COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
Licensing Combat from other games

I will start off by pleading ignorance on video game development. That said I was wondering if it would be a smart move for CoE to license combat from another game.

Combat is an important feature for any MMORPG. If CoE were to license combat from one of the many games that focus primarily on combat, CoE would be able to better focus on the actual elements that make CoE unique in the MMORPG realm. It would instantly speed up the development of many of the game's aspects.

Mordhau would be a great candidate for combat due to its emphasis on realistic medieval warfare, sharing many of Caspian's vision for combat in CoE. It is also built on Unreal Engine 4, the same engine CoE is using. Granted, you would need the other games to agree to licensing :P

Thoughts?


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4/1/2017 5:53:22 PM #1

Mount and Blade Warband combat in CoE would make my head explode from joy. Skill based combat/directional would make warfare and combat not just the amount of men you have, but the quality of those troops.


4/1/2017 9:39:33 PM #2

I have not played Mount and Blade but I have heard great things! There are a ton of games going for the skill based medieval combat: Of Kings of Men, Gloria Invictus, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, just to name a few!


4/1/2017 9:42:14 PM #3

That Combat system in Banner Lord is my favorite atm. Too bad they don't allow great swords to cut through several people at once. And melee weapons can't hit allies. Everything else is glorious.


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4/1/2017 10:23:33 PM #4

Aside from the fact that COE combat is already in development, I think it's extremely unlikely that it would be feasible.

Making code reusable in unknown projects is a significant effort, and there's no reason most games would do it. Combat in particular is likely tightly bound to other specifics of the game. It would take a lot of effort for the devs of the combat system to decouple it - probably having to make quite a lot of compromises in the process. Then a similar effort for the devs of the new game to integrate it.

Additionally, you create a new dependency on an external team - and one that isn't focused on supporting the system for third parties. What happens when they make fixes or improvements? Bringing those across will probably mean more effort updating and testing them to work with the adjusted code. Alternatively, you can let your system lag behind, or you can do the fixing and updating yourself - in either case you've lost quite a lot of what you gained by licensing a third party produce.


4/1/2017 10:25:52 PM #5

Posted By Anconia at

Thoughts?

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4/2/2017 1:11:56 AM #6

You cannot simply import gameplay mechanics from another game that uses a completely different engine. It's like trying to take the engine out of a jet plane and trying to install it into a car to make it go faster. Not going to work unless you completely rebuild the car from the ground up.


4/2/2017 1:26:07 AM #7

hahaha I'm actually serious Aurra Sing. I just want to know why it would be a bad or a good idea.

For example, Caspian has said that later he would like to license the Soulbound Engine to other games that would like to use it.

The same way CoE is licensing Unreal Engine 4 and SpatialOS to save development cost/time, would it be unwise to license combat?

AlricJ they have said they were going to overhaul the current combat system. "Combat is featured in the demo, a little more streamlined than last year's PAX, however combat is likely getting an overhaul after PAX East 2017 and will remain our focus for several months. No doubt you'll have more detailed videos of combat later in the summer."


4/2/2017 2:21:21 AM #8

Ahh... Mordhau, if only CoE were to have a combat similar to that little upcoming gem. One can dream eh?


4/2/2017 2:49:48 AM #9

Posted By Shady Clown at 4:42 PM - Sat Apr 01 2017

That Combat system in Banner Lord is my favorite atm. Too bad they don't allow great swords to cut through several people at once. And melee weapons can't hit allies. Everything else is glorious.

I wish bannerlord was out. Looks like it'll be a race between the CoE prologue and bannerlord.


4/2/2017 4:29:45 AM #10

Posted By Jasta85 at 11:11 AM - Sun Apr 02 2017

You cannot simply import gameplay mechanics from another game that uses a completely different engine. It's like trying to take the engine out of a jet plane and trying to install it into a car to make it go faster. Not going to work unless you completely rebuild the car from the ground up.

Aren't both games using Unreal 4? The Soulborn Engine is just the name they have given to the various code they have written for map generation, AI and other RNG factors.


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4/2/2017 9:02:46 AM #11

I would prefer CoE to use its own entirely new combat system designed to best fit with the rest of the game.

Moreover, I've always had a bit of an issue with the combat in first-person slashers or whatever you might call them. Attacking is completely divorced from the footwork and movement in those games. This tends to make the combat look silly and feel kinda like a twitch-fest as people move around like crazy while slashing. Granted, Mordhau does appear to have toned that down a bit so perhaps it plays better. It still looks pretty weird, though.


4/2/2017 11:45:22 AM #12

Posted By MReal at 5:02 PM - Sun Apr 02 2017

I would prefer CoE to use its own entirely new combat system designed to best fit with the rest of the game.

Moreover, I've always had a bit of an issue with the combat in first-person slashers or whatever you might call them. Attacking is completely divorced from the footwork and movement in those games. This tends to make the combat look silly and feel kinda like a twitch-fest as people move around like crazy while slashing. Granted, Mordhau does appear to have toned that down a bit so perhaps it plays better. It still looks pretty weird, though.

From the looks of it, I believe attacking in CoE will also be separated from your footwork. Don't think it is easy to make a combat system out of a combine movement of feet and arms.


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4/2/2017 11:52:06 AM #13

Posted By Roarer at 07:45 AM - Sun Apr 02 2017

Don't think it is easy to make a combat system out of a combine movement of feet and arms.

Fighting games do it, For Honor does it, many action games are that way too. All it takes is to not allow the player to move freely while attacking.

As far as I can tell, this is already the case in CoE. It appears that players were either standing still or in a forward lunge while attacking, not moving at-will.


4/2/2017 1:26:16 PM #14

Mordhau combat is impressive and polished, but I don't think it would fit well in CoE. Dueling arena games, such as Chivalry, Mordhau, M&B, all have the action combat that feels empowering to players, but the design tends to get a little chaotic in multiplayer. There is an argument that combat will always be chaotic, which i agree, but the chaos in these games seem to be a product of the combat design.

Watching the video in the OP, players are able to perform a variety of attacks in a variety of directions, giving the player a lot of options and choices. This system seems to work very well in a 1v1 setting, as players need to decide how to read their opponent and react accordingly.

However, this combat design falls apart in anything more than a dueling setting. Perhaps the third person perspective will help with this, but with the limited view of first person(and thus limited amount of information given to the player), fighting multiple opponents becomes surviving randomness. More skilled players might have a better chance of surviving such situations, but I would argue that their survival was a result of their ability to reduce the amount of opponents(aka kill them) rather than their ability to defend themselves. What I'm saying is no level of skill will help you survive randomness.

Having meaningful combat roles would be a good step in the right direction, but the mounted combat in Mordhau seems...pointless I guess? I would understand why Chivalry decided to leave mounted combat out of their game if this is what they discovered. The problem is that mounting on a horse actually limits the players mobility, instead of increasing it. Yes, players might be able to move faster from point A to point B, but the horses appear to get stuck on everything(including other players). If other players can completely halt a horse's momentum(which is currently what happens), then they essentially make the player a sitting duck as they can't duck, dodge, or quick pivot to address every attack direction. This limits the player's survivablility and combat effectiveness, making mounted combat pointless.

Mordhau's combat, and by extension all those other dueling arena games, have polished combat for very specific scenarios. However, the focus on individual dueling doesn't allow for much teamwork or group tactics. There is no difference in combat roles, so every match is simply a large slug fest that focuses on player skill to determine attrition. The point of tactics is to be a force multiplier, but individual skill and randomness will always win in these types of games, rather than teamwork and group play. This is why I think CoE should look outside the normal "individual player skill should determine everything" combat paradigm a bit more.

Games like Squad, Project Reality, Arma, etc, do a good job of emphasizing group play over individual play while still rewarding individual skill, so perhaps that could be a good place to look?


4/2/2017 2:38:32 PM #15

Posted By Elhamer at 1:53 PM - Sat Apr 01 2017

Mount and Blade Warband combat in CoE would make my head explode from joy. Skill based combat/directional would make warfare and combat not just the amount of men you have, but the quality of those troops.

Directional based attacks and blocks NEED TO HAPPEN DEVS!!! Please implement this into your combat system as that is all we need for an interesting and skill based combat system . Please don't make it like eso or other games where you just spam left click . We need skill based combat !!


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