[Combat] Attacks of Opportunity

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

Edit: I've removed this idea as, since making it, I've been appraised that charge might be currently working in a bit buggy a manner.

[Voxumo]

*Chuckles* It sounds like the old problem... combat used to literately devolve into 'chase' games, as each person had to take a single step to try and close the distance between their targets, while said target constantly countered each step with a step of their own. At least with charge it seems a tad...easier? I guess that would be the term. Quicker maybe? I don't know. I barely ever use Charge because I'm typically carrying different weapons to counter the range game.

[Rothgar]

Necro'd!

I had the opportunity to see this firsthand (Thank you, Good_Dragon, for taking time out of your day to teach me both OOC'ly and IC'ly - it means a lot to me, man) when I was sparring the other day.

I think what irritates me most about "Charge" at the moment is what Voxumo posted - it literally turns combat into a cat-and-mouse game of who has the greater defense. Now, most of the result of that spar is entirely my fault - my character has been specc'd into unarmed/dagger as a plot hook, and that's just the way he is. That being said, my opponent just used the "Charge" command over and over, dancing around until the statistically probable event of my failure occurred. At this point, they attacked once at a range outside of mine, and then danced away again.

Let me hammer this in, in DnD terms (because that's what I've always based combat in MUD's on) - moving inside and outside of my weapon's area with literally no repercussion, every turn, for 20-30 turns until I just tossed my hands in the air and stopped the spar. No attacks of opportunity. Very little chance for failure on the part of my sparring partner - even if they failed a check, it'd leave them halfway to where they intended to be. If you choose 'charge far' you're more or less invulnerable against a character that focuses on close-range combat.

Maybe it's just me being salty? I mean, I -am- salty. I poured tons of points into combat, as this was my first combat-centric character, and in a single spar I had revealed to me that it was entirely useless. Certainly, I can toss daggers, but eventually I'll run out of ammo. In essence, I've pretty much tossed fourteen thousand XP on a single skill, and thirteen thousand on another, leaving me sitting with at least tweny-seven THOUSAND XP down the drain against someone with any weapon that isn't a dagger or unarmed.

That's how I see it, at least - and I may be wrong! But at the moment I'm just gonna get a poleaxe and a dagger and start training my heart out, knowing what I know now. Would like to see some discussion about this!

[Kinaed]

I'm interested to see further discussion too.

[Voxumo]

I'm not sure what can truly be added to the discussion besides 'Cat and Mouse combat generally sucks for the one at the disadvantage'. I mean it seems charge hasn't really fixed that, though I can't really base that on person experience as I haven't had to use charge yet.

[Dice]

I think this is a serious problem at the moment, though in practice it often goes the other way - real fights tend to occur at close range, so the polearm specialists are at the disadvantage, not the dagger fighters. It's only in spars, where people explicitly think to adjust their positioning to start at far range, where you seem to see this happen.

That said, the way it works now, if you start the fight at the range your weapon is good at and the other person's weapon is multiple ranges off? You're probably going to win, period. It's way too powerful.

I wouldn't solve this with attacks of opportunity but by making range itself far more forgiving (and symmetrically forgiving!) and/or going the DnD route and letting people move 1 range along with their attack every round for 'free'.

[Voxumo]

What about having attacks work in a reasonable range, but there being damage reduction if it's out of range?

[Kinaed]

There's already a damage adjustment to not being perfectly in range. You can still generally hit until you're so far out of range that it doesn't make sense for the weapon.

[Dice]

The problem with the current implementation of that, imo, is the asymmetry. A polearm can hit at close, medium-close, medium, and medium-far, even if it's hampered - and the hampering isn't necessarily a death knell. With miss chances being so low, a polearm user can accept being extremely hampered if it means their enemy can't hit them at all, because doing a bunch of 'swings wildly' will still do more damage than not being able to hit at all. A dagger user, on the other hand, literally can't attack outside of close and medium-close, and at the moment charge is bugged so that it doesn't always give the bare minimum 1 range of success. Therefore you could have a fight very conceivably happen like this:

A polearm user and a dagger user start at medium range, which is exactly as far away from ideal range for a polearm (ideal range far) as it is for a dagger (ideal range close).

Round 1: Polearm user attacks. Dagger user charges to medium-close.
Round 2: Polearm user charges to medium-far. Dagger user charges to medium.
Round 3: Polearm user attacks. Dagger user charges to close.
Round 4: Polearm user charges to medium. Dagger user charges to medium-close.
Round 5: Polearm user charges to medium-far. Dagger user charges to medium.
Round 6: Polearm user attacks. Dagger user charges to close.

Etc. The dagger user could, with just a slight bit of bad luck, literally NEVER be able to attack before the polearm user picked them off - and that's starting at a range that should be equally bad for both of them. But it's unwieldy and it's frustrating, and even if it doesn't happen in this lopsided of a fashion, a fight that consists of charge after charge isn't fun.

[Rothgar]

Awesome, some replies! I'm excited to see people talking about this so soon.

A polearm user and a dagger user start at medium range, which is exactly as far away from ideal range for a polearm (ideal range far) as it is for a dagger (ideal range close).

Round 1: Polearm user attacks. Dagger user charges to medium-close.
Round 2: Polearm user charges to medium-far. Dagger user charges to medium.
Round 3: Polearm user attacks. Dagger user charges to close.
Round 4: Polearm user charges to medium. Dagger user charges to medium-close.
Round 5: Polearm user charges to medium-far. Dagger user charges to medium.
Round 6: Polearm user attacks. Dagger user charges to close.

Pretty much exactly what happened in the spar that I had. I never had a chance - and in a real-combat scenario, I'd just be causing the imm's grief by submitting that for review and basically just pitching a fit about it. No one wants to lose a character in such a ludicrous manner, especially a character that they've put lots of hours into. I know I'm not exactly the easiest of people to get along with OOC'ly, but man - the idea of getting into combat now is such a turn-off that I don't even really want to play plots with combat any longer. (I know, I'm terrible, I'm sorry. I just don't want to waste a 450+ hour character on what I get the feeling is a bug)

I think this is a serious problem at the moment, though in practice it often goes the other way - real fights tend to occur at close range, so the polearm specialists are at the disadvantage, not the dagger fighters. It's only in spars, where people explicitly think to adjust their positioning to start at far range, where you seem to see this happen.

I totally agree. At the moment, I'd consider those on the forums now to be "lucky," as we're aware of this bug and can kind of call it out or avoid it when/if the time arises. That being said, we're also incredibly dangerous to people who DON'T know about this bug. If you're losing combat, you can just drop back and wait for them to tire of it, or, alternatively, flee. The folks posting are generally pretty awesome - but imagine everyone on the MUD using this exploit. There'd be absolutely no reason to train anything other then bow and poleaxe - because it'd just be a useless XP sink. I'm invested in this discussion because, like I said, I've got a combat character that's short range - I had no idea that this thing existed until the other day.

TBH honest, though, I don't really have a suggestion and I'm just whining and agreeing with people because I don't know a darn thing about TI's combat and coding. I did like Dice's suggestion of ye olde 5ft step, though! Looking back, attacks of opportunity would probably be OP as heck, seeing as how Charge disregards map position and just moves you wherever.