Combat Mechanics - how to make oort a REAL fighter game

Suggestions
1

I would like to give a few suggestions about combat mechanics that can be present in Oort.

First of all, let me show you a game that contains all the combat mechanics im going to talk about; it’s a mmorpg called Dragon Nest. in this video i will show you a fight between a “Gladiator” (the male sword class)and a “Flurry” (female lancer class)

Hit States
In Dragon Nest, diffrent attacks can cause diffrent “hit states” on enemies, meaning - some skills will lift up the enemies, some will just stagger the enemy, some will knock him back… etc etc.

Some of the hit states present in dragon are Stagger, Flinch, Slip, Lift and Knockback. now, some of the hit states can be combined: Flinch followed by a Stagger, for example, causes enemies to fall down.

In the video,
you can see a “Lift” hit state at 00:14.
you can see an example of a Stagger hit state at 1:29~1:30
You can see a Flinch hit state at 00:20… notice how when the enemy fell down afterwards when he was being hit again under a flinch state.

Super-armor
Skills in Dragon Nest have values called “Superarmor” and “Superarmor Break”. Superarmor refers to how hard it is for the enemy to cancel your skill, and Superarmorbreak refers to how good the skill is at cancelling skills of the enemies. this mechanic allows you to counter the attacks of your enemies by breaking them.

For example, a skill with 400 superarmor break will break a skill with 400 superarmor, but not a skill with 600 superarmor.

those numbers can also stack - if there is a slow skill with 1200 superarmor, for example, you can break it by hitting with 2 skills that have 600 superarmor quickly enough.

In the video:
notice how that 00:18 the Gladiator(sword fighter) starts to attack, but his skill gets cancelled by the attack of the other player.

at 00:45, notice how to first few hits of the Gladiator dont cancel the skill of the other player, but with the addition of the final hit it does.

at 1:38, notice how the Gladiator being hit by the other player but his skill doesn’t get cancelled, because it has a very high superarmor

I-frames
I-frames are skills that have a short period of time where the player is invincible. those are “dodging” skills, that are used to avoid the attacks of the enemy. in dragon nest, every class gets a basic dodging skill with an i-frame at the very start, and get additional skills with iframes later on the game, depending on their class.

In the video,
Notice at 1:34 how the attack of the Gladiator is being dodged
At 2:18, notice how the Gladiator avoids one of the hits by the Flurry(the female lancer), by using a skill called “evasion slash”, which is a skill with iframe… though he gets cought later, after the iframe is over

Cobmos and combo evasions
In Dragon Nest, it’s possible to combo other classes by keeping them being hit over and over again. most classes combo by lifting and re-lifting the enemy, since not all skills can hit enemies who are lying down on the floor. however, to prevent “infinite” combos, every class gets skills that allow them to evade from combos. All classes get an aerial evasion skill, some classes get an extra evasion skill from any hit state, and sometimes they get an extra “counter” skill to use after they are being hit. all classes also get a “wake up” attack, that they can use when they are lying on the floor for long enough. (it’s also possible to roll to the sides if you lay long enough)

In the video,
Notice how the Flurry(the female lancer) is using her aerial evasion at 00:15, after being lifted
At 00:28, you can see the Gladiator using an aerial counter skill, called “counter exile”, to evade a combo
Notice how the Flurry combos the Gladiator between 00:34 to 00:40 until the Gladiator can use his aerial evasion again.
At 1:28, notice how the Flurry fails her combo and the Gladiator use his wake-up attack to stand up again

Skill controll and cancellation
In Dragon Nest, there are alot of skills that you can controll very finely while it’s being executed. you can controll the direction of the speed, the gaps between the diffrent sword slashes, and in some cases even cancel the skill mid-way to dodge or to cast another skill. being able to very finely controll your skills give this game an amazing feeling when you fight, and part of what makes it an amazing fighting game.

You can see all throughout the video how skills can be aimed until the very last moment before it’s fired, how the Gladiator can controll the direction and speed of his sword slashes very finely…

For example.
at 00:52, notice how the Gladiator can change the direction of his attack until the very last moment before the actual hit
at 1:24 the Flurry can change the direction of her skill while casting it, like in a real fight
at 1:29 you can see the Gladiator using a skill called “Triple Slash EX”. while using that skill, he can finely controll the direction of every slash, the gap between the diffrent slashes. Also, unlike most skills in game, he can even choose the type of the last two slashes (right mouse click is one type of slash, left mouse click is the other type)

I would love it if Oort will take some of those amazing combat mechanics as insparation!

2 Likes
2

WOW. That was totally epic!! The Advent Children music helped too :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Question 1
What is the learning curve on this? Could someone with zero MMORPG experience (say, a Minecraft player) do it? Or would they get frustrated?

Question 2
How does this feel for someone with tons of MMORPG experience? Too simple? About right?

Honestly I had always just wished for a Skyrim-style fighting experience, but this has definitely opened my eyes…

3

This looks neat, but I’ve got a few of issues with it. Mainly that this is a fight on flat ground, and oort is going to be anything but flat. Second is that oort isn’t necessarily trying to go for a fighter game style of combat. Third (kindof unrelated to you suggestions) is that the fighting Seems very frantic and confusing (not to mention drowned in flashy particle affects) and That doesn’t seem like a very good feel for oorts combat, seeing as it’s a sandbox game.

I do like the thought of having dodging maneuvers ( I’m pretty sure there was a whole thread for those though) but imo if you can hit someone with an aimed attack (with the flick a dat wrist) while they are moving that quickly, I think you should get the hit.

Different types of knockback are good features to have when you’re making combat system, So I would support those, but I don’t want to see them getting to complex. Knock an enemy back or slow em down, but that’s about it.

This “superarmor” seems interesting, but I’m not sure how it would feel in a first person battle. It also just seems like a complication which is unnecessary due to the knockback types you mentioned earlier.

Skill control seems like a no brainer for a first person sandbox like this. It’s actually kindof intrinsic to 1st person games in general that you can swap your attack at will and have very precise pixel perfect accuracy. It’d be very annoying to get stuck into long skills. I don’t even see why you’d want long skills in the first place though…

1 Like
4

The learning curve is very steep… but dont worry. it starts easy and become very hard only later in the game
You also need to level in PVE before you can PVP.

Here is an example of how that combat system works in pve:

5

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t find anything portrayed in the video applied to Oort.
It’s more of a slasher, while Oort is an MMO and a building game, so the combat should be essentially much simpler (both in mechanics and execution). Just saying.

Maybe I’m just allergic to asian mmo’s.

3 Likes
6

Well, Dragon Nest have places that don’t have a flat ground too… and yes, those non-flat ground areas makes things more complicated for some classes, since there are a few skills that just shoot in a straight line, the best example would be a lazer beam skill of the sorceress class called “linear ray”… Oort can just avoid that type of skills

And i don’t think that combat system is essentially “confusing”. its more in the lines of “hard to master”

7

Whatever happens with combat, I’m sure the developers will find a great blend between voxel and MMORPG, like they already have been for many other things.

2 Likes
8

I think something like skyrim would work nicely

9

But the magic reaaallly sucks. Other than that, I would like a system like Skyrim, but sort of like Assassin’s Creed + Batman: Arkham where you can string combos. It sounds kind of ridiculous, but if correctly melded, a Skyrim styled combat mixed with stringing attacks together in AC would be really cool. But of course we have to tie in the fact that it’s a voxel game, and we’d have to make sure that all of that would work along with building mechanics and such.

1 Like
10

Nope. the combat system of DN also works great for magic classes imo. just watch videos of it, you will see it works really well ~

Also,you guys seem to really like skyrim aren’t you =.=
I never even played that game, but from what i saw, the combat system of it doesn’t seem as action-paced as what im suggesting here!

1 Like
11

To be honest, I really like Dragon Nest mostly because of its combat style. It’s wonderful if the developers would be able to make it happen with a touch of Oort style. However, I doubt they will have enough time to make that kind of combat style since Oort is not just about combat unlike Dragon Nest where for me, it’s mostly dungeons and PVP.

The balancing of such combat system can also be hard even the Dragon Nest still have this issue from time to time. But seriously, I was also hoping for DN style combat when I backed this game up :smiley:. I hope they at least make it as action-packed as the DN’s combat system. :wink:

12

DN also looks very 3ed person so is oort going to be more first person or more 3ed person is what I was thinking about

13

I would like to see something along the lines of matrix slow-mo, when using long distance attacks (of course this would leave the shooter vulnerable for a brief moment). having the ability to “Fly” or "Direct’ your shot with a steering mechanic, adding more damage to wherever the shot hits the player.

as for melee, this can also be done, but with a shorter slow-mo. Not sure if this is possible to implement at such a late stage of design, but I’m sure they have combat complete but not fine tuned yet. I can’t wait to see the end product. Whatever it is, Im sure its going to be controversial.

14

Definetly. Two hands that can be separatly equipped with 1/2 handed sword/axe/maze, shield, bow or magic{1} would work perfectly. (simple enough for a voxel game yet allows strategical combat)
Maybe add something like this for additional customization.

{1}Not said that there should be a fixed spellset like in Skyrim but the discussion for this topic happens here.

15

Slow motion in a real time game with multiplayer aspects cannot function. Or do you want to slow down the whole world for that skills? ^^

1 Like
16

Yeah that’s what I was thinking…to slow down time on a multiplayer game would require everyone to slow down and if many people use that ability then that would cause the game to switch between normal speed and slow motion.

17

Perhaps a bubble is created around the battle which anyone and anything [physics wise] would slow down based on what was happening, not so much people activating an ability. I for one… Actually, that ideas is now going to be an amendment to my other thread. Carry on.

1 Like
18

Maybe, it could work but you would need to reload the world after the battle to catch up time wise with the rest of the world.

19

Not necessarily. What would need to catch up?

20

jepp, like a local timestop spell. All in the sphere is frozen (like a stun) or slowed, just exept you (if it a aoe arround you) or even not (if it is a ranged cast/fire)