The Mana World Forums

Being id is necessary, else the server will never know which being you decided to attack. If someone with a modified client will try to attack a creature out of his range the server will answer with a packet indicating that you failed because you were out of range easy enough isn't it?

We could also send the coodinates when attacking normally and the direction (very similar to a move packet) to let the player just calculate which monsters are in our range anyways (so a direct SoM-Conversion, where you can hit several monsters with one slash) (This wouldnt be possible if the client sends just an being id of the attacked monster - because its just 'one')
For skills we could do a similar system to D2's bolt system /same for bows.
(That means: Sending an Vector, maybe based on 2 points (x,y of the player and x,y, of the tile you clicked at for shooting the bolt/arrow) Or the direction of the Player

Anyways: Most important is, that every calculation, even if its done by client already is re-checked by the server to absolutely stop exploits.
For example: In our 0.0.9 version there was autolooting client-side enabled, anyways, this was just possible, because the server just accepted Client's 'get that item' packets and didnt reassure that the item is really in palyer's range, etc...This is STILL enabled and therefore any user who slighly modifies the cvs client or uses an old version of tmw just can get all the items of the map...In our own server version + protocol this should just be not possible...

Mra wrote:We could also send the coodinates when attacking normally and the direction (very similar to a move packet) to let the player just calculate which monsters are in our range anyways (so a direct SoM-Conversion, where you can hit several monsters with one slash) (This wouldnt be possible if the client sends just an being id of the attacked monster - because its just 'one')

That's true. In fact, there's really no reason to tell the client what the creature actually IS. The user only needs to know where it is and what it looks like, so it can appear on the screen. Let the client just give it an arbitrary ID for display purposes. When the user sends an attack command, just let the server do hit calculation for him. That ensures that all clients get the same result.

Just dropping a vote off for the realtime fighting. You guys seem to be on the right path to make it work.

There is something to be said for auto attack. One of the advantages of making your character a melee build in many MMOs is when you're auto attacking, a lag spike during the fight has no effect on your gameplay, unless you need potions or somehting to beat the monster. Plus, real time may be problematic for players with slower connections. In addition, I personally never liked the whole "use your attack and then run like hell until it recharges back to the level n attack, then let that loose and start running again" thing SoM had going on. This is only my opinion, but I have a valid point to go with it.

In a party/group atmosphere, virtually all the time there is a character that has large defence and max life that acts as the tank. They are supported by support builds, and have offence builds working with them. Having all the party memebers scurry around charging their bars and letting loose isn't really teamwork as much as it is parallel play. You may be working together, but success depends not on the party members doing their job, but is really just a matter of when the monsters drop dead from the people who are doing hit and run attacks on it who just happen to be in a party/group.

Also, a few questions concerning combat, in no particular order:
are we going to do hit/miss?
how fast are the monsters going to be?
how dependent on stats do we want combat to be?
how easy will monsters be to avoid? (i.e. running around them with no intention of fighting, but to get to the area past them)
how will monsters decide which player to attack?
will we be encouraging team play/character specialization?

Questions that I thought were more important I bolded.

Hello Wakka here come my thoughts: I think you're thinking too much on a RO way, I mean having a tank was a technique we used when play on euRO, but our tank had always to do hit and run against strong monsters (why fighting weak monsters when in a party?). A tank in TMW should have a lot of defense and attack speed, this way it will be convenient to fight the monster instead of running round and round after the first hit until the party gets rid of it.

I hope my poor english succeded explaining what I was trying to say.

1) Well I think you don't like when yourplayer can only perform successful attacks.
2) it depends on the monster, an heavy monster will be very slow, while a flying one for example will be fast.
3) 3%, 50%, 99% ? Who will know?
4) Again it depends on the monster, easy ones will let you go, while another one will grab you as a rugby player.
5) well my vote goes to scripted AI. we will have different behaviours: for example easy mosters like to walk alone and only fight back, crazy monsters will follow everything is moving in their range, plants will try to damage every being around it per attack turn, while a knight will concentrate on a single target (the strongest one) ignoring the others. Probably AI scripts will be also random assigned, this way the player cannot elaborate ways to easily get rid of monsters.
6) we should decide it together, but I think it will be good

WakkaCraft wrote:Also, a few questions concerning combat, in no particular order:
are we going to do hit/miss?
how fast are the monsters going to be?
how dependent on stats do we want combat to be?
how easy will monsters be to avoid? (i.e. running around them with no intention of fighting, but to get to the area past them)
how will monsters decide which player to attack?
will we be encouraging team play/character specialization?

1) Yes, but misses will make up a far smaller percentage of attack results than in most MMORPGs.

2) As Elven said, this depends mostly on the monster, though stronger monsters will generally have long range and spell attacks in case players try to run.

3) We are generally dependant on stats for combat and such. Players can's win by skills or stats alone, but with a careful balance of the two, the player should be able to take out monsters near his own stat levels with little trouble.

4) Again, monsters will have attacks with a wide range, as well as magic, so some attacks may be difficult to dodge. If a player is a melee fighter, there is a good chance that he is going to get hit, no matter how he runs.

5) Scripted AI, as Elven said. I'll create a method for writing this later on, hopefully.

6) We are encouraging a little of both, since the way players fight determines the way they advance, it encourages diverse specialization, which in turn encourages party play.

This is the current standing of the gameplay design, as far as I understand it.