07/07/2015 - Melee Combat Recommendations?

[MrDDT]

All games have desync, just some are less than others. Darkfall's desync is much much less than WOW, but WOW you wouldn't even notice is due to how the combat system works. Darkfall you have even just minor ones and you feel it.

Like Treyu is saying, you might have desync spotty here or there, less is better. Xsyon you ALWAYS have desync in the current combat system.

[azzymor]

There are ALWAYS issues with latency in a network (internet). The distance between the players and the server is what is causing the latency, and in this universe it is what it is, and will never be any better. In the beginning of game design the algorithms were quite bad at solving this fact and generally it was considered the less latency you had, the better the combat it would be. (old quake for instance).

Today the algorithms are a bit more capable and take latency into consideration when players go into "combat" vs each other or vs environment. In short both server and client is reset frame-wise and then start an exchange of messages with state updates. In between they both have to simulate actions which will then (upon an actual update) be interpolated into what actually happens, and then again predict->simulate->update->interpolate-> until combat is resolved.
What happens is the server/client hides the latency in prediction and interpolation which makes for a smooth experience, but which can yield extremely surprising results during longer periods of latency

I'm happy you start to dig into the combat, because in my opinion it is the most uninspiring thing about Xsyon. I can see (hardly) any similarities with Mount & Blade at all (a game I completely love). I hope you do what Treyu and DDT suggest, decide what should be possible to do in combat (strike, dodge, block, thrust ...etc.) and make those actions as generic as possible, polish it and make them work as smoothly as possible.

[Drevar]

Age of Wushu (yeah, yeah, I know...) uses a combat system that is way slower (in terms of input) than most games, yet the animations are long and detailed enough that it totally masks the "slowness". They are of course dealing with very fancy martial arts moves with distinct start and interruptable intermediate frames and not just a simple swing of the arm. Skills are limited to a 1 second cooldown between (so even if you spam the queue up, they are processed at one second ticks), and when coupled with elaborate animations give plenty of time for the round trip ping and time for the other player to recognize what move is coming and try to counter it with a parry or counter move.

They do still suffer problems in situations where there is a large delta between competing players' ping time, however, and some players take huge advantage (read cheat like bastards) of the client side prediction. Basically a super high (slow) ping allows you to move out of the way of attacks while the low (fast) ping client sees the slow guy teleporting all over and away from his attacks. All of the slow players attacks connect as the fast client acknowledges the hit nearly instantly, while the fast client misses a lot because the slow client has time to move out of the way before the "im hitting you now, are you there?" packet gets responded to. They seem to leave a lot of the trust for positioning up to the client side.

It is kind of hard to recommend a system other than WoW style faceroll 1-2-3-4 when we know that art/animation resources are quite limited.

I wonder how a UO style system where you have war/peace modes and just autoswing your basic attack when in range coupled with manual "special moves" would work? (Ranged weapons would be 100% manual.) This would be highly PnP RPG style depending mainly on skill checks and "dice rolls" rather than player skill. I don't know if you are willing to push that far away from a more interactive player based system like we have now.

[znaiika]

Elder Scrolls Online or NeverWinter Online did a good job.

[Kyosa]

Very interesting melee combat system in Mabinogi.
Mobs and players have enough time to choose their skills.
Playing as an EU on the US Server at at prime time and no lag at all.

Here is a tutorial for basic skills:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4FXm-9Jo58

and here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DusAX0AHtDY

[Bejaymac]

Keep it the way it is.

Combat in Xsyon is hard but simple and in a way similar to what you get in the real world, you have a big stick and you need to beat the crap out of your target before it does the same to you, this kind of combat takes skill, timing and a lot of luck.

Probably going to upset a few with this, but from the sounds of things most want a "fire and forget" combat system, or as I call it the lazy turd combat system, the kind where you get a bunch of skill combos, keybind/macro them in rotation, select your target, then hit a key and sit back and watch your toon kick 9 colors out of the target. No skill, no luck and very little timing required, and not to mention boring as hell.

[Pwnuts]

there is no luck needed, but timing and skill for sure. and i would like to see this combat in the future as well. not sure why we would need a change, anybody will cry about any combat we have anyway, anytime.

we need to balance the critters, not the combat itselt. basically the range of small mutants and mutant bears. animals who ignore surfaces, and keep the same speed all the time. and for sure the speed critters who run faster than a sprinting player and hit like 10 times per second.

we could implement more weapon skills like swords and polearms(again). i'm against ranged combat since xsyon kinda invite player to cliff any critter, and there is no challenge or unique mob anymore. even if 2 players just kite a enemy, they will get it down in a way where they do not get any hits.
i also think we could work on the charackters animation. there is no animation when a player recive dmg yet. only when he deal dmg. this could be changed for diffrent weapontypes again.
also 2 hand axes and a shield which support parry/block and players defense additional would be great.

anyway. i returned in november and i heard xsyon is working on the critters now. then we got plenty of new stuff and all the time we heard that the current projects are critters. i dont know if the critters topic is to complicated to change or if there is simply no real interest on it. we sould fix the stuff we have and not cause new problems with new implementations. i reported prolly 50% of the bugs in the past 6-8 month. not even all of them in the forum, some via ticket or with hidden threads because they are abusable. i dont really care for all the diffrent opinions and suggestions, but i accept what will come up in the future. i support the game (imo) in a way where it can work well, without issues, and i'm satisfied with the stuff we already have. but this stuff shouldn't annoy players, it should simply work. new players wont come and stay because we have more features to provide. a lot of players who try the game leave already for the reason that they get killed by a rat, or any animal which is not supposed to kill them, compared to reality - and xsyon is based on reality since years, most fixes and changes was to make things more real, soon we can push shortkeys and newbs still die on the rabbits.

at least but ot lost: improves are fine but please dont start copy a combat system of any other game, this is ultra dumb! xsyon is xsyon and not any other game, keep it this way. the combat here isnt really hard, just not similar with oter games, but pretty easy to learn. add a window with players abilitys like def, atk, hitrate and fix the critters, then we will have a way better use of time spend on development.

[MrDDT]

The reason I don't like the current combat system is because you can be hit in MELEE combat from 12+ meters away due to desync. Because desync can only be fixed so much, I suggest changing the system of combat.
Also, combat is extremely boring. You attack back up attack. Repeat until monster is dead. No skill or tactics outside of that is needed. I can kill ANY monster in the game without being hit due to this. Mean means armor is worthless for combat (oddly enough its useful for crafting) and weapons matter in only the amount of time not IF you can do it.
Combat should be more than walking backwards.

[thurgond]

Let me preface my remarks by saying I'm an older gamer that didn't grow up with playing 1st person shooters on home consoles. The home version of Pong came out about the time I hit the quarter century mark. Keep in mind that Xsyon's population does skew older than the hand holding theme park MMO's.

The only times I can kill anything without getting hit is when I can one shot something.

My biggest problem with the current combat system (ignoring my general lack of coordination and slow reaction speed) is that mouse look remains enabled in a combat system that requires holding down the right mouse button. In combat, mouse look is even enabled on the left mouse button, so I can't switch to using my weapon in the left hand.

Melee combat should have several valid tactics, even if some are situational. As it stands, the best strategy is to walk backward while fully charging your weapon and trying to time the opponent's strike. Picks/shovels are the best choice because their slow charge time is still shorter than the strikes of big game. Shorter charge times of blades/axes/clubs in no way off sets their lower damage and reach.

I'd be cool with not bringing a knife to a bear fight if there were some situations where blades were a valid option. Perhaps allowing a dual wield/double hit option with two blades. Making frequent hits interrupt critters would also make faster weapons a useful skill.

Options to make weapons different are stuns from clubs and staves, crits from axes, bleeds from blades and pole arms.

With or without major changes to combat, additional combat AI would really help make combat more than backing up. Current critter behaviors are run away, advance and the mixed run away/advance of dogs and cats. Having big game occasionally back up and then charge would also make combat more interesting.

The AI when several mobs are agro is also easily defeated by player's back up all the time strategy. Say you have several revs coming at you. You can see the revs that are not at the front of the beat down line trying to go wide to get at you, but the best they can do is occasionally get to the front of the line.

[Flashand]

New to Xsyon, however this is the one area that needs a significant boost. I hope it is simple to do, make the hit box bigger... Not just the head as this is sometimes a small area or is blocked by the body of the animal (most occurrences) so if there were 2 hit boxes on the creature not sure if that is doable, i dont code, one on the head (does more damage) and one on the body 1/3 damage of head maybe this wold work?