Oh, you're fine. I didn't mean to sound like I was annoyed that you posted this topic. Heaps of topics get rolled around (the same ones seem to appear once every 3 days ), but we've only seen this once before now.
And yeah, exactly. It gets annoying when you hurt a friendly NPC to the point when they become your enemy, but this will probably do more harm than good.

NPC were so stupid in Oblivion, I just hated when they put themselves RIGHT in front of my sword. If they don't fix that, well, magnetism is the way to go.

You're right. The magnetism is so strong that it makes ALL of your attacks hit no matter where you aim them.

Seriously, it'll be weak and only when combat becomes a cluster[censored] of enemies and allies. It's just an easier way to prevent all those bounties from guard cause they ran in front of your enemy. It may not be the best fix, but I'm happy with it as long as it doesn't actually control or guide me, just gives me a little nudge when some idiot runs in front of my sword. Cause, hey, who the [censored] runs in front of a sword in real life anyways?

And what the hell do you mean Oblivion's combat was "free-style"? It was just *smack smack smack smakc block smack smack magic smack*
Magnetism is hardly going to change that. Do you think it pauses you between attacks or something?

The best option would be to make it optional. That way you could turn it on when fighting alongside allies and not having to hit them all the time because they're getting in the way, and you could turn it off if you want to go berserk on your allies.

(PS: Quicksaving, going on a killing spree, quickloading - one of the most funny things to do in TES games. You'll get to see how strong you are as well.)

The name you are looking for is "Die by the Sword." Using their very intuitive "combat move editor" that came with the game you could make any, I mean ANY realistic (meaning did not break the laws of physics) attack or parry animation you could dream of! Then the game would calculate the damage done per your animations speed and movements. I spent 10 times more hours making RL melee combat moves for the game than playing the quest. That is how the game Civilization ( or Sims? sorry I do not remember exactly) was inverted by the way, I read this in the book "SMART BOMB": the game editor was more fun than the game. (some helicopter combat game, the terrain editor was what inspired the creator of sims.... or was it civ...).

This magnesium feature sounds bad. All games with a TOGGLE for aim assist I turn it off the toggle right away. A sand box game with a RAIL targeting? Please please say it is not so...

Except for the archery (even that remains to be seen) I am worried about everything I have heard so far, like the romans, has this great empire started to collapse under its own amassed greatness?

Well if they allow this magnetism to be modded out I guess I have no complaints and will still bow to their greatness as game Dev for their vision and bravery to allow such deep modding of their games. They do tower above all other DEV on this point. This is why I do not begrudge them making money off my archery ideas. They gave me the platform to realize my game DEV dreams, they can have my first born brain-child!

That was so easy to mod out, maybe I should release that as a mod?

I made it for my companion mod, but it could be made to work on all NPC.

All depends on how good/bad the A.I. and movement is and the degree to which the magnetism is noticeable. If NPCs don't move around so randomly in combat we probably don't need it, but I don't think it will be an issue either unless it's overdone.

Very bad news, magnetism is not realistic and not funny. If any think free-for-all is bad system combat, are not played Mount & Blade, the realism of this game is awesome, you can block any direction of attack MANUALLY, and need be carefull with your attacks for not hit friends, no more 15 guys over the enemy attacking, only 2 or 3 guys can attacks at the same time one enemy, this is realism, this is funny, this is for noobs and for pros.
Magnetism system only provoque horde of players attacking same objetive, without any tactic and teamplay.

Please Bethesda, if you like one good combat system, look Mount & Blade, is the best of the all market, and can be improved.

Free-style in the sense that controlling one's weapon and direction of attack was solely on the player. There was no target guider/helper or any sort of assistance system implemented to make things more convenient for the player. Again, it will all depend on the degree of Magnetism implemented, but an option to turn it off will definitely be a favorite among the community. If it's extreme like RDR, I would be forced to turn it off. If it's really only slight as someone stated Mr. Howard said, then maybe it won't really be noticeable.

"Limit combat"? What exactly do you mean? It's not like our character will turn-around-180-degrees-and-attack-the-enemy-behind-us type of combat, not a chance. I think it will only work if you have both an ally and an enemy in range and in frotn of you and you attack somehwere between them that the "magnetism" would "target" the enemy instead of you ally. Very subtle, almost so subtle that you wouldn't even notice it. If it is noticeable in various combat situations, then it has been done in the wrong way.

We shall see. I'm not going to start assuming to what degree BGS uses magnetism. While the intent of using it is probably to avoid attacking allies, it "limits" players by making targeting enemies easier is my point. Again, if it's slight it won't be that much of an issue. If it is noticeable however, then hopefully it's optional. I personally liked having to be aware of how I attacked enemies in regards to my allies. It made combat more of a challenge.

It sounds like a useful thing but i hope that this will not be in use when i start to kill people in towns

Well I doubt they would have spent any time introducing the whole " hold your breath while aiming with your bow " if there had been magnetism included ... doesn't make sense to me!

Tis news sound bad... auto-aim? Seriously? What will be the point of the FPS view, then?

hope that's a console only thing...

I have a feeling that Skyrim is inching towards being a faster combat action game.

I'm with Hellmouth.

The difficulty shouldn't be made harder by adding the danger of friendly fire into the picture, it's just the wrong way of doing it. The difficulty of hitting enemies should ofcourse not be a 100% like in ACB, but it shouldn't be 0% either as it was in Morrowind. Oblivion had a good way of doing it, except when it came to big fights. In those, the enemies and allies would just randomly chase eachother back and forth, making it impossible to hit the enemy or the ally if you tried to aim at one of them, it was a 50-50 situation. This "magnetism" as far as how I have understood it, was specifically made for big battles with enemies and allies in the same smack down. I think this will add up the speed of the combat and the feel of actually accomplishing something in great battles.


Auto aim is to take it a bit too far, "magnetism" and "auto-aim" are way different things. If Skyrim would include auto-aim, you could attack to any direction and it would pull the camera straight at the enemy and always hit them, while magnetism simply prevents you from hitting you allies if an enemy and you ally are fighting.

well i never had trouble aiming in oblivion on the Xbox 360.

Hmm, sounds good then if it acts that way.

I really don't like to see auto-aim as we know it though, couse it will turn the game into pointless button masher.

i might cry if this is FPS noticeable if its like COD and your cross-hair automatically follows someone for like 5 steps i'll cry harder :shakehead:

We shall see how magnetism in this game turns out. I do not like, however, how Gameranx describes the mechanic:

your melee attacks will automatically target foes instead of slashing everything in your path. This is somewhat similar to the autotargeting system in “Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.”

It's too early to make any clear judgments of how the system will work. It's obviously made with the intent of preventing friendly fire for sure. We will just have to wait until we see some melee combat (this magazine suggests magnetism will only be used with melee attacks).

Do you think they want to make the game more TPS view oriented?

I'd have to see it in action, it doesn't sound too intruding.

I'm sure by having a more compelling third person perspective, this magnetism was taken into account (It will likely as always be somewhat easier to fight in a 1st person view rather than 3rd). I think it's main purpose though is to still try and prevent friendly fire as this was an issue with allies in Oblivion.

Assassin's Creed has the best combat system in any game.