Josh Sawyer on Miss and Hit

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I like everything, except for the proposition that no attack ever misses and/or does not inflict some form of damage.

 

It precludes many different combat activities:

• An highly skilled veteran swordsman is incapable of evading, parrying, or blocking a rookie nave's blade.
  
• All archers are experts, at any permitted range.
  
• No combatant can ever truely make a mistake.
  
• Conditions such as concealment become irrelevant, as an attack will never miss.
  

There are more, but they have already been addressed. While the notion of a minnimum attack only taking stamina is reasonable (as parrying & parrying require exertion), it still fails to resolve conditions of concealment or cover.

[SunBroSolaire]

You are looking at averages over time and seeing that they play the same, whereas it's not the averages that matter or make the older approach interesting, it's the spikes and valleys over time that make one different than the other.

That's fair, but the new system will also have spikes and valleys. idk about you guys, but I would rarely perform a single melee attack in the IE games. Rather, I would set my fighter to hammer away for a few turns, at which point the extreme spikes are smoothed out, and I don't think there will be a huge difference with the new system.

[Adhin]

Yeah I agree about concealment amongst other things but his example was quite literally shields in melee and nothing else, while also referring to them considering it amongst a bunch of other things to handle other situations. For basic melee situations I think it works good, hopefully we get more detailed information as to other examples for other systems. And while I'm very much in favor of a more consistent system (even with some wild range in dmg numbers and glancing blows) there should be situations of negating all dmg for specific things.

[Osvir]

One thing at a time I think Lephys.

 

Get the "Main Health" (in essence, Stamina) right and you can add additions to it.

 

Priority should be something like:

1. Get "Main Health" right (Stamina)

2. Get Mortality right based on the "Main Health" factor

3. Get Combinations right between the two.

 

Just some thoughts/brainstorming/developer insight armchair philosophy on how melee combat could be somewhat handled:

 

"Attack"

1. Attack (Stamina)

2. Hit or Miss?

3a. If Hit. Go to 4.

3b. If Miss. See "Block" 2b

4. Enemy Block Roll (Same as "Block" really)

5a. If Hit, Enemy looses Health (Mortality)

5b. If Psuedo-"Miss", Enemy+Player looses Stamina in a new dice roll (See "Struggle")

6. If Critical Hit: Hit entirely and powerfully

7. If Critical Miss: Miss entirely (Lose Stamina+Morale/Effect+Health sometimes?)

 

"Block"

1. Hit or "Miss"?

2a. Hit: You take Health damage (with Mortality "Off" you'd instead take Stamina damage?)

2b. Miss: Block/Dodge/Parry etc. etc. (See "Struggle")

3. Critical Hit: Player takes more damage

4. Critical Miss: Enemy misses entirely.

 

"Struggle"

1. "Missed" attack.

2. Block/Dodge/Parry, could they statistically have different tactical values?

3. Who wins the struggle?

4a. If Player, lose less Stamina.

4b. If Enemy, lose more Stamina.

 

If I were to scry in the matter I would guess we're at some "0.4" in discussion with actual discussion on about a 3.5 level, in development it sounds something like "0.1" or "0.2" even.

 

What is Critical Hit and Critical Miss then?

 

Josh is only talking about Hit and Miss no? Critical Miss+Critical Hit aren't taken into account at this point so (or thought about at this point?)... maybe those will accommodate to those who want the possibility to miss? (me too!) In my opinion it adds intensity, "The party can miss attacks" and gives them this sort of "No one is perfect" feeling to combat.

 

It'll make me sit on my toes and be frustrated on higher difficulty yelling "Why did you miss!?!?" in an important battle which is a sense of odd enjoyment as well, because when the character in question manages to get that vital last hit on a random encounter I'll be celebrating in adrenaline and joy

 

Note and general suggestion (for a broader consensus): Just because "Parry/Dodge/Block" might not be a part of P:E visually or graphically, perhaps it could be represented in dice rolls and in the form of a "Log".

Edited January 3, 2013 by Osvir

[Bartimaeus]

I like the idea of somewhat mitigating the effects of chance, but I'm not sure to this extent. I would've rather seen a system where there's four different types of attacks: miss, glancing hit, hit, critical hit. Removing miss entirely makes me feel a little uneasy. It would be neat to see a more AD&D-like system with glancing blows, so that if you reach a certain THAC0 threshold, similar to doing a regular hit, you still do a little damage, but certainly not all of the time.

[Tigranes]

I like the idea that combat is always risky, and you can't get out of being damaged, because that introduces a desirable element of attrition into adventuring as a whole (you can steamroller 50 opponents but at the end they will have worn you out). But I think there are pitfalls in implementation that will have to be worked around:

 

(1) Why the absolute figure of half damage on a perfect miss? Why not a sliding scale with a fixed minimum (say, 25%)?

(2) Tactical poverty. The idea of monsters or PCs that hit very hard but not very reliably, or ones that hit very reliably but for not much, etc. become immediately only half as effective or striking. In this system, why do I want to invest in dodging? Why do I want to invest in greater to-hit chance? Wouldn't I be encouraged to just build all my characters to keep on hitting and have high stamina/health in order to survive a battle of short-term attrition?

(3) There is excitement in missing, and your opponents missing; even better with critical misses. Times when you escape death and claim victory because of an opponent's critical miss, etc - those dramatic instances now become only half as likely to occur in the first place.

 

Most importantly, from a player's point of view, I simply don't see much benefit in removing perfect misses. They never bothered me before. Sure, there have been cases in existing games where you miss far too much, say, in earlier levels (e.g. non-combat oriented character vs. the plants in FO2 starting area), or systems where far too much is due to chance and encourages reloaditis, but it has never been that big of a problem in well designed games... so why incur the above costs by messing with it?

[Osvir]

Personally feel like something like this should be considered:

 

Critical Hit Chance

Hit Chance

Miss Glance Chance (Ti-hi!)

Critical Miss Chance

 

Now to go advocate Lance weapons!

[Helm]

I think you're overestimating the fun of dodging and missing. I don't think most players find it particularly enjoyable, and it's exacerbated/amplified in games like the new XCOM where players are constantly in stunned disbelief at the RNG.

I thought it was an interessting mechanic in the IE-Engine games. It was fun trying to improve your characters stats in order to improve your THAC0. It also gave you the feeling of becoming a powerful warrior to see your ability to hit the enemy rise.

 

Kind of sad, that Sawyer wants to remove this. *sigh*

[WorstUsernameEver]

I get Josh's reasoning, but I don't get why he wants to remove misses completely. Making it a less likely occurrence surely would accomplish roughly the same goals while also lending more unpredictability and variance to combat? That said, as with all the mechanical changes proposed so far, it's difficult to comment until we actually get to play and see how they coalesce together. The beta is going to be really important in that regard, so hopefully the team is keeping all doors open at this point.

[Hertzila]

Disregarding parrying for now, I can see how this would work nicely from a mechanics point of view if glance damage is locked only to stamina, but supposing that there is no such thing as a miss, it would result in strange situations when applied to ranged weapons. A rookie thief suddenly picking a small bow and still hitting (even if just a glance) the guy 40 meters away. Behind a tall wall.

I'm pretty sure that at least for ranged weapons the complete miss will have to be brought back, lest things turn to strange. But instead of the chance of miss being something like 30%, at least for melee attacks make it be under 5% like the critical miss chances of the old.

 

Regarding parrying and dodging and all that, one way I could see it working within this system is that instead of being included in the miss roll, it's rolled seperately and it results in the damage going one step down. That is, if you're hit with a glancing blow but you parry it, it turns into a complete miss. Or you happen to be unlucky and get a crit up your face, but you manage to dodge succesfully and reduce the critical attack into a normal one.

It'll need testing for the correct values and thresholds, but it might work and still result in a more normalized damage.

[HansKrSG]

I can in theory get that you expend Stamina for dodging/parrying etc. but it still feels silly. Not getting hit is not half as bothering as getting hit, its a lot less bothering, trust me, please try it yourself with a sharp sword. (No don't, you'll get hurt badly or die).

 

In short. I do not agree with removing full misses.

[Gumbercules]

Does anybody have any thoughts on my suggestion to limit the amount of misses that can happen in a row? Reading the formspring, it seems to me that one of Josh's main objections is a situation where the RNG gives you a big long run of misses in a row. In a tabletop RPG, the DM might be able to fudge the numbers from behind his screen when something like that happens.

 

In a computer RPG, you could sort of mimic this by either limiting the number of times in a row that any character or enemy can completely dodge an attack, or the number of times in a row that a character or enemy can miss an attack. The threshold can differ depending on stats and level.

[DreamingVoid]

You should really post this in general discussion as it will, sadly, get more attention there than it ever will here.

[Karkarov]

Will say the same thing I said in the actual formspring comments.

 

Remember that in P:E stamina loss is the primary reason you get incapacitated in combat, not health loss. Yes, blocking a sword swing with your shield might not actually hurt you very much, but it will definitely fatigue you. As will having to make a desperate dive to avoid a fire ball, or a series of fast parries to block a furious attack, etc etc. Even games like TES series and Dark Souls follow this type of system with a stamina system. Just in this game stamina is maybe more important and you don't lose it for taking offensive actions, or at least not always.

 

There is also something to be said for combat mechanics that remove RNG, speed up combat in general, and put the focus on tactics not luck or big all or nothing attacks. As long as they include rules to make it possible to get mitigated effects in same melee without having to have a shield I see no issue. The minute being able to take reduced melee damage becomes reliant on having a shield strapped on.... well you can forget about dual wielding or two hand weapons unless their damage potential is over balanced. I trust Obsidian knows that though and already has plans to address that and other balance issues.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Karkarov

[Gfted1]

Now you cant miss? Undoubtedly being implemented to stomp out degenerative missing. It gets worse every day.

[Alexjh]

On initially rading the whole "always get damaged" thinf I was strongly against it, as a character who is good at dodging is if nothing else one of the main archetypes of combat, however, on consideration of the context of the 2 tier health system I can see ways to make it work sensibly.

 

If stamina is representative of the ability to continue fighting while health is the representative of the ability to continue living, a dodge would therefore be represented as no health damage you haven't been actually hurt, but you have completed an action whereby you have exerted yourself, and thus you still take a hit to stamina even if you successfully dodge.

 

One thing I would say is that I think people have the wrong idea about what the dice role actually represents, there seems to be this assumption in some quarters that it is just representing randomness of scuess,whereas I've always seen it as being representative of all the random factors in a fight that it would be too fiddly to calculate but just simulated into one conveniant form. So rather than just "will I hit or won't I hit" being representative of luck, its more things like whether you came out of tht last round in a bad stance, whether there is some light reflected in your eyes, whether the very slight changes in your poise are going to have a positive effect or negative effect etc, whether you choke on a bit of dust thats been kicked up and so on.

 

Which isn't to say I can't see why people dislike the random rolls (but I find predictable combat far more tedious that one with a wildcard element) but the simple way to fix that is to proportionally increase the portion of a roll that is stat based, so that character skills plays a bigger part of a roll relative to the d20 or whatever. You could also halve the d20 to d10 but then you end up with much more probable critical succeess and critical fail rates, so it makes more sense to double (or whatever) everything else.

[HansKrSG]

Just to add, I am scared how many people blindly trust Obsidian. Obsidian =/= the people that made All the IE games, just some of them that are specifically working on this project.

I hope they (The developers) are mindfull of the promise of bringing back the IE feel to this game, when they are thinking of straying away from design concepts that was a part of these games.

 

I do not want them to use an already existing system, but basic concepts, like actually managing to miss something. for example, are things they should be very careful about changing.

 

The stamina score in the TES games are very different from what role Stamina seems to have in PE. In TES you could not run(All games), jump (Arena-Oblivion) and use power attacks (Oblivion+Skyrim) when you were out of it, but you didn't loose stamina when you were hit, nor did you fall unconscious when it was empty. (I know there are exceptions in Morrowind and Oblivion I think, where stamina draining attack actually made you fall over if you reached 0, but I might remember incorrectly). In PE stamina is your wounds before you go get really hurt with crits and the like(Think Warhammer FRPG), or your health before you loose vitality (Think the Star Wars D20 system). Loosing this because its "le tireing" to block/dodge/parry is in my mind a step in the wrong direction. It is tireing to block and dodge and parry, sure, but people fought for hours without falling unconscious because of fatigue in real battles, to accomodate any logic with this kind of system, you would have to have thousands of points of stamina to make those "miss" 5 stamina losses, trivial enough.

 

Again, simply put, I no like.

Edited January 3, 2013 by HansKrSG

[Infinitron]

You should really post this in general discussion as it will, sadly, get more attention there than it ever will here.

 

You're saying that as if attention is a good thing.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Infinitron

[rjshae]

If armor determines how much damage you take. What dictates whether you hit/miss/dodge an attack in PE?

A "miss" against any defense translates to half minimum damage inflicted or half minimum duration on any sort of status effect. I.e. there aren't "full" misses, but mitigated effects. A hit is the standard damage/duration. A hit that is within the critical hit range does 150% max damage or duration.

There's something I'm unclear about here. Is he saying that if the opponent would have scored a hit against you if you were not employing any defenses, then you will always receive some minimal amount of damage? Or is he saying that just waving a sword in your general direction will always cause some damage? If it is the former then that would make at least some sort of sense. However, then latter seems completely illogical; it's just too much of an abstraction for me to be happy about.

[Undecaf]

I don't like this. Obviously I can't predict how it'll feel (mechanically) in the end, but I find the concept of my character (or an NPC) being unable to "fail" and "cause fail due to being better" an odd one in a game where the player has no direct clickety-click control of the situation and the result is based on "numbers" that are supposed to imply the characters aptitude.

 

I like my RNG fine where it is appropriate, and surely there are ways to implement failure without it coming down to a missfest (unless the situation is appropriate for such - i.e. a clumsy enough character trying to pummel or shoot something really agile, or a bad archer shooting -- does this "mitigation" stuff mean that even archers/other ranged combatants can't miss).

 

It just feels an odd a concept (to me) in an RPG.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Undecaf

[Helm]

Ok, so no reflex saving throws and no THAC0.... does that mean rogues and wizards all have to wear plate armor like your fighters or what?

[Greensleeve]

I don't feel as though I can really comment on the system very much as is, considering it's very early on and in a vacuum. We'll see out if plays out.

 

However:

 

Just to add, I am scared how many people blindly trust Obsidian. Obsidian =/= the people that made All the IE games, just some of them that are specifically working on this project.

I hope they (The developers) are mindfull of the promise of bringing back the IE feel to this game, when they are thinking of straying away from design concepts that was a part of these games.

 

I do not want them to use an already existing system, but basic concepts, like actually managing to miss something. for example, are things they should be very careful about changing.

 

The stamina score in the TES games are very different from what role Stamina seems to have in PE. In TES you could not run(All games), jump (Arena-Oblivion) and use power attacks (Oblivion+Skyrim) when you were out of it, but you didn't loose stamina when you were hit, nor did you fall unconscious when it was empty. (I know there are exceptions in Morrowind and Oblivion I think, where stamina draining attack actually made you fall over if you reached 0, but I might remember incorrectly). In PE stamina is your wounds before you go get really hurt with crits and the like(Think Warhammer FRPG), or your health before you loose vitality (Think the Star Wars D20 system). Loosing this because its "le tireing" to block/dodge/parry is in my mind a step in the wrong direction. It is tireing to block and dodge and parry, sure, but people fought for hours without falling unconscious because of fatigue in real battles, to accomodate any logic with this kind of system, you would have to have thousands of points of stamina to make those "miss" 5 stamina losses, trivial enough.

 

Again, simply put, I no like.

 

Well, quite frankly, I'm not sure why everyone wants a game capturing the mechanics of the IE games. They weren't very good and it's not on that promise that I backed this game. The magic and IE-feel they want to bring back, as far as I'm concerned and what I'm hoping, is that of the characters, the setting, the plot, the monsters, and the writing.

 

But what do I know, I might be in great minority here.

[SunBroSolaire]

Just to add, I am scared how many people blindly trust Obsidian. Obsidian =/= the people that made All the IE games, just some of them that are specifically working on this project.

I hope they (The developers) are mindfull of the promise of bringing back the IE feel to this game, when they are thinking of straying away from design concepts that was a part of these games.

Personally, I backed this more for Obsidian (and specifically Avellone, Cain, and Sawyer) than I did out of nostalgia for the IE games. If I didn't trust them to make a good game, I wouldn't have given them my money. As far as sticking to the IE formula, they said they would try to capture the feel, not exactly replicate the entire D&D system. D&D is complete balls in real time crpgs, frankly I'm shocked so many people are defending it.

[Malekith]

I don't feel as though I can really comment on the system very much as is, considering it's very early on and in a vacuum. We'll see out if plays out.

 

However:

 

Just to add, I am scared how many people blindly trust Obsidian. Obsidian =/= the people that made All the IE games, just some of them that are specifically working on this project.

I hope they (The developers) are mindfull of the promise of bringing back the IE feel to this game, when they are thinking of straying away from design concepts that was a part of these games.

 

I do not want them to use an already existing system, but basic concepts, like actually managing to miss something. for example, are things they should be very careful about changing.

 

The stamina score in the TES games are very different from what role Stamina seems to have in PE. In TES you could not run(All games), jump (Arena-Oblivion) and use power attacks (Oblivion+Skyrim) when you were out of it, but you didn't loose stamina when you were hit, nor did you fall unconscious when it was empty. (I know there are exceptions in Morrowind and Oblivion I think, where stamina draining attack actually made you fall over if you reached 0, but I might remember incorrectly). In PE stamina is your wounds before you go get really hurt with crits and the like(Think Warhammer FRPG), or your health before you loose vitality (Think the Star Wars D20 system). Loosing this because its "le tireing" to block/dodge/parry is in my mind a step in the wrong direction. It is tireing to block and dodge and parry, sure, but people fought for hours without falling unconscious because of fatigue in real battles, to accomodate any logic with this kind of system, you would have to have thousands of points of stamina to make those "miss" 5 stamina losses, trivial enough.

 

Again, simply put, I no like.

 

Well, quite frankly, I'm not sure why everyone wants a game capturing the mechanics of the IE games. They weren't very good and it's not on that promise that I backed this game. The magic and IE-feel they want to bring back, as far as I'm concerned and what I'm hoping, is that of the characters, the setting, the plot, the monsters, and the writing.

 

But what do I know, I might be in great minority here.

With this i agree. Even if combat turns out **** if the things you mentioned are great i'll be happy.But,for me at least IE had good mechanics.They are my favorite games of all time combat-wise.And even though i'm an Obsidian fan, i didn't like any of their game systems so far,including New Vegas.I believe that is not because they are bad designers but because the design direction of the whole industry is not the same with the old games.I hoped that since this game is kickstarted and is cattering to IE nostalgia,the direction would be more IE like. I couldn't care less if they won't use D&D.But it seems like the type of things in game design that I really enjoy -- chaotic systems, breakable systems, and a sense of humor in mechanical design (think Fallout 1) are being phased out. From a designers' perspective maybe these things aren't great, but I always like being surprised when playing games, whether its because something fails that I was sure would work, or vice versa. Most of my favorite moments in old RPGs happened when some utterly improbable gambit worked, and it seems like modern designers are determined to make such a thing impossible.And i'm not the only one .The underline text is a quote from another person who sums my feelings exactly.The IE games had that.IF that is a good thing or not is a matter of taste.But in a IE inpired game they shouldn't go for the complete opposite direction with League of Legends mechanics

Edited January 3, 2013 by Malekith

[Shadenuat]

Real-time + stamina shield make glancing kinda an overkill. Making new X-Com an example was kinda dumb because in TB you do see effect of every miss. In RTwP I rarely ever payed lot of attention to misses, I mostly watched flow of combat in general.