High Latency Combat

[pxib]

It'd be swell if everybody had a ping less than 100ms, but if wishes were fishes we'd all be Icelandic. The current MMOG latency-abatement strategy seem to be to automate aiming and attacking while imposing a global cooldown on spells and abilities. Everybody plays at a simulated 500ms ping and all feel equally gimped. Complaints come from all quarters that there's no "skill" involved. That it's too easy.

What can be done?

Is realtime aiming impossible? It's a challenge even at 150ms in the average FPS. The pros ping their target and then lead it at a particular arc in order to compensate. Can this be computer-assisted without making the game surreal?

Would a hypoethetical hierarchy of counters and counter-counters (Paper stance beats rock stance! Move to scissors stance! He's blocking? Execute a throw!) make autoattack and global cooldown feel less arbitrary?

Is there an untried third way that revolutionizes MMOG combat alltogether?

Let's hear it!

[Engels]

You're talking about two different types of game mechanics; FPS and MMOs. I've found that with Planetside, my ping hasn't affected my ability as much as with, say, counter strike.

[Krakrok]

Planetside works fine for me too. I'm not seeing the problem.

[Trippy]

PlanetSide uses client side hit detection which sucks big time -- there's nothing more frustrating in a shooter than running behind cover only to fall down dead a second later cause some lagger was shooting at you. Also doing all that stuff on the client makes it ripe for exploitation. It's only because PlanetSide has so few players that hacks aren't wide spread for it.

[Xilren's Twin]

What can be done?

Is realtime aiming impossible? It's a challenge even at 150ms in the average FPS. The pros ping their target and then lead it at a particular arc in order to compensate. Can this be computer-assisted without making the game surreal?

Would a hypoethetical hierarchy of counters and counter-counters (Paper stance beats rock stance! Move to scissors stance! He's blocking? Execute a throw!) make autoattack and global cooldown feel less arbitrary?

Is there an untried third way that revolutionizes MMOG combat alltogether?

Let's hear it!

Turn based. There, I said it.

The net effect would be to slow combat down so that instead of it taking 15 seconds to kill a mob, pehaps a battle takes a few minutes of MtG level strategy games. If you wholesale replaced the combat mini game with such some factors to consider.  If 1 battle is now "worth" 20-50 kills under the old ADD style combat, that would satisfy the need for more "involving" combat, lessen the perception of grinding a sheer mass of mobs to advance without actually changing the time spend playing, and give designers much more flexibility in terms of things to do in the combat mini-game.  Hell you could even make the party based interactions closer to the mything pen and paper combat sessions where each character has a wide variety of tactical choices and stuff is resolved in a queue.  Reward planning, communication and teamwork in something other than "you tank, you clerics heal, every one else don't get aggro".

Course, you would have to make some changes to the overall gamespace as wandering mobs and add wouldn't fit the combat model as is.  But still, it would be a major point of difference between game titles, any the only game i can think of that was headed in this direction got cancelled.

Turn based.  Squad turn based.  Multiplayer time round with action queue turn based.  large number of ships in a space battle.  Whatever.

Xilren

[tazelbain]

I'd like to play the game you discribed, but the only MMOG I know that gives tactical choices to players is GW and that didn't go well around here. Not everyone likes "the figure out their weaknesses while protecting your own" style of game.  I think most want to be a one man killing machine while spaming the pwn button.

[Rasix]

There's a couple systems that I've played that would make the MMO combat something a bit more interesting, skillful, and strategic than the current crop. 

One system is in a text MMO called Dragonrealms made by the guys that are attempting Hero's Journey.  On the surface this is your standard DIKU battle system but it has an additional strategic element of balance.  Certain swings and combinations allow you to be more balanced. If you parry, then jab, thrust, then followed by a lunge with a rapier, you tend to do more damage and allow your character to be in a better balance position for your next series of attacks.  Some finishers at the end can take away balance also (it's been a while but I think a lunge makes you less balanced) but you can only really attempt to pull those off if you are balanced.  Certain weapons are harder to keep balance with, such as large blunt weapons.  Also certain weapons are only effective balance wise with certain types of attacks: you won't be very balanced after trying to stab someone with a two handed broadsword.

Add this to a system that allows for locational attacks with various effects (head, arms/legs, torso, hands, etc) and has a fatigue system that's tied to the weapon weight and you have a very compelling battle system that rewards strategic thought as well as giving battle a very interesting flow.  This is combat that doesn't rely on mashing Sinister Strike as fast as possible to get to your finisher, but instead allows you to get your character into position to levy a killing blow that cleaves the top half your opponents skull from the rest of his head.

After playing Shadow Hearts 1&2, I'm surprised that no one has taken the shot at incorporating something like the judgement wheel into a MMO.  The judgement wheel is a wheel (SHOCKING!) that has an indicator that spins around on it.  Certain actions have colored areas on the wheel that correspond with success.  Some actions even have smaller colored sections next to the success portions that would indicate a critical success.  Take for example, my main character Yuri's basic attack is a 3 part attack.  I choose to attack and the wheel starts to spin.  I stop the wheel in the three different success areas colored in yellow.  He executes three regular attacks.  My next character Karen has a two part attack. I try to get fancy and stop the indicator on the smaller red portions of the success and manage to hit the first critical success area but miss the second.  The first attack hits for a great deal more damage but the second wiffs completely.  This system also applies to item use and heals.  You can play it safe and go for the regular successes or you can be riskier and get off a big heal or massive string of critical attacks.  The more complicated or advanced the action, the more complicated the wheel.  In SH2, my success rate on 5 area spells was about 50% so more of the time I was more conservative in the actions I chose.

Now, there's a couple drawbacks to this approach.  One, it would have to be implemented in a turn-based or quasi-turn based system.  It would not survive WoW level combat thrash.  Two, I'm not sure how hard this would be to implement server side and client side action are vulnerable to automation and exploitation.  Three, like I said.. it's color based.  If you choose the wrong color combinations or implement the colors poorly, you can have a game that's unplayable for certain people.  In Shadow Hearts 1, I could not see the color of red they chose 50% of the time.  This was a problem since red is the color for the critical sections of the wheel and was also used for environment interactions.   However, this was easily remedied in Shadow Hearts 2 by using vibrant colors and avoiding shades/combinations that are difficult for us color blind people.   

The judgement wheel system also had a rich metagaming aspect to it in SH2.  You could increase the attack/critical area.  You could add effects to your normal attacks.  You could increase/decrease the amount of hits you had per attack. You could change the overall characteristics of the wheel (riskier v. safer).  It also allowed for status effects that went beyond your normal poison/paralysis/silence.  You could be hit with a reverse ring that would cause well.. your judgement ring to spin in the opposite direction.   You could equip items that allowed for a slower ring speed or even an invisible ring (success areas would not show up) that doubled the damage of your attacks. 

It could be such a rich combat system that could easily be shoehorned into an MMO framework to appease just about anyone (the minmaxers, hardcore skill obsessesed, casual players, pvpers, etc).  But I'm not sure how latency friendly it would be unless the ring successes were determined client side.  But I'm not a client-server MMO programmer, so who knows..

[Samwise]

Puzzle Pirates ship-to-ship combat is neat.  It's a strategic turn-based sort of thing, with rounds consisting of 4 moves each.  Taking 4 moves at a time makes it much faster than if you were making one move per turn, and adds an interesting element of having to guess your opponent's strategy a few moves ahead.

[Kail]

Other people have already pointed out that you can have a skillful system that doesn't require you to have sub-200 ping to work, so I won't spend much time there other than to say that I agree.  As long as it's not handled client side.

I also think, though, that lag is not a universally unbeatable monster.  First of all, you can do something like EVE, and separate the players into different servers.  As far as I'm aware, each system in EVE is it's own server, so when there's only twenty or thirty people in system, the server is under comparable load to a server running, say, Unreal Tournament.

Also, lag hits different gameplay elements differently.  Playing Team Fortress on a dial-up, I had no problem killing people with a rocket launcher, but I absolutely could not hit with the sniper rifle.  The rocket launcher already requires a player to lead his target, while the sniper rifle doesn't, so a high ping can seriously screw with your rifle aim while only requiring a bit (if any) adjustment to your rocket launcher.  Slowing down combat, also, will generally help deal with lag, since less can change in that 500ms.  I know that slow run speeds are not looked upon kindly in a lot of circles, but if everyone's flying around like rabbits on meth, it doesn't give players a whole lot of time for strategy.  If you can be outside of sword range, run in, hit, and then run back out of range all in a second, a lag of half a second is going to cause serious problems.  If you slow it down, so that the player can see you coming, see the swing coming, and still have a chance at defending against the attack even if he's a half second behind the attacker, then you can still have "skill" with a significant lag.

[Margalis]

Ping times and lag are not related to the "no skill" complaint. You can design 0 ping combat that takes no skill.

Lag times only really effect aiming skill, which is one of many types of skills. The basic problem with MMORPG combat is at any given time there is one option that is 90 times better than the next best option. Rarely if ever is there any variance at all in enemy tactics or in situations.

I've said it before and will say it again, the most fun you can have in MMOPRG combat is when things STOP happening according to script. Maybe you got an add you were totally unprepared for, maybe your healer disconnected, maybe you joined a party as a Red Mage that consisted of FOUR Black Mages and a Thief. (Note: That party kicked ass)

Nobody ever descibes their favorite time, or even an enjoyable time, as fighting the 17th lizard in a row where your tank taunted it, some guys stood around hacking at it for a while and your healer healed the tank.

Manual dexterity for things like aiming is a skill. Making choices between two real alternatives is a skill. Balancing risk and reward in non-obvious situations is a skill. Judging distance is a skill. Predicting your opponent is a skill. etc etc.

The reason MMORPG combat takes basically no skill is that it just isn't designed to. It really is that simple. (People always overlook simple answers) At no point in the design of typical MMORPG combat did anyone stop and think if any real skill is required. Note that leaning the most effective strategy and repeating it does not take skill after the strategy has been learned if the repitition is straightforward.

I can think of literally a million ways to make MMORPG more skillfull.

The problem is that people don't approach the issue directly. Instead of saying "is this going to take some non-trivial ability" they say "you can have piercing, slashing and blunt weapons and different enemies are good against different types of weapons. That makes combat more complex!" When the reality is as soon as I learn that hitting a skeleton with a club works better than poking it with a rapier I'll just use a club against skeletons the entire time. Systems like that add zero depth, the only thing they add is initial learning-curve.

In a game that is supposed to last for years, "slightly hard to learn and easy to master" is a pretty poor philosophy.

I always feel like ripping my hair out when I read about systems like blunt vs. pointy weapons or about how fire works well on undead but thunder works well on evil puddle creatures. That stuff is fine but it doesn't add any actual depth or skill unless there is more to the story than what these systems typically provide.

----

In Starcraft different weapon types work well against different units. That in itself does not introduce any depth. The complexity comes from figuring out what units to build, what units your opponent is likely to build, where to deploy the different units, etc.

In a MMORPG-type game you strip away all the unpredictability and just say "on this level you will be fighting only zerglings." When you do that what weapons do well against what units really doesn't matter, just pack whatever kills zerglings and you are good to go.

---

Unpredictability is a key. There is a reason people still play Chess and Street Fighter. If your opponent is utterly predictable you WILL find a single best way to combat them. In PVE games this is a major issue. In PVP it isn't an issue, but then of course you still have to give the combatants something that requires actual skill.


/rant

[stray]

/rant

I mentioned last week in some WoW thread that the only way for me to have fun in instances is to invite a shitty tank.

[Sunbury]

I never felt that the combat in MMOGs was the "game".   The "game" in MMOGs is setting up for combat, or getting past the combat to get to your goal.  The combat part was a test to see if you figured out the other parts of the game, or prepared for it, correctly.

Setting up for combat means learning where to go to fight, or what to fight, or what buffs to use or which weapon to use, or getting that weapon to use, etc.

Of course the vast majority of players 'cheat' this part of the game by just looking it up on some web site, or having someone tell you what to do, or having some higher level give you the equipment or buffs --- and then they complain there is no game there.

I'm not saying I would be against more skill-based (physical or logical) combat in MMOGs, but complaining too hard about it is like complaining there is not enough twitch skills in use playing chess.   Or playing poker where you can see eveyone elses hands.

[tazelbain]

Ping times and lag are not related to the "no skill" complaint. You can design 0 ping combat that takes no skill.

Lag times only really effect aiming skill, which is one of many types of skills.

Well any time you have to react to opponents lag can be a factor. If there is lag, you'll be slow to react.  Interupts in GW. Mezing at range in DAoC.  Postion based and counter attacks in various games.  All are effected by lag and are not aiming.

[Margalis]

That is certainly true. However I would say that simply reacting is not a very interesting skill on it's own.

A lot of games have things like that. For example in AC2 where you do a special move when the enemy flashes yellow or something like that. It doesn't add a whole lot of depth, you just press the right hotkey when the enemy flashes.

[Yegolev]

I am generally in favor of slower combat since it lets me plan better.  Some games don't require much planning, but those can be fun as well.

[Stephen Zepp]

While it applies mostly to PvE, Jason Booth wrote an extremely interesting article regarding how games could handle latency: Fast, Secure Interactions in Latent Environments.

Even Torque (which still has one of the best/most complete networking models in the business, all false modesty aside) doesn't work completely towards this model--all we do is allow the client to have future time for it's control object (the player object) and handle client-server desynchs authoritatively server side, forcing the client to correct when needed.

This article has had me thinking for a couple of months now..

[Tale]

Everybody plays at a simulated 500ms ping and all feel equally gimped.

Bullshit. Get a clue. Noob. Fuck you! I don't really mean to be that harsh, but well, you don't know what you're talking about :) As an Australian-located player of US-based games with US-based servers, I have the right to tell you you're SO WRONG.

Why? Because there is a good 130-200ms between me and the US (undersea pacific cable) before my US-to-US latency begins. So on ubermegacableT1000 fastest buyable Internet, I get 250-450ms pings in MMORPGs (obviously with FPS games, I use local servers). And this is IN ADDITION to the simulated delays. The way you describe it sounds like the mythical negative ping code. As if a "simulated 500ms ping" compensated for my actual ping.

No, if there's a simulated 500ms ping in the game, for me there's a 750-950ms ping. I press the button. I wait 250-450ms, and THEN the 500ms spell timer starts. The player hits me and I don't find out till 250-450ms later. So no way in hell is everybody playing at a simulated 500ms ping. A US-based player on a bad ISP might see the same thing (but you'd probably also get packet loss on such a shitty cheap connection, which adds a different set of problems).

Also, it's not always a disadvantage to have such delays. The cheating Australian faggot high ping bastard's character is 250-450ms further away than you think it is, and the server says you missed.