Sneak attacks should be toned down, but I don't think that's the way to go. Some of us like to play in third-person, and aiming your stabs is a bit harder than in first-person.


Also, I'm not sure, but the locational damage may not work the same way with melee weapons as with ranged weapons in FO3&4. You can only target the whole enemy in VATS with melee weapons.




From recent experience, it would be fun if it looked like alcohol increased your skills, but actually decreased them.


*coughs water*





What a horrible thing to say.


I'm sure they get along with each other just fine.


(I'm an ass, I'm an ass).

Locational damage is always a mixed bag. Sure, its immersive and makes a decent amount of sense, it never really falls through as intended when dealing with humanoids, especially in games that take place in real time, and not turn based combat.

By the time you actually manage to cripple a limb in combat, chances are, your enemy is already a few blows away from death. Focusing on weakening their fighting efficiency stops, or rather, never becomes a focus because of the fact that what they'll contribute to combat is basically nil. That's not even getting into the problems of TES being both first and third person perspectives, making it slightly more difficult to carefully target hits effectively.

The only time locational damage really works is against giant enemies with massive health pools, as weakening what they can do will actually have a lasting impact on the fight.

IAmAMoronEDIT:

I have to agree. When playing Fallout 3 or New Vegas, I almost never use VATS to target anything other than the head since taking out a limb usually almost kills them anyway. Besides that, shooting the head is more efficient, minimizing wear on your gear, conserving ammo, and leaving their gear in better condition than if you had aimed anywhere else. This could be mitigated by reducing limb health, though.

Either way, I don't like the idea of melee combat including location damage as part of the standard point-and-click combat since I feel it would just result in the shooter trap of only ever aiming for the head. Special moves that cost stamina and cause location damage would be fine, though.

Fair point on third person, but I don't think a game that is made primarily for a first person experience should make a single decision on its core gameplay based on the minority of third person players out there. Plus, third person can never be as precise as first person, and I don't want to remove the idea of locational damage because of third person players either. That said, third person is pretty atrocious and should be improved. It shouldn't be impossible to make it a bit more accurate. For example, in Dark Souls where locational melee damage isn't even a thing, you can still aim up or down based on the camera angle. At least it is for power attacks with certain weapons.

And that's true about VATS melee targeting, but you can still cripple individual limbs or get headshot outside of VATS. Same concept should be applicable to melee weapons. Even if it doesn't work currently work the same, that's still not an excuse. Bethesda is a Triple-A studio; they can find somebody to write that code haha.

Gotcha. So do you want light and heavy armor skills, DR system?

It's definitely more useful for mini-boss and boss enemies that can take a lot of damage, or large enemies that are easy to hit in certain locations. That doesn't mean it isn't worth implementing though -- those are the kinds of fights where you should be pressed to use all the tactics in your arsenal anyways.

Plus, there's archery, which will become maybe 50 trillion times better when you can cripple enemies from afar or score sick headshots (without those bogus sneak multipliers).

From Dark Souls: some boss variation that require a bit of tactics to defeat them. And some areas that are more horror/survival to contrast the inherent rainbows and unicorns pastures. I'm thinking Tomb of Giants which is so dark and unsettling.

Problem: why is always a woman kidnapped? This time it's a man who needs rescued by women.

I had the very same thought.

Just introduce two new things.

First, all armour/clothing should have a set value for 'equipped encumberance' or some such name, that represents the extent to which any piece of equipped armour hinders movement. It would not just be about how much the thing weighs, but how well that weight is distributed, and how much it prevents regular motion. The aforementioned puffy, stiff robe could theoretically encumber you more than an expensive plate cuirass (especially if reality is anything to go by).

Second, have a value for protection against blunt trauma and sharp attacks. A truly decked-out warrior will have a tabard, some chain and some plate going on. That might not be too heavy, but it will hinder movement significantly. All the chain weight is on your shoulders, and the thick cloth would tire you out more than if you didn't wear it.

Now we have some trade-offs to make. To move more quickly, you might opt out of your greaves, or your chainmail, or your tabard or (but probably not) your plate cuirass. Each piece of armour can prevent a certain type of damage and/or protect a certain area; it's up to you to decide how much of it you want.

By the way, 8-year-olds were capable of memorizing all of the Pokemon weaknesses and strengths. I think two damage types will be easy. Plus, it's good incentive for warriors to actually carry more than one weapon, like any real knight would do.

Random point:

We could have a 'noise' value for clothing and armour. Dwemer is loud to walk in. Fur is quiet (but terrible for protection!).

Hell, that could be one of the things that increases the more something is damaged. Banged up, loose armour should definitely be louder.

for baby bandits project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja8WWqg2eLA

u cannot make jori in the witcher 3..

this why i love skyrim, the possibility to create our own story!!!

hope need tes, beth will improve the sandbox content significantly

I disagree, and Fallout 4 emphasises the point. It's singular armour format with a differentiation between Ballistic and Energy damage shows that you can quite easily represent defensive characteristics with a simple graphic, and a number. a 9 by 9 block, featuring 3 Physical Damage types, 3 Magical damage types, and 3 special variables (Piercing being one of them) is visually simplistic, concise, plays to the Paradigm inspiration, and offers far more variety than the current Split-Skill model.

Part of the problem is, we're past the point where you can actually expect people to not level a skill. That died with Morrowind. Particularly when it comes to skills that are just going to progress naturally as you play. We should be operating on the assumption that people are going to level everything, intentionally or otherwise, and the exclusion of a Skill is going to be more of a niche experience, rather than an intent. As such, each Skill should offer more options in HOW it develops, rather than whether or not it develops at all.

I disagree, because you're just mixing and matching a re-naming of the same skill, increasing redundancy and making meaningful differences more difficult to achieve. You can combine Blue, Blue and Blue in 9 different ways, but it always looks the same.

That only becomes a problem when Penetration is a type of damage, rather than a variable applied to a type of damage. A Piercing weapon with a low Penetration isn't going to be inherently superior by merit of piercing alone, it's just going to favour particular types of attack (typically thrusting). It's just a matter of scaling variables, which allows far more options than linking things like Penetration to specific types of weapons.

Agreed. It also opens up opportunities for a better Encumberance model, and for things like Burden and Feather to be more situationally useful rather than being relegated to Constant-Effect enchantments that just let you stuff more in your pockets (or are entirely useless).

That said, the mention of clothing functioning in a DR related model is interesting, and something i hadn't actually considered. It may be a good way to inject some specific bonuses into particular types of clothing, such as Gambesons, without requiring a specific Cloth Armour type. I still think that Armour its self should be expressly DT, but having certain heavier clothing offer a sort of impact cushion would give incentive to wear it, without expressly limiting what you can wear under armour like with Fallout 4.

I think you could get away with something more complex than 2, thematically link it to the Paradigms, and create a dynamic which offers a huge range of options.

Physical Damage;

Piercing, Slashing, Blunt

Magical Damage;

Ice, Fire, Lightning

Tactical (pending) Damage;

Penetration, Critical, Cripple

The first 6 are pretty straight forward, but the others may require some explanation.

Penetration would be how much Armour it ignores. So a Piercing weapon with a Penetration of 6 ignores 6 points of Piercing armour. If it has a Piercing Damage of 10, against an Piercing Armour of 7, it does 9 damage when you hit. It's clear, it's concise, and it's not fiddling around with too many % modifiers.

Critical is how much Injury a weapon inflicts when you score a Critical. Bear in mind, this is basing of the changes we've spoken about before to Resources, but Injury basically functions like Rads in Fallout 4, decreasing total Health (I'm actually playing with the idea of Injury being what kills you, so if you drop to 0 health you, or an enemy, my not be dead...). When you score a Critical Hit, the chance of which is governed elsewhere, it represents hitting something important, rather than just slapping someone around a bit. The Critical rating of a weapon would be how serious a wound such a hit would be.

And Cripple is just about limb damage. It would be how much damage you inflict on a limb regardless of whether or not you get through the armour. You can snap joints and crush bone without actually penetrating armour, and a weapon with a high Cripple is focused more on breaking an enemy, rather than killing them.

Agreed. While not quite as bad as it could have been, and more appropriate in Fallout than some give it credit for, this was one of the problems with the Voiced PC in Fallout 4. The background and character of the PC are too clearly defined, and while it's upfront about it (as opposed to New Vegas which spoon feeds you your past regardless of what you decide for yourself) it does dramatically limit the range of character identities can be played with.

Unrelated. Dargor, you appear to have lost your hat.

Care to flesh this idea out a little further? I'll reserve my comments until then, so we don't have that whole slowly-revealing-and-slightly-misunderstanding-each-other thing happen.

Are you saying that all weapons have a penetration, critical, and cripple stat, or that certain weapons have one of those stats? When and how are those effects applied? I'm also not seeing the way you're calculating penetration damage and piercing damage. 10 piercing damage VS. 7 DT = 9?

Oh, and you forgot one type of magic damage, which is non-elemental.

The penetration value would serve to functionally decrease the armour. So the formula would be something like :


DMG - (DT-Pen)= Damage Done


In the above example:


10 - (7 - 6) = 9

Or

10 - 1 = 9


Ultimately, you're going to end up with % values tied in either through Skil progression, Perks, Spells or Tempering, but the basic formula is simple and clean, making it easier to predict a progression curve.


** Edit


I should also say, I don't think Penetration should have any impact beyond lowering Armour to 0. Pushing Armour into the negatives effectively increases a weapons damage potential, rather than countering Armour, and makes Penetration too attractive a stat. If a weapons Penetration is higher than an Armours protection, it simply renders that armour ineffective, it doesn't make the weapon inherently more deadly.


Yeah, in the past I've identified it as Entropic Damage, which would fit well with certain Sithis related aspects of the setting... There is also mention of forms of Earth, Water, Light and Wind magics which, while rare, are practiced by some cultures. I kept it limited to the main 3 which are present across the board (I dont think straight Damage spells made it to Skyrim) for the sake of simplicity, but Magic damage is something that is far more expandable.


Basically, every weapon (or, preferably, Attack for a weapon, but that requires a better control scheme) has a Damage Type. A Scimitar would be a Slashing weapon, while a Rapier would be a Piercing Weapon, despite both being Swords. If you have control over specific attack types, it would vary even more, with an Estoc being Piercing on the Thrust, but Crushing (and generally inferior) on a Swing or Chop.


From there, the Tactical options vary. If you have control over particular attacks, having values for all 3 Tactical Damage toes could get cluttered, and you could get away with specific attacks having specific variables. An Estoc would have Penetration on a Thrust, but Cripple on a Swing or Chop. Meanwhile, a Rapier (which is visually very similar, emphasising the variability in such a system) would have Critical on the Thrust, but nothing on a Swing or Chop. If you are going straight from the Skyrim model, with either no or limited control of attack types, you could fit in specific variables for all 3 Tactical Damage types without much clutter, basically giving a Weapon it's Damage Value and Typee, and 3 Tactical modifiers.


So, your Weapon Stats could look like either:

Damage# Pen# Crit# Crip#

Or

Thrust - Damage# Tactical#

Swing - Damage# Tactical#

Chop - Damage# Tactical#


Every type of Armour, in turn, would have different defenses against the types of Physical and Magical, determined primarilty based on how it's made, and what it's made from. So, Maille would have a high defense against Slashing, but low defense against Blunt. Generally speaking, more metal = higher Physical Defense, while more leather = Higher Magical defense. So, Plate would be the ultimate defense against physical attacks, but leave you vulnerable to magic, while Leather would be the opposite.


Armour has no variables for Tactical Damage, though, as they serve more as a way to diversify approaches to dealing with higher AC. You can either go through (Penetration) make every hit count (Critical) or just maim your enemies (Cripple).


So your Armour stats would look like:


Slash# Fire#

Pierce# Frost#

Crush# Lightning#



The overall point being to emphasise more than just actions, but rather reactions. Instead of the problem of combat boiling down to "I use a Sword, so I fight this way," it becomes "I use this Sword, so I have to approach this enemy in this way". The focus is more on knowing your abilities and how they interact with the world than simply having them drive a particular play style. So, a heavily armoured enemy is going to be easy pickings for someone who has refined their skills to penetrate armour, and equips accordingly, but that same character is going to have to shift their approach against an enemy.with a large health pool and minimal armour.

Alright this seem to be going towards an are of interest to me so I think I'll chime in Damage types and such were brought up and people mentioning the different types reminds me of how damage is done in one of my favorite games, Warframe. In Warframe there are 3 Physical damage types; Puncture, Impact, and Slash each being unique in there own way.

• Puncture is good against armor but bad against shields, it can also induce a status proc which can cause an enemy to do 30% less damage for x duration.


• Impact does well against shields normal to armor and less to unarmored/flesh enemies, It's status proc is a chance to stagger/knockback the enemy.


• Slash is very effective against unarmored/flesh while being neutral to shields and bad against armored units, with it's status proc being a DoT bleed effect.

Each weapon in Warframe contains all of three of these different damage type to different ratios. Regular one-handed swords tend to have higher slash damage compared to their puncture and impact damage. Although this is always true as the Rapier in the game has a higher puncture damage compared to it's slash and impact damage. This can translate pretty well over to TES as a damage system.

While it can't be moved over 1:1 as a lot of things are different and that would be copy/stealing and overall boring it can still take a a lot of cues. All three damage types would still exist although. Slash will still cut through unarmored enemies with ease but be less usefull against armored. Blunt(Impact) and Puncture will overlap a little more however than they do in Warframe. This coming from the fact puncture damage is going to be something more unique and be a damage type mostly found from bows and daggers. Because puncture damage is mainly coming from bows and daggers weapons with more unique play styles than conventionally melee it allows for more of an overlap. This means now Blunt damage will be good against Armor and average against flesh.

Now this just leaves us with with how shields are handled. When I say shields I don't mean physical ones but magical/energy ones. This concept actually translates well as TES does have those in the form of shield spells. Against these magical shields much like the Warframe ones slash wouldn't get a damage buff nor penalty. Blunt however would receive a penalty as the magical shield absorbs the blow better than armor. This is where Puncture damage gains a bit of it's unique-ness back by being extremely effective against shields.

Upper tier TES armors make me feel like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcsoWKFolbw.

Now that I think about it, Auriel's Bow, the Sun Fire spell, and the Vampire's Bane spell dealt "sun damage". Also, the Dragonshout cyclone made a whirlwind, which may or may not have been wind damage. Could have just been physical damage. There were some cases of straight magic damage as well.

Dragonshouts: Drain vitality and Marked For Death (although the latter is more like a draining spell. Spriggans use that too).

Spells: Vampiric Drain

Enchantments: Ebony Blade, and other life absorption enchantments.

I really like a lot of these idea, but a little overcomplicated to the point that Bethesda wouldn't implement it. But I do think this can be explained and streamlined to a point where it could work, without sacrificing what this is trying to accomplish.

1. Button Map
   
   
   We would need a button map for consoles, otherwise this will never see the light of day. Fortunately, TES has some options available, because it hasn't been totally efficient with it's buttons in the past. I'll use Xbox names for buttons, and assume that we are only equipping a single weapon in our right hand for the moment. LT and LB would be the same for single weapon or for a shield.
   
   

   LT: Block
   
   LT (Hold) + RT: Bash

   
   

   LB: Parry

   
   
   
   

   RT: Primary attack

   
   

   RT: (Hold): Power Primary Attack

   
   

   RB: Secondary Attack

   
   

   RB (Hold) Power Secondary Attack

   
   
   
   

   LS: Movement

   
   

   LS (Click): Sprint

   
   

   RS: Look around

   
   

   RS (Click): Toggle sneak

   
   
   
   

   X: Draw/Sheath weapon, cancel arrow

   
   

   A: Activate, take

   
   

   B: Dodge -- I'm hoping for a short dodge, like the non-rolling dodge in the Witcher 3

   
   

   Y: Jump

   
   

   *** Alternatively, B (Hold): Jump

   
   

   *** Alternatively, Y: Special power (equivalent to Dragonshouting mechanic)
   
   
   D-Pad: Shortcuts/favorited weapons, magic, powers, items

   
   
   
   

   View: Wait

   
   

   View (Hold): Toggle 1st/3rd person

   
   

   Menu: Open Skills, Inventory, Magic, Map menu. Press one of the Triggers to navigate to system menu for saving, loading, options, etc.

   
   


2. Skills
   
   
   Separating curved swords from longswords, adding rapiers, different stats and tactical attacks for each... Don't forget different kinds of pole arms (spears, bidents, tridents, halberds), bows. Also hand-to-hand. I missed hand-to-hand so badly in Skyrim. We would need some major adjustments to the skill system to account for all these weapons. Here's a tentative way of organizing weapons to skills. A weapon's primary attack determines its sub-category (i.e. pierce), which will have specialized perks within the super-category (i.e. One-handed).
   
   
   One-Handed
   
   • Pierce: Dagger, Rapier, Knife
   
   
   • Slash: Curved Sword, Longsword, Katana, Axe
   
   
   • Crush: Mace, Hammer, Club
     
     Two-Handed
     
     
   
   
   • Pierce: Spear, Bident, Trident
   
   
   • Slash: Claymore, Dai Katana, Halberd, Axe
   
   
   • Crush: Mace, Hammer
     
     Archery
     
     
   
   
   • Pierce: Bows and Crossbows
     
     Hand-to-Hand
     
     
   
   
   • Pierce: Claws
   
   
   • Crush: Bare Fists, Brass Knuckles, Caestus
     
     
   
   


3. When to have consistency, and when to not
   
   
   There needs to be consistency in the ?Primary Attack movesets for each weapon based on its sub-category. So for instance, Daggers, Rapiers, and Knifes all need the same Piercing stabbing motion as their primary attack. All Curved Swords, Longswords, Katanas, and One-Handed Axes need the same Slashing motion as their primary attack. Etc.
   
   
   There shouldn't be the same consistency in the Secondary Attack movesets. A dagger's secondary attack could be a Slash with the blade, while a rapier's secondary attack could be a Crush attack with the hilt. A Longsword or Katana's Secondary Attack could be a Piercing stab, while a One-Handed Axe's Secondary Attack could be a charging Crush attack with the haft of the weapon.
   
   
   However, Secondary Attacks don't necessarily have to be of a different sub-category. For example, a Curved Sword's Secondary Attack could be a spinning Slash attack that can hit several enemies at once.
   
   
   ***NOTE: Primary Attacks are primary for a reason... they should cost significantly less stamina and be faster than Secondary Attacks.
   
   


4. Calculating Damage, the Question
   
   
   You suggested that each weapon has a specific damage type, and that armors in turn have type-based resistances. This is how damage calculations work in Dark Souls, and it's a very good system. Even though i like the system, I don't think it translates perfectly into a TES format for two reasons: 1) character growth's relationship to damage, and 2) magic.
   
   Character Growth's Relationship to Damage
   
   
   Character growth in Dark Souls and TES are very different. In Dark Souls, you choose a class that ends up meaning nothing after 10-20 level ups, and upgrade your weapons. These two things make up the sum of character growth, and in turn they determine how much damage you can do. Damage is a proxy of weapon scaling to the stats you choose to level up and weapon upgrades (and magic buffs, but that's not the point) -- Classes don't pigeon hole you, and there are no skill trees.
   
   
   TES used to pigeon hole the player with classes. You chose your major and minor skills, chose your birth sign, and advanced through the game knowing that those decisions defined your character's ability to excel at certain kinds of combat. Skyrim changed this system for the better, IMO, by implementing skill trees in lieu of the class system. I don't think Bethesda will switch back, because this system lends itself to more organically developing your play style. While Damage directly scales with your skill level in a certain kind of combat -- similar to the stat investments in Dark Souls -- the existence of skill trees is where the real specialization comes into play, especially if we take my suggested categorization above as a good template. Perks are where the effects of these weapons should become pronounced. More on that later.
   
   Magic
   
   
   I like that only enchantments or spells are good defenses against magic in TES for two reasons.
   
   
   1. It makes using precious enchantment slots on equipment for magic defense an important decision.
   
   
   2. It creates balance and a variety of strategy for magic users vs non-magic users. Mages need to focus on leveling up their magicka. This must come at the expense of either health or stamina, and often comes at the expense of both. Also, mages should be incentivized to wear robes and not armor (I like how Skyrim robes have better magic enchantments for that purpose). If they have low health compared to physical damaging opponents, and if they aren't wearing armor, then their attacks need to especially dangerous. This makes mages cast defensive spells and try to keep their distance. It also makes physical damaging opponents wary of getting hit by their spells, and incentivizes magic resistant enchantments, as per reason number 1.
   
   
   ******************************************************************
   
   So, this is where it gets really tricky. I can't think of a way to justify a hammer being able to cripple limbs, but not being capable of issuing critical hits. A rapier should be able to penetrate armor, but also cripple limbs. But at the same time, weapons definitely shouldn't be able to do everything equally well... so how do we structure the system so that weapons benefit from their specialties, but aren't completely useless in other regards? I think this goes back to the system that Dargor and I were discussing: a DT/DR hybrid in armor, interacting with innate weapon stats that become more useful with perk investments. Only I'm going to modify that idea slightly to synthesize what you've said.
   
   


5. Calculating Damage, the Solution
   
   
   I really like the idea of layering DT armor with DR clothing. Now, how to approach this with weapons...
   
   
   Instead of having specific damage types, weapons should just have a raw damage score. Sword does Q damage. So instead of specialized weapon types, we instead turn to specialized attack types. We exaggerate the usefulness of certain attack types through perks. Without any perks, any weapon should be able to ignore X% of DT, have Y% chance of causing a critical hit, and have Z% of its total damage converted to limb damage. Perk investments in certain kinds of attacks increase the percentages for those attacks.
   
   Example 1:
   
   
   Armor: DT = 20, DR = 10
   
   Longsword: Damage = 40
   
   NO PERKS: Ignore 5% DT, 5% critical hit chance, 5% of total damage converted to limb damage
   
   
   Primary (Slash) Attack:
   
   40 - (20 - (20DT * 0.05)) = 21
   
   21 - (21 * 0.1DR) = 18.9
   
   Result: 18.9 damage, 5% chance of critical hit, and 0.378 damage dealt to limb.
   
   
   ............ Now let's run this again, but with some perks. Let's say that each investment in a One-Handed Slash attack perk grants an additional 10% to critical hit chance, and increases the other 2 stats by an additional 4% as well (this way, piercing weapons aren't obviously the best choice every single time, but there is still plenty of difference between attacks). Let's also say that we have invested in this perk 5 times total.
   
   
   Investing in a One-Handed Slashing attack perk ?only affects One-Handed Slashing Attacks (RT) -- using a Longsword's Secondary piercing move (RB) would have no perk effects, and would deal the same damage from Example 1.
   
   Example 2:
   
   
   Armor: DT = 20, DR = 10
   
   Longsword: Damage = 40
   
   ONE-HANDED SLASHING PERK, 5 INVESTMENTS: Ignore 25% DT, 55% critical hit, 25% of total damage converted to limb damage
   
   
   Primary (Slash) Attack:
   
   40 - (20DT - (20DT * 0.25)) = 25
   
   25 - (25 * 0.1DR) = 22.5
   
   Result: 22.5 damage, 55% chance of critical hit, and 5.625 damage dealt to limb
   
   
   Let's do one more of these, but instead with the longsword's piercing attack, and assuming that we invested in piercing perks instead of slashing perks.
   
   Example 3:
   
   
   Armor: DT = 20, DR = 10
   
   Longsword: Damage = 40
   
   ONE-HANDED PIERCING PERK, 5 INVESTMENTS: Ignore 55% DT, 25% critical hit, 25% total damage converted to limb damage
   
   
   Secondary (Pierce) Attack:
   
   40 - (20DT - (20DT * 0.55)) = 31
   
   31 - (31 * .0.1DR) = 27.9
   
   Result: 27.9 damage, 25% chance of critical hit, and 6.975 damage dealt to limb
   
   
   Now obviously there needs to be a better balancing of damage to armor values, and the perks could probably have different percentages yielding better results. But that isn't really the point -- with the proper balancing, this system could work very well by allowing players to build characters around perk investments in different kinds of attacks, and therefore around different kinds of play styles. At the same time, it doesn't leave out certain effects that are kind of necessary (like crushing weapons that need to bypass some DT to do any damage).
   
   
   EDIT: One thing I want to backtrack a bit -- the effect of slashing attacks. I don't love the idea of having critical hit chance affected by that, so maybe it's just best to consider that effect as a placeholder. It could be something else. Maybe a percentage bonus to critical hit damage instead, leaving the frequency of critical hits to be determined by other factors.
   
   
   EDIT 2: Actually yeah, let's go with that. Critical hits with melee weapons can be caused by successfully parrying and riposting, or hitting somebody mid large stagger. Perks increase the damage of critical hits. Archery critical can come from the Secondary Attack (RB). Call it overdraw or something, have it eat up a massive amount of stamina (reduced by perks), and have it take a very long time to draw the bow back to full power. A critical hit is only scored when it's fully drawn back using RB.
   
   
   

wow that math. can u describes in simple explaination like, what other game that have this systems?

The math looks more confusing than it really is haha. The first line adjusts DT to the perk bonuses, then subtracts that adjusted DT from the base damage. The second line takes the damage left over, and subtracts the amount of damage reduced by the DR from it. Some of the steps are combined into the same lines.

I'm not sure if any other games have a system like this, but they could exist; I don't run around studying game systems.

Eh. I'll cozy up to the DT concept, if what is known as DT is significantly overhauled, IE not as how New Vegas handled it.

Also, scrap One-Handed/Two-Handed skills. They're functionally worthless if you try and do anything beyond basic Swords, Axes, and Mace Trees, which is incredibly bare bones. They're quite bad. Divide it back up between Blade, Ax, Blunt, and Pole-Arms, that way more weapon types can be added back into the game, and have supporting Trees that add to additional functionality. Some perks should effect how the Skill is used as a whole, but I'd rather focus on the what's and hows of what a character is using, and tone down the number of passive perks that effect base stats significantly.

Side note, kind of abhor anything taken from Dark Souls. Never been a tremendous fan of it, and frankly I think most of its entire system is frankly overdone.

I'm not a big fan of classes, god knows, but that is not how classes worked at all. In Morrowind and Oblivion we could excel at any skill in the game. It did not matter a bit whether those skills were class skills or not. Class skills merely determined how fast our characters leveled up. That's all they did. Our "ability to excel at certain kinds of combat" was a result of using combat skills after character creation.

I can take a Breton race with a Mage Birthsign and the stock Mage class and turn that "pure Mage" character into an excellent heavy-armor wearing, claymore-wielding barbarian Warrior if I use the appropriate skills. In Morrowind and Oblivion class did not define combat ability. The choices we made after class creation defined our character's combat ability.

The problem was with its Attributes, which depended on leveling Major/Minor Skills to get specific Attribute increases accordingly. Frankly, that part of the old Attribute system is what frustrated me more then anything, and not because of not necciscairly how it worked, but how stifling the system was. Even if you theoretically had a high Intelligence, that Attribute confers no significant impact to a character that focuses on melee, and Strength had minimal impact on Spellcasters that focused on on...well, spellcasting.

A good Attribute system should contain reasons for any specific character to look at any given Attribute and find something useful that it could potentially add to a character. Strength and Endurance for melee fighters is all well and good, but if our character (And not how we, the player utilize them) is reasonably intelligent, we should have bonuses that can actually take to the forefront if we deign not to invest heavily in Strength due to personal preference.

I'm of two minds when it comes to control... On the one hand, i firmly beleive that the game stands to make huge gains for adopting a more modern anologue control scheme. The ability to handle what could effectively amount to 8 different modes of attack for each hand and the ability to fluidly chain together attacks is something that, frankly, i think is more than worth the minor learning curve... But it has a tendency to be disliked every time it comes up, so while i personally think it's for the best, i'm willing to accept that it may not be popular.

With that in mind, i think maintaining the current idea of controlling each hand independently is good, and shouldn't be simplified into the usual Block/Attack model. Blocking should be a feature of Shields, while Parrying is your defensive option with a weapon.

The button mapping i've been playing with is as follows;

We talked about button use before, and the basic idea is to have any multi-use buttons serve very similar functions to minimise the risk of miss-clicking. Parrying should be more a reaction of attacking while the Enemy is also attacking, basically serving as a timed counter, something that many games have had for almost 20 years (the earliest time i encountered it was Theif, in 1998)

Doing this also resolves the issue of Attack Consistency without having to limit your ability to control your attacks. You don't have to resort to Dark Souls like Animation cycles, because you retain control of the actual attacks. While it may not be particularly common, you may occasionally find reason to slap someone with a Rapier instead of stabbing them, and it gives that option.

Beyond that... I think a large part of the inherent problem with any sort of discussion regarding combat is, it's such a multifaceted field that ties into so many things, which makes it difficult to talk about in isolation. Enchanting and Magic, i think, need some significant overhauls to really shine as well, which plays into the Damage problem.

Slash, Pierce and Crush, actually. If each Weapon's variables and attack types are more unique to it, it becomes more of an issue of knowing what types of Armour as strong against what types of damage, and knowing what type of damage you Weapon does with particular attacks.

Overall, i agree with CKelley, and that each weapon should optimally have values for each type of attack, and each type of attack should have variables for each type of damage (as even a blade has some impact force) but things start getting rather complicated if you've got 3 attack modes that all do 3 different types of damage... So limiting it to a singular Damage type per Attack type solves some of those issues (though, admittedly not all) while still offering enough variation to drive a reactionary combat approach, at least on higher difficulties (on lower ones, you could probably just get away with slapping everything).

So a Rapier would have a relatively high Piercing damage on a Thurst attack, but a notably inferior Slashing damage on a Swing or Chop. Still, if you find yourself against Skeletons, with nothing to really poke, swinging at it may be the better option.

I used to agree, though i'm not entirely convinced anymore. I think a lot of it is going to depend on exactly what Perks do, and what Techniques could cover.