Darrin McPherson, Senior Game Designer at Sigil Games Online, and I hung out at the Sony Online Entertainment booth and discussed - in length - the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes combat system:

What makes combat in Vanguard unique?

You hit auto-attack, you’ve got a set of special attacks, those attacks can be chained together to attain different goals, you can execute your Brutal Strike and then Armor, and then the Warrior uses Armor to get an even better Armor than if you adjust that Armor by yourself. That of course opens up a finishing attack that does something even more powerful, but you have to learn all of these attacks.

On top of that there’s the reactionary portion of combat. What the reactions are, for us, is our ability to give players the opportunity to change their tactics while in combat. While I may normally go in to a fight as a cleric and cast my heal a few times, turn on auto-attack, it’s not that way every time, and in fact no combat will be like that. There are a bunch of things that happen in a normal combat. If you and I were in a group fighting a bunch of Orcs all sorts of stuff could happen aside from you swinging five times and me swinging six times. NPC do things and we allow you to react to that. The basic reactions are, like I explained earlier – the attack chain, every time you execute an ability that can be chained you’ll be notified – you’ll hear a chain sound and your buttons will indicate which abilities can now go.

And then, as a Warrior, you have a set of reactions called rescues. Rescues allow you to protect your defensive target. We have an offensive target which is your traditional targeting method of all the other games and you also have a defensive target. So a Cleric can have the NPC that you’re fighting as the offensive target and your tank as the defensive target. That allows you to get off your heals while still fighting. It also allows the warrior to get reactions for the defensive target. The defensive target for a Warrior is the Cleric. In our group the Cleric is getting beat on by one o the NPCs because there are multiple and he’s getting too much aggression. If I enough perception, perception is based on intelligence and skill, than I will receive a reaction to that – I’ll hear a noise, a scream for help – and I can use an ability and take all the damage that my defensive target would have taken allowing me to force the NPC to switch. Depending on what class I have I’ll have different rescues, the Paladin is really good at rescues – he’s all about protection.

Does every class have rescues?

No, defensive tanks have rescues. The Paladin, Warrior, Dread Knight, and Inquisitor all have rescues – they don’t have the same rescues, but their rescues all function close to the same. You will have opportunities, as a Paladin, to gain more aggression and do more damage because rescues are your forte. You can rescue your defensive target and do other things to him. The Paladin has spells he cast on his defensive target. If my Cleric is getting beat on than I can cast a shield on him, that’s another little rescue thing I have. The defensive target enables a lot of other dynamics to combat than a normal MMO. Also, the things you can do simultaneously without having to do the mechanical switching back and forth between your guys. You will have to cycle through targets if your entire group is getting hit and you’re a Cleric – that’s acceptable and it’s going to happen.

One of the other things that make us different is the perception system. Perception is a set of skill; as a spell caster you have spell identification a skill, as a melee you have attack recognition as a skill and those skills allow you do a few things: you can use them to recognize what NPCs are doing, what attacks they’re performing which allows you to do things like rescue or potentially learn that attack. We have a lot of different ways for players to learn other than going to trainer, pushing a button or going to a spell vendor. You, as a warrior, can get advanced abilities by simply absorbing other people’s fighting. You may to learn one of your opening attacks by visiting the master on the hill and the sword master will teach you how to do this attack, but you have to spar with him. It’s NPC combat and he would turn it on and you’d be able to fight him than he’d turn it off and ask if you have observed than you learn this thing – you’ll be notified that you’re beginning to learn this attack and eventually that ability will be added to your book and you can use it. Spell casters use spell identification to do the same thing. You identify a spell that is cast by an NPC and you can learn it.

Will learning abilities be a timing based opportunity where you have to press a button at the exact right time to learn the ability?

That’s passive. The timing that is involved is in countering a spell or defending against the ability. Let’s say something casts a fireball and I already have that spell, or it’s not something I can learn, I have a finite amount of time to actually counter that spell and I will see it identified – I will see the little icon for what the spell is – and it’s my job as the player to learn that, okay the NPCs I fight often will have similar spell lines. When the Orc casts “Minor Debuff I” I may not care to counter it. I could counter it if I wanted to, it shows me the icon and the seconds ticking down where I can press the counter-spell button, or I can skip it and do another one of my reactions. I could also wait until the Lich King is casting “Time Stop” and that’s very important to me so I can be notified as to which spells there are and what the spells are that are being cast.

If the perception skills for learning abilities are passive than is your learning it based on the amount of times a spell is cast on you?

The amount of times a spell is cast and your ability to perceive it is what will determine the rate at which you learn a spell. If you decided, as a spell caster, to not put much skill in to spell identification because you decided as a spell caster you never want to fight other spell casters than it may take you 50 casts to learn a new spell. Whereas a guy who’s really good and bumped a lot in to intelligence and who has gotten the items to identify spells better may learn it in 5 casts. So it is both your skill level and the frequency that you are hit with the spell, or observe the spell being cast. You don’t actually have to be the target of the spell to identify and counter it.

Do you have to be within the group being cast on to perceive an attack or can you be within the vicinity?

You have to be within the group. So you can’t sit down and watch a group fight away and observe all the NPCs. Perception also gives you bonuses – I mentioned rescues earlier, you can rescue anytime. If you know your Cleric is getting beat on than you can rescue. If you perceive the attack than you get bonus to the mitigation that your rescue does and the refresh time that’s normally applied to the rescue is not applied. So let’s say you can only rescue every 10 seconds. If you are perceiving all of the attacks than you can do it over and over and over again. Counter spells are the same way, you can counter anytime you want but than you’ve got to wait for the 30 second refresh time on that spell counter. If I identify that spell with my skill in perception than I can counter it and I can counter it again. We’re playing in beta right now and we don’t find that you’re able to do that all the time. But against NPCs that are lower than you it becomes easier to beat those NPCs.

Is there a “Rescue” type ability for offensive fighters, healers, or arcane casters?

Offensive fighters, who are our damage-per-second classes – the rogues, monks, berserkers, rangers, and bards –, have intercepts. Intercepts are very similar to rescues. The difference between a rescue and an intercept is that if you fail a rescue the Warrior takes the damage; if you fail an intercept your defensive target takes the damage. When you do an intercept you mitigate some of the damage, the rest of the damage is taken by your defensive target. So you’re trying to catch the attack with your blade or somehow – you’re diverting it but you don’t always recall it. It’s not as effective as a rescue, but it will help you and has proven in beta to be a huge boon. The Warrior is really busy with the NPC, but there’s an addition and he’s out beating on the Cleric because of healing aggression. The Ranger in the group is intercepting until the other healer can get a heal off then maybe the Psionicist, who’s involved in something else, can mesmerize that guy who’s uncontrolled. It allows you to actually affect combat in a way you couldn’t before – you know the guy is dying and you either get the heal off or he dies. We give you lots of options. You may not always have aggression as a Warrior. If you lose it, you can rescue and you may be rescuing many times.

We also allow you to do defensive abilities – they’re the exact opposite of offensive attacks. You can attack, most people generally just have a set of attacks you can do – or you have auto-attack. In Vanguard you can elect to block. So I’m chugging away and I’m pouring my attack chains. The healer is off on his heal, I know this because I see the icon and he’s yelling “Oh crap, the heal is going to be late”. I’m going down, down, down so I can go in to defensive mode and hedgehog myself and I can take the beating for a round or two and absorb the damage. At the same time I’m losing aggression and I’m not generating any damage. I sacrifice the ability to do that, but I can also hold out. You can’t do that forever though, it takes a lot of endurance to execute those abilities, but it’s another option for you – in combat – to form this defensive maneuver. And when you form those you get another type of reaction called the counterattack. Counterattack is a simple reproach after parry. So I block, now as a Warrior one of my specialties is counterattack – they’re really good at counter attack – so now I’ve got a devastating stunning counterattack, but I’ve got to take a round off of damage to actually hit that. There’s another way I can get that and that’s if I naturally block or parry. As you fight you will naturally have these skills firing – you dodge the attack. If you dodge the attack than you’ll be able to do the counterattack and what that means for you is that you didn’t have to use the endurance cost to do the defensive ability – you get the counterattack for free. So you need to be paying attention: “Oh crap, I dodged!” and I want to do my counterattack. We’ll let you know you can do that, you’ll hear audio, you’ll see the NPC you’re fighting will flash, and you’ll know through the feedback we’re giving you. So that’s basic melee combat.

Casters have a whole different set of reactions that they can see: sympathetic spells, working together with another caster, and counter spells. My counter spells aren’t simple nullify effects, they don’t just make the spell go away. I know other games, I think World of Warcraft has a spell counter you can do, that make the spells go away. In Vanguard you can do that, that’s the most basic form, but all the arcane casters get other types of spell counters. You can disperse then or you can, as a Sorcerer, reflect them back to the NPC. Sorcerers also get reflective shields so I can place a canvas shield around my defensive target which may be a Warrior. I know he’s going to run in and try to beat on the fire nuker and the nuker is going to nuke him a couple times – that counter shield is going to reflect those spells back for however many charges are on the shield, so let’s say it’s a two-charge shield: the next two attacks are going to be reflected back and now it’s broken and he loses that protection. Pcionicist has the ability to divert and change spells. So counter spells come up and I turn an offensive spell in to a group buff, I turn it in to a shower of flowers, I can turn it in to anything. The Pcionicist will have a number of diversion abilities so he’ll have to choose. Let’s say I’ve got four diversion tactics, what’s best right now? I know a spell is coming in, I’ve identified it and I hear the sound that accompanies a spell counter – I can disperse it or I can turn it in to a heal for our group. Maybe that spell, which is really useful, is really hard to get; perhaps I’ve got to trek across the world to find the NPC that will help me gain the knowledge to use that counter spell.

And then there is sympathetic combat system that is also different from other games. Synthetic magic will enable you the Sorcerer and me the Necromancer to fire our respective damage spells: you fire your Fireball, you cast that – or begin casting it, and I receive a reaction that I can use my Bone Spear in sympathy with you. If I choose to do that than both of our spells go off like normal and then an additional effect goes off on the NPC – whether it’s a permanent effect like a debuff, a lot of extra damage, maybe it’s a damage over time effect, there’s a myriad of things that can happen.

We now have a really good Cleric spell called “Itaperosity” [spelling may vary] and basically it buffs the group for the next 10 seconds and they do more damage. You can’t do it very often and you can only do it in combat. Two Clerics doing that together, when one Cleric begins casting the other will receive a reaction, you get it for 30 seconds. So there’s a big bonus for working together and that’s just the sympathetic stuff.

We have other means of working together that we don’t actually represent via a reaction. That’s call “Combat Synergy”. The simplest form is the Dread Knight has an ability, when he executes it bares the soul of the opponent – baring soul doesn’t actually do anything, it just sets a flag: hey, my soul has been bared and it’s all handled without any actual tangible benefit. The Necromancer may have a spell, that when someone’s soul is bared, will do double damage. That stuff is only represented by a little tiny icon on the NPC. We actually have beta players right now who are around levels 20 and 30 learning these combinations because it’s something we want players to discover. You don’t have to do it – you can still kill as efficiently as you ever were, but it does give you benefits for working together. If I do this and you do that than something else happens.

There are a lot of little details that make Vanguard’s combat different, and it does feel different. We’re playing beta all the time now and one of the troubles, since then, that we have is that it’s a totally different combat which has the basic underlying principles that people are used to with all these other additions and it’s giving the players the amount of feedback they need to actually perform all these actions that they need has been difficult.

Watching someone demo Vanguard combat makes the combat look like every other game, but talking with you makes it clear that there are some very unique features to Vanguard’s combat.

Giving a demo to combat and actually sitting down and immersing yourself in the combat are two different things. You have to play the game to really appreciate it.

I personally wouldn’t consider the combat system that you’ve implemented to be too complex, but do you have any fears that a casual gamer will have difficulty learning this system?

Well the wonderful thing is that the reactions come up in a window – it’s like training wheels; they come up, they sound, they pop-up. Advanced players on beta complain that it’s like playing whack-a-ball because it comes up: okay, I have three reactions at this point in combat, which one do I do? Hitting them when they pop-up and come up. For newbie players they like it because it trains them. I don’t play with the reaction window up because I know what the combinations are, not from actually making them – I’ve made thousands of abilities so I don’t remember them. I remember them because I play the Pcionicist and the Sorcerer all the time and I have a really high-level Ranger on the beta server. I know I’m learning the combat synergy stuff with the group I play with often. All that stuff adds up. When I was a newbie I used the reaction stuff. With combat synergy you can kill stuff with auto-attack, you can kill stuff by spamming your buttons, and you can learn. And there are beta players that don’t learn; they’re frustrated because they’re at level 5 and don’t see how it’s different. Well, it’s not really different at level 5 because level 5 is really early in the game for you to be doing any of this advanced stuff. They’ll post on the boards saying I’m level 5 and it doesn’t feel any different. Five levels later they’ll post and will have had a change-of-heart.

Does combat feel familiar to other games at lower levels to introduce players to combat at a comfortable point thus allowing them to learn the dynamics of your combat systems at a more natural learning curve?

Yes. You don’t get attack chains until level 4. Before that you have abilities that make you feel like you’re a class. The Ranger gets an ability at level 1 one that is a better ranged attack than any of the other starting classes. So you get a good ranged attack, but we don’t give you all 12 or 15 types of ranged attacks at level 1 because we want you to get familiar with how these things work and add complexity on top of it.

Have you implemented anything that just didn’t work because it was too complicated?

Lots of things. The biggest problem we’ve had is not giving the players enough feedback. The interface and other things in the game weren’t allowing players to feel like they were in control. We went through a period of time where the interface wasn’t as reactive as you’d of wanted it because everything was arbitrated on the serve for security reasons. Players felt like they were playing in molasses, they hit the button, then they heard the sound, then they see the animation. It didn’t feel responsive so we’ve changed things like that and now our combat, on the surface looks similar, is actually really complex – there’s a lot of stuff you can do and that’s been the biggest challenge because without proper feedback, the players don’t have a good avenue in to the complexity. So you go from having something that’s complex and overly complicated, and then you make tweaks so now it’s complex, but easy to access and that’s the sort of thing we’re looking for. World of Warcraft did an amazing job at getting players comfortable with the game – the game mechanics are simple, even at higher levels -, but the game is ultimately accessible. Grandma can go in and press the buttons. That’s where we need to get with Vangaurd. We’re almost there, but it’s like jumping a hurdle: when we add more complexity the problems of making things easy to use become exponentially more difficult.

One can interpret Vanguard to be very complex and difficult due to lengthy travel times, immersive crafting systems, and complicated combat; can casual players play Vanguard casually?

In terms of travel times, depending on where you’re going – at least if you’re going continentally – it’s rather understandable because horses are accessible very easily at levels 1, 2 and 3 via quests – everyone will riding around on a horse: horses of varying speeds and because your small area of influence at lower levels players don’t have issues with the travel times. At higher levels there’s a lot of travel. We’ll be experimenting with ways of trying to speed that up, but we want travel to be meaningful, but we also want players to be able to actually play when they actually want to play and not have to travel for hours on end. That’s a really delicate thing to balance and we’re constantly tweaking it in beta.

Combat for the casual guy, I think that what they’ll find, although these things add to combat, is that they don’t make or break the combat. You can be a button-spammer and get to level 50 in Vanguard. You can get to 50 solo in Vangaurd – it’ll take a while, longer than it would in a group. You’ll have some meaningful content, but you won’t get all the rewards or see all the cool sights you’d see in a group, but you can do that. We really want to encourage the player, through whatever means that we can, to facilitate grouping as much as possible – really good looking for group systems, the ability for players to summon other players to them – if you come to the mouth of the dungeon than healers will have the abilities to summon other players to them if they’re in the same area (so you can’t summon across the world), but if they get to the dungeon and you’re down there than each individual player can get out of the dungeon via a magic ability and all the people can be summoned down in a group so they can experience what grouping combat is because grouping combat is far my dynamic and immersive than solo combat. We want to make solo combat fun, but we also don’t want to cheapen the group experience because that’s really what our focus is.

Does solo combat have many unique features? At this point you’ve lost the ability to use defensive targets, synergy combat, and group chains.

You have your solo attack chains that you can perform and there’s certainly something to be said for solo tactics. The tactics you would use as a Dread Knight in a group you’d never use in solo. You’d never want to fear a mob in a group because you want the mob to stay put. The classes will have different tactics that they use for soloing than in a group and you’re right, you lose a lot of the dynamic content. There’s not a lot we can do to change that without lessening what the group experience is. So much of other stuff is wrapped up in reacting to other people. You can still counter spell and defend, so you can still do solo. A caster who’s really good at counter spelling could solo casters because that’s what you’ve specialized in.

One of the most unique variations on combat in an MMO, that I’ve seen this year, is Simutronics’ socket system in Hero’s Journey where combat abilities are actually socketed and can be modified by interchangeable sockets, thus allowing for an almost infinite number of variations on abilities. What is your outlook on that system?

The players will have a hell of a lot of fun with it, but I don’t know you balance something like that out. All I can say is that last year, pre-beta, I had lots of dreams and aspirations. Beta changes everything. Getting people to play your game, versus playing it yourself, when you’ve got all the systems implemented changes everything. A lot of the stuff we had in that seemed like it would be fun didn’t work out, or it needed to be changed. If they’ve got the time to do something like that than that’s awesome. It sounds really cool, and I hope they can work that stuff out.

Anything else you want to say about combat?

You and I been talking about combat for a long time! Let’s see. We’ve got the archive system that EverQuest II had. Like I’ve said, we’ve gone through lots of exercises to make sure that every class feels and plays differently. The classes have complexity in them, but that’s another thing. Did this experiment work? No, it didn’t, we’ve got to change. Some of the classes have changed fundamentally because the initial thing didn’t work. It’s easy to say “you tank the best”. If you want to say that the Sorcerer does the most damage of anyone than that’s how you feel different. Our approach is harder, but I think that ultimately it’s going to pay off better because you’ll have situations where you’re forming a group and you won’t need specific classes – you need somebody from an archetype. There are lots more people out there playing Paladins and Dread Knights than there are playing just Warriors.

One last question for you: If you had to sell Vanguard in one sentence, what would it be?

That’s a tough question! Do I get unlimited words and tons of commas?

Proper English, you’re not going to get away with a run-on sentence!

Okay, fine! Goodness gracious. All these little tags lines are going around in my head. I’d probably say that “Vanguard is the experience, for the older players, which you want to experience again, with a lot of new twists”.