How do you design combat so you are not slashing at the back of a dragon's legs? (Overlaps with tanking and aggro)

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It is quite unfortunate that in games where you can move your character around, the most optimal way to play tends to be trying to circle around the back of the huge monster to slash at it from the rear, usually to avoid being hit by frontal swings or conal AoEs. You see this in Dark Souls and Monster Hunter games. Or for one character to aggro the mob and spin it away from the rest of the party. Due to the size of the mob and the position of the camera, you are usually staring at its ankle or tush, which does not feel grandiose, and also usually does not show off the mob the way it was intended to be shown off by the designer (designed to look good from the front). Is there any way to design a combat system with free movement that incentivizes fighting the monster from the front rather than circling around the back?

The only half implementation I can think of is having a boss located off of the fight platform the player characters are standing on, so you can't go around its behind or spin it away from the other characters. The only other implementation I can think of is for the boss to charge up hard hitting attacks that require the party to stand together and soak the incoming damage, which means they will be facing the boss.

Expectation:







Reality:

[rusty_shackleford]

Dragon's dugma is the closest representation in video game form of how I imagined abstract combat was actually playing out.
Have you played it?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Dragon's dugma is the closest representation in video game form of how I imagined abstract combat was actually playing out.
Have you played it?

It's the on the list of things to get around to. I have heard about the cool size and weight thing where small characters can crawl into small tunnels and will get carried off by harpies, while large characters can drag down harpies.

[Oyster Sauce]

Dragon's dugma is the closest representation in video game form of how I imagined abstract combat was actually playing out.
Have you played it?

Came here to post DD, but it isn't something I'd want to do all the time.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Dragon's dugma is the closest representation in video game form of how I imagined abstract combat was actually playing out.
Have you played it?

Came here to post DD, but it isn't something I'd want to do all the time.

There are few stronger recommendations than that.

[rusty_shackleford]

Dragon's dugma is the closest representation in video game form of how I imagined abstract combat was actually playing out.
Have you played it?

Came here to post DD, but it isn't something I'd want to do all the time.

Climbing on monsters gets repetitive, would probably be best to slant it ~85% standard size monsters or monsters that can't be climbed on at least. Otherwise, climbing on a giant ogre would lose its uniqueness.

[J1M]

It is quite unfortunate that in games where you can move your character around, the most optimal way to play tends to be trying to circle around the back of the huge monster to slash at it from the rear, usually to avoid being hit by frontal swings or conal AoEs. You see this in Dark Souls and Monster Hunter games. Or for one character to aggro the mob and spin it away from the rest of the party. Due to the size of the mob and the position of the camera, you are usually staring at its ankle or tush, which does not feel grandiose, and also usually does not show off the mob the way it was intended to be shown off by the designer (designed to look good from the front). Is there any way to design a combat system with free movement that incentivizes fighting the monster from the front rather than circling around the back?

The only half implementation I can think of is having a boss located off of the fight platform the player characters are standing on, so you can't go around its behind or spin it away from the other characters. The only other implementation I can think of is for the boss to charge up hard hitting attacks that require the party to stand together and soak the incoming damage, which means they will be facing the boss.

Expectation:







Reality:

Players do that because it is optimal. It is optimal because developers added a spot where players could avoid breath weapon and tail swipe damage.

This is easily fixed by:
1) Adding thrash damage so there is nowhere safe to stand beside the dragon.
2) Allow the tank to block breath weapons, shielding allies behind them from it, making the front the safest place to stand if the tank is aware.
3) And most importantly, make the creature take 3x extra damage when it is hit in the head/from the front.

[Norfleet]

Monster Hunter games.

Is there any way to design a combat system with free movement that incentivizes fighting the monster from the front rather than circling around the back?

Yeah, I have an example from this very game: Give your monster a punchable face. If your monster has a punchable face rather than a stabbable back, the player is incentivized to hit the monster in the face instead of circling to backstab.

[aimlesshealer]

It doesn't necessarily have to be anticlimactic. It's not a gentlemanly duel; it's a struggle against a beast. If you were fighting a bear with your buddies, would you all stand together in front of it? You're working together to take a giant monster down, so it makes sense to flank when possible. What is anticlimactic is when the giant monster completely ignores the people slashing at its rear in favor of one dude in the front. It should react by thrashing around, kicking its legs, swiping at the group, etc.

In single player it is pretty bad when the monster lumbers around awkwardly while you slice away at its buttcheeks. Then it feels like you're slashing a health bar with a hit box more than a living creature. That could be avoided with better enemy design (making it riskier/more difficult to flank) or reactivity (so successfully slashing the back of its leg cripples it), or even just better animations.

[Manny V]

I would say that for the most part, Monster Hunter doesn't incentivise smacking away at the legs for several reasons:

- Monster's hind legs are usually not a weak spot
- Other parts of the monster are breakable, yielding additional parts as rewards, so you want to focus on them
- There are plenty of opportunities to whale on the face/tail/wings/whatever other part, depending on the monster or weapon, and things like traps, exploitable things in the environment to immobilize the monster, or status conditions like paralysis or sleep let you hit parts reliably
- Some weapons with more reach have no issues hitting higher up parts of the monster, like insect glaive, and obviously ranged weps
- Other weapons want to focus on particular parts of the monster anyway, such as blunt weapons hitting the head to KO the monster, long reach bladed weapons to sever the tail


You'll only be likely to smack at its legs constantly if you're using a small weapon like Sword and Shield or Dual Blades(and aren't getting many windows to hit other parts), or if it's a particularly massive monster like some of the elder dragons

[Vergil]

I think dragons are inherently something that are poorly suited to just being a group of infantry with melee weapons or bows trying to take down conventionally. Dragons should be massive extremely tough creatures (and intelligent imo) to the point of needing things like ballistas to take them down. Besides that or the way Dragon's Dogma handles things you're always going to have to greatly abstract the fight because it's just completely implausible that you don't just get immediately stomped to death, tail swiped 20ft away or whack/bitten by their big ass head/neck. I guess Skyrim in theory had a way for this to make sense if the thu'um was actually the most viable weapon against dragons since it's basically firing big blasts of specifically draconic magic.

[TKVNC]

I think dragons are inherently something that are poorly suited to just being a group of infantry with melee weapons or bows trying to take down conventionally. Dragons should be massive extremely tough creatures (and intelligent imo) to the point of needing things like ballistas to take them down. Besides that or the way Dragon's Dogma handles things you're always going to have to greatly abstract the fight because it's just completely implausible that you don't just get immediately stomped to death, tail swiped 20ft away or whack/bitten by their big ass head/neck. I guess Skyrim in theory had a way for this to make sense if the thu'um was actually the most viable weapon against dragons since it's basically firing big blasts of specifically draconic magic.

You are almost entirely correct. It’s not practical, enjoyable, or even immersive to have a dragon that lands willingly, and stays there for you to fight it.

You should be required to use cover, damage its wings, forcibly ground it, then focus on landing the killing blow.

Taunting, and threat is a very unimmersive way of managing fights. Even arbitrary, random, target choice with limited to no decision making would be better.

Also, weak spots and one shots (for the intelligent player as well) should be encouraged. Rather than getting people to simply learn the most efficient way to cycle through 5 abilities. However, Dark Slop style gameplay should be heavily discouraged.

[Vergil]

Thinking more on it dragons should be used extremely sparingly and I think a lot of the challenge either within the game or at least the narrative should be getting the dragon into an ideal position to attack it. Dragons in open air on their own turf should be basically impossible to take down. You should have to either bait it into a well defended position with lots of artillery to take it down and then use overwhelming force or wait until it's in a typical dragon's den type of scenario where it can't just fly away. They're (usually) highly intelligent and so there should be some element of wit/trickery/strategy involved. I think for a party of adventurers an open air dragon attack should basically be a retreat in just about every scenario. If you're fighting a dragon unless you can corner it in a cave (which is still extremely risky) you're just fucked.

[Oyster Sauce]

Thinking more on it dragons should be used extremely sparingly and I think a lot of the challenge either within the game or at least the narrative should be getting the dragon into an ideal position to attack it. Dragons in open air on their own turf should be basically impossible to take down. You should have to either bait it into a well defended position with lots of artillery to take it down and then use overwhelming force or wait until it's in a typical dragon's den type of scenario where it can't just fly away. They're (usually) highly intelligent and so there should be some element of wit/trickery/strategy involved. I think for a party of adventurers an open air dragon attack should basically be a retreat in just about every scenario. If you're fighting a dragon unless you can corner it in a cave (which is still extremely risky) you're just fucked.

WOTR kind of does this. A dragon is ravaging your territory so you hire a tracker, ambush it, track it down to its lair by following its bloody trail, try to sneak up on it, and then attack. Ultimately you're just hitting it until it dies though.

► Show Spoiler

[Steel-Knight]

Gauntlet Dark Legacy had a dragon boss fight, and it placed a wall behind it preventing you from getting behind it and attacking there. You had to pretty much tank it from the front with your character and anyone else that was playing with you, dodging attacks as best as possible and repeatedly attacking it until it eventually died.

Don't think a similar design philosophy would work too well in a modern game though, but I could be wrong.

[rusty_shackleford]

Is there a story prior to Hobbit that put thought into the difficulty of dragonslaying? It's usually just melee combat, perhaps a lance on horseback.

[Steel-Knight]

Is there a story prior to Hobbit that put thought into the difficulty of dragonslaying? It's usually just melee combat, perhaps a lance on horseback.

If old tales and mythology count then perhaps the Nordic/Germanic folklore tales of Sigurd/Siegfried. There's also the Old English poem of Beowulf.

They may be where Tolkien may have gotten some of his inspiration for Smaug come to think of it. In Beowulf, a slave steals a golden cup from a sleeping dragon which then goes on a rampage on the countryside, similarly to how Smaug goes on a rampage after Bilbo steals a cup from him.

Smaug's weakness may have been somewhat inspired by the Sigurd tales, where he drives his sword into the underside of the dragon to kill it. Bard of Laketown shoots an arrow at a weak spot in Smaug's underside if I recall correctly.

[rusty_shackleford]

If old tales and mythology count then perhaps the Nordic/Germanic folklore tales of Sigurd/Siegfried. There's also the Old English poem of Beowulf.

Yea but they don't actually put much thought into how hard it would be to kill, and/or (especially in the case of nordic tales) were referring to something closer to a wyrm.

[Stack of Turtles]

Is there a story prior to Hobbit that put thought into the difficulty of dragonslaying? It's usually just melee combat, perhaps a lance on horseback.

If old tales and mythology count then perhaps the Nordic/Germanic folklore tales of Sigurd/Siegfried. There's also the Old English poem of Beowulf.

They may be where Tolkien may have gotten some of his inspiration for Smaug come to think of it. In Beowulf, a slave steals a golden cup from a sleeping dragon which then goes on a rampage on the countryside, similarly to how Smaug goes on a rampage after Bilbo steals a cup from him.

Smaug's weakness may have been somewhat inspired by the Sigurd tales, where he drives his sword into the underside of the dragon to kill it. Bard of Laketown shoots an arrow at a weak spot in Smaug's underside if I recall correctly.

"may have"
Tolkien wrote a prose translation of Beowulf while at University of Leeds and it was a major element of his academic study thereafter.

[Steel-Knight]

Is there a story prior to Hobbit that put thought into the difficulty of dragonslaying? It's usually just melee combat, perhaps a lance on horseback.

If old tales and mythology count then perhaps the Nordic/Germanic folklore tales of Sigurd/Siegfried. There's also the Old English poem of Beowulf.

They may be where Tolkien may have gotten some of his inspiration for Smaug come to think of it. In Beowulf, a slave steals a golden cup from a sleeping dragon which then goes on a rampage on the countryside, similarly to how Smaug goes on a rampage after Bilbo steals a cup from him.

Smaug's weakness may have been somewhat inspired by the Sigurd tales, where he drives his sword into the underside of the dragon to kill it. Bard of Laketown shoots an arrow at a weak spot in Smaug's underside if I recall correctly.

"may have"
Tolkien wrote a prose translation of Beowulf while at University of Leeds and it was a major element of his academic study thereafter.

I'm aware.

[Cipher]

I think dragons are inherently something that are poorly suited to just being a group of infantry with melee weapons or bows trying to take down conventionally. Dragons should be massive extremely tough creatures (and intelligent imo) to the point of needing things like ballistas to take them down. Besides that or the way Dragon's Dogma handles things you're always going to have to greatly abstract the fight because it's just completely implausible that you don't just get immediately stomped to death, tail swiped 20ft away or whack/bitten by their big ass head/neck. I guess Skyrim in theory had a way for this to make sense if the thu'um was actually the most viable weapon against dragons since it's basically firing big blasts of specifically draconic magic.

Yeah, Dragons should be nukes. Any colossal size monster should be treated like a Godzilla level threat because, they are. Requiring armies to take down. The thing is people really want their fighter, thief, cleric and mage little band of misfits to be able to take on anything and everything but that's the problem with WotC's dragon game and their "balanced encounters" ethos. If everything can be vanquished easily by a 4 man party then they are not monsters they are XP bags.

This is why stuff like orcs and goblins, or even hordes of zombies are not scary anymore. And the problem with this is that it turns the setting into DBZ. For videogames, taking on colossal beasts should follow the God of War games. Yeah QTEs are lame but that's the only way to make it make sense, you activate or direct siege weapons/magical artifacts at the colossal monster and eventually take it down.

The only other way is handling like Shadow of the Colossus, which Dragon's Dogma does at a smaller scale. And yes, if you are fighting a creature larger than you, attacking its back or hind legs is the right strategy. Your slaying a monster not dueling another honorable knight.