Do we really need a combat overhaul? What are your opinions on it?

[Thorfinn]

44 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

So, wolves for example, they would run up to a few blocks away and then do a forward lunge that starts ahead of you and ends behind you.

You should be able to do that in a mod. Just make the lunge chance 100% (or whatever), set the lunge priority high, and allow other actions, like charge, to be interrupted once in lunge range. Have you tried that to see whether it achieves the result you want?

 

44 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

 I really think that we should have quick little dodge

We have a dodge key. Two of them. A and D.

 

44 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

but now combat is at least more engaging than "run backward and swing".

This one I'm definitely on board with. Remove "sprint while running backwards" and disable anything resembling StepUp (at least for going backwards) and Bob's your uncle. Sprinting backwards isn't something n00bs typically do, anyway. It's mostly veterans who inexplicably hate that, but do it anyway. Just so they can be bored, I guess.

 

44 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

That and bows/spears (in ranged combat) should do much more damage but charge slower.

I am so not a fan. Falx rapidly outpaces the sheer damage of spears and arrows. All they offer in return is damage at a distance, assuming you can maintain that distance. Which, if we nerf sprinting backwards, is no longer possible. That and I really do not like the idea of higher damages from missiles. Bowtorn are already a terror if you don't have Tier 1 armor. But if surface bowtorn start one-shotting n00bs who are down a couple points and don't understand that Wilderness is Ultraviolence mode... 

Edited April 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Thorfinn]

36 minutes ago, SubtleOrc said:

Also people who comment in a thread like this with "combat is not important to me, therefore it should not be improved" are all that is wrong with the world. Stop ...

Why isn't it equally valid to to object, saying that those who insist, "combat is important to me, therefore it should be improved" are what is wrong with the world, and should just... stop?

To put a finer point on it, can't we just leave it at you prefer some things, I prefer some things, and so long as neither of us insists on getting our way, we are good?

Edited April 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[SubtleOrc]

23 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Why isn't it equally valid to to object, saying that those who insist, "combat is important to me, therefore it should be improved" are what is wrong with the world, and should just... stop?

because if combat is NOT important to you, then you can go on with your life, avoid combat using the existing game mechanics allowing you to turn off, and not worry yourself if the devs decide to FIX combat for those who it is important ... it costs you nothing, if you avoid combat, to have combat fixed..

 

[Thorfinn]

14 minutes ago, SubtleOrc said:

because if combat is NOT important to you, then you can go on with your life, avoid combat using the existing game mechanics allowing you to turn off,

But that's not true. Whatever new AI gets implemented gets implemented for everybody. You can't just avoid the bear outside your house because he is going to be there for at least 14 game days. You can't just go on with your life. If you like the bear as it is, how do you keep that?

[EDIT]

To riff off a recent joke, "If you like your bear, you can keep your bear."

Edited April 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Chuckerton]

33 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

You should be able to do that in a mod. Just make the lunge chance 100% (or whatever), set the lunge priority high, and allow other actions, like charge, to be interrupted once in lunge range. Have you tried that to see whether it achieves the result you want?

Do you mean theres a mod out there that does that i would modify like you listed this or do you mean you think I should make a mod that does this? 

33 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

We have a dodge key. Two of them. A and D.

Given the suggestions I gave I don't know if simply side strafing would be fast enough to dodge a wolf's lunge. Not to mention I don't think you should be able to sprint in all directions anyway, so I would think that you can sprint forward and forward diagonally with shift, but shift+a,d,or s would be your dodging. Is how I would imagine dodging working. 

33 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I am so not a fan. Falx rapidly outpaces the sheer damage of spears and arrows. All they offer in return is damage at a distance, assuming you can maintain that distance. Which, if we nerf sprinting backwards, is no longer possible. That and I really do not like the idea of higher damages from missiles. Bowtorn are already a terror if you don't have Tier 1 armor. But if surface bowtorn start one-shotting n00bs who are down a couple points and don't understand that Wilderness is Ultraviolence mode... 

True, falxes do rapidly outpace damage of spears and arrows, and if we were trying to get the absolute highest DPS all the time then yes having a slow charge time with our ranged attacks would be bad but combat doesnt necessarily have to be maintain highest DPS. If a ranged projectile has very high damage but a low rate of fire it could be a great way to start a fight, weakening the enemy before charging in, make up for poor armor by giving you a viable ranged option to harass enemies from a distance, or you can actually use ranged projectiles to hunt. Like you would in real life. I know realism isnt always what this game goes for but chasing a deer across vast lands or bating goats and boar to charging us for the 100th time because we dont have viable ranged options that can stop it from running away isnt fun, engaging, or immersive, its tedious. 

Im also not suggesting bowtorn get a damage boost, they do enough damage as is. Im only recommending changes for our own ranged attacks. 

[Josiah Gibbonson]

44 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I prefer some things, and so long as neither of us insists on getting our way, we are good?

That sounds boring. It's much more entertaining to try and beat one another into submission with personal preference until everybody feels worse than before! 

 

Online discussions are a wonderful invention

[Thorfinn]

Just now, Chuckerton said:

Do you mean theres a mod out there that does that i would modify like you listed this or do you mean you think I should make a mod that does this? 

I don't know whether or not there is one. Because of the people who play on my server, I don't look into mods that make combat more difficult. But it would be relatively easy to change the AI to do that. I mean, consider the alternative if the feature is as popular as you think and it does not exist.

4 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

Given the suggestions I gave I don't know if simply side strafing would be fast enough to dodge a wolf's lunge.

Shoot, it is now! But I'm all for nerfing sprint. Make it work for forward and quartering forward only. Most n00bs would have no issue with that. It's something that only veterans can use to any effect, but, for whatever reason, rather than simply not using it, insist that it be removed for everyone. There are things I consider cheesy, so I don't use them. So...?

 

8 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

Im also not suggesting bowtorn get a damage boost, they do enough damage as is. Im only recommending changes for our own ranged attacks. 

That's the kind of cheese I hate. I want to be able to kill other things easily, but I don't want my foes to have the same rules.

[Thorfinn]

18 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

I know realism isnt always what this game goes for but chasing a deer across vast lands or bating goats and boar to charging us for the 100th time because we dont have viable ranged options that can stop it from running away isnt fun, engaging, or immersive, its tedious. 

After a bit of reflection, how about just reducing the HP of game animals? Make it so they do die from one arrow or spear or whatever would remove the tediousness. This would be a trivial mod, off-hand, maybe a 8 or 9 patches? Though it would be nice to add something that does less damage so you could damage a sheep or a pig to lure it into your pen, rather than killing it by slapping it.

Edited April 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[SubtleOrc]

25 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

I know realism isnt always what this game goes for but chasing a deer across vast lands or bating goats and boar to charging us for the 100th time because we dont have viable ranged options that can stop it from running away isnt fun, engaging, or immersive, its tedious. 

I use a little mod I found which reduces animal speed based on their damage ... couldn't live without it now .

[Josiah Gibbonson]

5 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

After a bit of reflection, how about just reducing the HP of game animals? Make it so they do die from one arrow or spear or whatever would remove the tediousness.

Hitbox weakpoints *COUGH* hitbox weakpoints *COUGH COUGH*

 

If we followed what hunting games do to make hunting feel...better, if you knew where to aim, you'd be rewarded with 1-shotting the animal. Problem with lowering the overall HP, is on the flip side, killing something instantly by shooting it in the knee is rather silly.

 

"It was running from me...so I made it take an arrow to the knee." 

 

Although reflecting on this further, shooting an animal's legs should slow it down some.

 

Hitbox weakpoints aren't very useful for melee combat most of the time, but for hunting mechanics where you'll be stealth-sniping your prey, it's a perfect fit.

 

 

[Josiah Gibbonson]

19 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Shoot, it is now! But I'm all for nerfing sprint.

It all gets ten times more complicated when you can change movement speed from world startup

[Thorfinn]

14 minutes ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

Hitbox weakpoints *COUGH* hitbox weakpoints *COUGH COUGH*

...

"It was running from me...so I made it take an arrow to the knee."

Oh, sure, that's fine. But good for the goose, good for the gander. A bowtorn gets a lucky shot into your knee, you are drifter chow. If he gets a lucky shot to the heart, you just die.

Edited April 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

41 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Though it would be nice to add something that does less damage so you could damage a sheep or a pig to lure it into your pen, rather than killing it by slapping it.

Personally I make like a drifter and throw rocks at them, then run like heck before I get stomped into the dirt.

[Chuckerton]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

But it would be relatively easy to change the AI to do that. I mean, consider the alternative if the feature is as popular as you think and it does not exist.

Man, "it would be relatively easy to change the AI to do that" I don't think so. I'll say that I've never tried modding or messing with file stuff in this game, so maybe its modding tools are really good and it would be easy to do so in this game, but as someone who... I guess I could call myself an amateur/aspiring game developer, this stuff is not easy, most of the time. Its easy to dream it, its easy to plan it, its easy to pseudocode it, but as soon as you start typing lines of code into the keyboard it can get messy fast, and a good rule of thumb is that everything will take longer than you think it will.

Maybe at some point ill look into modding this but generally speaking when i feel like programming i usually work on my own projects. 

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

After a bit of reflection, how about just reducing the HP of game animals? Make it so they do die from one arrow or spear or whatever would remove the tediousness. This would be a trivial mod, off-hand, maybe a 8 or 9 patches? Though it would be nice to add something that does less damage so you could damage a sheep or a pig to lure it into your pen, rather than killing it by slapping it.

Well for that last sentence, rocks. Does 1 damage, which im pretty sure any bow with any arrow do more damage then so just make them have more than 1 health. But otherwise, i dont disagree with reducing their health. Bears, elk, wolves, sure, let them have enough health to be dangerous, but a boar or mountain goat should be a 1 hit kill from a thrown spear and a deer should be a 1 hit kill from an arrow. Although...

1 hour ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

Hitbox weakpoints *COUGH* hitbox weakpoints *COUGH COUGH*

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Oh, sure, that's fine. But good for the goose, good for the gander. A bowtorn gets a lucky shot into your knee, you are drifter chow. 

I also like this, but i didnt suggest it because i thought it would be a little overcomplicated. I tried to suggest more simple changes because ultimately this isnt a combat game, its a game that has combat in it. I want it to be engaging, but i dont think it would be right if it was a very complicated system itself. I guess if its what the people want so be it but i like to suggest smaller changes because it would be less impacting on a devs presumably very busy schedule

Edited April 9, 2025 by Chuckerton

[Thorfinn]

51 minutes ago, Chuckerton said:

Man, "it would be relatively easy to change the AI to do that" I don't think so.

I wasn't going to bother, but when I looked at my Notepad++ window, I had wolf-male.json loaded in one of the tabs, so I took it as a sign. Looking at the following snippet from there...

						code: "seekentity",
						entityCodes: ["player"],
						priority: 1.51,
						movespeed: 0.045,
						seekingRange: 9,
						
						belowTempSeekingRange: 25,
						belowTempThreshold: -5,
						
						animation: "Run",
						leapAtTarget: true,
						leapAnimation: null,
						animationSpeed: 2,
						leapChance: 0.01,
						sound: "creature/wolf/growl",
						whenNotInEmotionState: "saturated"

...you have no idea what you would change to increase the leapChance? How you could change the movespeed to something higher than 0.045 if it were in the seekentity mode? C'mon. I believe in you more than you do.

Edited April 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Moltrey]

12 hours ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

That sounds boring. It's much more entertaining to try and beat one another into submission with personal preference until everybody feels worse than before! 

 

Online discussions are a wonderful invention

I think you just summed up the last decade in America my friend. 

[Thorfinn]

11 hours ago, Chuckerton said:

Well for that last sentence, rocks. Does 1 damage, which im pretty sure any bow with any arrow do more damage then so just make them have more than 1 health.

For a rock not to do an accidental "critical" to a knee, the leg hitbox needs more than 1 HP, right? So 2 HP per leg, times 4 legs, so we are up to 8HP already, How many other hitboxes are we considering?

I assume the same is true for seraphs? 2HP per leg, 2HP per arm so a single drifter rock doesn't disable you. On wilderness survival, your total HP is 10, so there's only 2 left for the entire rest of the player character? Turns pretty much everything in the game into a one-shot.

[Steel General]

This seems like a good place to mention:  AI projectiles are trivial to dodge. Juke and jive!

As you move forward, rapidly alternate A and D - anything aiming at you will presume your travel will continue in the current direction and aim to that side of you, while you continue on straight ahead. Anything directly to the side of you has a good chance of hitting you, but the rest of the projectiles will patter all around. To throw off the ones beside you, alternate sprinting and walking - this is trickier and a small margin to chase, but it might be worthwhile if that margin is populated by nightmares.

That said, if you don't want to cheese the AI, you can just watch for their tell - e.g., arm going back - and then sidestep.  I've dodged many a stone like so, but haven't tried it on arrows yet - for them, I sidestep behind cover.

[Chuckerton]

14 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

 

...you have no idea what you would change to increase the leapChance? How you could change the movespeed to something higher than 0.045 if it were in the seekentity mode? C'mon. I believe in you more than you do.

I didnt know wolves had a leaping behavior, never seen it happen. I know they can jump up if youre above them to try to get you but i dont think thats what the 'leaping' behavior they already have is. I was thinking i would have to make the leaping behavior and then see how the ai works and find a way to add it in there. 

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

For a rock not to do an accidental "critical" to a knee, the leg hitbox needs more than 1 HP, right? So 2 HP per leg, times 4 legs, so we are up to 8HP already, How many other hitboxes are we considering?

I assume the same is true for seraphs? 2HP per leg, 2HP per arm so a single drifter rock doesn't disable you. On wilderness survival, your total HP is 10, so there's only 2 left for the entire rest of the player character? Turns pretty much everything in the game into a one-shot.

For a hypothetical hitbox based health system where each limb has its own healthbar, would you really need a total HP? Losing the torso or head would just kill you, so do we need to limit the characters total hp to 10? Why not just give the torso enough health that you dont get 1 hit by everything? How about just 8-10 health for the torso? Sure, creatures would technically have a higher total healthpool but seeing as you only need to destroy a specific part not much will change. Even if your attack (or their attack to you) doesnt hit the part that you need to actually kill the creature, youre still potentially disabling something and making the rest of the fight easier for yourself. 

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, Chuckerton said:

I didnt know wolves had a leaping behavior, never seen it happen.

Oh. It's been a bit since I watched the @Dubbs Malone vid, but I think he had 2 leaps in it. But because the leap is where you are, not where you will be, side-step while sprinting (backwards) makes the leap miss.

 

2 hours ago, Chuckerton said:

For a hypothetical hitbox based health system where each limb has its own healthbar, would you really need a total HP? Losing the torso or head would just kill you, so do we need to limit the characters total hp to 10?

That's a good point. But crits will be seriously bad in a hitbox system. The game already assigns a hit location, head, body or legs to determine which part of the body was hit. A bowtorn does 5, so any leg hit will cripple. Well, assuming you are not giving the leg hitbox at least 6HP, which seems to defeat the purpose -- being able to take down an animal with a called leg shot.

It's kind of like tabletop RPGs. Critical hit systems are wildly popular until the monster rolls a 20.

[LadyWYT]

30 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

It's kind of like tabletop RPGs. Critical hit systems are wildly popular until the monster rolls a 20.

I mean, you could just disable the specific hitbox system on the player, but that leaves two problems...first of which is you'd have to rework how damage to the player is calculated, since where you get hit already matters in the current iteration of the game. The second problem though, is that Vintage Story so far has very much followed the rule that if you can do it, so can your enemies(in most cases).

As it stands currently, I think there are three main areas you can get hit: head, torso, and legs. You take the same amount of damage regardless of where you get hit, but your torso and legs are the most likely to take the hit while your head offers a smaller target. That being said, if you neglect to wear armor in one of those slots, it can lead to a shorter adventure than you may have intended.

It's also worth noting that not every enemy attack makes the enemy's tier. Boss monsters are an obvious example, but so are drifters: their melee attacks always match their tier and will thus always hurt, but the rocks will always be a piddly little low tier attack. I daresay future enemies will probably utilize a similar concept of different tiers of attack.

As far as janky hitboxes, after thinking it over more I'm not sure the hitboxes are the problem. I suspect that whatever bug is causing the extreme knockback in some cases(which can trap players in blocks) is likely jostling both players and enemies around too much when hit. Enemies don't have a problem, since aiming isn't hard for an AI, but players have a lot more trouble dealing with the disorienting movement. I suppose it's somewhat realistic, after a fashion, but not really the kind of realism that's ideal for a fun game. Fixing that bug would probably clean up combat quite a bit.

 

4 hours ago, Steel General said:

This seems like a good place to mention:  AI projectiles are trivial to dodge. Juke and jive!

As you move forward, rapidly alternate A and D - anything aiming at you will presume your travel will continue in the current direction and aim to that side of you, while you continue on straight ahead. Anything directly to the side of you has a good chance of hitting you, but the rest of the projectiles will patter all around. To throw off the ones beside you, alternate sprinting and walking - this is trickier and a small margin to chase, but it might be worthwhile if that margin is populated by nightmares.

That said, if you don't want to cheese the AI, you can just watch for their tell - e.g., arm going back - and then sidestep.  I've dodged many a stone like so, but haven't tried it on arrows yet - for them, I sidestep behind cover.

I believe it's possible to do with arrows as well; the key is to figure out exactly when the enemy has locked in their target position and then move. Oftentimes, that moment is the split second before the enemy launches the projectile, but not always. I wouldn't say it's a particularly hard maneuver to figure out, but it does take a lot of practice to consistently nail the timing.

[Thorfinn]

15 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I mean, you could just disable the specific hitbox system on the player, but that leaves two problems...first of which is you'd have to rework how damage to the player is calculated, since where you get hit already matters in the current iteration of the game. The second problem though, is that Vintage Story so far has very much followed the rule that if you can do it, so can your enemies(in most cases).

There's always the third, that the whole point of this thread was to argue that the combat system was boring and easy, so making it even easier seems to be a couple steps backwards.

Thing is I think it would probably take quite a bit of rework to do the called shot thing because the hit is determined when the missile reaches the target, not when you throw/shoot it. This allows for the accuracy thing to be taken into account. It also lets one dodge the missile and take no damage, or even step into the path of an oncoming missile. It would seem odd to have the kill shot succeed even if the target moved away before you hit it.

[PrismaticaDev]

I think everyone can agree that the combat doesn't feel "fun". People avoid it entirely because they don't enjoy it, and the people who do engage seem to unanimously agree it could do with an overhaul.

Also, combat is pretty much enforced within/hunting/spelunking/story content.

Having more options/complexity/more readable AI doesn't necessarily make combat more OR less difficult, but simply more interesting and fun.

[HalfAxd]

On 4/8/2025 at 4:33 PM, Chuckerton said:

<snip> That and bows/spears (in ranged combat) should do much more damage but charge slower. Enough damage to 1-shot most "game" type wildlife like deer or goats. Crafting even a crude bow or a spear should be a "I can hunt with this" instead of "better make 3 more spears or 10 arrows so I can chase a deer across the continent pelting it with projectiles or just running it down with a spear.
     I really should only need to hit them once, <snip>

The hunting mechanic is actually pretty realistic from the perspective of using crude spears and arrows... running down a wounded animal is what happens even hunting with guns.  In game this brings the historic use of chasing animals off cliffs or into pits as a viable tactic.  I like having to work for my kill.

I agree the current rapid fire spear spam is OP...  but I do take advantage of it! 

[Chuckerton]

12 hours ago, HalfAxd said:

 running down a wounded animal is what happens even hunting with guns. 

I want to just talk about this specific point because its true but i think not completely. Yes, you would have run down a wounded animal with a crude bow or spear, but that doesnt happen in this game the way it should. If you hit something and it freaks out and runs, its bleeding, and getting tired. We hunted in primal times by chasing creatures until they got so tired the begged us for death but creatures in this game have no limit to their endurance, the only limit is the players patience. 

if there was a bleedout mechanic then yeah crude bows wouldnt need to one hit kill hunting creatures, you just hit them and then track them to where they drop, but i dont know if they have any intention of adding that. And besides, i was thinking that ranged weapons should PUNCH! They should have weight and chunkiness! If they hit harder but slower they would be a rewarding and satisfying weapon