Random functions of casting, attack, and ability times

[Graham]

Hello,

 

first, I don't know if someone already made a thread about something like this. If so, I apologize.

 

I'd like to address a feature that found enjoyable in the games of the Infinity Engine, namely rounds.

Before you start getting heated, let me explain. It's actually not rounds but the result of attacks and spells being confined in the corset of rounds. I give an example: Since you could (usually) only cast one spell a round, and the spells did have different casting durations (the time from starting the casting until the end of the casting), it needed a different amount of time until you could cast the next spell, i.e., something like (duration of a round - casting time - start time). This seemingly random time introduced some kind of dynamic into the fights (or the illusion of it). And this is what I really liked about the fights.

 

In other words, I don't wish back the concept of rounds, but I not only like randomness regarding, for example, the length of the effect of some spell, but also regarding the casting time as well as the time a character needs to recover from a spell. This randomness can indeed be very small such that it introduces some kind of dynamics while still preserving a large degree of predictability. This could prevent the feeling of very mechanic battles where the characters cast like perfect machines what could damage the immersion. This concept can maybe also be applied to attacks and abilities. What do you think about this?

[Lephys]

Well, for what it's worth, P:E will not be using rounds. Honestly, I support this decision.

 

The problem I have round-based stuff is that you don't really know when the round starts each time. Sometimes, you'd go to cast a spell, and by the time you've actually clicked on your target, you missed the beginning of the round by a millisecond, and now your frail Wizard just stands there for 3 seconds, THEN tries to cast the spell. This is especially bad when it's one that relies upon positioning (like a cone effect or something).

 

See, all the decision-making and movement is still occurring real-time (unlike in a turn-based system, which is where the rounds started... in PnP rules), but many of the actual actions/results are somewhat arbitrarily limited to rounds. About the only benefit is, sometimes, if you happen to be lucky and the rounds don't screw you over, the enemy can't get the jump on you before you get to fire off YOUR ability.

 

It's like a mish-mash of turn-based AND real-time, with added detriments and minus many of the benefits of either system, individually.

 

I'm not so sure about some non-round-based similar aspect of randomness, either. *shrug*. It just begs the question: "Why?". What good does it do to not have any clue what your cast time or effect duration is going to be?

 

I'd much rather allow things like casting interruption/setback (a la WoW and other MMOs) and debuffs/criticals/ability-effects/etc. produce this dynamic you seem to be looking for. Critical hits are already going to affect effect durations, in the current P:E design. And equipment weight/encumbrance affects cast/action times. I'm sure plenty of spell effects will throw even more dynamic results into the mix, and they could always allow certain types of hits against most non-instant abilities to simply delay your cast/usage time (as in MMOs).

 

There are plenty of reasonable ways of preventing monotonous, machine-like ability timings than to arbitrarily throw randomness into the mix.

Edited October 2, 2013 by Lephys

[Walsingham]

I can see this from both Lephys and Graham's perspective.

 

Frankly I think the problem is an attritive mechanic for damage, full stop. So long as you have an attritive damage mechanic all combat is going to calculate victory incorporating actions per 'minute'.

[teknoman2]

NO. randomness is bad... randomness is the evil that plagues RPGs!!!

Edited October 4, 2013 by teknoman2

[jamoecw]

sounds like the OP is looking for ME2 style casting.  in IE a character's round starts when they perform an action, so someone standing around will start casting immediately, if you didn't have the option set to pause after casting and didn't cast a spell that took less than a round to cast, then the person would start to do something else (assuming you didn't turn off AI) which would mean that they might have to wait for the next round to start casting.  but in essence that was all it was, spells that cast in less time than a round meant standing around for the rest of the round, or moving, or attacking (which you couldn't do in DnD), much like in ME2 where you had global cooldowns for your spells, but could run around and attack in the meantime.  hardly random in either case, the IE games just didn't have a cooldown/round timer so you had to guess (or count, or use autopause).

I can see this from both Lephys and Graham's perspective.

 

Frankly I think the problem is an attritive mechanic for damage, full stop. So long as you have an attritive damage mechanic all combat is going to calculate victory incorporating actions per 'minute'.

actually that equation doesn't actually work.  it is stated that a non automatic firearm can potentially kill multiple people, where as ancient soldier using a spear can only kill one person.  the reason given for this is range, which is bogus.  the equation only works with equally armed soldiers with equal training, that decide to only fight spaced so as to only allow this to happen, so that a spearman can only reach one person, and a rifleman can hit multiple.  very few actual battles did this, and the results often differ from the results from the equation.  maybe he read about how colonial era battles were fought and drew conclusions from that, as you would have masses of people lining in front of each other and firing at one another, potentially having the bullet pass through multiple people, but that didn't often happen, and that style of warfare had other factors to throw a wrench in such equations as well.

[FlintlockJazz]

I have to say, I did like having 'rounds' in the IE games.  It meant that as soon as battle started I could pause, set everyone's action including spells, then unpause and watch the action before pausing again and queuing up their next actions.  It's why I disliked cooldowns in DA: O, you had to keep checking each character to see whether their powers had cooled down yet or not, since they were on different timers, and often just gave up on trying to control them that well.

[jamoecw]

I have to say, I did like having 'rounds' in the IE games.  It meant that as soon as battle started I could pause, set everyone's action including spells, then unpause and watch the action before pausing again and queuing up their next actions.  It's why I disliked cooldowns in DA: O, you had to keep checking each character to see whether their powers had cooled down yet or not, since they were on different timers, and often just gave up on trying to control them that well.

i didn't like DA:O because i was constantly wiping their ques due to changing battlefield conditions, and if i didn't set up ques, then i either had to trust in their AI (which was pretty poor) or keep track of their CDs and pause the exact time each of them came off CD.  of course that isn't taking into account things that would wipe their ques for me (and thus reinstate their AI unless i paused the game and redid their ques, and no i am not talking about bugs).

i imagine that i could have customized their AI 2 or three times during battle so that they didn't need such hand holding, but that is more effort than it was worth.

[Gfted1]

I have to say, I did like having 'rounds' in the IE games.  It meant that as soon as battle started I could pause, set everyone's action including spells, then unpause and watch the action before pausing again and queuing up their next actions.  It's why I disliked cooldowns in DA: O, you had to keep checking each character to see whether their powers had cooled down yet or not, since they were on different timers, and often just gave up on trying to control them that well.

 

That's a good point I hadn't thought about. I never played the DA franchise so how did you know when an NPC turn was ready? For example, say I throw a Fireball. How can I tell when its ready again, by looking at the icon and waiting for it to be "ready" again? And then do this x 6 party members?

[Messier-31]

That's a good point I hadn't thought about. I never played the DA franchise so how did you know when an NPC turn was ready? For example, say I throw a Fireball. How can I tell when its ready again, by looking at the icon and waiting for it to be "ready" again? And then do this x 6 party members?

 

In DA: Origins there's this ability icon. After use you see it go "round the clock", ready to use again after 360. And the party was of 4 people, not 6, so regarding checking all the companions abilities THAT'S A RELIEF!

[Gfted1]

I wonder how that will play. Just making up numbers, lets say the mage grimoire can hold five spells. Clicking on the mage brings up his spell selection on the bottom of the screen (or wherever). So I cast Fireball. While thats going "around the clock" can I fire Magic Missile? There has to be some mechanism to prevent that otherwise we could just spam 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then back to the beginning. Has anyone seen any dev posts that explain that?

[rjshae]

I wonder how that will play. Just making up numbers, lets say the mage grimoire can hold five spells. Clicking on the mage brings up his spell selection on the bottom of the screen (or wherever). So I cast Fireball. While thats going "around the clock" can I fire Magic Missile? There has to be some mechanism to prevent that otherwise we could just spam 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then back to the beginning. Has anyone seen any dev posts that explain that?

 

That's how it works for special abilities in the DA games, and in the Drakensang series. It's less of a problem than you might think--the net effect is to create more of a variety in the powers that get activated. The player has to be a bit judicious in when and where they use the powers, so it motivates some tactical planning.

[Lephys]

Cooldowns and round-based combat are not the antithesis of one another. And you can still have actions incur "time until you can actually do something else" durations, without actually having proper cooldowns, per se. In P:E, it's true that one person might be currently casting Fireball, while another person is ready to act. But, I don't think there are going to be any cooldowns. So, if a character's not immediately performing an action/maneuver or casting a spell, they're probably good to go to immediately respond to a command to perform an action/maneuver or cast a spell.

 

Does this mean you have to pay attention to up to 6 different people? Yes. But you can still pause (so you can still synchronize abilities without much trouble), and you won't necessarily have to watch 6 different people's ability icons to see if their 20 seconds is up, so it should be a hell of a lot simpler than the DA referenced situation.

 

Just, for what it's worth.

[Gfted1]

That's how it works for special abilities in the DA games, and in the Drakensang series. It's less of a problem than you might think--the net effect is to create more of a variety in the powers that get activated. The player has to be a bit judicious in when and where they use the powers, so it motivates some tactical planning.

Interesting. Just so I am clear, with no mana mechanic or cooldown between actions, in those games I could just drag my finger across the 1-5 keys, like dragging my finger across piano keys, and fire off abilities like a machine gun? Non-stop and without consuming time or resources? And the feeling is that PE will play like this?

[Sabotin]

Are you talking about cooldowns or what now? I can't remember for Drakensang, but DA had both those and mana/stamina use. Even toggles had a nominal reuse on them and there were no rounds.

 

As far as I understand, OP,  you were saying that the spells/abilities in IE games essentially had a form of cooldowns, which consisted of the time between you finished casting something and the beginning of the next round. So that depended on the cast times and when in the round you decided to cast it, right?

 

There's no rounds in PE I think, so technically you can probably cast stuff back to back as long as you have uses available (per-combat/rest abilities or whatever they said they'll do).

I think this would make micromanagement quite a bit more intensive, so perhaps they'll adjust cast times to compensate. Another form of regulation might be the importance of positioning, since you can't cast while moving and you can't move while casting (right?). This thread actually makes a good point: they promised the "IE feel", but eliminating rounds does change certain aspects.

 

To be honest I quite disliked that I couldn't really tell when I can take my next action or if I'm wasting time running/attacking when I could already be casting. The thing I did like though was that it was practically impossible to counter-cast. It was very unlikely that when you see someone casting you could cast something else (with a shorter cast time) as a counter, since the round dynamic would prevent it. So the game play was more on the planning side rather than having twitchy fingers (as far as spell casting goes).

[Gfted1]

Yeah, casting time is the answer. That will prevent the rapid use of spells / abilities.

[rjshae]

Drakensang has a mana cost, or rather an astral energy cost. You can change the actual cost of the spell by modifying the power per use (up to your trained limit). Thus if your astral energy is low, you can choose to cast weaker versions of the same spells. It also has a spell-casting time.

[teknoman2]

for those who dont remember, they said that spells and skills will all have 3 casting times instant, short and long. an instant skill will take as much time as an instant spell and the same goes for short and long. so if you set all characters to use a long at the same time, they all will finish at the same time.

and since most spells and skills are limited per encounter or per rest, you cant spam them even without a cooldown

so you dont need to micromanage so much and keep track of 100 different cooldowns, and you cant spam skills because you may be able to cast 3 magic missiles at each battle, but at your level, you only get 1 fireball a day so if you use it on goblins you wont have it when you find the orcs

[jamoecw]

I wonder how that will play. Just making up numbers, lets say the mage grimoire can hold five spells. Clicking on the mage brings up his spell selection on the bottom of the screen (or wherever). So I cast Fireball. While thats going "around the clock" can I fire Magic Missile? There has to be some mechanism to prevent that otherwise we could just spam 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then back to the beginning. Has anyone seen any dev posts that explain that?

in DA this was how it was, you'd cast fireball on the enemies that didn't charge you melee people, then magic missile on the big threat in the melee, then flame arrow, then acid arrow, then magic missile again, then restart the process.  if the single threat went invisible due to using an ability when you wanted to cast a spell on him, then your que gets wiped and the character casts fireball on the big threat then auto attacks him waiting for the CD to expire as you didn't trade the ability to perform certain quests for the ability to have him need slightly less hand holding (you would have to spend 5 minutes and the start of combat to configure his AI, and maybe pause the combat once or twice and do it again due to things changing, as opposed to keeping an eye on his symbols and what the enemies were doing that might disrupt your orders, all from a fps viewpoint that can't see the whole battlefield) that probably won't make a difference in 90% of the fights anyway.

[Graham]

I have to say, I did like having 'rounds' in the IE games.  It meant that as soon as battle started I could pause, set everyone's action including spells, then unpause and watch the action before pausing again and queuing up their next actions.  It's why I disliked cooldowns in DA: O, you had to keep checking each character to see whether their powers had cooled down yet or not, since they were on different timers, and often just gave up on trying to control them that well.

Now that you say that, I actually agree with you there. Battles in infinity engine games are very "rhythmic". You do something and watch how it "turns"s out. You repeat this for each turn. And you usually exactly know when a round ends after a short amount of time for getting used to this rhythm.