e8747e6c4e0ceedb55ae841fe9 Posted 4 hours ago Report Posted 4 hours ago I saw in the latest dev post that some members of the team are coming together to help improve the combat. I saw the 'armor wishlist' post and I wanted to express some similarly constructive hopes, asks, thoughts, or weird ideas for the future of Vintage Story's combat. I think everyone can agree that it feels very rudimentary and one dimensional right now, but I also think that it wouldn't require a massive overhaul to leave it in a fun state. In fact, while I'm not concerned that this is a risk, I think that too much of an overhaul, or too complicated of a system would end up making the combat just as uninteresting to most of the player-base as the current system is. Generally, I feel like the direction most people take when solving this problem comes to overhauling the player's capabilities by adding more weapons, attack animations, etc. I think the player could use some extra tools in combat, maybe a different attack animation for each weapon if you were crouched that had different damage, knockback, cooldown, etc. I envisioned something like this for spears, where if you crouched and held still, the seraph could deliver a stronger thrust of the spear than if they were running around, giving the crouched strike improved pushback and maybe even a bit of a stun to help pin down and control specific targets. Besides some small additions or some new items to play with like some traps, I generally think the issue with combat more has to do with the limited interactions between enemies and players. A good example of this is with the shiver. Fighting shivers honestly doesn't feel too different from fighting drifters other than it happens faster. You don't deal with them much differently, it's just swing at them until they're dead, with some occasional chasing if they decide to run away. To me, improving the combat in this example has less to do with in enhancing the general tools available to the player, and more has to do with adding more interesting engagements with the shiver. It'd be interesting if there was some trigger for their stun animation, or for them running away, rather than just health or rng. My thought was to make it so if you hit shiver's in the head while their mouth is open, it would cause them to recoil in pain and curl up in the stun animation, giving more of a timing to fighting them, and larger group combat more of a tempo. It allows for moments where, if I'm amidst a temporal storm, I can stun the shiver, and make a decision on whether or not I need to finish the shiver now, or cut down other enemies since I'm no longer being rushed down. I believe it's consistent opportunities for those momentary decisions that will make combat most interesting. Ultimately, I think that improving combat is going to come down more to providing more contexts through which more diverse outcomes can emerge in combat. Whether that's adding more ways to trigger enemy behaviors like mentioned above, adding new items that can change the flow of combat, or even something more environmental, I can't really say for certain. Anyways, if anyone else has any other thoughts or criticisms as well, I'd love to hear them.
DarkGold Posted 4 hours ago Report Posted 4 hours ago (edited) 3 hours ago, e8747e6c4e0ceedb55ae841fe9 said: It allows for moments where, if I'm amidst a temporal storm, I can stun the shiver, and make a decision on whether or not I need to finish the shiver now, or cut down other enemies since I'm no longer being rushed down. I believe it's consistent opportunities for those momentary decisions that will make combat most interesting. This resonates with me. It does make me think that combat situations in the game are quite diverse, but the enemies between those situations are often the same. Situations: Surface spawns of drifters and bowtorn. Usually lower stakes 1 on 1-2 fights. Fighting bells. Pick off a bell from outside its activation range, so as not to trigger summons or run right at it and prioritise killing it as fast as you can before dealing with whatever it summons. Temporal storm hordes. Dealing with an evolving fight, probably more than 1 enemy, probably tough. Spelunking. Maybe 1 tough enemy at a time if you are lighting the path as you go and progressing slowly, or possibly finding yourself in the middle of a group of tough enemies if you are just running into a series of dark tunnels with only a lantern in your hand. Ensuring choices are interesting in all situations with all the same enemies will be an interesting challenge. I wonder if more enemy types or different behaviours depending on whether enemies are in groups/alone/higher tier will be important. Edited 58 minutes ago by DarkGold Improved formatting
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