Elveone
Ancient
Mallius Odium
Ashen_Ring
Players Playing Bloodbath Demo
Immemorial
Ageless
OG 2020
Dog Adopter
Harbinger
- Mar 28, 2019
- 242
- 313
- 113
These are some thoughts I have had for a while and as I started writing some of them in the Subclasses Thread I thought it would be good to expand on them in a separate thread in order to not highjack the existing one. OK, that out of the way, let's begin.
The Problem
I hate when multiplayer games are based on the "Holy Trinity" system of Tank, Damage Dealer and Healer/Support. I think that separating the roles like that is a significant detriment to a game and especially to an action game where one of the main things you do in an action game is learn how to effectively avoid damage while doing damage or completing other objectives. Additionally balancing the game for such a system makes the fights artificially longer than they need to be in order to check the very simple tanks of managing agro or your mana. Such balancing is also extremely unforgiving to mistakes and often relies on one or two-hit kills as otherwise there would be absolutely no challenge in the combat system due to the presence of the healer as a primary role. Furthermore in order to force tanking and healing as primary roles some games make some attacks completely unavoidable which is a huge mistake in an action game. The result of such a system are prolonged battles that end extremely quickly on any non-trivial mistake that are both dull and frustrating to the players at the same time and do not play as an action game at all.
The Proposed Solution
I think the solution of these problems in multiplayer action games is pretty easy... theoretically and kind of hard to pull off in practice. So what is it? Make all character deal relatively the same amount of damage, remove healing almost completely and de-emphasize tanking instead making the characters differentiate from one another on the way they deal damage, they way they avoid damage and what else then can do in a party. That last part is actually extremely important in a multiplayer game and is what is missing in most previous attempts to circumvent the trinity system. The ways to deal damage and ways to avoid damage should come from action games directly with some minor inspiration from RPGs while the "thing you can do in a party" should be heavily based on RPG archetypes but should enhance dealing or avoiding damage without making them trivial or inconsequential. Of course different class resource mechanics and resource management in general are also a great way to differentiate different classes from one-another but those are not really the focus of this Thread and I will not talk about them.
Ways To Do Damage
I think this is the most intuitive part of the equation. Besides damage dealt that is the balancing factor so that different attacks feel fair most attacks feel different because of a combination of the following factors - range, speed, area/need to aim, movement and wait time for effect.
Range description usually fits in melee, close range, medium range and long range. Of course there could be effective range for attacks and damage fall-off after that.
Attack speed can be really fast - an attack taking a portion of a second, really slow - having to channel the attack for several seconds, or anything in between. And there are skills that have different effects depending on how long do you channel them which can be a lot of fun as well.
Area and Need to Aim are pretty self-explanatory and they are kind of loosely tied to the range. And again here we could have different areas of an attack or aiming that have a different effect - the simplest one being a headshot in most games that deals additional damage. A similar mechanic in some games is used to target individual limbs at melee range.
The movement is very important - how does an attack move your character. Most melee moves should move your character slightly forward but there should also be skills that are stationary or that reduce your speed or move you greatly or enhance your speed. Most people underestimate that and have prefer to have the character either be completely stationary or completely mobile during all attacks but I think both are bad approaches - both feel unnatural and have a detrimental effect on the necessity or ability to avoid damage.
Wait time for effect is a bit weird as most attacks would have an immediate effect. Still a playstyle with delayed effects can be fun. The most obvious playstyle is the Damage-over-time playstyle that places debuffs on enemies that deal damage to them every second or so but it is not the only one. Another possible way to do a delayed effect attack can be putting stacks of debuffs on an enemy and then detonating them with another skill later on. Even just having a skill that just deals a large amount of damage at a later time can be a fun mechanic especially in PvP where players can react to those things.
Ways To Avoid Damage
While dealing damage is fun I think that the most important part of an action game is your ability to avoid damage and your limitations in doing so. Damage avoidance is pretty basic - taking an action in order to not take damage and as such I do not think there are that many variants for it. Most of the variance here comes from your attacks preventing you to take an action to avoid damage. Because of that I'm not a big fan of action cancelling and although I can see how it is useful in some instances I think excessive action cancelling makes a game kind of trivial. Another factor that makes avoiding action interesting is the effect that this guard action has on your character or on the attacking enemy. I think a character should have at least two possible actions of damage avoidance. That being said here are some variants of damage avoidance and I know all of those are pretty standard but I feel like I need to list them... for some reason.
Guarding - an action that rises your shield or weapon and when you are hit in that stance you either take significantly reduced damage or no damage. You guard could be limited or unlimited in terms of time or damage taken and it can be tied to some kind of resource the character has such as mana or stamina.
Dodge - an action that moves your character out of the way of an attack. Multiple flavors in terms of aesthetics - dash, blink, roll. I think that dodge with and without invulnerability frames could make for a different type of experience as well.
Post-hit-vampirism - you don't really take an action to avoid damage but if you take a particular action/attack after you are hit to recover the lost health.
Being tanky - this might sound stupid but being tanky/having a large health pool and/or natural health-regen and very little other defensive actions could be a playstyle on it's own.
Parry/Riposte - a very limited time guard or dodge in terms of animation that results in a counter attack of some sort. The counter attack effect should have a proportionate power to the time limit you have to execute the Parry action.
Consequences for enemies - stamina drain on attack and being open for attacks from other directions is the obvious downsides for the enemies but particularly with the parry/riposte system you could have mutiple negative effects on the enemies depending on the class. The simplest one is dealing some damage back. Another one is placing a debuff on an enemy or controlling them for a limited time - disabling their ability to attack or cast spells or move - and having that effect in an area could also be a very high-risk-high-reward mechanic. Regaining health can also be a consequence of a successful parry.
Party Skills
This is the final piece of the puzzle and it is the most easy to mess up and result in a trivial game or felling like those skills do not matter and thus the game lacks teamplay in multiplayer. While those skills can be very useful in solo play, having them used appropriately in multiplayer really elevates the game. There are 3 general types of skills you could have here - control, stat manipulation and providing information.
Control - this is the type of skill that controls the battlefield in some form. There are aggression control skills that forces the enemies to attack a particular target, usually but not always the caster of the skill. There are ground control skills that create obstacles on the floor that prevent enemies and allies from moving or attacking through but in a 3 dimensional game those could also be elevations or pits created by that skill that allow allies to take higher ground or enemies to fall into a pit and be disabled and an easy target for long-distance fighters. Another type of control skills are the position control skills that move an ally or an enemy to a particular position. And the final type of control is direct disables - stuns(no action), disarms(no weapon attacks), silences(no spells), root(no movement), slow(reduced movement).
Stat manipulation - this is the type of skills that directly manipulate an RPG character's stats. Usually those are either positively affecting an allied character stats or negatively affecting an enemy character's stats commonly know as buffs and debuffs. Mixing those up into a single skill that has to be cast on a single target could be fun and tactically challenging. Shielding an ally or healing them also falls into that category but those two have to be extremely sparingly used as they tend to trivialize damage avoidance.
Providing Information - I don't see many of those types of skills in multiplayer action games but I think they could be extremely beneficial to the whole experience. Those would be the skills that provide information to your allies but do not have a direct effect on them, rather giving the whole party the option to utilize that information to their benefit. Examples of those would be revealing enemy placement in an unexplored room or highlight traps, incoming attacks or enemy weak spots to allies. A common mechanic in Turn-based strategy games are places of power that provide temporary buffs to units standing on those places - it is possible to implement such a mechanic in the game but have those places visible to only certain character with certain skills that can reveal them to their allies. It is possible to have the reverse done as well - having cursed places where you try to lure your enemies to reduce their stats.
So this is what has been rattling in my head for quite some time now. I would love to find out what you think about it.
The Problem
I hate when multiplayer games are based on the "Holy Trinity" system of Tank, Damage Dealer and Healer/Support. I think that separating the roles like that is a significant detriment to a game and especially to an action game where one of the main things you do in an action game is learn how to effectively avoid damage while doing damage or completing other objectives. Additionally balancing the game for such a system makes the fights artificially longer than they need to be in order to check the very simple tanks of managing agro or your mana. Such balancing is also extremely unforgiving to mistakes and often relies on one or two-hit kills as otherwise there would be absolutely no challenge in the combat system due to the presence of the healer as a primary role. Furthermore in order to force tanking and healing as primary roles some games make some attacks completely unavoidable which is a huge mistake in an action game. The result of such a system are prolonged battles that end extremely quickly on any non-trivial mistake that are both dull and frustrating to the players at the same time and do not play as an action game at all.
The Proposed Solution
I think the solution of these problems in multiplayer action games is pretty easy... theoretically and kind of hard to pull off in practice. So what is it? Make all character deal relatively the same amount of damage, remove healing almost completely and de-emphasize tanking instead making the characters differentiate from one another on the way they deal damage, they way they avoid damage and what else then can do in a party. That last part is actually extremely important in a multiplayer game and is what is missing in most previous attempts to circumvent the trinity system. The ways to deal damage and ways to avoid damage should come from action games directly with some minor inspiration from RPGs while the "thing you can do in a party" should be heavily based on RPG archetypes but should enhance dealing or avoiding damage without making them trivial or inconsequential. Of course different class resource mechanics and resource management in general are also a great way to differentiate different classes from one-another but those are not really the focus of this Thread and I will not talk about them.
Ways To Do Damage
I think this is the most intuitive part of the equation. Besides damage dealt that is the balancing factor so that different attacks feel fair most attacks feel different because of a combination of the following factors - range, speed, area/need to aim, movement and wait time for effect.
Range description usually fits in melee, close range, medium range and long range. Of course there could be effective range for attacks and damage fall-off after that.
Attack speed can be really fast - an attack taking a portion of a second, really slow - having to channel the attack for several seconds, or anything in between. And there are skills that have different effects depending on how long do you channel them which can be a lot of fun as well.
Area and Need to Aim are pretty self-explanatory and they are kind of loosely tied to the range. And again here we could have different areas of an attack or aiming that have a different effect - the simplest one being a headshot in most games that deals additional damage. A similar mechanic in some games is used to target individual limbs at melee range.
The movement is very important - how does an attack move your character. Most melee moves should move your character slightly forward but there should also be skills that are stationary or that reduce your speed or move you greatly or enhance your speed. Most people underestimate that and have prefer to have the character either be completely stationary or completely mobile during all attacks but I think both are bad approaches - both feel unnatural and have a detrimental effect on the necessity or ability to avoid damage.
Wait time for effect is a bit weird as most attacks would have an immediate effect. Still a playstyle with delayed effects can be fun. The most obvious playstyle is the Damage-over-time playstyle that places debuffs on enemies that deal damage to them every second or so but it is not the only one. Another possible way to do a delayed effect attack can be putting stacks of debuffs on an enemy and then detonating them with another skill later on. Even just having a skill that just deals a large amount of damage at a later time can be a fun mechanic especially in PvP where players can react to those things.
Ways To Avoid Damage
While dealing damage is fun I think that the most important part of an action game is your ability to avoid damage and your limitations in doing so. Damage avoidance is pretty basic - taking an action in order to not take damage and as such I do not think there are that many variants for it. Most of the variance here comes from your attacks preventing you to take an action to avoid damage. Because of that I'm not a big fan of action cancelling and although I can see how it is useful in some instances I think excessive action cancelling makes a game kind of trivial. Another factor that makes avoiding action interesting is the effect that this guard action has on your character or on the attacking enemy. I think a character should have at least two possible actions of damage avoidance. That being said here are some variants of damage avoidance and I know all of those are pretty standard but I feel like I need to list them... for some reason.
Guarding - an action that rises your shield or weapon and when you are hit in that stance you either take significantly reduced damage or no damage. You guard could be limited or unlimited in terms of time or damage taken and it can be tied to some kind of resource the character has such as mana or stamina.
Dodge - an action that moves your character out of the way of an attack. Multiple flavors in terms of aesthetics - dash, blink, roll. I think that dodge with and without invulnerability frames could make for a different type of experience as well.
Post-hit-vampirism - you don't really take an action to avoid damage but if you take a particular action/attack after you are hit to recover the lost health.
Being tanky - this might sound stupid but being tanky/having a large health pool and/or natural health-regen and very little other defensive actions could be a playstyle on it's own.
Parry/Riposte - a very limited time guard or dodge in terms of animation that results in a counter attack of some sort. The counter attack effect should have a proportionate power to the time limit you have to execute the Parry action.
Consequences for enemies - stamina drain on attack and being open for attacks from other directions is the obvious downsides for the enemies but particularly with the parry/riposte system you could have mutiple negative effects on the enemies depending on the class. The simplest one is dealing some damage back. Another one is placing a debuff on an enemy or controlling them for a limited time - disabling their ability to attack or cast spells or move - and having that effect in an area could also be a very high-risk-high-reward mechanic. Regaining health can also be a consequence of a successful parry.
Party Skills
This is the final piece of the puzzle and it is the most easy to mess up and result in a trivial game or felling like those skills do not matter and thus the game lacks teamplay in multiplayer. While those skills can be very useful in solo play, having them used appropriately in multiplayer really elevates the game. There are 3 general types of skills you could have here - control, stat manipulation and providing information.
Control - this is the type of skill that controls the battlefield in some form. There are aggression control skills that forces the enemies to attack a particular target, usually but not always the caster of the skill. There are ground control skills that create obstacles on the floor that prevent enemies and allies from moving or attacking through but in a 3 dimensional game those could also be elevations or pits created by that skill that allow allies to take higher ground or enemies to fall into a pit and be disabled and an easy target for long-distance fighters. Another type of control skills are the position control skills that move an ally or an enemy to a particular position. And the final type of control is direct disables - stuns(no action), disarms(no weapon attacks), silences(no spells), root(no movement), slow(reduced movement).
Stat manipulation - this is the type of skills that directly manipulate an RPG character's stats. Usually those are either positively affecting an allied character stats or negatively affecting an enemy character's stats commonly know as buffs and debuffs. Mixing those up into a single skill that has to be cast on a single target could be fun and tactically challenging. Shielding an ally or healing them also falls into that category but those two have to be extremely sparingly used as they tend to trivialize damage avoidance.
Providing Information - I don't see many of those types of skills in multiplayer action games but I think they could be extremely beneficial to the whole experience. Those would be the skills that provide information to your allies but do not have a direct effect on them, rather giving the whole party the option to utilize that information to their benefit. Examples of those would be revealing enemy placement in an unexplored room or highlight traps, incoming attacks or enemy weak spots to allies. A common mechanic in Turn-based strategy games are places of power that provide temporary buffs to units standing on those places - it is possible to implement such a mechanic in the game but have those places visible to only certain character with certain skills that can reveal them to their allies. It is possible to have the reverse done as well - having cursed places where you try to lure your enemies to reduce their stats.
So this is what has been rattling in my head for quite some time now. I would love to find out what you think about it.