PnC vs WASD Options

[Hawkins]

I would like to talk about how PnC affects game world design.

WASD here means the way how you control your char's movement in games like EQII and WoW, while PnC i am talking about is that employed by Lineage II.

The advantage of PnC is that you can have a third-person full camera view to see how everything happening around your char, you wont get backstabed like in WoW. While WASD is just an extended 1st person view where you can normally only see the *back* of your char (like in WoW that is), the shortcoming is that you dont know what's happening at your back, i think open pvp will be affected the most as you dont know what's happening at your back, which becomes your weakest postition for an ambush/backstab.

As the main advantage of PnC is that it allows you to have broader camera view, so if PnC is to be adapted, the UI must be so designed that you can freely and smoothly move your camera view, LineageII is an awesome design in this aspect.

On the other hand, the freely adjustable camera view will become a shortcoming in a narrow environment such as in dungeons and small houses. This is because you can hardly obtain the best camera view for the human eyes perception. WASD doesn't have the same problem because it's an extended 1st person view where your camera's viewing angle is limited (ie. you can only see your back when you move).

In Lineage II, the problem is "fixed" by designing all the dungeons as *big halls* and no *small* houses are present. All the shopes are with a certain *size* to allow you to get the acceptable camera view suitable for the human eye perception.

Wish tries to use the path-finding feature to partly cover the shortcoming up. That is, whenever you are in a narrow tower or house, you can make use of the path-finding to move your char instead of adjusting the camera view to get a proper viewing angle to see and control your char's movement.

What's been affected that most is house decoration, no matter it's PnC or WASD you cant have a proper camera view for house decoration, unless you have a *big enough* house in the case of PnC. You can hardly get it right in case of WASD. I think this is one of the reaon why housing is simply ignored in 3D MMORPGs (i dont have a chance to see how good the camera works in SWG yet).

A workaround I can think of for house decoration is that there will be a button "decorate" which can be accessed by a player when he's inside his own house, when the button is pressed, his house contents are moved to an instance where the camera is locked with a view exactly like in UO (the isometric view? i forgot the name), and the player can only view one floor at a time (this affects how a 3D house is modeled, i dont know how easy or difficult this is done). While the house with its contents can rotate along the y-axis (z-axis in UO).

Personally I think if PnC is used in PW, I prefer to see the UI and movement control exactly like LineageII instead of Wish.

[Slacter]

The advantages of PnC: Hundred-fold less server traffic than WASD, better automated control, other clients see your movements more accurately, action response is controlled by roll calculations and puts everyone on an even plane, thus allowing all characters with the same skill experience to have the same chance of success.

The advantages of WASD: More character control, better control in tight spots, action response is controlled more by the player's skill to manipulate the keyboard, thus allowing individual player abilities to determine uberness.

Is it possible to hybrid these together? They could use the same messages, just that WASD would give short distance PnC commands (i.e. like auto-run while the key is pressed, thereby only sending a server message when a new key is pressed or when a key is released).

[kru]

Shadowbane had (when I played it) one of the best interfaces in a mmog. Its a great design. This includes the way that it handles movement. The viewing area is controlled by the keyboard, and the mouse is used to initiate movement. Pathfinding was optional, and I preferred to keep it off. When moving into buildings the objects that would block your view of the ground were shadowed, and removed. The picking routine was very 'smart'. I forget exactly how it worked, but I never had a problem targetting what I wanted to target.

Thats all just the camera and character movement stuff. SB's interface was had lots more great stuff, too. Anything could be moved, easily, or turned into button by unskilled users. Any button could be created and placed anywhere on the screen. Its a real gem of an interface. WoWs interface, as user-friendly as it is, is disappointing in comparison.

Any UI designer for wish should get some familiarity with the Shadowbane interface.

[Zhiroc]

Something I posted on a different Wish board:

IMHO, just about all games are missing the point when it comes to movement. First of all, I think there has to be a distinction made in whether an MMO is trying to be more of a FPS action game than an RPG. In an RPG, you shouldn't need to concentrate so much on micro-tactics like positioning oneself. In this, neither WASD nor PnC really have it right.

For example, as a seasoned warrior, I should just "know" that I should manuever to attack an opponent's flank, so that's what my character should do--automatically. Likewise, the opponent should know that this is bad, so they should move to counter--also automatically. Of course, the player should be able to make overriding decisions, but the point is that precise movement shouldn't be necessary in most cases. And if my character is a crafter that never leaves the house, I don't care how much *I* know about how to position myself for combat--my character doesn't so it doesn't manuever well at all.

Likewise with going from city A to city B. If there's a road or a path, or even just a general direction, I should just be able to set out that way, and the character should follow the twists and turns, and avoid obstacles. If the character notices something (and it shouldn't rely on me the player noticing by seeing something on radar or the view), then it should bring it to my attention. If the terrain is confusing, the character should have a chance of getting lost that doesn't matter how well the player knows the terrain (or has OOC knowledge of position).

Again the question, is the game an FPS or an RPG?

If you've played pen-and-paper RPGs, this is *so* natural and isn't at all radical in concept. I don't tell the GM "I walk straight to the bend in the road, turn around 180 degrees, do I see something? OK, I turn 60 deg to the left, walk another 100 feet, and look around...." If I do tell the GM that I'm looking around, it's for a specific reason, and yes, it would enhance my character's perception (at a loss of movement speed, mind you).

I'm beta-testing a WASD movement system game (with no waypoints/bookmarks), and I *hate* it. I can't see how any socialization will take place except when just standing around, since you're jamming keys to move and therefore can't chat. And adding a 3rd party app like Teamspeak to me just proves how broken the model is, at least for an RPG.

[Blacksmile]

Although this might be really hard to implement i absolutely like the idea of Zhiroc. On the other side i think the people want some control over their character, no matter if that fits the role of the character or not. So there should be a way to choose whether to let the character navigate or to navigate on ones own.

For short distance navigation I think spatial effects like backstabbing should only be possible if the character is likely to know about them, maybe has aquired a skill to do so. And if the character does know it should (when this system is to be implemented) move around the target for backstabbing it automatically, unless manually overriden.

For mid-distanced navigation (within visibility) i see no need (if we were going for PnC) to differ between char navigation and player navigation. If we are going to have WASD (wich in my eyes has some major technical drawbacks) then char navigation of course needed to be done through PnC...

For long-distance navigation i think the proposed model of the character beeing likely to get lost in unknown territory is cool, but it could lead to serious frustration if you end up in an area lurked by some strong monsters. So i would rather give the player the choice between letting the character find it's way or navigating himself (maybe hindered through the minimap beeing depandant on the characters cartographic or orientation skill.

[Masamune]

I think I read on the old Wish forums where somebody did a packet count test on PNC vs WASD commands and found that the WASD commands were actually a bit smaller. According to that post there was no reason from a network standpoint why WASD couldn't have been used either instead, or along side (which was an interesting idea I hadn't thought of) of PNC. I watched the forum and never saw where any member of the Wish team replied to that, they just always said it was PNC or the highway (which I understand if your that close to releasing a product you want to tweak not make major changes....) Obviously the server side code plays a large part in this, of which I plainly have no knowledge, but maybe it would be possible both could be done?

For the record, I am a large fan of Morrowind's WASD interface, I think Bethesda did an excellent job with it. I also like UO's simple mouse interface, providing you turn pathfinding off! Wish's PNC was getting better with each update, but had a lot of work left before it was ready for prime time, especially with the whirl and hurl camera. But after playing with it, (frustrating learning curve), I can see where it would have been quite serviceable with more refining.

[Phoenix]

personally i like WASD or arrow keys, PnC reminds me of runescape(its easy to click on players in a crowded area which is anoying as it slows you down) WASD has always been more fun for me, easier to use less incidents.

[silmaril]

It is possible, but I seriously doubt it.

For WASD you need to send a direction everytime you change directions (including "no direction" to stop). For PnC you send the coordinates you want to go to and the server returns the route to get you there. This can also be optimized to perform the same calculation client side as well and just check if they are the same, only sending the information from the server if they are not.

Another problem is that of latency. With WASD you need to continously send information about your movement, and the server must continously check if the moves are legal. Even with rather low latency on the connection the server and client can disagree on where a character is and cause the well-known rubber-band effect. Additional checks can be put in place to solve it to some degree though. With PnC you transmit one request to go to a location and get one response (each in one packet), instead of a continous stream of packets for movement.

[Masamune]

That makes sense. I guess the size isn't important afterall, just how it's used :) Seriously, thanks for the explanation. I was sure there was something more complicated involved.

[babocan]

Sorry if my reply is redundant... there were too many posts/words to take in during one sitting...

Point and Click can badly interfere with "tense" situations if using a graphical interface (that is why WoW has things like a Tool Bar "LOCK" button - so you don't accidentally drag an action icon off of the tool bar during combat, tryin' to do to many thing rapidly)... I.E. you are trying to click on a "stance" button placed on the side of the screen and you miss it causing your character, during battle, to walk that way, opening your side and flank to attack.

WASD can be difficult when trying to "chat", but with a walk/run toggle and "auto-move" feature (both in WoW), and multitasking a converstation while walking through the woods (hit enter mid sentence, adjust autowalk direction with WASD, hit enter and type rest of sentence), you can get along fairly well - this doesn't work well if you are not so very dexterous.

Automatic pathfinding can take the "exploration" factor out of it. BOTs are not good, IMHO, because they take the player involvement out of it. I want to be able to inch my way around a tree to spot the enemy before he sees me... maybe get off that crippling shot before he starts charging at me. At the same time, in some way your character resists you trying to drive him off a cliff that will kill him (although you didn't realize it was quite that tall) - I like the idea of some automatic character response to environment based on skills and traits - similar to when you goto attack something, your character automatically goes into a combat stance (graphically, and ?operationally?).

Now I have put so many words down as well... what we need is a Hybrid. The ability to put it into "auto-pilot" or direct drive... while utilizing a middle mouse button to control camera angle while using the WASD to control direction of travel. TOO MANY times have I caught myself holding down the scroll button on my mouse and try to pan across a web page, MS Word doc or other such file - too many hours running around a 3D MMORPG environment.

- just my opinions.

[Bomhammer]

I think it would be a good idea to take a look at the Star Wars Galaxies movment control.
For me it worked.

I could use the WASD control or I could i could configure it to control movement through mouse and the chat was availible on the fly as soon as you type words instead of pressing "enter" then putting the word in the chat box..


you could also give a choice of which system people they many want tp use or they can make their own control scheme based on the commands availible.

that is my 2 cents

[Abe]

I think I read on the old Wish forums where somebody did a packet count test on PNC vs WASD commands and found that the WASD commands were actually a bit smaller.


Yes, a fellow at the old WISH Vault also explained, in detail how WASD required no more commands and a bit smaller packets then PnC movement did.

I noticed myself when playing WISH that I only used PnC to move where I had to go to play the game. I never explored inside of buildings or up stairways as PnC was just to tiring to use when compared to the ease and control of WASD movement.

Another troubling item with PnC was combat. When trying to "click" a creature, missing and clicking the ground, then walking to that point instead of attacking. I was willing to try and live with PnC because WISH had so much to offer but WASD would have made the world so much more fun to interact with.

[Pashta]

I noticed myself when playing WISH that I only used PnC to move where I had to go to play the game. I never explored inside of buildings or up stairways as PnC was just to tiring to use when compared to the ease and control of WASD movement.



Were we playing the same Wish? It had the BEST EVER PnC controls.. I went up stairs and inside buildings with no problems at all. I was very impressed by it and still would prefer it to crappy WASD.

Anyway, as I keep saying, just let the PEOPLE choose, have BOTH options available. Stop trying for one or the other... would it really bother you folks that much that I prefer PnC and can use it if I want to? If so then that's pretty selfish, not to mention mean.

[Abe]

Were we playing the same Wish? It had the BEST EVER PnC controls.. I went up stairs and inside buildings with no problems at all. I was very impressed by it and still would prefer it to crappy WASD.



Yes, I know we were playing the same WISH, I remember you. We are just different people, with different preferences. I think you misunderstood my post.


I did not say, "that moving inside buildings or upstairs? was faulty. I said that PnC required much more effort then I chose to use to explore as much as I have in WASD based games. WASD is just much more convenient and fluid. (By the way, it is nice to see you over at IRTH) I understand that PnC worked in WISH; I just think the best PnC leaves much to be desired when compared to WASD. WISH had enough good qualities for me ?to put up with PnC? not convert me to it. A choice of controls would be nice.

[StaticGrazerr]

Why is it that we cannot have a combination of the two systems? WASD and P&C? Is it too complicated?

Why is it that we cannot have it so that WASD is basic movement, moving the mouse is basic looking around, right clicking and holding could also be used for movement? A simple left click for attacking, and a simple right click for a weapons special attack ( Block, zoom for bows, charge for spells, things like that)

And as far as Small areas are concerned, why not offer a feature where Page Up and Page down dipict 1st Person or 3rd Person?

Now I liked UO's Omnnesant overview camera, however it probley wouldn't seem right with PW. Simply because you'd be missing a lot of the great terrain and beautiful building sides. How are we going to enjoy my nice tavern or pub if all I can see is the walls and floor? What about my chandaleer darnit!

Not only that, but the Onmnesant view ( as far as decoration goes) makes a kind of eye-trickary to objects around the player. What seems to be together is actuelly stacked, or turned in a specific way.

Games with a P&C normally ( or at least I think they do) Have a zoom feature on the keys above the arrow keys. And if they don't then by god they should! I personally prefer WASD above all others, but I'm a flexible gamer than can go with the flow.

And I'd like to see a combo system! Go Democracy! lolz

[exocrine]

I'm fairly sure that would be considered plain old WASD. The PnC vs WASD debate is about basic movement.

[emeraven]

Exo is probably right about this, most people think of Point and Click or the arrow keys (WASD too) as about basic movement.

But SG has a point, a combination might be good, Im not sure about the mouse look. Ive tried a few mouse look on various games and I found it took a lot of co ordination (I dont have much :P), than having one or the other.

For a long time I was sold on PnC as I could just use one hand to do most things, and it helps that I have a rollerball mouse (I spin the ball to look around :P). But stopping and thinking about it, there are some things the basic WASD can do better, placing a character step by step is much easier with WASD, first person can be easier. Mind you in Wish I found first person point and click to be pretty good.

On the whole I would like to see something that was a little flexable, than just offering one or other solution.

[StaticGrazerr]

I'd like to see some kind of combination, heck, or even the option to choose one fron another. A few clicks and clacks in the options menu, and BAM you're on WSAD. LoL, if we put the two together in the same game we really would find out what's better wouldn't we?

Or, we could just invent our own movement system. That'd be a pain in the Go-nads for sure.

[emeraven]

Hmm possibly a pain yes, though I have tossed around a few ideas in my head how to develop both methods a bit further than the basic.

Movement is currently on my list of things to work on. It ties in with targeting, battle and perhaps even training or npc interaction. So any thoughts, keep em coming.

[StaticGrazerr]

What about a movement system based off of the use of a 5 button Joysick?

Basic Movement my moving it around, use the 'optic button' as your view. ( Or vise-versa now that I think about it ) And the clicks can dipict what commands and all that. Leaving the entire keyboard for your left ( or right) hand to play with. Hur Hur hur!