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[Athelas]

I think you might be confusing move sets (similar to stringing together combo's by pressing button combinations in fighting games) with to-hit rolls. How about posting something like a GameFaqs guide on mechanics that backs up what you're saying?

Why bother? You appear to be more interesting in dodging the point anyway.

'These games had secret to-hit rolls, believe me' isn't a very compelling argument. I don't think asking you to back up your claims is unreasonable.

 

[Infinitron]

But dodging in those games is far more simulated and situational. Having a direct RPG-style to-hit roll means you can have characters who might endlessly play dodge animations as you fail to hit them with your low accuracy character. At that point you're just exchanging one absurdity for another, and for no particularly compelling reason since you've already implemented all the animations necessary for a genuine action game.

Yes, you can end up with endless dodge/parry. That's how it works. If someone's a much better fighter, you're not gonna hit him because you suck. How's that bad? Certainly happens in plenty of movies/ tv series where our hero is never hit no matter how many enemies surround him, and people seem to enjoy that.

Secondly, why would you want a genuine action game when you can have a genuine RPG?

I don't consider to-hit rolls the mark of a genuine RPG.

 

[Raapys]

'These games had secret to-hit rolls, believe me' isn't a very compelling argument. I don't think asking you to back up your claims is unreasonable.

But that isn't the argument. You're making it the argument.

As for whether it's true or not, it should be immediately apparent to anyone who's played the game. How so?

DF2 JK: You're standing still and watching your enemy, touching no button. Enemy fires laser, your character deflects it away(or back towards the enemy). Enemy fires another laser, you deflect it again. Enemy fires again, your character doesn't deflect it and it hits you. I.e. there's a to-hit roll going on in the background. Same with blocking lightsaber attacks. In either case, no blocking is done if you are touching your attack buttons.

In JediOutcast/Academy, exact same thing except here your character can also dodge, which is essentially a lean-move that triggers automatically when you're not attacking, but not always.

Dark Messiah: You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, both hit each other. You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, swords deflect each other. Whether this one is a roll or determined by the exact position of the swords at the time they clash I don't know, but *it might as well have been a roll*.

Again though, this is way outside the point, which is simply that these mechanics could easily be bound to stat-rolls instead.

I don't consider to-hit rolls the mark of a genuine RPG.

Hey, fair enough.

To me, RPGs are about the success of the player's actions being determined by the character's skills rather than the player's. The latter is to me the marks of an action game. If that doesn't work for you then that's your prerogative.

 

[Athelas]

Dark Messiah: You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, both hit each other. You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, swords deflect each other. Whether this one is a roll or determined by the exact position of the swords at the time they clash I don't know, but *it might as well have been a roll*.

No, because it relies on timing/collision detection of the swords, i.e. fully deterministic things.

I have no experience with the other games, so I can't comment on them.

 

[Raapys]

Dark Messiah: You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, both hit each other. You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, swords deflect each other. Whether this one is a roll or determined by the exact position of the swords at the time they clash I don't know, but *it might as well have been a roll*.

No, because it relies on timing/collision detection of the swords, i.e. fully deterministic things.

I have no experience with the other games, so I can't comment on them.

Are you gonna argue the actual point too, or did you feel this was enough to invalidate everything?

 

[Athelas]

Dark Messiah: You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, both hit each other. You attack at the same time as the enemy attacks, swords deflect each other. Whether this one is a roll or determined by the exact position of the swords at the time they clash I don't know, but *it might as well have been a roll*.

No, because it relies on timing/collision detection of the swords, i.e. fully deterministic things.

I have no experience with the other games, so I can't comment on them.

Are you gonna argue the actual point too, or did you feel this was enough to invalidate everything?

What is there to argue? Unless you don't understand what 'deterministic' means. Though I did forget to comment on this:

To me, RPGs are about the success of the player's actions being determined by the character's skills rather than the player's. The latter is to me the marks of an action game.

Technically, outcomes being decided by RNG aren't being determined by 'character's skill'.

 

[Raapys]

What is there to argue? Unless you don't understand what 'deterministic' means.

Making these moves/animations based on a more visible RPG-tohit roll is a non-issue.

The point which is that adopting these dodge/parry mechanics for a to-hit roll based on your character and your opponent's sword fighting/parry/dodge skills is a non-issue.

Again though, this is way outside the point, which is simply that these mechanics could easily be bound to stat-rolls instead.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey, fair enough.

To me, RPGs are about the success of the player's actions being determined by the character's skills rather than the player's. The latter is to me the marks of an action game. If that doesn't work for you then that's your prerogative.

Even in gameplay contexts where it's unfun and doesn't make sense, gotcha.

 

[Raapys]

Even in gameplay contexts where it's unfun and doesn't make sense, gotcha.

Very snappy. Do explain how it doesn't make sense.

Unfun is, of course, highly subjective, so I'm not gonna ask you to elaborate on that one. I guess for me, unfun and 'doesn't make sense' is what happens when my character excels at an action in which he has crappy skills.

 

[Athelas]

Who says that has to be the case? Instead of giving the character a to-dodge roll, just make his movement/dodge speed slower.

The dichotomy between player skill and character skill has always been a false one. A game driven by character stats is still reliant on player input.

 

[Raapys]

No one says it has to be the case. The question is simply one of how much you want the character's skill to matter vs how much you want the player's skill to matter. Most people prefer full control over their character and thus love to play Call of Duty, some prefer that it's all up to the character and thus play Might and Magics and Wizardrys, and others still prefer something inbetween the two extremes and play Mount&Blade or Deus Ex.

That's all fine.

Morrowind went the M&M and Wizardry route. My point was merely that it would certainly feel a lot better had it implemented some visual/audial clues, as does action games, to better represent hits and misses. It's not the to-hit rolls themselves that were wrong, it was the non-existent in-game representation.

 

[Athelas]

Well yes, the reason action games are able to implement those cues so well is because they allow you full control over your character. If an attack hits you even if you raise your weapon/shield to parry it because you failed a roll...that's more difficult to present to the player.

 

[Raapys]

Well, I guess that's where we disagree then, on the difficulty it presents. Many games allow you to block light attacks, while heavy/power attacks will break through your block. Switching that to instead take a boolean hit or not hit doesn't sound like a huge undertaking to me.

 

[CyberWhale]

TL;DR - go deterministic or bust.

 

[tuluse]

Isn't the obvious thing to have stats control how fast you can swing weapons and give new better moves to use?

Low weapon skill, low physical attribute characters: slow wild swings
High weapons skill, high physical attribute characters: fast controlled swings

 

[Infinitron]

Isn't the obvious thing to have stats control how fast you can swing weapons and give new better moves to use?

Low weapon skill, low physical attribute characters: slow wild swings
High weapons skill, high physical attribute characters: fast controlled swings

I can imagine some kind of "precision melee game" where you can aim at and hit very specific spots on an enemy character and have a stat controlling your hand-eye coordination for that purpose, but I'm not sure where that kind of precision would very helpful, except for "hit the weak spot for massive damage" scenarios.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Isn't the obvious thing to have stats control how fast you can swing weapons and give new better moves to use?

Low weapon skill, low physical attribute characters: slow wild swings
High weapons skill, high physical attribute characters: fast controlled swings

That's similar to how Gothic 1 did it, was very satisfying in terms of character growth. Risen (the first one) had nice skill development for melee weapons as well, every level gave you a useful perk or ability (wield 2H swords in one hand, Power Attack, counter parries etc.) instead of boring +damage increase.

 

[tuluse]

I can imagine some kind of "precision melee game" where you can aim at and hit very specific spots on an enemy character and have a stat controlling your hand-eye coordination for that purpose, but I'm not sure where that kind of precision would very helpful, except for "hit the weak spot for massive damage" scenarios.

I was actually thinking of a PS1 game called Bushido Blade. It featured 6 characters who had different attributes and move sets. Now, being a Japanese fighting game, this was all obscured. However, it was pretty straight forward. Stronger characters could recover faster when attacking with heavy weapons. Faster characters could use light weapons much faster.

Also, combat was very lethal. Any landed hit could kill, and short of killing could cripple an arm or leg. So you actually spent a lot of the game, not attack to keep your weapon up for defense.

This would resolve the problem you and raapys were talking about of "how do you visually show attacks missed"? Well, have the attack bounce uselessly off the opponent's sword or shield is a good way to show it.

This requires a big change in top down design because the primary motivation of the player is no longer how to maximize damage over time, but how to get past the opponent's defenses to even cause damage and how to make sure you keep your own defenses up.

And now that I've written all of this, I realize a much more recent example of all of this is From's Souls games (though, they make DraQ mad by also increasing damage).

 

[Raapys]

That's exactly what I've been suggesting though, some visual feedback for when an attack 'fails'. Morrowind didn't do this. With no visual indication of what went wrong with your attack, the game's combat ended up frustrating and annoying until you got your weapon skill to a high enough level.

These other guys have been arguing that character skill shouldn't affect the chance to score damage at all, instead just having it as an action game in that regard. Which is fine. But it doesn't change the fact that to-hit rolls could work great in first/third person too, given the presence of suggested feedback features.

 

[Roguey]

Isn't the obvious thing to have stats control how fast you can swing weapons and give new better moves to use?

Low weapon skill, low physical attribute characters: slow wild swings
High weapons skill, high physical attribute characters: fast controlled swings

Modifying speed wouldn't necessarily be fun or appropriate.

 

[tuluse]

That's exactly what I've been suggesting though, some visual feedback for when an attack 'fails'. Morrowind didn't do this. With no visual indication of what went wrong with your attack, the game's combat ended up frustrating and annoying until you got your weapon skill to a high enough level.

These other guys have been arguing that character skill shouldn't affect the chance to score damage at all, instead just having it as an action game in that regard. Which is fine. But it doesn't change the fact that to-hit rolls could work great in first/third person too, given the presence of suggested feedback features.

Yeah, I was giving you an example to visually show a miss without needing a Matrix style dodging.

 

[tuluse]

Isn't the obvious thing to have stats control how fast you can swing weapons and give new better moves to use?

Low weapon skill, low physical attribute characters: slow wild swings
High weapons skill, high physical attribute characters: fast controlled swings

Modifying speed wouldn't necessarily be fun or appropriate.

I think if the range is bounded correctly it would be.

If it's not appropriate, well you're probably making a game where stats shouldn't affect abilities at all. Instead it should be entirely equipment based like 90% of first person games ever made.

 

[Roguey]

If it's not appropriate, well you're probably making a game where stats shouldn't affect abilities at all. Instead it should be entirely equipment based like 90% of first person games ever made.

New Vegas and Skyrim worked well enough without speed being a factor (though NV had a speed perk and 'rim had perks that increased the speed of dual-wielding and how long it takes you to draw a bow which was fine).

Before release, NV had agility determine how fast you could run (and they never corrected the description), but they realized this made it not-fun, so the only speed-related things it affects are drawing, holstering, and reloading.

 

[tuluse]

New Vegas and Skyrim worked well enough without speed being a factor (though NV had a speed perk and 'rim had perks that increased the speed of dual-wielding and how long it takes you to draw a bow which was fine).

Before release, NV had agility determine how fast you could run (and they never corrected the description), but they realized this made it not-fun, so the only speed-related things it affects are drawing, holstering, and reloading.

I meant for speed attribute to only affect attack and especially recovery times, not movement speed.

Edit: I think there is plenty of evidence that Gamebryo games are pretty bad action games though and would be vastly improved by going with a flat or very shallow power curve.

 

[Roguey]

New Vegas and Skyrim worked well enough without speed being a factor (though NV had a speed perk and 'rim had perks that increased the speed of dual-wielding and how long it takes you to draw a bow which was fine).

Before release, NV had agility determine how fast you could run (and they never corrected the description), but they realized this made it not-fun, so the only speed-related things it affects are drawing, holstering, and reloading.

I meant for speed attribute to only affect attack and especially recovery times, not movement speed.

Edit: I think there is plenty of evidence that Gamebryo games are pretty bad action games though and would be vastly improved by going with a flat or very shallow power curve.

I made a mistake, I forgot that NV reduced the attack speed of melee/unarmed weapons if you didn't meet the strength and skill requirements. Josh does it again.

I think most games could be improved with fewer levels.