Why are RPG combat systems so boring?

benfinkel · 2004-01-05T15:00:39

Hello all, As a big fan of RPG games, I was wondering why their combat interfaces are usually so boring. The subject is usually brought to mind when watching my characters defeat some orcs in Dungeon Siege, or (god forbid) the repetative snake-bashing of Everquest. To me, a game is supposed to be an interactive fun experience. Here are my thoughts on the matter: There seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to combat. On one side you''ve got the people who want it to be a completely dice-roll kind of system. You spend hours developing your character pefectly, getting all of the right magic equipment and spells, so that he is a master with that sword. It doesn''t matter that you, as the player, have no idea how to use a sword. There''s the appeal; a handicapped person can become a master swordsman without having to be highly coordinated or reflexive. You''ve built a character that handles all of that for you. The down-side seems to be that combat is a boring thing. You may make a few choices about when to pause and drink a health-potion, but generally the game handles all of the interesting stuff. On the flip side, you''ve got a totally action-oriented system where it''s ENTIRELY up to the player to be quick, reflexive, and coordinated. Think Soul Caliber, where the player must know what attack combinations to use at which point, and must be able to execute them in a timely and correct fashion. The down-side to this is that there is no RPG element. If you''ve got a few magical enchantments that increase your skill with the sword, and your character is level 75 and spent all of his skill points in swords, you as the player are still not any better at it. So, why hasn''t anyone tried to devise a system that marries the two? Thoughts for the day. Apparently this is what too much Turkey does to you. -Ben

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by benfinkel November 28, 2003 12:11 PM

107 comments, last by benfinkel 20 years, 3 months ago

Anonymous

December 22, 2003 07:40 PM

quote:
For example majority of persons in fantasy setings were litereate. Actually all, and that is much higher amount than in advanced countries, or in US. Persons in fantasy were independent on goverment and have strong opinion about it.

i didn''t read the rest of your post after this because allready you have very biasted opinions. fantasy settings are whatever the author of them makes it to be. there is no standard to them because they are nothing but the author''s fantasy. You''re talking as if there are distinct set rules to what fantasy should be and thats exactly what fantasy is completely not about. fantasy is about breaking the rules. doing what the other guy wouldn''t. creating what hasn''t been creating. believing what is unbelievable. you can''t debate fantasy setting politics cause a fantasy setting could even have zero politics.

Anonymous

December 23, 2003 07:13 PM

they are boring because they are turn based and full of mind numbing stats ;-)

will increasing the complexity -really- make them more fun?

Iron Chef Carnage

1,845

December 23, 2003 08:51 PM

But AP, if you increase the design complexity in the right directions, you can effectively hide all that boring computing from the player. Not having to stare at stats all the time would definitely improve my gameplay experience. Of course, I''d like to be able to see them. I think every system should have a manual override.

Raghar

December 24, 2003 02:29 PM

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
i didn''t read the rest of your post after this because allready you have very biasted opinions. fantasy settings are whatever the author of them makes it to be. there is no standard to them because they are nothing but the author''s fantasy. You''re talking as if there are distinct set rules to what fantasy should be and thats exactly what fantasy is completely not about. fantasy is about breaking the rules. doing what the other guy wouldn''t. creating what hasn''t been creating. believing what is unbelievable. you can''t debate fantasy setting politics cause a fantasy setting could even have zero politics.

Surely I have. I somehow start to understand Bishop pass. Fantasy is a genre. It''s divided into:
Heroic fantasy.
Techno fantasy. (IMHO this isn''t genre)
High fantasy. (Hard to describe it)
Medieval (fantasy)/ stories.
Psychologicaly done fantasy. (Fantasy as a fantasy genre, not commonly used dictionary meaning)
Goth fantasy.
Dark fantasy.
And a lot of books that don''t fall straithly into one of that categories.

The fantasy as a genre started by some kind of disappointment by technology. In fantasy wasn''t important if hero has sword of heroeness, but if he is able to use it, or rather if he has skills and abilities to use it even if there is risk. Sometimes that risk is unavoidable.

It seems that you actually described psychedelic story, or something like Kurt Vonegut''s books. ~_^ Believe or not there are some rules in the Fantasy genre. That Rules are much more hard to deffine than rules for more "normal" genres, however.
It would be very hard to find fantasy that wasn''t about politic. Death gate, Amber, Dragonlance, FF7 were about political combat. In FF7 it was terrorist x corporation. If they''d know there would be third group, they''d try to reach some kind of agreement. (FF isn''t called final for nothing. When they discovered theirs real situation it was too late)
Well accept it politic is fun. Everyone likes to read about Kings, Quens, Dictators, Minstrels that move whole kingdoms... It would be actually very hard to write fantasy that has no politic.

Raghar

December 24, 2003 02:34 PM

Back to the combat without arenas. I remmember two games that didn't have battle arenas. One was Dark sun. Other Might and Magic. What implementation would you like more?
The problem with no battle arena is decision who is active in the combat. I mean who is part of the combat. IT's not hard to implement several layers of hero's health to do damage reasonably, but one problem is with numbers of combatnants. It could easily end with a^2-a type of calculatons. Another problem is how to implement health damage when you have slime as another combatnant. It offten ends in crazy damage calculations.

 combatnants =Groups.getCombatnants(InitialGroup);For cobatnants.group countParticipation(group.character)for each <combatnants>?group.character count(action):\update xxx xxx And there we are. We will need somewhere hide small drag when we will do this calculation. Actually it wont be neccessary if we would use this code, but it will be neccessary if we will change to Java or oh terror C++. A little exercise on how small drag it would be. Starting values calculations could be. 1200 combatnants. Test them for will to combat. 1200+Declare their opponents. 1200^2 -1200. Chose combat Strategy. AI calculation (depends on severity it might be even higher than 1200^2 -1200. It could be of course precalculated in different thread. And then chosen from situation. Calculation of the situation could be difficult as ell.)

So it would looks like this:
Screen apears with text precalculations. Then caracter would choose attack from several different strategies. Then it would run. Character would move to dragon carefully. At same time his coumpanion would strike him from behind and then after main character would fall on the ground. He would say "Oh mighty dragon would you take that pig as gift of our gratitude and alows as to go?" It would be even nastier, if this would be generated at runtime and story would be modified aproperiately.

re AP2
More complex games looks more lively. They are much more like a story than a mathlike spreadsheet. You just need to be carefull to do it nice way. MOO3 could be example of things that could go wrong. (too much hiding)

[edited by - Raghar on December 24, 2003 4:31:22 PM]

Thermodynamics

443

December 24, 2003 03:21 PM

quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage

I''m looking for a way to represent combat, not exciting new ways for people to fight each other. If I could find a satisfactory method by which to emulate two drunks trying to knock out the other guy''s teeth, without using HP or making them stand in a ring, I''d be pleased. From that foundation, I could factor in weapons, magic, and sensu beans.

The way I see it, ICC, you are limited to several options.
1.) Turn based: you run the combat at a slowed pace so it becomes more cereberal about what the next correct move would be. This can be simplified into something like FF where one characters actions has no significant impact on what the next one does. Or it can be more along the lines of moo3 what would be in a fight. Here every one moves at the same time and your success directly depends on guessing what your opponent will do.
My father has an old game called "Ace of Aces" which consisted of two books. In each book you would have a picture of your current view of the other plane and a list of options to choose from. Each option had a page number associated with it. Some how (I can not remember the exact process) you would trade page numbers and the new page you looked at would be your new view. It was quite an ingenous system for being done with two books. But back to the topic. You not only had to decide how you were going to move, but you also had to base that decision on what you knew about the opponent. (Has ANYONE else seen, played of even heard of this game).

2.) Your other option is to do it in real time or at least continuously. This unfortunately results in a twitch reflex game. Even a game that was slowed down would require that final component of timing. Do you want timing as part of your play?

The best way to simulate a drunken fight would be to use two people in the same room. Feed the liquor. Give them lines to taunt each other with. ("you''re a shmelly farmer") and finally let them duke it out. Unfortunately I don''t think this is what you had in mind. Judging from what you have said about your history with fencing and the like, you should know that you need to use your sense of balance and touch during a battle. Driving simulators are terrible because you don''t get to use your sense of inertia to let you know when the vehicle will lose control. Unfortunately, no program can simulate these feelings yet. It is more of a hardware issue. Once we get those direct spinal implants I am sure gaming will be much more realistic.

Stick a fork in me, I''m done.

[s]I am a signature virus. Please add me to your signature so that I may multiply.[/s]I am a signature anti-virus. Please use me to remove your signature virus.

_buu_

122

December 26, 2003 10:40 PM

quote:Original post by Raghar
Fantasy is a genre. It''s divided into:
Heroic fantasy.
Techno fantasy. (IMHO this isn''t genre)
High fantasy. (Hard to describe it)
Medieval (fantasy)/ stories.
Psychologicaly done fantasy. (Fantasy as a fantasy genre, not commonly used dictionary meaning)
Goth fantasy.
Dark fantasy.
And a lot of books that don''t fall straithly into one of that categories.

Thats a nice, random, made up list. I''m sure most other people could pull out darts and a dictionary to make another random list just as valid.

Apple Fantasy
Red Fantasy
Blue Fantasy

quote:Original post by Raghar
The fantasy as a genre started by some kind of disappointment by technology. In fantasy wasn''t important if hero has sword of heroeness, but if he is able to use it, or rather if he has skills and abilities to use it even if there is risk. Sometimes that risk is unavoidable.

What the hell does this paragraph mean? "fantasy [...] started by some kind of dissapointment by technology". What the hell? Thats so ridiculously wrong it''s hard to choose which spot to attack. Fantasy has many more roots in age old, epic legends and tales then anything involving a "disappointment by technology".

quote:Original post by Raghar
It seems that you actually described psychedelic story, or something like Kurt Vonegut''s books. ~_^ Believe or not there are some rules in the Fantasy genre.

No, there isn''t a magic set of rules that god laid down for all fantasy to ascribe to. You could, possibly, argue that there are certain rules "good stories" must follow, or things of that nature, but saying (or implying) theres a magic set of rules for fantasy is just rankest stupidity.

Iron Chef Carnage

1,845

December 27, 2003 02:03 AM

I''d have to go at east somewhat turn-based, though I''d like to see less in the way of "turns" in the classic sense. I tell you, coming up with a way to properly represent time in an RPG is a lot like trying to work out a good MMO bullet-time system. There are so many tradeoffs, there can never be one "right answer". I guess each designer will just have to use the system that works best with the game that they are making.

Raghar

December 29, 2003 07:11 PM

How can I say it. EEEEEK BUU-chan you are so MEAN. I thought that I provided nearly complete list of fantasy sub genres and you

quote:
...ridiculously wrong it''s hard to choose which spot to attack

If you can''t attack it, it could be most likely true.

quote:
No, there isn''t a magic set of rules that god laid down for all fantasy to ascribe to. You could, possibly, argue that there are certain rules "good stories" must follow, or things of that nature, but saying (or implying) theres a magic set of rules for fantasy is just rankest stupidity.

Star Trek woulnd''t be Star Trek without xxxx. Dune wouoldn''t be Dune without... Goth fantasy would be strangely empty without horror from realisation... There are some commonly shared features that are defining the genre. Doesn''t matter if it would be a Cyberpunk, or a Heroic fantasy.
To don''t aknowledge such restrictions means that story would suffer.

to Iron.

Simultaneous, phased, or semi realtime are also option. It''s more important to consider freedom of the player. If he could use just one specified character in the combat or if he could swith characters so he would modify behaviour where it would count. I think first is better for role playing.

Iron Chef Carnage

1,845

December 29, 2003 07:21 PM

But simultaneous action has too much of a rock-paper-scissors feel to it. I''d like to get a bit more action-reaction, expecially with more skilled characters fighting against less skilled characters. Maybe a high perception level will give you a clue as to what the other guy is doing during the command phase, like a peek at the other guy''s play in a football game. That way, the more skilled character would be able to help the player choose the most advantageous course of action, without actually doing it autonomously.

Why are RPG combat systems so boring?

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