The Official Merged JK4 Speculation Thread!

[joesdomain]

I think they should do a prequel Jedi Knight game set during Star Wars original trilogy period. With a good engine and graphics compared to Dark Forces or Dark Forces II. Maybe use a different main character than Kyle Katarn. I still like being able to fight enemies like legions of stormtroopers, Imperial officers, Imperial Navy Officers, Gran, Rodian, Trandoshan, Gameorean Guards. I hope it involves a story set in aound Jabba's empire going to planets like Tatoonie, Bespin, Hoth, Yavin 4, etc. I would hope they add Quarren, Weequay, klattonians and have noteable charcters like Bossk, Greedo, IG-88, Zuckuss, 4-LOM, Dengar, Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt, Bib Fortuna. I would also like to fight creatures like Rancors, wampas, kyrat dragons, dianoga, etc.

[Kurgan]

Actually I've heard developers and players say that the majority of people who buy games (that are both SP and MP capable) play SP almost exclusively.

 

They buy the game at Wal-Mart, play through it in a couple of weeks, then buy another game.

 

They either don't know how to setup or join a multiplayer game or they are too lazy too, or else they have a bad ISP and dialup and it's just not fun for them.

 

 

So, in a sense, he's right about the SP thing.

 

BUT, any of us that are still playing the game after all this time are not playing SP!

 

As long as the series is both SP & MP, both have to be improved, but the primary focus will always be on SP first (since it requires the most work and makes or breaks the game sale.. gets your foot in the door so to speak).

 

The average game has about 4 months of life after it hits the store shelves in mass release.

[StormHammer]

While what you say may be true, I don't classify the Jedi Knight series as 'average' games. The series has a long-standing community, and while people may come and go, the MP side of the community inevitably continues. It is still 'popular' online, and so the focus should really continue to be SP & MP combined.

 

Having said that, vanilla MP modes can become tiresome after a while. I'm not playing JA online as often as before, and when I do it's mostly Siege mode. Of course, I do have rather a lot of other games to get through at the moment.

 

I would still be intrigued to see an MP only version, along the lines of Unreal Tournament, with some innovative new MP modes. It might not have as wide an audience with a lack of SP (or an SP 'ladder' as training for online play), but it could be a rather interesting experiement.

 

That's not to say I'd want that for a potential JK4 - but as a separate 'Jedi' game.

[jon_hill987]

You mean like 2 compleatly seperate games? thats a good idea, How about Jedi Knight:The Hunt For Jaden and Jedi Knight Tornament 2006, or somthing like that anyway. seriosly though it is a good idea, some people never play the MP and some people use it exclusively, so paying for both is a waist of time.

 

Oh and to anyone who reads this and can influence lucasarts in any way, please make the next game play more like Deus Ex... with more lightsabers.

[Prime]

Originally posted by Smood

You are in a sense arguing that reality sucks.

No. I'm arguing against this statement:

 

"A more realistic 'fantasy' experience may possibly equate to a greater experience."

 

I am arguing that at some point realism is no longer the driving force in making the game fun and playable. At some point the fact that there is a mouse and a keyboard and lag has to be taken into account, and that means sacrifices in realism, however small, have to be made so that the game works well as a game.

 

I am not arguing that realism is not desireable or that it has gone as far as it can go.

 

Originally posted by Smood

However, as games become more technically advanced, more and more of these factors that hinder our influence of the motions depicted by our screens, our 'control' weaken and even vanish which leads to steps closer and closer to truly feeling as if you are wielding the saber yourself.

True. But there are issues other than realism that come into play (lag, balance, and so on). And the requirements of all those things don't always line up with perfect realism.

 

Originally posted by Smood

Try and let your mind grasp

Please don't patronize me.

 

Originally posted by Smood

an entirely different level of control. Still the same mouse and keyboard movement, but think it more advanced and one with essentially a greater degree of control.

But the fact is that control is still coming from a mouse and keyboard. Until control comes from a stick in your hand mapping your movement, deviations from realism will have to be made to make the game work. That is all I'm saying.

 

Originally posted by Smood

True, but one must not discount realism (and when I say realism I mean reality in action and not reality in context, like physics for example, but not everything must be tactical ops or some real shooter, fantasy is still extremely appealing) and its possible implementation as a tool to enhance the level of entertainment a game provides.

I'm not saying at all that more realism can't be more enjoyable. I'm saying it isn't automatically more enjoyable. At some point more realism isn't desireable. CTF games aren't really based on realism from Star Wars. Does taking that game out for the sake of realism make the game more fun?

 

Originally posted by Smood

Wow, are you kidding me? The movies in ep1 are fast and really enjoyable to watch. But I can easily tell each and every step and swing that is taken, it is very clear.

Fair enough. I'm trying to say that obi's swings are just as fast as my character's blue swings in JA.

 

Originally posted by Smood

Again you are putting a cap on your imagination, confining ideas, restricting evolution.

No. But I understand as a software designer that at sacrifices in realism have to be made to make the game work as a game.

 

Originally posted by Smood

You must believe the impossible is achieveable somehow.

Or I can look at what I know about implementing software systems that attempt to represent reality. For complex systems, at some point estimations have to be made to make everything work. At this point a little bit of realism is sacrificed. That is my only point.

 

Originally posted by Smood

1. How do you enforce no running and jumping in a FPS saber fight?

 

There are many options to this and all your questions that designers will eventually find suited to them (as games like jediknight evolve and go from engine to engine).

 

One idea would be to first have movement acceleration, so you cant strafe dance side to side, but when you push a direction you may start slow for a brief moment, then slowly ramp up speed (like reality, you can't just run in one direction then suddenly in a split second run in the other direction, you have to slow down, stop, change directions, speed up, run. Jumping could be connected to a constant use or physical force pool that governed basic jedi movement while a seperate pool was responsible for force. These are then scaled individually as desired for the best use.

But this doesn't prevent the player from running and avoiding saber swings.

 

Originally posted by Smood

2. Guns vs. Sabers

Yes this is quite a problem. But it can be solved with innovation. Although what I might say could sound unattainable or foolish, only time will reveal the possibilities of programmers and designers.

 

Here I would say 100% manual blocking. Obvious not to difficult of blocking but tied with saber control which is a HUGE ISSUE. My vision is that of manual mouse saber control, but still regulated with certain yet deep and branching variety of animations. It is complex to explain so I will simply say that manual block would force jedi's to take their time and use their own SKILL to block blaster shots. It would also force mercs to be agressive and break the jedi's ability to block or outshoot their deflection ability (precisely like the jedi master shot off the genoshian balcony by jango in ep2),

But if a gunner has to be agressive and a jedi has to be defensive, the Jedi wins. For the sake of realism, the Jedi is going to deflect, say, 90% of the shots coming at him when playing defensively. To have any hope, the gunner has to hold down the fire button and pump many shots at the Jedi. What happens to the %90 of the shots the Jedi deflects back at the gunner? They hit him and he's probably dead. I'm just trying to point out that the movie system does not work cut and paste into a game. Alterations have to be made to that realism to make the game playable.

 

Originally posted by Smood

3. Force Users vs. Non-Force users.

How do bounty hunters do in the movies against jedi? Pretty damn good don't they (boba, jango, and also imo the greatest bounty hunter Calo Nord [from kotor] who could probablly kick the crap out of an avg jedi). When they have the skill and the mechanisms to fight (and experience/knowledge), they can perform quite well.

Well, Boba didn't do jack against any Jedi, and was actually taken out by a blind man with a stick. We saw Jango perhaps beat obi-wan and kill one Jedi before getting killed by a Jedi. I beat Calo as a level 4 scout

 

It is fine to say the bounty hunters do well against Jedi, but how to you implement that into the game rules? Exact realism doesn't solve this.

 

Originally posted by Smood

But again this comes to the realistic implementation. Jedi should use force powers extremely sparingly so as to achieve these kinds of epic battles that seem a good fight. Again one reality system depends on another and so on. It is a big web that must be strongly linked or fail all together.

So you want to restrict when the Jedi can use the force to get realistic looking battles? There is no restrictions in the movies for Jedi using the force. Is this not a deviation from movie realism?

 

Originally posted by Smood

4. Damage and Killing

This issue is really up to the developer and the context of the game. As I said earlier don't just JUMP to an ALL OUT REALITY GAME (like the game that will corrupt itself if u get killed so u can never play again). But instead take smaller steps to something more and more real.

OK. That's my point. You can't just implement all out reality for a game and have it work well.

 

Originally posted by Smood

A better gaming experience is always ahead, their are almost no limits.

Yes, it is always ahead, but time, money, and available resources always put on limits

[Kurgan]

If you want an example of "more realistic" sword combat in an action video game, I suggest you check out Bushido Blade and Bushido Blade 2 for the Sony Playstation.

 

THIS is the best swords combat I've ever seen in a video game, period (you'll note the Raven team seems to have learned a lot from their example).

 

You've got stances, great hit detection, blocking is carried out with swings or your blade simply being in the way of the other person's swing. You can do tons of different moves, crouch, jump, run/walk, roll on the ground, do knock downs, ground stabs, combos, etc. and damage parts of the environment. You can even pickup a handfull of dirt to toss in your opponent's face on certain levels.

 

In the first Bushido Blade you have visible damage on your player model, and not only (as in BB2) can you have one or both of your arms wounded (hangs limply at your side with only your sword arm slowing down and being less able to block), but you can also have both of your LEGS wounded as well, forcing you to crouch and making it nearly impossible to walk around!

 

Of course there are a few major differences...

 

1) While you can toss projectiles and fire guns on occasion, the majority of the battle is melee based.. there's less stuff to worry about and no need to balance other weapons.

 

2) There's no online play, this is strictly on the same machine (or networked through a PSX link) so you don't have lag to factor in, as you would in any online game.

 

3) There's only two combatants at any one time. Another issue that would creep into SP & MP especially.

 

4) There's no force powers. All you usually have is your melee weapon and possibly a "secret weapon" like a daggar or shuriken you can toss at your enemy.

 

And this is strictly dueling. The Jedi Knight series has always been about more than just two combatants dueling. There's a whole galaxy of other options that have to be taken into consideration.

 

For the "ultimate dueling game" this is still where it's at, but if you want the Star Wars flavor, Jedi Academy is top of my list.

 

That doesn't mean it can't get better, but as I see it, that is the standard set, other than JK1, which set the standard for story, cutscenes, morality choice/alternate paths, and pure speed & adrenaline. MotS's strongpoint was in its options. Tons of maps, tons of skins, tons of variables to mess with. But the series has always been about lots of options, and I think it should stay that way.

 

A pure dueling game would be great, but it just wouldn't be the successor to the series we've been waiting for. It just wouldn't live up to the reputation set by previous installments.

[Prime]

Originally posted by Kurgan

If you want an example of "more realistic" sword combat in an action video game, I suggest you check out Bushido Blade and Bushido Blade 2 for the Sony Playstation.

I really need to check out those games. I've seen them mentioned as the best for sword combat a few times now...

[babywax]

OK, after reading ALL of that, I think I'll post what I wish JK4 could be.

 

 

 

 

Saber Combat

Technical details included

 

For saber combat, I hope they use an inverse kinematics system.

Someone before said that you could not use this due to having a 2d movement and needing to move in 3d. Normally this would be true, but through some thought I have figured out a way to do this.

All you have to do is imagine a circle. You have a circle around your hand, now, when you move your mouse to the left, it moves the tip of the blade to the left on the circle. When you move it to the right it moves it to the right, up goes up and down goes down. There you go, one part done.

That takes care of right or left click (when you hold it). The other button (left or right click) would then move both arms left/right/up/down. Holding both left click and right click would cause you to do both at once, allowing you to really swing your sword, moving your wrists and arms at the same time.

 

To calculate damage:

Time spent swinging adds to damage, if you change direction of your swing, it lowers damage. You would have to add a little buffer to this to account for imperfections, but you get the idea.

This system would also be used to calculate the "power" of your swing, used for parrying. Parrying would have the physics calculated using the already existing physics engine in the game engine.

 

All movement would be disabled while swinging your saber, this would allow you to concentrate much more on attacking instead of running around like a doofus. When you start to control your saber though, you would still continue moving in your direction for a moment. This would allow you to keep moving while you're deflecting blaster bullets.

 

Attack and defence buttons would be the same.

 

This system is feasible, the only hitch is with netcode, I don't know how well this would perform over dial-up.

 

Damage should be one hit kills for torso, neck and head, and two hit kills for limbs. When you hit your enemy's limb, it would cause his attacks to slow and attack power to lower, making his attacks easier to parry.

Leg shots make the enemy slow down.

 

 

 

 

 

Movement

All walking. Map sizes would have to be tweaked to make walking not too annoying. You would have a meter for stamina, and you can use this meter to run. It doesn't run out too slowly, but it takes a long time to regenerate, hopefully this would make people save it for chasing gunners.

 

 

 

 

 

Guns

Blasters, maybe grenades, but all blasters. Blasters, if aimed skillfully enough, can beat a lightsaber. Just like a lightsaber can beat a blaster. If you catch someone off gaurd they're dead in 1 shot, or close to it if you only hit their arm or leg.

 

How will you block blasters you ask? Simple. All jedi get a "force sense" power (not like the current one) that draws a line along the bullet's path. The color of this line increases intensity when it gets closer, so once it is bright red you know it is just about to hit. Bullets would still travel at roughly the same speed they do now, this would have to be tweaked.

 

Shooting speed would be reduced, mainly to about 2 shots a second for the fastest weapon. It would be more about aiming your shots instead of trying to get lucky.

 

 

 

 

 

Force Powers

Force powers would mainly move objects. They would not be a dominant thing in the game, but used more in a stealthy manner. Used most of all to set traps and move things from afar.

No lighting, no mind trick that makes you invisible. Just straight forward powers.

When you use a power, you are stationary. You put your hand up and face the object like your are concentrating on it.

 

Force Telekinises -

Pick up and object and control it from a distance. Somewhat like grip without damage, this allows you to pick up and object and move it. The amount of weight you can lift lowers as the distance between you and the object increases. This is for picking up stuff up to around 100-150 pounds TOPS. That's within like 5 feet.

Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

 

Force Push -

This also only works on inanimate objects and droids. Same as the above. You hold down your force button to scale the amount of power, and wait as a meter fills up. You let go when you reach the desired power. This makes a delay between when you start using the power and when you use it, making you vulnerable for that time. If something is real close, just tap your force button.

Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

 

Force Pull -

Same as Force Push.

If aimed at merce

Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

 

Force Jump -

This is a bit different from the current force jump. It is not for moving forward, but almost exlusively for moving up. You crouch on the ground and prepare to jump, a meter shows up just like force push, and you let go when you reach the desired jump height. This allows for accessing higher places, without making it a superhero flying banana peanut circus.

 

Force Mind Trick -

This does not make you invisible. It allows you to persuade enemy AI to do things they wouldn't normally. It only works on stormtroopers for the most part, but you can convince the stormtrooper squad leader to take his men somewhere else while you sneak past them!

No use in multiplayer, not available in multiplayer.

Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

 

Force Regenerate -

Allows you to slowly regenerate health over time.

 

Force Sense -

Adding points to this force power increases the radius in which you can see incoming bullets.

 

Those are all the force powers.

When you have your lightsaber down, your force pool regenerates faster.

 

 

 

 

 

Maps

Cities would hopefully boast lots of NPCs walking around. If an engine like the CryEngine was used, you could just imagine Endor with little ewoks all around in treehouses.

The game would be largely darker than JA. A little under half the missions would be set at night. Gratuitous use of weather effects like rain would be used.

 

 

 

 

 

Gameplay

In multiplayer, you could choose to be either Jedi or Mercenary. Jedi can't use guns, only a lightsaber and a simple blaster like the one in JA.

Jedi get points to use in force powers.

Mercenaries get points to use on equipment.

Equipment would include mandalorian armor with jetpacks, guns, grenades, flamethrowers(maybe) and deployable turrets(maybe). They could also use equipment points to buy "gyro packs" which would give them improved balance. Because of this they would be harder to knock down with force powers.

Jedi would always have single sabers. Duals and/or staves would be too hard to work out with the combat system.

 

 

 

 

 

Player Customization

Using bones set in the model's face, a customization system like TopSpin would be worked out, allowing for massive customization of the face. Increase the width and height of your cheekbones, move your nose and resize it. Move your lips or make them wider. Raise your eyebrows or make them further apart.

Clothing would be one piece. Creating two-set pieces of clothing isn't worth it, being able to customise your face is enough, plus, when the whole set of clothing is modelled it looks much better than mixed up torso/leg combos.

Clothing would be dark too, consisting mostly of cloth clothing for Jedi.

 

 

 

Well... I think that's it. This post is getting a little hefty now so I think I'll stop. Turned out a lot longer than I wanted it to be heh. Good luck reading it, hopefully it isn't to unorganized.

[Darth Rythe]

I think you should all work for Lucas Arts:P

[babywax]

Then we would have one wierd game including tons of NPCs, a new sabering system, and lots and lots of bugs

[Crow_Nest]

Originally posted by babywax

Cities would hopefully boast lots of NPCs walking around. If an engine like the CryEngine was used, you could just imagine Endor with little ewoks all around in treehouses.

The game would be largely darker than JA. A little under half the missions would be set at night. Gratuitous use of weather effects like rain would be used.

 

Imagine what the requirements would be like......

[Weiser_Cain]

Originally posted by |GG|Crow_Nest

Imagine what the requirements would be like......

I can hack it. And if not I'd upgrade.

[babywax]

Imagine what the requirements would be like......

Not too high if done correctly (Good use of LODing on the trees would keep the polycounts low enough probably). Of course the cryengine probably wouldn't be used, but it already can do treehouses and stuff etc.. It is in one of their official maps and it runs very well.

Only problem with the CryEngine is that the online play is fairly laggy client side, and the netcode isn't exactly great yet.

 

That's one of the bigger advantages of Source IMO, because they will be using netcode similar to half life, which has very good netcode since it has been out for so long.

[Tyler_Durden]

Actually, babywax, i posted about a system similar to this wherein the mouse is an extension of your arm and thus would follow any action you would take with the saber be it blocking or slashing. It would be pretty intuitive if done right.

[Kurgan]

Such a system didn't come off so well in Die By the Sword, sadly.

[babywax]

I still think it could be done well It would require a lot of work though, however, most of the new "big name" engines coming out seem to feature this, Far Cry, Stalker, I *think* HL2 features it too, not sure if it is just part of the Havok engine or you can touch it with mods.

I wonder if Doom 3 has IK?

[Clone L68362]

Ok, the AI HAS to increase in intelligence. They just aren't very smart. At all. Also there has to be more interaction (civilians, mind tricking them to tell things, and optional stealth.)

Then they gotta make cutscenes better. Watch the cutscene after you beat the last Vjun mission. Horrible. I couldn't tell wtf hapened the first time I watched it. On player customization, I hope they have the same options and clothes in JK3 and more races and genders. Also, they have to do different voices. As to the story, they should give you an option to choose weather you followed the dak or light path in JK3. And lastly, a better saber fighting mode. It's awfully easy to run up to a reborn and kill in one hit with red stance.

[Rad Blackrose]

The one consistency I noticed across the board is the word saber. Saber this, saber that.

 

I will tell you this: as long as the Jedi Knight series continutes to use engines half assed to create bumbling stances, poor hit detection, and so on and so forth, the longer the series will continue to stagnate until either:

 

a.) people take the hint and the series dies out due to rehashing on the same principle

 

b.) someone figures out that a Jedi Knight game, especally since everyone is so ****ing rabid about a lightsaber, is just not possible in the current FPS engines/conventions, and an engine has to be created from scratch to get the true desired results

 

Yes, you heard me right, if you want to see better saber combat, then you're going to need to turn away from the Quake 3 engine. Don't bother with the Doom 3 engine. **** the Unreal engine! The one thing consistent with these engines is the fact that they are built for one specifc kind of weapon:

 

Guns. Lots of guns.

 

Face it, in games like Quake, Half-Life, and what not, melee combat is an afterthought. In Counter-Strike, for example, the knife is a humiliation kill, FFS. Raven can try all they want to try and let the fans have their cake and eat it by implementing a half assed saber system WHILE keeping FPS guns intact, but in the end it's only going to send gameplay in one direction: right down the ****ter.

 

It is my personal feelings that BOTH the saber system and the gun system could be stronger, however they both can't be active at the same time because it creates balancing issues and massive headaches. Especially when you factor in Star Wars' unique weaponry... *cough the concussion rifle cough*

 

If Dark Forces, and more specifically Kyle, never went down the path of the Jedi, we wouldn't be in this kind of a rut hole, now wouldn't we?

 

Then again, this could just be me being a combat purist... And since when do we say that it's so hard to use katanas Kurgan?

[Prime]

Originally posted by Rad Blackrose

b.) someone figures out that a Jedi Knight game, especally since everyone is so ****ing rabid about a lightsaber, is just not possible in the current FPS engines/conventions, and an engine has to be created from scratch to get the true desired results

 

Yes, you heard me right, if you want to see better saber combat, then you're going to need to turn away from the Quake 3 engine. Don't bother with the Doom 3 engine. **** the Unreal engine! The one thing consistent with these engines is the fact that they are built for one specifc kind of weapon:

 

Guns. Lots of guns.

Rad, this is a very refreshing post.

[Amidala from Chop Shop]

Players should be limited to using only team chat (messagemode2) while playing.

 

Only spectators should be able to use general chat (messagemode). Any points scored should be retained when going to spectator.

 

In other words, if you want to chat (except team chat), you must go to spectator, but you would keep any points you had scored so you could go to spectator and rejoin the game later without losing your points.

[Prime]

Originally posted by Amidala from Chop Shop

Only spectators should be able to use general chat (messagemode). Any points scored should be retained when going to spectator.

 

In other words, if you want to chat (except team chat), you must go to spectator, but you would keep any points you had scored so you could go to spectator and rejoin the game later without losing your points.

My only concern with this would be that players might use it to escape being killed. There would have to be some deterant to stop players from becoming spectators just when then are about to die, and then quickly joining again, which I assume would usually be in another location.

[Amidala from Chop Shop]

Originally posted by Prime

My only concern with this would be that players might use it to escape being killed. There would have to be some deterant to stop players from becoming spectators just when then are about to die, and then quickly joining again, which I assume would usually be in another location.

 

OK, then you lose only one point when you go to spectator. That negates the temptation to keep going to spectator to avoid death (because you would keep losing points) while still taking away the excuse "but if I go to spectator to chat, I'll lose all my points", which I have heard more than once when it is suggested to honor players that they should go to spectator to chat if they don't like being "chatkilled". But if someone is chatting, they clearly don't care about winning the map, so why do they care about losing their points?

 

Plus, there is already a restriction on the number of times you can change teams within a certain time period. Include spectator with that (since it is already considered to be a "team" by the game) so people can't go to spectator more than, say, once a minute.

[Master William]

that's just... absurd. the game will get abandoned at once, as I would surely not play it if I had to go freaking Spectate everytime I wanted to say something... but I would however go with the idea if you could toggle it on or off, like /cg_specchat 0 (0 for normal chat and 1 for chat in spectate-mode only) though the normal way of chatting should stay default, otherwise we'll see lots of server with this weird option that not many people enjoy.

 

I didn't read many posts completely here, so I might have mentioned something someone else already did.

[Amidala from Chop Shop]

Originally posted by Master William

that's just... absurd. the game will get abandoned at once, as I would surely not play it if I had to go freaking Spectate everytime I wanted to say something...

If it means that people who would rather chat and whine about "chatkilling" and "laming" would abandon the game and go back to AIM and MSN Messenger where they can chat all they want, leaving only people who want to actually play the game (or chat in spectator mode), then that is exactly the effect I am trying to achieve!

 

What are you doing here anyway? You've already said you abandoned this game, go away and play KOTOR or SWG.

[lukeskywalker1]

Actually I've heard developers and players say that the majority of people who buy games (that are both SP and MP capable) play SP almost exclusively.

 

They buy the game at Wal-Mart, play through it in a couple of weeks, then buy another game.

 

They either don't know how to setup or join a multiplayer game or they are too lazy too, or else they have a bad ISP and dialup and it's just not fun for them.

 

True, but in JA's case, I think that server bug in the beginning messed it all up, many people would be playing the unpatched version right now, if it wasnt for that. Not everyone knows about the ASE. If people could have seen the server, more people would have joined MP and stayed with the game. Many more people would have patched, and continued playing today.

 

If it means that people who would rather chat and whine about "chatkilling" and "laming" would abandon the game and go back to AIM and MSN Messenger where they can chat all they want, leaving only people who want to actually play the game (or chat in spectator mode), then that is exactly the effect I am trying to achieve!

 

You cant change the community, you cant. Theres hundreds of honor servers, and maybe 20 normal servers in all. Thats how they play, accept it. Your idea, although it might deal with the honor problem, would drive a whole lot of players away. I talk while I fight, especially with friends. In fact, its not as fun without a small ammount of chat, then hack and slash. (At least to me) I dont care if I die.... just saying a few words here or there (mainly with friends, or people I know) can be fun, then cutting them up....