Critical hit

[Kraven]

Should critical hits be in? How should they work? Player skill? Stats?

If no critical hits :
Each part of the body should have a damage %, say head is 200%, upper body is 100%, back is 150%, arms and legs are 75%.
This is in case of a overall HP pool or if all body parts got the same amount of HP in the beginning.
Or some other system to make it attractive to go for a soft spot.

Critical Hits (Player skill) :
Player skill based critical hits are based on where you hit, example could be "head" is a massive critical, upper body is a normal hit, back is a critical, etc.

Critical Hits (Stat based) :
Example of this is you have a base critical chance of some sort and everytime you hit there is a chance it crits, some/most games you can enhance this critical chance by skills, feats, etc and in some games through gear.

No critical, no damage enhancing, nothing :
The target is one big hitbox that takes the same amount of damage no matter where you hit.

[Dagger]

I voted for select body parts being susceptible to damage more than others. It should be possible within the engine used, and I'm guessing most people will favor this option. It's probably one of the few ways to include critical blows without them being left to chances.


Perhaps the critical areas could increase in size when you're fatigued even, making it easier to crit weakened enemies.

[Jutsin]

I like the enhanced damage for body parts option. If this is going to be a true FPV skill-based game, random factors (such as % chance for critical on strike) need to be removed, or minimalised.

Example: 1v1, two melee characters, roughly equal match-up .. fighter A lands 5 blows against fighter B's head - fighter B lands 5 hits against fighter A's legs. Fighter A should be outputting a shitload more damage because of where they are hitting, in comparison to their opponent.

Armor/shielding would obviously need to be taken into account for damage calculations .. but body part damage is a good system to use, IMO, and should be more than possible with the Unreal engine.

[Shinzon]

Shouldn't that be armor dependant. If one is wearing a great helm; and the other a leather cap; and if both are hit in the head; obviously one is going to be a little bit more than dazed...

At best armor protects you as you would expect it; minimum damage; but if you manage to either pierce the armor, or get the sword inbetween individual plates; thats a critical hit without any addative number crunches.

[Blahman]

In addition to #1, I think there should be "damage states" such that if a body part takes too much damage you start to really feel the effects such as limping, slowed movement, dropped weapons or broken armor/equipment, even severed limbs (which would invariably be a mortal wound, giving you only enough time to get revenge on your enemy before bleeding out). Depending on how much physics come into play, damage states could be simply a random % chance event happening (least realistic and least skill-based), to being accurately modeled and based on impact surface area, velocity, angle, materials, and muscle & bone structure (most realistic and most skill-based). I'm hoping for something in between, since I don't believe the world is ready for that level of physics simulation in an MMO yet.

[Jutsin]

@Shinzon - Out of curiosity, if the critical hit system is based on armor (and moreso the strikes that get between/through the armor), will someone fighting without armor be receiving a critical hit on every strike, or will they just have a higher chance of being hit critically?

[catmorbid]

I personally prefer a hit location-based effect. However, simply having different damage multipliers tied to each body part would be a too simple and too FPS-like solution for me, so I would instead use a system similar to Fallout. Fallout had a different critical chance for each body part, which was also affected by damage dealt (I think).

So, the chance for having an actual critical hit would vary on damage dealt and the body part in question. This would effectively take armor into consideration as well, because armor would reduce the damage you take, and thus the critical chance as well. Still, low damage on head would be better than low damage on leg.

Combine this solution with unique critical-hit table for each body part, and you have a really complex and realistic system for dealing critical hits, which can pull through everything presented above. If you can think of better one, I'm really interested in hearing about it

[Veith]

@catmorbid, i think also we will not get a pure hitpointsdecreasing combatsystem. So a mix between points for different i write now bodyparts but also possible really critical hits would be most interesting. But never a system you can make a linear countdown to hell:
10,9,8...0 lifepoints-game over.
One aspect i disliked for all MMORPG's, you are knowing nearly the second if the char of an opponent will die or your char will die. Yo can count like '11' blows and my char is dead or 6 blows and the opponent is dead, is that really gameplaydesign for combat?
The challenge of combat is to prevent, parry hits and for the attacker to place hits, and not to count down the exact number of blows for winning a match. And for easier winning we need a sword with 20 more hitpointsdecreasing.

If there will be different bodyparts then really armor for legs, arms, body, head is a big decision for using. And not only the total amount of armorrating points.

[Mavrick88]

I like the option of a chance at a critical hit. That way it's totally random and a fight can go either way. Most games, you have classes that are just stronger than all others in PVP and MOST of the time, they win no matter what. If you toss in a chance for crits, that could put a battle in anyone's favor instead of just having a class that will whoop butt all the time.

[Shinzon]

Out of curiosity, if the critical hit system is based on armor (and moreso the strikes that get between/through the armor), will someone fighting without armor be receiving a critical hit on every strike, or will they just have a higher chance of being hit critically?

Wearing little to no armor for a mellee charachter in this situation is going to give you an entirley diffirently flaviour one compared to a full armor. Your "Protection" doesn't come from armor, but from your agility and your ability to parry each hit with greater ease, though if someone manages to land a hit on the naked body; you will get hurt pretty bad.

This way 2 different fighting styles are born just by the type of armor the user is wearing.

[silenced]

critical hits should not do more damage, they should debuff the one that's been hit, like applying a wound, reducing your chars capability to fight

of course, this should not affect the players own skills, if he realizes how to handle it, it will be fine, if not -> well ...


of course, critical hits are mostly luckbased and so is real life, sometimes you're lucky, sometimes they bite you all the time


always a two-bladed-sword, as almost everything

[Dagger]

Originally Posted by silenced

critical hits should not do more damage

Why not? Hitting you on the back of your head would obviously damage you more than hitting your leg. Doesn't need to mean you do 3 times more damage in game though. Perhaps a multiplier of x1,4 more damage or so.

Originally Posted by silenced

of course, critical hits are mostly luckbased and so is real life, sometimes you're lucky, sometimes they bite you all the time

I think this is completely wrong. For an unskilled fighter, a critical hit would be a matter of luck. A skilled fighter could score criticals time after time, however.

[Neek]

I'm all for hit boxes producing differing results based on player placement when moves are executed.

AoC pissed me off because many times (lag was taken into account) I would be behind a player only to have them parry, dodge, and even miss. This is game breaking in that I take the trouble to land a move, position myself perfectly only to find out I wasted my time.

[Veith]

I really dont want again a combat system like you cut down a tree, not again playing a lumberjack must cut down other chars and call it fight.

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by Veith

I really dont want again a combat system like you cut down a tree, not again playing a lumberjack must cut down other chars and call it fight.

lol, yeah I know exactly what you mean. It does feel kinda dumb to spend 15 minutes bashing this guy before either one is even close to dying

I think that's a new quote of the week

[Lachrymose]

i'd like hit boxes, although it could bog things down a bit, assuming you want armor mitigation to come into play. for example, getting hit in the chest w/ no armor would obviously do more damage than getting hit in the arm w/ no armor, but getting hit in the arm without armor may result in more damage than getting hit in the chest with armor.

it'd also be interesting to see status effects/debuffs as a result of an attack. for instance, being struck in the leg would slow movement speed or agility or something, while getting struck in the arm may slow attack speed or reduce melee damage or something. would be an awful lot to implement though.

[Veith]

Originally Posted by catmorbid

lol, yeah I know exactly what you mean. It does feel kinda dumb to spend 15 minutes bashing this guy before either one is even close to dying

I think that's a new quote of the week

But it seems most voters want to be never playable warriors, they want to be exactly to calculate lumberjacks, its a bit sad. They want to know 'i need exact 12 blows for beating the foe', the only surprise if the foe has 'bandages, some magical ore religious doping' and so on, then 14 blows are needed, but its all exactly calculatable. I want more control for the fight, means also if i am not able to control then i will surely lose. But such a unfailable calculation is only again statistical scrap. Thats not combat what folks want thats only constructed, curious gameplay, nothing to do with the presented show. But its kown, common, and so wanted. I am sad about the momentary vote, it means really again only points increasing or decreasing, call it hitpoints or damagepoints for several boxes, its finally the same.
Critical hits should be if someone wants to play a kind of combat. But critical hit must not mean every blow is 100% deadly, but there are possibilities to place critical hits.

[auutumn]

I want to be able to target parts of my opponents body and cause damage, hopefully visual damage. If I hit one of their arms then their ability to fight with that arm should go down, perhaps to the point where they can't hold their weapon or shield.

[Saviour]

The different body part critical hits in my opinion would work quite good because if the Devs would add effects like bleeding, if I swing into someones hand/leg and I hit his vein there could be a bleeding effect ;p which would probably work pretty well with the previously mentioned(not in this thread though) bandage system which would stop the bleeding.

[Lachrymose]

a lot of these ideas would be great, but they would eat up a ton of resources with all the complicated calculations and whatnot that would have to go on in real-time, since attacks are collision based. not to mention, a lot would go into implementing some of these ideas.

[Veith]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

a lot of these ideas would be great, but they would eat up a ton of resources with all the complicated calculations and whatnot that would have to go on in real-time, since attacks are collision based. not to mention, a lot would go into implementing some of these ideas.

Thats a real problem
but anyway if someone asks me what i want as 'next' then something in a direction with a more realistic damage-model for also 'only' fantasyMMOG's.
And for that i would also renounce to some superficial for gameplay unneccessary effects. Make first shapes of the models fine, then you dont need to much shiny blink on equipment.
Why AoC failed for my taste. I was satuated very soon of the (for a MMOG) fine grafics, but gameplay is simple, boring, uninspired, common. So with half of grafical effects but designed as a good Multiplayergame then it could be a game for me. AoC is for me a good example for a product nice looking without for a good game necessary content.
Its not like a nice living superwoman its more like a lifelike dummy. Thats not what i want from 'realism' in games.

[lgnlint]

personally, i don't like crits because they rely on an RNG (random number generator) and then you end up with a random element in pvp

there should be no random elements, only things controlled directly by the player imo

that way you don't win something because of a lucky string of crits

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by lgnlint

personally, i don't like crits because they rely on an RNG (random number generator) and then you end up with a random element in pvp

there should be no random elements, only things controlled directly by the player imo

that way you don't win something because of a lucky string of crits

You're missing one very important thing: Life is about random elements. Without random elements I reckon humans wouldn't have evolved from apes. If you don't want random elements in a game, you should go and play chess. And even then, I bet you cannot completely put out random elements, not in the game, but in youand the environment. The reason random number generators are used in pretty much every software, is because randomness is essential and omnipresent.

When a game uses a critical hit system with randomness, it basically just simulates something that would otherwise be impossible to simulate due to technical reasons: the exact infinite number of variations how a weapon could hit the body, the exact location, speed of blade, angle etc. you name it. It would be impossible to take such a thing into account, and keep it low on the resource consumption. That's why a critical hit system was created in the first place, in the early PnP games, to simulate real life combat, by introducing the random factor. Critical hits simulated attacks that land on head, heart or any other vulnerable spot, to deal real incapacitating damage.

So, you see, randomness and critical hits are in fact essential for any crpg which aims for realism. Without randomness, I reckon the combat would be very boring. And unless you can achieve true randomness, because of technical limitations, it's okay to use a random number generator.

[lgnlint]

Originally Posted by catmorbid

You're missing one very important thing: Life is about random elements. Without random elements I reckon humans wouldn't have evolved from apes. If you don't want random elements in a game, you should go and play chess. And even then, I bet you cannot completely put out random elements, not in the game, but in youand the environment. The reason random number generators are used in pretty much every software, is because randomness is essential and omnipresent.

When a game uses a critical hit system with randomness, it basically just simulates something that would otherwise be impossible to simulate due to technical reasons: the exact infinite number of variations how a weapon could hit the body, the exact location, speed of blade, angle etc. you name it. It would be impossible to take such a thing into account, and keep it low on the resource consumption. That's why a critical hit system was created in the first place, in the early PnP games, to simulate real life combat, by introducing the random factor. Critical hits simulated attacks that land on head, heart or any other vulnerable spot, to deal real incapacitating damage.

So, you see, randomness and critical hits are in fact essential for any crpg which aims for realism. Without randomness, I reckon the combat would be very boring. And unless you can achieve true randomness, because of technical limitations, it's okay to use a random number generator.

That would all make sense if an MMO was real life. But it isn't, and RNG ruins PvP.

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by lgnlint

That would all make sense if an MMO was real life. But it isn't, and RNG ruins PvP.

Like I said, try chess instead, if you don't like random numbers