So, this is my toughts generally about the combat system.
I will be comparing at some moments to a diffrent game called Forgotten Hope that is a Battlefield 1942 mod. (its a WW2 first-person shooter)As a start, we should figure out what are the key elements to a victory, whatever it is, modern battle, medieval duel or simple street fight, the key elements are still the same. No matter of size of the army. Few i dig up are,
perception (see the enemy before he sees you),
knowlage (knowing enemies options) and finally
decision making (where, how and when). Now, in TB Fonline combat, none of those are base to victory, very seldom and mostly by the enemies complete lack of those rather then ones superiority one can make use of those 3. In RT combat (TC) those come to use, however, could be on bigger scale?
Something a nerd can call experience; I can tell from Battlefield game and realism. So, in battlefield 1942 players had a lot HP (like in Fonline), and most guns were weak (like in Fonline, majority of guns are weak). Only head shot was one shot kills (like eye shots/critticals in Fonline). If you shot a whole magazine in ones torso, he would not die (like Fonline). So, the battlefield 1942 was a lot about,
reflexes,
quick button pressing and
joysticks (insert aimbots)(mean, which players were favorized by the game to win). Now, Forgotten Hope is a mod that tried to make the game more realistic, players were given a lot less HP and weapons did more damage, a torso one bullet shot most often ended in player elimination (meaning, totally the opposite way). Now that players were so easly killed, they had to think, exacly those; where is the enemy? What does he see/do? what weapon does he have? how do i kill him without getting killed, or should i risk? My main point with this is, the mod made the game a lot more about those 3 key elements then luck, and gave this feeling (which i think is good) that you play the game rather then the game plays you.
TB encounters and its Luck In Fallout Online a lot of things depend on luck and items unfortunatly. Especially in TB. You cannot decide where you gonna spawn, you dont see who you meet until you spawn on him, and you cant decide what to do becouse its not your turn (and to make it worse sometimes never is!). I my opinion the whole TB PVP should be reworked and rethinked from beggining. Why not make for exemple not only outdoor count but the amount of lets say KG of armour and items that are in encounter, meaning if there is a big fight, you should hear it coming from far away and easier spot it before it spots you, and the other way around, if you are a level 1 char walking in blue with a knife then it should be harder to spot you.
The maps are really too small for a player meeting aswell (especially the cave ones), in my opinion should be at least 4 times bigger, and when walking into an encounter, instead of them just standing there looking stupid why not making NPC walk (caravan walks from one side of the map to another, rats do not work as a team no more but run around the map for themselves, a deathclaw hides behind a wall waiting for you to pass, and maybe some items could be found aswell like in caves). Few days ago i spawned 1 hex from a player(!?), i mean, who the hell am i, some kind of a spiderman? On the side note, i do not agree that the higher HP on animals make the game any more intresting, encounter system is quite broken and so is leveling becouse of it, higher HP just makes the annoying things more annoying. Sitting on the sun drinking a beer is great, killing 3000 scorpions in Fallout online is just priceless. I dont really know what really are the enconters made for aswell, TB or RT? maybe there should be two encounters for each encounter type, like, Scorpions for TB and Scorpions for RT.
Real Time PVP In Real time combat, even though those 3 key elements matter, there is a lot of space of improvement in my opinion, as those key elements are not really key at many times. HP 200+ is a must, becouse, if one person having 150 hp meets in a direct confrontation a person having 240 hp then one that has 240 hp will most likely survive the first shot and the other wont, so, is it really good to keep the game rules to who survives first shot (whole usage of AP)? What if both died on first shot? If the starting HP at level 1 was higher, and the EN bonuses were lower, making the lowest possible HP for a player around 110 and highest around 180? Would that not encourage decision making? Then the winner will be decided more by perception (who spots who first, who looks around more simply), knowlage (knowing the map, what advantage can i get by standing here), decision (Should i wait for him or engage and from where?)
About AP, who shoots faster, a Minigun or a Luger? They fire both
same fast. Acually i do not see the point of even having AP in RT at all. How it looks currently, is
not representation of the Turn-based combat system of fallout. Becouse in TB, the minigun does take longer time then a luger to fire, thats why the AP. I believe that if firing a minigun represented the AP cost in real time, meaning it would take time to fire it (there could be diffrent ways of achiving that, one could be, if the minigun burst cost 6 (with BROF lets say) then it would take maybe 3 sec overally, and the damage will be counted out on first shot and then delivered on the target in 3 parts, so if the damage was 60 then it would go 20 each second for 3 seconds) would strongly improve the area of ability of making decision during combat, tactics in other words. It would probobly make the combat slower, and therfore
more responsive (player will have more ability to respond to what he sees and take actions). Lets imagine two players, one sniper and one p90, p90 is walking out of the building and he doesint know that there is a sniper waiting for him outside, p90 is outside and he is in range of the sniper, the p90 spots the sniper and the sniper begins to eyeshot him (which cost a lot of AP and therefore takes time, 4 sec?), now the P90 has a choice attack or hide, attacking would require to run and hope that he will get in range before the sniper shots him or running back to the building, but that is his choice and tactic. Isint that more fun then just bang bang?
Personal Protection and anti-Protection The JHP and AP bullets, i wonder if those are really needed. The only thing that differs is the price of buying and making them. They help to split the game into two, one is the players with BAs and other is with players with LJ, like two diffrent game worlds in one. You take JHP bullets to the battle and oops, the enemy has CA, you take AP bullets and oops, player has Metal armor. Whats the point? Why not making the bullets a bit more effective on all kinds of armor, making them more simillar on all in terms of damage and leave the AP only for perfectionist rather then having them as a must. About armors protection, maybe a better way is to split the DR into two, and make half of it work against critical hits, like lets say you got 50% DR then 25% is damage reduction and 25% is less critical chance (maybe to much though this calculation though, 35% DR and 12,5% less Critical ratio maybe better). Why not lower the CAs overally? or at least some of its values, why not give LJ a lot more AC then CA (making the AC get lower and lower with better armor not otherway around), and maybe making them visible from farer distance, Metal easier to spot then LA and CA easier to spot then Metal. Like i said before, this game is a lot about items right now, world of warcraft is about items too. Maybe setting all weapons from lowest to highest to be able to kill a player in highest armor in between 5 to 1 shot would be a good idea, starting with 10mm pistol (5 shots) and ending on a Avenger (1 shot).
There has been a lot of good user posts on weapons, where an ideas are showed how to turn this Single player weapons into multiplayer ones and skip the cliff between them. I like that you the devs have highered damage on many weapons, i think it could go even higher (at least for the lowest weapons, exept the bb-gun). If not, then why not try to implement a "Energy" bar ripped of from JA2. That way if you have CA you would be protected as you are now from the damage to HP but each 10mm JHP shot would hurt still (as it should) reducing energy instead and if you get enough much of those shots you drop down becouse of energy loss (maybe for exemple if energy was at 0 then you would get knocked down with every shot, if your energy was 100 then never knocked down, well, it opens a whole book of options). An energy bar could acually solve a lot, lot of things and give many new options for gameplay, and room to build on.
Some Non-combat things that come up to mind: About the
faction karma system, i think it would be good idea to make factions stand for their actions (like they always did in fallout universe). Meaning, if every player has his own karma affected by his actions, and a gang/faction has its own karma affected by its members actions. For exemple if a player has -5000 with SF, and he joins a gang that has 0 with SF, the gang still remains 0, now if the player while beign in this gang gets -6000 with SF then the gangs gets -1000. Another way to do it, maybe a bit more reasonable would be that the factions Karma is counted out as in the middle of all its members karma, meaning one player has -1000 with SF another player has +1000 with SF then the faction is neutral (0 Karma) towards SF. When the player leaves faction his own karma is used. The faction karma could become of use in several ways, if players in faction kill a lot of bluesuits (and they are neutral, no faction that to say) and get marked by them with negative karma then the faction could get pubic enemies kind of tag (all in red for neutrals? enemies of rangers?). What if factions could become underdogs of other factions like NCR or The Hub? which would limit them a lot in their actions that cannot go against NCR (or would end in exaltation from the NCR faction familiy) and maybe member ship payment aswell, maybe the leaders of the factions (starts when more then 5) could vote on diffrent things that NCR put foward (GMs creates roleplay situations?) (its a republic after all) for exemple attacking one northen town bringing it into republic (the NCR would give a specific time of the attack if the attack is accepted).
The proffesions and their requirements, like must be faction member of BOS and ENCLAVE to get proffesion this or that, i think it doesint work well. My counter idea would be to give instead every town would have some special item, like for exemple 5mm bullets crafted (or gived as TC reward) would have -5% more DR, or Desert Eagles from the Den would have 2 more damage per shot. For Enclave, Bos or Raiders as they look now they are more of a problem for a player, they dont really give anything, they dont open new areas of the game, those factions only exist one time when you get the proffesion then they are just there,, not giving anything gameplay wise. So unless they become somehow active on daily terms of Fonline world of faction politics, wars or events they will remain anti-gameplay.
In TC, i think the faction in control should have some kind of responsobility towards the
town they control, i believe they should have to keep the town inhabbitants happy (counted out by the amount of visitors from outside, the inhabbitants should not like when people get killed (unless the player killed was in faction marked as enemy faction to one in control) in the town meaning the controlling faction have to keep the order aswell) if not, then the karma will be dropping, and in the end the town would revolt, the faction then can choose to deal with the revolt by force (which would lead to even worse karma, but they would maintain in control if they managed to put down the revolt (the revolt could be indicated the same way TC in progress shows up but only for the faction in control) but would have to deal with the revolt 1-2 times per week? (lets say the civilians revolting would respawn 1-2 times per week exept the traders that would not participate in revolt). One time it might happen that one gang tries to set up a team of unfaction people set as friends to the faction and use it as advantage, thats why I think that friends to faction should be counted same as the faction and any karma by any of those factions you are friend with should affect you, meaning you are friend to two factions one has karma -1000 with SF and one has -1000 with Modoc, then you as a friend of both get both -1000 with SF and -1000 with Modoc. I believe killing the civilans should not affect the karma though (becouse, this lowers the control of the system). Allowing factions have more bases then one is way to go aswell, now its only problematic to have more bases and its a must especially with the current speed at world map and cars that require garage.
What happend to tracking? I really liked that feature, it could use a protection against low lever players though, making a level 1-15 player very hard to track. Otherwise i do not know what happend to that feature.
Well, a few ideas i guess
