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RTWP and TB inherent problems (and NPC companions)

Sergiu64

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Another reason why you are retarded, is that in most RPGs, enemies have an innate aggro for tank characters anyway. So even without the ability to taunt, things attack the warrior no matter what. Or their AI is so dumb that it doesn't even consider attacking something else. Also if the warrior has abilities like trip or disarm or bash to stun, that is no different to taunt. It achieves the same thing.

ALSO, the game you are trying to shit on actually has an AI which does exactly what you are bitching about not happening. A mage with a huge meteor, WILL get focused by enemies in EQ and will die because of it. And in EQ, taunt isn't guaranteed to work. It is an ability that can fail based on the skill level, the level difference between you and the target, and the type of target it is. Tell me a single player game where enemies will aggro a caster based on 100 different calculations constantly? You can't, so shut your retard mouth.

Or how about instead of killing the same monsters over and over in a 6 on 1 situation for hours on end the encounter is instead against a similar party to yours? What if the enemy fighters do not want to rush your mages because that would let your fighters rush their mages? And the next encounter is against something like a medusa where it doesn't matter who's in melee range, everyone has to adjust their tactics completely. And maybe that will be the two encounters of the day instead of killing the same mob over and over for hours. See how completely different the design is? One is centered on having the player(s) actually think during the encounters and have the act of fighting them be a brilliant tactical experience. While what EQ does is waste your time in exchange for illusion of you becoming better than other players for getting a few levels faster then them or getting that piece of loot you've poop socked for.

One of the reasons EQ crashed and burned when trash like WoW came on the scene was because WoW respected player's time just a little bit more.

anvi said:
The result is that an enemy will change targets and will focus whoever is causing the most problems.

Right, cause clearly the guy who just used some harsh words against the mob is causing the most problems. Go play Knights of the Chalice to see how mobs act when they're really going after the characters who cause problems.
 

JarlFrank

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" intelligent enemy behavior with assessment of threats, target values, and setting priorities" is exactly what aggro is. It can be directly raised or lowered with tank abilities in some games but that is usually because tanks can't cast massive fireballs. In EQ it wasn't like that, 2 out of the 3 tanks had to raise and lower it with spells of their own. The third tank had no spells at all but had one 'taunt' which was a class skill that could fail or be resisted, and some targets were immune to it. So people had to balance their damage and healing output carefully. It was such a big deal that they later added a threat meter to the game for modern dumb gamers to see the number increasing towards danger levels so they know when to ease up.

Hate the 100% taunts dumb games have, not the concept of aggro.

Wasn't aware of Everquest's mechanics. I mostly associate "aggro" with those cheap mainstream MMOs where the tank basically just uses his aggro skills and automatically pulls all enemies.

The way EQ does it sounds pretty good, yeah.
 

Sergiu64

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Wasn't aware of Everquest's mechanics. I mostly associate "aggro" with those cheap mainstream MMOs where the tank basically just uses his aggro skills and automatically pulls all enemies.

The way EQ does it sounds pretty good, yeah.

Meh, it was the same thing, they just didn't have an agro bar so players couldn't be sure how close they were from losing/gaining agro. Some tank classes had a really easy time keeping agro. One of the problems was that spells wouldn't give proportional agro to the damage they would do. My Shadow Knight would be using lvl 9 spell named Disease Cloud that I think would only do like 30 damage total over its lifespan - it would keep agro better then spells that would do 100's/1000's of damage. Why? No idea.

Anyway, dps classes had abilities to lower their agro later on. So it became like other mmo's. That is all irrelevant as the encounter design was terrible and the hp bloat was terrible. You'd basically farm exp or exp and specific items all day long by either using classes that could "pull" one monster at a time, or pull a bunch and having a class that could CC them. Then you'd beat up that monster slowly with the entire group and move on to the next one. Each monster would hit a LOT harder than any of the individual characters in the party and would have crazy amount of hitpoints so this process would be slow and frankly boring. I have no idea why anvi thinks that people enjoyed the combat in the game.
 

Cryomancer

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I an neutral in RtWP vs TB IMO, depends.

I prefer RtWP when >

  • There are a lot of encounters
  • A lot of party members
  • Enemies are very resistant
  • A lot of enemies
  • Few AOE spells
  • Slow animations

And prefer TB when >
  • Few companions to micromanage
  • Few enemies with a lot of stuff to care, a lot of different abilities
  • Fewer encounters against the same type of enemy
  • Positioning playing an big role
  • Quick animations

So, i would never play PF:KM with turn based combat mod, nor think that RtWP would work in Solasta for eg.
 

JarlFrank

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Wasn't aware of Everquest's mechanics. I mostly associate "aggro" with those cheap mainstream MMOs where the tank basically just uses his aggro skills and automatically pulls all enemies.

The way EQ does it sounds pretty good, yeah.

Meh, it was the same thing, they just didn't have an agro bar so players couldn't be sure how close they were from losing/gaining agro. Some tank classes had a really easy time keeping agro. One of the problems was that spells wouldn't give proportional agro to the damage they would do. My Shadow Knight would be using lvl 9 spell named Disease Cloud that I think would only do like 30 damage total over its lifespan - it would keep agro better then spells that would do 100's/1000's of damage. Why? No idea.

Anyway, dps classes had abilities to lower their agro later on. So it became like other mmo's. That is all irrelevant as the encounter design was terrible and the hp bloat was terrible. You'd basically farm exp or exp and specific items all day long by either using classes that could "pull" one monster at a time, or pull a bunch and having a class that could CC them. Then you'd beat up that monster slowly with the entire group and move on to the next one. Each monster would hit a LOT harder than any of the individual characters in the party and would have crazy amount of hitpoints so this process would be slow and frankly boring. I have no idea why anvi thinks that people enjoyed the combat in the game.

That sounds like a terrible boring grind, then.

HP bloat based grind does not make for fun combat, and the whole aggro management mechanic sounds quite different to what anvi described (a lot more about managing an abstract stat rather than AI reacting smartly to player threats).

Combat is more fun when a single well-placed maneuver can decide a battle, rather than it being a long attrition fight of whittling down high HP pools.
 

anvi

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Wasn't aware of Everquest's mechanics. I mostly associate "aggro" with those cheap mainstream MMOs where the tank basically just uses his aggro skills and automatically pulls all enemies.

The way EQ does it sounds pretty good, yeah.

Meh, it was the same thing, they just didn't have an agro bar so players couldn't be sure how close they were from losing/gaining agro. Some tank classes had a really easy time keeping agro. One of the problems was that spells wouldn't give proportional agro to the damage they would do. My Shadow Knight would be using lvl 9 spell named Disease Cloud that I think would only do like 30 damage total over its lifespan - it would keep agro better then spells that would do 100's/1000's of damage. Why? No idea.
That's not true. For a start, it isn't like other MMOs where you can ez-taunt a group of enemies. In classic EQ you can only taunt 1 thing, and even that wasn't a sure thing. Most fights involve multiple enemies which is why crowd control was such a big deal and playing smart was important with any class. Also it took time to build up the aggro with spells, if you are tanking 2 mobs and someone uses area damage or you require a lot of healing (which creates aggro for the healer), then you could easily lose aggro on one of the mobs. And you then have to change target which can mean you lose aggro on the first mob which is the one everyone is attacking. Groups died all the time because of things like this.

Also the reason Disease Cloud causes more aggro than its damage would indicate is that it was a disease which at higher levels lowers the resistances of the enemy to other diseases and can lower their stats too. The good aggro from it is why Shadow Knights used it to build aggro while tanking. And again, a tank has to be able to build aggro or what's the point of having tanks in a game? And it is not much different to how it works in AD&D with Fighter abilities like Intimidate and disarm/knockdown/etc.

Anyway, dps classes had abilities to lower their agro later on. So it became like other mmo's. That is all irrelevant as the encounter design was terrible and the hp bloat was terrible. You'd basically farm exp or exp and specific items all day long by either using classes that could "pull" one monster at a time, or pull a bunch and having a class that could CC them. Then you'd beat up that monster slowly with the entire group and move on to the next one. Each monster would hit a LOT harder than any of the individual characters in the party and would have crazy amount of hitpoints so this process would be slow and frankly boring. I have no idea why anvi thinks that people enjoyed the combat in the game.

They added the ability to lower aggro because a Wizard doesn't have much else to do... Nuke nuke or nuke. So weaving in a concussion spell that lowers aggro over time was a good idea. You are retarded for saying encounter design was terrible, it has the best encounters in any game. Clearly you never even saw the best part of the game if all you ever did was farm trash mobs for xp. You bitch about pulling one mob at a time, even though that often wasn't possible for a lot of reasons... but if the mobs were easy people would be happy to fight multiples. They prefer 1 because it is tough, and it isn't any different to fighting a tough mob in any other RPG. You bitch about getting xp and items all day long, how is that any different to any other RPG? Saying it is boring is your dumbass opinion, you could pick any number of other MMOS where all mobs explode in 2 seconds. In most MMOs now I can kill a mob before it even reaches me. I get close to a mob in Rift or Elder Scrolls Online or whatever, I cast my 1234 routine, and the mob dies at my feet before it even lands a hit. Is that better to you?

The reason why harder hitting mobs with a lot of hp is better, is because it makes the game harder and more intense. If something goes wrong and you end up with 5 of those mobs on your group, a panicky noob group will all end up dead. A decent group will survive but maybe need to resurrect a dead guy. And a talented group will kill them all. That's why anvi thinks people enjoyed the combat, that and the fact that people say they do and still play it 20 years later.

Combat is more fun when a single well-placed maneuver can decide a battle, rather than it being a long attrition fight of whittling down high HP pools.
The single well placed maneuver deciding the battle is exactly what EQ was all about. The large HP helps with that. With low HP mobs then who gives a shit about smart maneuvers? Just fireball everything dead. That is how all modern MMOs work. No tactical combat, just everyone nuke hell out of everything in explosions of lightning and fireballs. Classic EQ was nothing like that which is why it is special, and there is no other game like it. Don't listen Sergay, he is a moron and he barely even knows the game he is bitching about.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
To each their own, but the automated AI aspect could be applied to NPC companions.

The level of sophistication you want the companion to have is up to you.
It could even be its own mini game. As your companions level up and gain better equipment, you get access to more sophisticated ways of controlling their AI. Specialized ways of picking targets, branching behavior based on enemy type or current (de)buffs, and so on. Would be nifty, and could work well with a battle system like Ultima 7's where you have very little direct control. Basically a kind of RPG Manager game. But it would also require lots of trash combat so that you can tweak the AI through trial and error, and it would actively discourage hand-crafted encounter design because your AI scripts wouldn't be able to exploit the environment.
DAO worked like this to some degree. Characters were limited in the number of tactics you could use and you had to increase the relevant skill to assign more.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
" intelligent enemy behavior with assessment of threats, target values, and setting priorities" is exactly what aggro is. It can be directly raised or lowered with tank abilities in some games but that is usually because tanks can't cast massive fireballs. In EQ it wasn't like that, 2 out of the 3 tanks had to raise and lower it with spells of their own. The third tank had no spells at all but had one 'taunt' which was a class skill that could fail or be resisted, and some targets were immune to it. So people had to balance their damage and healing output carefully. It was such a big deal that they later added a threat meter to the game for modern dumb gamers to see the number increasing towards danger levels so they know when to ease up.

Hate the 100% taunts dumb games have, not the concept of aggro.

Wasn't aware of Everquest's mechanics. I mostly associate "aggro" with those cheap mainstream MMOs where the tank basically just uses his aggro skills and automatically pulls all enemies.

The way EQ does it sounds pretty good, yeah.
"aggro" is bad, but there should be a reason to not run right past melee warriors. If your back is to them they should be able to easily grapple you, trip you, knock you down, do more damage, etc.,
Attacks of opportunity are a good start, but often not punishing enough.
 

anvi

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"aggro" is bad, but there should be a reason to not run right past melee warriors. If your back is to them they should be able to easily grapple you, trip you, knock you down, do more damage, etc.,
Attacks of opportunity are a good start, but often not punishing enough.

Why is aggro bad exactly? You guys are trying so hard to turn this into a meme and you don't even understand it. As I explained, IN DETAIL, aggro is just AI for enemies. Saying "aggro is bad" is no different to saying "enemies should have no AI and just attack the nearest target".

Another reason why you are retarded, is that in most RPGs, enemies have an innate aggro for tank characters anyway. So even without the ability to taunt, things attack the warrior no matter what. Or their AI is so dumb that it doesn't even consider attacking something else. Also if the warrior has abilities like trip or disarm or bash to stun, that is no different to taunt. It achieves the same thing.

ALSO, the game you are trying to shit on actually has an AI which does exactly what you are bitching about not happening. A mage with a huge meteor, WILL get focused by enemies in EQ and will die because of it. And in EQ, taunt isn't guaranteed to work. It is an ability that can fail based on the skill level, the level difference between you and the target, and the type of target it is. Tell me a single player game where enemies will aggro a caster based on 100 different calculations constantly? You can't, so shut your retard mouth.

Or how about instead of killing the same monsters over and over in a 6 on 1 situation for hours on end the encounter is instead against a similar party to yours?
First off, that game has more enemy types than any other game ever made. So in a game with tens of thousands of different monsters, if you are killing the same ones over and over then that is your problem. Even in the same dungeon there are multiple enemy types. Secondly, the 6 on 1 thing is not how the game works. Mobs are put together in large groups, only a few classes have a chance to get one solo, and the spells they use to do that can and will fail. That's why crowd control classes were considered essential, because you always end up fighting more than you can handle. And lastly, you DO fight encounters exactly like your party. How do you not know that? You see it at level 1 and beyond. You attack a pack of goblins or something, a goblin warrior charges at you with its sword, a goblin shaman stays back casting poison on everyone and healing its buddies, a goblin ranger stays back shooting you, etc. And the higher level you get, the more advanced this gets. And raids mobs can be so complex that it took people months to figure out.

What if the enemy fighters do not want to rush your mages because that would let your fighters rush their mages? And the next encounter is against something like a medusa where it doesn't matter who's in melee range, everyone has to adjust their tactics completely. And maybe that will be the two encounters of the day instead of killing the same mob over and over for hours. See how completely different the design is? One is centered on having the player(s) actually think during the encounters and have the act of fighting them be a brilliant tactical experience. While what EQ does is waste your time in exchange for illusion of you becoming better than other players for getting a few levels faster then them or getting that piece of loot you've poop socked for.
I don't get why you can be so off base with this? You are talking about a game that probably has the best enemy AI of any game ever made. The mobs don't rush the mages, they rush whoever is the best target. That might be the healer or the crowd control or the rogue or the guy who is nearly died, whoever they decide is best, and they are constantly deciding it in real time. So why are you trying to shit on the game that does a better job than anything else?

The point of this thread was have strong mobs or strong AI. What I am describing is smart AI... OP says the problem is that it can destroy your group too easily, I am showing how you can have strong AI yet you can still win if you have good enough spells of your own to deal with whatever happens. Why are you even trying to argue about this? Are you saying there should be no AI and everything should just attack the nearest target?

One of the reasons EQ crashed and burned when trash like WoW came on the scene was because WoW respected player's time just a little bit more.
That's true, but what does that have to do with this thread?

Right, cause clearly the guy who just used some harsh words against the mob is causing the most problems. Go play Knights of the Chalice to see how mobs act when they're really going after the characters who cause problems.

I have played KOTC, it is far worse than EQ. The "harsh words" only works on one target, so you still have enemies attacking various other targets. Also how is harsh words any worse than a Fighter doing "trip" on fire elemental or something?
 
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ItsChon

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Underrail Expedition has some massive engagements against the natives, with over a dozen of the guys attacking you on one map, but it never feels like a slog because you can set animations to be super fast and then these massive battles actually become exciting and make you use all your available resources - spells, grenades, traps, etc.
See I agree with you, but the problem is multiple people did have a problem with the Expedition battles for some god damned reason. The vast majority of Codexers are fat virgins that are going to be at home anyway, so it boggles my mind that they lose their shit at an extra 30 seconds of animation each turn, as if they have shit to do and places to be.

Also, I honestly tend to lean towards 5 characters being a little much to control. I think 2-3 characters is the perfect sweet spot.

I really think that Underrail is the supreme example when it comes to turn based combat. The AI could be tweaked slightly to make it a little smarter (such as retreating behind cover, playing around cooldowns), but the game is so hard that even one or two of these small tweaks would make it really fucking difficult, almost too difficult in some spots. "Trash fights", even against enemies like rathounds or azuridaes are not a bother due to how powerful your player gets in comparison to them, and has the ability to do massive AOE damage rather easily. And the interesting fights where strategy needs to be used can be extremely deep and complex. I really think with some minor adjustments, the Underrail system could also be perfect for companions.
 

anvi

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Does Underrail combat get advanced at higher levels? I tried this with a Psi build and the low levels were TERRIBLE and all I was doing was spamming the same ability. Should I keep going? Or is combat not a strong suit?
 

anvi

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I'll be whatever has decent combat! I figured Psi was better than just shooting stuff. But I could try going with explosives and traps or something. But I got a feeling the game isn't worth the grind.
 

ItsChon

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Does Underrail combat get advanced at higher levels? I tried this with a Psi build and the low levels were TERRIBLE and all I was doing was spamming the same ability. Should I keep going? Or is combat not a strong suit?
It depends. What level did you get up too, and what do you mean by terrible? I'd have to see the buold you were with, but it's entirely possible you were spamming the same ability. In the early game you don't have any levels in enough of the PSI schools which severely restricts your options, which makes complete sense considering your level. As the game goes on your options become evne more varied and it is necessary to resort to more advanced tactics/elaborate plans to survive certain fights. I'll repeat myself, Underrail is one of if not the greast turn based combat games ever created, and you missing out on that will be your loss.
 
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This is my take on it, though I am sure no one will care.

Party based combat is generally speaking an obsolete anachronism. In PnP, it made perfect sense, because you had a "party" of friends playing together, but in a single player game it not only makes no sense, but generaly hinders gameplay in various ways. For instance:

- In a traditional RPG, having a party with complimentary skills roughly equates to having a Bethesda style hero who can do anything, thus removing different approaches that would be required with a single charactger game and their specific build.
- In an action RPG, having a party or companions generally interferes with the elegance of individual combat.
- Party-based tactical combat waters down combat depth. Because there are so many entities involved, you can only allow any single one of them to perform shallow actions, or things would get too complicated to manage. But at the same time, given the nature of RPGs, there are not enough entities involved to produce large scale complexity, as in a wargame. So you are stuck in a bland no-man's-land, where your fighters have fascinating skills like power attack and defensive stance, and your mages alternate between magical arrows and dull binary cc. If tactical combat featured single characters, it could significantly raise the complexity of combat moves and interactions, to the point of modeling RL stuff like feints, combinations, master strikes, etc.

Mind you, I am not against having your single character occasionaly join up with others for a particular quest, quest-line, or part of the story, I just hate it as a full-game thing.
 

Bester

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If tactical combat featured single characters, it could significantly raise the complexity of combat moves and interactions, to the point of modeling RL stuff like feints, combinations, master strikes, etc.
If you played as a single character, e.g. warrior, some opponents would be unbeatable to you in a DND based game. You'd get constant fail states by encountering mages with protection from normal and magical weapons.

By having party members, the variety of your actions goes up => more tactical freedom => more depth.
 

Butter

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- In a traditional RPG, having a party with complimentary skills roughly equates to having a Bethesda style hero who can do anything, thus removing different approaches that would be required with a single charactger game and their specific build.
This is a point I see made often, and it irks me. The issue here isn't with having a party, but with not having the right ratio of skills to party members. If you get 6 party members, and each one specializes in one skill, you only need >6 in order for complete mastery to be impossible. With >12, even half mastery is impossible. Naturally you might want characters to specialize in more than one skill, but then perhaps you don't need to allow 6-man parties.
 

anvi

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I sort of agree Porky. I prefer party based combat to a single character, but that's only because single character games are mostly shallow and dumb. So the options are glorious tactical games like TOEE/KOTC/BG2/etc, or dumbass Skyrim type games with squirting fire out your fingers. But if you put the few abilities a Fighter gets, and the spells a mage gets, as well as the druid abilities and various other stuff, all on one character, it would be glorious. But I still think a party is always going to be deeper if you fully flesh out the abilities/spells of each character. But it wouldn't necessarily be better or more fun than a single character game with the amount of depth of a combined party. I've played something similar and it was awesome, and blobbers are vaguely similar too - if the game doesn't let you use positioning etc, then you are mostly just fighting as a single unit that has all those combined abilities.
 

JarlFrank

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
See I agree with you, but the problem is multiple people did have a problem with the Expedition battles for some god damned reason. The vast majority of Codexers are fat virgins that are going to be at home anyway, so it boggles my mind that they lose their shit at an extra 30 seconds of animation each turn, as if they have shit to do and places to be.

And the fun thing about Underrail Expedition is that it added an animation speedup slider that lets you push animation speed in combat up to 300% or so, so movement of AIs happens almost instantly.
 

ItsChon

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And the fun thing about Underrail Expedition is that it added an animation speedup slider that lets you push animation speed in combat up to 300% or so, so movement of AIs happens almost instantly.
You can move up to 500, and in patches before that 1,000.
 

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