I was wondering what people liked better. I personally like oblivions better, not having to miss or fail casting a spell. I do still like morrowind I just would like it more if you hit every time unless you really do miss, this also made spears and crossbows less awesome cause you would just miss a lot.

that hit and miss think was kinda annoying, but if you are going in terms of weapons also than Morrowind wins hands down

Morrowind didn't have animations for dodging or missing, but was more dependent on character skill and fatigue. Attack damage was based on how far you pulled back your weapon. Block is automatic if you have a shield and good Block skill. Blocking absorbed all damage (not sure if it fatigued you).Your shield could break if it took too much damage. Mostly character skill, other than direction you're moving in (which determines the way you attack with your weapon) and dodging.

Oblivion was mostly player skill. Hack, slash, block, rinse and repeat. Weapons did the same amount of damage every swing unless you did a power attack. Fatigue doesn't play a big role and neither does character skill. Skill perks introduced things like disarming and bashing people with your shield. Blocking reduces damage taken by your character, eventually doesn't fatigue you. Little or no dodging.

Niether of them are really perfect. Morrowind is more for the roleplayer, Oblivion is for the action seeker.

I liked Oblivions combat system more, but fighting in Morrowind was more enjoyable due to the amount of hitpoints enemies typically had.

If you're including the magic system as part of combat, then I like Morrowind better. If not, then I haven't decided yet.

I'm going to let some more discussion happen before casting my vote on this one.

Fairly indifferent. I liked Morrowind's spell failure, but also approved of Oblivion's ability to cast spells without needing to switch into "casting position." The dodging/missing in Morrowind was badly balanced while Oblivion's never-miss focus was bland and too far in the other extreme. I preferred the slashing/piercing/bludgeoning options in Morrowind and the manual blocking in Oblivion. Neither was perfect, and in application both were almost exactly the same.

I really like the Morrowinds fail spell thing.

But when it comes to fighting, Oblivion hits the ball out of the park (Although in comparison to other games, it still svcks). I think if the devs want something to look at for inspiration for their combat they should look at Demon's Souls, it rewards both stick control and RPG leveling in a very satisfying way and makes you think about combat in a tatical way, not just charge in if you have the stats to win.

I totally forgot about the magic system. :facepalm:

I liked the magic in Morrowind much better.

I couldn't pick one or the other; both systems had half the answer.

Morrowind's system was better for RP, because your character's skill made a difference, while OB was better for casual "hack and slash" play, because it was more responsive to your input. Unfortunately, Morrowind's lack of decent "miss" animations and steep learning penalties made it awkward at the start, when most players develop their opinion of the game. Oblivion's system was "gratifying" at first, but didn't take the character's skill into account, with the result that any character "improvement" wasn't meaningful, except as a way of triggering gimmicky "perks".

I liked oblivions combat system since it was more intense but the level scaling killed it along with it having little to do with character skill. In the future I hope they can some how implement the intensity of oblivions combat but including more character skill involvement and less hacking and slashing that takes 30 swings to kill one person and make it more faster paced and deadly combat.

I prefer Oblivion's style, and it does implement character skill just as much as Morrowind. The differences are skill and fatigue in Oblivion affect how much damage one can give to an enemy rather than determining one's chance to hit or miss, various attacks can affect an enemy in different ways, being able to choose when to block, and an overall smoother and more satifying combat experience. It also makes learning how to use a low level skill by use rather than by training a more viable path due to actually learning with each attempt at an attack/spell instead of just on a rare occasion(when they hit, in Morrowind). I prefer always hitting while swinging in my enemy's direction with skill affecting damage rather than a chance to hit. Where people get the "it's based on player skill, not character skill" notion, I do not know.

FYI:

Both games had pretty much the same combat experience.

In Morrowind, you miss a bunch then hit the enemy and kill them.

In Oblivion, you hit them everytime but it takes a bunch of hits because of their mutant huge health bar.

In both games, you're just sitting there, clicking the mouse or the right trigger, when you could be enjoying yourself instead.

At least Morrowind's damage was based on dice rolls, like an RPG.

Morrowind had the right idea, executed poorly.

Oblivion had a bad idea, executed well.

Both are lame.

EDIT: I voted Morrowind, only because there's no "they both svck" option.

I don't find that I miss that often in Morrowind after I've levelled up a couple of times, unless I'm playing as a pure mage.

I decided to vote Morrowind, by the way.
I played some oblivion yesterday and found myself immensely bored trying to hack an ogre to death.

Morrowind. I've always saw TES as one of the few games out there that retain a lot about traditional RPG's. It saddens me how we're losing that feel.

Perhaps they could dumb it down, making us hit more often, with less damage, but it's just strange that I can hit anyone with ease, as a compelte noob, even if they're some godlike guy with full daedric. I like being able to fail.

(Though I do believe they should raise the hit chance when I'm low levelled at something and I'm attacking a higher levelled enemy - just look at Hrolfgar the Strange during the Raven Rock quests.)

Oh, and also, at around 60 in a weapon skill, I'll hit around 90% of the time. People are very over dramatic about everything. I only miss when I shouldn't be using a weapon. (level 5 or so)

I think it should be like Oblivion's with a chance to do more or less damage, and do special things like countering.

Personally, I don't fight a lot. Most of the time I'm a Civilian when I play TES games. People call the Oblivion system awful, but then never suggest what to fix about it besides the fact that you're just sitting there clicking over and over again. If you turn your difficulty up, it's then that you need to implement strategy, and it's entirely dependent on player skill if you miss or hit. NPCs can already disarm you, block you, and knock you down, maybe Bethesda could improve those a little, but other than that I personally think they should focus on more than the combat, and focus on adding more unique experiences, landscapes, quests, and working more on the meshes, textures, and the physics system.

...

That physics system. :mellow:

Anyway, in real life a little kid can hit you with a dagger on their first try (unless they're like... 3).

Definately Oblivion.

In real life a trained warrior (Or even a fairly in shape advlt) can dodge that knife.

Am I the only one who liked Morrowind's combat? Oh right, there's a poll.

I liked how the combat system lent importance to fatigue and agility, attributes with relatively little use by comparison in Oblivion. Whilst it may have seemed confusing at first, by the third or fourth level most of the missing could be shrugged off. I like to think of it that whenever your weapon passes through your target, perhaps your character has fumbled their weapon due to their lack of expertise. Maybe your enemy managed to maneuver out of the way of the swing, because you have not yet mastered the balance of your weapon and thus cannot strike quickly. Since Morrowind is, well, Morrowind, there are no animations to serve as visual indicators for these sorts of things, but with a bit of imagination a fair bit of the missing you encounter at earlier levels can be forgiven. I also found the directional movement attacks to be a pretty interesting concept, so long as you had enough room to maneuver around in.

I personally don't care much for Oblivion's combat - though you may always land a hit, the combat itself feels too responsive and player movement too "locked" for my tastes. Power attacks are annoying - charge, and it takes you a second or two before you can move again. Block an attack, you reel back and don't have time to counterattack. Run away, you're flinching half the time (moreso than in Morrowind) and can never get away. You have no idea how many times I would've avoided death if I had merely another second or two to react. Instead, Bethesda has to gloss the entire system over with view bobbing and character movement. But that's just me - I greatly preferred Morrowind's "weave in, weave out" approach.

Yeah, but when you have two advlts fighting it's a bit harder to dodge unless you know how to counter or you were particularly fast. If they coupled it with a "dodge" animation I wouldn't care, but if we're going to clearly cut through somebody's stomach and have the game go "Miss!" it'd be a bit extreme.

I can slightly forgive that sort of thing moreso in Morrowind's environment. Vvardenfell is a dangerous frontier province, and you would expect only the strong to survive. People seldom run away from you in Morrowind - I always liked how picking up a fork in a tavern meant that even the most decrepit looking old woman could pull out a steel claymore and hack you to pieces. A very romanticized, DnD esque atmosphere.

When you miss in Morrowind, it's because you're awful with a weapon, and the other character is at least a mediocre fighter, and can move out of the way. Two warriors can dodge eachother's attacks. In fact most real-life sword fighting involves dodging attacks, when not in heavy armour.

Morrowind RARELY misses. On average, from level 1-20, I'll miss, perhaps, 5-10% percent of the time. People are over dramatic. If you have long blade as your only fighting skill, and you're using a spear, you deserve to miss, you're just a complete idiot. To put it quite honestly harsh.

The reason there where no animations, is because of technical limits. If Morrowind's system where to be implemented again, I doubt they'd leave it out. It's just like the reason there was no advanced AI, or advanced physics.

I don't mind having a chance to miss when performing an attack, provided the enemies follow the same rules I do. In other words, if I am at level 3 with a Blade skill of 15, then by rights I should miss a fair amount of the time since I, by definition, svck at using a sword. The problem comes when the enemies are not so bound, and hit far more often than I do due to having computer-assisted aiming when they should be just as inept as I am.

Furthermore, if there are going to be perks such as those for higher levels of Agility, then they should actually matter instead of having opposition power attacks simply blast right through them.

I am not a fan of the damage-centric combat model, since increased skill at use of a weapon will not directly increase said weapon's lethality but rather indirectly increase it by making it more likely any one blow will be landed and/or that said blow will be aimed at a weak point. There is also the fact that, no matter how bad one is with a weapon, when it does connect it will inflict a potentially serious injury because that's what weapons do.

As such, I would suggest a system wherein:

-Weapons have a fixed damage rating, independent of character skill levels
-Character skill determines the likelyhood of landing an individual attack
-A provision is made for critical hits, the chance for which would increase with character skill; these would do increased damage, up to a point
-Any Attribute-based combat-related perks would actually function as intended
-Blocking enemy attacks would be similarly governed, but even a fully blocked attack would not be entirely negated
-All of the above would apply in equal measure to computer-controlled opponents

The provision of letting at least some damage through from a fully-blocked attack represents the concussive force of the blow, which, even though it didn't cut or compress the target area, still sends shock waves through the recipient's body.

In Morrowind, enemies have the same chance to miss as I do. The difference is, They're not morons who use weapons they have no skill in. Occasionally, I'll see enemies fail a spell or miss me.

If you want to test this, simply set a guard's long blade and agility to 1, and watch him try to attack you.

That was fun.

The Nords are known for being warriors, and the provinces of Skyrim always fought, so you'd expect people there would be similar.


I've played Morrowind, it's not like I don't know where you're coming from. However, if you're good at using a shortsword, you'd probably have some skill with daggers. If you used claymores, a switch to a longsword wouldn't be a huge jump.

I understand the technical limits though, it'd probably make the enemies come to life if they dodged a bit more, which if I remember correctly, they did more in Fallout 3, and they also took cover when you used ranged things, ran from bombs, and would call others to help them, unlike in Oblivion. Fallout was too focused on the action though, if you walked around in the wilderness you'd be assaulted constantly and it was all bombs, guns, and explosions. And the environment was kinda depressing...

I gave examples of the importance of missing a lot before. Morrowind didn't have proper miss animations due to lack of physics engine. Block, parry, dodge. I was imagining(role playing) those in Morrowind and hoping it will be added in next TES. Oblivion's always hit system when there was already a physics engine. I will assume it never happened.

Zeno Clash (I just found out this one, I think I will buy it today.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-quGPWGYoM

Dark Messiah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHyRyHE3dlk

Now, those are fighting. Also note the stealth play in Dark Messiah. :thumbsup:

An old post on the matter with Real Life examples.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1104003-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-171/page__view__findpost__p__16161019

@StoneFrog
You are not alone. I do hate Oblivion's too "locked" combat. I always catch myself pressing the mouse button with excessive force.(I hate that!)