[Gareth]

The animation, yes. All you need is to change animation. When you hit with a sword, you opponent can parry with his own weapon, block with his shield/other object, or dodge. You can't really "miss" otherwise. So, if you clearly see the sword hitting the opponent while you are getting the "missing target" message, it is simply bad animation.

It is only really in the latest generation of games that we have complex interlocking animations between characters of the type needed to show someone parrying or dodging a knife thrust. For most of the history of RPGs, people have been fine with swinging their swords through the models of enemies in RPGs and imagining some reason why they miss or hit.

There is absolutely no reason why they can't do the same thing with bullets (imagine it grazed his ear or nicked his arm or whatever) except that we've gotten used to bullet mechanics from FPS games and sword mechanics from action/RPG games. When we reverse things, take guns and use a more statistical model, something shorts out in people's brains. Bzzt-bzzt, no compute.

The difference between trying to hit someone using a knife or shoot him with a gun (say, you are trying to kill someone in his bedroom because you are disappointed) is that while you can dodge/block/parry the knife, the possibility of dodging the bullet fired at point blank range is so low as to be negligible.

I'm not talking about scaling the damage as an abstraction of blocking or dodging bullets. I'm talking about scaling the damage as an abstraction of the fact that the damage the bullet does will vary wildly based on where it hits your body, and a more skilled shooter is more likely to hit something vital.

Not exactly. While I agree that the targeted body area matters (heart, brain, major vessels, spine or soft tissue only), and I said as much in my previous post, the type and the extent of the wound mostly depend on the bullet's properties not the body.

Different bullets behave differently, sure. But where the bullet hits you plays as large a role. As such, scaling damage based on skill + weapon properties is perfectly logical. And, as I demonstrated above, by working the maths right you can adequately convey RPG character progression while not introducing the to-hit chance stuff that annoys so many people when using guns. Win-win.

[Ellorien]

scaling damage based on skill + weapon properties is perfectly logical

Yes, but then in a game  with the "RPG character progression" (I suppose in AP that means proficiency lvl 1 to 10 with SMG/shotgun/assrifle) the character will never miss because his aim is determined by the player's ability to point the gun in the direction of the opponent. Or we can say, he will miss only if you accidentally click LMB.
If the higher weapon proficiency level only means I can inflict more damage, regardless of my aim (because we stipulated that a more experienced shooter is more likely to hit the vital areas), aimed shots become obsolete. All the player needs is to hit something. If your SMG level is 5, you always hit the target for 5 points. Plus whatever modifiers the weapon provides. Yawn. I don't think that's what you actually have in mind but that's exactly what can be inferred. Of course we can say, hey if you manage to hit him in the head the damage will be double (lvl*2) and if you shoot at his legs he will not be able to run. That's better. Still, you don't need to raise your weapon proficiency at all to hit them in the head 100% of the time (which should be lethal anyway unless your bullets are doomed to merely "graze" the heads, always, if your w. skill is low) and that is exactly what the devs are saying.

Btw, I think they have reticle in AP.

[DorkMage]

We also decided we wanted only a few vectors of randomness in the action - a bucking SMG fires in a cone (not directly down range in laser beam line) so that might be random, but the damage it causes is not and the bad guy doesn't have a random chance to dodge.

... assault rifles were sloppier but with an excellent range, allowing me to remotely target and dispatch enemies with subsonic rounds (which requires patient aim).

This sound alot like the mechanics of Bloodlines - which I found to be quiet good as an RPG mechanic.  Pull a gun out and the cone is initially quite large (can't hit the side of a barn) and the aim bobs and weaves.  Wait patiently to aim and the cone shrinks down while still bobbing and weaving.  Add points to gun skill and the cone shrinks even smaller and the aim becomes steadier.

It is only really in the latest generation of games that we have complex interlocking animations between characters of the type needed to show someone parrying or dodging a knife thrust. For most of the history of RPGs, people have been fine with swinging their swords through the models of enemies in RPGs and imagining some reason why they miss or hit.

There is absolutely no reason why they can't do the same thing with bullets (imagine it grazed his ear or nicked his arm or whatever) except that we've gotten used to bullet mechanics from FPS games and sword mechanics from action/RPG games. When we reverse things, take guns and use a more statistical model, something shorts out in people's brains. Bzzt-bzzt, no compute.

BethSoft took alot of flack for the miss mechanics (or lack there of) in Morrowind which is why they changed to Oblivion's variable damage but always hits/blocked.  I found Oblivion's approach less satisfying but Morrowind's lack of a dodge animation is very annoying.


FPS games are perfect-soldier-RPG's.  One hits the target at exactly where one aims and one is "expert" at any weapon found.  This is why perfect-soldier-RPG's are labeled First-Person-Shooters and not RPG's.

Which begs the question: Is AP an FPS or an RPG.  From a gun mechanics perspective it comes down to the cone-of-aim dynamics.  If the cones always shrinks to a dot (if you wait patiently) then it's an FPS.  It's more of an RPG if the cone is annoying until you invest skill points - which is how it is implied by the devs.

Shooting people in the head from 5 feet away and seeing "Miss" never feels right. So chance to hit must go. Even hardcore RPG fanatics baulk at missing with guns far more than seeing their sword swing through an opponent and missing, for some reason. Our minds are trained to accept the abstraction with melee weapons but not firearms, that's just the way it is.

It never feels right because missing at 5ft is very difficult to do (maybe a ball & powder deringer could miss) and counter-intuitive - your unlikely to miss someone at 5ft throwing a rock.  Missing someone's head at 30ft is easy to do - for a handgun wielded by an unskilled individual or someone skilled using a unfamilar handgun.

PnP RPG mechanics were created to be easy/quickly to do by hand but this is doesn't translate well for CRPG's.  Why?  Because the rolling of the die is unseen so there is no player involvement in how the outcome was obtained.  This is why using guns (or bows) in RPG's can be unsatisfying.  Intuitively, the closer you are to a target the more likely you are to hit it but PnP dice mechanics don't take range into account and thus a low skill individual misses even at 5 feet - which intuitively (and in reality) wouldn't happen.

The cone-of-aim approach gives the player visual feedback as to likelyhood of hitting the target versus range which makes missing acceptable while having bullet damage be constant or nearly so when a hit occurs.  Which is more intuitive for the player while playing an action-RPG rather than bullet damage based on a hidden die roll.

[caster]

It certainly matters if the bullet hits a bone or not. Not to mention anything else.
But regardless i agree with Gareth on perception of gamers coming from shooters. It is wrong to see your cross hair square on the opponent when you click the trigger and then miss.

But then again... the mechanics of shooters are so wrong and abstracted from reality that it doesnt matter that much. You know... all that business of bullets having trajectories of laser beams and so on. No air resistance, no aerodynamics, no hand shaking etc etc etc...

Ideally a developer should worry more about creating a good system rather then about possible perception of some type of players which isnt that uniform to begin with.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Usually if you miss with a sword and it looks OK, it's because you aren't directly controlling the sword. Missing with a gun works the same way. If you are controlling the sword and miss, then it's confusing whether it's because your swing was bad or the roll was bad, see Morrowind.

[Spacekungfuman]

Usually if you miss with a sword and it looks OK, it's because you aren't directly controlling the sword. Missing with a gun works the same way. If you are controlling the sword and miss, then it's confusing whether it's because your swing was bad or the roll was bad, see Morrowind.

This is exactly the point.  It makes no difference if you are using a gun or a sword.  Noone complains about missing with a bow in BG, or about missing with a gun in syndicate, because your only role is indicating who the character should aim at.  Once you move to first person, you are asking the player to actually take the extra step of aiming, which makes it seem like the player and not the character is aiming.  Since the player has now aimed, they get upset if their "correct" aim is then ignored by the system.

Even in a third person game like kotor or DA (played over the shoulder) players won't complain about missing, because they are only selecting targets, not aiming at them.  Personally, I prefer my rpgs to be games where I just select the target, and I think the problem we are seeing now is not one inherent to or even related to traditional RPG mechanics.  The problem is that developers are moving away from rpg mechanics to action game mechanics, and in the same way that someone who enjoys chess would not want to play turn based football, even dedicated RPG fans may not want to play stat based action games.

[Gareth]

Ultima Underworld, Daggerfall. Clearly, these games were 'moving away' from RPG mechanics to action game mechanics.

[yaster]

People were more forgiving in 96, less opinionated. No internetz, forums, younger audience and fresher, unexplored game mechanics, that kind of jazz I suppose.

I've seen plenty of complains on morrowind for that kind of missing.

[Spacekungfuman]

People were more forgiving in 96, less opinionated. No internetz, forums, younger audience and fresher, unexplored game mechanics, that kind of jazz I suppose.

I've seen plenty of complains on morrowind for that kind of missing.

If I'm being honest, the comabt in Daggerfall and Ultima Underworld does feel less like RPG combat than in tile based games, because I have to aim.  But the complaint about Morrowind was very prevalent, which is why they dropped "to hit" in Oblivion in favor of the same system SoW is using.  While that may be fine for some people, the difference between having a "to hit" roll in morrowind and not having one in Oblivion was the difference between tolerating the combat in the former and not even being able to play the latter.  I don't even have the desire to play Mass Effect 2 because they moved the combat from skill sized reticle based to straight up fps.  If I want to play an FPS, then I'll play a game made by a team that knows how to make one, and that goes for hand to hand combat as well.  Why play Oblivion when even Hexen has combat that is so much more enjoyable?