05-26-2009, 03:43 PM
I think a lot about my Perfect PvP game. This post is mostly me rambling...
/ponder
I've been thinking that one element I really enjoy is the FPS concept of "sometimes, through skill and luck, one person can defeat many". Sometimes you get to be Rambo. In an FPS, 5 v 1, each of the 5 is capable of killing the 1, but the 1, sometimes, can manage to beat the 5.
This element is almost completely missing from RPG style PvP games. If it's 5v1 in WOW or WAR, all players max level, you're dead. No way around it. It's an amazing feat to defeat 2 on 1, let alone 5 on 1.
The FPS gets away with it because FPS skill comes in the form of aiming. 1 can beat 5 if he's fast on the draw and a good aim.
Is this concept incompatible with RPG gaming?
RPG style combat doesn't have the "skill based aiming" component. RPG combat skill comes from effective use of abilities and counter-abilities and that takes time to play out. Root, break root, knockdown, stun, snare, teleport, etc. After 60 seconds of fighting the player who understands his class better is probably winning, all else being equal. But you can't be Rambo like that. The best you can ever do to capture the Rambo feel in an RPG combat system is to have BIG fights with LOTS of people so that at least some of you can feel like Rambo as you get kill after kill while your teammates take the hits. The smaller the battle, the more this model falls apart.
Hmmm...
What can we do to a non-aim based, RPG style combat system to bring back the Rambo element? The idea that one skilled player can potentially take on 3 or more equally powerful opponents and have a chance of coming out on top, without making it purely a game of "whoever hits 'TAB 1' first wins"? We'll also need to address the problem of spawning in a town and having to run around for 3 minutes to find a fight, if fights are only going to take a couple of seconds.
Let's see....
1) You must have the ability to spawn close to the action. Planetside did this right. Defenders spawn in the base. Attackers spawn not far away, outside the base.
2) The real battle must be for control of spawns. Planetside did this right, as well. Although the goal may have been "secure the base", the real way you did this was to shut down the enemy's ability to spawn.
But #3 is tricky. How can you have a 1 to 5 second, skill based fight (as happens in an FPS) without relying on "aiming" to be that skill?
How do you make combat fun, fast and skill based without using FPS mechanics? We still want to rely on character stats to influence hit rate and damage -- that's the heart of RPG combat, after all, and we want to keep that, but we don't want to simply make fireballs to 15000 damage for that Rambo effect...
...
I'm pondering some kind of "preparation" mechanic. Like something you can do beforehand to prepare for a battle and that preparation has a big impact on how you can fight, perhaps not unlike deck building for a strategy card game. So maybe the fight itself is over in 5 seconds but somewhere beforehand you spent a lot of time thinking about what all you wanted lined up and ready to go.
Perhaps not unlike what I originally thought the Warhammer "tactics" were going to do. Like if you knew what was coming, you could prepare in a very specific way and give yourself a tremendous advantage. Of course, Warhammer's "tactics" skills were kind of diluted and didn't achieve this goal as I had envisioned it, but maybe that's an idea that can be built on.
For example, Rambo knows he's going to be fighting numerous human enemies in a wooded area in close combat, and prepares fully for this. Enemies coming in may be more generally prepared for a variety of things, but they are not specifically prepared for Rambo. Rambo might have a real shot at taking several of them out. The fights themselves are short -- the skill was more in the preparation than in the execution.
Is there potential in something like that to work and make for a fun game?
/ponder
I've been thinking that one element I really enjoy is the FPS concept of "sometimes, through skill and luck, one person can defeat many". Sometimes you get to be Rambo. In an FPS, 5 v 1, each of the 5 is capable of killing the 1, but the 1, sometimes, can manage to beat the 5.
This element is almost completely missing from RPG style PvP games. If it's 5v1 in WOW or WAR, all players max level, you're dead. No way around it. It's an amazing feat to defeat 2 on 1, let alone 5 on 1.
The FPS gets away with it because FPS skill comes in the form of aiming. 1 can beat 5 if he's fast on the draw and a good aim.
Is this concept incompatible with RPG gaming?
RPG style combat doesn't have the "skill based aiming" component. RPG combat skill comes from effective use of abilities and counter-abilities and that takes time to play out. Root, break root, knockdown, stun, snare, teleport, etc. After 60 seconds of fighting the player who understands his class better is probably winning, all else being equal. But you can't be Rambo like that. The best you can ever do to capture the Rambo feel in an RPG combat system is to have BIG fights with LOTS of people so that at least some of you can feel like Rambo as you get kill after kill while your teammates take the hits. The smaller the battle, the more this model falls apart.
Hmmm...
What can we do to a non-aim based, RPG style combat system to bring back the Rambo element? The idea that one skilled player can potentially take on 3 or more equally powerful opponents and have a chance of coming out on top, without making it purely a game of "whoever hits 'TAB 1' first wins"? We'll also need to address the problem of spawning in a town and having to run around for 3 minutes to find a fight, if fights are only going to take a couple of seconds.
Let's see....
1) You must have the ability to spawn close to the action. Planetside did this right. Defenders spawn in the base. Attackers spawn not far away, outside the base.
2) The real battle must be for control of spawns. Planetside did this right, as well. Although the goal may have been "secure the base", the real way you did this was to shut down the enemy's ability to spawn.
But #3 is tricky. How can you have a 1 to 5 second, skill based fight (as happens in an FPS) without relying on "aiming" to be that skill?
How do you make combat fun, fast and skill based without using FPS mechanics? We still want to rely on character stats to influence hit rate and damage -- that's the heart of RPG combat, after all, and we want to keep that, but we don't want to simply make fireballs to 15000 damage for that Rambo effect...
...
I'm pondering some kind of "preparation" mechanic. Like something you can do beforehand to prepare for a battle and that preparation has a big impact on how you can fight, perhaps not unlike deck building for a strategy card game. So maybe the fight itself is over in 5 seconds but somewhere beforehand you spent a lot of time thinking about what all you wanted lined up and ready to go.
Perhaps not unlike what I originally thought the Warhammer "tactics" were going to do. Like if you knew what was coming, you could prepare in a very specific way and give yourself a tremendous advantage. Of course, Warhammer's "tactics" skills were kind of diluted and didn't achieve this goal as I had envisioned it, but maybe that's an idea that can be built on.
For example, Rambo knows he's going to be fighting numerous human enemies in a wooded area in close combat, and prepares fully for this. Enemies coming in may be more generally prepared for a variety of things, but they are not specifically prepared for Rambo. Rambo might have a real shot at taking several of them out. The fights themselves are short -- the skill was more in the preparation than in the execution.
Is there potential in something like that to work and make for a fun game?