Let me try and reduce this a bit to a simpler system, I know this is not perfect but I think it will greatly help you understand how I am thinking and approuching this.
Lets take D&D. What is it that bring immersion to a game of D&D or any TTRPG for that matter. Is it the roll you make for diplomacy or checking traps? Or the rule stating you can not occupy the same space as another unit? I say no to this, those are there to simulate and bring fairness to a game of make belief, it is not the diplomacy roll but the description of the speech(or the speech itself) that makes you drawn in to the game, of the GM's description of the room and yours of how you go about searching for the traps. Combat immersion is not from the rules or rolls but from how you once again describe and play the character, it is not the action itself but the reason for the character to take that action that is the immersive part. I hope that you can see now why I believe systems and mechanics are not the biggest factor and in fact many times not a factor at all for the immersion in a world, for we are very good at overlooking mechanical things from breaking immersion but when you see a ferrari in your high fantasy world it is harder to ignore.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
1) I'm not sure if this is related to collision or not. But one thing I liked about EQ combat was that as a tank you had to position the mobs, and certain weapons and abilities would push the mobs. So the positioning of the mob while killing became part of the strategy of combat, and as a melee dps, you had to move to stay within melee range while fighting. So if having collision is needed to create that game mechanic, then I think it is necessary.
2) I think player collision adds challenge to raid situations. I remember raiding in SWTOR (which had no player collision), and there were instances where everyone in the raid would stand in the exact same spot to avoid an AoE. That to me, is a cheapened experience when compared to EQ1 raiding.
So I am in agreement with Dullahan. I think player collision would add more to the game, than it would take away from it. Hopefully a proper balance can be reached.
Wellspring said:1) I'm not sure if this is related to collision or not. But one thing I liked about EQ combat was that as a tank you had to position the mobs, and certain weapons and abilities would push the mobs. So the positioning of the mob while killing became part of the strategy of combat, and as a melee dps, you had to move to stay within melee range while fighting. So if having collision is needed to create that game mechanic, then I think it is necessary.
Collision and push exist independently of eachother. One is not required for the other.
Wellspring said:2) I think player collision adds challenge to raid situations. I remember raiding in SWTOR (which had no player collision), and there were instances where everyone in the raid would stand in the exact same spot to avoid an AoE. That to me, is a cheapened experience when compared to EQ1 raiding.
That happens with or without collision. Even in EQ when jousting an AE, everyone stands in the same location, they just can't stand directly inside of eachother. The end result is the same.
Wellspring said:So I am in agreement with Dullahan. I think player collision would add more to the game, than it would take away from it. Hopefully a proper balance can be reached.
Does your opinion change if you take into consideration that collision isn't required for any of the things you stated above?
@Liav, Yeah, Knowing that they can keep the push combat mechanics and the challenge of grouping/raiding the same w/o player collisions, then I'm fine if they decide not to have it.
And yeah in regards to #2, I do see your point about the end result being basically the same. With player collision on and shrinking abilities, the players are so small you basically end up standing in the same spot as a full sized character.
I don't care about having player collision just for the sake of realism. Like if someone wants to walk through my character to enter the bank, that's fine.
Liav said:Fulton said:I don't mind collision, but if it is in game, I'd like to see that with each bump, the non-moving character would be slightly moved, thereby being able to move someone AFK out of the way, and or the ability for some caster clases to cast shrink on out of party PC (possibility for trolling there as well).
Said it before, I'll say it again. I'm going to have a great time pushing people I don't like off of cliffs if this is included. So much troll potential.
You can say it as many times as you like.
I didn't side with or without, I simply stated "if" it is , then we need a mechanics to deal with griefers. Much like your pushing people off intentionally would be griefing. And as I continued in my post, that you decided not to include in your reply, I also showed a possible exploit if collision of PCs vs NPCs was in game.
Fulton said:You can say it as many times as you like.
I didn't side with or without, I simply stated "if" it is , then we need a mechanics to deal with griefers. Much like your pushing people off intentionally would be griefing. And as I continued in my post, that you decided not to include in your reply, I also showed a possible exploit if collision of PCs vs NPCs was in game.
I'm kind of bored of debating about collision at this point. Realistically, most posts in this thread are coming up with ways to deal with the griefing and other negative consequences of collision. I think that's argument enough against it, personally.
Aradune said:Dullahan said:I like character collision and also what it can bring to combat. We already know there will be some collision mechanics involved in combat with certain abilities. Hopefully this is a thing with players as well. Yes, it has grief potential, but so will many other things in Pantheon or any virtual world.
IMHO it has (and has had) huge grief potential. That said, if you or anyone have any ideas on how we could turn it on but also avoid the griefing, I'm all ears :)
Given we are going to see environmental auras is there a way to use a subset of the environment system to toggle collision for PC on and off based on doorways/cities or tight spots to avoid griefing..and have it be a thing in open areas?
So why not just make it possible to bump into other players? pushing them aside slightly if you run by with great speed
If 2 players bump into each other at same speed ,you'd see them pass each other by,like you'd normally see 2 people pass each other
tuning to (or from) each other to pass each other slightly sideways
Don't know if I'm correct in this,but I think Assassin's Creed has a system where NPC respond when player run into a crowd of NPC. Never played it ,only watched at a friends place
Fluffy said:So why not just make it possible to bump into other players? pushing them aside slightly if you run by with great speed
If 2 players bump into each other at same speed ,you'd see them pass each other by,like you'd normally see 2 people pass each other
tuning to (or from) each other to pass each other slightly sidewaysDon't know if I'm correct in this,but I think Assassin's Creed has a system where NPC respond when player run into a crowd of NPC. Never played it ,only watched at a friends place
Yeah, Assassin's Creed did have that.
I don't know though how well it'd work with other players though. Either a) you could push another player around (which could lead to griefing, e.g. pushing an afk player off a cliff), or b) it's simply an animation that doesn't move the other player, then we're basically just like no collision at all?
Plus we got to account for climbing/jumping collisions. Not just walking. Collisions may just be more trouble than they're worth, idk.
Maybe players could only push aside the other player the first time they bump into them.
Griefing wouldn't work when players can't repeat the bump for a time
If a griefer tries to bump into the same character again and again in an attempt to push the player of the cliff
The player would just evade in place on the second bump attemps
as if they are aware of the presence of the player that just bumped into them.The off guard bump caused them to be on guard about the other player for x time
Guards might have different move properties,like declining free passage until demands are met?
Also consider a large pack of dps on a raid targets butt. If player collision is on it is likely that not everyone would be able to actually reach the mob to attack. Or any mob that tends to get clustered around....auction house and bank come to mind. Personally I'd rather see collision off. They are designing enough challenge into the game already, I'm not a big fan of missing a jump in amberfaet just because the guy on the ledge ahead of me decided to back up as I was jumping, etc
Edit: silly autocorrect
On cliffs ,players could automatically hang to one side to let passing by players pass by?
Are we going to see long climbs or just pulling ourselves up on ledges?
I'd like to see more about climbing before jumping to conclusions
One thing I didn't like in some games without collision were the zergs clustered together with so much particle effects and players clustered up, you'd sooner have an epileptic attack than an exciting battle.
Raids without collision are a mess.And in PVP you could expect zerging stack-to-win,where you wouldn't be able to tell who is who.
At least with collision,players can't just all get in the same *safe spot* to ensure victory ,as seen in so many of these raids and dungeons in games without collision.
With collision,at least you have to use tactics.You can't just copy same tactics and positioning as everyone else.
Other players have a presence and you need to adapt
If one guy walks backwards on the edge of a cliff in Amberfeat ,the other character might grab on to that player/pull the player into the depths too <3 Or the one that tries to get you to fall down will always be off guard with the bump mechanics,so they would be pushed out of the way when you jump against them
Liav said:Character collision has high troll potential and honestly doesn't add anything meaningful gameplay wise. I don't think immersion is a good enough justification, personally.
We make tons of other concessions away from how things intuitively work in "real life" for the betterment of games. Increasing realism isn't always better.
I disagree that it doesn't add anything meaningful to the gameplay. Player positioning is super important at all levels. Standing in front or behind or to the side of a mob makes a difference, being close or far makes a difference, having something to LOS behind vs. casters, whether you can move quickly or slowly, are you positioned to switch targets, etc. I feel like player collision forces the player to think more about how they interact with other players and the environment in a three-dimentional space. It also helps simulate real life, like you mentiond.
Really the only negative aspect that I can think of is griefing, which can be pretty easily fixed in quite a few ways. An example is creating a command like /collision off that allows you to target a player and temporarly turn off collision with that character for 10 or 15 seconds. Another is allowing characters to push or move other players a little bit; if a few people are all colliding with an orgre who is sitting in the doorway they should be able to succeed in moving him out of the way. People would worry about the griefing potential of this im sure, but it is easy to limit the amout of movement you can achieve. Maybe if you move them a certain distance you will not be able to move them any further, or remove their collision box once they have moved to the max distance from their origional spot. There are tons of simple ways to keep griefing to a minimum.
What bothers me is the "pile" of characters that occurs when you fight boss mobs. 20 characters all standing on top of each other just seems like a massive breach of immersion. Wouldn't an encounter be more challenging if you had to manage your proximity to other characters? What if you cant just run into the pile and start DPSing, but rather have to find a spot where you can get close enough to do damage. This also is a natural deterant to zerging open world content with 100's of players like we did in EQ1.
I am in favor of having both player and npc collision, allow characters to scooch other players out of the way a little bit, and add an emergency command that you can use out of combat to deal with specific types of griefing. It will make the game more dynamic, more difficult, and more realistic. Any thoughts?
Xbachs said:I am in favor of having both player and npc collision, allow characters to scooch other players out of the way a little bit, and add an emergency command that you can use out of combat to deal with specific types of griefing. It will make the game more dynamic, more difficult, and more realistic. Any thoughts?
A lot of discussion about this kind of thing here: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/7592/bottleneck-zone-lnes/view/post_id/143898
Collision is essential if you want more tactical pvp. shield walls and such. But for a game that is pve focused i am not so sure its necessary.
While i enjoyed the hell out of Daoc and still the best pvp experience in any mmo to date not having collision allowed players to run through the meat shields and kill the clerics and the finger twitchers first then finish off the tanks. Most mmo's with pvp end up this way kill primary targets and finish off the tanks last!
If you had collision an enemy would have to first break through a shield wall to get to the healers and finger twitchers..
Its actually very easy to get by someone who is not actively trying to block you it should be so in an mmo. The only time another player should be able to block your movement is if there actively trying to block you thus a stance of some sort. For a warrior a shield wall stance shield up and blocking anyone coming from the front of the player. In the case of a cast a magical wall of some sort etc. Again this type of mechanic would only make sense against AI mobs and if there is pvp.
Xbachs said:I re-watched the stream that demonstrated the climbing system and changed my mind. The climbing system looks pretty awesome and I would hate for player collision to make it awkward.
Could probably implement an idea stated earlier on this page where there are situations without collision, so if you are climbing your collision turns off automatically.
I actually really liked your earlier idea of a /collision command that gives you 10 seconds of 0 collision to get into the bank past the door-ogre. It's a fantastic start toward a compromise for people who want collision because it makes groups/raids slightly more challenging/immersive, and people who don't want collision because it allows for blocking other players from getting to important locations.
I'd say add in collision, but keep out any push mechanics (I dislike mechanics which allow you to non-passively physically affect other players in any negative way). Add in the /collision command, and also make collision automatically turn off when doing anything particularly acrobatic like climbing a wall. I'd also support making the collision boxxes on fatter races a bit smaller than what's totally realistic.
This way our casters don't all stand inside of the leader to avoid some aoe spell he's really good at avoiding. Clicking other players to access their information and cast on them will still be a thing. Best of all, using /collision, we can still easily get beyond griefers.
Finally, I do completely agree with pets having 0 collision
To add in further details on the /collision command;
I'm not fond of the typecommand thing, I think it could be smoother like :
-Character collision happens naturally
-Targets can be crossed throught if you keep trying to pass, but you will allways end up ejected from their hitbox (like if you were pushed away) if you stop moving against them.
-Pvp situations allow no cross throught, if you need to pass badly you better push him with a spell or kill him
-Hostile targets (pve) might also block you, making big pulls a mess if targets can circle you and cut you of any retreat.