The curse of the nerf bat Saber

[mavsynchroid]

In every star wars game I've played, this has been one issue that's always bugged me. I don't think I remember a game where the lightsaber has been a one hit kill like it should be.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they should add this to SWTOR. That would involve a lot of work and might make Jedi and sith a liiiiitle OP, nevermind how quick pvp would be.

 

I just have a dream where they come out with a game that uses a lightsaber as it's portrayed in the SW universe. SW force unleashed was close, but still, if i have to make more than one direct hit with a lightsaber, something's wrong with that. Then again I guess you could say that about blasters, swords, or any other death dealing weapon.

 

Anyway, this is just one of the "Universe to game" transfers that bothers me.

 

Anyone else have anything like that??

 

 

(Btw I love this game, not flaming it at all.)

[EvilGoodOne]

Pencil can be one-hit-kill weapon too.

[pursang]

Go and play the Forced Unleashed games then come back after you've torn out your hair.

[Kabhal]

They don't resurrect the dead in the movies either. (aside from spectral force ghosts I guess).

 

This game would be more fun if one hit from a lightsaber killed you and there was no resurrection.

[mavsynchroid]

They're adding pencil's in the next update.

 

FU2 is awful, I know, I was just looking for a comparison.

 

As for the whole coming back to life thing, I don't mean to make the whole game realistic to that extreme, but like I said, I've never played a SW game that uses the lightsaber like you would "in real life".

 

Maybe they could come out with a feature that instead of a health meter, you have a block meter? And that instead of getting "hit" you "Block", and the meter drops as if a health meter would. Then the killing blow actually hits you in the animation. That'd work for jedi and sith, and with blaster users, they could have a shield meter, with the same results.

 

 

Edit: I actually really like this i idea.... And so do you. (waves hand in front of you)

Edited February 9, 2012 by mavsynchroid

[nezroy]

Maybe they could come out with a feature that instead of a health meter, you have a block meter? And that instead of getting "hit" you "Block", and the meter drops as if a health meter would. Then the killing blow actually hits you in the animation. That'd work for jedi and sith, and with blaster users, they could have a shield meter, with the same results.

 

Yup, I've been waiting for a game to come out with this mechanic for years. This has nothing to do with light sabers... even in the fantasy world with regular old steel swords, anything but a glancing blow, even on armor, is very likely to be fatal or at least highly injurious.

 

Give people a stamina meter (or whatever you want to call it instead of health) that behaves exactly like health, and make all the combat animations appropriate versions of dodge/parry/block/shield/whatever. When your stamina hits 0, the next hit will be the killing blow that you finally couldn't avoid.

Edited February 9, 2012 by nezroy

[Bazouk]

They're adding pencil's in the next update.

 

FU2 is awful, I know, I was just looking for a comparison.

 

As for the whole coming back to life thing, I don't mean to make the whole game realistic to that extreme, but like I said, I've never played a SW game that uses the lightsaber like you would "in real life".

 

Maybe they could come out with a feature that instead of a health meter, you have a block meter? And that instead of getting "hit" you "Block", and the meter drops as if a health meter would. Then the killing blow actually hits you in the animation. That'd work for jedi and sith, and with blaster users, they could have a shield meter, with the same results.

 

 

Edit: I actually really like this i idea.... And so do you. (waves hand in front of you)

 

 

but... by making that change, you wouldn't effectively be changing anything.

 

in a real sword fight, you get stabbed when you make a mistake. not when you run out of "block juice".

 

it would be easy to design a game where your death became more a result of one or two mistakes as opposed to the inability to sustain yourself through a long, drawn out series of exchanged multiple direct smashes to the face.

[pursang]

Edit: I actually really like this i idea.... And so do you. (waves hand in front of you)

 

I really like this idea.

[NinjaRockStar]

You should go play some of the Jedi Knight games. Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy probably have the best lightsaber mechanics of any Star Wars game. Most enemies die with 1 slash. When you fight enemy force users it sometimes take more than 1 slash to kill them, but you can just use a dismemberment cheat to make them die in 1 slash. It is still challenging though.

[stephenjohnp]

I do not care. It's sad that you care.

[HanzBlix]

There was an old game called Bushido Blade, maybe for the original Playstation. I've played so many games/systems I can't remember for sure.

 

It was my favorite fighting game of all time. Pretty much if you got hit in a limb you couldn't use it anymore (i.e. limp around with leg, or gimp arm), and there was a one shot kill. Look it up.

 

It would be pretty awesome if they made another game like that, but not sure if it would work in an MMO.

[nezroy]

in a real sword fight, you get stabbed when you make a mistake. not when you run out of "block juice".

 

And you are more likely to make a mistake when you are tired, which is a relatively easy thing to capture. Replace "health" with "stamina" and, voila... blocking/dodging/whatever is tiring, eventually you get tired enough to make a mistake, and bam, there's the killing blow that finally lands.

 

Of course no game mechanic is ever going to replicate real armed combat in perfect detail, but still, it doesn't mean the tired old health bar and "squish. ow! squish. ow! squish. ow!" flow of current MMO combat is the pinnacle of design in this area...

Edited February 9, 2012 by nezroy

[GnatB]

Combat is abstracted in roleplaying games. "Health" isn't really how wounded you are, but more like a measure of fatigue/chance of making a mistake leading to that unblocked blow that 1-hits you. Better warriors have more HP because they are better trained and less likely to make that fatal mistake. (as well as being in better shape and thus tiring less)

 

Hence that you fight just as well at 1hp as at max HP. If it makes you feel any better, just pretend you (and your enemy) are blocking/deflecting/rolling every blow that comes your (or their) way until you finally land the one that finishes them off.

 

edit: Admittedly, "Western" RPG's tended to be less abstract (such as D&D). Lower HP, higher miss/block/etc. chance, such that actually landing a hit is the exception. Whereas Japanese RPG's tended to be more into large HP numbers and missing being the exception.

 

Admittedly, that JRPG trend of missing being the exception, and large HP numbers is pretty much the rule globally now.

Edited February 9, 2012 by GnatB

[mavsynchroid]

but... by making that change, you wouldn't effectively be changing anything.

 

in a real sword fight, you get stabbed when you make a mistake. not when you run out of "block juice".

 

it would be easy to design a game where your death became more a result of one or two mistakes as opposed to the inability to sustain yourself through a long, drawn out series of exchanged multiple direct smashes to the face.

 

Well maybe an endurance or stamina meter like the other fellow posted? You could get more "tired" to the point where you were just too tired to defend yourself I suppose.

 

Or maybe the chance % of you getting hit goes up as your meter goes down? I'm sure some sort of mechanic could be worked out.

 

I just thought it'd be nice to have the saber just hit once like it should be, but I suppose most of you are right when you say it'd would be very hard to pull off. I could always use my force persuade power again to make Bioware look into it....

 

Loved Jedi Academy and it's prequels btw. Think it might have been the first games that had different light saber combat forms.

[nezroy]

Combat is abstracted in roleplaying games. "Health" isn't really how wounded you are, but more like a measure of fatigue/chance of making a mistake leading to that unblocked blow that 1-hits you. Better warriors have more HP because they are better trained and less likely to make that fatal mistake. (as well as being in better shape and thus tiring less)

 

Except that the combat animations they use constantly show blows/laser bolts/arrows/whatever landing full force on you, blood spurting everywhere, etc. There's absolutely no sense conveyed by the animations in most MMOs that the health represents anything other than exactly how much blood you have left in your body...

[Sprgmr]

I think Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Academy had meaningful sabers if I remember. Same with Star Wars: Obi-Wan.

[Pathlight-]

Try Jedi Knight 2.

[Arraegath]

Last I checked, even blaster fire kills you in 1 hit.

 

Anakin got slashed a few times, lost a few limbs, etc. Darth Maul survived quite a bit....

[LyriaFrost]

In every star wars game I've played, this has been one issue that's always bugged me. I don't think I remember a game where the lightsaber has been a one hit kill like it should be.

 

All weapons should be "one hit kill" weapons, in that case. The lightsaber is nothing special.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they should add this to SWTOR. That would involve a lot of work and might make Jedi and sith a liiiiitle OP, nevermind how quick pvp would be.

 

Everyone would be OP. Balance achieved!

 

I just have a dream where they come out with a game that uses a lightsaber as it's portrayed in the SW universe. SW force unleashed was close, but still, if i have to make more than one direct hit with a lightsaber, something's wrong with that. Then again I guess you could say that about blasters, swords, or any other death dealing weapon.

 

Anyway, this is just one of the "Universe to game" transfers that bothers me.

 

It's because you're thinking of the health bar all wrong. Don't look at it as "I impale your skull with my lightsaber! You take 20 damage!" After all, characters don't suffer any penalties for being hit (save for status effects). Instead, think of it like this:

 

Each time your health bar takes damage, you're not being impaled/chopped in half/etc, but rather you're having "near misses", or "heroic movie wounds" (shot in the shoulder/leg; something non-fatal, but injurious). A block that's barely in time, a dodge that's just a fraction of an inch ahead of being impaled/shot, leaping out of the way of an explosion, etc. All these things are reducing your ability to avoid the next one. They're taking up stamina, morale, energy, what have you. Then finally, when you're just too tired/unnerved to fight or dodge any more, you get "one shot killed".

 

Think of the cinematic where Satele's master is fighting the two sith lords. Lots of dodging, parrying, hurling objects back and forth, all sorts of leaping about. Each time their sabers are clashing, or they're narrowly dodging, their "health bars" are dropping a bit. Until finally, one of the sith is stabbed through the chest, and the last of his health bar is eliminated, removing him from the fight. But with the context of a cinematic scene, he was killed (well, disabled really) in a single blow. Because that's how you'd NARRATE the fight, or describe it in a movie/book.

 

Health bars make much more sense when you think of them that way.

Edited February 9, 2012 by LyriaFrost

[mavsynchroid]

There was an old game called Bushido Blade, maybe for the original Playstation. I've played so many games/systems I can't remember for sure.

 

It was my favorite fighting game of all time. Pretty much if you got hit in a limb you couldn't use it anymore (i.e. limp around with leg, or gimp arm), and there was a one shot kill. Look it up.

 

It would be pretty awesome if they made another game like that, but not sure if it would work in an MMO.

 

Bushido blade = one of my top ten games. Yeah it was for PSX. I DLed it and used a psx emulator just to replay it a couple months back. I would LOVE a new one. You know they came out with a sequel right? Bushido blade 2 on PSX as well. Had some characters that used guns. It was actually pretty fun.

 

But yes, that's a good example of how games like that are in fact possible.

[DJRK]

You should go play some of the Jedi Knight games. Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy probably have the best lightsaber mechanics of any Star Wars game. Most enemies die with 1 slash. When you fight enemy force users it sometimes take more than 1 slash to kill them, but you can just use a dismemberment cheat to make them die in 1 slash. It is still challenging though.

 

Beat me to it. I know Jedi Outcast (and I assume Jedi Academy too, but I don't recall) had a console command, I think it was "realisticsabercombat" or something like that, which allowed dismemberment, but it also determined how powerful the saber was (so you could put a high # for instant death/dismemberment), and turned the collision detection on completely, so you didn't even have to press the attack button, if anything came into contact with the saber, it would take damage, so you could kinda "swing" your saber manually just by moving your mouse around. Made for some really awesome slow-mo death & dismemberment sequences when saber dueling, and you could literally hack them into pieces. That was the epitomy of lightsaber ******ery!

[mavsynchroid]

All weapons should be "one hit kill" weapons, in that case. The lightsaber is nothing special.

 

 

 

Everyone would be OP. Balance achieved!

 

 

 

It's because you're thinking of the health bar all wrong. Don't look at it as "I impale your skull with my lightsaber! You take 20 damage!" After all, characters don't suffer any penalties for being hit (save for status effects). Instead, think of it like this:

 

Each time your health bar takes damage, you're not being impaled/chopped in half/etc, but rather you're having "near misses", or "heroic movie wounds" (shot in the shoulder/leg; something non-fatal, but injurious). A block that's barely in time, a dodge that's just a fraction of an inch ahead of being impaled/shot, leaping out of the way of an explosion, etc. All these things are reducing your ability to avoid the next one. They're taking up stamina, morale, energy, what have you. Then finally, when you're just too tired/unnerved to fight or dodge any more, you get "one shot killed".

 

Think of the cinematic where Satele's master is fighting the two sith lords. Lots of dodging, parrying, hurling objects back and forth, all sorts of leaping about. Each time their sabers are clashing, or they're narrowly dodging, their "health bars" are dropping a bit. Until finally, one of the sith is stabbed through the chest, and the last of his health bar is eliminated, removing him from the fight. But with the context of a cinematic scene, he was killed (well, disabled really) in a single blow. Because that's how you'd NARRATE the fight, or describe it in a movie/book.

 

Health bars make much more sense when you think of them that way.

 

 

Yeah I see what you mean. Infact, now that I really think about it, i think some mobs who have vibro blades actually clash with your saber as you attack. Maybe what I want is just an animation for that every time.

 

It would take a heck of a lot of work, and I mean A LOT of work, because they'd have to create animations for blocking or dodging every skill from each ability each class has, and then make different dodging or blocking animations for each class as well.

 

And THEN you'd have to figure out what happens when you both use skills at the same time..

 

Yes I'm quite aware that I'm arguing against my own idea. I guess I do it in hopes of people not flaming me for an idea.

 

Don't do that (wave)

[Tenetke]

People do realize there are things in the sw universe that a lightsaber couldn't cut through.

[GnatB]

Except that the combat animations they use constantly show blows/laser bolts/arrows/whatever landing full force on you, blood spurting everywhere, etc. There's absolutely no sense conveyed by the animations in most MMOs that the health represents anything other than exactly how much blood you have left in your body...

 

That's because artists (and players) like blood and gore and fancy particle effect bloodspurts. Watching people constantly attack until somebody finally gets hit and falls over would "boring".

 

'Course, in this particular game, I don't really notice much in the way of blood spurts or anything, really. Maybe I'm just desensitized to it, or spend too much time looking at which abilities are available. (main is guardian)

[mavsynchroid]

Beat me to it. I know Jedi Outcast (and I assume Jedi Academy too, but I don't recall) had a console command, I think it was "realisticsabercombat" or something like that, which allowed dismemberment, but it also determined how powerful the saber was (so you could put a high # for instant death/dismemberment), and turned the collision detection on completely, so you didn't even have to press the attack button, if anything came into contact with the saber, it would take damage, so you could kinda "swing" your saber manually just by moving your mouse around. Made for some really awesome slow-mo death & dismemberment sequences when saber dueling, and you could literally hack them into pieces. That was the epitomy of lightsaber ******ery!

 

DLing Jedi Academy now.

 

 

 

As for the fact that there's some things a saber can't cut through, I agree with you. But sith robes? Jedi robes? That's a little silly. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the new star wars movies that has ninja like lightsaber combat and dodging. Most of a jedi sentinels attacks are kinda "Darth Vaderish" too. Slow and and grounded. That observation is for another thread though.

 

 

Off topic, how do you do multiple quotes from different posts? I'm not a big forum goer but I need to know this. I NEED to.

Edited February 9, 2012 by mavsynchroid