Game Guides Archive
Thread: SWG Very much a horisontal game?
Witnezz wrote:
Rockard wrote:
Lol things were bad enough that you wanted to jump of your balcony.... that's bad.
Havent we all ???
station1 wrote:
admiraljz wrote:
And the first time someone shoots you from the roof of their private medium house or PA hall and kills you before you can even figure out where the shots are coming from, and as you lay there on the ground you realize you wouldn't have been able to get inside the house at all to fight back if you were a melee player... you'd be right back here on the forums trying to get that function nerfed.
Ahh yes, it is way toofar above the skill level of the Devs to put in code that doesn't allow you to intiate combat from a private building....
As far as me getting attacked by a sniperfrom a public building rooftop or from a base landing, I wouldn't call for a nerf; I would love it. My tab buttonworks in any direction if I am a ranged fighter, and my burst run works just fine if I am melee. If the sniper could duck below the wall, then quickly pop up and shoot at me it would be all the better. If I could dive behind some ground cover, pop up andchuck a grenade up there, all the better.
Yes, I see what your saying.....although what you describe is a FPS not a RPG....that's one problem. Those types of abilities and functions are geared more towards twitched based combat instead of the traditional RPG styles. Hiding behind a rock or ledge would directely affect thenumber rolls in the game due to human input and thus makes the game much more FPS like.Combat in this game is not under your total control and that's the nature of RPG's....it's not what you do or want to do, it's about what you have the "CHANCE" to do. It's a numbers game, the higher number usually wins and being able to directly affect a players "CHANCES" by ducking behind a rock or tree defeats the whole purpose of the RPG system.
So you duck behind a rock, your opponent has no grenades or ability to attack you behind a rock.....you pop up, shot at him (he has no cover). This situation essentially means that, your opponent has virtually no "CHANCE" at all of hitting you (basically he can't win)....while you can pop up, shoot him and duck back down. That's not RPG combat, that's FPS combat. Remember, your ability to shoot, hit and affect your opponent in various ways is determined by the game engine and number rolls, not you directly...if you don't have the numbers on your side, you lose basically. That's why the stacking of numbers and templetes make some people uber and ultimately unbeatable, that's why they nerfed defense stacking.
anyway, cool ideas and it would be fun, but not for a RPG type of game where number rolls determine everything.
True. I hadn't thought about how it would affect PvE. And there are already lazy people doing this in our current game, at the squill cave and probably elsewhere. (unless they finally got around to fixing that). And now that I think about it, that temple on Yavin used to be the same way. If the mobs had decent AI though, they would've come rushing up and destroyed the player though. I guess the pathing and mob AI would have to improve tenfold before vertical combat could be viable. /sigh
admiraljz wrote:
It also comes back to farming/exploiting XP. If I could stand on the roof of my house all day and shoot spawns around it without them being able to hit me back, I could conceivably farm a lot of xp that way with zero risk to myself, if I placed my house carefully enough to where large spawns are common.
Message Edited by station1 on 08-20-2004 08:07 PM
station1 wrote:
I know what you are saying about the number rolls and basically being turn-based, but I can already affect them somewhat even now. I can go prone, increasing my ranged accuracy and ranged defense. This is really not that different than ducking behind some cover. In the cover example, it would just break my opponent's line of site. In theory, Ican already do this by running behind a house or something and popping out from around theside taking potshots. Of course my opponent can still win even if he is melee, because he can just come after me, just like he could if I was actually ducking behind something.
HardwiredXMan wrote:
Remember, your ability to shoot, hit and affect your opponent in various ways is determined by the game engine and number rolls, not you directly...if you don't have the numbers on your side, you lose basically.
I don't have much faith that actual 3d combat will be implemented, but it would be great if it was.
This is true but my point was that making Swg more of a 3d type game just makes it more and more like a FPS not a RPG. In a FPS, there is no auto attack, there is no auto defense (dodge, counterattack, block) and so on. It's all about what you make your character do with your keyboard and mouse not what the outcome of the number rolls are. If we start making SWG more like that, it ceases to be a true MMORPG. The ability to duck down, jump on top of objects, shoot from balconies would mean that we could directly control whether we get hit or not and the accuracy numbers of our opponent would then mean nothing taking away part of the turned based system. Right now, the only thing that affects our opponents accuracay is LOS, Movement and whatever kind of food buffs we have that increase our defense and finally the numbers oftheir accuracycompared toour defense numbers. As soon as we are able to directly affect our opponenets numbersother than using LOS (which is impossible to take away from our control without making the game totatlly unrealistic), it's not turned based (RPG style) type of play.
As for our opponent having to come after us because they can't hit us since we are hiding....two things you have to consider are that first if your ranged, it's to your disadvantage to force your opponent to come to you (especially if they are melee)and second if they are melee they have to come to you anyway. So hiding really is not that big of an advantage since you don't control the number rolls 100%. Breaking LOS in SWG right now only means that you delay the numbers rolls until LOS is acquired again. It will never serve as a means to protect you and yes it gives you time to regen...but so does your opponent and at that point the number rolls all start over again. Now if we had the ability to dodge attacks on command, then hiding would serve a purpose more than what it does now....but then again, the game becomes a first person shooter.....so this just proves my point even more.
My opinion, if you want 3D play (x, y, z axes), go play a FPS. When I want 3D play (jump while attacking, use ledges and terrain in my ability to attack, duck, dodge and take pot shots), I go play Jedi Academy or some other FPS. Now if we could get 3D play without losing the RPG turn based play, I'd be all for it.....but no game to my knowledge has done that yet (if there are some let me know please), especially not an MMORPG.....Oh the challenges that lie ahead....too bad I'm not a developer....I'd welcome that challenge myself.
Herbsman wrote:
Those of you who say that Z-axis limitation is actually better for the game and stuff, go try out Anarchy online. Yes I know you may not like the game and all of that, but the feeling of having all 3 axis is awesome. You can jump over obsticles, use hover vehicles to fly way up over cities and watch all them lil buggers scurrying around on the ground. You can land on top of a skyscraper and start sniping people on the ground. It's awesome. They even have dual wield.........crap, what the hell am I doing playing SWG.
That does sound awesome! I don't know much about that game. Do they (or did they at one time) have alot of trouble with people exploiting line of sight? Like what some have said here, where people get in a spot where the mob can't attack them?
Sepen wrote:
I played AO for 2.5 years. Actually, my two accounts just expired at the end of this July.
Typically, it was the opposite; you could end up in LOS positions where you could not hit the mob, yet it could still hit you "through walls", etc.
AO is a decent game. It's a heavily loot-based economy, with tons of camping for stuff. I tired of that type of gameplay.
And while many claim "it's soloable"; it depends on how you define that term. With Shadowlands, so much of the "good stuff" (remember, loot-based economy here) drops of stuff you will needs groups to kill in order to get the loot at levels where it is most effective for you. So in my mind it is "grouping highly encouraged". WHich would not be so bad, but it's also a game of "random drop off the mob, and usually only one or limited good drops, so not everyone on the team gets rewarded". I tired of that gameplay also. If you mostly solo in AO, you will end up with subpar equipment as compared to your grouping friends. Prior to shadowlands, that wasn't true to nearly the same extent, and a soloer could be quite competitive with groupers.
But if those things aren't turn-offs for you, then AO has quite a lot going for it. The Yalms are nice. They are AO's "speeders". Except they fly into the air. Too bad in the Shadowlands they don't work at all. Since it's basically over half the game content now, that's a lot of flying you cannot do anymore. And they did nerf how high they can fly some time back. Used to be you could fly up until the world was a tiny little object. Now you can only fly 129M up. Not high enough to clear some mountain peaks in the game. While flying up basically "infinitely" isn't necessary, the 129 meters seems a bit restrictive. But to a SWG player it will feel great.
I've never tried SWG PvP yet. But AO's tower-based PvP can be quite fun (if a bit laggy at large battles). Basically, guilds can build "tower farms"; where each tower (there are many types) gives some benefit to the guild as a whole and individual bonuses to the tower owner. There are towers to debuff attackers too. You get a tower field by taking it from another guild. That's your PvP. Also there are "zones" in the game where there is "open PvP". So you are at risk just being in some places. It's fun.
The crafting in AO isn't anything close to SWG's. Selling stuff is limited to "sales channel spamming"; shouting (like at C-Net, but highly discouraged in-game), or the trade forums. Supposedly the upcoming October Alien Invasion (AI) expansion will add some type of Bazaa system. But it isn't present in beta yet (so I hear).
Bleh, this is getting long. I'd say give AO a look if you like sci-fi/fantasy mixed together, and some of the above doesn't sound too bad.
Overall, I prefer SWG. And I am looking forward to JTLS way more than I was to AI.
Cheers,
Martek
Yeah I actually agree. I loved anarchy as far as the game engine goes and exploring and such are fantastic. Loved taking my yalm into the middle of the woods somewhere in the dead of night, activating my infravision and go hunting.
I would have to say that as far as basic game mechanic goes, Anarchy is a step ahead of SWG, but as far as the general feel of the game then SWG is better. If SWG had Anarchy's game mechanic (True 3D) as well as Anarchy's mission system (read the clicky in my sig for explenation) then SWG would be unbeatable for years to come.