f13.net

Splitting this topic off of this (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7994.0) thread, since it fits better here, but that's what got me started.  Quick background on the problem: most MMOGs have a 'problem' where in group vs group combat, it boils down to each side having one guy calling targets in the opposing team who promptly gets assaulted by tremendous odds (10-20 to 1, or worse).  Usually this results in the death of the called target within seconds.  I say problem because although some see it as a viable strategy (and it is), it is also not very much fun for the victim.  It's not all that great for the participants either, since their sense of control needs to be surrendered to the group leader.  Individual participation is largely removed, since any efforts of strategic combat are largely voided by simple mass.  No need to worry about attack/counterattack when the combat is often over in one shot.


This is a problem in almost all games, and is a consequence of characters with 1% health being just as effective in delivering dps/healing/etc as someone with 100% health. 

Eve devs have noted this as well, and are considering adding damage-based penalties to targets, so that a ship with 1% hull does not operate at 100% effectiveness.  I think approaches like this are incorrect (as are removing /tar or equivalent).  People who are losing a fight don't need to lose it even *more* by being less effective.  If the desire is to stop people from calling targets, then calling targets needs to be rendered ineffective. 

I would like to see a mechanic where there is a softcap on DPS relative to the number of attackers.  The idea is that as more people start hitting on you, the actual damage done by each is diminished by some amount based on the amount of damage and number of aggressors.  That is, if two people do 10dps each, and both attack the same target, their total dps is 18, not 20.  The total damage done to the target should still go up with each new participant, but in a diminishing returns fashion.  You will still take down a single target quicker by calling, but at the group vs group level your group will do far less dps total if you focus on one than if you spread yourself out. 

It would also open up additional mechanics, if desired, for bonuses/penalties: some weapons/skills/classes could do better or worse when stacked, and some targets/armor/skills may increase stacks used against them.  A rogue class for example may not have high dps or tankability, but compensate for that by highly penalizing anyone who would call them as targets due to dexterous skill at multifighting, for example.  Or, archery may not be penalized at all by stacking while melee is (you just can't get 20 people close enough to one guy to all swing at him at once). 

A MMOG which wanted to utilize sticky combat and real formations would have an even better time at it.  They could for example, state that any target can only have 4 points of melee (front, back, left, right).  Formations would then serve to cover one or more of those points, so that whoever is in the middle of a box formation (healer, mage, etc) is unable to either deliver or receive melee attacks.  Likewise, no player is ever able to be the target of more than four melee attacks at any point which potentially can both limit your offensive capability (your four slots are taken, and you really want to attack some other fifth person) and enable a defensive one (formations/flanking maneuvers). 

I agree with the latter part of your post.

In real life why don't 100 guys attack 1 guy all at once? The answer is they would if they could - but they can't.

Once you get 3 or 4 guys around someone swinging swords the 5th guy is as likely to hit his own teammate than the enemy. And any guy standing back with a gun is also likely to hit his own teammate.

I don't like scaling back damage with number of attackers because it seems so artificial.

GW has spells that say no attack can do more than X% of a person's life.  These can handle most "spikes" of damage.  GW doesn't have large spikes like SB, but a spell like that can still make spikes less inefficent and encourage more tactical play.

Also I'd like a front line and less running around.  There is no time to make tactical decisions while everyone running in circles like idiots.

It isn't high percent damage that's the problem though (although I would think they are from a balance perspective regardless): it's that if I can inflict 1% of your hp in damage every second, and there are 20 of us, you are dead in 5 seconds instead of a minute and a half if it were just you and me.  You wouldn't expect much different if it were 20 on 1, but in group vs group combat this occurs even when each side is roughly equal.  The result is that the combat experience is not nearly as fun for those so victimized, and in my experience, not all that thrilling from the aggressor's side either since combat is far too brief to allow for any form of tactics or strategy. 

Dumb questions:

1) If effectiveness were to decrease with damage, wouldn't ae damage become ridiculously overpowered? 

2) Wouldn't it become a better strategy to just damage every enemy target rather than killing them one at a time?  I guess some of this would be determined by the damage/effectiveness decay algorithm chosen. 

One question is what effectiveness would be lowered? *All* effectiveness? For example if I am at half health and a healer do my heals only heal half as much? Or take twice as long to cast? Or have half the range? Or take twice the MP?

My guess would be even with "more damage taken = less effectiveness" you would still want to gang up. Because for one thing a non-dead target can always be healed, whereas a dead target can't. In addition living targets can still cast spells, use abilities, use items, etc. If you each attack one guy the healer can throw healing over time spells on every teammate and effectively double team HP.

I like the idea that you can only attack with X guys at once because it is fluid. You have to be paying attention, it isn't rote. If one of your 4 attackers goes down you have to realize that and take his place.

In addition you can do things like archers have some chance of hitting their own guys, or mages can't cast offensive spells on targets if someone is in the way. (Both heals and offensive spells) I think that would lead to pretty active combat with guys circling, moving around, shifting targets, etc. Or arrows/spells can miss and hit the next guy in line. Things like that.

A lot of numbers makes combat a mess. That is what needs to be reflected.

Depends on how much dps the aoe ability(s) do, what the range is, whether there is a target limit similar to what SB impliments (-ed?), whether aoe effects affect group mates and/or friendlies, whether it is targetable, and all in relation to how much of a decrease we're talking about with an increase in numbers, and whether aoe effects count toward that limit or not. 


Not really.  You would be left with a tradeoff; you still have the desire to get kills, because a 1%hp target is still as effective as a 100% target.  However, strategically you have to think beyond just one kill, and instead over the course of combat.  Depending on how much of a dropoff there is, the devs could have significant control over ideal tactics.  They could set a goal, so that your optimum is around 1-2 per target, or 3-4, or whatever.  Instead of measuring damage over time, strategy would be also measured in kills over time which while similar concepts, aren't identical.  The point isn't to make all combat 1v1, but to break the habbit of ganging huge groups on one guy at a time. 

Eve offers a good example on how this can work, albeit with modules.  Ships can be fit with different hardware to increase performance, although sometimes with diminishing returns.  For example, a unit can be added to increase weapon damage by say, 30%.  A second unit can be added for a total gain of 50%, not 60%.  A third can be added to grant 60%.  A fourth may only boost it up to 65%.  You can keep adding for as many slots as you have available (1-8, 8 being on the largest ships), but anything beyond 2 or 3 is a waste not because it ceases to add returns, but because other modules can be added for better overall effectiveness (strategy) even if they don't relate directly to dps.  Some ship loadouts call for none, one, two, or even three; strategies which play into this penalty are still viable and successful, but within practical limits.

In the case of heals, I would think the easiest (perhaps not best) approach would be to consider healing just negative damage, and applicable to the same limits.  That is, the penalty applied is a ABS(x) function so someone healing you would add into the damage done, potentially allowing you to take more damage (at worst, negating part of the healings done).  If healing is all that's being done, the amount hits a similar softcap on the positive side incase it matters.

One of the big problems with MMORPG PvP combat is that there are few disadvantages if any to turning your back on one enemy and focusing on another. This is why melee gangbanging works and trying to protect "squishies" with tanks does not. In real life weapon combat I would imagine that trying to rush past the guy standing in front of you with a sword to get to the person behind him or her would mean a pretty quick death for you. D&D has the "Attacks of Opportunity" concept but even that I don't think models how dangerous it should be to try to run through some defenders to try and engage the casters in back.

I like the risk of hitting each other idea above.

Why not just make it an escalating chance to hit a friendly? The more people piled on the higher the chance of a friendly fire accident.

Likely for the same reason that most MMOGs disable any sort of collision detection with other players; hideous performance.  Another because it likely wouldn't be that fun.  Dying because a groupmate randomly rolled up you as the target instead of his target would suck - it turns everyone in the group/area into a random victim.

Nothing to do with collision detection, just range and games already track range.

If the person getting piled on cast an AE the game would know quite well who to hit with that AE. That same group would be the possible friendly fire accidents.

Seems far more reasonable than just picking some arbitrary amount to scale back damage.

Worse yet, it'd be ideal for griefing as it allows you to kill that holy grail of grief... people who can't fight back: your own teammates.

Also if archers and spellcasters are able to attack in groups while melee is not AND they are immune to friendly fire penalties, I imagine melee classes get pretty darn rare in GvG battles even if they're immensely powerful, and making any class immensely powerful doesn't help your game balance, even if they have very specific disadvantages.

I've always been of the personal opinion that the future of the standard auto attack + hotkey combat should/could look something like this:

Every attack is a hotkey, all attacks hit multiple targets in one form or another (pbaoe, targeted aoe, chain lightning, cones, arcs of various degrees etc. etc.)

Everyone can hurt everyone.  Toss in collision detection for terrain and players and you've got a solid combat system if the balance is done right.

Not only would this make good individual tactics stronger, but I think it would address the issue of zerging to a small degree as well as the whole calling target phenomenon this thread is about.

In that case, a lot of my attacks would have to be overhead arcs and straight ahead thrusts.

I know a lot of people hate collision detection, but I think at least a form of this would be a step in the right direction. As much as I didn't like most of DDO, I think they made the right choice with collision detection. You can only fit so many people in one spot at a time, same goes for mobs as they aren't exempt from this. It allows for an amazing amount of tactics - Blocking a doorway with two shield warriors determined to hold their ground, pinning the other group's healer into a corner because their melee combatants were off doing the wrong thing, if you try to range attack the robe wearer behind the front line you'll hit the frontliners instead, it limits AoE power without arbitrary target limits or damage scaling, etc etc.

This is a lot like the original suggestion of combat sides, except instead of putting a direct number limit on how many attackers can be on you (four), its limited by the size of you and your opponents.

Now, I think the ultimate solution would be to design a game around actual formations. Each group has its own formation, let's say one has five people on each side. No matter how many other groups you try to pile on top of it, you'll only get 1 or 2 people at most fighting each member of the 5 on the sides because really you can't fit more than 6 or 7 seven people against the front of a row of 5 people.

Rithrin has a point, in that D&D 3.x has this problem licked, between the AoO system, and the fact that it's very rare for more than one person to be in a 5'x5' square... and ranged attacks into melee are at a penalty.  A normal person can have exactly 8 people around them, no more.  There are cover penalties for peopole standing in the way for ranged attacks, and flat penalties for firing at someone in melee combat.

And tactically makes sense.  If you have 3 fighters, and a healer behind them, to get a shot at the healer, an enemy has to get past the fighters.  Either use movement speed to run around (either wide around, for more movement, or close around, risking opportunity attacks), or take out the fighters.  Tumble can help you avoid the AoO's too.  But either way, it's not quite like the issues of today.

Frankly, IMO when in combat, most games are paced too fast.  Attack too fast, move too fast.  In an FPS game, it's somewhat okay, because you can't outrun a bullet.  But a sword is easy to outrun... In a game like WoW, you can attack just as fast whether running or not(melee).  Running makes you no easier or harder to hit with ranged attacks.  While some attacks are positional, there is no general advantage to attacking someone from behind over from the front.  There's no reason not to run around in circles mashing your best special attack... And there should be.

Yes that has always bugged me mightily. In real life running in a circle swinging it a great way to accomplish very little.

It makes some sense for a gun, because while movement effect accuracy it won't effect damage. With a sword moving very much effects damage, especially if you are moving away from your own swing and into someone elses.

Yes, I've never understood why most games love to have combat be lightning fast and as unrealistic as they possibly can, which leads to all the aformentioned problems of group vs group combat. While D&D doesn't neccessarily have an amazing combat system (as it lends itself to catassery if unchecked), it sure does have the right idea when it comes to penalties and bonuses while fighting. Something's in the way? D&D: Well, its going to be a lot harder to hit him. (Most) MMOs: No problem. Realism need not apply. Repeat with countless other situations.

Movement tactics are nearly nonexistant, there is no advantage in these games to not just bull rush your target head on regardless of whether he's got allies around him or not. "Outmanuevering" has become simply who can run in the shortest line.

But these are just going to be beaten to death, I would just like to point out that adding at least one modicum of realism to some of these games would yield great benefits.

I think if you want to decrease mass targeted 'gankage' you need to introduce set of short invulnerabilities and short damage reflection powers.
Friendly fire idea mentioned above is also seems promising - more people attack single target more attacks miss or hit random targets.

Decreasing usability of a user interface in hopes that people will not be able to coordinate well enough will result in poor interface and 3d party programs that will still allow people to do that.

Most of the collision issues regarding making tactical positioning appropriate are now excuses in my opinion. You aren't talking free poly or per pixel collisions here, you're talking box to box (or better for realism, cylinder to cylinder at least for humanoid models).

Both client side (authoritative) hit detection and no collision at all are, again in my opinion, "old school" developer techniques to avoid performance issues that are no longer needed--the combat designs just haven't caught up to performance yet.

The networking in an MMO-style 100v100 pvp fight is by far the most difficult performance optimization, and even that isn't going to kill you with strong and optimized networking.

All of the above is correct, but the root of the problem is Hit Points...with Hit Points come the need to focus.  You take hit points away, apply basic anatomy models, some basic humanoid health controls, and you remove the need for focused fire.

You can not even begin to achieve realism until you have a realistic humanoid design mechanic.  And the MMO player base doesn't want that.  They want HPs.  So no design change is going to alter that.

In short, there is no modern or historical reference I can think of that supports focused fire.  It defies weapon vs. armor technology since the beginning of mankind.  The only two instances I can think of are the transitions between the modern main battle tank and WWII era battleships.  Sure, opponents needed to focus fire, but that was more about accuracy and getting the right weapon load to the right spot.  The Sherman tank didn't need to be focused on, one round from a german tank gun would take it out.  A Sherman needed all his buddies to help take down a Tiger, not because he needed to "whittle" down the Tiger's HP, but because he needed a large volume of fire to ensure one of his smaller rounds would penetrate the weakest spot on the Tiger.

But in modern RPG game design, and the offshoot of MMO design we see HPs being the basis of balance.  The reality is that it takes only marginally more force to kill a 6"3 230lb human than it does to kill a 5'1" 100lb human.  A dagger strike with the same amount of force to the same location would kill them both.  A longsword slash to the exposed thigh, with the same force, would provide a critical wound to each.

The point is that game design is fantastic.  Because it is, you can not add reaslistic controls to it and expect a realistic outcome.  All you will be doing is shuffling the problems around.

1.  Focus'd fire is unrealistic against single point targets.
2.  Hit points provide an unrealistic base mechanic to the entire design.
3.  Weapon damage is irrelevant, it is about force generated versus armor or hit location.
4.  Without true collision, there is no tactics on the field.
5.  When skill is the same, conditioning determines the winner.
6.  Fights between equal opponents should last a long time...fights between unequal opponents will last mere seconds.

Those are just the basics.  But if a game system was designed around those concepts...people would play it...but it would never achieve a good market share....


idm13

You don't need focused fire because one hit from an arrow to the chest will kill you and so with a whack from a great maul to the head. Then again, they didn't have clerics casting complete heal.

I still haven't seen a viable idea for removing hit-points.  People have dogged on them for some time and for good reason.  But removing them and replacing them with any other system that isn't most-hits-auto-kill/maim will do nothing to break the focus fire cycle.  The only thing less fun then being the first target called is a game where everyone dies in .5 seconds and it really comes down to who sees who first.

Gemstone IV has a hybrid system where you still get HP, but the cap is Very low. Also, you have full anatomical targetting, so a mighty whack to the head will at least daze you. If you're good and know what you're doing, you can 1-shot practically every mob you fight.

I'll forever  :heart: that game.

That makes no sense at all. Anytime you have ranged combat you have the opportunity for focused fire. And HPs are a perfectly reasonable approximation of how much damage something can absorb in many situations. Since you used WW II in your example I'll give two counter-examples from the same period: dive bombers attacking a carrier (or other ship) and fighters attacking a bomber.

How about limb specific hit-points?

Back in they day we play this pen-and-paper RPG called Drackar och Demonar (Dragons and Daemons). You had a HP pool, but you also had limb specific HP. You could cut a foes arm of, and he'd be incapacitated. This might be a bit hard to calculate in fast moving PvP combat, and it could be way to random. But it could force skill, ie. targetting specific limbs, cut of a leg and leave your opponment there, bleeding to death.

As for more strategy and tactic in mass PvP, collision detection is a step in the right direction.

The MUD I code for has pretty much this system of limbs/limb-HP, and you can sort-of aim for limbs (it's character-skill-dependent). This includes the ability to both partially incapacitate (make unusable but healable) and destroy (unhealable except by extraordinarily character-skilled players).

It makes combat faster and more brutal, since a destroyed head is lethal (and the side-effects - unconsciousness - of a disabled head will likely be lethal). If it's character skill-based, then people will attempt to pump their aim skill and go for headshots. If it's player skill-based, see Counterstrike for reference.

Alternate schemes for hp are not implement, not because of the load on the computer, but because of the load on the player.  Right now "bar goes up/bar goes down" is simple to understand, to visualize, and to interact with.  Any alternate scheme going have to be the same otherwise you screw up the noob factor and the fun factor and your game is dead to everyone but grognards (sp?).  Just look at the SWG HAM system barely more complex than straight hp and people hated it.

I never understood the HAM system hate.

The HAM system wasn't hated because it was overly complex, it was hated because it was very poorly balanced - having certain classes only being able to target certain pools, having one of those pools impossible to heal and difficult to buff (and therefore the only one worth targetting), having a certain type of buff that was 20x more effective and 100x more long-lasting than all the other buffs in the game, et cetera.

As with most of SWG's mechanics, the basic idea was reasonable enough, but whoever worked out the actual numbers was a blithering retard.

The ONLY fun thing I remember from AC2 was friendly fire. Which, by the way, was patched out in the 2nd monthly patch. Which was when everyone quit Darktide.

I think the answer to your question is enabling friendly fire and line of sight type stuff. The thing is with Eve, being in space, you really have a full 360 degrees to attack a target. If you had a gate camp going with players at 6 literal locations around the gate (N, S, E, W, HIGH, LOW) - they could all fire at the same exact target and hit it without injuring one another.

I'll describe a scenario in AC2 which I witnessed several times, and what we took advantage of. I'll explain it because (hopefully) very few people played that pile of shit.

When a mage would shoot a war magic spell at a target, you didn't get the option to "lead" them. IE point in a direction and press fire, and whatever it encounters along the way it hits. You had to select a guy then begin casting, and your character would turn in place and when the spell casting timer reached full, the spell would go off.

So what we'd do is attack people in this popular dungeon (a popular place for twinking, Rasix can add to this 'cause I know he saw it) from the end of a hallway. You'd pop around the corner and fire a bowshot or toss a spell. If someone started casting towards you, you'd just strafe back behind the corner.

Their line of sight would be broken, but the spell would continue to cast (unless they cancelled it) - and if you timed it right their projectile magic fireball or whatever would hit the walll, trying to make a perfectly straight line towards you. When the spell hit the wall, it would "splash" and damage those near it - which more often than not were the mages melee buddies that were chasing after you.

Also if you were a mage and you started casting (somewhere else, outside or something) and your melee buddy wasn't paying attention - if he runs in front of you right as the spell goes off, it'll hit him and blow up in your face, literally.

Mass multi games try to be real ping sensitive but I think that really needs to change, to provide more interesting gameplay at the least. It's '06, get broadband.

Friendly fire in Eve could be cool though. Despite space being really fucking empty, it could change tactics a bit.

Enough to "fix" teamspeak called targets? Eh, not really. They could enforce some arbitrary rule where the max damage a person could sustain would be X dps, period, and anything above that would be ignored, but people would freak the fuck out. For good reason, too.

Now, if they STARTED with those arbitrary numbers for each ship in place, well, I could see it working. Pushing those kind of changes now would be like dropping a nuke on a beehive the size of Africa.

See I wonder game developers, you could phase changes like that over time. If you goal was 30dps max you could start off at 300dps slowly work down and let people adjust.  Maybe stop 45dps if you get the effect you want. Instead when these guys nerf, they just lop your balls off and are stunned people get upset by it.

And, No, I am not bitter DAoC's Smite Cleric changes.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YZ9ER1j0V2M (http://youtube.com/watch?v=YZ9ER1j0V2M)

I always liked that game better than Street Fighter, but I'm obviously a minority because SF is still wildly popular. Bushido Blade? Not so much.

I liked Bushido Blade more as well, though that video was cheesey sploity crap. Me and my friend went nuts in VS mode with that game. A lot of our matches either came down to who broke a standoff first and attacked, or who was the first to misjudge their range and whiff hard.

Yeah, I looked through a few other bushido blade videos, but the other ones were the intro only. (why?)

or crap like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7d6fDzZu5o (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7d6fDzZu5o)

If we're talking about Massive Multiplayer anything .5 second deaths = lame as hell.  I remember playing the first Rainbow6 multiplayer and it was like 95% camping as three bullets on target were almost gaurenteed to incap somebody.

Go see the thread on high latency combat. As cute as it is to feel like you've got a "realistic"  combat system, if that's based on position, distance, or precise timing things get awfully "sploity" in PvP. Everybody wants to one-shot the baddy... nobody wants to be one-shot when they thought the baddy was out of range and safely to their left.

I think this should happen, only player should have a bit more control over casting and targeting. If you can prepare (load) spell and then target it you would see less LOS abuses and more tactics. You can also add spells that have direct line of attack, spells that have parabolic line of attack, spells that rain from directly above and spells that are on-touch only.

I'm tired of DPS vs DPS combat, more options during a fight is always a good thing. Missing or getting friendly fire due to player actions is a positive step. I think its time we move on from auto-hit auto-aim mechanics.

Boo Yah!
Anyway, what makes them too complex is not the mechanics themselves but the inability to give back feedback so people can make meaningful decisions in combat.

You are mostly talking about Phantom Dust, except PD does not have precasting, and it's more of a CCG-style game.

Bushido Blade was a great fighting game, one of my favorites.  I'd also suggest something similar to the health system in Riddick as an option to the DPS problem.  In any case, you cannot just plop these systems into a traditional design to good effect.

Disclaimer: I never played SWG.  On the subject of too-complex combat systems, it might be worthwhile to take a harder look at that.  I am sure that complex combat systems are nichey, but how nichey?  I can imagine comparisons to the hundreds of wacky combat and advancement systems I have been exposed to over the years, but most of those were single-player games and as we all know the top 0.5% of cockholsters will ruin the game for those just trying to have fun.  In any case, I am on tazelbain's side here.  Complex combat does not scare me, but I do need adequate time to consider my options and require solid feedback.  If you cannot go turn-based, then slow things down a bit.

What about limiting "focused fire" via limitations on targetting rather than damage?  Specifically for EVE, but workable in other games too, 5 of your gangmates pinging that target with active targetting systems, the echoes totally screw up YOUR computers and you can't get a lock on it?

Ultimately, a solution along these lines needs to result in an increase in dps per peson added, but a decrease in the dps for each participant.  If this is handled via a percentage cut in damage given, or increase in the percent misses which net the same result doesn't matter.  The thing to avoid is any ability for players to target / fire upon a friendly in order to keep them from taking damage.  That is, the lv 100 SuperKnight shouldn't be unkillable because he has 10 lv1 alts trying to hit him.

I have thought about it for a bit and have decided that I don't like the idea of diminshing returns on damage.  I prefer the notion that ten torpedos will do ten times (approx) the damage of one torpedo.  It doesn't lend itself to the current drive by CCP to slow down the pace of combat, but is more sensible to me.

I wouldn't like to have a cap on DPS or any other general cutoff to try and reproduce logical limitations to "zerging."  I'm not sure how any existing games could be changed, but I certainly could come up with a game that looks at this problem as a fundamental requirement from the beginning.

The types of characters would have to developed with this in mind with each having specific relationships to different damage types.  The damage types would be.

Close Melee - physical force applied by touch, character to character.
      - Defensive stance - medium influence from LOS, medium damage, high accuracy, fast reload
         typically.  Backside defended well while stationary.
      - Offensive stance - highly influenced by LOS, high damage, high accuracy, reload dependent
          on weapon type.  Backside very vulnerable.
Ranged melee - physical force applied by use of a tool that is propelled towards another character.  Always vulnerable to attack.
       - Lofted Ranged Melee - avoids any issues with vertical LOS, low damage and low accuracy rating.  Medium reload speed.
       - Direct Ranged Melee - can hit objects within verical LOS, high damage and medium accuracy. Slow reload speed.
Artillery (magic or conventional) - objects or energy propelled towards another character often creating a
          secondary impact within its own energy. (fireball or bomb)  Always vulnerable to attack.
       - Lofted Artillery - avoids vertical LOS, low accuracy and low direct damage or medium damage over
           time. Secondary effect (if present) very much influenced by LOS of surrounding characters,
           frendly or not. Medium reload speed.
       - Direct Artillery - greatly affected by LOS, high accuracy, medium direct damage or high damage over time. 
           Secondary effect (if present) affected by LOS but not as much as lofted. Slow reload speed.
Indirect Influence - methods used to reduce or boost abilities, position, influence, etc. (buffs, debuffs, etc.)
        - All ignore LOS, no damage, perfect accuracy although resistances could be applied.
        - This could be used either in a magical game as standard, or as music (think battle chants, bugler, etc.)
           or as shouts.  You get the idea.

LOS and collison detection would play a huge role for this all to work.  This would all lead up to a limited number of close melee character able to be in proximity to a target thus limiting their high damage attacks to 4 or 5 of them.  Ranged attacks could be made, but if an open shot is not available, lofted shots would have to be made with the limitation of lower damage and accuracy.  Buffs and debuffs are pretty much open with restances being their only obstacle.

The calculations for a succesful attack would:

First:  Check for LOS.  If LOS does not satisfy conditions, the attack fails and is not fired.  Friendly fire is not possible.
         (This is just making the judgment call of a shot or no shot for the player since it isn't always obvious and time doesn't really permit it.)
Second:  Once LOS is obtained, the attack will only be directed at the target.  Further calculations will only involve that target.
Third:  Accuracy is taken into account and used to calculate whether the attack has actually hit the target.
Fourth:  If the target is hit, the damage is calculated and submitted.  Otherwise, no damage is taken.  Resistances can affect damage taken based on armor or other special reasons.

The only part I'm a bit lost on is the splash damage from AE spells/artillery that have a secondary affect.  I'm half inclined to just leave them out as possiblities, but that seems wrong.  Including them would mean providing chances for friendly fire, which always seem to kill the use of the attacks for all BUT the griefers (a la UO.)  Perhaps, the secondary affect does not fire if friendly chars are included in LOS.  The secondary affect would just fizzle in that case.  Dunno, seems like a sticky one.

For those wanting to avoid an attack by ducking around corners, once LOS has been made for you, the attack will come regardless.  Ducking is still viable as it would help keep LOS broken if you time it right.  However, once you've been "made," the attack will start its graphical show and calculate a hit or a miss.  This might have the affect UO had with archery with an arrow following you around a corner, but that's just the animations catching up with the attack.

Calling targets should still be a very good strategy, but with a bit more intelligence than "Everyone get XXX."  Now, there would be a lot more orchestration that would probably include the use of smaller cells dedicated to certain jobs like breaking down the front lines, or infiltrating to the backline of ranged attacks, or influencing the combat through indirect means, etc.

From an individual perspective, this also helps with the ranged fighter vulnerability syndrome.  While they will still be somewhat more vulnerable from physical attack as compared to a front line fighter, they will be by no means weak.  While they will only be able to do limited damage if the foe is surrounded by close range fighters (dropping arrows on them from above,) if a fighter were rushing towards an archer/mage/etc. without anything in between, the direct attacks would be far more damaging and hard to ignore.  Other effects could be included to slow the opponent, etc.
 

My suggestion is to make defenders aware of concentrated fire, and make defensive actions be typically quicker (or much quicker) and scale more then multiplicatively.  (what the hell did that mean?)

Have offensive abilities take (in general) a couple seconds to pull off.  Have some graphical representation of when an offensive ability is being brought to bear on someone.  Defenders now have some (short) period of time to stack defenses on the target, defenses stack more then multiplicatively (e.g. 3 shield actions results in 5 shields defense, which would more then balance out the combined attack strength of 4 bolts).  the system shouldn't penalize 2 on 2 combat (i.e. 2 shield actions results in 2 shield defense), but should make a quick acting defensive effort more then able to completely counteract a focused 5 or 6 man (or larger) effort.

This would require most/all classes being able to bring to bear both offensive and defensive abilities.  But I like hybrid classes, I think pure classes result in boring gameplay.

Concentrated fire is only an issue in games that support known hit points.  When you know for a fact that you can survive a minimum of X number of hits from an enemy regardless of what you do, you're going to get target-calling.

One way to solve target-calling are creating defensive abilties that are similar to the now-standard hokey attacks.  An example is the Paladin Bubble from WoW: a short term defensive abilty that provides total protection but limits attack ability.  Temporarily negating the effect of that focused fire is one way to counter target-calling.

Another possibility is to figure out a way to handle threat in PvP.  Special hotkey attacks or buffs that are applied to attackers who are generating the most threat if their attacks go unnoticed is an example.

A way that games like EVE could handle the target-calling problem is defensive ECM.  Making ECM that prevents anything from establishing a lock on anything within X km, or that allows a consumable to be expended to break all targeting locks on a ship, or just turning a defensive ECM into a percent chance to miss, might change fleet battles for (what is usually considered) the better.

Defensive skills usually suck because they are designed with PvE in mind, and mobs have nothing on players when it comes to wanting to unleash pain in large doses.

Good point though.

Surely collision detection takes care of this problem for melee, and for ranged, just drop 3% off of to-hit for everyone you are shooting through.

This way focussed fire is still possible, but you actually have to plan around it - rather than just making an assist macro.

It would also give much more incentive to thinking about positioning in general.

MMOG combat needs to make formations more important.


Another solution is for someone to hurry the fuck up and make total war medieval, the mmog.

Total war combat tactics are entirely about focussing fire, but they make it non-trivial to do, because you have to think about size of units, friendly missile fire, making units arrive at the right place at the right moment etc. And while you can run total war units through each other, you really don't want to.

Greeting your foes with Massed Blaster Fire is exactly what we train our players to do in the PvE portions of many MMOGs, and (was) the only way to play Shadowbane.  What we've turned off with the lack of Collision Detection is maneuver.  Maneuver is a big deal in squad and larger unit conflicts, which often mitigates the frequency of Massed Blaster Fire in real life.  We're all familiar with the "cloud of ninjas assaulting the lone hero" battle, where a thousand enemies are defeated a handful at a time.  That has to do with packing real objects into the same space - only so many people can be in reach of our hero at once.  Not so in most MMOGs.  Maneuver in many MMOGs is all about creating a "cannot attack that" situation for the other guy by running away while you kill your enemy (if you aren't just outright exploiting some sync issue).

Many (board, war) games overlay on a hex grid, which provides 'better' freedom of mobility than square systems while keeping the number of nearest neighbors reasonable and remaining a regular close packed array.  Some of these games also incorporate damage patterns - specific attacks effect certain arcs to specified ranges over specified spreads.  These damage patterns can natually create interesting situations (friendly fire, widowed armor, etc.).  This is a problem that really has already been solved in other genres.  Magic and ranged attack could similarly be addressed by causing X damage to spread over a widening cone of area the greater the range.  This would naturally mitigate the ability to focus fire overmuch and produce a reasonable abstraction (not everyone ought to have sniper accuracy every time they pull the trigger - unless they are willing to sacrifice mobility and rate of fire to do it). 

The example of a SuperWarrior with his points of attack filled with allies, thus rendering the Super Warrior invulnerable, deals with itself.  Said warrior cannot reach anything of interest; boxed in as he is by allies he'd have to fight through.  The exploit here is if SuperWarrior can perform some action that violates the rules on nearest neighbors (like a management role or "Magic" ability - bardbot springs to mind).  The SuperWarrior surrounded by 'ablative' manpower can also have that manpower chipped away, and chipped away unexectedly leaving an unanticipated vulnerability for real damage.  If a patterned damage is used, that pattern can incorporate both width and depth, basically trample damage through the ablative/friendly ring and into the real target.  Not an altogether unrealistic scenario to attack one's foes through one's less valuable troops that were set out solely to pin down valuable enemy units. 

One of the things that makes Massed Blaster Fire so damning is the stickyness of target selection.  Instead of attacking into whatever arc we've got ourselves facing in most MMOGs we attack the selected target and only the selected target.  Very few abilities are strictly tied to our facing, most taking anything in the front 180 as close enough to launch an attack with pinpoint accuracy.  Even if we can't get the shot off, we don't "lose the turn" or have to find another target.  We keep running in a circle until our target is in a valid arc then we fire off an attack, maybe losing some fractions of a second.  I'm not entirely opposed to sticky target selection as a simplification so long it doesn't simplify too far, which Massed Blaster Fire is the result of.  If one was limited to sticky target selection I'd like to see patterned damage centered on that target.  If one allows pinpoint accuracy, one should have to aim the shot or risk hitting whatever happened to be in the sights at the time you pulled the trigger (dissallow sticky targeting if accuracy is absolute).

In short:

• Imposing a nearest neighbor grid on the combat can address Massed Blaster Fire for melee units
  or a patterned damage for melee attacks (effectively limiting attack density - unless you do something stupid like allow typed damage that one can anticipate...).
  
• Imposing patterened damage can address Massed Blaster Fire for ranged units.
  

Cheers,

Bit of a necropost, but Design is always a slow discussion.  Interesting points.  I'd throw Line of Sight in there as well, to minimize clumping by exposing combatants to possible friendly fire.

On the other hand, can an internet game really handle all the computation this idea implies?  With collision detection, what happens when all of the players are lagging by different amounts?  I could see calculations becoming deadlocked due to interdependent positional corrections, and/or possible exploits based on controlling lag to exploit collision detection.

It better be a computation problem, because otherwise current game devs are even more lame/retarded then I think they are.  :-P

Computation isn't nearly a problem.

Lag and potential abuse outside of pvp is what has worried devs with regard to collision detection.

DAoC is probably the single game most in need of collision detection on this earth. And it's available in the engine.

The reason we are told it was never switched on is network traffic and lag related exploits (I guess without collision detection the client can determine player location on its own. With it, the server and clients need to negotiate)).

Personally I think collision detection between enemies is simply a must. Someone has to find a way to make it work for large scale pvp to stay interesting.

Just rereading some of this thread - I'm still not clear why focusing fire and target calling is 'a bad thing'. I agree that most games make it too easy - but that's really about the lack of things like collision detection or meaningful ways for players to shield teammates using their positioning and abilities.

But prioritising targets just seems like common sense to me.

The tactics that require organisation + common sense should probably be rewarded?


The problems with hit points are probably unrelated to this as well. Any fun model is surely going to require multiple attacks to defeat a PC, and the quicker multiple attacks are made surely the quicker a PC is going to die under any sensible model.

Focussed Fire is a bad thing when the expected combat lifetime of a character is significantly less than the expected latency on the connection.  Under that condition the player just dies, with no opportunity to make a decision - like moving into position, coordinating, or cleverly targeting a critical component of the opposition force.  We'd like to see clever player choice rewarded and brute overwhelming force mitigated, because it is more "fun" for the user to go down fighting than to "random" acts of overwhelming force.

Prioritizing targets is common sense, but in the real world there are practical limits to how many people can punch you in the nose at once.  You have one nose.  It doesn't matter how many fists the other team has, there just isn't enough space for every fist to hit your nose at once.  There is, in a physical world, a limit to how quickly you can take damage; which provides some measure of decision making for both parties to the conflict.  Focussed Fire is dropping a 16 ton weight on the other guy before he can do it to you.  That isn't clever gamesmanship winning the day, that's a game of chicken.

One could just put collision detection on the client, and trust that exploiters typically are not subtle and will clearly self select themselves into a flaggable and disciplinable pool of cheaters.   :-D   Of course, I'd keep patterened damage in that sort of world so all those players illegally piled into the same space kill each other as much as they kill their intended target.  Damage patterns for every damage source and full on friendly fire can introduce a cost to the present no-cost focused fire. 


The server doesn't need to care how much lag the client has, if the client steps out of bounds (via delayed information transfer) the server (should) just ignores the client's wishes.  For the player side that can quickly become an intollerable user experience, which is probably why client side delays are coded in so the user doesn't see "That spell isn't ready yet" when the client side timer runs out.   The server needs to care about "Is this move legal now" and "which character resolves its movement action first" neither of which necessarily needs to wait on additional input from the client to resolve the last input from the client.  High latency users will be seen as static obstacles to well connected users, just as it is in normal practice.  Dealing with gridlock is another issue entirely, which still hasn't been worked out reliably on our city streets yet.  ;-)

Yeah great - what post UO MMOG is that?

Seriously, every dev group knows that people dying before they can respond is bad.

They usually solve the problem by having PCs unlikely to die without being smacked several times, and they usually give support characters skills to react to it.



If the real problem here is people just getting sniped, then fix the real cause of front loaded damage  - which is mana and endurance pools.

Having your primary resource for attacks start out as high as it will ever get is a recipe for battles with all the dramatic spells and high damage attacks front loaded into the first few seconds.

Basic rules of drama tell us that this is stupid; never mind balance issues.

Combat should get more dramatic as is goes on; not peter out into a petty cat fight because I used all my mana shooting fireballs out of my ass in the first volley.

Mana and endurance in mmogs needs to work at least like rage meters, and preferably more like M:tG mana.


EDIT: edited for readability because I was typing like ass yesterday.

That's how I read it, and it's a very cool idea.  What I immediately though of were two examples: a pyromancer type class that gained access to more power/more powerful spells based upon how much was burning in the combat zone and a whirling dervish class that gained similarly based upon how many fast he was spinning (and spinning faster was only achievable by hitting something).

Of course enemies of those classes would be trying hard to kill them (duh), and/or put out fires/slow the spinning.  Very cool premise.  Deciding when to attack and when to counter-attack (i.e. put out fires or slow down the spinning) adds a good amount of complexity/skill.

Eldaec's post immediately made me think of a rage bar that does not empty until out of combat for a certain period of time. Damage you deal/suffer boosts the bar and you have a bunch of skills that have "requires X <rage-like resource>" before they can be used, and the size of the bar could boost power by itself as well as possible affecting things like cooldowns. That way you'd have a situation where the beginning of the fight is more to get into a good position for when the rage is flowing. It would also mean that someone being focussed is going to be juiced up pretty quickly. A few fighting games work a little similar to this, you could be putting the beatdown on someone pretty hard but then you get whalloped because their guage filled up and they caught you with a special.

It also makes the burst damage vs sustained damage distinction meaningful.

And shamelessly borrowing from M:tG again, would allow at least three distinct approaches to winning....

Aggro mages : Who attempt to win by loading up with as many small spells as possible, and casting them as quickly as possible.

Combo mages : Who do not very much to other guy and hope to stay alive while desperately building up resources as quickly as possible for a massive combo attack.

Control mages : Who seek to prevent enemy win conditions (possibly through healing, counter magic, whatever) to exhaust enemy resources and extend the battle into an end game, and then, having planned for a late game, have a few of the most powerful spells available to make use of all the mana swilling about.

To me at least, this is a lot more interesting then endless red fireballs vs infinite blue iceballs.


Feel free to switch mage for warrior, spell for ability - it's all the same.

I agree with you, in fact I meant to post earlier that artificial limitations on how much dmg a person can take per second or how many people can attack a given person at once are dumb.  I forget if I did or not.

There are plenty more things that can be done by a clever game dev imho, we've come up with plenty of ideas that seem to get around the current set of tactical stagnation.

Mostly though I think it usually comes back to the problem is having your pvp in a pve world.  There are times where I feel that every skill would need to have two sets of effects one versus mobs and one versus pc's to actually get any kind of good gameplay in such an environment.

I've found a majority of defensive skills suck balls in pvp because if they didn't you would be invulnerable in pve.  Mobs will never throw out the kind of damage (not to mention the cc's and burst nature of it) that players will.  No matter how you design players will find a way to do a large amount of damage, as burst as possible, to a single target.  Like eldaec says that is just the smart way to go.

Perhaps if someone designed the pvp first, then created npc statlines and attacks to counter the strength of the pvp skills...

To my knowledge that has never been done (see Prot Warriors in WoW for one glaring example) in any game.  Instead the game is released with certain skills being stupid in pvp and slowly they have to re-balance classes for pvp as a result.

I think that is the major flaw in the current system you have to account for first.

I was going to let this go but then some other server in my WoW battlegroup came onto our forums to complain about one of our 10 Hunter WSG teams.  Every 3 seconds they can remove a player with an instant, coordinated, defense ignoring strike.  If their target is a warrior or a druid that target might get lucky and survive the initial burst, but surely won't last another 3 seconds of regular focussed fire (and certainly wasn't targeted before the healers were).  That is an example of Focussed Fire being a very poor game experience for the receiving side.  There was also a video running around where one player controlled 4 Warlocks from the same keyboard.  This was a similarly disturbing instance of focussed fire removing the opportunity to react from the opposition.  Taking it to an absurd level, watch a Hogger Raid video with 40 level 1 gnomes taking out a level 11 elite NPC.  Any trivial amount of damage in WoW can be lethal if applied with sufficient focus.  While Hogger raids are not instant kills, it should be pretty straightforward to extrapolate to an arbitrarily large amount of non-trivial damage applied in an instant.

This (focussed fire problem) is a relevant issue and accurate description of a problem facing contemporary MMOGs, including the current subscription king.  Specific to this thread's context: Shadowbane is an excellent example of Massed Blaster Fire changing in a fundamental way how large scale conflict is carried out.  While we may not always agree on what "every dev group knows" we can make the observation and independently verify that regardless of dev team knowledge this focussed fire issue exists and persists despite efforts (if any) to date intended to mitigate it. 



While many of the ideas for what to do during combat are interesting - they are all vulnerable to focussed fire making them utterly irrelevant (or other common game elements like crowd control).  I'd like to see decisions made during combat matter in large scale combat - rather than strategic decisions like group composition and firing order rule the field.  I too would like to see alternative victory conditions (alternative to health -> 0 due to incoming damage) in a large scale conflict.  The problem is not limited to sniping, or frontloaded damage.  The problem is one of scale, in that without collision detection and/or line of sight any number of opponents can strike any one target at the same time.  So long as you can deal 'damage' you can eliminate an opponent in an instant by massing enough sources of damage under the current MMO models.  That's the nut to crack; while diversifying routes to victory and making combat more dramatic are fine objectives they do not crack the nut.

If focussed Fire cannot be avoided through clever design, then perhaps there are ways to mitigate its impact? 

One such example comes from WoW's instances.  In AQ40 (and to a lesser extent MajorDomo in MC) there are groups of mobs that gain the powers of their fallen comrades.  This makes individual pieces of the Environment Side harder to deal with as the Environment side takes losses.  That's the kind of solution that would work in a world where focussed fire is a reasonable expectation.  One of the breaking issues with Shadowbane GvG conflict was how after a battle the losing alliance was weakened while the winner was strengthened.  There was no (little) practical cost for defending a wider perimiter or advantage to having ones force concentrated in a single geographic location for defense. Attempts made to limit guild power via code changes were circumvented by guilds reaching out of game (around the rules) and forming several in game shell guilds to manage assets.  Designing with awareness of focussed fire is neither easy nor straightforward.

I'm about to lose power, so that means I'm done.

I take your word for it - I haven't got into WoW so I can't comment.

It surprises me though, because everyone else fixed this just by reducing player v player damage in general and giving support characters quicker action times in order to compensate for being unable to take initiative. It's a kludge, and it doesn't help with other symptoms of the underlying problem, but it does get rid of sniping in every other game. /shrug


I still maintain that if the underlying problem is that a player can be doomed by an opening move alpha strike, then preventing focused fire probably isn't the way to fix it. You need to find ways to restrict opening move alpha strikes. My own opinion is that late game alpha strikes are a legitmate strategy; the 'philosophical' reason opening move alphas are bad and will always create one problem or another is that they externalise the (high) cost of the alpha from the battle at hand - the mana you use was saved up prior to the battle, and the reuse timer 'cost' was paid prior to the battle, typical MMOG combat always gives everyone their first move for free - so it shouldn't surprise anyone that players will seek to get maximum value from this free pass.

The cost of anything you do in a battle needs to be fully paid for within that battle.

Another good example of the problems that arise from externalised costs is Barrier of Faith - a daoc realm ability unique to clerics in the first version of daoc realm abilities.

BoF allowed a cleric to increase the resistance of his group to all melee damage by 50 points for 30 seconds. In practice this would be around a 70% reduction in incoming damage. ie. this would win you an 8v8 almost every time (unless the other team had an equally broken ability). Costs of the spell were as follows....

instant cast
0 mana
0 endurance
30 minute reuse clock
10 realm ability points (one off cost to buy the ability)

...in other words for the first use in a battle every cost was externalised - and you almost never need a second use.

From the perspective of the team using the ability these are genuine costs - if I use BoF now, I probably can't use it in the next few fights. Also, saving up 10 realm points was a non-trivial about of realm point farming.

BUT from the perspective of the team facing the ability, these costs are all free. The other team gives up no time or resources from the pool available for this battle in order to cast BoF. The battle is being decided (or at least dramatically affected) by an ability they can't counter, can't predict, and which did not cost the opposition anything - so as well as BoF they still have just as much healing, nuking, and tanking as they would normally have. QQ much?


Free abilities suck - always. Frontloaded damage is just as free as BoF was.

This is long and rambly. I apologize.

My favorite of the twitch console fighters is a bizzare little game called Guilty Gear. Its designers took a surprising but effective route towards balancing their game. First they created an enormously robust fight framework which every character shares, described below... then they let the artists create whatever sort of fighter they though would be fun. Each character plays entirely differently and has a barrage of attacks completely unique to them. In other words, the moves were designed not because they make intuitive sense or because "everybody ought to have something fast and short range" but because they look impressive. In any other game certain characters would have huge advantages against certain others... many oughtn't exist in any fighting game ever... yet here they are all playable, and all beatable, because the basic framework is so solid.

To summarize:
Attack beats Throw beats Block beats Attack. There are high and low attacks and blocks.
Percentage damage done exists on a continuum (expressed as a sliding scale near your health bar)
If you haven't been blocked, your damage ticks slightly lower. Long combos stop doing appreciable damage.
Every time you are blocked, the scale ticks the other way.
Advancing towards the enemy and attacking her (whether she blocks or not) adds to your "super meter".
If you play defensively for long enough, your super meter depeltes entirely.
Any given super move requires half of your meter, but
You can also rapidly deplete your meter for "faultless defense", which blocks anything COMPLETELY. Your super meter drops over time, not by amount of damage prevented.
You also have a "BURST" meter, which starts full. It can be used at any time to stop an enemy's attack, throw him back a small distance, and stun him for a moment. Once used it must be replenished by taking damage.

Fighting games have at their core what I will refer to as "initiative". Being attacked makes it difficult to attack, so whomever has initiative has a temporary advantage and the abused opponent must play entirely defensively while looking for an "opening" through which he can make a counter-attack and grab initiative for himself. If no opening presents itself, if defense is ineffective, or if the particular defenses and openings available to your character are completely bypassed by the opponent's character... you feel powerless. Worse, you are powerless. Once initiative is lost it can never be regained. Guilty Gear steps around this by providing every character with an easy, universal defense and an easy, universal opening. Faultless defense and BURST.


So what does a 1v1 twitch duel have to do with focused fire and group combat in the latency drenched world of MMOGs? That bit I highlighted from eldaec. The problem isn't the ability, it's the framework. When defense and offense happen at the same time, the group with the most of either gains an unimpeachable advantage. In short, there's no initative. Rather than defense being reactive, an effort to passively shield the group from assault while they look for an opening, it becomes proactive: a cloak the group wears while they actively  beat their opponents black and blue. This will not do.

I propose the following:

Defense and offense must be mutually exclusive, but defense is the default... the first attacks against an unaware player (automatically defensive) must always be the game equivalent of a "throw" (picky and/or short range) or they'll block it. Every unblockable "super move" must require a period of effective combat before it can be used. Every character needs a limited "OH SHIT" button to universally counter any given "I WIN" button, and thus any I WIN must require enough concentrated time to allow the opponent to OH SHIT. Damage is best done incrementally rather than in instant chunks. If there is a chunk it should be at the end of a long incremental, and defense ought to be able to begin anywhere within that increment.

So one player can defend effectively and take minimal damage from a great number of attackers if she decides not to attack. Sometimes she can even make the decision to go defensive during an attack because most heavy attacks will start with a light damage warning sign. If she remains defensive, the enemy players will gain combat points towards their unblockable super attacks which, once unleashed, will offer the defender no choice but to hit the OH SHIT button and make a break for it... and if that proves ineffective she's done for.

This process still sucks if you're all alone, but it ought to take enough time that your friends on the field can see what's going on and come to your aid. Every enemy concentrating on attacking you cannot also be defending, so they'll be vulnerable to anything that comes their way.

Err on the side of defense, and the game stays fun. Attacking a defending player is a little irritating, but not nearly so irritating as being defenseless.

What if by joining a group your gave up your own ability to move and the group leader would move the entire group in a formation. Only people in groups could attack (solo players SOL). So you have your Roman legion formation and the leader of the group moves the entire formation.

Each player still has to attack individually. Each player can break out of the formation and run but can no longer attack if they do. Each player at the front of a formation also has the option to fall back to the back (only the front players can do this) and stay in the formation. The person behind them takes their place at the front. So when the person at the front gets beat to crap they move to the back (via a button push) and the fresh person takes their place. If the fresh person had already fought they'd have the same HPs as when they left the front before. Repeat. Formations could get whittled down this way.

Possibly if your formation destroys enough people your group leader would get a berserk option which would allow the formation to continue to exist (and therefore do damage) but allow individual player movement for X period of time. So if your formation has significantly routed your enemies your leader can berserk and everyone can give chase. The group leader could also have different formations which the players would automatically shift to when he choses that option like wedge, line, square, etc.

Single 'scout' positions away from the main formation with limited player roaming might also be an option.

Maybe not everyone in the formation has to be a PC. Or PCs would always man the front of the formation and only the characters/avatars would cycle to the back.

---

Which leads to my second idea which is a futuristic version of the formation idea. Everyone is in a tank the size of a turret. If a player joins a group with another tank the group leader becomes a 'host' tank (think treads only) and the second person becomes only a turret (think gun only) on the 'host' tank. Each new tank which joins the group becomes a new turret on the 'host' tank. The turrets are spaced out so the more you add the more field of fire the host tank has (each turret has a different field of fire). Each turret on the host tank is player controlled. The group leader moves the host tank and everyone else can only fire their turret (with it's limited field of fire). Each new turret makes the host tank move slower. Individual turrets can be blown off the host tank.

Throw everyone in the battlefield. Let them form up or group up however they want to win.

Crude example of the tanks:

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What's the advantage for linking up? If you get slower as you add more I don't see how that's an advantage over separate speedy individual tanks, especially since the turrets aren't linked up so you aren't automatically getting focused fire.

Invincibility for the primary tank bulk; you have to blow the pieces off while the whole can fire. At a specific size, it could be an unstoppable juggernaut as people may be able to respawn and connect at a faster rate than they can be blown off. You'd want this for your vanguard to break a defensive line, to absorb some amount of punishment during the close-distance period, whereas small individual tanks would never make it.

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogre_%28game%29

Still not following - seems a swarm of one/twos and a few threes would overwhelm the ogre build using the repleneshing benefit of raid and retreat.

How about shared pool of hit points during group fights with only portion of damage dealt to individual target and rest getting distributed to other participants?

What problem is this intended to solve?

We're trying to figure out how to make it so that with Krakrok's link up idea people would actually want link up rather than move and shoot on their own.

All tanks regenerate HP at a steady, non-trivial rate.  Tanks which are stacked can still be targeted individually (requirement was for individual turrets to be blown off), but will share a percent of their damage with the larger tank structure.  Perhaps some sort of curve, where two tanks will deliver 75% to the target and 25% to the other, whereas composite tanks of greater than some value X will do 25% to the target, and 75% to everyone else (divided amongst them).  Additionally, the HP regeneration rate is shared between the tanks, either partially or totally, so that if an individual tank is being targeted, it will notice an improved regeneration rate over what it could expect on its own.

Assuming the tradeoff for this buff is speed, you need to have some sort of requirement in battle to include mobility.  That is, there needs to be a reason for each side to do something OTHER than form Voltron at the first sign of a threat.  The classic naval/space combat scenario you might picture here is the desire for both capital ships and fighters; you need strategic justification for both.

Why not make it completely immobile?

oh, I see what you mean.

In that case, you could make self buffs apply across everyone linked I guess.

Espeicially if self buffs were used to deliver most of the inherent abilities/advantages of each class as in EQ2 or CoH.

Maybe tanks have shields and when grouped it's a universal shield so you have to blow through all of the combined shield before you can damage any of the combined tank. And/or single tanks takes more damage at the back. And/or a combined tank has a forward main gun (like the MagRider) and you have to get a big enough combined tank so the main gun can shoot through the enemy base shield (like a siege tank). And/or maybe there are different weapons for tanks so you can take a low damage long range or a high damage short range or a missile rack or a shield only so a combined tank could have a bunch of different single weapon tanks on it.

Could be spaceships or airships instead of tanks.

Focus-gank of soft targets resulting in bunch of instant deaths in group combat. In PvE you have agro management in PvP.... nada.

I think area effect is definitely the right direction.  Maybe there are threshold points at which multiple turrets on the ogre "cross beams" to create cones, the more turrets the wider the cone and stronger its intensity - but the less its range.

Again though why can't something akin to that have been implemented in the current crop of auto-attack + hot-key worlds?

A Spirit Link (thanks mtg) type spell where damage received/taken is shared between the caster and the target.  One tiny spell at least adds half a layer of lacking complexity to the "hey clothie lets all shoot it really dead in .5 seconds!" paradigm that currently dominates.

Plus that leads you pretty simply to a bunch of other nifty damage sharing/redirecting ideas that could make combat pretty cool and tactical.

The problem is you can't make those types of spells (either at all or with a power level where they would matter in pvp) apparently without trivializing pve content.  Or  you can and devs are just too stupid or something.

I still blame pve for why pvp always ends up sucking in A-List MMO's.

Guild Wars has all kinds of spells like have been talked about in this thread though? Invincibility, damage sharing, damage redirect, etc.

EQ1's cleric class has an AA ability that takes the group's hitpoints and redistributes them so everyone is at the same amount of health... and depending on the rank of the ability, it's a lossy process.

It's useful in a fight where the tank takes a bit pike of damage when already low, as you can balance hp to get him up to some hp, then hit a group heal spell to fill everyone up.  The Balance AA is an instant cast, so it's faster than even the fastest heals.  it can be dangerous tho, as what happens in reality is the damage is evenly applied to the group, not the hitpoints.  So you take the 11k of damage done to the tank, and divide it by the group members, and apply evenly to the group, with damage done to other players healing the previously damaged person.

I think it was possible to kill people with it, if not careful.  Nowadays it may leave them with 1 hp.

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Alkiera

Not sure how it works now, but UO had a lag time after the character reached 0 health, but before he died.  I was in a 3 vs 15 fight, where all 15 concentrated on one character, and could not kill him.  If their timing was more precise, they probably could have, but with 15 attackers, versus 2 healers, they should have dropped him before they ran out of mana.  Too bad a 3rd group was ghosting our fight and gated in, right when we were about to go on the offensive.

We were forced into a retreat, because the inital target had burned through all his potions, and our mana was low. 

I somehow know I would always be on the wrong side of the tank just sitting there wondering why the guy WHO IS IN THE FIELD OF FIRE ISNT SHOOTING. Then realize it's because he's more bored then I am and just went AFK knowing that it was unlikely he'd get to shoot anything.

I'd much rather see turn or point based combat.