Combat Overhaul

This is an idea I’ve had for a while. In my opinion, one of the things holding this game back from going more mainstream, is the combat itself. Combat is mostly just you and an enemy trading a blow with each other with no real way to defend yourself. So I’ve come up with some ideas on how to fix that and make the combat feel more intuitive and add some skill to it. As a side note, this is kind of a bunch of ideas put into one, which is why I’m calling it an overhaul.

Knockback System

First off, the knockback system. Currently there is a knockback system in the game, however the knockbacks don’t do much at all. If anything, they cause you to move a little bit more so that you’ll hit your target. However it isn’t enough in my opinion, because you can still get hit right after striking an enemy. This doesn’t feel rewarding. In fact, it might scare new players away. Think about it. The majority of new players aren’t going to have access to any weapons other than the default sword. That’s why, for the knockback system, I’d like it to be more like Minecraft’s. At least very similar to it. Instead of just being pushed back, I’d like to see enemies jump up a little when being hit. As an added bonus, enemies can flash a color (dark red or white) when being hit to add a greater feeling of impact. Something that could be adjusted would be the knockback being determined by how hard of a hit the enemy just took and how big the enemy is. I don’t think Aragog should have the same knockback as a small spider.

Something like this: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/10884689/44043354-85e43780-9ed7-11e8-9f76-fead24711dac.gif

Sword Combat and Stamina System

Lets talk about the sword combat next. As of now, the sword combat is pretty simplistic, and I’d like to keep it that way, just with a few changes. Currently there is a timer for when you can swing your sword again. I feel like this could be adjusted. Instead of having to wait for the timer to end so that you can swing your sword again, you can now swing your sword after the attack animation plays so that you aren’t waiting around. Now this does sound very over powered, so I’ve come up with something to counter this and add some more strategy. I’m thinking that a stamina system would work here. Just like with the mana system, each time you swing a sword, it uses up a little bit of your stamina so you cannot keep attacking. It will recharge when you are not swinging a sword around. This could also bring in new possibilities like stamina potions to refill your meter faster, rings that would increase your stamina or stamina gain, and so on. At the moment I’m just thinking that stamina should just be used for combat that doesn’t involve magic. I don’t think it should be used for something like mining. Maybe sprinting can be added for this system?

Guns & Bows

There isn’t much I’d change about guns and bows. I think they are in a good spot right now. I think when they hit their targets, arrows should do a little bit of knockback and guns should do a bit more. After all, you’re hitting a target with a bullet or rocket. Lastly, and I think this is the one real change I’d like to see. Guns and Arrows are a cheap way to win fights from a distance. You can hit enemies from a distance and they won’t even react at all. I’d like to see this changed. If you hit an enemy, it doesn’t matter the distance, that enemy will become aware of you and try to go after you. Or if it’s something like a sheep, it will run away from you. That will make ranged combat feel less cheap.

Staffs

I’m a bit torn on what to do with staffs. Should they be left the same and just given my idea of the new knockback system? The only other idea I have is to revamp them completely. Instead of locking onto a target hoping you don’t get hit, you can charge up the staff in your hand and shoot a ball of energy at a target. This ball of energy would have to be aimed like with a bow and arrow. Once the ball gets launched you lose some mana like a normal magic attack, and if it hits the target it damages that target just like the staffs would normally do.

Shields

The next thing I want to bring up are shields and how to make them better. This has been hard to come up with because of the mobile version of the game, so if you have any ideas on how to make it easier for mobile users to do something like this, I’d be curious to know. My idea is to remove the chance of shields working and to have the player manually have to press and hold to get the shields to block incoming attacks by holding right click. As for mobile, I was thinking about having a separate block button just above the fly button that is toggleable so you don’t have to hold it down. Instead on mobile, you press to block, and press again to stop blocking. Now being able to block every attack in the game would be super overpowered. So I’ve come up with a simple way around that, that also comes with wanting to use every shield in the game as you progress. Each shield in the game is going to have a defense number. The defense number represents the amount of damage that can be blocked. For this example, I’ll use the early game bone shield and the late game phoenix shield. The bone shield has a defense number of 50. So if you were to block an incoming attack that does 40 damage, you will be able to block the whole attack. However, if you try to block an incoming attack that does 60 damage, you will resist 50 of the damage and take 10 damage because that shield isn’t strong enough to block that attack. If you try to block something that does 110 damage, you will once again block 50 damage, but this time take 60 damage. It’s basically the attack damage (110) minus the defense number of the shield (50) and whatever is left is how much the player receives. This will encourage the player to craft the next best shield to block stronger attacks and work all the way up to the phoenix shield that will block a total of 500 or 1000 damage. Also as a bonus, when you toggle your shield your character will slow down a bit (and if there is stamina) your stamina will recharge slower.

 

These are some of the ideas I have in mind for a combat rework. I love this game, but one thing that makes it hard to keep playing is the old combat system. Let me know what you think! Getting something like this on to mobile would be tough so I’d like to hear some more ideas on how to work this out if you are playing on a mobile device.