[for Standalone]Struggling(fight close and personal) - move-based method.

[pawlzz 18]

I like the idea but it's too complicated in my opinion.

[TholaisGeren1 2]

I had this huge post in another thread, but I'd like to receive some feedback for this idea. Please read the whole post before posting anything.

See this thread also.

So you're in some urban area and suddenly you bump into someone else face to face - be it a zombie or a player. Most of the time people start shooting\swinging their axe at the enemy while waltzing around. I bet there should be an option to get into struggle with them to either shove them out of your way or disable them for a short period of time to get away or, if you are totally hostile - incapacitate them completely.

It is much better than clicking franticly with a melee weapon or trying to switch to melee while running against eachother forehead to forehead.

As it was proposed before, it can be done in this fashion:

This can work for Alpha, but it will become boring soon enogh like it happened to hacking in Mass Effect 1.

How I see this, I'll try to keep it simple:

As soon as you are at point blank you hold a specific key for about a second and get into struggle with another person.

Holding one-handed weapon or unarmed:

The person initiating the struggle effectively grabs the opponent with one hand (leaving another for action).

Holding two-handed weapon:

you'll just punt your opponet, so he gets pushed back and can even trip sometimes (similar to L4D "shove off" action) - you're interested at keeping distance anyway.

Your struggle can be broken by third person - this will help if you're strangled by a zombie, or you have an ally close to you.

While you hold against eachother you can perform different moves. Each of them take time to perform, defined by animation, so you can't just spam them.

types of moves (with possible keymap in gaps):

Offensive

• disarm - attempt to make opponent drop his weapon (Shift)
  
• damage - try to weaken your opponent (Left click)
  
• drop - attempt to take your opponent to the ground (spacebar)
  

Defensive

• block - self-explainationary (Rclick + Lclick)
  
• break out - get out the struggle state (Rclick + Spacebar)
  
• dodge - dodge incoming attack (Rclick+Shift)
  

Used this system as it worked pretty well in assasin's creed and was pretty intuitive. Spacebar as a jump key you assingned is used for moves performed (mostly) by legs, block and damage are performed by right hand (Left click in mostly any game), shift for cunning moves or performed by offhand. Right mouse button lets you perform defensive moves and lets you perform offensive while released.

_________________________________________________________________

Here comes the difficult part. How to do this? Turn-based or real time?

I vote for real time:

You guess incoming enemy action by his movement and and decide what you do in return - it has to be tested out though.

How successfull your and his action would be are defined by numerous factors such as:

• health condition (health, fatigue, adrenaline),
  
• weight on the character (huge backpack makes you clumsy)
  
• equipped weapon(see below) (new stat "ergonomix" can be applied)
  
• equipped clothing\armor - based on protection and weight (new stat "ergonomix" can be applied)
  
• Skills (it is confirmed we'll have skills, so more experienced survivalist should have upper hand)
  

Also: struggling drains your stamina very fast, so the more you struggle - your fatigue will grow expotentially

Effect of the weapon equipped:

The one initiating has upper hand (with first move that is).

One-handed melee weapon or sidearm (as improvised blunt weapon) gives advantage at attacking moves.

Bare-handed gives advantage at dodging and disarming.

Two-handed melee and big firearms (shotguns and rifles) give advantage at defensive moves.

Upon successful drop action:

Both go to the ground, the one who managed to drop appears ontop of his opponent.

For the one ontop

• drop changes to finishing move which has a chance to either do massive damage resulting in fracture or to knock your opponent out
  
• performing break out has 95% chance to work.
  
• all moves have slightly increased chance for success
  

For the one below

• break out changes to switch sides, if you manage to do this you become the one ontop - this way you can turn the tides in your favor, even if the things went desperate
  

Initiating struggle from behind:

Holding one-handed weapon or unarmed:

70% chance to drop your opponent to the ground and appear ontop of him

Holding two-handed weapon:

100% chance to knock your opponent to the ground (hell, he'd be dead -anyway- if you got behind him at point blank.

Benefits:

1. This sytem allows us to have intense cinematic assaults as every single one will be different from another.
   
2. Easy to use, intuitive system.
   
3. Players define the duration of the fight themselves - if they spot some mutual threat they can both start pressing Break to get out of struggle.
   
4. Incapacitation over killing. You can reason your opponent while you struggle, drop him to the ground and run - you decide
   
5. Ambushing becomes even more intersting
   
6. Getting strangled by a zombie will be fun as well
   

In conclusion:

It is somewhat indepth system I tried to keep simple for the players. It might result in some pretty spectacular assaults especially if playes will keep swearing at eachother over comms while they are struggling and zombies are getting closer.

I'd like to hear your thoughts and ideas. I doubt that we'll see it at the release, but it would be a nice game mechanic to experience.

I had this huge post in another thread, but I'd like to receive some feedback for this idea. Please read the whole post before posting anything.

See this thread also.

So you're in some urban area and suddenly you bump into someone else face to face - be it a zombie or a player. Most of the time people start shooting\swinging their axe at the enemy while waltzing around. I bet there should be an option to get into struggle with them to either shove them out of your way or disable them for a short period of time to get away or, if you are totally hostile - incapacitate them completely.

It is much better than clicking franticly with a melee weapon or trying to switch to melee while running against eachother forehead to forehead.

As it was proposed before, it can be done in this fashion:

This can work for Alpha, but it will become boring soon enogh like it happened to hacking in Mass Effect 1.

How I see this, I'll try to keep it simple:

As soon as you are at point blank you hold a specific key for about a second and get into struggle with another person.

Holding one-handed weapon or unarmed:

The person initiating the struggle effectively grabs the opponent with one hand (leaving another for action).

Holding two-handed weapon:

you'll just punt your opponet, so he gets pushed back and can even trip sometimes (similar to L4D "shove off" action) - you're interested at keeping distance anyway.

Your struggle can be broken by third person - this will help if you're strangled by a zombie, or you have an ally close to you.

While you hold against eachother you can perform different moves. Each of them take time to perform, defined by animation, so you can't just spam them.

types of moves (with possible keymap in gaps):

Offensive

• disarm - attempt to make opponent drop his weapon (Shift)
  
• damage - try to weaken your opponent (Left click)
  
• drop - attempt to take your opponent to the ground (spacebar)
  

Defensive

• block - self-explainationary (Rclick + Lclick)
  
• break out - get out the struggle state (Rclick + Spacebar)
  
• dodge - dodge incoming attack (Rclick+Shift)
  

Used this system as it worked pretty well in assasin's creed and was pretty intuitive. Spacebar as a jump key you assingned is used for moves performed (mostly) by legs, block and damage are performed by right hand (Left click in mostly any game), shift for cunning moves or performed by offhand. Right mouse button lets you perform defensive moves and lets you perform offensive while released.

_________________________________________________________________

Here comes the difficult part. How to do this? Turn-based or real time?

I vote for real time:

You guess incoming enemy action by his movement and and decide what you do in return - it has to be tested out though.

How successfull your and his action would be are defined by numerous factors such as:

• health condition (health, fatigue, adrenaline),
  
• weight on the character (huge backpack makes you clumsy)
  
• equipped weapon(see below) (new stat "ergonomix" can be applied)
  
• equipped clothing\armor - based on protection and weight (new stat "ergonomix" can be applied)
  
• Skills (it is confirmed we'll have skills, so more experienced survivalist should have upper hand)
  

Also: struggling drains your stamina very fast, so the more you struggle - your fatigue will grow expotentially

Effect of the weapon equipped:

The one initiating has upper hand (with first move that is).

One-handed melee weapon or sidearm (as improvised blunt weapon) gives advantage at attacking moves.

Bare-handed gives advantage at dodging and disarming.

Two-handed melee and big firearms (shotguns and rifles) give advantage at defensive moves.

Upon successful drop action:

Both go to the ground, the one who managed to drop appears ontop of his opponent.

For the one ontop

• drop changes to finishing move which has a chance to either do massive damage resulting in fracture or to knock your opponent out
  
• performing break out has 95% chance to work.
  
• all moves have slightly increased chance for success
  

For the one below

• break out changes to switch sides, if you manage to do this you become the one ontop - this way you can turn the tides in your favor, even if the things went desperate
  

Initiating struggle from behind:

Holding one-handed weapon or unarmed:

70% chance to drop your opponent to the ground and appear ontop of him

Holding two-handed weapon:

100% chance to knock your opponent to the ground (hell, he'd be dead -anyway- if you got behind him at point blank.

Benefits:

1. This sytem allows us to have intense cinematic assaults as every single one will be different from another.
   
2. Easy to use, intuitive system.
   
3. Players define the duration of the fight themselves - if they spot some mutual threat they can both start pressing Break to get out of struggle.
   
4. Incapacitation over killing. You can reason your opponent while you struggle, drop him to the ground and run - you decide
   
5. Ambushing becomes even more intersting
   
6. Getting strangled by a zombie will be fun as well
   

In conclusion:

It is somewhat indepth system I tried to keep simple for the players. It might result in some pretty spectacular assaults especially if playes will keep swearing at eachother over comms while they are struggling and zombies are getting closer.

I'd like to hear your thoughts and ideas. I doubt that we'll see it at the release, but it would be a nice game mechanic to experience.

Kudos, this sounds like a perfect mechanic , Im for it.

[WiFiN 55]

I like the idea but it's too complicated in my opinion.

Well it is detailed. I had to describe the mechanic in detail so the community and hopefully the devs will see how this can possibly work. Sure, I could cut it down to "so I want a melee combat system where you grab onto eachother and trade blows, so the one that loses falls. Anyone with me?" but that wouldn't really help anyone.

The whole system consists of six moves which are based on your common control keys, so everything is pretty intuitive. I can be quite of a task to implement, but it won't be hard to use.

Chivalry's combat is all very localized on the mouse. Close to what you recommended. L-click is swing, R-click blocks, scroll forward stabs, scroll back to swing over hand. I think F kicked (which is basically the shove) and clicking the scroll button may have done something, though I don't remember. If a skill based melee system is going to be implemented, Chivalry's is not a bad one to borrow from. I think if its done like this, and you wanted to throw something, clicking the "scroller" on your mouse could throw your weapon, this would keep melee combat mainly on the mouse, and keeping it simple.

Well as we discussed above -

Chivalry is a fencing simultor, that's why they have a lot of various attack moves. In my opinion we should keep this system simple as melee combat is one of the essential parts of survival (alongside with shooting people in the face), but not it's main orientation. And secondly I wouldn't like to overburden mouse, as we already have context menu on it. Any thoughts why (space, Rclick, Lclick, shift) wouldn't work well?

[Ghass2 6]

Yes.

At first glance at the "Move-based method" I thought you meant some pokemon bullshit.

But this could work.

Edited February 3, 2013 by Ghass2

[mushroom911 14]

I like this thread, I have no idea if this has any potental tog et implemented, but some sort of hand to hand combat would be nice. (even though 99% of engagements happen between 50-300+ meters

[doodleisbrutal 33]

bum fights... bum fights everywhere...