There is a god… L4D 2
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, PvP
The above title may be cryptic to you. If that is the case fear not! click here.
If the above title is not cryptic, this cake isn’t a lie!
Should you be a PC gamer, a steam player and a fan of the above franchise: Rerollmuch is my player name on steam. Look me up, TRR will invite you into a match.
Visceral Combat - Animation Guidelines
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry
Great combat in a game is broken into many disparate elements. For the visceral combat line of posts, we’re going to focus on responsive combat. Good combat design breaks down any moment to a series of events. Each event is driven by a rule. Once you have your set of rules, you get to play the Lego bricks game of building combat moves and characters. Let’s talk about animation
Animation Guidelines
Just like any sport, motion and controlling that motion makes or breaks an animation. Weight control, pose, follow apply to the worlds greatest athletes and also to video game avatars. For combat, I like to break my combat animation into 3 parts: Start - Impact - End.
Start
The start animation is the character build up. For WoW, this happens to be the casting animation, for most brawlers this is a low frame count section where the character blends from idle to the initial pose.
IRL, bring your hand over your head and make a fist. You’ve just completed a start animation.
Impact
Impact is my favorite part of the combat animation sequence. It mostly deals with the targets reaction, so we’ll deal with that later. For our purposes, the impact section is the meat that your player understands. They notice and will describe their favorite animations based on the impact section of the move.
IRL, with your hand in the air, bring your hand from above your head to directly in front of you with your arm follow extended. The distance between the start and this “impact” point is the impact section of the animation.
End
Ahh! The end animation, AKA the follow through. This section is where magic happens. Transitions from your combat animation to traversal states and other combat moves happen here. You’ll notice that the end of your combat animation occurs after the impact of the same animation. This is very important. Additionally the end section can inform the “power” of the animation.
Example 1:
Repeat IRL sections above, then bring your hand straight back and to your side, keep your feet planted. You’ll notice that you slow down your arm once it is perpendicular to your body. Then you gather your arm back to your body. Because of the speed and motion, your hand travels in a upwards curve towards your side. Notice how you felt about this RL animation. Did it feel powerful? Comedic? Effective? Ask yourself if you were watching a video game avatar do this move, what reaction would you expect?
Example 2:
Repeat IRL sections above, exclude example 2. Instead of bringing your arm perpendicular to your body, cut your right hand(the one above your head) diagonally across your body and step forward with your right foot. Notice how that felt. Did it feel powerful? Comedic? Effective? Ask yourself if you were watching a video game avatar do this move, what reaction would you expect?
Summary
This is a very brief, very basic overview of some animation guidelines I’ve learned and stand by. Next visceral combat post will take a look at a couple combat systems(Sonny 2, EQ2, WoW) and discuss rules established that inform the player experience.
Big Red Kitty, Tyler Durden and Fulgrim
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry
I’ve often wondered about the nature of narrative in a persistent world. In WoW the character is nothing more than a cog. A part of the masses and left to make stories only relevant to the player. Narrative in real life is a very personal experience. We each experience the same story of life from different perspectives. I’m curious sometimes why game developers don’t explore similar concepts from the characters perspective.
Oh, that isn’t to say there aren’t great games with great narratives out there. What I’m referring to is the ability for the player to relate directly to the character. The player doesn’t necessarily have to “experience” the emotional state that the character goes through, that would be silly. I’m talking about creating Tyler Durden moments for the character and experienced.
A moment like that felt by Fulgrim (Fulgrim by Graham McNeill). Fulgrim after dealing a duel ending blow to his brother Ferrus Manus realized, in horror, what he had become and the root of the evil. Attempting to right his wrong, in the heat of the moment forgave his image and life to his eternal detriment. Recreating moments of self-realization is a powerful tool in the hands of the game designer.
Imagine a moment similar for you. A moment of illumination when beliefs, practices, ideas and actions of that past have been brought into crisp and clear focus. You remember then. That moment sticks with you. It hangs as a clear divider between what memories happened before and what memories happened after. These moments keep readers coming back.
As an example, on March 30th, the world of warcraft world blog community witnessed such a moment. Big Red Kitty reflected in one weekend on his action and the effects on his life. Details, telling. The effects heart felt.
How does one create such a moment? What game mechanics are involved? What declaration is made to distinguish the old from the new?
What would an mmo with this tenant look like?
Are you a brute!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry
Click here to create your brute!
Are you good enough to complete? Think you have the skillz? Think you can take the punishment? Join My Brute and test your mettle.
Only a password and a name are required. Everything is stored without the link above.
Warhammer Online Keeps - Not a bad system
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, PvP
Update: Fancy that! My main issue is that the keep system being implemented has no design hook into other sections of the game.
Having reflected on Warhammer Online state of open world pvp, it dawned on me that very little in that game has to do with holding a keep. In fact, the few rewards that exist that involve keeps have to do with attacking and taking over a keep not holding out against a siege. so I put my thinking cap on and designed a content centric system that borrows ideas from other mmos and leverages existing tech.
Goal:
- Players want to own keep
- More players want to adventure/pvp in RvR lakes than in other systems
- Creates a critical mass of defending players
- Players want to prevent the opposing faction from owning keeps
- Constant tension and pressure for keep defenders
- Create denser content for player consumption
- Players want to own keep as they level
Problems this system is not meant to resolve:
- Class balance issues
- Trade Skill mechanism and value
- Partial integration
- Population balance within a server
- We can encourage players and they must manage this themselves
Opposing factions will fight over ownership of a keep. Once a keep is owned, an ownership timer begins. Initially only the renown vendors and general item merchants spawn in the keep for use by the winning side(current implementation). After 1 day, and for each day afterward up to 6, a new item is available from the renown merchant that is specific to that Keep. Keep items are unique to each keep. After 7 days a pve instance(called a Keep Instance) opens for the owning side. This instance will drop the highest level pvp items available to the tier(1-11, 12-21, etc). Difficulty will be balanced towards mid tier renown items(8, 15, etc) and mid tier PQs items to complete. Tier 4 Keep Instances drop items that aide in City sieges and end game pvp. Items that drop from Tier 4 Keep instances are not set items and are on par with City Dungeon Itemization.
The keep owners side is granted a zone wide defense buff. The buff is minor and equal in value to the diametrically opposed offensive buff the opposing faction is granted. Testing will prove whether the buff should affect RvR and/or PvE.
The Keep owner also has access to special aesthetic trade skill recipes that are only available when a keep is owned. These recipes should represent the chaotic and fun aspects of the Warhammer Universe(think holiday weekend items from World of Warcraft).
The keep system already allows for ownership and specific guilds to own them. Prototypes and early roll out are based on new content.
Prototype:
- Instance portal spawns at top of keep based on timer
- Vendors spawn based on timer
- Keep ownership grants zone wide buff
Alpha:
- New Spawner: Spawn List of attacker and defender types based on keep state
- Spawner spawns appropriate entities based on keep ownership and is controlled from the PQ system
- PQs complete and reset
Beta:
- Guard spawners are triggered from RvR lake ownership
- Vendor entities populate based on keep ownership time
- Keep resets to a neutral state if no pq is completed after 7 days
Head in the clouds:
- Keep ownership grants an xp bonus to the owning side after 1 day
- Keep ownership leader boards for guild competition across servers
- Unique trade skill recipes drop from an RvR lake only if the keep is owned
Final and Approved:
- 36 instances, 2 per lake per tier
- 144 PQs themed around defending or attacking a keep
- 32 items per lake, 16 per side
- 108 Trophies
The specifics are in the desired player behavior. Encouraging player RvR is centric to the “War is everywhere theme”. Warhammer Online had a similar level of content across each tier but divided the player base. Encouraging players to play in similar areas creates the critical mass necessary to initiate conflict. The time limits allow for more casual players to always take part in the RvR. They may not be able to participate in the actual attack/defende and holding of a keep, but they can complete PQs in the lakes and benefit from the additional PvE and PvP content provided.
Hardcore players will have more to brag about. And the opposing faction certainly wouldn’t want you to own a keep for any length of time. There is however one issue this design fails to resolve. Keeps can be attacked at any time of day. Many guilds will attempt to log in the off hours for a straight up PvE challenge avoiding PvP altogether.
I tossled with the idea of requiring the attacker PQs to defeat defender players but I ran into a chicken and the egg situation. In order to create the desired population, the defending PQs would need to be the most rewarding PvE content available, and therefore more precious to the player base. There is a fine line between creating compelling content and over compensation for the issue. This solution can go a long way to solving some of the population issues with War PvP. Testing and future patches will determine what Mythic actually does!
