Hi,

I played Oblivion again after many years after playing Mount and Blade: Warband. Close combat in Oblivion frustrated me because of the lack of control and timing in blocks and attacks.
It would be good if Bedhesda can find a way to make combat more realistic in Skyrim. In Oblivion, I hit like ten times to a goblin with a steel sword, see that I hit its head and many other parts, and all that happens
is its hit points decreasing slowly. This is not realistic. In Mount and Blade: Warband, any human opponent falls dead after at most 6 hits, and that is only when he is very heavily armored. When I hit the opponent, I can see that
I am damaging him. Bedhesda has the resources and creativity to be able to surpass Mount and Blade: Warband combat. Rpg elements are very important but first of all, I want to see
physical realism and the ability to control my character, and not be the victim of my stats. If my character is weak and slow, I must still be able to inflict massive damage by a well placed arrow/hit, if the animation
I see on screen shows that I am doing that. The realism that the player experiences must not be sacrificed to the RPG elements and the skill system.

Bedhesda team, if you start a Warband Server and play multiplayer among yourselves, you will experience and understand what makes combat really fun in that game.

Best Regards.

I'd rather let the indie company keep it's monopoly on twitch based combat.

Don't like the whole let's drop stats and skills influencing the way combat plays out idea. I agree the combat needs an overhaul, but this is not the way to go, in my opinion.

I'm confident the combat will improve a lot. New animations is something they've worked on, we know that... so I think we can pretty much expect it to be changed.

I completely agree with you with what you said (except for partly about the stats and skills thing; skills and stats should control the character in combat... but there has to be a balance).
When you hit someone hard, it needs to be shown...
Otherwise it just becomes a mindless hack and slash game where you just strike and strike and strike and you see no difference, duh.

I do agree that when I fight a goblin sometimes I have to slice him over and over for 20 times is rather comical than serious.

I don't know if you've played Mount and Blade, but lower weapon skills and agility means swinging weapons is quite slow, lower strength and related skills means you do little damage even with decent equipment, and lower archery skills means less accuracy and damage. The combat gives more control to the player but overall they're still limited by their stats, skills and equipment. I think what Mount and Blade did the most was to shatter the idea that mounted vs unmounted combat was unbalanced in some way; as any Mount and Blade player knows, the last thing you want to do is miss a pass while on a horse, crash into something halting your movement and then get your horse and legs sliced up by 2 handed axes.

Combat animations basically need to be upgraded I think. There also need to be some new moves and such, that way a combat character has a bit more to do other than pull the trigger over and over and hold it to do a power attack sometimes. I don't really think we should shun stats and all that, I mean stats and skills are pretty much a big point of TeS.

The thing I love about Warband is firstly that it's a believable realism level (I hit someone with a sword and I can be sure that he was badly injured) and that I had full control of what I did, which is important for me in a game in the first person perspective.

Skills did matter. As already stated, it might take one more hit to kill someone when you have low strength, some weapons might be too heavy for you to use if you have low strength, some bows also require certain strength and "power draw" levels before you can use them, the better horses require high riding skills; low weapon skills slow down weapon animations, which makes combat a lot more difficult; much more important than the damage of a weapon, imo, are it's speed and reach. If I have a fast, long weapon, I can keep my distance and block those strikes that get close. It's just a matter of time until the enemy is dead. A powerful, slow weapon kills an enemy faster, but I can't be sure to leave the fight uninjured - and an injury in Warband means not only the loss of 5 HP that you can just refill with a spell or magic potion withing a second, but that you lost like 30% of your health and will take a couple of days to regenerate (in singleplayer that is, in MP you don't recover from injuries at all).

Secondly, what is more important and the best part about the combat system, is that your character does EXACTLY what you want. I can control very accurately how I hold my spear. If I want to do some extra damage, I'll hit my enemy with the blunt side of it, take a few steps back as he recovers from the hit, then run at him with the spear ready for an overhead attack. Thinking I'd proceed to perform said overhead strike, the enemy gets his weapon ready in the overhead-block-position; in the last moment, I abort the attack and switch to the thrust - the enemy doesn't read my feint in time and is hit in the belly by a spear. Due to my speed that I gained, I do additional damage. And there's many of these things you can do. It doesn't require many special attacks and stuff, I can do that on my own. Many people in multiplayer have perfected the ways of combat by developing new techniques to surprise the enemy. One example would be distance control; Taking a tiny step back so that the enemy misses just by an inch, then step forward with and counter-attack him with a swing - then turn into the swing to do extra damage.
Or turning into a swing as if you wanted to do maximum damage but then NOT performing it. The enemy most likely braced for impact and guarded only his side, but then you switch to an attack from the other side to hit him where he doesn't expect it.
Some players good at group fighting techniques get themselves surrounded on purpose by players with large axes, as those are likely to act careful; they're bad at blocking and don't want to hurt their own men, so they'll likely only perform overhead attacks. That way you know what to expect while you are free to attack in any direction; good formation-fighters would instead use a different weapon that mainly has powerful thrusts AND overhead stats so they can still out-feint the enemy without risking their teammates. It also makes group fights much better because you know exactly how your weapon will move and can abort the attack at any time (given you don't use an unbalanced, extremely heavy axe or bardiche); you're unlikely to kill teammates on accident, compared to our beloved battles in Oblivion where we spent more time protecting the NPCs than fighting the enemies.

I would like to see a different "damage system". I would prefer it if I did more damage hitting someone in the head or neck. Expecially with bows, an headshot should take a lot more damage then lets say a torso or leg hit.

Edit: I just saw there was another thread for this^^.

This is also one of my expections a better combat mode, It should be nice to cut of limbs and arms but then we go in the direction of action games and not rpg anymore, but an update of the combatsystem is necessary. But i'm sure of this that Bethesda works on it (already said) so we don't have to worry about this

Not to mention the penetration system, where a very low weight weapon will bounce off heavy armors. I agree that mount and blade's combat system is leagues beyond any other game i have ever played, and i still play M&B (with wedding dance mod mostly) and M&B:WB a lot. it's truly awesome. But I do believe Beth will do a good job at their combat system, hope they bring some form or more interactive combat this time around!

I like the idea of player skill being pertinent in combat, but we shouldn't ever forget about character skill...

I have to agree with others, we need an overhaul, but this isn't the way to do it.

I don't get why people like M&B's combat. The controls and everything else is absolutely horrible. I mean, I play tons of twitch-based shooters in addition to RPGs and M&B is still awful comparatively.

M&B is, in my opinion, the best medieval combat simulator ever.

Something tells me neither of you have played M&B.

The game IS an rpg with real time player controlled combat. It just made better use of combat mechanics and how skills/stats influnced things.

The RPG side of the game DID affect combat, but it affected it so that the "fun" aspect of combat, in terms of player control and ability wasn't sacrificed for a numbers game. It found a better balance for both to exist while still providing the more fun aspect of combat as far as player control goes.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it an RPG. Some stats do not make an RPG.

The archery and mounted combat was fun, and to me is still the best in any game to date. However Melee combat, I agree taht it could use work. The whole swing left/right/thrust and controls felt a bit sloppy.



How on earth is it NOT An rpg? You build up your character, completely determining what stats and skills to shape him to your liking. These have affects both in combat and out of it. You build him up over time and play out the game in ia role you wish to. Explain how that doesn't fit as an rpg? That's the basic building block for any rpg, being able to shape your character via stats/skills. If Mass effect is an rpg, M&B definitely is.

I posted because I want to understand why, not hear people tell me that it is. It's not fluid or even remotely close to the visceral feel of actual combat. I've been doing archery for 10+ years and fencing/medieval weapons practicing for 4 years. I don't get it.

At a distance, the archery worked well. However, anything closer than 50-75 yards became a bit unrealistic. Closer was worse. Mounted was probably the highlight for the most part. Melee was terrible, as you said.

Seconded. Although I must admit that I find most of the game quite boring. But combat? It get's it right.

i love mount and blade warbands combat although i could never get used to using the mouse to determine which direction you attacked from. i changed it in the menu to wasd and it plays much better for me.