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AoD Combat Demo R3 Released

Chaud

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Droog White Smile said:
I have zero interest in AoD's combat. It's a silly relic of the past.

Oh, hell yeah. And thank God (and VD) for that. Unfortunately, it seems that the fashion now is to say that something old is bad, just for being old. A pity.

BTW, thanks for the link, Konjad.
 

Jim Cojones

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Lebanese Warrior said:
Jim Cojones said:
Lebanese Warrior said:
Jim Cojones said:
Lebanese Warrior said:
Melcar said:
Does anyone care anymore?
Moi, and apparently 190,112 other people.
Fail.
Care to elaborate?
The thread informs about a number of visits every month and one person can visit forum multiple times.

Do you understand what the word 'unique' means? Do you understand it when it is used in the context of unique visits?

The only fail here is you.
Cloaked Figure. Delivering lulz since August 2008. Of course I do understand. I also am able to tell when the word "unique" wasn't used. I also know what "visits", "sites" and "hits" mean in context of Webalizer.
 
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Chaud said:
Droog White Smile said:
I have zero interest in AoD's combat. It's a silly relic of the past.

Oh, hell yeah. And thank God (and VD) for that. Unfortunately, it seems that the fashion now is to say that something old is bad, just for being old. A pity.
I expected such a response.

OK. Tell me then. What's so great about single character TB? Somebody said it's like TB Street Fighter. And you know what? They were right.

It's like VD took all the boring aspects of Fallout's combat and dropped all the fun ones. And Fallout's combat was already pretty boring and dull as it was. No tactical thinking was ever required.
 

Melcar

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I enjoyed FO combat a lot more than AoD. Of course, I have the lore and setting of the entire FO game to inspire me during the combat routines, which I don't have for AoD, so I can't make a fair comparison.
It's odd that VD hasn't showed up yet. Think he's working on R4?
 

Serious_Business

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Droog White Smile said:
Chaud said:
Droog White Smile said:
I have zero interest in AoD's combat. It's a silly relic of the past.

Oh, hell yeah. And thank God (and VD) for that. Unfortunately, it seems that the fashion now is to say that something old is bad, just for being old. A pity.
I expected such a response.

OK. Tell me then. What's so great about single character TB? Somebody said it's like TB Street Fighter. And you know what? They were right.

It's like VD took all the boring aspects of Fallout's combat and dropped all the fun ones. And Fallout's combat was already pretty boring and dull as it was. No tactical thinking was ever required.

Nahh. You're thinking too hard about it. I bet you didn't even play it. It's more fun in practice then in theory. I mean yeah, it sounds sucky, because most of it could be based on luck. You can re-load a fight until you win it. Tactics are limited. Say I have a 30% chance to do hit on the head : I can reload until I just do a couple of well-placed strikes, and I win. I know, sounds bad. I thought the same as you. But here's the thing, it's actually fun when you play it.

Don't ask me why. Ok this is a shitty response. But I can tell you there's a difference. You're the kind of guy who analyses shit with a stick up his ass. That's fine, but that's not living. Or playing video games. Whatever. Anyway, try it. It's pretty fun to have 5 hit points left and to wonder if you're going to be able to finish the fight or not. I know, this isn't JA2, but come on, it's better than 90% rpg combat out there (which isn't very hard to surpass, but yeah).

I'd say it's better than Fallout, because in Fallout once you get the right armor, you can't die anymore. Also, different builds kind of change how you're gonna play (instead of just two builds, melee and guns). But by all means, I know it's not the end of the world, but yeah, it's fun for what it is. Fuck off
 

Zomg

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Konjad said:
Depends how much fixed do you mean.

Like, something about as stable and unfucked as R2 yet? I don't wanna bother playing a new rules revision (which was the point of this one, not bugfixing) until it works gewd.

I am a backseat designer not a beta tester dammit
 

Hory

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DROGG BRO ARE YOU A CONSOLETARD OR JUST GEALOUS THAT VINCE DWELLER IS MAKING A CRPG NOT JUST A FANBOY PATCH??
 
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Droog White Smile said:
I expected such a response.

OK. Tell me then. What's so great about single character TB? Somebody said it's like TB Street Fighter. And you know what? They were right.

It's like VD took all the boring aspects of Fallout's combat and dropped all the fun ones. And Fallout's combat was already pretty boring and dull as it was. No tactical thinking was ever required.

Is it confirmed that we are only going to be able to control a single character in AoD (full game, not combat demo)? If so then I agree completely. The combat system presents a lot of character creation possibilities, but the actual combat is pretty basic insofar as fighting 1v1 or 1v2. I can see battles along the lines of 4v4 being really interesting with characters supporting each other and I'll be sad if that isn't possible.
 

Chaud

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Droog White Smile said:
OK. Tell me then. What's so great about single character TB? Somebody said it's like TB Street Fighter. And you know what? They were right.

Well, we can ask that same question about any other game, and you will always find someone who will offer you a positive response, and a negative one. "What's so interesting in CoD? What's so fun about having to use your reflexes to see who clicks the mouse fastest to blow the opponent's head"?

By the way, what's wrong with a Street Fighter in turns? Would you care to elaborate?

I never thought the combat system of AoD as something that requires any deep strategy/tactics. It is a simple puzzle. You know the fun you get when you buy a puzzle, and analyze to find out where to place each piece? If you don't know, I have nothing more that I can say, you simply won't understand. As I don't really understand the fun that anyone can have in playing a football game.

If you do understand, what I see in AoD is something very similar. You have a fight. You need to build a character and equip it in order to win this fight. Each attribute of your character, each artifact of the game is a piece of this puzzle. As the options during combat. The fun is to do it, finish the puzzle. Since it's a game, you can create assemblies that is more or less efficient than others. (I even think that the act of being able to save to "abuse" the system is something kinda boring - perhaps the ideal was that you should not be able to save during combat.) But for me, this is where the fun is.

And it has certainly nothing to do with the "age" of the battle system.
 
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AoD tries to ape Fallout in many aspects but it misses the mark horribly with the combat. Fallout's combat was never about tactical thinking and strategy. It was about aiming for the eyes and watching heads explode with over-the-top animations.

Now try to play Fallout with no guns and the gore turned off. What do you get? A trudge.

Turn-based combat is worthless without a party, it's a joke. AoD is only turn-based for the sake of being turn-based, for the sake of reminiscing about "good ol' RPG days". It ignores all great turn-based games that came out since 1997, it only tries to parrot the "sacred" Fallout, since that's what VD is so obsessed with. They even took the horrible inventory UI straight from Fallout, FFS.
 
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The problem is that, from what I have seen, the AoD character system isn't really all that complex to make fights interesting all on its own. If it the character and battle systems were something with the complexity of D&D I would find the combat interesting, but as it is you had a few stats determined at character creation and during the game you level up 1 of maybe 2-4 skills that matter for your build (keep in mind I'm only talking about combat-related stuff). There is a little bit of equipment variation, but for the most part its not all that far away from buying +1 versions of prior equipment.

Let's take the JA2 comparison. How fun would it be to play JA2 with just one character (assuming the game was balanced for it)? It really wouldn't be much, because there isn't much to do with one person except surprise the enemy, shoot and hope you hit. With multiple characters you can flank, make distractions, and support each other in various ways. For the AoD demo, save-reload spamming fights was pretty much the only way to with an underpowered character unless you wanted to restart. There really wasn't much way to intelligently play fights to better your odds. I think having at least 2-3 other characters controllable by the player could make it a lot more interesting. Almost at the JA2 level.

Of course all I'm talking about is specifically applied to the combat demo. The full game probably shouldn't be compared to JA2, its an RPG not a turn based tactical simulation. But that doesn't mean that thinking of ways to make combat more interesting is a completely futile idea.
 

Melcar

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But AoD isn't about the combat. It's about story, C&C, character development, and all that other shit. Combat is an extra VD threw in there. That being the case, I don't mind a less than satisfying combat system. If combat is indeed kept to a minimum compared to the overall game then the combat as it is is not that bad.
A combat demo was a crappy choice to initially showcase the game and get first impressions from want-to-be fans, but what can you do; ITS needed to keep the interest going and this was the best a quickest way to do it.
 

Jora

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Droog White Smile said:
Melcar said:
It's about story
What was the story again?

The map and the temple and the faction wars, what's your point? Arcanum is about the ring, the missing clan of dwarves (sounds silly on paper), and the ancient prophecy. When Arcanum was about to be released, did you ask what the story story was again? Bloodlines is about being forced to do missions for you boss, PtD is about finding and destroying the ancient enemy etc. None of that sound particularly intriguing.

As for the combat, I'm currently playing Dragon Age and wishing it was turn-based like AoD so that the fights wouldn't be so chaotic and it would be simpler to use even basic tactics without having the NPCs running to different directions and doing exactly the opposite of what I wanted.

Turn-based can work even in a single player game because its advantages aren't limited to party tactics. Michael McCarthy said it well:

"I never really considered doing any other type of combat than turn-based. For me, there is far more tension in turn based games than in real time (unless you're playing with other humans). When your guy has 3 hit points left, and just enough action points left to take one last aimed shot at your wounded opponent, you are PRAYING it hits... hesitant to hit the button... you fire and miss and it's his turn.... You are PRAYING he misses.... He does by some miracle!! You fire back and kill him! HAHAHA Man, I'm getting tense just type this. Turn based isn't for everyone, but I betting there's plenty of people who read this and know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Turn based combat is exceptional and I believe there is a great market there."
 
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Jora said:
I'm currently playing Dragon Age and wishing it was turn-based like AoD so that the fights wouldn't be so chaotic
Jora said:
When your guy has 3 hit points left, and just enough action points left to take one last aimed shot at your wounded opponent, you are PRAYING it hits... hesitant to hit the button... you fire and miss and it's his turn.... You are PRAYING he misses.... He does by some miracle!! You fire back and kill him!
So you're saying that Dragon Age's combat is chaotic while heavily luck based Fallout-style TB somehow isn't? Oookaay.

Fallout's combat was never logical. You could be wearing the best equipment but still sometimes "Super Mutant fires his minigun and hits you in the balls for 500HP. You die." Your skill didn't matter much, if at all, in Fallout. You just aimed for the eyes and hoped for a huge critical. And enemies did the same.

And really, that's not what TB combat should be all about.
 

GarfunkeL

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Plus, the various attacks actually are different. When you get to know the system, you notice the difference between fast and power attacks. Then you have the aimed attacks with various bonuses (disarm, tripping, knockout) plus throwing and whirlwind. Add that that attacks of opportunity and the way that different weapons really ARE different and you have a good system.

Especially as combat is one path in the game, amongst many others so the combat system doesn't even have to carry the whole game on its shoulders.
 

Soulforged

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Droog White Smile said:
So you're saying that Dragon Age's combat is chaotic while heavily luck based Fallout-style TB somehow isn't? Oookaay.

Fallout's combat was never logical. You could be wearing the best equipment but still sometimes "Super Mutant fires his minigun and hits you in the balls for 500HP. You die." Your skill didn't matter much, if at all, in Fallout.
Both statements are untrue. In Age of Decadence a lot of work and thought has been put into making the mechanics as deterministic as possible, there's random factors still, but luck wont play a part in your victory or defeat unless your skills and those of your enemy are evenly matched or generally close to each other, otherwise you wont have any chance against your opponents/s or viceversa. Also terrain, positioning, armor and weapon types are taken much more into account than they were on Fallout. These are obvious things, the fact that you didn't notice them makes me think you did not play the demo.

As for Fallout: the luck factor was stronger, certainly, but not enough to call it "luck based", that's implying you could safely rely on luck to win any battle and that's not true.

Both systems are not "luck based" they're stats and skills based.
 

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