1 swing-multiple hits?

[Schro]

I remember a thread a few years ago when I asked in the Taleworlds forum for this and they told me, the engine isn't made for this.
So how about now?
Basically, I want the possibility to hit multiple enemies with one swing. Of course, the swing must not be blocked by the first target and it won't do as much damage on the 2nd target, but it should still do damage if it goes though him.

[Salahudin]

Lol.
How do you see this happening?
Like, when the swing hits its first target, it needs to have some crazy immense force to keep going and hit another target and do damage at the same time.

[Beowulf1990]

You want to slice through one person into the next?

[Destraex]

Maybe he just means swing and bounce to the next person if attacking a line?

[ProjectAngel]

Nothing has been posted on this yet so I can't really answer the question but I sure hope swings can hit multiple targets.

[Th3o]

Hope they'll not make it, cause only way it can be done - arcade AOE crap like in MMO etc. I think there is some reason-consequence mistake. Blade is moving further after hit (with the same speed as before hit) not because it weighs 1 ton and is wielded by some godly terminator and thus its able to hit 5 people more with this swing, but because its hardwired part of animation sequence, which can only be stopped by death/injury (or block, before hit). To know whats blade capable of after leaving one body you have to calc how fast this blade moves, how heavy it is, what kind of armor and part of body it hits, how deep it penetrates, does it crack the bone or not, etc, and to see it you have to alter animation basing on that all, and check if it looks real... In fact, most good hits must end with blade stuck in opponents body, those which do not chop off limbs Im afraid, these options are too complex and time-consuming to implement, and without them such "multiple hits" are worse than useless not to mention unrealistic (what weapon will constantly crush through more than one body? 20 kg pole-hammer? )

[Beowulf1990]

I guarantee you that EVEN IF you manage to completely pass through the body of an individual with a sword (which is not very likely in the best of cases) that you will not have either the control or the momentum left to injure another individual next to the target.

[ProjectAngel]

Depends where you hit the person though doesnt it. Passing through the torso of a person is a little different to taking someone's jaw clean off with a two handed sword.

[reis91]

What about hitting two people standing next to each other, each with a different part of the blade? That's a big flaw of M&B, actually,

[Salahudin]

You underestimate the absorption power of human anatomy.
'Take a jaw clean off'.
The sword wont have much momentum after that. Even the cleanest of cuts lose almost all their energy when they hit something.

Please devs, don't make the silly mistake and make this a reality.

[ProjectAngel]

I know this isn't exactly a valid piece of evidence to support my argument, (because I saw it on Deadliest Warrior lol,) but I watched a katana slice through two pigs cleanly with my own eyes. Granted these pigs weren't fighting back or wearing armour, but they were two huge chunks of meat that a sword went right through.

[Salahudin]

First of all, there is no way in hell that a human body that is moving, probably against the swing's direction, with some sort of armor on is going to be sliced in half by a katana. They tried the swords on peasants who were tied up for a reason. Movement creates inertia which disrupts the swing's energy.

How do you suggest that a European 15th century sword, meant for hacking not cutting or slashing mind you, is to cut through a body and continue its way through?
Its ridiculous and you know it lol.

[ProjectAngel]

I'm not saying that if a sword hits a torso it should pass all the way through and hit another person, (with armour, lack of momentum etc it's just not going to happen. My previous reply was just to show that a sword could pass through two people.) What I am saying is that there are circumstances in which an attack could hit two people and I would like to see that in game.

[Robin.]

So... this is a complicated question really so I'll start with what I think of realism in games to give you a backdrop of our reasoning.

So, fundamentally our games main objective are to be fun obviously and realism is a great tool for this. Despite this, I'd still say realism has no inherent merit in it's own, it always depends on how it affects fun. Games don't have to be "realistic" to be fun though, but underestimating "realism" as a tool to help game design I believe you'd never be able to explain the success of modern shooters that kind of started through CS and then split up through the whole spectrum från CoD to Arma.

The two main ways "realism" helps fun in games in my opinion is through suspense of disbelief/"immersion" and by implicit intuitive understanding.

The first is kind of clear, it's similar to aesthetics, a way to convey a general and continuous theme that helps keep the players attention and keep him/her interested in the game, in short, by being cool The main thing that will ruin this is when you break the player's suspension of disbelief. When you violate the "rules" of the world you've set up you will weaken this. Like an ugly low rez barrel in the middle of a pile of pretty barrels. In this form of realism it's a lot more important to not in an obvious way break your rules rather than alway follow them and actually depends more on the users concept of reality than actual reality unfortunately. One can always instruct a misinformed player of how things _really_ are, but that's always hard

The second, implcit intuitive understanding is basically that if you follow a reality that the player knows, he/she will understand your mechanics intuitively, lower learning thresholds and not be confuse him/her by doing something entirely unexpected. A basic example is that in the halo beta the explosions of grenades actually were so overdimensioned that ppl would get instakilled way outside the explosions. The result this had was that players got very confused, because they broke their reality they'd set up and a large amount of players apparently attributed this to network lag which wasn't a factor in any way. Another example is Call of Duty, which a lot of people (not all regard as very realistic even though some of the things in it are insanely unrealistic if you live in the real world. My explanation to this i that it simply follows a realism that very many players very easily can relate to, Hollywood (and Discovery channel weapon fetish documentaries . By keeping with the rules of this perceived reality players both know what is happening without much explanation and aren't surprised and confused by the effects perceived i the world.


Soooo.... getting back to the subject of hitting multiple characters.

It is probably unrealistic to slice through an enemy completely like you do in warband (and most melee games) and even yet more to slice through another following it, especially without killing them both instantly. So, how does relate to the wall of text above you may ask?

Well, we could let all hits but killing blows bounce or deflect off enemies and we have tried this. The main problems with this is two-fold. First of all it really hurts the fluidness of combat, constantly bouncing off eachother neither looks good nor feels fluid while playing it. It gets clunky and unfortunately kind of akward. The second problem is that it really obscures player feedback. Because melee games, especially with multiple combatants tend to be come rather fast paced and hectic it's very important to give the player good feedback of what is happening. With blood splattering everywhere from multiple combatants it's kind of hard to distinguish hits from parries, shield deflects, armour deflects if you can't clearly see it on the animation of your character. This punishes all gameplay and will turn fights from being less tactical and more of a random hack-fest.

So, what if we'd let the player cleave through when he hits always and only bounce when hitting "hard" stuff like walls, parries, shields etc, but not be allowed to hit anything else with the same swing. Well, this would help both issues above, clearly distinguishing hits from deflects, but it introduces a new and _even worse_ issue. This results in a _very_ heavy unrealism factor that can very clearly be seen and heavily breaks suspension of disbelief. What happens is that you get attacks that will pass straight through enemies without harming them at all. I'd say that a sword passing completely through an enemy's chest without instantly killing him is kind of unrealistic, but it's pretty common in games (and thus easy to understand) and nowhere close to as unrealstic, unintuitive and immersionbreaking as a sword that passes clean through somebody in full swing without even harming them.

Therefore, we've chosen to, as you've probably seen in the gameplay footage shown, allow swings that do damage to pass through enemies and actually damage several enemies in one swing. Every additional hit does less damage with diminishing returns, but exactly how much depends on factors like weapon attachments and the like (being able to sacrifice strength in one area to be slightly better att defending against multiple enemies at once). But, because of the damage being less for each consecutive hit, it's very likely that the second or third hit will simply bounce off the armour rather than penetrate, but against peasant rabble, cut, hack and slash away!

Like everything else balancing wise though, things could change depending on feedback/data from alpha/beta testing, but this is roughly the reasoning behind how things currently work.

[Robin.]

I guess I just can never stay concise... oh well

[MeryGamer]

I guess I just can never stay concise... oh well

I like it better this way. More information is good. Also...

DOUBLE POST!!! tsk, tsk.

Your in detail explination sounds interesting, and I shall reserve judgement until I get to hack through several enemies myself (and get hit myself, through allies) and get the feel of it. Of course, this is just another ploy to get players to wear heavy armor.

[Beowulf1990]

Magic swings it is.

Nothing really against that though, it's just that arguing that it's realistic is silly.

Oh and I have to disagree on realism not having merit in it's own right. I really do feel that it does, it's another way of making something enjoyable for me.

[Robin.]

Magic swings it is.

Nothing really against that though, it's just that arguing that it's realistic is silly.

Oh and I have to disagree on realism not having merit in it's own right. I really do feel that it does, it's another way of making something enjoyable for me.

I didn't argue it was realistic, I argued passing through enemies without harming them is even more unrealistic

You misunderstand me. I'm sure a lot of things being perceivably realistic makes things more enjoyable to you, it does for me too. My point was that adding things for realism must be weighed on their merits like all other elements. Something being realistic is not in it's own an argument, it's how the perceived realism adds to the totality of the game. I think the kind of enjoyment you are referring to, at least the one I experience from "realistic" or "historical" games is the aesthetic one. If it's a realism I don't much care for (like an aesthetic I don't much care for) it will not only not make me like the game more but probably even detract from my enjoyment.

[Beowulf1990]

No, I know you didn't, but it seemd to be going that way in general in the thread.

And I don't think I misunderstand you at all. Something being realistic is, for me, entirely in itself a positive thing in every way. Not just aesthetically either. Although the sort you're talking about is definitely nice to have

[Salahudin]

I honestly don't think it will benefit 'fun' or gameplay in anyway Robin.
In fact, it might just turn a bunch of us off =s

We are given a game in an era of plate armor and heavy weaponry. We are told that everything is modeled into the engine, so you have to shoot your arrows/bolts at certain parts of armor.
We are then told that you can hit through plate, and still harm someone in your swing direction.. AFTER you hit the plate, and AFTER you do the damage..

It just seems like a really awkward way to design your game.
Why not just limit it to hitting the first thing you hit? If you hit a shield, you have to hit again. If you hit flesh, you do damage, and the first thing in your swing arch takes damage based on when in the swing animation you hit them and how far you charged up.
It really is a simple formula.

I still don't understand why any developer would make 'magic' slashes through stuff. Its not about realism.. its about gameplay. Can you imagine hitting through an enemy that you and a teammate are trying to kill, killing him and then having your swing go on to do friendly fire to your friend?

Can you imagine how ANNOYING it would be to have your lances go through an enemy, kill them, and pierce through a friendly while you're charging in on a horse?

How would someone block against a 'magic' swing? Naturally, if there is someone in the way of an enemy's attack, I'd think, "its fine, the friendly will either block it or take the hit. In both cases I'm fine", but then on goes the swing and I'm hit, even though I probably didn't have clear vision on where the attack was coming from.

Hell, why not just make bolts and arrows go through several targets too =s
Truly, I am disappoint.