My beef against modern real time combat systems

[Achilles]

Having played through a number of recent fantasy RPGs and "RPGs", it strikes me as odd that they pay so little attention to their combat system. This is all the more puzzling because most games of this type are 90% about combat. They hype the combat system with all those cool-sounding words like "visceral", but they never deliver.

My main problem is with the depiction of melee combat. It should feel like a gruesome struggle, after all it's about armored dudes beating each other up with heavy metal weaponry. Instead, in most games you swing a sword and you see it passing through your opponent. Some blood might come out or another type of effect to let you know that you've scored a hit, but it doesn't feel like you've just brought down a massive weapon on a foe with plate armor. After a hit like that, your opponent should be struggling to retain his balance while you bounce back from the "recoil".

So my point is this: Scoring a hit should be important. Melee combat should be all about parrying or deflecting blows, thinking fast and searching for an opening. When you do find it, it should feel like you've actually dealt a serious blow to your opponent, not just grazed him with your weapon.

I'm going to attempt a weird comparison, but bare with me. Melee combat should be more like Street Fighter 2. Two adversaries deflecting blows, trying different moves until one of the connects. When it does, the one who got hit is knocked back while the attacker recovers from the move. No button mashing, no hacking away like crazy.

So what do you think? And more importantly, do you know of any RPG that has really satisfying combat?

 

[Destroid]

Play Rune instead.

 

[SkeleTony]

Your first problem is in seeking satisfying and/or realistic REAL TIME combat in a RPG. it does not exist. RPGs by definition should never base CHARACTER'S physical aptitude on PLAYER'S reflexes. That is as wonky as basing a FANTASY strat's "magic" systems on what can be achieved in REAL WORLD physics...actually it is probably much worse than that.

 

[SCO]

Gothic

 

[JarlFrank]

Gothic 1 and 2. Also Risen, maybe.

Non-RPGs that you might like:
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Severance: Blade of Darkness (highly recommended, one of my favourite action slashers)

 

[chzr]

problem is that 'modern real time combat' in RPGs is based on hitpoints and spamming skillz with kewl effactz. That alone means it's impossible to have combat with 'realistic' blocking/evading and then 1-2 hits & death.

Until someone actually manages to think about making RPG with 'realistic' combat, without hitpoints/dps formula, you won't see anything more then bland slashing with some fancy finishing moves ala dragon age.

So what do you think? And more importantly, do you know of any RPG that has really satisfying combat?

JA2

 

[Mastermind]

Your first problem is in seeking satisfying and/or realistic REAL TIME combat in a RPG. it does not exist. RPGs by definition should never base CHARACTER'S physical aptitude on PLAYER'S reflexes. That is as wonky as basing a FANTASY strat's "magic" systems on what can be achieved in REAL WORLD physics...actually it is probably much worse than that.

I don't see what the big deal is. Your intelligence is crucial to a TBS game even if your character is a retard who would never come up with the same plan you did on his own. As long as you're not role-playing a peg legged midget who dodges shit like a professional ninja at the press of a button, it's perfectly fine. I want to play a game, not watch a movie where you just click on your enemy and your character does everything on his own. That's how we got modern day Bioware games.

 

[ironyuri]

So what do you think? And more importantly, do you know of any RPG that has really satisfying combat?

JA2

JA2 IS NOT RPG

But chzr is right, it has really satisfying combat. Well worth a playthrough if you haven't.

Mass Effect 2 has pretty satisfying combat, especially because you can score some awsum headshots, bro.

 

[KalosKagathos]

My main problem is with the depiction of melee combat. It should feel like a gruesome struggle, after all it's about armored dudes beating each other up with heavy metal weaponry. Instead, in most games you swing a sword and you see it passing through your opponent. Some blood might come out or another type of effect to let you know that you've scored a hit, but it doesn't feel like you've just brought down a massive weapon on a foe with plate armor. After a hit like that, your opponent should be struggling to retain his balance while you bounce back from the "recoil".

Alexandros cannot into action games. After a hit like that, you should be able to roll-cancel and then combo the fucker until he recovers from hit-stun. That (most) action RPGs don't allow that is their true problem.

 

[Black Cat]

Alexandros cannot into action games. After a hit like that, you should be able to roll-cancel and then combo the fucker until he recovers from hit-stun. That (most) action RPGs don't allow that is their true problem.

Don't forget to juggle the heavily armored jerk in mid air with a string of well timed attacks.

 

[JarlFrank]

Since JA2 has been mentioned, I'll just mention 7.62 High Calibre. Best gunporn realtime combat system to date.

 

[DriacKin]

Mount & Blade had some good stuff.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Play Rune instead.

Decapitate your enemy, then whack him with his head when he comes for more.

What more could you possibly want from a video game?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Rune had great combat. Unfortunately, the level design was absolute shit, does it get better after the endless boring caverns at the start?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yes, it picks up a lot after that. The city of Thorstadt (which comes right after you leave the caverns) is excellent. Dwarven lands are also pretty neat, so are ice wastes that come later.

And by 'caverns', do you mean the goblin caves only or do you also mean Hel that comes after the goblin caves? Because that area was also nicely done, I thought.

But yeah, the starting caverns are dull, and it's a pain to get through them each time I'm replaying the game.

 

[Phelot]

I suppose there's two avenues of thought: One is what I would consider to be "aRPG" which relies on the player's skills, but has ingame skill system that augments or unlocks various moves, abilities, combos, etc. for the player to utilize. Gothic, Risen, Severance (if that's to be considered an RPG)

The other is the weirdo RTwP... though there are certain games that don't include pause, but are still relying solely on the player's abilities and skills, usually determined by rolls of some sort. This has always looked retarded. It was retarded looking in BG, in Morrowind, and in every other game that uses it. While in some of them it still works despite the glaring retardedness that comes with your character doing ballerina jumps and slashes that clearly hit, but are still *misses* in most it does not work and the game should have been TB.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yes, it picks up a lot after that. The city of Thorstadt (which comes right after you leave the caverns) is excellent. Dwarven lands are also pretty neat, so are ice wastes that come later.

And by 'caverns', do you mean the goblin caves only or do you also mean Hel that comes after the goblin caves? Because that area was also nicely done, I thought.

But yeah, the starting caverns are dull, and it's a pain to get through them each time I'm replaying the game.

Also, is there any way to skip cutscenes?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Uh, no idea. Wasn't there a 'skip cinematic' option or something when you invoked the main menu with ESC?

And... Why the hell would you want to skip ODIN, HUH?

So much for being a viking, you fucking poseur

 

[Truman]

People don't like to admit it, but I would say Assassin's Creed. Hitting people and getting hit does a lot of damage, like it should in real life. Your character moves at a reasonable speed, so he's not chaining massive combos. And you have to block attacks until you get a good opening.

 

[pero]

Your first problem is in seeking satisfying and/or realistic REAL TIME combat in a RPG. it does not exist. RPGs by definition should never base CHARACTER'S physical aptitude on PLAYER'S reflexes. That is as wonky as basing a FANTASY strat's "magic" systems on what can be achieved in REAL WORLD physics...actually it is probably much worse than that.

This assumes that the RPG elements govern the combat. There's really no reason they have to, beyond the fact that we're so used to it. Perhaps those RPGs which do make use of real-time combat would be better served scrapping the RPG combat pretence altogether and utilizing RPG elements solely for non-combat actions. This would, of course, rely on the game providing a far larger range of activities than most, but I don't think it would contradict the nature of RPGs to any greater degree than we allege current real-time systems do.

 

[Zeus]

...I have Rune Gold but can't get it to work right in WinXP. :/

Mount & Blade does have glorious melee combat, though.

 

[JarlFrank]

Uh, no idea. Wasn't there a 'skip cinematic' option or something when you invoked the main menu with ESC?

And... Why the hell would you want to skip ODIN, HUH?

So much for being a viking, you fucking poseur

I like the cutscenes, but they can get tiresome in a second playthrough because they're rather lengthy.

 

[JarlFrank]

...I have Rune Gold but can't get it to work right in WinXP. :/

Mount & Blade does have glorious melee combat, though.

Infantry combat kinda sucks and ends up being a horrible clusterfuck. Mounted combat is awesome, though.

 

[Zeus]

Infantry combat kinda sucks and ends up being a horrible clusterfuck.

Ah, but I imagine that'd be a problem on any battlefield.

When I think of M&B melee combat, I think of the superb arena battles. There's nothing quite like being worn down to 10% health (no heal spells here, folks), being surrounded by three guys, and trying to time your blocks just right so you can get a swipe or two in before they kill you.

 

[Lyric Suite]

WoW. The game is shit and MMORPGs are fail but the warrior class from that game was great. I heard it was designed by Pardo himself and some of the designing elements from Blizzard's former strategy games obviously went into it. While most of the other classes get locked into some boring rotation (the ones i tried at least), the warrior was all about using the right ability at the right time, depending on the circumstance. Often times, that ability was on a different stance which required good reflexes and situational awareness. The class was also one of the few that lacked any form of escape or protection ability to get out of tight situations, which meant every encounter was to the death, and you always strove to take down as many enemies as possible before dropping to the ground, which felt very, well, warrior-like. Tanking was also fun, due to the difficultly of keeping aggro between multiple mobs. That too really felt like you were playing a warrior, and not some boring automaton. All this was of course before Blizzard dumped down the game. Now i hear you can tanl any instance by spamming thunderclap and using some boring rotation, that's how easy it has become to maintain aggro. Fucking popamole cunts.