Recently, I’ve tried remaking an old combat game of mine, now that I consider myself a good programmer. So far everything has been going smoothly, but after having the first version of my combat system, It doesn’t really feel satisfying or that impactful. I feel as if my hits have no weight and no real effect on the enemy.
My game is a weapon based, hack and slash kind of game, but for the question i’m asking, Im talking more generally. I play a lot of battleground games and I feel the ones with less player often feel boring and unenjoyable compared to the popular titans like, The strongest battlegrounds. Other games like criminality also feel very “emotional” in its combat and I kind really put my finger on why, But I know this is what MY game is lacking.
From your experience, the reader, what would you say makes combat games enjoyable to you and ESPECIALLY, what makes them fun to play and satisfying to use. I’m not necessarily asking for technical notes/feedback although I am VERY MUCH open to any, I’m more so interested from a game design perspective.
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This is something I worked on and thought about a lot for our game, and I think (hope) it paid off, as multiple people have come to me and mentioned how addictive our gameplay is. Most of my points will be from a shooter perspective, I have not done a lot of work on the melee side of combat.
- Stop relying on the server for everything.
I see this far too often in PvE and PvP games. You should NEVER do any sort of shooting/attacking VFX on the server, as it results in a terrible experience for players with any sort of latency. Most people know this, but you can also take this principle further. In our case, since we are a PvE game, we implemented a predictive kill system for our enemy NPCs which results in far more responsive gameplay than most other games in our genre. Damage calculations when you shoot a zombie are done on the client before anything reaches the server, same with kill effects. This gives players with higher average ping an amazing experience compared to similar games.
Of course this also means you have to design your networking architecture in a way where you can predict what will happen on the server in a reliable manner. You want to keep things secure, while also minimizing false positives and de-synchronizations with the true state of the game. You will also need a method of “rolling back” the predictive decisions in case false positives do happen, which they are bound to in some cases. But try to minimize false positive server rejections as much as possible.
- Enemies need to respond to the player’s attacks
This can mean a bunch of things. Particle effects emitting from the part that an enemy was shot in, stagger / flinch animations when they are hit, knockback effects which correspond to the type of weapon that was used to kill / damage them, and plenty more. This needs to be done on the client in a predictive method as well to ensure peak responsiveness.
- Cool or unique VFX
This is something that is ultimately up to your creativity and / or skill as a VFX designer. It might be worth it to hire someone with experience making cool VFX, and then implement the previous principals into your wider game concept with the effects you receive. I am not skilled in VFX design so a lot of the effects in our game were taken from free VFX packs and then repurposed to fit our needs. Someone with more experience than me in this would definitely have more practical tips 
There is plenty more you can do to make a satisfying combat experience as well, but these are the main things I thought of. I’ll try to edit this post if I think of any other big points, but let me know if you have any questions!
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Vfx and animations are important but don’t forget the sound.
Rather high pitched sounds work really well for light punches/weapons, etc. while a really crunchy, bass heavy sound makes something feel powerful.
Also add screenshakes for powerful things.
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