so.
But I fail to see what a game like Grim Dawn possibly could gain by doing so?

[Tonester]

Someone told me about this game while talking about TQ and I had to come check it out. Gave some money... and now I'm trolling through the forums trying to figure out when I can start testing it ;)

At any rate, being a couch game designer, I thought I would chime in.

I personally feel that ARGPs need to become a bit more sophisticated, not complex (I'm so stealing this wording), in terms of the controls and battle mechanics.

Personally, I feel point and click just doesn't do it any more. I really feel having some sort of control (preferably analog) that is separate from your aiming/attacking functions is key to rewarding and engaging battle mechanics. A great example of this is Alien Swarm.

Use the mouse to rotate or turn/face your character as well as designate the "range" on some attacks. Use WSAD or an analog control for side-stepping, going forward, and back pedaling. And this is where a separate control really differentiates itself from typical point and click action titles. You can't side-step or back pedal in point and click.... which really limits the engagement of combat, imo. Add in some movement penalties for back-pedaling (like slower movement) and you have some very subtle, yet important, decisions to make to a character's play style... not to mention creating depth for player skill. This is still very easy to learn, but hard (and rewarding) to master.

And there are all sorts of cool and unique mechanics this opens up to the ARPG genre:

* Shields that have to physically intercept a missile attack to block it. As such, the player must rotate/position the character appropriately while attacking... but maybe holding the duck/walk (or activating a special skill) makes the warrior up the shield up in front of him (he can't attack) but allows him to charge or push forward while ensuring the shield is correctly positioned (instead of being to one side).

* Rogue classes and speed buffs allow these typical hit-and-run classes to actually hit and run, circle strafe/kite, etc. Perform some sort of stun attack, and then circle strafe the stunned enemies while unloading a 1-handed crossbow.

* Mages that have focus attacks that only work while stationary or moving slowly (aka, back-pedaling). When you get aggro, you have to do a 180 and teleport to safely, do another 180, and start in again.

* Have some sort of "laser sight" which isn't too intrusive (or maybe only comes up when you are stalking) which shows the direction your character is facing for hitscan/dash attacks while also having your mouse be some sort of range finder for lobbed projectiles (bombs), AoE attacks (storms... anything that doesn't require an enemy for a target).

There are tons more. But this kind of makes ARPGs feel more like true action games. You can still map common attacks (like auto-attack, alternate attack, main class attack) to the mouse while using other buttons for instant attacks or special skills... in addition to movement.

[wsensor]

Do you really believe that this does fit into a Hack&Slay type of game?

I'm not against ammo restrictions. I believe they are very essential and enriching to certain types of games, especially the survival horror genre, which would just loose many of it's thrills had you unlimited ammo.

But in a typcial ARPG...
Diablo2 had ammo for Bows and Crossbows. What did it bring to the gameplay? Absolutely nothing I believe. You had to be able to carry so many arrows, that you could just shoot as if they were unlimited, but from time to time you had to teleport to town to replenish them, and they did always use up some space in the inventory.

I can fully agree to ammo restrictions if the gameplay does gain something from doing so.
But I fail to see what a game like Grim Dawn possibly could gain by doing so?

Yea but if they added an option for ammo you could make a survival/horror mod. I see no problem with unlimited ammo in the normal game. I just would like to have the option of having ammo limits and such available for mods.

Use the mouse to rotate or turn/face your character as well as designate the "range" on some attacks. Use WSAD or an analog control for side-stepping, going forward, and back pedaling.

I like these things as well. I play a couple games that use these things. SOE Infantry Online (not as great as it used to be/seem T_T) and dead frontier. Both use something along those lines.