If you wouldn't want to change it, that's great, go read some other thread.
Anyway, I'm really hoping to apply some spare time with the mod tools when Skyrim comes out, because I want to change the melee combat. Basically, I want to work technique and skill in to the game so that it's possible to go in to a fight, and fight with skill, and effectively come out of any 1 on 1 fight with the ability to kill without taking any damage.
To this effect, I'm likely going to aim to model it after Dark Souls, in that:
A) blocking has a direct and noticeable effect on enemies
B) hitting an enemy triggers a visible reaction, so that you aren't just swinging past each other to do damage
C) getting hit communicates the fact to you beyond the health bar.
D) add some kind of counter system. All those fancy kills exist but right now only trigger on your normal hit that would normally kill the enemy.
Now, I'm going to have to work with what animation is there, I might be able to line up a skilled combat animator but he's being a whiny bitch and says he doesn't have time to do it, since he has kids or some stupid shit like that. But I think the animation I would need is 90% there and I might be able to fake the rest. Of course, everything else is dependent on tools.
But if you could change something about Skyrim's combat, what would it be? I'm interested in hearing what people dislike about what's there.
I'd like the ability to knock an enemy off his feet, maybe for no damage, just to buy myself some time. Maybe it could be a charged shield bash that uses stamina?
I'd also like weapon clashing (as in bounce off/impact each other, not "mash A to win the struggle"), which I think would improve the dual-wielding quite a bit. I don't know if that's possible with the engine, though.
Location-specific damage and limb disabling would be nice, but that might be too ambitious.
I'm not fresh from a gameplay session due to moving, but I liked what I saw in Dead Island quite a bit. I believe when you swing you move forward and your view shifts downward (this is especially visible with power swings) with a bit of inertia, which can leave you vulnerable to attacks for a moment. It really makes each decision to swing have consequences.
Your A-D all sound like great changes. So far the only effect I see from blocking is that my shield goes down regardless of enemy size or hit strength. Seems a bit uniform.
Good idea. I thought I saw this happen every now and then but maybe it's my imagination. I don't dual-wield very often.Originally Posted by MattKeil
Sword/Shield currently has some interesting dynamics in combat other combinations don't have, including some of the things on your list, especially when you go up the block tree a bit. Dual Weapon and Two Handed are boring in comparison.
2h/2w desperately needs a block/parry and shield-bash/???? equivalents to keep it interesting.
Last edited by Quaro; 12-02-2011 at 11:13 AM.
Location specific won't happen I doubt -- if they don't already have it, there's no detection for it, and I doubt the tools would let me go low enough level to track weapons and such, and even if it did I wouldn't have the animations.
As for weapons reacting to each other, there *are* recoil animations, and they might work. Certainly I want to do something similar.
I don't use melee weapons at all beyond the brief few hours I played a melee character for video capture, but I was under the impression there was no weapon clashing. I might be wrong, though. If it is in there, it should happen more often and with more predictability.
Steal the Mount and Blade system. Also let me facefuck enemies with a lance.
Hmm.
- Proper jumping attacks? I'd like to do a ridiculous flying leap attack. In fact anything that adds some more variety to the attacks you can do beyond just small wack/big wack. A sweeping attack that hits a wide arc in front of you knocking back multiple enemies? Trip attacks? Double tap direction dodges?
- AI that can deal with jump/fall pathfinding, currently it's super easy to get some distance by jumping over an obstacle or falling off a low ledge. Probably impossible to fix.
- Make staggering effects less reliable across the board. Right now you can pretty much pin opponents in place with attacks of any kind that stagger opponents. Not sure what makes it happen but right now in my game any single attacker is of no consequence because they spend 90% of their time staggered.
The archery system in M&B warband - basically, a split reticule that explodes as you begin your draw, contracts back together to a skill-defined minimum, and de-accurizes if you move or try to wait too long with the bow drawn - could be adopted wholesale by any other game that wants to have archery. Running around with a perfectly accurate bow fully drawn - 50-odd pounds being held back by the fingers? - is just goofy.
Directional sword cuts also seem like they might be good, however they were implemented. Look in a given direction ala Warband, or aim at a part of the target and have the game take whichever cut seems logical?
A) already happens in my game. When an enemy hits a shield it checks their swing and they bounce back from it. An increase in this effect might not be a bad change, though.
B) happens as well, though not always without a noticeable delay. Enemies flinch, and react directionally to the way a swing hits them.
C) would be awesome.
D) would be my most-wished for element of defensive play, and could be modeled on the Demon/Dark Souls concept of timing a block to coincide with the enemy's swing.
Keil's wish for a knockdown would be great, too. The shield bash/knockdown perk already exists, but I cannot imagine getting 100 in blocking at any point before level 60ish. In fact, an entire reworking of the blocking skill to either level up faster or get the perks sooner would be nice.
Offensively the thing I want the most is location specific damage. We know the capability exists with the engine from Fallout, so I'd really like to see it ported into Skyrim.
Not when you're the goddamn Dovahkiin.
But seriously, yeah, those would be good changes to the archery, IMO.
I would want more Skyrim threads!
<.<
[Skyrim]
First off, I'd have the right mouse button attack with the right hand, because the way it is now is just crazy.
Next, I'd make the primary attack button (the RMB) attack with both weapons while dualwielding, so the secondary button always works as a block with a weapon equipped in the offhand or using a 2H.
Thirdly (and this is obviously not melee, but bear with me), I'd change the dual-casting so it doesn't work with the same spell in both hands. I'd offer spell synergies to dual-casting instead. Flames+ice close range thingie=steam effect, reduces target's accuracy. Fireball+lightningbolt=fast cast, instant travel on both. Lightning storm+ice storm=hurricane, slows movement and attack speed. And so on and so forth.
I'd also do something to incentivize using a 1H weapon in the right hand and a spell in the left. For example, casting a fire spell causes the equipped weapon to do additional fire damage for a period of time.
There is weapon clashing if you stirke while the enemy is parrying/blocking. If you're talking about just random swords clanging off each other, then no.
I'm wondering if there's a silent majority of right-handed people who don't mind the RMB/LMB = left arm/right arm mapping. It's certainly natural for sword-and-board, and in general it's mapping the "dominant mouse button" to the "dominant weapon hand" (for right-handed people!).
I certainly don't mind it... but people who want it the other way can just remap the keys so it does not seem to be a genuine problem.
I like stusser's other suggestions. I do think melee is reasonably interactive already and it is actually heavily skill & timing based, but dual wield does need some sort of block mechanic.
Spellcraft would indeed be awesome. It always seemed like a natural fit for the one spell per hand system.
Yes, I'm talking about weapons in mid-swing, not blocking or shields.
1) I want crossbows, hand throwing weapons (daggers, darts, axes, bolos, spears), polearms (halberds, pikes, spears), more types of existing weapons (why can't I have a cool scimitar like the Alak'ir?).
2) It would be nice to have a better understanding of your follower's strengths and weaknesses even if only at a high level. For example, if my follower is better with a mace than an axe because he/she has feats then I want to know that. Also, do followers level up with you? There's really no feedback to the user.
3) Followers should consume food and potions as appropriate, or when you ask them to (have a way to inspect their inventory during combat like you can do for yourself?).
I'd add either add combo attacks like in Space Marine (AoE spins, stuns, etc.) or active abilities with different effects like in Dragon Age or WoW or whatever. In Skyrim, melee combat consists of hitting just one button to swing my weapon (or two buttons if I'm dual-wielding). There's no tactical subtlety to it, and it's incredibly boring. Fighting a group of three enemies armed with two-handed axes should feel different from fighting a mage, or a dragon, or an archer, or a single opponent with a sword and shield.
Say what you will about Dragon Age 2, but at least its melee combat was engaging.
Great ideas. Though keep dual-casting with the same spell in there too, just another variation.
I think dual-casting is a good idea, esp. for those who prefer to switch from dual-hand cast to dual-hand weapon (ie Heavy/Resto folks).
I don't understand how you could even attempt to compare 'melee combat' in DA2 vs. Skyrim. How pointless.
I also don't understand what you mean about fighting groups of enemies with different compositions not being any different. I do completely different things in combat in Skyrim when the enemy group has a single mage, or a single archer. I played on normal difficulty with a sword & board character, and never thought that different armed enemies felt even remotely similar. A dual wielding Forsaken, for example, fights very differently than an orc bandit wielding a giant fucking warhammer, and therefore I have to play differently to beat them.
Combo attacks would be great, but Skyrim has AOE cones and stuns already. I don't think you've given the combat a fair shake at all, and I definitely think Skyrim's combat could be greatly improved.
People seem to have missed where I said "melee combat". I doubt I'll touch spellcasting or ranged combat. At least not unless I really get in to it. Also definitely not changing any AI except where absolutely necessary to make any combat changes work.
And again, all of this is totally hypothetical, I don't know what is possible with vanilla tools and I'm not interested in hacking stuff to get it to work.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it "boring"--I do still enjoy the two-handed combat--but sword and shield is definitely more exciting. The framework is already there, though, because even with a two-hander you can do shitty blocks and rudimentary bashes, it's just pretty much pointless, because the block barely works and the bash makes no sense, since it uses up stamina that you might as well just put into a power attack to kill the guy. So maybe just making those two things a little more meaningful would help.
I've put 60+ hours into Skyrim and have completed the main quest and all the faction quests, primarily as a dual-wielding melee player. Combat, regardless of the opponent type, consisted of running up to the bad guy's face and holding down both buttons for a dual-wield power attack. If the enemy survived, I'd repeat as necessary. I used this same technique whether I was fighting a dragon, a mage, a single tough Draugr Deathlord, or a group of bandits. This was on the middle (Adept?) difficulty, although I'm not sure if that makes any difference.
I asked in another thread if I was playing wrong and missing some hidden subtlety in the melee combat, but other posters assured me that, no, that is indeed as complex as combat in the game gets.
Ranged crits and backstabs with sneak are probably more entertaining, FWIW.
See, I think that qualifies as not giving it a fair shake. The combat was too simplistic for your liking... but you didn't turn the difficulty up? Look, I'm not saying that's the cure for all ills, but it definitely makes a difference. Just doing the run up, power attack combo over and over again works because you're able to soak up whatever damage they can do in the meantime; on higher difficulty settings, at least some of those fights become more challenging to the point that that's no longer a viable option, and you have to at least put some kind of effort into mixing it up a bit.
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