Greetings Ladies and Gents,

This is the third installment of The Matrix Online developer journal. Today’s journal is pretty big, so go grab a cup of your favorite beverage and settle in for a good read.

I’m pleased to say that the team has been making great progress. We’ve had a busy month working on game improvements including the SOE mail system and the first phase of the content revamp. And now, as we head into the last month of 2005, our hard work on the combat revision is paying off. The main focus of today’s journal is to explain the first part of the combat revision and I think you will love the changes.

Combat Redux

In my first journal I mentioned that we started working on improving the combat system shortly after launch. We needed to create a system where player versus environment (PvE) and player versus player (PvP) combat are both balanced. That, with our varying combat modes such as Interlock and free attack, makes our combat system more complex than most other massively multiplayer games. Interlock alone uses somewhere on the order of 16,000 animations (Yes. 16,000). Keeping it fun, exciting, and balanced is a real challenge.

Today I’m going to explain the nuts and bolts of the combat revision. I may create more questions than answers with this journal, but that’s to be expected. After all, we’re asking you to throw out everything you know about combat in MxO and look at this with fresh eyes.

We have worked toward our goals for many months so we can bring a better gameplay experience to everyone. To help ensure that we’re successful we are planning to release the combat revision on the soon-to-be revived external playtest server before we take the revision live. Walrus will update you on the full details for the playtest server later. I will say that, yes, we plan to allow character copies to make it easy for players to check out our improvements.

Design Requirements

The easiest way to present the combat revision is to explain what combat system is rather than a list of changes about what it used to be.

You may recall from my previous journal that I mentioned we had specific design requirements we used to frame the combat revision. We derived the design requirements from meetings that analyzed the current combat system and created goals. Design requirements serve as a sort of checklist that helps us keep the design focused, and ultimately achieve what we set out to do. I’m pretty confident that everyone will find a handful of items in the list that they really like.

• Improve gameplay through Interlock, melee free-attack, and ranged free-attack using Styles, Tactics, and Abilities.
• Provide a consistent combat implementation. For example, Hackers use the same combat rules as other character types do when using Abilities in Interlock.
• Simplify the presentation of the combat data to make it easier for players to understand what is going on in combat.
• Provide players with more control over character customization using Stats, items, passive Abilities, and buffs.
• Provide adequate information to allow players to make smart choices that suit them.
• Provide players with valuable strategic options in combat.
• Remove as much zero-sum combat as possible and create a standard round length. (“Zero sum” means there’s one winner and one loser each round; never two hits or two misses.)
• Convert the combat system to a damage-per-second (DPS) model.
• Ensure the combat length is appropriate.
• Mitigate state and effect durations based on level deltas. (“Level delta” means the difference between opponents’ levels.)
• Ensure that players always have a chance to hit another player or NPC.
• Ensure that players never have 100% chance to hit another player or NPC.
• Ensure players have a fair chance of hitting another player or NPC with a delta of 10 levels.
• Create a point of critical mass where a group of players can effectively take down an NPC or player 10 levels higher than they are. (6 vs. 1)
• Tune Abilities to reflect new combat values and gameplay.
• Tune Ability caps to meet the above requirements.
• Tune item bonuses to meet above requirements.
• Balance NPC and encounter difficulty using new rules.

 Attributes and Influences

Attributes and Influences form the base of the new combat system. It’s the combination of their effects that allows us to create lots of interesting choices for characters.

Attributes

Attributes are things like damage type, healing (not the Ability, but the property on the Ability), max Inner Strength, and effect duration. Attribute values are always numbers and are sometimes upgraded when a character gains a level or when certain "levelable" Abilities are loaded. Styles, Abilities, Tactics and the base characteristics of your RSI are made up of Attributes. As characters go up in level they can also load Abilities with higher Attribute values.

Almost all the things characters do in the game activate something with Attributes. Obvious examples are Styles and Abilities, but there are many which work behind the scenes; such as health and inner strength regeneration rates which change depending on whether you’re sitting, in combat, or standing.

Influences

Influences are a multiplier for Attributes and their values are always percentages. Characters increase their Influence percentages as they increase their Stats, equip items with specific bonuses, or load passive Abilities.

Influences are called whenever the player activates/uses anything that has Attributes and, as mentioned above, almost anything you do in the game has Attributes associated with it.

We’ve designed the Influence system to prevent characters from maxing all of their Influences. This design methodology adds weight to every choice, because characters cannot be great at everything. This makes it possible to create two characters with identical loadouts that play differently.

Because Influences adjust Attributes directly, different Influences will change different Attributes of an Ability. Two characters with the same Abilities will play completely differently if they spend points raising different Stats. One Martial Artist might have a higher maximum damage and the other might be better at defense. One Hacker might have longer DOTs, while the other is more effective at crowd control.

Increasing Attributes

Characters increase Attributes through the following methods:

Using Styles

Styles provide increases to many of the basic Attributes that are important to characters in combat. There are eight styles: Self Defense, Viral, Karate, Aikido, Kung Fu, Hand Guns, Rifles, and SMGs.

Tactics

There are four types of Tactics that players may choose between: Speed, Power, Grab, or Block. Tactics affect the following Attributes: Accuracy, Defense, Damage, and Contested Withdraw. (Editor’s Note: Let me repeat that for emphasis. Contested Withdraw. –Walrus) Certain Tactics are more valuable in certain situations than others, so it pays to be alert.

Tactics come into play anytime a combat action uses accuracy, defense, damage, or withdraw. However, except for Block, Tactics are constantly active even when a character is not in combat. You can also select a different Tactic outside of combat, which means you’re no longer stuck with the last Tactic you used in the last combat.

Tactics have the following Attributes:

·         Speed – medium accuracy boost, medium defense reduction, normal damage, chance to cause Dazed state, normal contested withdraw

·         Power – medium accuracy reduction, normal defense, medium damage boost, chance to cause Staggered state, normal contested withdraw

·         Grab – small accuracy boost, medium defense boost, large damage reduction, chance to cause Off-Balance state, normal contested withdraw

·         Block – normal accuracy, large defense boost, normal damage, increase to IS regeneration, small chance to clear any state, normal contested withdraw

Activated Abilities (Buffs)

Toggled Abilities and buffs can increase various Attributes on a player.

Increasing Influences

Characters increase Influences through the following methods:

Increasing Stats

Increasing the 5 character Stats--Focus, Perception, Reason, Belief, and Vitality—are the most effective way of affecting a character’s Influences. Stats make the largest contribution to Influence bonuses and Influences have been distributed amongst the five Stats in way that encourages characters to increase more than one Stat. However, all of the Stats are useful to a character, so there really isn’t a wrong choice when increasing a character’s Stats.

When the revision goes to the playtest server we are planning to provide documentation that lists the Influences affected by each Stat. We also intend to implement a way for test-server players to reallocate stats on a more frequent basis. (Editor’s Note: RARH! –Walrus)

The average score for a bluepill’s Stats is 5; but players begin with only one score of 5, three at 8, and one at 11. Since Influence bonuses begin at a score of 6, players aren’t “only human”. Once a Stat is 6 or higher, all Influences associated with that Stat get a bonus.

The only way to increase Stats after awakening is by leveling your character. Players gain a total of 49 points to spend on increasing their Stats as their characters level from 1 to 50.

As a character grows, his or her Stats can increase to a cap of 30, which means you can spend points on several Stats to diversify your character. Not only does this cap make it beneficial to diversify a bit, it also keeps characters from being “crippled” in an area because too many points were spent on one Stat.

Loading Passive Abilities

Passive Abilities provide the second largest contribution to a character’s Influences. Passive Abilities contribute to fewer specific Influences than a Stats do; however, the grouping is different and contains Influences specific to the character’s current loadout.

Enhanced Items

Enhanced items provide the smallest contribution to a character’s Influences. The contribution is still significant enough that items cannot be ignored. Items increase specific Influences and may increase more than one Influence.

 Conclusion

That covers most of the backend changes to the combat system. The second part of the journal should be out in a much shorter timeframe than this one and will detail how all the pieces tie together.

--Archon

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