03/24/2020 - Feedback Request - Creatures & Combat

[Static]

"- You should not be able to walk backwards to avoid attacks. Creatures should keep up with you and you should have to turn and run (or sprint) to get away. (Walking backwards to avoid attacks is NOT an intended feature - it was a bug caused by code I changed a few days ago - that's why we need testing like this! Thanks ;-))."

So how are you intending for a player to actually fight a animal if they can't turn towards them and the only option is to turn away and run? This is not good combat if thats the intention.

In dark souls, if you walk around a unit to the side and odds are the unit will attack you if its within their range, the miss opens up a opportunity for you to hit them if they miss.

This is 100% doable without being a multi-million dollar budget gaming company, your halfway there already in current state (not test server) the animals come at you, attempt attack and if they have stamina they will hit you, if they dont have stamina you can dodge the attack and use the opening to counter attack them with your own attack.. this is GOOD combat gameplay, removing this "counter play" style gameplay turns this into a fight where you need more hps than the enemy to win cuz the enemy is auto hitting you and instant hitting you with no ability to counter it... its really bad for both new and old players, the animal changes in combat are a step in the wrong direction.

I could have legitimately killed a hunchback yote by just walking back with 65% carry weight, I hit him prob half dozen or more times while he was unable to hit me as long as I was going backwards, even if it was extremely slow. The animal is "waiting" to be in instant hit range before swing'n, this gives zero counter play ability and zero ability to react to the attack coming, it just "instant hits" than you see the animal have its "after attack" animation, as in, the animation seems to be cut in half, the starting half of the animation is missing now and the animals instantly hit you without any swing or wind up to let you know its coming ~ this is bad combat that is even worse for noobs cuz you have no idea why your taking damage and you cant see it coming to react to it, you just take dmg instantly.

"- Aggressive creatures should automatically aggro and attack if you get too close (instead of coming towards you and watching you)"

They DO do this! I like the new aggro system, it works well.


"- Situations where creatures appear walking in place should not happen now. If they do, please try to reproduce the circumstances."

It seemed to be that the bear was doing this while its agro level was rising, it was "standing" in spot with agro going up, than it ran at me, during this time he was "running" in spot. If you've changed something since I posted I can try it again I guess.

Comments:

"- Dodging was removed because it seemed that nobody liked or wanted it. I may add it back. First I want to make sure everything that is in place is working well and no long 'broken'."

If you change animals so they run full blast at you, than instant hit you with zero ability to counter play them, than you'll have made the combat MORE 'broken" than it was previously. The way you COULD make this change work is making it so animals have a much slower time turning around in combat and add some sort of side dodge step so you could side-step the animal your fighting and hit them in a spot that isn't the front of their face where they'll instantly hit you for dmg magically without swing'n at you.

"- I've never played Dark Souls. I'll be honest, it's very unlikely that I can code a system that resembles that of a multi-million dollar budget game series like that. My goal right now is to make sure combat is simple and satisfying, clear for new players and does not feel 'broken' or 'too hard'. Then I will do my best to add to it for PvP combat."

Nobody is asking you to be a multi-million dollar gaming studio and add that level of detail, shadows and graphics that comes with that.... however ... taking a page from their book of combat is 100% something that could be done. Currently (without this test patch) animals already react like in dark souls, they walk at you, swing attack, leaving opening for counter attack, animals are NOT the problem.

The problem is that the PLAYER doesn't have the correct tools in order to properly fight verse these animals in combat. This means you have no ability to dodge to the side, or dash to the side in order to avoid a attack.

The animals also have unlimited turning speed and will "always" be pointed at you, if this was changed so that rotation speed was lowered so you had a better chance to get to the side or behind them than you would have the ability to counter play, if the animal swings and misses the same time you side step you could hit them in the side while avoiding their attack, this would be great combat gameplay.

Right now there is no ability to actually fight the animals if they just charge at you and automatically hit you and you just take dmg till you die.. this sucks for both old and new players cuz nobody see's the attack coming and theres no way to avoid it, this isn't combat, this is bashing stats up verse each other and whoever has more will win... so all mutants become unkillable at this point than without abusing range, bears and yotes too, this isn't good.

I mean the whole point is you want real combat, someone to fight the animal in a field right? This won't do that. This will cause people to possibly fight it, than rest up at a rock with fire repeatedly inbetween cuz they won't have the hp to exchange hits with a animal, nobody has 1k hps or even over 400hps. Even sark with 333hps would get rekt by most mutants including squirrels and marmots, despite being one of the strongest people in the game and spending a ton of time investing to get to that point he still wouldnt be able to solo combat due to the skill level not being there, it just being stat bashing up verse each other, this isnt fun gameplay to have no ability to "out play" or "use skill" verse the enemy, if its purely just trading hits, you'll lose every time and that isn't fun gameplay knowing you can never win cuz theres no ability to out play the animal.

"- Once all that's listed on my main post is considered working well without bugs I will add parrying and we'll test that. I'm not going to add shields or fancy moves with this first upcoming patch but they can come in subsequent patches. One step at a time."

I'm not talking about "fancy moves" I'm talking about something thats pretty simple, the way parrying works atm depending on how close you are in the directional and location of blocking the hit, if you parry it properly you'll get rewarded with a damage reduction percentage that reduces the amount of damage the enemy does to you. I'm suggesting simple attach a hit recovery delay to the attacker if your able to properly hit this correct parry spot to reduce dmg by a decent amount. I'm not talking about a minor parry where its the wrong direction and just barely activates parry, I'm talking about for when you get it in the sweet spot and reduce dmg.

Shields could be the same thing, you reduce dmg near the edge of the shield, while blocking with the middle would give you a stun/hit recovery on the enemy.

Basically just code it so that if the defender properly parrys the enemy hit, that the enemy "reaction" is if they just got hit with a regular attack, this would give a "hit recovery" action and would open up a change to hit them back. Meaning in theory you could parry or block a attack and if you did it perfectly at the right spot you would cause the enemy to "hit recovery" as if they had been hit with a attack, giving you the chance to land a hit.

"- Regarding revenants on King's Beach: Revenants in easy zones on abandoned tribes near the lake should die permanently when killed. Is that not happening? Do they continue to re-spawn? Or is the tribe not completely abandoned? I will take a look at that situation."

On pve its a problem, the high object tahoe tribe, mixed with the mass objects/trees of kings beach can heavily hit a new players frames, mix this with a rev farm and its a bad combination, the area needs to be cleaned up to be better for lower power computers/laptops. My laptop that my wife plays on laggs so bad it almost seems like its freezing when you cross over from founders to kings beach... this doesn't happen anywhere else or near our tribe, or even going past large tribes like elite. So no idea what exactly the issue is but it must have something to do with the amount of objects loaded in that area, mix a rev farm with that and its a bad combo.

[Xsyon]

Regarding walking backwards to avoid attacks: In the old system (Main Servers) that's a major game-breaking bug. It's not an intentional feature. This simple bug caused many a headache and here is why...

--- A small group of players understood how to exploit this bug. They could defeat any creature using a new unskilled toon. It could be a long arduous process but it could be done.

--- With this bug exploit (especially in combination with hiding on rocks or other tricks), armor doesn't matter at all because creatures will never hit you. Combat skills and damage don't matter much either because it's just a matter of patience while leading a creature around to its ultimate defeat.

--- This was not reported to me (as happens with many bugs that players can exploit) until long after it was in game.

--- Because of this creatures were balanced based on feedback that they were too easy. They were too easy because of this bug that wasn't being explained to me. So I kept bumping up the stats on creatures.

--- The end result was a group of players that could easily kill any creature using this trick and a ton of players, especially new players, who didn't know of the trick and found even the smaller critters too hard to fight.

So let's put this issue to rest. I'm not going to re-introduce a game breaking bug so that players can simply walk backwards and avoid all attacks. It's not the kind of combat I'd enjoy and it's not what I want in this game. It's silly.

I am willing to add more complex moves such as parrying and dodging. Those are fine and makes sense. I will see about switching parrying back on first.

[Static]

Another example: doom

You keep moving to avoid the attacks while trying to land your own. Keep moving to avoid damage while trying to land damage yourself in its most basic form, pvp on doom was some of the first real pvp to exist, but it even in the most simple of forms (way more simple than xsyon) follows those same basic rules of having some way of avoiding damage while trying to deal damage yourself or "counter play" as I keep putting it.

Nobody wants to play doom if your forced to stand there and trade shots with someone, you wouldn't get very far verse enemies stronger than you, and most are stronger than you, so you gotta use a better stratigy than standing and trading.

right now this proposed change on animal combat means if you stand and fight a creature and they repeatedly instant attack you, your almost always going to be trading hit for hit.. and if animals both have more life and more damage, you will lose almost every time with no ability to avoid damage or use "skill" to make up for the huge difference in life and damage.

[Static]

"--- A small group of players understood how to exploit this bug. They could defeat any creature using a new unskilled toon. It could be a long arduous process but it could be done."

I disagree this is a bug.

If someone who is highly skilled and knows how the animal or enemy works in a game like dark souls, they would be able to do the exact same.

This means someone with a brand new toon on dark souls, but who already knows the attack timings on the enemy they are fighting, they would know how to properly block or parry or roll or dodge to get the opening they need in order to land a attack themselves.

That is someone learning the game and countering the enemy they are playing verse, this is a good thing when skill can make up the HUGE difference in life and damage.

"--- With this bug exploit (especially in combination with hiding on rocks or other tricks), armor doesn't matter at all because creatures will never hit you. Combat skills and damage don't matter much either because it's just a matter of patience while leading a creature around to its ultimate defeat."

The creature never hits you ONLY if your able to properly bait the attack and remove yourself from range repeatedly. In theory this is possible, in reality however not something you can do verse a plateback or shadow bear.... however with this new patch you CAN totally walk back and attack a plateback without him hitting you as long as you keep moving back, this feels way less intended.

"--- This was not reported to me (as happens with many bugs that players can exploit) until long after it was in game.

--- Because of this creatures were balanced based on feedback that they were too easy. They were too easy because of this bug that wasn't being explained to me. So I kept bumping up the stats on creatures."

You can call it a bug and maybe it is, but the way its been changed is not any better and I feel I've elaborated on why but to brake it down the biggest issue is that there is no wind up or action before your instantly hit, even going in and out of range gets you phantom instant hit, this isnt good, you need to see the attack coming... Think dauntless (its free, try it) the large monster throws a attack and you know to get out of the way, but at the end of the attack there is a opening to attack. Yes their attacks are more complex than xsyon, I know this, but I'm just trying to get you to see the "concept" not copy another game. The "concept" is that you need a opening to attack and instant attacks don't give you that opening.

"--- The end result was a group of players that could easily kill any creature using this trick and a ton of players, especially new players, who didn't know of the trick and found even the smaller critters too hard to fight."

Well this is compounded by a few issues. Most new players or crafters have under 100 hps and don't do alot of damage, so trying to balance the game for them at the same time as people like ddt/dang/sark with 300-350+ hps your going to get two wildly different opinions on what should be done cuz they have different damage and hp levels.

Another thing (that you've solved somewhat here) is having quick hits do 75% dmg instead of 1% dmg, I feel this is a step in the right direction for noob combat.

The last thing would be the lack of meaning in parry and lack of shields or blocking or ability to hit recovery or stun.

Trying to balance animals before addressing all of this is just going to cause you more work since your going to need to rebalance it after you change or add combat aspects, for example putting side dodge or dash into the game would heavily change balance if animal spin rate was also reduced and there was animal wind up time so you could see the attack coming.

A solution might be to have more of a lunge attack, instead of just "normal speed" and attacking you, maybe they "wind up" letting you know a attack is coming, than they charge forward at a temp higher speed rate to unleash the attack, with a minor hit recovery if they miss from overswing'n, giving you the chance to attack yourself if you used dodge to the side to avoid the attack, this sounds like GREAT gameplay!

"So let's put this issue to rest. I'm not going to re-introduce a game breaking bug so that players can simply walk backwards and avoid all attacks. It's not the kind of combat I'd enjoy and it's not what I want in this game. It's silly."

Okay I advise you to play your own game than. I don't think a creature running at you faster than you can dodge, side step, move backwards or move in any way is fun combat cuz your effectively making it so there is ZERO way to avoid the damage coming.

If you want the game to run like this you need to have the ability to avoid the damage in some way, some mechanic, I suggested a few but you need to pick at least one instead of saying you need to effectively "face check" every attack, you need to tank a attack to give a attack, its bad gameplay... even worse gameplay would be a coyote running up to you and you and the coyote spamming your attack as fast as you can till one of you died... is THAT your intention? To spam attack at each other till one falls over with no way to out play or avoid it?

We need parry hit recovery or stun action OR shields with the same, or both.

We need the ability to counter play the creatures or avoid the damage, if they sprint at you, you can't avoid the damage unless you turn around and run away, side stepping does nothing cuz their turn rate is infinity so they are always pointed right at you if they are agroed towards you, your trying to remove walking backwards so what honestly is the plan here to avoid damage? We don't have dodge or any other meaningful way of avoiding damage so the plan here is to just force a attack spam or run?

How is this fun gameplay? How does this utilize the directional twitch combat?

"I am willing to add more complex moves such as parrying and dodging. Those are fine and makes sense. I will see about switching parrying back on first."

[Static]

Can you release the good parts of this patch without the bad?

Like the migration parts seem great, the weapon damage rates displayed seem great, the animal names to show age seem great, the reduced lagg and synch issues seem great, the 75% dmg on quick attacks seems great, 100% on charge seems fine and gives the ability to give you a strong attack that you can hold... however I do feel at this point "how long" it takes to full the bar up should be reduced to better reflect the fact that its only a 25% boost, power charge bar could have its times cut in half at this point.

The only issue we're talking about here is how the animals attack, its obviously not as you intended at the moment and from my opinion its a massive step down cuz instead of seeing and baiting attacks, this new patch doe exactly what you DONT want, you can just walk backwards and free him them if you out range them still, but you also ruined it for attacking peopel who have the same range as you or more cuz they dont even swing at you anymore, they just instant hit so you cant avoid the damage, this one lone part is a step in the wrong direction, while everything else on this patch seems pretty legit.

I have NOT seen a animal die of old age tho so I have no idea about this feature since I'm unable to test it. Is the intention for this that animals don't instantly disappear anymore? Cuz if a animal "dies" wouldn't it just be gone in a minute or two and disappear? That means no player would ever be there within that time in my opinion.

[Static]

"Regarding 'instant attacks' on the Test Server:

Attacks are not instant. The creature swings and the attack hit and damage is calculated at the end of the swing. This will give the player time to parry or dodge (when those are re-implemented).

If the attacks seem too fast - which is what is sounds like you are saying - it's because the system overall processes much faster than on the Main Servers. Creatures don't have charged attacks on the Main Servers. If the attacks on the Main Server are slower or seem like they are charged, it's simply because that old system is slow and laggy."

I'm not sure this is the problem.

The reason I say this is cuz when I was walking backwards with 65% carry weight, attacking a plateback bear who was unable to attack me cuz he was stuck at 99 aggro I assume cuz I was moving backwards and he needed 100 to attack me, so he needed to be closer and wouldnt attack purely cuz I was too far back.

I think if it attacks at 99 instead of 100 you might remove this issue completely.

Now why I don't think its server side lagg making it too fast is cuz, again, I would see the attact animation AFTER the hit at normal speed, only the BEFORE hit was missing, the hit was instant, no wind up or animation before being hit, however, after hit animation was completely fine.

"There are two variables at play here; attack speed (speed of the animation) and attack rate (time between attacks).
I will look into these and make sure they are slow enough for a player to react to them with a parry (or later with a dodge or block). These are easy to adjust.

Note: My main goal right now is to wrap up this first patch. My priority is finding and fixing any bugs and balancing creature variables so that combat is welcoming to a new players (that is just going to stand and click to attack)."

If your intention is to have the creature and player spam attack each other till one falls over your going to need to massively nerf the damage and hp of all creatures. I think doing this before focusing on on fixing the issues with combat (no way to avoid dmg or counter play atm) would be a waste of time since you'll need to reblance them again in the future, but if we're getting instant attacked and having a spam battle it would be heavily required for anyone to kill anything.

"Creature variables CAN and SHOULD be adjusted with this build. Hp and damage are not fixed numbers that I need to work around. They need to be properly balanced so that players don't feel a need to try tricks to defeat creatures.

I will not be able to add shield and likely not a proper dodge to this patch. I don't have the time or resources. (For example - anything that requires new animations is a time drain. I know how to use the tools but I'm not a skilled animator. I didn't create any of the current animations.)."

I can totally understand that, but coming up with a good solid game plan of what needs to be done could be a good idea that way you know exactly what it is you need to out source and what exactly it is your asking for programers to do instead of just telling them to "fix the broken combat" you would have very exact things you wanted them to do, a direction and goal to fix it.

I'm all for theory crafting here and talking about it, but trying to vaguely "fix broken combat" without addressing the reasons why it feels that way due to lack of features, the biggest being a way to avoid damage or counter play, seems like it will never work without a concreted goal and direction, a list of exact features and talked out ideas of how it should exactly work... instead of just trying a bunch of shit and hope'n something works, or putting your trust in a "combat programer" to do whatever they want, you would be telling them exactly what you need done.

[thurgond]

Did a lot of testing this evening.

Biggest problem is that every critter will agro and attack. This includes rookie ground squirrels, chickens, rabbits, cats, dogs, etc. Small critters also seem to like to walk up to me. Perhaps this is code left over from the taming testing. About a third of my fights with larger critters, some smaller critter would join in.

I like it that critters slow down when going up steep slopes, but since they can climb slopes a player can't it will still mean that more often than not the prey will get away.

There were a lot of mutants in low and medium danger areas near the lake including elders. I do not know when they migrate, but with the critter distribution I saw tonight, a new character would die a thousand deaths before learning how to set a totem or climb a rock for safety.

I was able to run away successfully on occasion on a road. If I fled to a safe structure or rock, I noticed the critter running away if they were within agro range when I reached safety, but not if I had put some distance before reaching safety. That is a good thing as it enables the hunt to continue after a little healing.

I used both my usual pre-order knife and a Christmas pre-order pick. I did not notice any difference is swing speed between the weapons. The knife did significantly less damage, but couldn't deal the death by a thousand cuts that would make it a viable weapon option.

I did enjoy the lower critter damage as I made hunting viable for me. Before, the toughest critter I could kill was a 60% racoon, and then only when I had paid my taxes and was wearing bone armor.

As far as the old meta of walking backwards to avoid damage, for me I never had the reaction speed and ping to pull it off regularly. On a flat road, I could avoid a third or less of hits but it was still my preferred tactic to walk backward to fully charge my weapon. On non-flat terrain and certainly on rock or junk it just didn't pay to try and fight, which left most of the map as not a place to hunt. That said, it did take some player skill and was an improvement over the initial combat system of standing there and clicking. With the system on test, the combat meta for a lone hunter seem to be back to standing there in front of the critter and doing uncharged attacks till someone dies or runs. If a charged attack only deals 133% of an uncharged attack, and the length of time to fully charge stays the same is only worth it to charge the initial attack.

One thought to make combat more interesting, have the critter do a charged attack (perhaps with double or better damage) when they rear up. But since they do not move forward to keep in contact with the player while charging, the player could back up perhaps getting out of range or move in for the kill if one more swing can finish it. Since the critter is exposing it's belly while reared up, maybe it would take more damage or the charged attach could be interrupted.

[Xsyon]

Thanks guys. I'm going to work on some of these issues and patch the server by this weekend. I'll post again once I've done that.

One comment about creatures on slopes that players can't climb: This is a tricky situation. I tried before to block creatures from climbing certain slopes and it created situations where creatures could get stuck. For now I think I need to just leave it as is.

Other players are welcome to add their comments.

Thanks again!

[Wilson423]

I spent a few minutes messing around with this and here's my 2 cents so far....
Agro range - I was hunting on the open flat where Oasis used to be and I could watch the smallest of squirrel come at me from max viewable distance itching for a fight. The mutants (thankfully) not interested.
Combat - I tried a fighting style of charging swing, sprinting to critter, swing at critter, sprint away to avoid being hit. problem is you could put an adult plateback bear between me and a squirrel and he would still land a hit. Also when facing the animal his hit would undo my attack, so I would have to charge up my swing again.
I can try and figure out a way to record a video of this if needed.
Everyone will have to build walls of some sort to keep animals out. My tribe land is mostly setup like a camp. I like being outside but the random Manx attacking me while I sit and eat at the camp fire cant be a thing.
Other Info - I wasn't wearing any armor of note and only hunted dog size or smaller animals. Ping sits around ~100 normally. Running 30-40 fps. I might turn down the graphics tonight to see if there is any difference.

Edit to Combat - With the cam zoomed all the way critters can still hit me as I sprint away and they are far enough away that I can't see them.

https://i.postimg.cc/267XrcGg/xsyon1.png

An image of a hit from 14 meters away

[Static]

I also agree that creatures running up or off cliffs you cant follow is prob the worst thing ever... Is there a way to "not prevent" but give them a bonus to choosing to go any direction that doesn't have elevation of x? OR you could have it so that if someone is "chasing" it or rather its in combat or agro over x than it can't run up or down elevation difference of x.. this would mean you COULD trap chase them in combat, but they could still go over cliffs for migration if they are not in combat... wouldn't that solve both problems?