Ideas for making combat (pvp and pve) a more enjoyable experience.

Twisted · 2019-05-16 16:17:49

Disclaimer - I haven't yet had a chance to use the sword on anyone, and I haven't seen anyone else use it in my town.

Recently we got swords added to the game and there has been a bit of an uproar due to them being very strong. I think the swords are not the problem, them being strong is just the symptom of the lack of a proper combat system. Currently every hit is a guaranteed kill (unless they get healed by a 3rd party), and if two players fight the person with lower ping will usually win. I have some thoughts and ideas on how this could be improved - some of them might work, some of them might be silly, but I think all are worth thinking about.

Make wounds only occasionaly deadly. Use the % chance system to give wounds a chance to kill you, and a chance to heal instead. You'd still be slowed down and unable to do anything for the duration of the wound, but who knows - you might make it even without first aid. I think surviving a bear bite would make for some amazing moments. Imagine a situation where a bear attacks your village, mauling two of your kids and your jerk brother. The kids die, but your brother survives. You feel angry at the injustice and might decide to take matters into your own hands.

Add a 'parry' system. If you are attacked with a sword while holding a sword yourself, you don't get wounded but instead there's a 30% chance for you to drop the sword, 60% for the attack to do nothing, and a 10% chance for the attacker to drop the sword instead. It would also be cool if this were affected by age - older people are stronger and more experienced, and they have a better chance in combat.

Add a low tech shield item that has the same parry system proposed in the previous bullet point. You can't use it to attack, but you might want to have a few of them around town just to give you a chance to defend yourself. If the attacker drops the sword you can pick it up and strike back. This would also make it so that one person can't kill a whole town on their own as easily.

Allow us to put bows on backpacks, same as swords.

Move the animals to a separate layer so that we can't avoid them by just standing on a berry. I know this would be a ton of work, but I truly believe that this should be done sooner or later. I'd be personally be happy to have two or three weeks without updates just to make this happen.

Give us a button modifier (similar to space) that locks the item in your hands so you can't drop it/swap it while held.

Knowing Jason swords are here to stay, but they won't be a pleasant game experience until we get some combat improvements. Does anyone else have any other ideas how to make combat better?

Last edited by Twisted (2019-05-16 16:19:34)

WalrusesConquer · 2019-05-16 16:23:23

Maybe an (extremely rare) chance that if you are not healed fast enough you may become lame? And require assistance? It just seems like a way to also put in "disadvantages" too! If you want to be healed, chances are you care about staying alive no matrer the cost? Just my pitch in!
Just another way to see people get represented in a game I suppose

futurebird · 2019-05-16 16:28:20

*sigh*

I rather like that I don't need to learn a combat system to play this game. It's more about:
-are you trusted enough to have a deadly weapon?
-who else has one?
-did you secure the weapons properly?
-after you kill, is the community supportive (feeding you, not taking the opportunity to kill you)

The way that knives work is great, it's very focused on the social aspect of murder and justice, and the "skill" you need to kill griefers successfully is a social one.

If there is a combat system the skill is, well, combat. So, you can put in the time to learn the system and it matters less if people support what you want to do or not.

I do like some of your suggested changes. Like the animals really should be a little less dumb when it comes to attacking. I also like the idea of wounds. In fact I like most of these suggestions, but not the broader idea that we need combat to be more complex ...

I think making Swords less powerful could be simple just make the death stagger (the slow effect after killing) get longer after each kill you make. So the first kill is a quick recovery, but the next one is 10s longer and so on. This would give towns folk time to react. And yeah, I think this could be a general life-time effect, so killing just gets harder and harder meaning to host an attack you need multiple raiders no more Mr. Punch.

Twisted · 2019-05-16 16:36:57

I do agree with you futurebird, and you make some great points. OHOL is NOT a combat game and combat should not be the focus. I don't want to have a complex combat system either, I just don't want it to be a system where the attacker wins almost every time, and the attacked person doesn't have a chance. One person can fairly easily wipe out an entire town single handedly if they put their mind to it, and that should not be the case.

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-16 16:47:50

This was never meant to be a combat-focused game.

The sword, knife, and bow are in the game more like symbols of combat than actual combat.

And actually, this is much more like real life than combat in actual games. When you get stabbed in the chest with a sword, you are FUCKED. When you get shot with an arrow, even a primitive arrow, it goes straight through your chest and comes out the other side by about 8 inches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsqrlaIef2o

Professional saber bouts are over in about 1 second each:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKUEZIrDVT8

All that parrying and such you see in the movies is nonsense.

So, if I have a weapon, the question is: Am I going to kill you with it or not? Not CAN I pull it off, but do I want to? That's the question that this game asks.

In the US, police officers carry guns at all times. It's not a question of combat my ability, but restraint on their part (for various reasons) that stops them from killing me.

Now, that said, there might be a disconnect between intention and execution, given ping times and other factors. There's some flexibility server-side, where if you say you're trying to kill someone, and you think they're within 1-2 tiles of where they actually are, the server gives you the benefit of the doubt and allows the kill to go through. This is supposed to compensate for lag.

Part of the problem might be that the wounded person drops what they are holding, preventing mutual destruction, and always giving one person the jump. I think this is okay, though.

Twisted · 2019-05-16 16:53:56

jasonrohrer wrote:

All that parrying and such you see in the movies is nonsense.

I'm not sure if we're referring to the same thing but parrying is definitely not nonsense. Heck, they're literally parrying in the video you posted. Besides, we don't have fencing sabres, we have war swords.

pein · 2019-05-16 16:58:25

no, maybe some health point system would help, chances arent good if you don't have an animation with it, and honestly if you hit with arrow, why would the player get away with it? and how? sure, if you need 2 arrows to kill someone that's ok

if there is parry system, i would much more prefer some skill based parry, maybe ad some buttons to pvp? direction of attack and block
so you can block an attack by guessing the side coming from
you cant attack from diagonal, only with ranged, so people could defend cardinal sides this would break shield
shield could be a primitive one, 2 curve shafts and pine needles maybe a thread
and obviously you need to put it down to eat or someone feed you
maybe attach to a pack but still need to take down to use it actively

older means stronger for a while, but an elder isn't stronger than an adult of 30 yo
so maybe the strength depends on food bars, but maybe elders would have more tricks
like disarming younger people easier

yeah maybe if you are injured twice and healed it prevents you from fighting ever again
if you just wounded, maybe some part of food bar is temporary blocked until you regenerate from it, like 5-10 min for a serious 80% health loss
this would mean 5 attacks with swords to die or 5 people 1 attacks

ranged combat maybe nerfed if you need multiple arrows, so a crossbow instead bow with it's own arrow set same only usable for other families

the other thing i could imagine is limiting fights to duels, where if you challenge someone, it transfers you two into a temporary arena whee you can use a basic weapon if you don't have one, you can kill, injure or give up fight, the winner can decide what happens to loser, like help up, kill or strip down and shame him

CatX · 2019-05-16 17:35:14

I would like for there to be a special knife for use in the kitchen and for slaughtering sheep that can't be used to kill or wound people. It would just be nice to have the option to not make weapons until you really need weapons if you don't want to.

I would also like to see how a baton for stunning people and a lasso to force people into jails or fenced areas would work. It might be an interesting option for those cases when you don't want to use knives and swords (if you need to stop someone from misplacing things or from whistling incessantly perhaps). I'm not 100% sure this is the way to go, I'd just like to see it in play.

futurebird · 2019-05-16 17:41:20

hmmm what if the sword functions like the knife does now for killing... but the knife could no longer kill?

I'm just spitballing here... I rather like the knife it's one of the most useful items in the game, but some of the time it feels annoying that when I just want to make paper I have to MAKE a knife because no one wants to give me their weapon.

The flip side is that nearly every griefer I've killed has been because I had a knife on me for some other practical purpose and saw what they were doing and was able to act quickly.

Also... not really related, but I feel like I should be able to use the sword on the bear....

Spoonwood · 2019-05-16 18:41:51

Swords should just get removed from the game. They are NOT a tool that anyone needs to prevent griefing, since other weapons exist which ALSO have uses such as cutting up bread or hunting turkeys. The probability that a lineage benefits from people using swords is extremely low. Swords are merely a result of Jason not thinking through whether a new item in the game would encourage or discourage people to play for their lineages. Swords take water, charcoal, and the use of a smithing hammer to make. Crusades don't help your family survive longer... it just makes them more vulnerable to get killed off by another family. Jason should admit that swords discourage people from playing for the sake of their lineages and completely remove swords from the game.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-05-16 18:43:52)

Tarr · 2019-05-16 18:52:08

-The sword should absolutely have cooldown: Since you can run at full speed during, and after stabbing someone the only real counter play to a sword in its current form is running away. The people QQ'ing about it making the sword completely unviable are silly as there have been tons and tons of cases of a town being killed off by someone with a knife which has a six times longer murder stagger than suggested.

-Don't let someone drop the sword when bloody: While ten seconds isn't usually even remotely enough time to starve (you lose a pip every 4.8 seconds in a neutral biome) it still means you can do silly things like nurse children while murdering a town (which I've done.) Pein proved this point long ago that you shouldn't be able to drop weapons to machine gun down people and swords shouldn't be any different.

Changes to making someone have to be visible with a sword are good, however you can still stealth a sword around by carrying a rod around + hammer. As Dodge suggested make a sword need to be forged by heating a steel rod in the forge instead of using cold steel to make a sword.

To note, I'm not against having weapons in this game that only exist to kill. I'm against weapons in the game being ridiculously overpowered like butter knives and swords.

Booklat1 · 2019-05-16 18:59:05

Twisted wrote:

[*]Move the animals to a separate layer so that we can't avoid them by just standing on a berry. I know this would be a ton of work, but I truly believe that this should be done sooner or later. I'd be personally be happy to have two or three weeks without updates just to make this happen.[/*]

This is long overdue tbh

futurebird · 2019-05-16 19:11:19

Tarr wrote:

-The sword should absolutely have cooldown: Since you can run at full speed during, and after stabbing someone the only real counter play to a sword in its current form is running away. The people QQ'ing about it making the sword completely unviable are silly as there have been tons and tons of cases of a town being killed off by someone with a knife which has a six times longer murder stagger than suggested.
-Don't let someone drop the sword when bloody: While ten seconds isn't usually even remotely enough time to starve (you lose a pip every 4.8 seconds in a neutral biome) it still means you can do silly things like nurse children while murdering a town (which I've done.) Pein proved this point long ago that you shouldn't be able to drop weapons to machine gun down people and swords shouldn't be any different.
Changes to making someone have to be visible with a sword are good, however you can still stealth a sword around by carrying a rod around + hammer. As Dodge suggested make a sword need to be forged by heating a steel rod in the forge instead of using cold steel to make a sword.
To note, I'm not against having weapons in this game that only exist to kill. I'm against weapons in the game being ridiculously overpowered like butter knives and swords.

I think all these changes are really well thought out.

Amon · 2019-05-16 19:55:38

I am an avid fencer and I can say that the sabre duel is NOT an accurate representation of actual swordfighting. Not even recent hema installments are, since they are falling into the same pitfalls of sportification. while people died by a single wrongful stab, actual combatants wouldn't be this 'daredevilish' in combat.

However if you needed an example; Horsemen with sabres could well easily 'slice' or more like 'chop' a human 'dead' in a single devestating motion.

Dodge · 2019-05-16 19:58:57

To avoid dropping sword when right clicking:

Dodge wrote:

There might be a bug when server disagrees, but actually missing the person would still make you drop the weapon.
How about you cant pick up a sword on the ground but you can only pick it up if it's in a sheath, to pick up the sword you put the sheath on the sword.
Or the sheath doesn't act as a container but as an object, a sword is actually a "sword without sheath", then we have the sheath that is "sheath without sword" and finally the "sword in sheath".
You cant pick up the "sword without sheath" from the ground, so no risk of taking a sword that you couldnt drop (it doesnt go in container also)
To take the sword only the transition with the hand + "sword in sheath" would work
"sword in sheath" can be worn or put in cart, boxes etc. "sheath without sword" could be too, but not the "sword without sheath" to avoid situation where you put a sword in a container and cant pick it back up.
Would that work?

pein · 2019-05-17 05:35:14

well if you watch dueling with sword, there arent this dramatic moves and swords more likely circle around each other
but wouldn't call it completely random

as it's a game, and is about civilization building, a fun way of pvp where you dodnt die to one hit would be nice, even if it's 3-4 hits, and the outcomes can be injuries or just a non lethal way of combat, maybe turn based trickery, this part of the game isn't satisfying right now
havent really seen pvp in point and click games but some bigger complexity wouldn't hurt

you said yourself jason, lifes are cheap in the game
a second chance, a revenge, a dramatic turn from almost losing would be nice

Dodge · 2019-05-17 05:39:18

pein wrote:

well if you watch dueling with sword, there arent this dramatic moves and swords more likely circle around each other
but wouldn't call it completely random
as it's a game, and is about civilization building, a fun way of pvp where you dodnt die to one hit would be nice, even if it's 3-4 hits, and the outcomes can be injuries or just a non lethal way of combat, maybe turn based trickery, this part of the game isn't satisfying right now
havent really seen pvp in point and click games but some bigger complexity wouldn't hurt
you said yourself jason, lifes are cheap in the game
a second chance, a revenge, a dramatic turn from almost losing would be nice

I agree having different types of wounds (superficial,deep etc) could be a good idea, right now it's too easy to kill compared to healing.

Or make better medicine and increase time before dying of wounds.

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#1 2019-05-16 16:17:49

Ideas for making combat (pvp and pve) a more enjoyable experience.

#2 2019-05-16 16:23:23

Re: Ideas for making combat (pvp and pve) a more enjoyable experience.

#3 2019-05-16 16:28:20

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#4 2019-05-16 16:36:57

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#5 2019-05-16 16:47:50

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#6 2019-05-16 16:53:56

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#7 2019-05-16 16:58:25

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#9 2019-05-16 17:41:20

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#10 2019-05-16 18:41:51

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#13 2019-05-16 19:11:19

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#14 2019-05-16 19:55:38

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#15 2019-05-16 19:58:57

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