Hopes for foot battles to make it more immersive, realistic and less MMO feeling?

[USS_Parallax]

Just some specific random ideas. I'm giving all my ideas classic MMO stats and stuff.
I mean no offense to Cryptic or anything.


It would be nice to have much more movement options than just Run/Walk.

Sprint: Run fastest, cannot attack. Only lasts a bit. Upgradable via 'tech trees' in various ways such as duration, energy spent, speed, etc. Takes energy.

Prone: Slowest movement speed (besides NOT moving). Improves aim greatly. Increases vulnerability to melee. Enemy ranged attackers suffer an accuracy debuff from the smaller contour. Takes a second to become prone and a second to get up.

Crouch: Basically like prone except everything is not so extreme. You move faster than prone, it takes no time to switch, your aim improves slightly and you become slightly more weak to melee. The ranged enemy attacks suffers a slight debuff when attacking a crouched unit due to the decreased contour.

Rolls/Jumps:
Roll left, right or forward. Or jump one of those directions. Gives you a second long great increase in evasion while animating. Cannot attack while doing this (though maybe a tech tree learnable thing can make it happen). Takes energy like sprinting. You can't spam it. You go fast while rolling so you can quickly hide behind cover like a wall by jumping behind it however it takes a bit to get back up so it cannot be spammed for speed increases.

Cover:
Objects and walls and such should be used as cover. I understand that this would possibly be very difficult to do true cover in an MMO. We should be able to go behind certain objects and poke our heads out and shoot and stuff from behind them. No MMO has been able to pull off a true cover system (like FPS games and stuff) as far as I know. Even Stargate Worlds and TOR only have a pseudo cover system with crazy pre-appointed cover spots.

Also I know it was already mentioned in a Dev chat or something but they said running will not make your accuracy fall at all. I'd wish it would. Maybe ever time you stand still you get an auto buff that isn't actually shown anywhere but your accuracy rises and the second you move you lose that buff. Or maybe you get a debuff when you move. Idunno.

Pretty much all of the things I mentioned could be done via classic MMO debuffs and buffs just usually hidden and activated by certain actions (like pressing Ctrl to crouch).



Other stuff

Animated battle animations: I really HATE to compare or mention it but... Knights of the Old Republic. Yes I said it. No I'm not talking the new MMO. I'm talking the old RPG games.
They had somewhat nice to look at battle animations. Basically swords and lightsabers connected. Dodged stuff was actually dodged. Etc etc. It wasn't perfect but it was something.
It would be nice to see if someone dodges a bat'leth their body slightly lunges and the bat'leth actually graphically misses instead of seeing something like "miss!" above their head. Two bat'leth wielding guys should sometimes have their weapons meet. Just to look nice.
It would also be nice if people fully reacted to being hit. I'm not too crazy about Borg style shields making shots not even graphically phase them (unless they're Borg).

Also ranged units shouldn't stay in the same position when facing a melee unit straight in their face. I hated the system in games like WoW where for some reason you couldn't fire and arrow if they were close to you but maybe with some creativity you could change the style of play for ranged guys once in melee. Like a change in stance, more melee moves used or escape moves or whatever then with some of the ranged weapon of course.


I think that with just some new stuff that look non-MMO'y like more movement options and stuff like what I mentioned even if all the backdrop, stats and stuff is classic MMO people won't notice.

[USS_Parallax]

Yes my idea would likely make use of an energy system. Nothing huge. Just like in some games where it takes energy to sprint, jump, etc but that energy comes back really fast. It would just stop spamming and wouldn't be used for attacks or anything.

And I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

[loyaltrekie]

Considering they said ground combat was supposed to be actiony and fast paced; I doubt they would add something "campish" like prone. All prone has ever done in "action oriented games" is created lousy players who will run->jump->laydown when getting shot at(not realistic at all; definetly if they are still firing in the process@FPS' today); or creates people just lying down waiting for people over and over and removes a bit of action, and creates a very slow atmosphere.

[USS_Parallax]

Considering they said ground combat was supposed to be actiony and fast paced; I doubt they would add something "campish" like prone. All prone has ever done in "action oriented games" is created lousy players who will run->jump->laydown when getting shot at(not realistic at all; definetly if they are still firing in the process@FPS' today); or creates people just lying down waiting for people over and over and removes a bit of action, and creates a very slow atmosphere.

You play poorly made FPS games. :p

You can't run jump lay down in any of the modern ones I play. Not to mention bunny hop and all that other annoying stuff.

And anything is better than just standing around in the open trading shots and hardly moving if at all.

[FerrariF40LM]

ive seen it done in BF2 and COD4.

[USS_Parallax]

Oh noes, they're in FPS games! That means they're off limits and we can't use these very real things people do in real life because of it!

[MajorD]

Yeah, if two FPS have badly executed mechanics, they must all be the same! Why, we should ignore every genera that has even one bad example of an otherwise sound mechanics and not bother to figure out how to make it work soundly!

By the by, I like your list of idea. However, I would change run from no shooting to greatly reduced accuracy, unless you have greatly buffed accuracy. Or, firing while running should drop you into a somewhat slower run with somewhat decent accuracy.

One thing they need to put in, that Champions already kind of has by accident, is destroyable cover. It's the one thing missing from Star Trek that should have always been there. If cover is too tough to blow up with normal weapon power, then we should be able to set the weapon to vaporize or explode and outright destroy the cover.

[USS_Parallax]

Yeah, if two FPS have badly executed mechanics, they must all be the same! Why, we should ignore every genera that has even one bad example of an otherwise sound mechanics and not bother to figure out how to make it work soundly!

By the by, I like your list of idea. However, I would change run from no shooting to greatly reduced accuracy, unless you have greatly buffed accuracy. Or, firing while running should drop you into a somewhat slower run with somewhat decent accuracy.

One thing they need to put in, that Champions already kind of has by accident, is destroyable cover. It's the one thing missing from Star Trek that should have always been there. If cover is too tough to blow up with normal weapon power, then we should be able to set the weapon to vaporize or explode and outright destroy the cover.

You got my run wrong. I have walk/run/sprint.

Walk and run means you can attack and you'd be running all the time (with walk as a crazy option nobody will use). SPRINT means running at full speed which nobody could shoot effectively while doing. :)

[USS_Parallax]

It can't be hard to just make different MMO styled moves replicate these effects with the press of a button.

[MajorD]

Normal Movement = Run
Ctrl = Walk
Shift = Toggle Stand-Crouch-Prone
Double Tap Forward = Sprint
Double Tap Backward = Dive Forward into Crouch
Double Tap Left = Dive Left into Crouch
Double Tap Right = Dive Right into Crouch

Or

Alt = Walk
Ctrl + Direction = Dive to Crouch

[Tamgros]

Normal Movement = Run
Ctrl = Walk
Shift = Toggle Stand-Crouch-Prone
Double Tap Forward = Sprint
Double Tap Backward = Dive Forward into Crouch
Double Tap Left = Dive Left into Crouch
Double Tap Right = Diver Right into Crouch

NO NO NO NO NO double tap! I know why you like it, but it really screws with people like me who enjoy subtle movements. I tap all the time, I guess i'm just used to it from my FPS days.

Just make "Sprint", "Dive forward into a crouch", etc. a hotkey that you can set to "double tap" please don't force it like AoC and other games have done...

Seriously, this is one of those things that players should really be able to customize to their own play style. I don't think any abilities should be locked to any one style of key stroke.

Not that I disagree with you, these movements should all be in there...

[Banar]

Considering they said ground combat was supposed to be actiony and fast paced; I doubt they would add something "campish" like prone. All prone has ever done in "action oriented games" is created lousy players who will run->jump->laydown when getting shot at(not realistic at all; definetly if they are still firing in the process@FPS' today); or creates people just lying down waiting for people over and over and removes a bit of action, and creates a very slow atmosphere.

Actually, it's a very common occurrence in real life combat to go from sprinting/running to throwing yourself prone. you don't waste time daintily setting yourself down, you dive like a hitter going for 3rd.

[Kriss]

Parallax, I have to agree with you on the first part of your post. ALL that stuff SHOULD be in there for Gods sake! Isn't that what ground combat is made of???

If none of this stuff gets into the game, I just don't know..... To stand there and duke it out like a stoned robot. . Like an everquest tank( that was what, 15 years ago?) that can only stand there and take hit. Who has more HP! Wow.....I payed how much for this again?

You'd think in this day of age they just might want to put a little more effort into a game of such self-proclaimed caliber. Don't fubar this up Cryptic!

[billybob442]

Considering they said ground combat was supposed to be actiony and fast paced; I doubt they would add something "campish" like prone. All prone has ever done in "action oriented games" is created lousy players who will run->jump->laydown when getting shot at(not realistic at all; definetly if they are still firing in the process@FPS' today); or creates people just lying down waiting for people over and over and removes a bit of action, and creates a very slow atmosphere.

Bear in mind that this is 'dice' based not twitch based combat, so unless the devs specifically inserted rules for reducing your chance of being hit while running and jumping those actions won't affect your survival. If you create the lay down / stand up animations to take a couple seconds that alone would be enough to keep people from jumping back and forth willy nilly. Another way to keep it from being overused in a fast moving fight, cause prone characters to turn and move very slowly

[USS_Parallax]

The difficult part is making all those abilities easily usable PLUS the action bar abilities. MMOs use too many buttons.

I mean here's my attempt:

Move Camera Angle and Facing position with the Mouse.
Hold the right mouse button to strafe and change angles too.
WASD: Run
Shift: Sprint
Left Ctrl: Crouch
Left Ctrl twice: Prone
Double Click W, A or D to perform a quick roll/lunge-jump in that direction.
Space: Alternate Fire
Left Mouse Button: Fire

I'm still missing JUMP and the Action Bar abilities. It's just stupidly difficult to move at the same time as doing 10 other things.

[Loekii]

Good summary of what others have been saying for quite some time.

Just putting in 'WoW' combat with a Sci-Fi skin -- without really adding any additions -- is basically just wrapping the same present in a different wrapper.

STO could make some tweaks to their Ground combat, to make it different than the typical MMO ground combat system -- which will help it stand out more (and possibly create that elusive 'hook').

[fractaleye]

Being new to ground combat MMOs, I think this is probably the area of the game I'm most intrigued by at present. I used to like the days of playing Doom II death match with a friend over a modem, so I guess it's time to look into the WASD, ctrl interface again. I do like the third person perspective over a first person, but that's just me (so I'm liking the look of the ground combat so far).

They've said hand-to-hand combat will be able to be skilled/learned/whatever iirc. So, some realistic moves and tactics will probably have to be used or that will all be worthless. I expect (and want) the ground combat to be faster paced than space, but I don't care for a too realistic experience a between the two is what I'd like to see (probably closer to the twitch/realistic side, but I'm not sure where.

Good points and ideas in here. Here's to whatever balance that can suit the majority, and hope that's the way Cryptic makes it (or vice-versa lol; whatever Cryptic decides, hope we can accept and learn to like it if we have to).

[Tamgros]

The difficult part is making all those abilities easily usable PLUS the action bar abilities. MMOs use too many buttons.

I mean here's my attempt:

Move Camera Angle and Facing position with the Mouse.
Hold the right mouse button to strafe and change angles too.
WASD: Run
Shift: Sprint
Left Ctrl: Crouch
Left Ctrl twice: Prone
Double Click W, A or D to perform a quick roll/lunge-jump in that direction.
Space: Alternate Fire
Left Mouse Button: Fire

I'm still missing JUMP and the Action Bar abilities. It's just stupidly difficult to move at the same time as doing 10 other things.

Yeah, it has become apparent to me while following these forums that not everyone uses the same setup of putting customizeable keys everywhere I can think to put them. The devs don't want to give people like me too much of an advantage by making so many options that only I, and people like me, can hope to utilize them.

It still would be nice if they could put them in. I like your idea of adding double clicks. As long as 'double clicks' appear just like anything else in the hotkey window, i'm cool with it. That also basically makes double usage out of normal keys.

Anyway, good thread, this needs to be discussed, and I think some added movementss that we haven't seen on the ground would really help add some polish to it.

[USS_Parallax]

Champions Online has a cool Block move that everyone knows. Just make each of these work like that!

[Loekii]

Yeah, it has become apparent to me while following these forums that not everyone uses the same setup of putting customizeable keys everywhere I can think to put them. The devs don't want to give people like me too much of an advantage by making so many options that only I, and people like me, can hope to utilize them.

In my experience, there are many ways people play the game. Often one group insists that 'their way' is the best or superior way, but in reality, it is simply what you find more comfortable.

I mean you have mouse-turners, clickers, wasd, macros, hot bar, multiple button mice, game pads, gaming keyboards, etc -- heck I have known people to use foot pedals.

Ideally, Cryptic will keep things mappable, so each play can cater it to the system that works best for them.

[fractaleye]

I mean you have mouse-turners, clickers, wasd, macros, hot bar, multiple button mice, game pads, gaming keyboards, etc -- heck I have known people to use foot pedals.

Who's with me for a Wii Remote ST:O Hack? Anyone? Anyone? ... Bueller?