Sparring feedback

[zeebratu]

So it was mentioned in the latest release that the gladiator mode would be a good way to figure out what needs to be worked on in combat, so here are my thoughts:

1. I always feel like, no matter what strategy I choose, I'm always better off if I just try to use the leg cannon on enemies. It is satisfying, and perhaps necessary at this point in the gameplay (see below), but it seems to undermine the other combat a bit.

2. Once you are at two or more enemies, it quickly becomes easy to get into situations where you're overpowered and no amount of skill can save you. You could be fighting with one enemy and countering their moves, but if the other attacks in the middle of your counter you have no way of defending yourself. This situation is one of the more problematic aspects of the fighting.

3. Weapons are all kinds of messed up. Beyond the simple knife, weapon combat is no fun. It's all one-hit one-kill and is just a matter of who strikes first. How is this going to be resolved in the game? Will armor make actual weapon combat plausible?

4. Randomly dying because you hit the ground the wrong way gets pretty annoying. Whether it's coming off a leg cannon, a dodge gone wrong, or whatever, there are too many ways to die outside of combat. Given how the damage system works, I don't know how this would be fixed though.

[gamowfun]

1: The leg cannon is pretty hard to pull of if enemies know your there because they move out of range, but yes it is OP and you should have to use the choke to take out enemies who don't know your there.

2: About being overpowered by enemies, go get in a fight with 2-3 guys and see who gets overpowered.

3: Your right about weapons being OP, but go ahead and have your friend take a hack at your head with a broad sword. It's going to do slightly more than give you a headache. To balance it out they should be very hard to get and only carried by high ranking guards which should be avoidable in most situations.

4: On the topic of dying out of combat. Have you heard that most humans die out of combat? Try doing a front flip in your driveway then land on your neck (wait it was just to prove a point!). It's gonna hurt and you could plausibly kill yourself.

5: This game is meant to have fairly realistic combat as in your not a killing machine on legs who can take out 30 other people before taking a punch.

[Karel]

1. I always feel like, no matter what strategy I choose, I'm always better off if I just try to use the leg cannon on enemies. It is satisfying, and perhaps necessary at this point in the gameplay (see below), but it seems to undermine the other combat a bit.

That's a big bad point about OG so far IMO, that leg cannon actually breaks everything and must be balanced as it's currently OP - besides AIs don't even use it. I really hope it gets balanced one day, I try to not use it too much and sometimes it works, but still there's the temptation of the leg cannon.

2. Once you are at two or more enemies, it quickly becomes easy to get into situations where you're overpowered and no amount of skill can save you. You could be fighting with one enemy and countering their moves, but if the other attacks in the middle of your counter you have no way of defending yourself. This situation is one of the more problematic aspects of the fighting.

Actually that's how I used to feel about fighting multiple enemies before. Got my ass kicked in frustrating ways many times like that, but in fact it's something that really can be done, without weapons or leg cannon. The way you fight just have to change, you'll realize it eventually. Now I often fight multiple enemies at the same time.

3. Weapons are all kinds of messed up. Beyond the simple knife, weapon combat is no fun. It's all one-hit one-kill and is just a matter of who strikes first. How is this going to be resolved in the game? Will armor make actual weapon combat plausible?

I think armor will solve the problem, but even with armors, what you say is partially true, a naked guy could sometimes resist to more than one sword attack. That said fighting weapon against weapon can be fun and if you change the health of the characters you can make long fights with swords and spears.

4. Randomly dying because you hit the ground the wrong way gets pretty annoying. Whether it's coming off a leg cannon, a dodge gone wrong, or whatever, there are too many ways to die outside of combat. Given how the damage system works, I don't know how this would be fixed though.

There are ways to avoid that.

[human_dictionary]

for me:

if i am presented with 2 enemies in gladiator, i always focus down the weakest (lightest clothing). this usually involves hit and run away before i am floored. once they are out, its just a normal 1 on 1.

when presented with 3 enemies, i am a dead man and occasionally try to leg cannon 1 out before fighting. with 3 enemies, if you take a hit and fall, they will crowd you and stomp your furry face into the floor. one time, i got floored and they all did a sweep at the same time, i was sent flying and laughing into my death.

and btw karel: AI does use leg cannon, but only when they are falling onto you, they dont know how to jump yet, just run up walls to chase you. i found this out doing skydiving on JackTheAwesome's Sumair map (its quite early in the SUMLauncher map menu) i also found out from that that ragdolls have a higher terminal velocity than, erm, not-ragdolls and can fall faster

[Chip]

The Gladiator mode as is is already quite fun. The main game-play problems I've had were with mobbing. The hit and move technique is rightly effective but situations arise where there are no reasonable course of action. I think the problem of mobbing would be a much more interesting puzzle if there were solutions as well as if it were an actual strategy of the AI characters.

The first solution being implementing the possibility of collision and friendly fire. This would have the characters space out more as not to be taken out by their buddy's round house kick or sweep. It could also be useful for weapons causing characters to give large sweeping weapons (dog hammer/swords) wider breadth than frontal weapons like spears. It would be especially cool if lower ranked characters had less of a feel for this distance and stayed too far away, leaving gaps, or too close getting smacked while better characters maintained good distancing in tougher situations and timed their attacks off one another. Collision would hopefully not be so dramatic or damaging as in Lugaru, but nevertheless is it difficult to throw an attack when a body is pushed up against you.

Another possibility is the creation of a "cover and charge move." In real life it's as clumsy and nontechnical as it is effective, in the right situation. The character would simply cover the sides of its head, tuck its chin, bend and charge. At best it would bowl a smaller opponent out of the way and to the ground, at worst, the character would run right into an attack (round attacks ie round house kicks and hooks having little to no effect except for the sweep kick which would cause the player to fall but likely right on top of the kicker). Normally it would just cause one or both characters to stumble and the fight would continue.

Just some thoughts...

[Surak]

The first solution being implementing the possibility of collision and friendly fire. This would have the characters space out more as not to be taken out by their buddy's round house kick or sweep. It could also be useful for weapons causing characters to give large sweeping weapons (dog hammer/swords) wider breadth than frontal weapons like spears. It would be especially cool if lower ranked characters had less of a feel for this distance and stayed too far away, leaving gaps, or too close getting smacked while better characters maintained good distancing in tougher situations and timed their attacks off one another. Collision would hopefully not be so dramatic or damaging as in Lugaru, but nevertheless is it difficult to throw an attack when a body is pushed up against you.

That are some nice ideas, I really would like friendly fire and behaviour based on that fact. Multiple enemies would still be very strong, but not unbeatable strong.

[Parco Folgore]

i like the group combat as it is, if they get the chance, they all go in on you. if you have played assassins creed, no matter how large the group is, they always come 1 and 1 on you, after a while it will get booring. this is why i never finnished the Brotherhood, all normal enemies, normally guards. all you do, even if theyr 10 to 20 enemeis on you, you attack, dodge, block or counterattack and can easly clean up a whole group easly within a minute without taking any dmg, because as i said, they only go 1 and 1 on you, rest of them just form a sircle, but heres the annyong part, the boss battles, the boss can almost never touch you(if you are used to the combat) and u deal almost no dmg to them even with clean hits. So i hope they keep the group combat system mostly as it is now in OG.

and one more thing, plz dont add any smash buttons into combat, even against bosses, its just simply annoying, cant remember one combat game where smashing one button to do one thing made me feel any good.

[Surak]

Yea, I agree, the AC combat isn't very good. But I don't think that is what Chip meant. The enemies still attack all at once, but they have to be cautious to not hit each other when they are too close. So they could still all attack normaly together if they come from different sides, but not when they basically hug each other. It would be still pretty hard to fight a big group of enemies, but it would be a much more diversified fight and maybe a liiittle bit easier.

[Endoperez]

Yea, I agree, the AC combat isn't very good. But I don't think that is what Chip meant. The enemies still attack all at once, but they have to be cautious to not hit each other when they are too close. So they could still all attack normaly together if they come from different sides, but not when they basically hug each other. It would be still pretty hard to fight a big group of enemies, but it would be a much more diversified fight and maybe a liiittle bit easier.

Well, I'm not so sure.If the enemies are far apart, they basically surround you. Imaging three enemies taking positions equal distance away from each other. Now that would be nasty.

[Causeless]

1. I always feel like, no matter what strategy I choose, I'm always better off if I just try to use the leg cannon on enemies. It is satisfying, and perhaps necessary at this point in the gameplay (see below), but it seems to undermine the other combat a bit.

Indeed, the leg cannon is not at all balanced. However, ways to counter it are planned.

2. Once you are at two or more enemies, it quickly becomes easy to get into situations where you're overpowered and no amount of skill can save you. You could be fighting with one enemy and countering their moves, but if the other attacks in the middle of your counter you have no way of defending yourself. This situation is one of the more problematic aspects of the fighting.

I disagree. Skill, definitely CAN save you. You just need fast reaction times, and you need to be more cautious. You mention countering their moves - this is exactly what you want to avoid. You don't have time for a judo throw, you need to instead only take punches and kicks when you have an open hit, and free time to do so - not when enemies are close by. Instead of doing moves which take a long time, try dodging by tapping A, S, or D, and rolling away when you get swarmed, and when possible get a quick jab in.

3. Weapons are all kinds of messed up. Beyond the simple knife, weapon combat is no fun. It's all one-hit one-kill and is just a matter of who strikes first. How is this going to be resolved in the game? Will armor make actual weapon combat plausible?

Not at all! You can counter and block with swords just the same as with unarmed combat. As above, you should dodge a lot (definitely in unarmed combat - you can't exactly block a sword with your arms), and also, if you do have a weapon, use the active block as much as possible. Passive block can sometimes make the weapon fly out your hands, so it's not as safe.

4. Randomly dying because you hit the ground the wrong way gets pretty annoying. Whether it's coming off a leg cannon, a dodge gone wrong, or whatever, there are too many ways to die outside of combat. Given how the damage system works, I don't know how this would be fixed though.

Uhm... don't land on your head? You can't land a dodge wrong unless you flip for some reason, and coming off of a leg cannon is meant to be dangerous. It's a sort of counter to it - you can use it, but only if you really need to as a last resort.

[MishoM]

2. Once you are at two or more enemies, it quickly becomes easy to get into situations where you're overpowered and no amount of skill can save you. You could be fighting with one enemy and countering their moves, but if the other attacks in the middle of your counter you have no way of defending yourself. This situation is one of the more problematic aspects of the fighting.

In real life, fighting one on three is very hard and requires a lot of skill. To get an idea, you might look up on youtube the black belt test that Steven Seagal required from his students. There are clips from a documentary and they contain footage from actual tests performed at his dojo. To take the test, the student had to resist three people for 15 seconds. It's brutal even though it's not a fight on the street.

[Erxv]

How about, if there are a group of enemies around you, they get (cocky) and wouldn't be as tough and are more reckless. Also a sort of morale system. If there is a group of enemies and you beat/kill a few of them, the rest would make more mistakes. Also if u one hit the first guy in a group, the rest would be much more cautious of you.

I know i contradicted myself, but just giving some ideas to think on.

[Karel]

According to one of my superiors, I should never try dealing with more than two assholes at the same time, 3 if I'm really really good at fightning.

He also told me to expect being beaten a lot, as good fighters usually are the ones who were beaten a lot. My mother sure got that point covered back in the days.

[Endoperez]

I've never been in a fight, but here are some things I've read and heard and guessed:

The thing about fighting three opponents is that you can't fight three opponents at the same time and win. You have to deal with them one by one, or at least so that they can't all get good hits in at the same time. If only one of them can reach you, you can do something other than trying to dodge.

The other thing is that anyone who wants to fight you, probably wants to fight other people too. So he fights. And if he fights, he's learned some tricks. And even one trick you don't know can end in your loss. So... DON'T fight if you can help it. That doesn't really work for OG though! Perhaps for stealth levels or something.

[Chip]

Fighting multiple opponents is easy with the proper techniques.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW4POr1ZNLc

Though most of my training is geared towards one on one fighting in a sport setting, I have also done quite a bit of group training. The strategy is simple, but the execution is not. One needs to never stop moving and always try to focus on one opponent keeping him or her between oneself and the rest of the group making it as much as a one on one fight as possible. Also, techniques that are often labeled as noneffective movie kicks suddenly become bread and butter moves to threaten multiple opponents at once and keep one's opponents at bay. About the worst thing to do in a group situation is grab onto someone or be grabbed by someone. (finally something I said is applicable to Over Growth) In other words, save the Judo throw for one on one combat, dodge otherwise.