[color:"orange"]I'm not saying you are trying to get away from the attack but trying to evade it.[/color]
Changing direction is still a lot easier than changing speed, especially when flying. Trying to maneuver and attack and change speed is too much to try all at the same time. I'm not saying you should never change speed, just that it is usually impractical during an attack and less effective than maneuvering.
[color:"orange"]I wouldn't go full speed all the time when attacking someone (and evading their attacks) but I guess thats just my opinion.[/color]
In nature things being chased run pretty much at full speed; things doing the chasing may have started off waiting or slowly stalking, but once the attack starts they go pretty much full speed. There may be a little extra both can do, but they change direction a lot more than speed.
Well I guess this is just our different opinion not much else to say about it.(But what you said was assuming one tried to run from the attack more as both trying to take on eachother)
[color:"orange"]So are we gonna be dragons for sure ?[/color]
Someone posted some time ago that they saw a preview of the game and the only thing they could say about it was you would be able to transform into a dragon. I tried looking for the post briefly, but couldn't find it.
ok thanks, I didn't know.(or I forgot <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />) Anyway I really hope the dragons will be very different depending on our character choices. At least different looking.
[color:"orange"]So flying into the group of enemys you wouldn't want to have a target selected or use auto aim since you will just stick your spear in whoever comes close enough.[/color]
So fly by, start swinging and hope you get close enough to hit something? Without some form of targeting, the timing that would be required for this is much greater than for the proposed ground based micromanaged fighting systems.
If you get rid of targeting, that means ranged attacks would not be targeted either. These characters would have to just point themselves towards an opponents and start firing.
Well personally I'm really against auto-aim attacks (only curses or similar type of attacks or charm spells or the like should be without aim, imo). I do understand that some people would want to be a fearsome fighter without having to time their every move and learn some combos or whatever. But I don't like fighting like that.
But now that I can assume we are gonna be dragons, I can also assume the dragon won't be holding any spears or lances or something similar.
(and being a dragon without some really cool skills would be kinda lame)
I guess the only way to keep us both (and prolly more people too) happy is to be able to enable some sort of auto attack. I don't mean you don't have to do anything when fighting, but just that the non-auto attack would require timing and fast button pressing and enable some skills as combos. While in the auto-attack mode you wouldn't need to have that timing or fast button pressing ability since the computer would just use the same attacks but automatic. Offcourse this doesn't mean that fighting is gonna be dull. The way I see it there should still be some skills (6 or 8 or something) that can be used by the numeric or function keys.
(so much in the same way guild wars does it) these skills would be different when we are a dragon and some would be better for air to air and some better for air to ground. (example: I think fire breath would be better for air to ground as for air to air. Since on the ground there are less ways to escape from the fire)
[color:"orange"]...not really, you could hurt them as you fly by and as you turn and fly towards them again you might as well hit another enemy since the other enemy might be closer this time. OK, so you can't kill them all in the same hit. but you don't have to take them out one by one.[/color]
Given a choice between targets in a group, it would be much more effective to attack one that is already injured. I didn't mean that you had to kill them in order, just that it would be much better to do full damage to half your opponents (so half were left that could attack) than to do half damage to all your opponents (in which case all could still attack).
I guess I understood you wrong. Offcourse that would be better from a strategic point of view. But as I think I said before, for example in Gothic 3 I really had to hit different enemys as they would all come for me and I couldn't really choose who to attack. And to me this makes sense since those enemys would prolly be working together and won't let you take out one of them without them all attacking you. It was more fighting them off, keeping myself safe and counterattacking.
But now that I can assume we will be the dragon ourselves I need to rethink the matter. Because the kind of skills used need to be very different now for the combat system I want.
[color:"orange"]But alone vs a group taking them on one by one shouldn't be able to work.
You are attacking just one target and the others are free to hit you and since you are focusing on that single enemy you will not really be able to defend yourself in a good way.[/color]
Without an area effect spell or something you are always only going to be able to attack one at a time, so the remainder are always going to be able to attack you. You don't ignore everyone but the first one you hit, but if you are able to attack that one again rather than one at full strength, do so.
About the only time you would want to exclusively target a specific opponent in a group is if you have a strong enemy doing a lot of damage (ie a mage shooting fire balls at you) surrounded by weaker creatures.
Yes you attack them one at a time, but more as one attack against this enemy and then the next attack against another enemy since he came dangerously close.
[color:"orange"]Why do you really want to target the enemys ?[/color]
Because I don't want a micromanaged fighting system that is heavily biased towards melee fighting and focuses on the player's coordination and reaction time rather than the character's skills and abilities.
I wouldn't want it to be heavily biased towards melee fighting, although this is often (or always for as far as I know) the case. Our opinions differ abit too much I guess, but what about the option to enable auto-attack ? (It would take some time balancing it out, but I think it could be done, it will not be easy to make it work though)
[color:"orange"]I just want to hit in about the same way gothic 3 does.[/color]
How does Gothic 3 handle ranged combat?
It uses manual aim and doesn't require you to target your enemys. But it was more for the melee type of attacks that I referred to Gothic 3. I do want manual aim and I do not want to target enemys (with again the exception of some skills/spells).
[color:"orange"]I don't want so select targets (unless when using some spells for example curses) And if it would require targeting, yes I would like to manually pick the targets.[/color]
How would you choose the targets?
The only thing I can think of to fly, attack and target at the same time is to have your left hand on the wasd keys for flight control (the left hand could also take care of pausing and potions) and use the mouse to select and attack. This would mean trying to click on a moving target that is changing direction while the screen focus is also changing direction in response to your flying.
Of course if dragons do not have spells then in your fight system there would be no need to fly and target at the same time.
Offcourse dragons should have spells (if we are gonna be the dragons ourselves) I wouldn't mind trying to click on a moving target while the focus of my screen is changing. But you assume that all spells/skills would require you to select a target and I wouldn't like that.
[color:"orange"]Well but unless we are the dragon it would be too weird for me to be able to control it as if it was my own char. We should be able to control it in a way but more like giving it commands. I don't want the game to be like a crazy mod of a modern combat flying game. (so don't control the dragon like a fighter jet)[/color]
So lack of targeting would reduce ranged characters to maneuvering straight towards an opponent so they could start firing and then adjust their heading to hit the opponent as required, but you don't want the fight system to emulate a jet fighter????
[color:"orange"]You could still use the wasd keys to move it, but more to evade things or fly closer to enemys than really controlling the dragons every move.[/color]
I don't see the difference between using the wasd keys to move the dragon and using them to control it. You still have to use the keys, which puts limitations on what else you can control at the same time.
Well no need to go into this any further since I can assume we will be the dragons ourselves.
[color:"orange"]And melee characters always have some sort of disadvantage versus ranged chars. But when they do get close they really are lethal.[/color]
When fighting on the ground you can always get close. To allow a melee character to fight on a flying creature the game would have to be biased so that no creature could fly faster than you could (so nothing could hit and run repeatedly) and there were no effective ranged attacks.
The same goes for our plain old ground to ground attacks, why would it be different for air to air or air to ground. You can get close because it is biased, else some fast running ranged attack user could always just hit, run abit hit again, run abit,... with you just running behind it staying out of reach. I don't see why this is suddenly different in air to air.
[color:"orange"]why would we have to stop attacking ? and switching and all that ? did you really think this through ?[/color]
Ok, you are flying in a circle and an opponent on the ground has a ranged attack. Since you have a very predictable flight pattern even a simple enemy AI would be able to quite consistently hit your mount, thus killing it. Once dead it would fall to the ground, as would your character, which would be fatal.
Do you still see no need to simultaneously control both the flight and fighting?
Offcourse you forgot my ability to summon a trampoline <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.
But well I'll just assume we are the dragons ourselves untill larian tells us otherwise.
[color:"orange"]so you really want a combat flying game where they made the fighting jets look like dragons ?[/color]
You seem to have no trouble advocating a control system which has been used in a different genre of game.
Flying is movement in 3 dimensions, and in order to have guided flight you must have a certain level of control. It doesn't matter if the thing flying is a dragon a jet or an alien, you still have the same physical restrictions and requirements. There is also fighting, which requires additional controls. In order to fly and fight at the same time, some controls must be automatic (roll left/right) and some optional (such as speed).
As for input, everyone is restricted to (at most) two hands, and the controls must be at least functional with a keyboard and mouse. Given the requirements of flying and fighting and the restrictions of input, I would think it impossible to come up with an effective control system that is completely unique.
The point of this discussion is for Larian to get a sense of what people want to control and what they would let the computer control. Since you want a very manual fight system you don't need any targeting, so the basic flight and attack controls are adequate. I don't want micromanaged fighting, so require a way to select opponents. Given the restrictions on controlling flight, attacking and targeting I can not think of a good way to do everything at once, so need to make further choices as to what is important (which for me results in the need for an auto-target system).
Well you could be right and maybe I didn't think it really through before I made this comment. That doesn't change however that I still don't like auto target and auto aim. The whole fighting could be done differently since I'm assuming that we are the dragon ourselves now.
Again I guess the only way to keep us both happy is to give people a way to bypass the manual fighting system with just one click in the options menu.
This would prolly make the game harder for the people that prefer manual fighting systems but I wouldn't mind.
Flying only changes one thing for me, we have an extra dimension to move in.
When being the dragon I would just use wasd to keep the horizontal movement as we are used to on the ground. And use to mouse to control the flying and the targetting/aiming. One button could be used to toggle between fly mode/target mode.
[color:"orange"]And I don't want to offend you in any way but reading some comments made it look like you enabled some sort of "ignore whatever he is typing mode" and just comment further on your own post instead of mine.[/color]
We are having a conversation. It isn't a question of ignoring you; if I believe you have missed the point of something I've said I will try to clarify it (as I expect you to do with me). If I realize I have missed the point of something you said (ie I didn't realize at first that you didn't want any targeting at all) then my earlier comments may be slightly off and I might also need to clarify or redirect them. If you bring up a point that gets me thinking about something else, I'll go with that. If some point or example I am making brings up something new (like hovering) that I wish to make a short side comment about, I don't think it is out of place to do so in the same post. The footnote about the game demo was to give an example of a control system to fly and fight, and is relevant to the overall conversation even if it is not directly in response to our own. If you can think of a game with a micromanaged fight system for a flying character, similar to what you would like, feel free to mention it so people can check out the demo.
Ok sorry about saying that. But I guess I got alittle bit frustrated because I wasn't able to explain my opinion properly.
