Toward a Satisfying, Asynchronous Combat System?

[Drael]

Hmm, on the surface I like this. Did you know that in medieval battles, at least 60% of deaths occured from bleeding from wounds, after the combat?

A chanced, and time based death emulates this reality well. It reminds me of the game "harnmaster", which has a gritty true to life combat system, where most death occurs after the wound...

Along with realism, it does remove some of this "active wins" tactic, a big plus. Doesnt so much deal with dragging, or hiding, but does take away some of the stealth advantage.

[Dudel]

I've already said I like this idea and could even include the chance for critical hit being NEAR FATAL, just not auto-death.

[Crosshair]

Not every wound kills instantly, but some do... So there's gotta be a chance of you just killing the guy when you hit them. Also, if you've "Mortally wounded" someone, then others could surely finish him/her off, if they've not already hit him.

[Cogliostro]

No, as we are talking about removing instant-death on purpose. Under the supposed new system, when inflicting terrible wounds on your enemy you can be "fairly sure" they will die in a little while, especially if no one helps them with healing. But it's never instant death and you cannot finish someone off by hitting a wounded person again.

[Dudel]

Diverting from main topic.

The point is basically that damage isn't recorded or "seen" right-then-and-there, which I like... and that people don't die automatically which gives folks the chance to RP like they want or whatever.

[Snake_byte]

So if this is only about instant death - it would make more sense if you could no longer work, pass items, move from room to room, hit anyone. IMO in the case of point where insta-death should have occurred, you can no longer do anything except DROP and WHISPER and EAT Healing Foods. Not even able to take off your clothes until you're at least 99% dmg.
Though you could still be dragged and healed instantly.

An error message like "You are too near death to perform this action" should show up if you try.

Other than that, hits should all be instant just as they are now... Until a new hitting system is in place.
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For the hitting system, I like Piscator's idea of an announcement ping.

Though it should be shortened to maybe <u>one turn, one RL hour, or when target moves or assailant's attack is responded to by someone else</u> - before action is followed through, instead of a whole day.

Except for the slap. Slap should be instant

[Dudel]

NO, the HIT would still be INSTANT the DAMAGE DONE wouldn't be automatically fatal... nor would you see the damage done.

Character A gets hit, but character A doesn't know how much (exactly) so it makes the game more riveting. HOWEVER, character A can't die from his wounds RIGHT NOW so he could try and "risk it" etc.

And limiting based on damage done to you is a bit lame considering how Cantr works, as is. Nothing else limits characters, not even tiredness.

[Snake_byte]

Well instead of making the actual damage take time to show up, why not remove the health bar from percent and replace it with the "vague health phrases" suggested previously all together.

Damage done is still chosen by % but actual damage received in that attack and in total (by looking at the health bar) would be with the statements and death would not happen instantly.

[Dudel]

Well instead of making the actual damage take time to show up, why not remove the health bar from percent and replace it with the "vague health phrases" suggested previously all together.

Damage done is still chosen by % but actual damage received in that attack and in total (by looking at the health bar) would be with the statements and death would not happen instantly.

That IS the suggestion and exactly what I was supporting.

Am I the one making people confused?If so, I'll apologize and leave the topic.

[Snake_byte]

Well damage would still be shown automatically... so the only things changed are the way it displayed to the player and you wouldn't die automatically... So how long would it take to "bleed to death"?

[Cogliostro]

Let's sum up what we've got so far and go from there:

- hide the percentage-based damage statistic, replacing it with text woundedness descriptions.
- Behind the scenes, make it so that reaching 100% damage or more doesn't instantly kill, but without care you are likely to die in the course of the next few (random factor + damage severity) days.
- For now keep the healing food system as is, with a little change. When wounded you can eat a certain max amount of each type of healing food a day. This varies depending on the healing food type. This might be enough to heal you, or at least prevent imminent death so you can continue eating healing food in the coming days and eventually recover. Carrying a variety of different healing foods makes you more likely to recover (you can eat more every day, since the daily cap is per food type)

Okay! So suppose this was put in place. We have now solved the really annoying and unfair ganking practice, which will no longer cause our characters to die before we ever logged in.

The combat system is still going to be in trouble because it depends on a lot of insta-dragging. Dragging we all know works best when multiple people are online at once, coordinating their actions. This "you better be online at once" should not be a part of Cantr gameplay. Who has any good ideas about how that could be corrected?

[Cogliostro]

The combat system is also going to be in trouble because of how locked rooms are used at the moment. Pop out, strike, pop back inside before anyone can shoot back. This is highly undesirable, because it prevents people from being able to Roleplay during battles, and depends on furious button-clicking by the player, giving unfair advantages to those with fast fingers, no lag, and well-calculated online timing (so that the enemy characters are asleep at the time you pop out). All that is for now part of the battle system and it's all cheating, from the perspective of Cantr's slow-paced asynchronous game ideals. But it's all we have, so we get by as best we can until a better simple-to-implement idea comes along.

Here's another contribution from yours truly toward such an idea:

It's called "the clash". When person X hits person Y, the server should calculate the result of their "clash", not just the damage dealing by X, but also the retailiation by Y, and the total result. That is, when hitting someone, there is actually potential that your character himself will suffer wounds. Here is the breakdown on how this can work-

An attack by person X can be a Critical Success, Normal, Critical Failure. The probability of these heavily depend on the combat skill relationship between the two fighting characters. Whoever has the greater skill gets more chances for Critical Success, weighted by the difference formed from X's skill minus Y's skill. The greater the skill gap, the more advantages for the more skilled character in this area.

Character Y, our defender, gets a Critical Success, Normal, or Critical Failure rated for their defense attempt also.

If both characters get a Critical Success, their clash is considered to be like the "AI-UCHI" (mutual kill) in samurai martial arts, where the warriors strike and both fall to the ground badly wounded. The damage for both is scaled up a little bit, to reflect the devastation of this combat situation.

If X gets a Critical Success and Y gets a Normal or Critical Failure result, then predictably, character Y is in big trouble. For Normal, it means he tried but was not able to defend from the strike. A lot of the damage still takes place. For a Critical Failure, it means his attempt at defense was a complete horrible fumble, and damage from X's strike is even scaled up some.

A Critical Failure by an attacker coupled by a Critical Success by defender means the attacker was caught off guard by a well-prepared and swift opponent, who parried or sidestepped the attempted strike and then immediately struck our attacker down. This is the situation where attacking an expert warrior can result in your own grievous bodily harm, and note that the defending character did not have to be online.

The advantage of this "three-gear" clash is that now we would be able to make different weapons and shields have different probabilities of success against other weapons and shields. For example, a crossbow is an excellent offensive weapon, but in defense it would be completely useless and will not allow effective retailiation by your character, if you're being attacked by someone with a battle axe. Foils and other piercing weapons might have an advantage against opponents with heavy shields. Heavy shields help against swords and axes, and so on! This way the combat in Cantr can revive itself from its current comatose state and actually begin to make use of all the fascinating variety of weapons and shields that ProgD has already added to the game.

[EchoMan]

That is a pretty good suggestion, but it implies that you always want to strike back, which isn't always the case.

What about a very simple thing, like after you hit someone, you can't move at all for X minutes.

[Cogliostro]

Previously we discussed a similar idea and the argument came up that some players do not want to retaliate when attacked, due to RP reasons. We can't force them to do so with some auto-retailiation system. So, to prevent a lot of useless arguments about this in this thread, let's consider that aspect solved - if someone does not want to be able to retaliate, then they would simply not carry weapons on their person. That will be treated as a special case in which the defender can still avoid damage if they have a shield or good luck on their side, but they cannot in any way retaliate. Brandishing a weapon? Then you are considered fair game. Very similar to the real world definition of an enemy combatant, if you think about it.

Not wanting to hit back would be in general a pretty sideline, exceptional-case thing. Going forward it might be addressed with some sort of "nonviolence" checkbox that a character has in their description page, which effectively forces that character to sheath all their weapons for a period of time equal to, let's say, 1 Cantr day minimum (they disappear from their description and can't be used). Helps out the roleplayers who don't wish to hit back and is useful in many other situations (town policy for visitors for example).

Look how using this "clash" approach we take away the clickfesty/gamey aspect of hitting first being a major advantage. Instead it becomes a much more strategic thing, with factors like your weapons, enemy weapons, your skills (which you know), enemy skills (which probably you don't). As a treacherous attacker you still have the advantage because you decide who to attack first, which can be decisive especially if your team has the right equipment and the enemy doesn't. But it will never be like now, where you hit someone and they haven't got any chance at all unless they're online right then and there babysitting over their charry.

We'd also be introing for the first time the idea of personal strategies for characters. One might strive to have every single weapon and the best shield on themselves, but this is both impossible and leaves no space for carrying healing food. Another might be the opposite, a specialized pikeman who carries healing food for himself and his buddies. Pretty fun team setups become possible.

I like the theme of your suggestion about not being able to move for a while after attacking. Force the people in the struggle face each other and roleplay, basically. But there's also something too restrictive-feeling in that.

[Piscator]

We don't have to invent entirely new rules for a "clash", the formulae currently in place should have roughly the same effect. A strikes, B retaliates, both damages are calculated according to the current rules, damages and tiredness are applied after the clash. The fact that sometimes a strike misses and a shield is ineffective should suffice to generate "spectacular" results. (Hitting/missing and success of defense could of course depend on weapon type and/or skill, instead of being a fixed value.)

As for unintentional retaliations, a checkbox and a minimum damage, below which no retaliation occurs (if someone smacks you with a pillow, you might not want to retaliate, even though you're not a pacifist), should take care of most problems.