Kap’s Log: Collision Detection: That is the Question, Part Two
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When EA Mythic VP Mark Jacobs writes an apologetic message in the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning newsletter after delaying the release of the game again, one expects that he is going to explain why he is apologizing.
Suppositions
Most gamers that plan to play Warhammer aren’t going to be swayed by anything that happens between now and the time the game is on store shelves. Hearing that the game is still in beta is not difficult to take for the loyalists, they will just go back to waiting patiently. But, sending 650,000 emails to your beta list explaining that they will have to wait just a little longer, without giving any specifics about why, leaves the community to come to their own conclusions - or illusions. That said, we will try not to speculate too much as nothing is set in stone, but we hope this exercise will bring to light some of the newest concepts that some of the industries visionaries are wrestling with these days.
Last week we touched briefly on the current capstone for gaming: collision detection math in a non-instanced MMO PvP battlefield environment. Now we ask you to imagine the scenarios along with us, and find out if you think it’s going to be a fun feature or a bug and a bust.
SCENARIO I: Door Defense
Dark Age of Camelot introduced keeps and siege weapons for their revolutionary realm vs. realm territory claiming system. Bonus relics and the keep lord would be protected from attackers by NPC guards and large doors that had hitpoints. The problem with defending the door in this game was that no one was ever able to truly barricade the door. Ranged classes could throw their missiles down at other players, and point blank attacks could deal some area of effect damage in the perfect set of circumstances, but for the most part defending the door meant drawing the attackers away from the keep. Thus, the most effective defense was actually accomplished by a secondary group that was outside the keep using offensive strategies.
If collision detection were implemented into similar settings, we can assume that the door would not be the automatic given that it was previously. Melee players inside the keep would not be relegated to running around aimlessly while they wait for the inevitable flood of enemies to burst through the dam and come rushing over them as if they weren’t even there. But, what would happen?
Would players be able to setup a phalanx and stack on top of each other, making an impenetrable wall of tanks? How many avatars would it take to clog up a door-sized hole? Will formations really matter, or will tanks just stand inside each other to increase their chance of success?
Post your thoughts or comments
SCENARIO II: Point Camping
Camping in general gets a bad rap. The negative connotation is derived from its history in PvP scenarios where players were able to trap their enemies in a room, or prevent them from getting their corpse or death pile. The truest form of camping is realized when the victim is rendered completely helpless and is at the mercy of their captor. (There are of course forms of camping that take place in PvE zones, like certain heavy spawn points or rare quest mobs, but this falls more under the category of griefing than camping.)
Applying even the most forgiving form of collision detection could open a Pandora’s box of exploit based battlefield strategies the likes of which quality assurance engineers have never imagined. It has not been made clear how much emphasis will be put on the character’s momentum when it comes to determining their resistance to being pushed through. If players are just as strong standing still as they are moving, then the possibility for a Great Wall of Chinese Gold Farmers could become a reality. But would it really be worth the effort or are these situations just not all that likely to occur on a regular basis?
Could five tanks stack on top of each other and produce an impenetrable square foot of the game world? Will tanks finally get a chance to play a role in PvP without having to re-spec / re-gear / fake it, or will their contributions be negated by an unforeseen flaw in the mechanics? Will being tasked with blocking a corridor or defending a spawn point become the most hallowed role in open world raiding, or a lame duck option that only newbies and role-players attempt?
Post your thoughts or comments
SCENARIO III: Defense vs. Offense
Rules for forming an effective PvE group:
1) Know who is in charge
2) Bring a healer
3) Don’t bring more than one tank
Rules for forming an effective PvP group:
1) Know who is in charge
2) Bring a healer
3) Don’t bring any tanks
Everyone knows these rules, whether they’ve actually ever read them in a succinct list before or not. It’s a widely accepted practice to remove as much chaff from the PvP group as possible, and to maximize your chances for success in any given encounter. Well-rounded groups can move fast, shut up, focus fire, and survive. A group with one weakness is a group not living up to its full potential and the weakest link is holding everyone else back. This is a sort of harsh outlook to have for a video game, but when it comes to MMOs, gamers don’t want their time wasted. Bringing a defensive based player for PvP is like hammering a square peg into a round hole - the biggest and strongest 1% will make it work, the rest are just wasting their time trying.
Enter collision detection: the saving grace for all main tank players who never get any PvP loot. Will defense become a more tangible thing with the implementation of physical mass - or at least more than the crowd control and shield counter attack abilities currently offered to melee classes in most games? Can defense ever escape from its PvE niche and become more than just a fantasy that no serious player indulges in PvP?
Picture the following PvP encounter and try to imagine what course of action each group would take in the current generation of MMOs.
Group A: Tank, Tank, Tank, Healer
vs.
Group B: DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS
No, these combinations are not that likely, but that’s exactly the point. Defensive groups are futile efforts. It’s not hard to see what Group B would try to do first. Their only course of action is to focus fire on the healer until he’s dead. If they did anything else other than that, they would not be doing their jobs. The difficulty comes in asking what options are open to Group A. They, too, need to focus fire and start doing some damage, but at the same time they don’t know who will be attacking their healer, so they employ a wait and see approach which involves huddling close to one another and waiting for the other team to act first. The frustrating part about this has always been that merely standing next to your healer doesn’t do anything unless you activate some form of defensive intercept ability making you a sitting duck. Therefore, huddling is often abandoned outright and a mad-rush approach is accepted as a better alternative than waiting to die.
Do you think that proper implementation of collision detection would include pushing back as a form of resistance? How much should line of sight affect the attacker - 100% of the time or should big strong attacks have a chance of landing for a lower amount of damage? Will fancy footwork be required to melee, changing the melee game forever? Will healers be able to stand inside their tanks and heal them while being completely invincible to all attackers?
Post your thoughts or comments
Cautions
EA Mythic is not going to have any trouble making profit. The Warhammer name brings a huge base of fans that are guaranteed to at least give the game a shot. What they should be concerned about is the rest of us — gamers who know all the tricks, and who aren’t fooled any more.
Tentative Conclusions
We don’t play games because of the reasons that are suggested in the advertising, and we don’t stick around out of any sense of brand loyalty. We play for our own selfish indulgences. If we choose to play a role-playing game, we want to choose our role. We don’t want to pick a class that has crowd control abilities only to find out that crowd control is useless in PvP. We don’t want to waste time practicing maneuvering and footwork if it turns out that standing still is just as effective. We don’t want the squeaky wheel always getting all the grease, and the rest of us just getting the shaft. In the end, we want exactly what the developers want, the game to do everything Mark says it will. Of course, that just might be impossible.
Nic Stransky - “Kap”
