Finishing moves on creatures when your crazy high lvl for them

[CoQui]

Anyone remember the game Revenant? Awesome 3D Hack n Slash RPG game that had great artwork for the levels and pretty nice animations for the models. I think that game inspired some of the 3D Hack n Slash games in the way you see each piece of armor on and the many layers of armor that a player can wear. Well anyways, in the game, once you reached high enough levels, the monsters that were hard to kill when you were lower level became usually 1 hit kill with a cool kill animation. For instance, these little spiders. When your high enough level, he simply stomps on them with 1 hit and it's dead. Or an Ogre, he'll decapitate it's head off if your using a blade type weapon. Really cool stuff and I miss that game. Might just have to reinstall it. :yes:

[CoQui]

BTW-Here's some screenshots from it for those that never seen it before. I think it was ahead of it's time as far as Action RPG's were concerned when it came down to the 3D graphics on beautiful handdrawn backgrounds.

http://12gemme.gilda.it/gpc/revenant/revenant_ss7.jpg

http://12gemme.gilda.it/gpc/revenant/revenant_ss5.jpg

http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/reviews/images/revenant_F03.jpg

http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/reviews/images/revenant_F01.jpg

[NKlint]

Let me use my super breath on Ghosts to blow them away, like Superman.

I'll catch giant flying insects with my chopsticks!

[Azymn]

That is a cool idea. I actually think the devs mentioned that they are doing something similar, expanding on the concept from D2 that when a monster is killed with an ice weapon it freezes and shatters.

[Siniz]

Sounds like a nice idea. I'd also like to iterate that I read somewhere here in diii.net that they are expanding on monster deaths.

p.s. that last screenshot can be used to show what a cartoonish game look like ;)

[NKlint]

http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/reviews/images/revenant_F01.jpg

Sounds like a nice idea. I'd also like to iterate that I read somewhere here in diii.net that they are expanding on monster deaths.

p.s. that last screenshot can be used to show what a cartoonish game look like ;)

It reminded me of King's Quest :D

Where is my Owl Guide?

[oOmpie]

You nearly made me reinstall Revenant with that post ^^

Too much other addictions going on at the moment though :badteeth:

[imjustsomeguy]

One of the D3 articles I've read mentioned different/more violent death sequences when monsters are killed with a critical hit. This will be good.

[Mcwhopper]

I hope we will have instagib animations. Although really: Only the first 100 times will be fun to watch: After that noone will notice:


*Sigh where did I leave my MF gear; time to go for pindle for the 1901907363 time.*

[CoQui]

Oh yeah and when we saw that big monster tear in half the barbarian in the gameplay video, I think that kind of stuff should be the norm for all bosses. Once you have low enough health, when they finally kill you and your health is literally 0, it'll go into a kill animation unique to each boss. That would be badass. Maybe even have 3 different deaths to keep it cool. It'll make bosses more brutal and epic. It'll make dying all the more tragic. So the same way players could have death animations on monsters when they deliver final blow, it would be awesome for bosses to do the same.

[5zigen]

I hope combat has a neat visceral feel and I hope they have some sort of "finishing moves" or rather just neat death animations (decapitation, explosion, severing, splitting body in half, impalement etc) for monsters that take their final blow.

For an example of what I'm talking about see Ninja Gaiden 2.

[sicilian]

I've never heard of Revenant. Is it any good? I'm looking for an ARPG time waster while I wait for D3. What are it's pros and cons in your opinion?

[Apocalypse]

I've never heard of Revenant. Is it any good? I'm looking for an ARPG time waster while I wait for D3. What are it's pros and cons in your opinion?

i was thinking the same thing, but then i said, screw it i will just buy it so i loaded up amazon and added it to my list lol. its funny, the d3 announcement is helping sales of the diablo clones

[CoQui]

It was real good back when it was released. I enjoyed it a lot although make sure you grab the patch out there. You could control the character with mouse or keyboard believe it or not. Obviously mouse is preferable but when I used the keyboard, I felt more in the game than simply clicking. It's weird. You can also use the keyboard for combat attacks. What was cool though could be annoying at the same time, you run around with your weapon sheathed on your back. Then you press a button to go into combat mode which unsheathes the weapon and put you in a combat posture and then you walk more slowly in the stance but are ready for combat. The game had some cool locations such as a spider island and a gladiator type arena at one point near an ogre camp or something. Very sketchy memory but it was fun. Also had daytime and night time clock which I think effected certain conditions.

[CoQui]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6gFb_R8aIAk
Short video I found on the game on youtube.

[5zigen]

OMG how can you guys like that game, the colors look just like WoW!
:whistling:

[CoQui]

OMG how can you guys like that game, the colors look just like WoW!
:whistling:

Sarcasm, I'm sure... :yes:

[SlechtWeerBeer]

OMG how can you guys like that game, the colors look just like WoW!
:whistling:

Wow, that was so epic. I lol'd :P

[Sein Schatten]

OMG how can you guys like that game, the colors look just like WoW!
:whistling:

Are you blind? There are mushrooms. It is clearly a Morrowind clone.

[Felix]

Just remember that everydeath animation in the game is basically a cutscene you are forced to sit and watch. Take Age of Conan for example, they overdid this and in my eyes its gameruining. Basically because you are forced into a cutscene while there are still many mobs around you, the fight isn't done but suddenly this commercial pops up.

And then everything turns invincible while the scene goes on, that is gamebreaking, or ruining immersiveness for me. Some loose immersion if the hat is the wrong color, or some dude named himself out of character. For me ruining immersion is when all math and mechanics are suddenly disregarded and a commercial cutscene pops up.

Death animations are great in RTS where you control a whole army, it makes for epic looking fights, but thats because it doesn't bring the game escalation to a hault. But when you only control 1 char, and it again and again unwillingly to you go into comboanimations that makes everything invulnerable and lays claim to a few seconds out of gamecharacter (the games character, not a roleplay character) it becomes an eyesore to me.

So careful with it, it might be cool to be eaten by a boss even. But if theres 5 players in the game and 4 has to stand and watch as the boss is invulnerable it breaks the magic in the long run. They will continue to nuke away but knowing that right now this does nothing is like the game is paused. Some commercials are fun and make you laugh for the first few times, but think about running the same commercial for years!

You really don't want all your finetuning and optimising to game mechanics to be put out of play over and over. Think about if they made every thing slowmotion, and then zoomed in to look at the cutscene. It's like the game telling you; wow look how cool your char is. But in the end it's trying to hype your char, and the sense of having a cool char comes from what you can accomplish with it, not the game banging empty drums which gets very annoying if overdone.

[SlechtWeerBeer]

WHY would they immediatly be immune to everything when they're biting off a head?

[Onehouse]

Hmm, this is a game I will have to look into.

[hankhenry]

sounds like a great idea!

[stillman]

I hear what you're saying Felix, but I'd be Ok if ONLY the monster who just died got the "immunity" for the finishing move. He's dead anyway, so it's Ok if that one monster is immune to other physics going around for the death animation.

I think it'd be neat to see a semi Mortal Kombat concept in that you must do some work to get the finishing move. Here's what I had in mind: Each class has a finishing move skill you can put points into, and it basically destroys the body. So not only do you get the neat animation, but the shamen to the left can't resurect the mosnter whose head you just cut off. The cost would be skill points put into the body-destroying moves. Of course all of this assumes they make the bodies not disappear and have shamen who res.

[ill logic]

Bashiok: "For boss fights we don't really want to just start throwing "damage decals" on them. It can very easily be too subtle if you're fighting a smaller boss or one that has odd geometry to it, and it can also end up that no matter the flavor, style, and cool look to a boss you just end up fighting a big gory mess.

Also we think that we can go a lot further than just simple decals and get something much cooler out of a boss fight. So what we hope to do for at least the bosses where it makes sense is to show more apparent and visually noticeable damage states. Instead of a blood splatter they may actually lose a limb, or a piece or armor, or - like the Thousand Pounder - may transform in some dramatic way changing how the fight progresses. We want to go a lot further than just showing sword slashes and instead use dramatic and noticeable (which can be difficult in a game like this) ways to indicate a boss' current state.

Speaking of battle damage though, and I don't think this came across in the gameplay video or any of the screenshots as of yet, but when an enemy dies a critical death it actually drenches your hero in blood if you're within proximity of the spray. It's awesome."

[Keanu style] Woah

[compres]

OMG how can you guys like that game, the colors look just like WoW!
:whistling:

Whiners are just as annoying as stupid apologists.

[CoQui]

Just remember that everydeath animation in the game is basically a cutscene you are forced to sit and watch. Take Age of Conan for example, they overdid this and in my eyes its gameruining. Basically because you are forced into a cutscene while there are still many mobs around you, the fight isn't done but suddenly this commercial pops up.

And then everything turns invincible while the scene goes on, that is gamebreaking, or ruining immersiveness for me. Some loose immersion if the hat is the wrong color, or some dude named himself out of character. For me ruining immersion is when all math and mechanics are suddenly disregarded and a commercial cutscene pops up.

Death animations are great in RTS where you control a whole army, it makes for epic looking fights, but thats because it doesn't bring the game escalation to a hault. But when you only control 1 char, and it again and again unwillingly to you go into comboanimations that makes everything invulnerable and lays claim to a few seconds out of gamecharacter (the games character, not a roleplay character) it becomes an eyesore to me.

So careful with it, it might be cool to be eaten by a boss even. But if theres 5 players in the game and 4 has to stand and watch as the boss is invulnerable it breaks the magic in the long run. They will continue to nuke away but knowing that right now this does nothing is like the game is paused. Some commercials are fun and make you laugh for the first few times, but think about running the same commercial for years!

You really don't want all your finetuning and optimising to game mechanics to be put out of play over and over. Think about if they made every thing slowmotion, and then zoomed in to look at the cutscene. It's like the game telling you; wow look how cool your char is. But in the end it's trying to hype your char, and the sense of having a cool char comes from what you can accomplish with it, not the game banging empty drums which gets very annoying if overdone.


I understand what you mean about commercials, but I'm talking quick finishing moves that add to the coolness but don't detract from gameplay speed. See the Revenant video for idea. The last hit on an ogre decapitates it real quickly with no time loss in gameplay. I'm not talking about a full blown animation sequence because, yes, even I understand that can get real boring after seeing it a couple times.

[Felix]

WHY would they immediatly be immune to everything when they're biting off a head?


It's been the practice in games so far to make the player and mob involved in the finishing move invulnerable while it plays out. This to avoid ones char starting a finishing move on a monster in a pack of monsters, and from that having the player watch his character get killed by the surrounding monsters while he sits there and can do nothing.

I'd say both alternatives are equally bad, also if they are split so player has one and monster has the other. Think about an exploit for example; there's this hard monster, but all the witchdoctor needs to do is use a rank 1 of a low summon with many mobs summoned. The witchdoctor can then force the boss into a repeating finishing move combo while he stands there and nukes away and summons low level summons as needed. An exploit thats prolly not gonna be present, but is also more of an extrapolated example of what too long scripted finisihing moves really are; a disarmed and helpless boss.

The solution is to make the boss invulnerable while it does its trick, but that is not a good implement gameplay wise, as it makes the player the target of the out of game experience.

[Sein Schatten]

The solution is to make the boss invulnerable while it does its trick, but that is not a good implement gameplay wise, as it makes the player the target of the out of game experience.

You are talking on the premise the kill animation is with a 100% rate. I, on the other hand, say, it needs a formula based on combatants. With 20 actors, he plays his animation for every, let's say 2.5%. With 2 actors, it is 100%. No need to make him immune to damage this way.

[Azymn]

You can allow him to take damage during the animation, but if he is "killed" during it you would just let the animation finish normally, then let him die afterwards.