Action-Oriented Escalated Bidding

I've been thinking about new kinds of gameplay for MMORPGs, because I'm not happy with any of the current styles.

I love the feel of the "personal epic" games like Star Wars Galaxies, Star Trek Online, even things like WoW. There's a lot of joy to be had in running around a world in real time. But the combat in these games is always either so clunky it's painful or so action-oriented that you have to be a twelve year old with broadband.

Thinking about alternate combat styles, one with appeal is escalated bidding.

This kind of bidding (found in poker and many tabletop games) basically allows players to judge a situation and decide whether to escalate or end the round. It's easy to balance, compelling, and naturally cinematic.

However, it's turn-based.

It's easy to come up with styles of play that allow for this kind of combat, but the turn-based nature is hard to avoid. And turn-based doesn't mesh well with the epic personal feel I'd like in my imaginary MMORPG.

I was having a hard time coming up with escalated bidding that didn't involve turns, but I think I figured it out: it's just a simple rework of existing mechanics.

For example, you're playing Star Trek. You're wandering into combat with your space ship. What's the "escalated bidding" for this?

Well, it's the same as Star Trek Online currently is... just a few small tweaks.

One critical element is range. Tiered bidding is a great way to escalate. In Poker, that would be the ante, the initial bidding, and the final bidding - but in Star Trek, it might be shields, system, hull. Rather than having distinct rounds, it's based on range.

You start off at long range, taking shield damage. You get closer, your weapons tick over into optimal range... but, at the same time, you now take systems damage from incoming shots. You get even closer, your weapons are guaranteed to deal terrific damage... but now any damage that leaks through your shields will blast away at your hull... and some damage is always going to leak through.

Conversely, if you can stay at long range, your ship is not at risk even if your shields go down. Incoming fire will scratch your hull and temporarily glitch out your systems, but that's damage that can be rapidly and completely repaired.

To be clear: as your weapons enter optimal range, you take a lot more damage. The better you can shoot, the more you get shot.

This range element adds a ton of complexity to conflicts, because your systems-damage range may not be the same as your enemy's systems-damage range. A long-range torpedo boat may be taking hull damage from a small merchant vessel while the small merchant vessel is still taking shield damage! This means the small merchant vessel's shots will squirrel through the torpedo boat's shields, while the torpedo volleys will largely splash off the merchant's shields.

Matching ranges will be a major element of what ships you use, when. Party loadout becomes a really interesting challenge.



In most bidding systems, how much you bid is also critical. But in this case, the "bid" is how close you get, for how long. Starships have position and relative speed: committing to a deep run can net bigger rewards if you come out on top... but huge problems if a lucky hit knocks your torpedoes offline. Ship headings are another, interlocked kind of bid, if each shield quadrant fails independently of the others.

Additional bidding can be done using various one-off powers. This is a classic "cooldown" setup: if you overclock your reactor for ten seconds, you won't be able to do it again for another two minutes, better make use of those ten seconds well.

Unlike current combat systems which look similar to our bidding system, the cooldown skills in our bidding system would exist to gamble on the next few seconds.

You're claiming the next few seconds will be critical, either offensively or defensively. With the range-based tiering system and quadrant-based shields, it makes a lot of sense to focus our skills on being useful shortly before or after changing range tiers - either your own or the enemy's. Fire your torpedoes when the enemy enters into their systems damage range, regardless of your current range. Pump your shields just before you change to systems damage range, since the damage you take in ten seconds will be far worse than the damage you take now.

Offensive firepower should be tiered as well, basically turning it into a set of cooldown skills. A full barrage hits hard, but takes a long time to recharge. Smaller shots recharge faster - fast enough to do more damage overall, but obviously the enemy's shield recharge and maneuvering cancel much of that advantage out. Will you do some small shots as you close, followed by a full barrage when the enemy becomes vulnerable?

This timing-based "bidding" feels more natural than any kind of shared pot or other abstraction. This also plays up the differences between different kinds of enemies with different ranges, and makes engaging multiple enemies or being part of a team a very interesting tactical opportunity. Obviously, various shortcuts also have value: a stealthed warbird decloaking right on top of you doesn't need a magic "decloak and fire" special power. Their special power is that they're right on top of you: you're at hull damage range, and at least some of that firepower is going to leak through the shields.



This combat is extremely similar to the existing Star Trek Online combat engine. The tweaks are very minor: simplified range indicators, slightly different damage model, slightly rebalanced skills. But the actual play is so similar that people probably wouldn't have to think about it very hard: they'd just suddenly be having amazing, epic fights.



This model could also be used for ground combat in the Star Trek universe, since ranged ground combat is the norm. You could just have literally all the same things.

A Klingon with a blade can rush through blaster fire: their max range is quite low, which means their range tiers are tiny. The blaster fire would just burn their armor a bit. Of course, when the Klingon reaches you, they are well within your nastiest damage range, and are guaranteed to put you down in short order.

The same basic mechanic would work for any personal combat system to some degree. A Star Wars combat system could be similar, with the light sabering Jedi naturally being similar to a Klingon. A Force-user could also take medium-range powers like Force Throw or Force Lightning. These would extend their attack range... and also extend their damage tier ranges. Someone specializing in sabers would be able to bull through Force Lightning because it's outside their damage tier range!

Even in tight combat, you could still see variations. A long light saber seems like a great choice... and it is, against anyone with a gun. But against someone with light daggers, your melee range is actually outside their most critical damage tier, meaning they can hold you off without too much danger... but you're not so lucky against them. You'd have to use combat abilities to close the range or disarm them unless you have a lot of time on your hands!

The downside of this is the bidding, since at melee ranges you don't really commit to be at a specific range or a specific angle for particularly long. To counteract that, I'd recommend using "charge" skills which push you into melee combat with a large bonus for a specific amount of time, but then leave you with a big penalty until it recycles. In this way, melee attackers would choose how much to "bid" by choosing a light, moderate, or heavy charge attack. They can also do this while already in melee combat, of course.



A tiny change to a fairly ordinary combat system: your optimal attack range is also the range you take worse damage. From there, a rebalance to existing combat approaches should result in a really interesting, cinematic challenge.

At least, that's the theory!

Action in Games

I just got back, and I've got a lot of essays stored up. This one's on action in games.

If you're like me, you think that action in games is pathetic, even in action-oriented games. The eighteenth time I pull the head off a gorgon by doing extended fireball motions inherited from a game nearly two decades older... it gets dull.

Contrast it to this (which I stumbled across via this).

Now, there are games which can be quite cinematic in the fight sequences. Someone pointed out that Soul Calibre tends to be very slick. But I'm thinking about action sequences from the opposite direction. The feeling of the fight, the choreographic color, is what I'm looking for in this case. It really has nothing to do with the player's actual reflexes. It's more of an RPG kind of setup, I would think.

The idea here is to make a fight as much about being interesting as it is about killing people. This same basic dynamic could also be used for chases, dialog, computer hacking, dancing, extreme fly fishing... to make them less about the mechanics of the thing and more about the drama and choreography.

...

A fight is implemented as dozens of rules about timing and placement and so forth. Your skill as a fighter is determined by how well you can navigate those rules and defeat your enemy.

Any other system that was implemented would be, from the large view, the same basic idea: a bunch of rules that you navigate. The idea is that instead of trying to capture the rules of physical combat, we can try to capture the rules of interesting choreography and drama.

However, this change is not as skin deep as that makes it seem to be. The point is that in the old rules, you were navigating a closed space of action and reaction, trying to improve your situation while degrading your enemy's. In the drama method, the point is to do the same thing, but it's done by creatively interacting with the environment rather than by simple statistical wanking.

We obviously can't make the rules quite as "sword does 10 damage" as they were before. There needs to be some kind of... story abstraction. Some kind of procedure that lets you do creative things and get an advantage.

These rules are probably largely divorced from the fight itself. There is no reason that carving glowing holes in the wall with your light sabers gives you a physical advantage... but whoever comes up with the idea and plays it should be given an advantage. Because it's very cool.

...

Here is an example of play that might illustrate what I'm talking about. This is based on an imaginary card-based prototype. It's just a thought experiment. Let's use Jedi.

We control Ulruok, a just-knighted Jedi with a tendency for acrobatics.

The GM is currently controlling Veda, a powerful dark Jedi known for his ability to twist dark force into living things, but also known for his solid sabering skills.

Our characters do not have stats, per say. Ulruok doesn't have 10 strength or 15 sabering skill. He does, however, have notes - "trained in saber fighting", "blue light saber", "acrobatic", etc.

We have a slew of cards, as does the GM. They all have various actions on them, accessible if we have the right notes. The GM also negotiates an overall power difference: it's decided that we, as Ulruok, are at a distinct disadvantage against an older, more experienced swordfighter like Veda.

EDIT: If you're in a feed, you may miss a lot of text due to an aggressive HTML interpreter... better to read local, in this case.

The GM plays his initial card, "furious assault", which means that Veda is battering at our defenses already. The furious assault card reads:

Tension < 10: Add a tension token to the pool if player has any advantage over target. If player is even or at disadvantage, add two tokens to the pool and worsen player disadvantage one step.

Tension >= 10: Duel resolution in favor of advantaged character, player wins ties.

Well, we're getting pushed around, so we decide to play the "sidewall boundary" card, which is when we get into close, tight swordfighting that's mostly pushing against each other's sword. And we carve up the wall. The card reads:

Tension < 6: Add a tension token to the pool, the advantage between fighters shrinks one level. Optional: play a terrain collapse card.

Tension >= 6: Add two tension tokens to the pool, increase the advantage between fighters. Optional: play a terrain collapse card.

This means we've gone from a "significant disadvantage" to a "disadvantage". A bit more work, we might even make it up to "even"! We've got to move pretty quickly, though, because those tension tokens will start to add up and things will start getting serious. There's a "batter" card we know Veda can draw, and he can "spend" six tension tokens from the pot to destroy our lightsaber with it if he still has an advantage at that point...

As an added advantage to this style of play, we can have cards for actions that aren't feasible for a "real" combat played by players with reflexes. For example, seeing into the future, or having the power cut out, or so forth. These are not really things that can be easily put into a game where the rules for the fight actually have anything to do with the physical fight.

But with these other kinds of rules... very interesting things can happen...

Off with his head!

I recently purchased Valkyrie Profile: Silmaria. Aside from the undertones of grind, it is an exquisite game.

One of the things I liked best about the first Valkyrie Profile game was the combat system. Some brainy Japanese guy said "hey, four characters in your party... four buttons on the controller..." (Presumably, this was not the same person that made Frey female and Odin have two eyes... but, hey, I'm no purist.)

In combat, you press a button and that character acts. If he has multiple attacks, each time you press it he makes his next attack.

"And... what's the big deal?"

The big deal is that hitting an enemy while he's in the air gives you free XP... and hitting him while he's on the ground gives you free action points. Each attack is not simply "hit him with sword", but is a sequence of specific moves that you specify. Moves like "dual cleave", "air drop", "spinning blade"... and you program your characters to do a specific one first, second, and third (depending on their number of attacks). Spells also have a progression, although it's hardcoded.

By being aware of your timing, you could cut enemies to pieces in midair, get lots of free XP.

In VP1, I was so good at this that I regularly got at least 50% extra XP per fight. You also needed to manage shield-breaking (if they block) and building up combos for super-attacks.

It's easy to screw up, too: if you knock a light enemy upwards, he'll sail above all but the most vertically-oriented attacks, and you'll end up stabbing a lot of air beneath him, doing nothing. Moving the enemy around much will also screw up spells, since they're stationary.

I'm not sure if it's clear to someone who hasn't played the game, but this system of combat is much deeper than most RPGs out on the market - it's about as complex as a tactical RPG. Except it's just four buttons.

VP2 has fundamentally the same system of actually whacking baddies, but they have a movement system I'm not terribly interested in. Aside from that, they added an additional bit:

Each of the enemies is made of parts. When you hit an enemy, you actually hit a specific part of the enemy. Sword, head, tail, whatever. This doesn't really change the damage much (unless the part is armored), but if you do enough damage to a part, it breaks off.

And you get to keep it.

Knock the weapon out of the hands of the lizardman, you get to keep it. Cut off the head of a wolf, you get wolf fangs. And so forth.

Adding hit-location damage to the scheme was pretty brilliant, although it seems to be balanced funny. It means that you can theoretically try to set up your warriors to not just knock them up or down, but also aim for various body parts! This is especially important for things with some armored elements and some vulnerable elements.

While this isn't done as well as I would like, it is a very interesting idea. You're replacing the "random drops" with a skill system: what you can milk an encounter for depends on how cleverly you've built your assault pattern.

In VP2 it's pretty random, at least for the moment. But I've been thinking and thinking... and I literally can't think of a better combat system. Sure, I'd implement it differently. But I can't think... of anything better! At all!

This kind of system - the attacks aren't simply there to get the enemy to 0 HP as quickly as possible. The attacks also serve to give you an in-fight bonus, an XP boost, more money, and determine drop! It's all done very simply in live combat, frontloaded by allowing you to pick weapons and attack sequences while wandering the dungeon.

It makes each enemy into a battlefield! It turns what is normally a single point of interest (HP) into a complex field of interests.

Do you see why I like it? Have you ever played it?