I agree From: project1dev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:project1dev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of figarus@xxxxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:08 AM To: project1dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [project1dev] Re: combat musings - injuries, status, party list, matchups and tagteaming I dunno about gold Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile ________________________________ From: Alan Wolfe Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:06:50 -0700 To: <project1dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [project1dev] Re: combat musings - injuries, status, party list, matchups and tagteaming Ok so lose all items but keep exp and gold? i think thats doable. I think i'll just have it do the game save / load idea, but make it over-write the exp and gold after load with your at death exp and gold. any other values we want to persist past death we can do in a similar manner too (: On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Kent Petersen <kentkmp@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:kentkmp@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: I'm with Eric, you don't want to let them keep items when they die. I think keeping experience is good. If we design our dungeons properly there should be no reason for a boring walk back to town anyway. All levels should be engaging at all times, especially when they are almost finished. That's when you should pull out the big surprises. I was thinking you could do it DnD style where your not really dead untill you achieve negative 10 life. So when you hit 0 your player or party member is knocked out and unusable. If you don't swap them out of combat they can still be targeted. If a knocked out player (a player with 0 life) is damaged further they can die, perhaps if your maxlife (as eric described above) drops below 0. A complete loss will only occur when everyone is dead and the player should not be able to be killed but only knocked out to 0 life. If there are no surviving party members to first aid him then the team loses and returns to a node. On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: that makes sense about the knockout before dying. About not keeping items that makes sense. Should they keep exp even then? If not, we could just do an automatic game save at the spirit node and then load that when they died. Can you think of a situation you'll ever want to do that is an exception to the rule? On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:49 AM, eric drewes <figarus@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:figarus@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: turnbased fantasy rpg version of americas army style gameplay :-P On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: That sounds decent (: On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:45 AM, eric drewes <figarus@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:figarus@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: well i think health would probably work like a hybrid of halo and marvel vs capcom where you have two health bars, current life and max life, your current life can go up via auto healing or first aid, but your max life cannot be restored unless you're in a town. example: main character has: max hp 100 current hp 100 he gets punched, losing life max hp 90 current hp 70 now he uses first aid, bringing him back up to 90 (100 is truemax, but he cannot attain that) max hp 90 current hp 90 this will also influence the strategy of party set up, tagteaming, etc. On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: Hey just thought of something else too... Eric if you hate the war of attrition we could go the route of the modern games (or at least try it) like halo where you have hp but it recovers over time (like when you are in back row or maybe not in combat... or potentially all the time?) Not sure if its a good idea, but its an idea :P lol On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Kent Petersen <kentkmp@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:kentkmp@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: I like the FF view better myself. I'm am curious for the answer to Alan's questions as well. On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:32 AM, eric drewes <figarus@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:figarus@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: 100% definitely. either ff style or maybe where its 3rd person over teh shoulder style. i think you should be able to see them and with our gameplay style i think it'll be needed to show whats going on - visually and mechanically it'll be better. i was actually gonna bring this up when we got into more detailed combat stuff :) glad we're on the same page there too. On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: BTW what do you think about us changing our battle view from the dragon quest 5 view to the final fantasy view? I kinda miss being able to see the characters, and see the weapons / attacks and skills the players use. I think it makes the combat more epic and fun. Like think of fighting vargas or ultros where you see his tentacles slap your players, can you remember a fight like that at all in DQ5? i cant...most of the fights are unmemoriable, except for the ones where like 10 slimes form into the slime king hehe On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:25 AM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: I think switching out your characters could work, that kinda sounds cool and i can picture it in my head. When you would switch, would you be able to switch any turn of combat, only the first, or what? Also is there a penalty to switching or is it for free? I'm just curious cause if one guy was dying you could swap him out with another and have a fresh guy, is that ok? If so we could do soemthing like marvel vs capcom i think it was, where the team mates that are in the back row and not fighting slowly heal their wounds (in this case they heal a small amount as round time progresses) what you think? If that is too overpowered, it could be something like they can only heal maximum up to the life they had before they got struck in the current battle. Being held by one character and attacked by another makes sense. Maybe its a skill, and what happens is when you use that skill, the character that used it has to keep using it each turn to hold onto the monster and that monster basically struggles each turn where it has some chance to escape but that uses up it's turn. Just like real life if you oare outnumbered, grabbing hold of someone or wrestling around with them wouldnt be a good idea cause his buddies would kick your butt, but if there is like 1 monster left it could be a cool skill. Like havin a guy like sabin be able to grab the last enemy and hold him while your other guys hit him would be a pretty useful skill (: About the player never dying, on one hand i could see that working but on the other, couldnt you just scrape through anyhwere by walking through a dungeon and getting knocked out at each fight? How do you balance that out? Some cool ideas! On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 6:36 AM, eric drewes <figarus@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:figarus@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote: ok here is how i am thinking parties will work in combat... there will be 3 active party members in any fight and 4 on the sidelines that can be "tagged in" (swapped) as a combat option for any of the active players INCLUDING the hero. this will allow you to sub out injured characters for fresh healthy ones, or if you want two people that can do a special attack, you can have them sub in to pull of a coup de grace, or maybe there is a MATCHUP you want to exploit. Matchups? Huh? Matchups are basically already existing in games but without anything to quantify them. basically, if you're in battle against a big slow ogre or something, you can adjust your party to better match up w/ the enemy (enemies) you're fighting. Maybe you want a big dude that can go mano-y-mano with the ogre, or a small quick dude who can exploit the ogre's plodding attack and slow defense. Maybe you're up against a flying creature and arrows will be the best way to bring them down when standard attacks seem ineffectual. Picking the best match up for what you're going against can mean the difference of life and death. Injuries/status - we don't just want fights to be wars of attrition where you attack attack attack and try to slowly drain your foes life (and vice versa) - in real life, this would be the equivelent of standing in front of someone and punching them back and forth until someone died. Silly! i think most (if not all) of us are experienced martial artists and we know fights don't work like that, there are holds, throws, etc that can put your opponent in compromising situations that give you the advantage. Add weapons to this and we have a fun system that is more dynamic than the typical rpg combat system. Examples of this would be sweeps/tackles/throws that leave the enemy prone and thus unable to defend themselves as well, or entangled via nets, maybe even HELD by one character while the others beat it up (could we do this)? or maybe getting maimed or hamstrung knocks you over, getting stunned (like street fighter when you do a certain combination the enemy can't move and has birds flying above their head) is another example. This style of combat would add a lot of depth and strategy and make combat feel more "alive" and dangerous and fun. Also it adds a lot of potential skills and techniques to our future list Injuries - with our injury and death system, swapping to keep your team healthy is important. This is kind of a big thing but I am sort of leaning towards thinking maybe MAYBE the hero can't die. everyone else can, but if the hero is "knocked out" in battle, he's back after the fight. he can then go forward to try to find the next respawn node or maybe theres a "Recall" option where you can revert to the start of the dungeon with all your party members intact. i think this will eliminate a lot of frustration as well as prevent people from keeping the hero on the sidelines worried he will die. just as a quick guess... i am thinking you get 7 active party members (3 active, 4 tagteamable) and then an additional 7 back at your "home base" that you can swap out ff style whenever you're there for a total of 14 in your party. We will (ideally) have 40-50 recruitable characters so this forces you to make some decisions on who you want to pick but also gives you a large stable of characters so you don't feel like "shit, i have to give up one of my favs". Just some thoughts... let me know what you think! ________________________________ ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************* This e-mail is the property of Oakley Inc. It is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, or otherwise protected from disclosure. Distribution or copying of this e-mail, or the information contained herein, to anyone other than the intended recipient is prohibited.