Eternity Avowed - Obsidian's first person action-RPG in the Pillars of Eternity setting - coming February 18th

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

I dunno. Maybe when it comes out people will say "At least it isn't packed to the gills with freaks like Veilguard.". After looking at that train wreck of a game the bland incompetence of Avowed is almost attractive.

 

[Morality Games]

If it were my product I would want to release it after DA:VG instead of releasing after BG3.

 

[Roguey]

I don't know what more shocking, that they added this feature to begin with, or that they thought they should advertise it in the previews.

All (well any worth a damn) melee combat games work like this, what's stupid is advertising it like a novel feature.

Article from 2015 https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/enemy-design-and-enemy-ai-for-melee-combat-systems

In most of the games I looked at, an enemy attacks the player every two-to-three seconds on average. Enemies do not attack the player simultaneously or shortly after one another.

“[Enemy attacks are regulated] in order to prevent that chaos of just everyone attacking you at once” – Alex Sulman, God of War

This allows players to avoid attacks gives the opportunity to and attack the enemies themselves without being overwhelmed. This is important to prevent player frustration, leading to a sense of unfairness in the combat system; however, the player is attacked often enough to keep a sense of danger. The enemies will usually not attack the player while they are still in the stagger animation that is played when reacting to the previous enemy’s attack.

Multiple enemies attacking simultaneously makes it harder for the player to avoid all the attacks. Regulating the pace of the attacks prevents the fight from being to chaotic and become unreadable for the player, and thus feeling unfair.

“We always try to make it that enemies almost never attack you off screen, which is always really unsatisfying because it’s really hard to read.” – Alex Sulman, God of War

Usually enemies also do not attack the player from off screen. This means that enemies also have to be aware of what the camera can see. This is particularly strong for attacks where there is only a visual tell and no audio warning for the player, and so it becomes frustrating for players because they cannot respond to something they were not aware was coming. In God of War 3 enemies also try not to move between the player and the camera, which is easier as the game has fixed camera positions in each level. It is useful for enemy AI to take the camera into account to prevent frustrating the players.

"Wow, look at us, we have standard features that have been in games like this for over 20 years!" - Carrie Patel

 

[luj1]

Just here to fling shit at Infinitron (and Roguey), cya

 

[AwesomeButton]

All (well any worth a damn) melee combat games work like this, what's stupid is advertising it like a novel feature.

In Thief the guards would just fuck you up. Real gamer-developers from the 90s don't have time for babysitting program logic.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Please clap.

 

[sebas]

Every time I read about this game I just sigh like a dissapointed father watching his mentally handicaped kid trying to fit a ball in a square shape. You're doing well buddy, keep trying buddy!

 

[Wesp5]

All (well any worth a damn) melee combat games work like this, what's stupid is advertising it like a novel feature.

In Thief the guards would just fuck you up. Real gamer-developers from the 90s don't have time for babysitting program logic.

The same happens in Monomyth...

 

[ColonelMace]

Maybe when it comes out people will say "At least it isn't packed to the gills with freaks like Veilguard."

Spoiler

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Sweaty sex with hairy orlans...

 

[frajaq]

Maybe when it comes out people will say "At least it isn't packed to the gills with freaks like Veilguard."

Spoiler

Man these actually look normal compared to Failguard

 

[Roguey]

All (well any worth a damn) melee combat games work like this, what's stupid is advertising it like a novel feature.

In Thief the guards would just fuck you up. Real gamer-developers from the 90s don't have time for babysitting program logic.

Thief combat is awful, being a thief game, not a fighting game. It's not designed to be fair, if you're in a combat situation, you fucked up.

The same happens in Monomyth...

Indies gonna indie.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Thief combat is awful, being a thief game, not a fighting game. It's not designed to be fair, if you're in a combat situation, you fucked up.

Check your original assertion, you are shifting the goalpost.

 

[Roguey]

Thief combat is awful, being a thief game, not a fighting game. It's not designed to be fair, if you're in a combat situation, you fucked up.

Check your original assertion, you are shifting the goalpost.

? I am not.

All (well any worth a damn) melee combat games work like this, what's stupid is advertising it like a novel feature.

Thief has melee combat, but it is not a melee combat game. No one plays Thief with the mindset of "Yeah I'm going to just ignore stealth and attack everybody head on." The design is oriented around stealth (sometimes poorly).

 

[AwesomeButton]

Thief has melee combat, but it is not a melee combat game

Forgive me, I thought "melee combat game" stands for "game that has melee combat".

Mind you, you're nkt specifying 1st or 3rd person.

 

[Roguey]

Mind you, you're nkt specifying 1st or 3rd person.

It applies to both. From my earlier link

“If it’s first person, it feels really unfair [if] you get [hit from off-screen resulting in] a one hit kill from a direction you don’t know.” – Doug Walker, Killzone

A lot of games that include ranged combat are played from a first person view, which causes additional problems for melee combat. This is why enemies generally do not melee the player in first person shooters. Nordlander explains they had a similar problem with Dead Island 2; however, they still wanted to give the player the feeling of being overwhelmed by zombies. They solved this by adjusting the damage:

“When you are hit outside your field of view you take less damage. With many enemies that you’re fighting at once every hit they do can’t be that punishing so you have a larger buffer already with how many hits you can take.” – Daniel Nordlander, Dead Island 2

For first person games it can quickly become frustrating for players to get killed by something they did not see coming, yet some games have demonstrated there are solutions to this problem.

 

[Tyranicon]

All (well any worth a damn) melee combat games work like this, what's stupid is advertising it like a novel feature.

In Thief the guards would just fuck you up. Real gamer-developers from the 90s don't have time for babysitting program logic.

The same happens in Monomyth...

You just got to shoot enemies 20 times in the head or kite them consistently for 10 minutes in melee. Not hard.

Seriously those sewer frogdudes each individually have boss-tier health.

 

[thesecret1]

Yeah, the mechanic is used in many games, and it always looks stupid. Asscreed comes to mind where enemies form a circle around you and go at you one by one, their friends probably only there to cheer them on or something. Personally, I think it's ultimately a consequence of poor enemy AI. If your enemy AI is poor, yet you want to add difficulty, the easiest solution is to just throw more of them at the player. If your average combat situation is then a 1v5, you need to create such crutches. Had the enemy AI been better, 1 or 2 enemies would present sufficient challenge, and there'd be no need for this.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, the mechanic is used in many games, and it always looks stupid. Asscreed comes to mind where enemies form a circle around you and go at you one by one, their friends probably only there to cheer them on or something. Personally, I think it's ultimately a consequence of poor enemy AI. If your enemy AI is poor, yet you want to add difficulty, the easiest solution is to just throw more of them at the player. If your average combat situation is then a 1v5, you need to create such crutches. Had the enemy AI been better, 1 or 2 enemies would present sufficient challenge, and there'd be no need for this.

You should perhaps read the article I posted.

Other Enemy Behaviour – Idles, Defence, Chasing

When enemies are not attacking they are often moving around the player, playing some idle animation to cheer on the other enemies, or taunting the player. This is very important to make it appear as if they are still participating in the fight instead of simply waiting for their turn to attack the player. Enemies also try to move around to be on screen (in view of the camera), or switch to the near group before attacking the player.

This is another good one that's even older https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/intelligent-brawling

Looking Stupid

Questions: What do enemies do when they're not attacking? What do enemies do to avoid looking like they are uninvolved in the combat?

God of War: Enemies in the far group just stand around and look relatively uninvolved. But they're zombies, so it looks OK. (Personally, I believe the popularity of zombie-killing games is partially fuelled by the lower AI expectations-they're supposed to be mindless, so game development is easier. That, and zombies are the only thing as fun to kill as Nazis.)

Enemies in the far group would occasionally play a yell/cheer animation that seemed more involved, but it was fairly infrequent. I get the feeling that they noticed this problem near the end of development and made this animation to fix it, but it turned out to be just a bandage.

Mark of Kri: Enemies in the far group are constantly moving, mostly just sidestepping in a ring around the player. This makes them feel active without really affecting gameplay, especially since the motion is centered on the player character. The close enemy stands still a lot, but his animation and facing make him seem to be watching the player character and waiting for an opportunity, so it feels appropriate.

Genji: Enemies are always moving in a slow, pacing, stalking motion. It does a good job of making them appear involved in a samurai-appropriate way. But they tend to get stuck on environmental objects and appear to moonwalk, which ruins the illusion. If their pathfinding had been able to better account for obstructions, it would look a lot better.

Prince of Persia: Enemies are always moving, which makes them feel involved, but the animation looks twitchy when changing between AI states, which ruins some of the effect. If it were smoother, it would feel even better.

Ninja Gaiden: Enemies mix side-step movement with standing in a fencing pose. The fencing pose does a good job of appearing involved even when they're not moving. My expectations may change a bit for ninjas, as I expect them to be controlled and cautious in their motion. A stiff animation makes sense for a ninja.

Heavenly Sword: Enemies use a circle strafe walking motion to appear to be doing something. But there are times when this behavior falls apart, and enemies strafe in a circle, or stand in place, or run to get to a seemingly random position. There are no occasional cheering animations.

Conclusions: Having enemies pace and sidestep when awaiting combat feels good. It makes the character feel active and also masks small positional changes without having to pop out of a standing animation. Occasional animations like the yell in God of War don't really help much, since there are still long periods of just the base animations.

Getting the right feel for the base animation helps a lot-characters who appear to be focusing on the combat instead of just using a generic standing animation feel much better. And tweaking one animation is a much simpler solution to execute than trying to fix this with complex AI changes.

It was interesting to note how many little bugs ruined otherwise good animation. That may partially be an artifact of my methods breaking the system or my overly analytical approach to the situation, but I think a bit more playtesting and review of content once it's actually in the game code would have helped many of these games.

You have these ideas that don't work in reality or don't create the feeling the devs want (brawlers are not trying to be 1vs1 fighting games). Melee combat in games was figured out decades ago by the Japanese, westerners still struggle.

 

[Beans00]

https://www.reddit.com/r/avowed/comments/1dcftoa/if_avowed_flops_everyone_needs_to_be_ready_for/


Even reddit isn't hyped for this game.

 

[Old Hans]

and from what I recall, this game is only going to be around 20 hours. That is not enough time for an RPG

 

[Morgoth]

They should make Obsidian a Blizzard annex and have them develop a singleplayer Warcraft RPG.

This Pillars and Outer Worlds shit is hopeless.

 

[thesecret1]

Yeah, the mechanic is used in many games, and it always looks stupid. Asscreed comes to mind where enemies form a circle around you and go at you one by one, their friends probably only there to cheer them on or something. Personally, I think it's ultimately a consequence of poor enemy AI. If your enemy AI is poor, yet you want to add difficulty, the easiest solution is to just throw more of them at the player. If your average combat situation is then a 1v5, you need to create such crutches. Had the enemy AI been better, 1 or 2 enemies would present sufficient challenge, and there'd be no need for this.

You should perhaps read the article I posted.

Other Enemy Behaviour – Idles, Defence, Chasing

When enemies are not attacking they are often moving around the player, playing some idle animation to cheer on the other enemies, or taunting the player. This is very important to make it appear as if they are still participating in the fight instead of simply waiting for their turn to attack the player. Enemies also try to move around to be on screen (in view of the camera), or switch to the near group before attacking the player.

This is another good one that's even older https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/intelligent-brawling

Looking Stupid

Questions: What do enemies do when they're not attacking? What do enemies do to avoid looking like they are uninvolved in the combat?

God of War: Enemies in the far group just stand around and look relatively uninvolved. But they're zombies, so it looks OK. (Personally, I believe the popularity of zombie-killing games is partially fuelled by the lower AI expectations-they're supposed to be mindless, so game development is easier. That, and zombies are the only thing as fun to kill as Nazis.)

Enemies in the far group would occasionally play a yell/cheer animation that seemed more involved, but it was fairly infrequent. I get the feeling that they noticed this problem near the end of development and made this animation to fix it, but it turned out to be just a bandage.

Mark of Kri: Enemies in the far group are constantly moving, mostly just sidestepping in a ring around the player. This makes them feel active without really affecting gameplay, especially since the motion is centered on the player character. The close enemy stands still a lot, but his animation and facing make him seem to be watching the player character and waiting for an opportunity, so it feels appropriate.

Genji: Enemies are always moving in a slow, pacing, stalking motion. It does a good job of making them appear involved in a samurai-appropriate way. But they tend to get stuck on environmental objects and appear to moonwalk, which ruins the illusion. If their pathfinding had been able to better account for obstructions, it would look a lot better.

Prince of Persia: Enemies are always moving, which makes them feel involved, but the animation looks twitchy when changing between AI states, which ruins some of the effect. If it were smoother, it would feel even better.

Ninja Gaiden: Enemies mix side-step movement with standing in a fencing pose. The fencing pose does a good job of appearing involved even when they're not moving. My expectations may change a bit for ninjas, as I expect them to be controlled and cautious in their motion. A stiff animation makes sense for a ninja.

Heavenly Sword: Enemies use a circle strafe walking motion to appear to be doing something. But there are times when this behavior falls apart, and enemies strafe in a circle, or stand in place, or run to get to a seemingly random position. There are no occasional cheering animations.

Conclusions: Having enemies pace and sidestep when awaiting combat feels good. It makes the character feel active and also masks small positional changes without having to pop out of a standing animation. Occasional animations like the yell in God of War don't really help much, since there are still long periods of just the base animations.

Getting the right feel for the base animation helps a lot-characters who appear to be focusing on the combat instead of just using a generic standing animation feel much better. And tweaking one animation is a much simpler solution to execute than trying to fix this with complex AI changes.

It was interesting to note how many little bugs ruined otherwise good animation. That may partially be an artifact of my methods breaking the system or my overly analytical approach to the situation, but I think a bit more playtesting and review of content once it's actually in the game code would have helped many of these games.

You have these ideas that don't work in reality or don't create the feeling the devs want (brawlers are not trying to be 1vs1 fighting games). Melee combat in games was figured out decades ago by the Japanese, westerners still struggle.

The point I was making was that I think all these things the articles you posted mention are wrong. If multiple enemies swarm the player, then the player should just die, like in real life. It's not like this is some unthinkable concept either – mount & blade, for example, does exactly that – if you get swarmed by enemies, you just die. Dark Souls also doesn't have enemies form a semi-circle around the character and wait for their turn. If one wants to make a melee-focused game where it's just the MC going against enemies, yet wants to make things more realistic or perhaps more "personal", then he should consider WHY he feels he needs to pit the player in 1v5 or even 1v10 fights – it runs counter to the whole design. In real life, if you get jumped by 5 guys, you just fucking die. If you have a semi-realistic system, the outcome of any such encounter will also be that the player just fucking dies. So why are you insisting on having such an encounter in the game? Is it perhaps because it's the only way you can adjust the difficulty? Well if that's the case, then all this shit about "taking turns" and what not is just a bandaid trying to hide a bigger problem, which is that your AI sucks and you can't create a decent 1v1 fight.

 

[Roguey]

If multiple enemies swarm the player, then the player should just die, like in real life.

Most people don't find that fun and "realism" is not a goal in most games. Especially Avowed, which is intended to be a casual power fantasy RPG for the masses, a fantasy flavored Outer Worlds.

 

[Harthwain]

Most people don't find that fun and "realism" is not a goal in most games.

Dark Souls did prove that players don't want to have it easy either. I doubt this game will be a success just because it caters to some handicapped people who can't come to terms that getting attacked by multiple people means taking hits from more than one direction.