[MUD-Dev] Better Combat

Dana V. Baldwin dbaldwin at playnet.com
Thu Aug 12 17:07:32 CEST 2004


Douglas Goodall wrote:
> Paul Schwanz wrote:

>> It seems to me that in this example, freeing up her hands to chat
>> involves a better UI design, not additional game-created dead
>> time.

> I came to a similar conclusion earlier today. There are two
> separate problems: downtime and socialization.

> Downtime is a design flaw. It's (arguably) accepted as a design
> flaw in every other genre, unless you're talking about a pause
> button. CoH corrected this flaw. Socialization should be an
> unrelated problem, but it's connected to downtime because of the
> interface.

--snip--

> Give me a better interface (or built-in voice chat or, preferably,
> speech-to-text-to-speech) and you can have your cake and eat it
> to. Easier said than done, I know.

As you state the travel downtime is largely flawed by implementation
of travel. Our group in CoH exoists primarily of flyers because it
does take time to get places in CoH and flying/follow presents us
with the best opportunity to use that time to do other things.

The inability to combat socialize might be alieviated somewhat in
this system if you could que up more attacks. I'va always been a fan
of queued attacks, especially when the commitment to a multiple part
attack increases the risk and reward of effective combat, in this
instance it might help me chat more as well.

As a side note, one of the ways that CoH aids these types of
conversations (though they are less social in genereal) is the emote
keys. Adding customization to this area would also be a big benefit
to sommunication and arguably socialization.

-Dana V. Baldwin
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