What defines a good action game combat system to you guys? I’ve seen so many people argue about this topic ad-nauseam that I’m legitimately curious to see what you guys think. Like, what makes something like Skyrim brainless while something like Ninja Gaiden fun when they’re both about hitting shit at the end of the day?
What defines a good action game combat system to you guys...
Asher Perez
Carter Morales
I dunno let me check youtube real quick and get back to you.
Gavin Brown
Tools should have a purpose and no tool should defeat the purpose of another.
Grayson Cooper
For me, it’s the synergy between the mechanics and how they impact the overall experience. A lot of people seem to mistake how complex a control scheme is with the actual depth of the mechanics and how said mechanics can interact with one another meaningfully.
For example, in Dark Souls 3, you can use certain sword arts to launch enemies into the air a bit or slam them into the ground. And while that’s cool at all, they’re just different states of hitstun that don’t really interact with the rest of your moveset. All that matters is whether you’ve either stunlocked your opponent or haven’t. Whereas in something like, say, God Hand, an enemy’s hitstun state can have a different effect on how it interacts with Gene’s moveset, in which you can attack enemies into a dizzy state and depending on what you do, you can either launch them into the air or catapult them against the arena. I’d rather have a single mechanic with a hundred uses than a hundred mechanics that are only confined to specific scenarios.
James Ortiz
Variety in the arsenal, good controls and a good combo system are very important
Mason Thompson
Basically this.
Jonathan Fisher
having enough options to have varied encounters and meaningful decision making
doesn't need to be overly complex but if it has few mechanics they should at least have multiple uses or synergize with eachother
Colton Morris
>I’d rather have a single mechanic with a hundred uses than a hundred mechanics that are only confined to specific scenarios.
This. The Izuna Drop in Ninja Gaiden is great not just because it looks cool as fuck but it also creates breathing room with its splash damage and makes you invulnerable during its duration.
Aiden Gomez
Enemies that have their own patterns and don't over stay their welcome due to needing a long time to hit a weak spot or having copious amounts of health. After that it's designing enemies and levels around the skills the player has access to, but it's better to keep it limited because eventually there will be obvious superior actions the player can take in a lot of combat scenarios.
Jaxon Lopez
I just like freedom myself. DMC for example is way too locked in, like a fighting game, there's no freedom to move how you want really since it's all about juggling and beating up enemies. I liked Nier Automata a lot more because of that. Games like Bayonetta with dial up combos are meh too.
Skyrim doesn't even have a proper collision system, it's just fucking trash combat with shitty animations to boot.
Colton Jackson
many difficulties and a really high skill ceiling. everytime you replay you should learn how to use certain mechanics better and new tech, and the game should be difficult enough to make all those things matter. the only games that did it for me were dmc3 and ngb
Angel Ward
>Good feedback
That doesn't mean just shaking the screen a lot when anything happens, but making players FEEL what happened in the combat. A wimpy thief with a rapier shouldn't feel the same impact on its strike than a buff warrior with a hammer. But maybe the fact its attacks are actually much faster can make the player really feel how more agile his character is compared to the other. This also adds real variety to the gameplay.
>Easy to understand, but hard to master
This is a given for everything. If a game gradually eases you into the combat flow with ease, that’s generally good. However, there's much more stuff the player can organically learn to expand his options in combat, and allow for more satifying and more effective results: Parries, animation-cancelling with dodges, zoning enemies out, etc. The options keep expanding in a natural way that rewards skill, while never asking too much of the player at the start.
>Consistency, while still allowing some suprises
Of course, no one wants a game where a mechanic suddenly stops working. It's like playing chess with a snotty brother that changes the rules every time he starts losing. Don't let what players learned be taken away from them. However, keeping the game the same throughout can get boring, so some extra rules can be thrown around to keep things fresh.
>Variety is the spice of life
Like in my previous point, games you always play and beat the same get boring. So adding viable, and actually distinct playstyles can keep them fun for a long time, specially if you can mix and match each style. This can be achieved in a multitude of ways, by making it so that the moves you receive vary not just in their stats, but also on how they're actually used.
Isaac Allen
I need a
>parry
>iframes
>melee weapon
>ranged weapon
>jump button (if this is the iframes the developer is a devil)
Cooper Butler
I just like games that focus on combos and speed, bethesda games are about role playing not combat. I also have a very strong preference for button layouts and how the camera functions, I hate souls likes for that reason. the camera should follow the flow of combat and attacks should be mapped to the face buttons.
Angel Bennett
And finally, the last of all
>Force players to play in a fun way
This one is one of the most underrated, and difficult to pull off, parts of designing a good combat system. If you don't encourage people to play in a fun way, they won't. Devil May Cry might be one of the dullest games of all time if all you do is dodge and hold square, but the games make you want to do better, and allow you to do better, and reward you for doing better with the Style ranking system. Graces F also does this pretty well, starting by the fact each enemy encounter has a small extra goal or two that incentivizes you to learn a new layer of combat, for example keeping a combo going for some time, perfectly parrying attacks X times in a fight, chaining together a certain number of artes, taking down the enemy in a limited amount of time, and more and it rewards you with more SP to get level up your titles faster.
Elijah James
Man, NEO TWEWY was such a fun game.
Hunter Mitchell
Personally speaking, Automata’s over-reliance on leveling for its combat system killed a lot of fun for me.
Caleb Walker
>DMC for example is way too locked in
>there's no freedom to move how you want really since it's all about juggling and beating up enemies.
Fucking what? DMC has a ton of freedom of movement.
Colton Carter
Graces remaster when?
Hudson Phillips
yeah and the chips system also means you get overpowered very early on, the harder difficulties don't really help either since super hard is just retarded and unfun
still I think the combat system is better than what most people give it credit for, there's a lot of neat stuff you can do
Ryder Young
Of course a DMCtard will freak and post a clip of exactly what I was talking about.
>freedom of movement
>entire clip is just juggling and beating up an enemy
>in a tiny room to boot
Yeah it could have done without the stats, I was just talking about the mechanical aspects though.
Benjamin Harris
>entire clip is just juggling and beating up an enemy
Oh, you mean that enemy that was juggled for literally three seconds at the beginning and that's it?
>in a tiny room to boot
The room's fucking massive.
Jacob Phillips
This has to be bait. What action game do you think has good combat with more freedom?
Joseph Powell
The absolute state.
And you can't even read.
Josiah Smith
A brisk pace with high risks: if your game doesn't have 5-frame timings for certain moves and ten-frame enemy moves then it's simply not good. Alternatively, the less down-time between engagements and levels the better.
Flow: every one of your tools should ideally link into another few, through a process that's perhaps not so obvious at first but that keeps you trying for synergies and exploiting the combat. If these links don't require enough set-up, they're boring and blend into one another. If they're too niche then they lose usage. The right balance here means a lot (here's to you, W101).
Mechanical variety and depth: here a lot of action games struggle. Interactions tend to be pretty simple due to consistency, but all it leads to is necessitating wildly different enemy designs and ruining a player character's possible moveset. Action RPGs actually fare pretty well with how their RPG layer interacts with the action, keeping you sometimes guessing but most of the time fully engaged in the more abstract train of thought that necessitates or prefers certain moves, actions, characters, etc. while dealing with the more common action combat.
A proper scoring system that demands mastery: teach niggas how 2 play & do good & keep it depe n stuff
Elijah Kelly
enemies responding to your actions and some play of advantages and disadvantages of using different combos, weapons, skills etc.
Jack Jenkins
You have no argument. I win. Thanks for playing.
Jacob Ross
Okami
Genshin Impact
Sekiro
Witcher 3 with mods
Josiah Wright
You were arguing with an opinion to begin with you literal sperg. Enjoy your "massive" rooms and juggle simulator lmao.
Jayden Parker
How does this game stack up to Battle Network?
Matthew Thomas
It's better. The resource system takes a while getting used to.
Gavin Diaz
>You were arguing with an opinion to begin with you literal sperg.
Yes, I proved you wrong, and you provided no rebuttal. That's how it works. I swear, Any Forums has the dumbest sons of bitches I've ever interacted with.
Owen Rodriguez
Action game threads are worthless regardless of subject because all the posts on them are just
>Game I like: good
>Game I don't like: shit
There are no real arguments or discussion to be made, just fanboy shitposting and trolling. Let it 404
Austin Green
For me, it’s a variety of hit reactions. In most action games (the big ones at least, not counting shovelware garbage), you can change the status of a normal enemy pretty easily. There are multiple types of hitstun, stun, aerial status, downed status, pinned on a wall etc. These go a long way in making combat against normal mooks enjoyable, since they open up a lot of possibilities. Hitting an enemy and having it suffer just damage and hitstun is the most basic interaction and it's fine, but if it's almost all you ever do (like in Souls) then it starts to become a problem.
Ayden Robinson
Bayonetta is trash for coomers. It lacks believability in the movement animations whereas in DMC the combat feel raw and real. There's both a visual and sound impact that makes it gritty and realistic, whereas Bayonetta is just an impactless power fantasy for coomers and trannies. Even with months of playing you'll still not master DMC's combat and that's a good thing, there's always more to learn. Consider yourself filtered.
>This is a given for everything
Only it's not. At all.
Brody Martinez
Not really. We can reach consensus.
Everyone call this fucking dumbass a retard.