Player movement and verticality

[Lowlife]

Something I would personally love to see is distinct class based vertical locomotion. For example the vampire being able to jump great heights/scaling walls with unparalleled finess and whatnot. The option to stalk and attack from roof tops and the sort would seem amazingly fitting for an apex predator of the likes and has been represented in many forms of media for countless years. While that would make sense for a vampire, personally I wouldn't think it would be fitting for a class like the revenant. If anything maybe jumping to great heights or very clumsily digging their finger tips into the side of a building to travel up the side. How you guys feel about such a thing, and what other types of vertical movement would you like to see other classes perform?

 

[derula]

I never got into the gameplay of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but I was very surprised by the verticality in its gameplay. Especially since it's one of the earliest 3D games. Sometimes it could be very annoying (high-flying bats you can't lock onto), but at other times it showed very clever puzzle design that required you to tile the camera up.

Now obviously we have some newer games with a vertical component - such as climbing buildings in Assassin's Creed - but I feel like even in these examples you're rarely required to account for that third dimension. That is, usually your camera can remain facing straight, and you only occasionally need to tilt it up or down slightly.

Many aspects of OoT were picked up by later games, but this one, it seems to me, not as much. It's possible that it just doesn't translate well to some genres, or that there are general problems with it that I'm missing. However, in OoT, setting aside the unfortunate camera, it mostly felt very rewarding to me to figure out such vertical puzzles. (I should add I was playing the 3DS remake, so improved graphical hints and stereoscopic 3D may have helped me there.)

So I wouldn't mind seeing another game take a shot at something like that.

 

[Elveone]

I like the idea of different traversal styles on paper but I think there's a severe problem with actually implementing that style of movement.

The latest Avengers game serves as a great demonstration of these problems. In Avengers there are basically 4 different traversal methods besides simply jumping - flying, grappling hooks, double-jump and wall running, and last - hanging on to walls.

Flying is just that - flying. And it renders any platforming challenge absolutely obsolete.

The grappling hook feels probably the best in this case - you still have to plan your travel path well in order to fully utilize it and it is a fun mechanic.

Wall-running and double jump is okayish and would be perfectly comfortable if the previous two traversal methods were not in the game. The way it is now it feels unnecessarily hard if not impossible to get to some places and it is just frustrating especially in a group.

The same goes for the last method - hanging on to walls - but it is mostly the implementation. That method is actually better at times for getting to high places but for some reason the game does not allow you to hang to every wall and there is no indication where you can hang and where you cannot so you have guess. Moreover you can only jump off the wall and not move on it while hanging and those jumps are helluva imprecise. Overall it feels very clunky as a style of movement.

The problem is that those methods are not equal. I think flying outright shouldn't be in any action-adventure game. Floating and gliding with optional air upstreams to gain altitude - sure, but straight-up flying - no. It trivializes platforming circumvents any traversal-based puzzles but outright ignoring them. For similar reasons I don't like the different characters to have different abilities when it comes to traversal - you have to design the level in order to let the most mobility-challenged character through and that often trivializes the traversal for any other characters that have higher versatility when it comes to mobility. Of course you can design pathways for multiple character types but that actually splits the party for an obstacle and then they meet back together and that feels cheap. You can have areas with secrets or rare items that can be reached only by a particular character but when you find such a secret area with a character of inappropriate type it just feels punishing for no reason and I don't think that is a good design as well.

When it comes to traversal abilities though I would welcome as many as can be made available with some caveats.

I like the double jumps and grappling hook as traversal mechanics as long as the grappling hook's range is not infinite. Wall-running is okay and I think it can be pretty fun when done right. All of these present a more action-y and less cerebral approach to traversal but overall but they are a good skill-check and result in very fun gameplay.

I severely dislike wall-climbing on any surface because it tends to have the same problem as flying - it makes platforming far too easy. It is the reason Assassin's Creed has always been a disappointing action-adventure for me despite the great visuals it has always had. I dislike the system even when there is a stamina bar attached to it like the way it is done in Breath of the Wild although it is a lot better. Wall climbing on particular surfaces is welcome as it can result in some great traversal puzzles.

On the more cerebral side of things I would like to mention things like conditional teleportation between two set points, turning into mist to go through grates, having the ability to switch to an alternative dimension of the world with altered geography, having a very long-distance grappling hook that only attaches to particular surfaces, floating/gliding with air movements playing a crucial role in ascending and potentially descending, moving parts of the environment. The combination of those elements usually result in a very pleasant variety of puzzles and are basically the basis of a lot of action-adventure games.

Of course all of the above is written from a perspective of an action-adventure fan who likes puzzles in his games. If the game is to be purely focused on action then the traversal abilities serve as only as combat tools and atmospheric differences between different characters and not as puzzle elements and those can be balanced a lot more easily.

 

[Lowlife]

I hadn't thought about that. Some of the locomotion could break puzzles and whatnot. Teleportation for the liche sounds awesome though!

 

[Livin]

Liche- Teleportation to areas within their field of view, all the way up to the horizon if unobstructed

Vampire- Projects themselves in the form of mist or a colony of bats, like the Reaver's shadow step ability from Nosgoth or Kain bat form from Blood Omen

Revenant- Channel the fires of their rage to propel their bodies like a rocket, with advancement it could lead to something on the level of Ironman

Ghoul- Forcefully climb any structure and leap great distances through brute strength

Banshee- Levitating from one from spot to the next, with advancement able to hover indefinitely

Wraith- Hooked chains erupting from their body to quickly grapple from place to place

Wight (don't know enough yet to say)

Edit
Perhaps the wights could enbue and manipulate their environment with their energy, causing it to shift temporarily into something that they can traverse (like the shifting in Soul Reaver but without the dimensional shifting).

 

[Lowlife]

Liche- Teleportation to areas within their field of view, all the way up to the horizon if unobstructed

Vampire- Projects themselves in the form of mist or a colony of bats, like the Reaver's shadow step ability from Nosgoth or Kain bat form from Blood Omen

Revenant- Channel the fires of their rage to propel their bodies like a rocket, with advancement it could lead to something on the level of Ironman

Ghoul- Forcefully climb any structure and leap great distances through brute strength

Banshee- Levitating from one from spot to the next, with advancement able to hover indefinitely

Wraith- Hooked chains erupting from their body to quickly grapple from place to place

Wight (don't know enough yet to say)

Edit
Perhaps the wights could endue and manipulate their environment with their energy, causing it to shift temporarily into something that they can traverse (like the shifting in Soul Reaver but without the dimensional shifting).

I love these ideas, especially with the wraiths.

 

[Quamobrem]

I think they should also consider *when* the classes can be most mobile. For example, Vampires seem to be very mobile in combat, and that gives them a different feel in a fight. Whereas a Liche could be not particularly mobile in combat, but have mechanics that allow it to keep up with an allied vampire *outside* combat so the vampire doesn't become the class everyone plays so they can speed through missions. Like if the Liche could enter a faster mode that makes it more vulnerable to enemies, leaving it with a more slow and methodical combat style but still able to keep up with the other classes.

 

[klokwerkaos]

I like the idea of different traversal styles on paper but I think there's a severe problem with actually implementing that style of movement.

These can actually be done well, some supers games over the years have done this masterfully (CoH/CoV being a great example). I'd argue instead that Avengers is a stinky poo poo game and shouldn't be used as a benchmark for anything but sucking and ugly over-monetization practices. The game is supposed to represent a major franchise and they A) couldn't budget actor likeness B) it's full of glitches to this day last I heard C) it's a samey repetitive garbage by all accounts I've heard.

The way you balance this stuff is with point buy allocations and class balance. I've done some preliminary design outlines in the suggestions area that I think gives a fair general notion of how to manage this.

Liche- Teleportation to areas within their field of view, all the way up to the horizon if unobstructed

Vampire- Projects themselves in the form of mist or a colony of bats, like the Reaver's shadow step ability from Nosgoth or Kain bat form from Blood Omen

Revenant- Channel the fires of their rage to propel their bodies like a rocket, with advancement it could lead to something on the level of Ironman

Ghoul- Forcefully climb any structure and leap great distances through brute strength

Banshee- Levitating from one from spot to the next, with advancement able to hover indefinitely

Wraith- Hooked chains erupting from their body to quickly grapple from place to place

Wight (don't know enough yet to say)

Oddly when I was doing my design outlines all of these line up without reading this post except the banshee and the wraith had the banshee lev and the banshee had a windwalk, but I think the chains idea you gave to the wraith suits the banshee design I have better and I'll edit that in.

I also didn't give mobility to the wight given that they have some other very potent abilities and being a priority target with lots of battlefield manipulation, adding movement to them would essentially make them too OP, also this goes against some of the general lore of wights.

It's not that wights definitely don't have mobility, it's that thematically they are haunters and often defenders of sacred places.

 

[Elveone]

These can actually be done well, some supers games over the years have done this masterfully (CoH/CoV being a great example). I'd argue instead that Avengers is a stinky poo poo game and shouldn't be used as a benchmark for anything but sucking and ugly over-monetization practices. The game is supposed to represent a major franchise and they A) couldn't budget actor likeness B) it's full of glitches to this day last I heard C) it's a samey repetitive garbage by all accounts I've heard.

City of Heroes is a tab-targetted MMO that does not feature any platforming or puzzles so balancing different travel powers there is a bit easier than in an action game that does feature platforming and puzzles. Even in CoH if you want to PvP you do want flight or a specific way to deal with it despite it being relatively the slowest of all of those powers. Avengers is an okay game and I will leave it at that and I have played it so I have an advantage on you on that front. The likeness of the characters to their movie version, the bugs and the amount of content in the game do not have anything to do with the travel powers discussed.

 

[BrandonWap]

I heard the soldiers talking, they said that people were hurt.

Thats when they all gathered up their things and most of then went north, remember guys?

looks at everyone else

 

[DukeVaeVictis]

I would like to see a system which is unique to each class, vampires being athletic and agile when climbing and traversing obstacles (or turning into mist or a bat swarms) while ghouls forcing themselves up with powerful strides. I don't think it should be the same for all classes, why do I think so? It's incrediable dull and boring. Anyone who has played Nosgoth knows that flying can work and I miss flying from that game, it was a lot of fun because you basically hunted other players like a bird of prey.

Should you be restricted by the class you play? Both yes and no, a ravenant shouldn't be as agile as a vampire. You should feel the class you have chosen to play as and if you don't like it, you can change it. Removing the unique feeling of the classes would basically in my opinion make them feel less apart, if I play as a ravenant I know that I might not have the same options for traversing as a vampire and that's something I am fine with, should I have fewer ways to approach the same location? No, but I shouldn't have the same ways to reach it. Let me ram the gate and destroy the human filth along the way while the vampire or ghoul runs on the roof tops and climb inside the church and clear the guts out while I clear out the courtyard.

 

[Elveone]

Nosgoth was an arena brawler style PvP game with no RPG elements and very basic combat mechanics. Flying worked because everyone who played against the flying character was a ranged character which basically eliminates the problems with flying as a combat power. Also there was also no exploration to speak of, no puzzles and no platforming which is the bigger problem of having flying and differing traversal powers in an action-adventure game.

 

[DukeVaeVictis]

I played Anthem for some months ago (waiting for Anthem 2.0 I just hope I don't have to buy it!) That game has exploration and "puzzles" but there everyone can fly though but as I said before. There should be class specifics ways for the classes to travel and overcome obstacles and not a something which is similar to all classes to even out. I think that's the worse solution for the developer to come with.

 

[Elveone]

I played Anthem for some months ago (waiting for Anthem 2.0 I just hope I don't have to buy it!) That game has exploration and "puzzles" but there everyone can fly though but as I said before. There should be class specifics ways for the classes to travel and overcome obstacles and not a something which is similar to all classes to even out. I think that's the worse solution for the developer to come with.

The problem with flying is eliminating traversal puzzles - if you can fly then you can get everywhere unless it is a walled-off space.

Generally a bigger problem is having different traversal powers in general with different easy of access to different portions of the map. In case with that combined with flying you have one or more flying classes that would be able to get anywhere easily while others would have to be confined to their respective traversal abilities. The disparity does not feel good altogether and instead of having fun and rewarding system that celebrate the differences of different classes you end up with a two-tier system of privileged and non-privileged classes. Basically you feel punished for wanting to play the wrong class.

One of the solutions can be to allow every class to go everywhere with their respective traversal abilities but then you end up with no traversal puzzles altogether which is something that I think is very valuable in an adventure game. Another solution is to not have a class that has access to everything and to do have different traversal powers that allow for basically the same access to locations with only cosmetic and possibly slight mechanical difference but with the same ease of access. I think I have extensively elaborated on different mechanics in a previous post of mine so I am not going to do so again.

 

[DukeVaeVictis]

Traversing puzzle, in one of the thief games you had to shot rope arrows on different wooden planks which was pointing out of the walls, if you did it correctly you could swing your way towards a rope and climb up to repeat the process is this what you mean with traversing puzzle? If so, I prefer to fly over it or wall climb it!

I would rather have abilites and gameplay mechanics that are unique to each class and not the "same-y" gimmicks or reskinned abilites.

The only thing which we can agree with is to disagree. Your solution in my opinion would cheapen the unique differences of the classes and I really hope that the developers rather tries to be unique and different then generic game 101.

Edit; I want to clarify that no, I don't want players to be punished for their selection of classes, what I want is that each class have an unique solution to traverse obstacles, you should feel the class you play.

 

[Elveone]

I guess that would be an example of a traversal puzzle although I have not really played any of the Thief games extensively as stealth is generally not my genre so I would not really know if it is not something really gimmicky or annoying that you are talking about. Generally I am talking about moving platforms or specific surfaces and altering the terrain in order to create a path though an area. Hob featured those pretty extensively and is one of my favorite games because of it but you have those kinds of puzzles in the Legacy of Kain games, the Darksiders games, the 3d Legend of Zeldas and other similar games. It is kind of a staple of the 3rd person action adventure genre. If you want to have that kind of puzzles then you have to limit the ability of a character to go everywhere they want by flying. The thing about those puzzles is that it is a combination of different abilities that allow you to have them and locking certain abilities to certain classes limits the possible puzzles available. Of course you can have multiple solutions available for different puzzles but when you kind of have to design every puzzle to have several different possible solutions it becomes very hard in terms of level design to keep those puzzles from being trivial.

Basically what I am saying is that what you are proposing would either diminish the gameplay experience variety for the sake of visual variety or create a severe overhead to the development.

 

[DukeVaeVictis]

I asked if that's an example of travesal puzzle so I would know more or less what about you speak about, I guess with your confimation, I do.

The gimmicky things are the stuff which you suggest, that every class have equality in traverse across the landscape in order for the classes to be "equal" I don't believe the classes should be equal, they should be different and they should remain so indeed, a ghoul or a liche shouldn't be able to withstand the damage output a revenant do and the revenant should feel heavy, it should feel powerful and their means of travel should be different as well.

I am not really asking for things which a team of veteran (or even decent) game developers can't do. Do I believe it should be multiple ways to solve obstacle (like finding alternative routes/pathways to the goal) or finding addition solutions to a puzzle.

Your concern is, I guess that classes who won't be able to fly, or climb would be left out of content? Now that's something which would be bad game design but lets say that a ravenent needs to find a clue on a rockwall in a large chamber, I don't think it an issue if he/she has to go the long way around compared to a more lighter class who jumped straight up or flew up? If you have friends who play such classes or people in your group no problem, and if you do play solo you will eventually get there anyway.

edit; I changed somethings I sounded too much like a butt, I hope I don't do now.

 

[Elveone]

Having the ability to fly for traversal puzzles is like not being able to ever die for combat - it is overpowered and makes the activity trivial and not enjoyable. Climbing without restrictions is almost as bad. There is a certain joy of solving those terrain puzzles - it is not just about being fast. Also if you have classes that subvert an activity then you cannot put a decent reward for that activity - for example why would you put valuable loot in a chess where a character can just fly to without any problems? Having something be overly easy is just as bad of a design as making something inaccessible for certain classes. I dislike flying and unlimited climbing because I love puzzles and being rewarded for doing them.

Having different traversal abilities and balancing the content around it is very easy to say. A team of veteran developers could possibly do it but that does not mean it would not cause an unjustifiable overhead for them for little to no profit for the player in the end. After all Crystal Dynamics is a team of veteran developers that have been making action-adventures for more than 20 years but when they tried to do the same thing in Avengers it backfired severely.

 

[DukeVaeVictis]

Crystal Dynamics did the Tomb Raider re-imaginations too, I liked the first but really disliked the latest. I honestly think they killed the series with it!

Avengers is a good example for when something to fail, it's honestly not a good game at all and there is a more money grabbing interest then actual making a good game. When it comes to puzzles I would prefer them to be optional and avoidable. I did like the puzzles in The Secret World because it did require some attention to the environment and do some readings they were mostly side missions or random things you came across when exploring, you could do them or go on with your business without an issue.

Are you telling me that, I should be forced to do puzzles when I don't want to do them? That I should be punished becasue I can't skip them? if you say yes then I will point at flying and wall-climbing and say. "not bad ideas after all."

 

[Elveone]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is actually developed by Eidos Montreal and not by Crystal Dynamics. As for the puzzles - generally action-adventures do require puzzle solving to progress but even if the puzzles are only optional then you should not be rewarded for not doing them. They are easy enough to figure out anyway with everything being on the internet nowadays.

As for the puzzles in TSW - worst design ever. It is a freaking ARG at times with internet searches required and impossible not to spoil because of that.