I am making a modern MUD - Multi User Dungeon, and I am trying to figure out how to make the warrior vs warrior combat skills more interesting. Suppose one warrior type "k player" and they start auto-attacking each other. We see some variation of this:
player1 hit player2 for 10 damage!
player2 hit player1 for 10 damage!
And so on until one of them dies or flee. I am only familiar with a handful of Diku-based MUDs. In those, they try to spice things up with skills like:
1. Kick = Do x damage.
2. Bash = Opponent cannot use any action next round.
3. Disarm = Opponent drops his weapon and has to manually type "equip" to wield it again.
Each skill has "cooldown" periods that determines how often it can be used. E.g. Bash once every 2 rounds only etc. And they don't always hit. i.e. It is possible for a skill to miss the opponent.
Have you guys seen any interesting skills that I could incorporate into my game to avoid making Warrior vs Warrior PvP combat a boring auto-attack fest?
One idea is to tightly integrate weapon crafting into the class. Unfortunately one of the draw-backs to choosing a warrior-type class is having to have fairly straight-forward abilities. You can't go too over-board in their skills or you risk creating the equivalent of over-powered mages. It could be fun if the warriors had a deep weapon crafting system, outside of any other crafting systems in the game, that rewards collecting and experimenting. That way warriors are often entering into combat to test the effectiveness of a new weapon they have created. Experimenting could be enhanced by having the weapons graded on several different scales, perhaps from melee damage to elemental damage to side-effects (poisoning, putting to sleep, etc.). That could create tons of variety, and also lead to the creation of tons of crafting materials available to alter these effects.
Is it just aiming to be a simulation of combat in real life? Well in real life it's kind of a hack fest until one drops - the reason that's exciting, or even just plain frightening, is perma death.
If combat in your game is about 'wanting to win' more than it's about simulation, then what do you win from combat? Basically it's an easy formula - the more you stand to win, the bigger the excitement.
The formula continues that the longer it takes to get there (ie, were waiting for hitpoints to go down), the more the excitement is reduced. I'd really recommend having a chance on each attack of one shotting the other warrior. Because instead of going "oh, I did 5 damage...and he's got 95 to go...well, what's the point of watching in the next few seconds to a minute? Nothings going to happen" they watch in anticipation because at any point one guy could be dropped instantly.
But again, the excitement is a multiplier of the potential reward.
Which is generally an issue to online game designers, because they want to spread out rewards over a long period of time. Sadly, even in big name mmorpg, the designers seem to have gone 'Oh, just incase someone grinds for eight hours each day, we'll make all the rewards really, really damn small'. Which sucks and is lame design. At the very least you could simply have someone have X number of chances per day of a big reward, thus the grinder does not break the reward spread AND you don't have to make the rewards pathetic - they can be substantial.
Anyway, for a long time I concentrated on how to make combat options that were exciting. But after a long time I came to the conclusion it was like flogging a dead horse. All the combat options in the world doesn't make combat exciting if the reward is pathetic.
Callan S. wrote:The formula continues that the longer it takes to get there (ie, were waiting for hitpoints to go down), the more the excitement is reduced. I'd really recommend having a chance on each attack of one shotting the other warrior. Because instead of going "oh, I did 5 damage...and he's got 95 to go...well, what's the point of watching in the next few seconds to a minute? Nothings going to happen" they watch in anticipation because at any point one guy could be dropped instantly.
Some of the later Diku-derived games (I think maybe SMAUG, but I can't quite remember) had something almost like that. What they had were multiple levels of critical attacks. There was a weak crit, crit, strong crit, slamming crit, crushing crit, obliterating crit, etc., until you are moving into 600% normal damage. Obviously the higher crits are quite rare, but I think some games tied them to a Luck stat so players could try to get them more often as a strategy. At a certain level of crit, if you were attacking with a strong ability, you are basically looking at an insta-kill!
I have a plan for "meta" combat - things that occurs outside of the auto attacking cycle. E.g. Thieves can flee, try to sneak and then start combat again with a backstab. Clerics/Mages can try to flee and spell up or cast nasty non-combat spells to give an advantage. I suppose even warriors can try to spell up with potions and scrolls, or attempt to chase down thieves/spellcasters before they can do their stuff.
The biggest problem I have is that warriors doesn't seem to have much do during the combat itself. I don't have much experience with MUDs. The ones I did play didn't try to spice up combat for the warrior class. They just auto-attack until someone flee or dies lol. I was hoping you guys might have come across MUDs that might have interesting ideas.
