[REQ] Fighting

Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 4:53 pm

I should kill a mudcrab with one blow. But there is nothing epic in killing a Mudcrab unless it eats your right big toe and your right index and middle fingers.

On the other hand, "Hit, hit, miss, miss, hit, miss, hit" is the definition of epic battles. If two non-agile opponents meet, then there could be hit, hit ,hit, hit. But if my opponent is fast, I want to see the dodging.

A Mudcrab shouldn't stand a chance with a good weapon I have, even if my skills were low. And chance to hit must be close to %99 as a Mudcrab is just slower than anything. This should add up to formula.

Morrowind's hit chance formula.
Chance to hit = Attacker's weapon skill * 1.25 + Atr's Attack - Defender's Sanctuary + (Atr's Agility - Dfndr's Agility) * 0.25 + (Atr's Luck - Dfnder's Luck) * 0.125

Your damage is modified by your Strength, with a Strength of 50 being the 'baseline' - so if your Strength is 100, you will deal 50% more than the listed damage, with 0 strength you will deal 50% less than the listed damage. Note that this is true for all weapon types, not just those with Strength as the controlling attribute. The amount of damage dealt is modified by your opponent's armor rating. The basic calculation is
(Damage * Damage) / (Damage + Opponent Armor Rating)

Creatures have no armor rating.


Now that I am looking at it, I can see the influence of speed is missing. Also weapon skill influence must be decreased and balanced in damage instead.

I would love if someone can break down that formula(influence of agility, skill in percents) and propose a better formulation(to mod it for Morrowind). For example, two low level agility fighters must end up with hit, hit, hit, hit while two high level agility fighters will end up more misses.

Test case:
50 agility player versus 15 agility Mudcrab. Mudcrab's speed is also 6. Let's say a blunt weapon with 35 weapon skill. How does this play out?

Maybe a normalized agility with speed. I know speed is helping player and agility the character but speed still must have some capping influence on agility. That mudcrab should not survive. :P To balance it, let's give Mudcrab high attack. I will assume mudcrabs are excellent in their weapon skills, by nature. They can bite you pretty bad, that's where armor rating comes into play.
Armor is used to reduce damage from physical attacks. The strength of armor is known as Armor Rating, or AR. The AR for each piece of armor is
 BaseAR * ( ArmorSkill / 30 )


The AR for each unarmored slot, including shield, is
UnarmoredSkill * UnarmoredSkill * 0.0065


Total AR is
Cuirass * .3 + (Shield + Helm + Greaves + Boots + RPauldron + LPauldron) * .1 + (RGauntlet/Bracer + LGauntlet/Bracer) * .05


In other words, Cuirass is 30%; Shield, Helm, Greaves, Boots, RPauldron, and LPauldron are 10% each; RGauntlet/Bracer and LGauntlet/Bracer are 5% each.


I think those formulas are incomplete, Where is fatigue? Agility, speed, strength won't be the same for someone just out of a heavy long combat.

I really want this to change.

  • Does Marksmanship need a different formula? And Hand to Hand?
  • Do you feel comfortable with weapon skills having too much influence(maybe bigger than agility) in hit chance while none in final damage?
  • Do you think the relativeness of Attacker's and Defender's agility works out? For example, how does this sound "two low level agility fighters must end up with hit, hit, hit, hit while two high level agility fighters will end up more misses.", better?

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Epul Kedah
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 2:09 am

*rubs temples* Uh, that made my brain hurt.

Agility is supposed to affect a character's ability to hit enemies with weapons (and with fists) and to dodge blows and missiles (ranged weapon attacks). So, it should definitely come into play when determining whether or not an attack hits or misses.

Does Speed (the attribute) affect the weapon speed (which is a fixed number)? The attribute description on UESP indicates it only affects walking speed. I think speed should affect attack speed (if possible), as well as casting speed (if possible).

Hand-to-Hand - does it affect creatures with normal weapon resistance? I've never tried. If it isn't able to hit ghosts, then it is nerfed as a weapon skill.

STR damage - works for weapon skills that rely on STR to do damage. But I'm of the mind that a good jab in the right place would be more lethal than a wallop in the wrong place (i.e. stab in the gut vs. a big punch in the washboard abs). Which is to say, low-str characters who want to RP with Marksman and Shortblade are crippled by a lower STR than, say, a knight. Perhaps the governing attribute of the skill should be the determining factor for Damage dealt by that weapon. Not sure if you can have different attack formulas tailored to different skills, though.

If it would be possible to tweak that 30%, 10% stuff, that would be wonderful. The game makes no distinction between small and tower shields - you'd think a tower shield would intercept more blows, but it still is 10%. =/

Aren't these formulas hardcoded? How could they be modded?

Pardon my rambling! :bonk:
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Heather Dawson
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 3:02 pm

I don't think speed should have an effect in combat. Agility is better than speed in the case of battle the way I see it: Speed effects the swiftness with which you move your legs, but Agility effects the swiftness and proficiency in which you move your entire body.

I think as things are, Morrowind's combat system is "perfect". The only thing I would like to see is "dodge" animations for both parties of combat and "fumble" animations. Dodge would play if it was the other party's agility that caused the miss, fumble would play if it was the attacker's (you or the enemy, whoever is "swinging") poor proficiency with the weapon that caused the miss. A dodge would be like a forced and quick "hop back" kind of like how enemies do for misses in JRPGs like Final Fantasy while a fumble would be a first/third person animation where one visibly messes up with their weapon, over/under-swinging in the wrong direction.
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Greg Cavaliere
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 4:21 pm

Rumbling is good. We should fire some nerve cells on this. It was a post http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107268-fighting/ but I decided to post it here. And we can't let hardcoded stuff to stop us, we never did. (cough cough Hrnchamd cough cough) :) It is just a formula.

The way strength influence damage is about the same with Speed. You can stab harder and/or faster. The animation doesn't need to reflect the speed change(too deep in the engine) but it can show inside the damage formula. Big arms rely on strength where small arms rely on speed more. Two handed vs one handed blunts/axes and short blades vs long blades. If there is one I want to see the speed change is drawing bows (but I want it to rely more on strength). It can be that the speed of the drawing animation can stay the same but maybe the arrow can fly faster with quick releases.

I think the armor influence must not be an absolute. There has to be a ">" threshold. Armor should protect me fully just like block protects me. I wear heavy armor for a reason! Also hit chance should be affected greatly with armor coverage. It would be perfect to have different weapons vs different armor matches.

(Also on a side note, I proposed a similar method on health damage, small wounds regenerates but heavy wounds need treatment.)

@Enzo Dragon,
I like Morrowind's combat. But it can be a little improved. I love misses. But not against a Speed 6 Mudcrab. I propose speed normalizing final agility, it doesn't need be determining stat for high level content but it should be there to solve the Mudcrab case. Also even with 50 vs 15 agility fight, Mudcrab still has an unfair chance. But on a side note, I am assuming that shell can protect it from blows, it can be the same in the end! :P

I searched for unarmored for creatures. But there is none. They do have a shield option though. Maybe they can have invisible shields.

What I have in my mind is simulating misses as blocks and armor hits mostly. For armor hits if there is a sound cue just like in blocking it can work.
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Charlotte Buckley
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 9:20 pm

Rumbling is good. We should fire some nerve cells on this. It was a post http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107268-fighting/ but I decided to post it here. And we can't let hardcoded stuff to stop us, we never did. (cough cough Hrnchamd cough cough) :) It is just a formula.

The way strength influence damage is about the same with Speed. You can stab harder and/or faster. The animation doesn't need to reflect the speed change(too deep in the engine) but it can show inside the damage formula. Big arms rely on strength where small arms rely on speed more. Two handed vs one handed blunts/axes and short blades vs long blades. If there is one I want to see the speed change is drawing bows (but I want it to rely more on strength). It can be that the speed of the drawing animation can stay the same but maybe the arrow can fly faster with quick releases.

I think the armor influence must not be an absolute. There has to be a ">" threshold. Armor should protect me fully just like block protects me. I wear heavy armor for a reason! Also hit chance should be affected greatly with armor coverage. It would be perfect to have different weapons vs different armor matches.

(Also on a side note, I proposed a similar method on health damage, small wounds regenerates but heavy wounds need treatment.)

@Enzo Dragon,
I like Morrowind's combat. But it can be a little improved. I love misses. But not against a Speed 6 Mudcrap. I propose speed normalizing final agility, it doesn't need be determining stat for high level content but it should be there to solve the Mudcrap case. Also even with 50 vs 15 agility fight, Mudcrap still has an unfair chance. But on a side note, I am assuming that shell can protect it from blows, it can be the same in the end! :P

I searched for unarmored for creatures. But there is none. They do have a shield option though. Maybe they can have invisible shields.

What I have in my mind is simulating misses as blocks and armor hits mostly. For armor hits if there is a sound cue just like in blocking it can work.

The bolded part alone would be super-awesome. I mean: if we can't have the animations for dodging, we can at least put the "armor hit" sound in place of the "woosh" sound normally played when a miss occurs. That would mean the combat would also LOOK better.
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Rachel Eloise Getoutofmyface
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 12:43 pm

The bolded part alone would be super-awesome. I mean: if we can't have the animations for dodging, we can at least put the "armor hit" sound in place of the "woosh" sound normally played when a miss occurs. That would mean the combat would also LOOK better.

hmmm, I don't know
It would be weird to have the Sound but not the correct Animation happen.
Also, if you're missing, but hearing "Clang" to simulate a hit, then you would be confused as to why the enemies HP isn't going down. Or why they're not getting knocked back/over.

(unless I missed a point somewhere)

Other than that, I do like the ideas here.
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Lily Something
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 3:02 pm

hmmm, I don't know
It would be weird to have the Sound but not the correct Animation happen.
Also, if you're missing, but hearing "Clang" to simulate a hit, then you would be confused as to why the enemies HP isn't going down. Or why they're not getting knocked back/over.

(unless I missed a point somewhere)

Other than that, I do like the ideas here.

When I played Morrowind back then there wasn't any enemy health indicator. My confusion can't be expressed.

Block sound
Armor hit sound
Actual hit sound

I think that can be learned.

There is also PC/NPC/creature pain voice/sounds and some limited animations. With a little bit organizing what happens when, there can at least the supposition of a real combat!

I saw this this other thread.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107390-morrowind-combat-fail/page__view__findpost__p__16218449
Maybe speed overriding agility not as an attribute but as an in game velocity. Maybe there is a way to make a creature jumps in to place and NPCs changing stance quickly, foot works. Don't get me wrong, I want MORE MISSES! But covering cases such as Mudcrab and that above video.
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Etta Hargrave
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 3:41 am

Block sound
Armor hit sound
Actual hit sound

I think that can be learned.

Good point.

I think this might be one of things I need to see/feel in action before I decide if it works through-out the entire game.
Also, like you mention, where is Fatigue in all this?
(Also on a side note, I proposed a similar method on health damage, small wounds regenerates but heavy wounds need treatment.)

MWSE could probably do this, but it seems like it would be a very intensive script check for every hit.

Just adding some thoughts. :)
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Natalie J Webster
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 1:12 am

Good point.

I think this might be one of things I need to see/feel in action before I decide if it works through-out the entire game.
Also, like you mention, where is Fatigue in all this?

MWSE could probably do this, but it seems like it would be a very intensive script check for every hit.

Just adding some thoughts. :)

One intensive script. I like that. It can be customized for all needs. I like misses but I think it should get a little more complex in the core. Having one formula for all types of weapons doesn't cut it. So with MWSE it is possible. Let's discuss what can be done with formula? (And what is the REAL formula with luck and fatigue?)

  • Agility is one of my concerns. I don't like the relativeness of it. It should be more like this. "two low level agility fighters must end up with hit, hit, hit, hit while two high level agility fighters will end up more misses."
  • Skills can have a high hit chance base. High skill level can represent the chance of having high damage chance.
  • Armor can work with a threshold and influence the hit chance with degree of coverage. Or more like canceling the hit damage on degree of coverage, above threshold lowering with armor rating.

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TRIsha FEnnesse
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 11:44 pm

While ramblings are good, it might be easier to get some concepts started if we don't mix animation stuff together with formula stuff. ;)

Since I have no knowledge concerning new animations and their limitations, I'll just talk about formulas... more specifically, the effects of certain given, but unused stats.

Speed is a character's ability to run fast. Nothing else. How does that influence an actor's attack? Well, actually not at all. However, running fast does! It influences the momentum of a potential hit, i.e. the strength of the blow. So first note right here: Speed affects the damage, but only if the actor is running while attacking. Now, we could say that Agility does so, too; after all, Agility also means your ability to move your arm forward fast, so that's momentum right there too (and even one that doesn't require your character to run). However, I think we'll have to disregard this influence, simply because there's yet another factor that needs to be taken into account which replaces Agility in this: the weapon's speed. It is a stat that tells us how fast you can move this weapon, period. If anything at all, we'd have to let Agility influence this factor, which then in turn would affect the strength of a blow.

To summarize, we have two factors that should add to the damage you deal, which haven't been taken into account by Morrowind's formulas yet. However, if we go this far, then we must also consider that running with a dagger is easier than it is with a claymore; so the actual benefit of running while attacking should be modified by a factor that characterizes a weapon's bulkiness. We can't use weight, because it is used for other gameplay mechanics, but we could use the weapon's speed again. But then, we also have to consider that at the same velocity, a heavy weapon will deal much more damage than a light one, so weapon's speed must also be used in the negative sense.

Okay, let me make this short - my proposed formula for damage looks something like this (assuming that 1 / Weapon Speed is the factor for the positive effect of a weapon's size/weight/bulkiness):
(Damage * Damage) / (Damage + Opponent Armor Rating) * ( Speed * Weapon Speed * A + Weapon Speed * Agility Influence * B ) / ( Weapon Speed * C )

Or, simpler:
(Damage * Damage) / (Damage + Opponent Armor Rating) * ( Speed * A + Agility Influence * B ) / C

You may notice that Weapon Speed has disappeared from the formula again.

If the character is NOT running, then A will be zero, otherwise it will be a simple modifier for balancing reasons, just like B and C. Agility Influence is a (small) factor that influences the momentum of your hand moving forward, but it might even be neglectable (i.e. equal to 1). The values of A, B and C in relation to each other are more important; how much influence should running while attacking have?
Assuming we neglect Agility Influence, and we say that B = 1. Should a person with 100 Speed deal twice the amount of damage while running compared to when he's standing still? If so, then A needs to be 0.01. C would finally allow us to balance out overall damage, and its value would have to be determined by playtesting.

One comment about this: While I do believe that this is a good (and mostly, also physically correct) way of introducing Speed to Fighting, it does have a huge problem, and that is that neither NPCs nor creatures actually run while fighting - they halt just before each attack. One would have to alter their combat behavior, otherwise this would just be another way of making the player a bit more powerful.
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Kayla Oatney
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 2:23 pm

There might also be a problem with including fatigue into the calculations for NPCs/creatures since they always run to close with the player. I can keep a slower opponent's fatigue low by continually stepping back and forcing them to constantly close for melee combat - they'll never walk to conserve fatigue and only start regenerating fatigue when standing in the same spot. The player already has a tactical advantage in that regard, one might say an exploitative advantage.

@vtastek ... hehe, your misspelling of mudcrab is amusing - there's your problem, the mudcraps are the pathetic incompetent variety! :laugh:
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Skrapp Stephens
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:21 pm

There might also be a problem with including fatigue into the calculations for NPCs/creatures since they always run to close with the player. I can keep a slower opponent's fatigue low by continually stepping back and forcing them to constantly close for melee combat - they'll never walk to conserve fatigue and only start regenerating fatigue when standing in the same spot. The player already has a tactical advantage in that regard, one might say an exploitative advantage.

@vtastek ... hehe, your misspelling of mudcrab is amusing - there's your problem, the mudcraps are the pathetic incompetent variety! :laugh:

If you sneak up on an enemy and lock them into my companion status bars mod, you can watch this unfold before your very eyes! :evil: During testing, I locked in a Mournhold guard and attacked him. He chased me swinging a sword, and his fatigue was zero within about 70-90 seconds. Cue hand-to-hand massacre. Even standing still, NPCs do not regenerate fatigue fast enough to recover from their own attacks.

Wait, you met a what the other day!?

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Jason Wolf
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 4:24 am

The problem is it's not very clear what speed and agility are. Your ability to hit someone should depend on three things on your side- your reaction time, your movement speed, and your accuracy; while the ability to not get hit would depend mostly on two things: your reaction time and your "dodging skill". Movement speed is far less important than your reaction time here, or your ability to predict what your opponent might do, but this is risky and inconsistent. I guess it might be a part of the "dodging skill" after all, but what I meant by that is being trained in the right movements.
To break it down- when somebody attacks you in a certain manner, first you must see it coming, then you must "know what to do" then last and least you have to physically move fast enough to get out of the way, most of the time taken is deciding what to do(you shouldn't be deciding in fact, it has to be drilled to be instinctive) but if you don't see it or guess correctly everything else is moot.

That's humans at least. I don't think crabs can grasp the idea of dodging. So it'd be their reaction time and how fast they run away.
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Cameron Wood
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 1:43 am

While ramblings are good, it might be easier to get some concepts started if we don't mix animation stuff together with formula stuff. ;)

Since I have no knowledge concerning new animations and their limitations, I'll just talk about formulas... more specifically, the effects of certain given, but unused stats.

Speed is a character's ability to run fast. Nothing else. How does that influence an actor's attack? Well, actually not at all. However, running fast does! It influences the momentum of a potential hit, i.e. the strength of the blow. So first note right here: Speed affects the damage, but only if the actor is running while attacking. Now, we could say that Agility does so, too; after all, Agility also means your ability to move your arm forward fast, so that's momentum right there too (and even one that doesn't require your character to run). However, I think we'll have to disregard this influence, simply because there's yet another factor that needs to be taken into account which replaces Agility in this: the weapon's speed. It is a stat that tells us how fast you can move this weapon, period. If anything at all, we'd have to let Agility influence this factor, which then in turn would affect the strength of a blow.

To summarize, we have two factors that should add to the damage you deal, which haven't been taken into account by Morrowind's formulas yet. However, if we go this far, then we must also consider that running with a dagger is easier than it is with a claymore; so the actual benefit of running while attacking should be modified by a factor that characterizes a weapon's bulkiness. We can't use weight, because it is used for other gameplay mechanics, but we could use the weapon's speed again. But then, we also have to consider that at the same velocity, a heavy weapon will deal much more damage than a light one, so weapon's speed must also be used in the negative sense.

Okay, let me make this short - my proposed formula for damage looks something like this (assuming that 1 / Weapon Speed is the factor for the positive effect of a weapon's size/weight/bulkiness):
(Damage * Damage) / (Damage + Opponent Armor Rating) * ( Speed * Weapon Speed * A + Weapon Speed * Agility Influence * B ) / ( Weapon Speed * C )

Or, simpler:
(Damage * Damage) / (Damage + Opponent Armor Rating) * ( Speed * A + Agility Influence * B ) / C

You may notice that Weapon Speed has disappeared from the formula again.

If the character is NOT running, then A will be zero, otherwise it will be a simple modifier for balancing reasons, just like B and C. Agility Influence is a (small) factor that influences the momentum of your hand moving forward, but it might even be neglectable (i.e. equal to 1). The values of A, B and C in relation to each other are more important; how much influence should running while attacking have?
Assuming we neglect Agility Influence, and we say that B = 1. Should a person with 100 Speed deal twice the amount of damage while running compared to when he's standing still? If so, then A needs to be 0.01. C would finally allow us to balance out overall damage, and its value would have to be determined by playtesting.

One comment about this: While I do believe that this is a good (and mostly, also physically correct) way of introducing Speed to Fighting, it does have a huge problem, and that is that neither NPCs nor creatures actually run while fighting - they halt just before each attack. One would have to alter their combat behavior, otherwise this would just be another way of making the player a bit more powerful.

You'd only ever do a "running attack" if you were jousting.
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Dagan Wilkin
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:06 pm

While ramblings are good, it might be easier to get some concepts started if we don't mix animation stuff together with formula stuff. ;)

snip

Weapon speed, I didn't know that.(checking UESP) I agree if we are going to add speed in combination, AI should use more movements. Rather than damage I'm more interested in a formula for hit chance that use Agility as prime component but final agility is capped by speed.(or on the fly movement speed.)

I'm glad you decided to contribute. Thanks.

There might also be a problem with including fatigue into the calculations for NPCs/creatures since they always run to close with the player. I can keep a slower opponent's fatigue low by continually stepping back and forcing them to constantly close for melee combat - they'll never walk to conserve fatigue and only start regenerating fatigue when standing in the same spot. The player already has a tactical advantage in that regard, one might say an exploitative advantage.

@vtastek ... hehe, your misspelling of mudcrab is amusing - there's your problem, the mudcraps are the pathetic incompetent variety! :laugh:

I use that exploit all the time. That's where Intelligence must play a role. :P (Those swamps can be depth pits, while actor standing, hurt speed(I wonder if it is possible to combine freeze spells with paralyze and burden spells. 0-50, burden %50 enc, 50-75, burden %100, 75-100 paralyze. For gameplay.) then sink actor and also they are already at water height so actor drawns. :P Smart NPCs don't walk on them, others will. I wonder if it is possible. I think all actors use the same paths grids. :glare: )

PS. Honestly I wasn't typing that at all, I was copy-pasting. But I can't remember where I copied that first. Youtube or this forums(or myself). (I'm not good with names.) On the other hand I just checked the number of mudcraps in my posts is amusing.

@merunnin,
yes I do think that a mudcrab with 15 agility should show. And that 6 speed should also show. It has no right to do dodging!

Also I like your "first you must see it coming" comment, it is particularly important. I do think stealth attacks from behind must have 100% hit chance. The actual sneaking ability will balance the how close you can get(which is already there). From there it must be 100% chance and it should be lethal too(with right weapon skill).

Although I am fairly certain, handtohand and marksman should work completely different. I would love to have a sneak hand-to-hand attack which results in opponent collapsing and staying that way for a long time. And Marksman should account the proximety to opponent for hit chance.
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Cheville Thompson
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 11:22 pm

:facepalm: Spent so much time writing a post, and then I accidentally close the tab. *sigh*

You'd only ever do a "running attack" if you were jousting.

What do you mean? And what does it have to do with my post? If you think of realistic fighting, then I have to admit that I'm a rather big fan of cinematic fighting that looks realistic. I also know that many people do want a fighting system where you can actually charge your enemy in order to deliver stronger blows.
What confuses me is that I didn't even talk about the realism of "running attacks", I just argued that the only way to include Speed in the formulas is if we check whether the player is running, and give him a Speed-based bonus on damage then.

@vtastek: I think I need to clarify something concerning Speed vs Agility. I had a very nice example of Usain Bolt vs David Beckham in my last post, but oh well...
First off, I think it's a misunderstanding of the concept of primary attributes if you suggest that one should cap another. Primary attributes are supposed to be separate, equally important categories into which a living being's abilities can be sorted. That is a very strong simplification, yes, but it is still a good approximation. So if you say that Agility is capped by Speed, then that just means that you want a system that has one attribute (Agility) less, and maybe a couple more skills instead that rely on the now more important attribute Speed. That would be plausible and well, however the combination of both systems, where one primary attribute is capped by another even though the second one doesn't have anything to do with combat while the first one is the most important attribute of combat, that just seems like very bad style.

That said, I personally also think that it makes sense to divide Agility and Speed, as long as we assume that Speed really just means your ability to run fast. From personal experience, I can say that being a rather agile person doesn't mean you're also fast. In school, I had very bad results in 100 m sprint races, but was one of the best when it came to games that required outmaneuvering your opponents. If in soccer you have the ball and are running towards the goal, it doesn't matter how fast you are running - what matters is that you are able to keep the ball by doing tricks, looking for gaps, having full control over your body.

About your mudcrab with Agility 15 and Speed 6: Okay, you're using a big bulky creature here to prove your point. Of course the only way for a mudcrab to dodge your attacks is to move out of the way, which would technically be covered by Speed. However, I believe that this is a pretty bad example if we want to talk about changing the whole fighting system, because usually your enemies are NPCs or at least bipedal creatures, which have a lot more possibilities to dodge attacks that are not dependent on Speed, but on coordination and reflexes.
Another point is that the stats become even more abstract for creatures than they already are for NPCs or the player, which is why you shouldn't pay too much attention on the actual numbers. A mudcrab has a Speed of 6, but that's only because it's supposed to be a creature that walks slowly and also charges you slowly. It doesn't mean that the creature can't use its feet more effectively in a close combat situation! Also, about the Agility of 15: Maybe it's unrealistic that you don't hit that big bulky creature more often, but then it's also unrealistic that it doesn't block some of your attacks with its gigantic chelae. So I'd say: Give the mudcrab a cool blocking animation and give it a high blocking skill, and then set Agility to 0. Now that would be realistic. The problem is just that creatures don't have skills, as far as I know. To approximate the high blocking skill a crab should have, giving it a high Agility is a pretty good idea. In short: If we can give the mudcrab a dodging animation that actually is a blocking animation, all problems are solved.
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Madison Poo
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 2:20 pm

What do you mean? And what does it have to do with my post? If you think of realistic fighting, then I have to admit that I'm a rather big fan of cinematic fighting that looks realistic. I also know that many people do want a fighting system where you can actually charge your enemy in order to deliver stronger blows.
What confuses me is that I didn't even talk about the realism of "running attacks", I just argued that the only way to include Speed in the formulas is if we check whether the player is running, and give him a Speed-based bonus on damage then.


Well you mentioned NPCs don't run while attacking, just saying there's nothing wrong with that at all, they're not playing Gridiron after all. ("football" to yanks)
Although come to think of it, being able to tackle enemies would be well cool. There are such mods for oblivion and fallout where you can knock your enemies over by running into them, though I think it should be a seperate animation/action./end OT.

Vtastek: Yep, a mudcrab and most stupider animals don't have the concenpt of dodging, and the mudcrab is just a big lump anyway, he has no body parts to move out of the way(though maybe he can slip into his shell like a tortoise hehe). So as long as you don't miss(poor accuracy) and the crab's whitin range, every single strike should connect until he runs off your crosshair or out of range.I don't know if the inability to dodge should be applied to all animals though, there's video on youtube where a lion dodges several bullets and comes within inches of the hunter before being shot by someone else. Also by accuracy, I don't mean just with ranged weapons- for example, a very accurate puncher always catches his opponent's jaw to knock him out, or with a spear you want to accurately stab him where there are gaps in his shield/armour. I think accuracy would be morrowind's "weapon skill". Since morrowind has no "reaction time" stat, what do you plan to use for it? Agility? or is Speed both movement speed and reaction speed? I think not since you can be quick at striking but have a very slow reaction time, like me. :D
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Teghan Harris
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 6:48 pm

snip
So I'd say: Give the mudcrab a cool blocking animation and give it a high blocking skill, and then set Agility to 0. Now that would be realistic. The problem is just that creatures don't have skills, as far as I know. To approximate the high blocking skill a crab should have, giving it a high Agility is a pretty good idea. In short: If we can give the mudcrab a dodging animation that actually is a blocking animation, all problems are solved.

I love Pro Evolution Soccer(456). This game's most important aspect is when you are in control of one player, you feel you're in control of his actual version. It is not the realistic face, it is a stat system much like ours which is giving the style and abilities to the player even without seeing the face you can tell who he is. Just because of this it has very high replayability and I consider it one of the best games ever. (Fifa is doing this too with their new game, finally not all players play the same.)

I don't have many problems with most of the cases. I want more misses actually. That being said, I like your "chelae" blocking example. I agree we can give it more agility. :P But I think it would be cheating. It is a solid case and our formula should still fix the problem. Also how is it gonna stop something like this.
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/ericthered1090/Random%20Stuff/md_weapon_01.jpg

Or any other blunt weapon. It has 15 strength. It can't stop that weapon. And take note as an average humanoid I already have high stats. I have to overpower it within these simple stats.

@merunnin
"Since morrowind has no "reaction time" stat, what do you plan to use for it? Agility? or is Speed both movement speed and reaction speed? I think not since you can be quick at striking but have a very slow reaction time, like me."
That is exactly what I propose. :) I see "speed" as the speed of body parts and overall speed in meters/seconds. Using it just for walking speed is a waste of attribute. Agility is reaction time in seconds. I think the defensive maneuvers should come with weapon skills but activated with agility.

I'm not a biologist, I may be wrong:
fly vs. human

I think a fly has higher reaction times but human wins by speed and agility combination. Speed is overriding it. Some humans can't match the agility but then this weapon helps too.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Fly-swatter.jpg



:P

I'm not kidding though. This is how real life works. We need to simulate more, dice less.
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megan gleeson
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 3:56 am

Well you mentioned NPCs don't run while attacking, just saying there's nothing wrong with that at all, they're not playing Gridiron after all. ("football" to yanks)

I never said there was anything wrong with that, this is what confuses me.

@vtastek:
Okay, so now you're saying Speed should govern some of the abilities that are currently governed by Agility. This is something we can agree on, and I think it would be helpful if we could focus on possible implementations of this.

In case you are interested, I http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1085961-thoughts-on-close-combat/page__p__15829927__fromsearch__1&#entry15829927, which sadly got recognized by most as a suggestion thread for TES V, even though that's not at all what it is about. In that thread, I mostly used the attribute Agility for anything that involved movements during combat; but that could easily be changed to Speed where proper.
Some of the concepts I tried to describe there might be interesting for a possible combat overhaul for MW, too - for example, the concept of only "partly" hitting the opponent, i.e. he doesn't dodge away completely, but you don't hit him properly either.
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Marie Maillos
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 12:32 am

MWSE could probably do this, but it seems like it would be a very intensive script check for every hit.



What about a simple regeneration of hit points after fight. you fight loose 250hp out of 300hp.... fight ends and you are added a spell wich restores 10hp/sec until 30% of your health{s been restored so ending up with 100hp the rest must be healed with potions/healers. maybe could be a spell with variable magnitude say 5 to 10 hp/sec and so the amount of time would vary and if is time based rather than percentage the amount of hp regenerated would vary.

Also see this tread don{t know if the rumbling there about the angle hit is true but if it is should count on the damage formula if possible.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1104227-headshots/page__gopid__16161222&#entry16161222

It{s great that you are trying to improbe Morrowinds weared down combat system it{s great but there is just much adrenaline wasted on first person RPG{s that any mod that cand make it more real and frenetic is most than welcome!!
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cosmo valerga
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 4:24 pm

[*]Agility is one of my concerns. I don't like the relativeness of it. It should be more like this. "two low level agility fighters must end up with hit, hit, hit, hit while two high level agility fighters will end up more misses."


I think that 2 low agility figthers can also miss miss miss, think that Luck should take a big involvement on this situation, as well as willpower (when you have a will to win your adrenaline produces some level of awareness)

[*]Skills can have a high hit chance base. High skill level can represent the chance of having high damage chance.

In the end it is but high skill also means in real terms that you wield the weapon better to align weapon swings and build momentum 2 ideas
- Miss swings at a high skill can build up momentum producing a critical hit when finaly hiting.(of course on a regular intervale)
- Weapon skill participates on chance to hit mostly and minorly on damage.

[*]Armor can work with a threshold and influence the hit chance with degree of coverage. Or more like canceling the hit damage on degree of coverage, above threshold lowering with armor rating.

- Armor should asist to build a resistance limit absorbing a portion of the impact a war hammer to the chest armor or not would calm you down
Hope it helps!!
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Cathrine Jack
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 7:42 pm

"Since morrowind has no "reaction time" stat, what do you plan to use for it? Agility? or is Speed both movement speed and reaction speed? I think not since you can be quick at striking but have a very slow reaction time, like me."
That is exactly what I propose. :) I see "speed" as the speed of body parts and overall speed in meters/seconds. Using it just for walking speed is a waste of attribute. Agility is reaction time in seconds. I think the defensive maneuvers should come with weapon skills but activated with agility.

mmmmm I think that:

Agility is something like acceleration, the higher you have the quicker your reflexes (active and reactive) it afects no sprint jumps, and combat movements. (in morrowind controls what the player cant control such as evation and something that the player should control more wich is chance to hit, I think that almost every attack released with the enemy on your crosshiar should land succesful and produce either you hitting him or him block/parrying you). I thing that NPC{s and humanoid creatures should be scripted to strafe and block a LOT! more to the sides making YOU actually miss. and let the damage for the calculations.
Speed is like Top speed it means how fast you can run so use the speed when you move back so that YOU not a formula dodge an attack adding a sanctuary/blook bonnus bassed on your speed and agility while pulling back.

Just a suggestion I think that{s is twice more fun when blocking is player controled such as Combat Enchanced by Aerlon
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Lexy Corpsey
 
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Post » Thu Jan 20, 2011 1:35 am

"Since morrowind has no "reaction time" stat, what do you plan to use for it? Agility? or is Speed both movement speed and reaction speed? I think not since you can be quick at striking but have a very slow reaction time, like me."
That is exactly what I propose. :) I see "speed" as the speed of body parts and overall speed in meters/seconds. Using it just for walking speed is a waste of attribute. Agility is reaction time in seconds. I think the defensive maneuvers should come with weapon skills but activated with agility.

mmmmm I think that:

Agility is something like acceleration, the higher you have the quicker your reflexes (active and reactive) it afects no sprint jumps, and combat movements. (in morrowind controls what the player cant control such as evation and something that the player should control more wich is chance to hit, I think that almost every attack released with the enemy on your crosshiar should land succesful and produce either you hitting him or him block/parrying you). I thing that NPC{s and humanoid creatures should be scripted to strafe and block a LOT! more to the sides making YOU actually miss. and let the damage for the calculations.
Speed is like Top speed it means how fast you can run so use the speed when you move back so that YOU not a formula dodge an attack adding a sanctuary/blook bonnus bassed on your speed and agility while pulling back.

Just a suggestion I think that{s is twice more fun when blocking is player controled such as Combat Enchanced by Aerlon

No speed is not "running skill". That is atheletics.
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Matthew Aaron Evans
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 4:50 pm

Going into too much detail killed the thread and hands down, the basic premise is just too good to break.

But after 50 days, while eating some cheese, a new idea emerged. :)



So, I boiled down the matter into agility and luck. Then I came to the conclusion that there is not much can be done about agility. After that I had LUCK in my hands to work with. The big picture appeared to me in that moment, as I understood:

Chance, the problem is chance.

Miss doesn't have a name in Morrowind and where chance triumphs in such a strong way, LUCK was underrated.

I think the chance of hitting someone right in front of you should AT LEAST reflect your LUCK.

So in the new system I propose. I offer %50 guaranteed chance for a player with 50 LUCK to hit an enemy in front of him. Plain and simple. To balance maybe starting luck can be decreased. This chance will be further enhanced by agility but eventually dominated by agility.

To balance out the variety missing, I offer changing the damage dealt with dice rolls. So that one can get lucky to finish an enemy with one hit(100 skill) or have a 0 damage hit(a hit that doesn't count, a graze). Skill again will triumph.


So what do you think? Only problem is LUCK mostly stays the same way through the game, mostly. But it is a normal problem with Morrowind and player habits. I have one crazy idea about this though.

What if we calculate LUCK on actual luck. It is interesting that Morrowind counts "success". What if we can calculate the statistics of these successes and turn it into luck. I don't know how but it would be fun to experiment. I suspect some are really lucky in real life turning even computer statics in favor of themselves. :chaos:

PS. In this system, I target having way more hits than normal. As I think there are unjustifiable amount of misses. Luck will rule out most of it fairly. By tweaking damage by chance and skill levels, we can normalize this. Also we regain the disadvantage by critical failures and get it back with critical hits which is NICE.

I was totally inspired by this mod:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31120

PPS. At this point I want to tell rant something about Oblivion. Oblivion doesn't have advanced physics for combat. Correct me if I am wrong. The physicality of Oblivion's combat is simple collision detection and is no different from Morrowind's simple collision detection except for some visual cues such as sparks and some sound and some new recorded animations. The havok engine activates to show ragdoll abilities the moment when you kill your enemy, that's it. There are no advanced technology in anywhere of it. Oblivion has ABSOLUTELY NO superiority in hit mechanics. It is just same Morrowind with 100% hit chance. I think above method can bring something better than both. So increasing the hits to almost Oblivion's point but preserving the variety and dynamism of Morrowind's combat is possible.

I want to get somewhere this time. We even have an example mod.
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MARLON JOHNSON
 
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Post » Wed Jan 19, 2011 5:58 pm

It's been a while since I posted,sorry for my bad grammar. :blush:

what about animation as you said,Morrowind has the same hit mechanics as Oblivion.The only difference is sounds and animation.I heard a bit about the code patch changing something about the animation system but I'm not sure exactly what.Can someone please explain to me what it is and how easy/hard it is to animate for Morrowind.Sorry if I went off topic.

Edit:Since I have a semi good laptop with some free time I wouldn't mind learning how to.
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Harinder Ghag
 
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