They have locational damage in Fallout, I don't know why they can't put it in TES. Headshots don't have to be auto-kill but they could at least be an automatic critical.

It's a minor gripe but it's still something that the game is lacking.

I'm always amazed that a mission bassed shooter is called a "RPG", I just don't get it.

I would be really pi**ed if my Character gets killed by a lucky shot of an Bandit -.-

Locational damage does not have to be in a FPS to work, it would work wonders in Skyrim for many reasons.

1. Archery will be more advance cant just shoot randomly you have to aim I don't really care about headshots because your suppose to aim for center mass via chest/heart for the most and highest chance of damage.

2. Close Combat would be overhauled, instead of today's swing blantanly you could aim for certian parts of the body with a chance of doing certain effects, Arm = disarm, Leg = Slow/cripple, Chest = most damage. This would apply to Archery as well.

For the overused meme "I took a arrow to the knee" what if actually in game taking an arrow into the knee did something?

my legendary ebony bow glass arrow 3X sneak heads shots kill :biggrin:

Maybe you should of shot them in the knee. :wink_smile:

I love how this isn't an FPS, so locational damage should be irrelevant. Just like any proper fantasy RPG, the damage in this game is calculated based on the strength of your attack, not on whether or not you put the attack in the right spot.

The skill of targeting is supposed to belong to the player's avatar, and be represented by their in-game skills. It's not like Call of Duty where the player skill is the skill that determines hit or miss.

I'm suggesting that combat is far more entertaining if it's quick and tactical than if it's brain-dead and drawn out. Targeting specific body parts to gain strategic advantage over an opponent and putting them down quickly versus hitting someone a dozen times in succession with the only real strategy being something like stun-locking the opponent.

Have you ever fired a bow? Because I have and it wasn't easy. I think I hit the target maybe once, and it wasn't especially near the center. Most went half to the target and landed in the grass. That's the level of success one should expect when playing a low-level archer. The goal then is to get as close to the enemy as possible to maximize the chance that you hit something. You implement this through things like an expanding reticle. At low levels you simply won't have precision accuracy.

I'm not sure how you can classify "Realistic fighting" as anti-climactic when the flipside is wailing on an enemy for a minute until he falls over... :/

Not exactly. The difference is that making realistic locational damage would mean any correct hit with an arrow would insta-kill most opponents. So an iron arrow from an iron bow would just as easily kill an opponent as a daedric arrow from a daedric bow. That would ruin all point in upgrading or leveling a skill. 100% of the damage would be based on player skill. As it is now, player skill does influence hitting an opponent but not it's damage so the character skills still play a vital role in that. In Morrowind, character skills had even a bigger (too big for my and most people's taste) role, as they also influenced whether any hit connected or not.

Now if they would implement a new system where you arrow's accuracy, travel speed, travel distance, and crippling chance would be influenced by gear and skill level (on top of damage from non-fatal shots to limbs and such), then locational damage would be fine. Because then you won't be able to headshot everything at level 20 Archery skill, which means you'd have to invest in the skill to master it. But as it is now, it would really make all bows and the entire archery skill (not to mention other combat skills) obsolete.

Locational damage is fine; it was in the Fallout series and no one minded or thought it made it less of an RPG.

Read the thread title to understand what doesn't belong in an RPG.

BUT does ARMOR in the given hit-location matter?

I force myself to think so.

People without helmets take full 100% damage to the head.
People without armor, but with helmets, take 100% damage to the chest, arms and tighs.

...

I would LOVE it if this turned out to be true

It makes archery so much more satisfying when you aim for soft spots.

Locational damage has been in RPGs ranging from old school PnP to turn-based CRPGs to real-time CRPGs. I'm not sure where people that giving the player tactical options somehow makes a game less of an RPG. RPGs use stat systems, dice rolls, calculations, etc to model the real world (or at least an internally consistent world). Locational damage is part of that, just as a player using cover or strategic positioning is part of that. It's all tactics (the thought process of the character) and so it can only ever be player controlled.

Not exactly. It would make equipment less important, not character skill. But that's only if we assume they implemented equipment precisely as they do now. Rather than pure damage increases, you would have mild increases in damage with the more significant improvements being things like weapon accuracy, chance of critical effects, weapon speed, etc.

This is how it always should have been done. Right now, I'm able to always hit every enemy while using a bow from forty paces even if I'm the worst archer in all the land. Somehow my precision placed shot hardly knicks the guy, but I still manage to pincushion him like an expert.

Locational damage is fine. Hyper-realistic locational instant killing is dumb in an RPG because the point is having drawn out epic fights as opposed to one-shotting king bandit in the head in 0.5 seconds. In real life it's so easy to just walk up to someone and kill them if they're not expecting you, no matter how much tougher they are than you. Wanting to replicate that in this game makes NO SENSE.

Didn't say it was easy; just said you only have to be moderately good at it to hit someone in the back when he's not looking.

If people want headshots to kill outright (and this isn't an FPS, so they shouldnt) then they shouldn't be so easy to get. Meaning something like quite a bit of sway would have to be added to archery to compensate with a perk deep down the tree that would reduce it by a bit.

So, out with sneak attack bonuses then? Because so far, I only one shot enemies. It's super easy, and sneaking is just about one of the easiest skills to level without doing anything out of the ordinary.

I'm not sure why the marksman skill should be gimped because coupling it with sneak makes things that much easier. Sneaking makes all combat easier, because the entire point of it is to kill an enemy without them ever detecting you. But then you're left with an archer who's really kinda incapable of engaging in direct combat. I mean, going from one shotting enemies while sneaking to sticking them with half a dozen arrows if you're not sneaking? That's silly, frustrating, and stupid.

Look this is exactly the point. I've tried to fire a bow, and they are difficult. They're hard to freaking draw, much less aim properly, much less aim at a distance, much less control while moving, much less deal with the weather.

The point is, people are asking for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ3ZmSY5h-A#t=01m00s kills because they are treating this as if the player skill is what determines the hit. That's not the case at all. In this game, the player is supposed to have a very easy time hitting the target.

It's the character skill that determines how much damage is done. That's why a level 20 skill does less damage than a level 100 skill. Thats supposed to represent a more lethal shot, not a more... deadlier arrow or something. At level 20, even though you might have "shot" your enemy in the fact, the game is calculating damage based on the statistical likliehood that your character actually would have done that. IE: zero. For that reason, damage is very low.

At skill 100, you hit the same enemy in the face and the game calculates damage based on the idea that your character might well have actually made that shot. So, damage is high.

It's as simple as that. No zone damage because that's not how RPGs calculate attacks. Player skill is not supposed to make the difference. Character skill is.

I'm not saying sneak isn't exploitable to the point of being broken in this game. I feel the same way about conjuration and crafting synergies. Doesn't mean I want another mechanic added that makes 1-shotting everything as easy as aiming for the head. No matter how easy leveling sneak is putting my cross-hair on an enemies head before clicking is easier.

Sneak damage modifiers are overpowered and make the game painfully easy. That's bad an should be fixed. The solution isn't making all kinds of combat brokenly overpowered.

I don't get the point with this auto aim thing. I miss almost just as much, and the companions STILL jumps in front of you. It really have just made me miss perfect hits.
Possible to turn off in .ini?

As a person who regularly practices archery (I own two bows, a wooden hunting bow and a polymer compound bow) I have to say you're slightly exaggerating the difficulty. At a range of about 7 meters or less it wouldn't be unfeasible to be able to hit a head-sized target with good consistency. Placing arrows consistently through the eye-slit of someone's helmet from 100 meters in a windy mountain environment, however, would be pretty silly.

I do wish arrows arced more realistically in Skyrim, though. I'd also like if different bows had different arcs to them. A recurve should shoot flatter for a short distance, then drop much more greatly than what you would expect with a longbow, for example.

What's this whining about archery?
I find it extremely easy, much easier than in Oblivion.
They're not difficult, you just need to get used to using them.

Something tells me you don't get what actually the concept of a "RPG" is.
Hint : it's nothing to do with how you fight.
Second hint : look at what the initials stand for, rather than at how "RPG" is over- and mis-used everytime there is just a player stat in a game.


No it's not. hardcoe RPGer are actually the ones who bother about immersion, not the other way around.
What's the fad with using words without even understanding what they mean ?


In "Skyrim.ini" (the one in "My Documents", NOT the one in the directory where the game is installed), add/replace :

[Combat]
f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0
f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0

You know we are talking about arrows right? You obviously didn't read anything as it was already pointed out that bullets /= arrows. Also, .8% is probably the more accurate number there. However, we aren't talking about "chance to survive" we are talking about "getting shot (with an arrow) and continuing to fight."

I specifically mentioned bullets turning flesh/muscle/bone into "extra projectiles" which is what you call "chewing up brain matter."

High velocity round (bullet) fired from rifled barrel (meaning projectile is spinning). Hole at entry, larger hole at exit. Cone shaped wound. Worse if the bullet/firearm being used is designed to make the bullet "tumble" once it hits something, such as NATO rounds.

High velociry round (bullet) fired from a non-rifled barrel (meaning projectile is not spinning). Hole at entry, slightly large hole at exit. Cone shaped, but not much. Mostly just straight hole size of the bullet, unless bullet bounces once contacting bone matter, which is likely.

Low velocity round (arrow) fired from a bow. Straight shot through, little damage beyond some sliced brain tissue and punctured skull. Sorry, chance are great that you won't be "dying instantly" from this. In fact, if you want to take someone out of a fight "instantly" with a bow, you're best bet would be aiming for the thigh/knee. Ankle/heel being best, but I imagine that's damn hard to hit.

It would only be game breaking if the game wasn't designed with that in mind. It's very likely that making this change would require some other changes to balance things out. It's true effects in this game, as it is, are very unpredictable without actually testing it in action.

You're implying that it would make the game too easy with your draugr deathlord example but don't forget you could be shot in the head too. In a perfect world, both these aspects would change difficulty in the same measure and you'd meet in the middle at the same difficulty level.

I think your reloading argument is beyond the scope of this discussion. I mean, you're saying it would be easy to kill it but if you need to reload 30 times to do so, does it still count as being easy?

Now you might throw the opposite argument. "I'm hit in the head all the time, then I'd die all the time and it wouldn't be fun". True, that's why this change would probably give rise to other changes. For instance, it probably should be harder to hit a moving target in the head. The AI seem to be a little too good at that. Maybe your own gameplay would change naturally to adapt and you'd seek cover more often. Maybe other factors would be taken into consideration, like, is the target wearing an helmet? What kind of helmet? What kind of arrows are you using? Is the target a magical creature (like your example)? Can we justify, it not needing an actual working brain to fight?

The point is, you don't need that much creativity to come up with ways to make a game fun and realistic at the same time. If the game is designed for that, I don't see why it would have to break.

That is how RPGs calculate attacks (just historically, not this one), and no it has nothing to do with player vs character skill. Or it does, but you've got it backwards. Deciding where to aim is player skill because that's a decision. Your success, however, in whether or not that targeted shot is successful is character skill. You the player decides what the character does, the skills decide how often and to what degree you accomplish those feats.

If your goal is to preserve character skill than you should be arguing against hit-is-a-hit combat, not against tactical options which are a wholly different mechanic.

As I posted earlier, it's a damage modifier, not a guaranteed auto-kill. If the modified damage exceeds the health of the enemy, then yes they will die in one hit. But this is no different than things like sneak attacks killing an enemy in one hit. And the issue with sneak is not how effective it's killing effects are, but instead the way it doesn't seem to give a [censored] about things like light sources. The problem with sneak is how easy it is to sneak up on people, not the modified damage. Similarly, the problem with archery is it's too easy to successfully hit precise points on the enemy, not whether successfully hitting those parts results in critical damage or not.

Hmmm, I'm not big on the idea that the game is solely about the characters skill, I do want some player influence simply because I think it makes things more fun. I find Mount & Blade to have a good balance between the two but will acknowledge that at the beginning of the game it is harder to hit enemies with a bow, it takes a while for the character skill to get to a useful level. This can be mitigated to a degree through player skill. I image though, that this could frustrate a lot of people.