I second the motion. :ninja:

MW and OB each had it half-right. In MW, hitting was purely character skill, and damage was fixed by the weapon, with a bonus for strength. In OB, hitting was purely player skill, and damage was mainly a function of character skill.

In reality, hitting is a matter of attacker skill versus defender skill, and it doesn't take a lot of talent to plant an axe or knife into a block of wood, but hitting a dodging, parrying, or blocking opponent who's swinging back at you, without getting killed by doing so, is another matter entirely. The damage to a chunk of inanimate matter is largely dependent on the weapon and your strength, with skill playing a highly variable and hard to quantify role by allowing you to target specific weak points. Being defensive about it can sharply reduce the amount of damage you do.

One way of handling the game mechanics would be to compare the attacker's weapon skill with the defender's agility or dodge skill, and adjust the chance to hit by that. Depending on the margin of success or failure, you'd get anything from a complete "wiff" (Morrowind style, but rarer), with a nice animation of your character stumbling or twirling around as the weapon catches absolutely nothing, through stages of "glancing hit" or "weak hit", up to "solid hit" and "critical hit". The odds of getting better damage on average would increase with skill, but not be totally dependent on it, since a lucky or unfortunate swing could still net you a critical hit or a total failure. Most hits would be "normal", getting rated damage for the weapon type and character strength, with just enough better or worse hits based on skill to skew the overall noticably. Damage would typically have a maximum of the weapon's rating, plus a strength bonus, but be modified somewhat up or down by the margin of success/failure. That should allow the game to avoid the "one hit kill", without making a reasonably competent character swat some goblin 30+ times with a massive weapon before it finally falls down. The main point is to avoid "stupid" failures like in Morrowind, by allowing you to "manage" the difficulty, depending on what offensive or defensive actions you take. Trying harder things is more likely to result in failures until your skills allow you to do them well, where "sticking to basics" is less likely to "pay off big", but will generally allow you to do most tasks with a low failure margin.

By allowing the character to go more or less "ballistic", you could have added emphasis on player skills (both attacking and blocking) for a slight reduction in the character's defensive stats. In short, you'd have to play "smarter" just to break even, or else just let the character act "normally" and use the character's stats as-is.

In short, character skill should be the main factor, but player skill should allow you to "push" the character a little beyond normal in a pinch.

In FO3, being able to routinely headshot "insta-kill" just about any humanoid NPC with a BB gun was idiotic. My second character probably got more kills throughout his short career with that starting BB gun than with any other weapon, including the Sniper Rifle.

It's all about armor to me. If you slash someone with a sword and they're in just clothes you should kill them. If they're in heavy duty plate mail you shouldn't. I think it should be a trade off (a huge one, not tiny like in most games) between agility and armor. If you're wearing plate mail you should take a lot more hits for you armor to get destroyed. If you're hitting with a sword you shouldn't do much, but if you're hitting with a hammer you should. It also makes you easy to hit b/c you're slow. But if you're in light armor you should be dancing around and hard to hit but you should survive a lot fewer hits (no matter what weapon is being used). As your skill in weapons goes up you can break down armor quicker or hit easier (but it shouldn't be like MW where you hit but you don't, the character should actually dodge away). Swords should be better for hitting quick people (more accurate, lower damage), hammers should be better for heavy armor low mobility.

So your skill should determine your chance to hit and your chance to survive hits, but it shouldn't be like it is in either MW or TESIV, but a mix of both.

let me start by saying sorry for terrible spelling and grammer

how about instead of the normal crosshair...

we have a radicle that starts out kinda big, like covering most of the enemies body. and as u increase in skill it would get smaller...so your still gonna hit almost every time, depending on whether the other guy blocks or parries or dodges or what ever, but you'll hit randomly wherever the radicle is located. say you want to go for the head, and your at a realativly low level, the radicle will be somewhat huge, so you center it on the other guys face, your attack could hit anywhere within the radicle...so you could cleanly miss the guys head...or hit him in the fricken arm, cus your very unexperienced. combine this with your character being slower, cus your low level. and i think it would make even the best twitch player feel like theyre actually learning how to fight with whatever weapon is being used. and the radicle can be tweeked to work right with all weapons, melee and ranged. add things like encumberace and fatigue levels to the factoring of the radicle size also. i think this would be a good balance between character skill, and player skill, and would make combat more fun than whats been in tes games past.

hmm i sure hope everyone gets what im gettin at here.

A reticle system is perfect for bows and arrows. If you imagine the cirlce on screen rather than a crosshair, the farther a target is from you, the less space they take up in the reticle. Each arrow has a chance to hit anywhere within that circle. (Instead of an infinite number of points or arrowhead sized points, there would maybe be a grid of 20 or so possible zones)

Somebody 3 feet away will probably have their torso completely fill the area, making it impossible to miss. Somebody 20 feet away will have their body, head to toe fill the reticle, giving you about a 2/3 chance to miss, 1/6 chance to hit somewhere below their waist, and 1/6 to hit above their waste.

As your skill went higher, the reitcle would shrink, meaning even at longer distances maybe you could fit the circle around just the head and chest, where you'd have maybe a 1/10 chance of missing.

That is actually not to bad for weapons either.


I guess I don't have anything else to say.

Hmm, yeah, so what you're saying is, we should be able to kill anything in one hit, regardless of our skills, because it's realistic? Next thread, please :facepalm:

EDIT: It actually wouldn't bother me too much what the combat system is, I just want increased modability, that lets us create our own combat systems. I get it would be tricky, and would take a year or two, but I know there would definatly be a team devoted to it.

REAL armor doesn't stop weapons from hitting you, it mainly prevents those light "jabs" from doing damage, so the opponent needs to take a serious (and more easily countered) wind-up to actually hurt you. The tradeoff with armor is that it makes you LESS AGILE, and MORE likely to be hit, but guarantees that only the harder shots will have any serious effect, and increases the overall difficulty of hitting those smaller unguarded (or less guarded) areas.

It's not that one or two good shots should end the fight right away, but a series of lighter hits early on should reduce the ability of the opponent to stop those lethal full swings when it finally comes down to it. At that point, once the opponent can't counter them, one or two solid hits SHOULD kill. Locational damage with reductions in effectiveness would certainly make it a lot more realistic in that sense, before the "final" shots. One-hit "insta-kills" should be nearly impossible at anything less than "amazing" skill levels against any competent opponent. Versus mudcrabs, that should happen regularly, at least after you've become reasonably proficent with your weapon.

The main differences between armor types are not "heavy" and "light", but "rigid" and "flexible", and having one overall armor skill wouldn't be totally out of the realm of reason (whereas more weapon skills would make sense, in my opinion). The various materials should cover the entire spectrum from high-protection/low-durability to low-protection/high-durability, with various weights, costs, repair difficulties, etc. One's choice of armor should be MEANINGFUL, not just one more brief step in the natural progression of worse to better as the game advances (as in Oblivion).

Generally speaking, I'm all in favor of a more "character skill" oriented game, but with the option for the player to manually "push" things a little (NOT like the speechcraft and lockpick mini-games, where character skill was "irrelevant").

The down side of Morrowind's mechanics was that there was no way to "manage" failure in some things like combat. Others, like Spellcasting, could be controlled by making weaker or stronger custom spells better suited to the character's abilities to cast them. Alchemy, on the other hand, was strictly a "pass/fail" process, with no control over the odds of success. Combat had no way to manage failure, since the odds of hitting were not affected by the type of attack, the strength of the strike (full windup for rated damage or quick jab for less), or anything else that you could vary. Having the option to try "alternate" attack forms with lower odds to hit, but greater damage potential, would be one way to handle it. Rather than just the attack button, you'd have to hold another control at the same time to trigger the "riskier" maneuvers. For those who don't want to miss too often, just stick with the base attack. A slider to control just HOW much risk you are willing to take with those alternate attacks (and how much benefit if/when they succeed) would be perfect. A similar slider to control the strength, duration, or area of effect of spells of a certain type would also be welcome. The grade of alchemy apparatus or repair tools could control the amount of risk of failure in using them. If you want to make STRONG potions with Master apparatus, the odds should be a lot worse than making a weak one with novice gear; if you want to repair harder materials which require a higher grade hammer, then you're less likely to succeed than if you try fixing some basic iron or leather.

yes exactly...but this same idea can be modified to work fot melee weapons, and even ranged spells. and thrown weapons, if theyre in.

What is an RPG?

It is tempting to say that an RPG is a game where you play a role, but by this definition RPGs would also include games such as Super Mario (you are playing the role of a fat Italian plumber who can shoot fireballs), Grand Prix (you are playing the role of a Formula 1 racer), and Halo (you're playing the role of Master Chief). Most games have you play the role of someone. What makes an RPG is the ability of the player to choose the role he or she wishes to play.

More strictly an RPG is a game where you can customize the protagonist you are playing and where your gameplay experience changes based on how you customize the protagonist.

Customizing the protagonist can be done in two ways. One way is customizing the physical aspects of the character such as name, apperance, and abilities. Another is customizing the character's personality and moral values, which is done by presenting the player with ingame choices and their consequences. So customizing in the above definition is meant in the broadest possible sense, from picking your name to the choices you get to make in the game.

The quality of a game as an RPG can thus be measured by the amount in which the player can customize the protagonist and how much that changes the gameplay experience. The more you can customize your character, and the more this customization impacts your gameplay experience, the better the game is as an RPG. (At this point I'd like to mention that the quality of a game as an RPG is not the same as the quality of the game. Just because a game isn't a good RPG, doesn't mean it isn't a good game.)


Player skill vs. character skill

Every game depends on player skill to some degree. The question is which skills it uses. Oblivion combat for example makes greater use of player reflexes while the original Fallout combat used the players ability of tactical thinking (positioning your character, using the most efficient of the weapons multiple attack modes, and so forth).

My opinion is that a first person game works best when it uses the players reflexes to handle combat and so Oblivion did somewhat better than Morrowind. The main problem with Oblivion's combat were not the formulas, but the variables. Weapon damage in general was too low in compare to hit points and the difference between low level and high level characters was too large. If weapons would do between 20 and 50 damage while everybody had between 100 and 300 HP it would have been mostly fine. Of course this doesn't mean there is no space for improvement.

One method I think would work well would be if weapons always hit Oblivion style, but the damage would be a random number between minimum damage and maximum damage. Maximum damage wouldn't depend on skill, but it would get a bonus from Strength. Minimum damage on the other hand would be a percentage of maximum damage equal to your skill. For example if maximum damage for a weapon was 50 and your skill was 20, minimum damage would be 20% of 50, which is 10. Then the weapon would do between 10 and 50 damage. Low damage rolls would represent poor hits that barely connected, while high damage rolls would represent good solid hits. A refinement of the system could use an effective weapon skill to determine damage rather than your absolute weapon skill. This effective skill would be adjusted based on the skill, agility, and luck of the enemy you are fighting, so that if you and the enemy are equaly skilled, equally agile, and equaly lucky your effective skill would always be 50.

Possibly the formula for effective skill could be: 50 + (attacker's weapon skill - defender's dodge skill) + (attacker's Agility - defender's Agility)/5 + (attacker's Luck - defender's Luck)/10

Another thing weapon skill could do is influence weapon speed. Weapons could have let's say half the speed they had in Oblivion, but you'd get a 2% bonus to speed for each point of weapon skill. Then with 50 skill your attacks would be 2x as fast as with 0 skill, and with 100 skill you'd be half faster than with 50 skill (and 3x as fast as with 0 skill). These are just numbers I'm throwing in from the top of my head, they could easily be adjusted to whatever fits best. This effect on weapon speed would be most interesting if enemies were actively trying to dodge your attacks.

good idea...couple this with the radicle idea, and we would have something to work with.

edit: a good healthy mix between player skill and character skill...cus i actually wanna be in control...but still have success depend on stats!? if that makes sense.

Because of the way the TES series uses First Person Perspective, I feel that hitting should be 100% determined by physics, and not some dice roll. Then we can all talk about how character skill should impact the physics. Here I'm talking about the fact that if I swing my weapon at something an it is within reach when the animation finishes, then I hit the target, how I hit, and what difference it's gonna make I'm totally fine with that being determined by character skill.

Things that can effect the animation itself could be speed and weapon skill, while things that effect what happens when I hit could be everything appropriate for that, weapon skill, speed, strength, agility.

Critical hit, and Critical Failure are things I would find funny if implemented.

I like it. Glancing blows are represented by minimum damage, and combine that with Keltic Viking's targeting, and I'd say we got ourselves a competent combat system.

But, level scaling and ridiculous amount of NPC health needs to be adjusted for this to be perfect.

I agree here, but to a lesser degree this is just like OB. So, with the whole *reticle system, player skill can decide player swing physics. Like Kovacius posted but expanded for weapons

* nevigrofnu, you can smack me for this, but its reticle, not radicle.

...or else face ridicule.

I personally think stats should affect dmg (since strength will obivously make you hit people harder)... It's the skill part tha tis difficult... I personally think that an RPG, atleast one like TES should be based around your characters level of skill, this is not an FPS, it's about what you learn your character. That said, I see the point that weapon skill merely making you able to hit someone is kiiinda lame... and i honestly wouldn't like to go back to MW hacking the air style...

I suggest you always hitting your target, with weaponskill increasing armor penetration, which makes sense, since skill is how well you aim your strike... And to make it balanced against unarmoured enemies it should also increase weapon base damage, but not to the extend of OB

I understand what you're saying. Can't see I agree with it though.

I think that locational damage and reticules are wonderful ideas, but I think they could be taken further.

Parrying and dodging are really useful methods of setting up for an attack. The higher one's Block or Dodge skill, the larger the window for a precise "critical parry" of sorts.

Say an attacker launched a lunging attack and was successfully critical-parried; their weapon and body would continue in the direction of the attack, leaving them exposed for a moment. With locational damage, this could mean their sides or backs would be open. The more skilled the attacker, though, the less likely that a critical-parry will throw them off. Also, defensive fighters would have a much lower chance of being thrown off, in exchange for lesser damage.

As for reticules, I think that collision boxes on weapons would work well. The lesser the character's skill, the smaller their collision box with the weapon, but higher skills make for a slightly larger collision box.

With a combination of these systems, character skills will make a big impact on what tactics the player has to use, but a really, really good player will still have a chance at winning even with a novice.

Dragatus and Curate you guys are definitely on the right track IMHO, but I want to switch subjects slightly and say a couple of things.

First off, no matter how physics-based you make a combat system there are always dice-rolls, even in the most tactical, reflex-based FPSs, it is just a factor of how hidden those dice-rolls are from the player. The less hidden, for me at least, the more frustrating it is when failure occurs because it feels like I had no control, whereas when they are hidden, it feels more like I personally failed and that is more rewarding as a gamer.

But how do you hide dice-rolls? Simple: animation.

The issue with Oblivion's melee combat mechanics is not so much the actual factors behind it, but the lack of convincing animation to make it FEEL right.

Check out this video from Dark Messiah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4uP1YSTovs

For those who have never played it, it's a linear first-person fantasy RPG built on the Source engine, so it isn't lacking bugs and certainly isn't perfect, but the animation makes up for a lot of the seemingly random stuff that happens especially in melee combat.

Another good example for shooter fans, is the cone-of-fire technique that keeps every bullet from being 100% accurate, especially when you hold down the trigger. Now in real life, bullets come out of the muzzle of a gun the same way every time if the gun is properly engineered. But accuracy is in fact more to do with the operator and then environmental factors once the bullet leaves the muzzle (wind/gravity). A longer barrel on a weapon translates to more accuracy simply because it drives the round down the barrel in a perfectly straight line for longer and the expanding gas has more time to accelerate the round. However, the cone-of-fire in games is there to simulate how the operator adjusts to blow-back and the inherent breathing and muscle tension present in everyone's firing stance. How does a game then make you feel like you are actually firing the weapon? They simulate said muscle-tension and breathing by making the weapon's sights sway and shake ever so slightly.

Back to the Dark Messiah video, this is basically the stepping stone from which I think Beth should approach melee in their games, be sure to check out the move at 3:15. Improvements can of course be made, as you can see not everything is 100% accurate but what you might not get from the video is that this game had stats like any other RPG but they were modifiers to the chances you had of actually landing some of these moves, but the modifier was shown to the player not as a dice roll, but as an animation. Also notice that holding up your shield doesn't necessarily mean you are blocking, you are just blocking the area that is covered by your shield and enemies will go for your exposed areas.

So we can talk about formula's all day, but in the end it will be the animations that decide whether the combat feels right or not.

Sidenote: when you leveled up your magic abilities you could eventually steer fireballs and other magical projectiles, which was totally awesome and should be possible in the next TES.

I understand what you mean when you say that you can't get rid of dice rolls, when I said that to hit, should be strictly physics, I simply meant that the variables shouldn't be the typical rpg mechanics for to-hit, but should be the positioning, movement, and reach of the player and the opponent(s), and that the characters skills should simply determine the animation and damage, and whatever else might be appropriate, which then indirectly effects physics, and so becomes part of to-hit, but not in an unrealistic sense.

I think dark messiah did well combat wise, it was basically what I saw as the best solution for TES as well.

Gotcha, yes, if the dice roll says you miss, then the animation has to reflect that (ie: the AI has to dodge in time), not the other way around. But if you swing your sword and there is no logical way, based on the animation and physics (the visual information being fed to the player), that you missed, then you hit, only then is it up to the dice to see if the enemy was able to block and if not, how much their armor mitigated the dealt damage, if at all.

I agree that the typical RPG variables don't apply, hence why Morrowind's combat could be so frustrating.

No more sword passing flawlessly through the enemy without doing any damage, which still happened in OB. It also has a lot to do with how first-person perspective is handled as well and what may seem like it would hit, from a third-person perspective might clearly be too far away, but that's no excuse. First-person camera and player model views are tricky to design but if anyone wants to make a first-person game they need to invest some R&D in visual psychology and how things visually register perception-wise versus reality. Sorry to all third-person lovers but TES has always been an FPRPG and that has to be properly optimized before anything else.

When it first came out I thought DM only existed to give Bethesda ideas on how to improve their melee combat, haha!

While I would love it if it depended on my skill, and I would like to fight the way I want to with my own gaming skills, I dont think that would fit in a RPG like oblivion. Were just back seat drivers, and watch our character for for us.

Oblivion's combat looked right and felt right, but so did Morrowind's. I can't say that I'm convinced that combat in either game is lacking anything of substance compared to Dark Messiah.

That looks great!

I think I get what you're saying. I hated shooting someone in the head with a bow only to have it just stick through their head, leaving them unaffected, still charging and attacking you.

There are ways they can fix the combat system. They could make the AI seem smarter (blocking most of your blows), they could make the cursor move around a lot when you're trying to aim at someone with the bow, etc. Hitting someone with a sword is going to really damage them. I'd like to see the next Elder Scrolls a lot more gory, similar to what they did with Fallout 3. You should be able to behead someone, cut their arms off, impale them, etc.