Ideas on spicing up combat without introducing twitch aspects

[Ruadin]

I was reading some earlier posts on adding variety to combat while not making it Quake style. Here are some suggestions to consider;

For those of us who have played fighting games, we're familiar with combos. One particular fighting game comes to mind and that's Soul Calibur (if you're not familiar with this title - its involves characters from medieval times with unique weapons like swords,axes,katars,scimitars etc). This is a most see game for the amazing graphics and the beautifully fluid motions of the characters - check out numchucks boy! Anyhow, as a fighter I imagine I would be expect to learn certain basic moves - thrust, swing, parry, riposte, charge, etc. When each of these moves are executed, they will put you in a position to peform another - which would probably belong to a slightly more advanced set of moves. Building on that, you will have an even more advanced set, or perhaps a number of choices which could be executed based on your choice in training and the situation you're in.

So I will try to illustrate my point in the examples below;

Expected fighting patterns:
---------------------------
(beginner fighter)
thrust
swing
parry
thrust
dodge
charge
...

(medium level fither )
thrust - swing - parry
chop - thrust - dodge - swing
stab - parry - swing
...

(advanced fighter)
swing - double swing - wind knocker
shield charge - brutal chop - knee thrust - bone crusher
punch - back-hand attack - vicious swing - impaler attack


Do you see where I'm going with this? The beauty of this system is its completely twitch free. All you need to do as a player is learn the necessary techniques (which can be scattered all over with different teachers) and they will occur based on your skill-level and based on the sequence of attacks. For example you can follow any basic attack with a level 2 attack (lets call this one "brutal chop"). So a "thrust", "chop", "swing" etc can all be followed by a "brutal chop". However "brutal chop" can only be followed by say "helm smasher" or "shoulder charge" (which would both be level 3 attacks). That places a limit on what combinations are possible and how many combinations you can chain together - for balancing purposes. Once such a combo is executed there should be a delay period where you're limited to just basic or basic + level 2 attacks etc., before you can perform another damaging combo.

What do you guys think of this?

Developers: Is such a system do-able?

[Lordosis]

Sounds like a cool system. Definitely reminds me of Soulblade. I was the Siegfried meister for a while there. But I had to stop playing because I was kicking Rolfe's arse too badly. haha. I still haven't played Soul Caliper. But as you might guess, I'm pretty busy nowadays.

Anything's doable. But I think we're going to start with our more basic combat system and see how it goes in beta. If it ends up being boring, without enough variety to allow strategies to be developed besides "press the attack button", then we'll have to rework it. Our system makes perfect sense to us, it's simple, but still allows for variety. And most importantly, everything about it seems to appeal to common sense. There's no contrived numbers or stats. Everything means exactly what you'd think it means. But it's still a MMORPG type system, so it's not rediculously exciting in itself. So we'll play it by ear and see how it goes in beta.

[Cynycal]

that would be cool n' all, while i'd like for other things to be spiced up as well..i'd hate to have a game too based on combat

[KirosBlade]

the combat system is mad important and all, but the interaction with the towns, other people, etc will be a lot more of the game and much cooler