There is no more or less hack and slash aspect with dice-rolls than without. You're still just hacking and slashing mindlessly, hoping you'll win.

The only reason games ever used dice-rolls was because there was no better way to simulate combat before.. I seriously wouldn't mind a combat system in the line of Mount and Blade but even better with actual sensation of slashing or crushing something.
I really enjoy a penalizing system for when someone gets hit, sure health bars are fine but what i really wanted is... if you hit the neck the dude is dead, if you hit his arm he becomes injured and slower.. instead of making it easy and just sticking armor values and health points to compensate the lack of skill to defend against attacks.

For example: A shield should not have the purpose of increasing armor values or health points.. Why do that? Just make the shield fully block any damage if it managed to deflect a enemy blow. You didn't block it? Well then your gonna suffer for it. Ofc the shield should have a durability which means if your constantly holding your shield eventually it will break do to constant blows or just simply making your tired.

I think something like this would open a entire new level to this game which is actual dedication to master the Technic of using a certain weapon and not just simply having a increased skill value at using a certain weapon and then just get a good weapon with stats. Make the player learn how to use the different weapon styles.

Whenever i hear someone saying ".... this shouldn't be in the game, its a RPG, if you want that go play something else!" I just wonder how many people actually understand the meaning of RPG.. Role Playing Game makes you take the Role of a Character in a certain fiction Story. Non of this has any implication on game Mechanics! I could very well consider a shooter a RPG since i can try to put myself in the shoes of the soldier and just simply playing the game immersing myself with character. It has nothing to do with the fact that i'm shooting a gun in 1st-person and killing stuff with one bullet! Then again.. Bethesda could just do a similar system to Vats in fallout for people who want the dice roll game and the iron-sight for people who want to actually try and hit the stuff themselfs.. I mean.. if you want to just dice roll your attacks you might as well have a system that doesent make you have to click the mouse a thousand times because the fact that your hitting doesn't determine if your actually hitting it or not.. this for me completely destroys immersion..

Well Demon Souls also didn't have fast combat with powerful enemies.
Dice rolls need to be better applied not completely removed.
Look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-d6eS4159c
Duke Patrick's SCA style combat has similar features, dice rolls applied to combat well and enemy react in combat well, so if we miss, enemy actually dodge attack not just Miss message but actual movement.

Demon's Souls compared to Oblivion? Totally different. The fight against enemies were long only if you had base weapons and tried to fight enemies in the second stage of any world or even the first in a few of them. It's pretty easy to 1 hit bosses in demon's souls too. Overall I think however that demon's souls hasn't got nowhere nearly as much slash slash slash slash as OB had, normal enemies with crappy weapons takes 10 hits to kill, a little better weapon would 2 hit the same enemy, due to the unique armor system DS has. Actual movement when missing is ofcourse an option, but for example in demon's souls you can dodge yourself, rolling and backstepping are a major part of the combat.

How much times you one hit kill False King or Man Eaters or Flame Lurker?
Oh well playing an archer in DS even more tedious then in Oblivion.

Combat in DS have one hit kill thats Enemies do at player
Crazy rolling around until backstab will be available
Crazy rolling around in heavy gear
There is block with shield option and parry but who use it, when better to do some crazy rolling around
Slow arrows
Such flaws can be fixed with mods, no they are not, while Oblivion slashes and Morrowind misses can be.
There is no ideal game until it can be modable, since more chances thats modders will fix flaws then dev's do it.
But DS was really interesting game I must say, I enjoyed by it todays when most games become simplified it has some nice hardcoe features, I wait for Dark Souls what will feature open world.

The biggest contributor to combat feeling tedious is damage sponge enemies. (I'm looking at you, albino rad scorpions...)

Enemies that are faster, stronger, smarter, etc. are great. Enemies that simply absorb absurd amounts of damage are not. No enemy that is close to your level should *ever* require you to whack away at them for half an hour.

It doesn't matter whatsoever how deep and varied your combat mechanics are, if enemies are damage sponges, your mental response when seeing them is "oh geez here we go again...". Combat encounters become a chore, and games should be fun, not tedious chores.

Morrowinds system was RPG because it relied on character skills, not player skills.
Oblivions system was hack n slash because it relied on player skills, not character skills.

'Nuff said.

No, itdidn't. Like stated Oblivion's player skill was *slash slash slash slash*. Your level in weapon skill determined the result, just like in Morrowind. You just didn't have odd hit and miss system to show it.

EDIT: Besides, I think there should be a mixture of player and character skill, or it's just boring.

Firestorm, homing soul arrow, hyper mode. All of those can ohko all bosses. Arrows are lethal with 50 dexterity and a sticky +5 compound longbow with white arrows, 350+ damage on new game +. But DS is so much different from OB the big difference is that enemies get staggered when u hit them

Then cascade weakness to magic elemental damage, drain attributes and parameters, lure to summon, stagger and disarm, shield bash and block, shooting and strafe back or use sneak attacks, Oblivion has the same option as DS for deal with hard enemies, as well as Morrowind have.
Also about staggering not all think it done well, I think there is must be check of skill attributes and parameters for decide staggering and recoils so I use an mod to fix this
Doc Block Recoil Stagger
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35933
In Morrowind some one say its even wrong to have stagger and say need to remove spears from game by this reason

Well that's morrowind, which is entirely different from Oblivion, which is entirely different from demon's souls which will be entirely different from Skryim.

I just don't understand what your point of view is on this? What are you trying to say by comparing DS and OB? :unsure2:

Boss level enemies had leveled health in Oblivion, liches, ogres, minotaur lords and similar.
and yes at high level they had far to much health.
This was best noticed if you used an unenhanced or weakly enchanted weapon.

Then you skill started to max out and you already had the best weapon around level 20 you did not become anymore lethal but the high end enemies got more health making the game harder.

You also had to much health, this made the game to easy as you could mostly ignore the enemy hits except from the staggering effect. Magic attacks was infective because it did not stagger you. Quite poisible to play trough both Oblivion and Fallout 3 without ever raising your endurance.

I agree the remark about "damage sponge enemies" being the biggest contributor to tedious combat, unfortunately increasing hit points seems to be one of the quick and easy ways developers use to make enemies more difficult. I think is also a major contributor to level disparity.

I also second the comment about not minding a combat system like Mount and Blade. Despite the repetitiveness of the available moves, I yet to find it tedious and I think one of the reasons is because of the relatively high weapon damage to hit point ratio, combat requires fewer successful strikes.

.....until you improved your primary weapons skill to something better than 20, and started hitting more often. That's what you get for taking your "preferred" skills as Minors, or using a Short Sword when you're experienced in Long Blades, or when you've been running until you're totally exhausted going into the fight. Do things that would get you killed, and guess what happens? Consequences. Face them.

I can agree that it was poorly done in MW, both because of the lack of decent "miss" animations to show WHY it happened, and because the failure rates were too steep, but the idea was right. HItting somebody in Oblivion with a 20 pound chunk of sharpened steel and having it barely scratch them because you weren't "skilled" was no improvement, it just "looked" more exciting for the "action junkies". As a RPG, that was monumentally stupid. Something "in between" the two games is badly needed, where skill matters behind the scenes, but there are no painfully obvious hit/miss "die rolls".

Good thing both Long blades and short blades are major skills and I still miss half the time. And getting better still doesn't help against the Sanctuary and Shield combination...

Yeah it was monumentally stupid, that it made sense. Your skill is low, your sword is dull, so you do minimal damage if you hit your enemy (or because he has an unreal amount of health), and you'll be able to hit him if he's standing right next to you.
Really, this "in between" thing is what Oblivion's been doing, only instead skill mainly matters in the to-hit roll, it mainly matters in damage. Oh no, it's totally not an RPG now...

What kind of response is this?

They most certainly did. Read a book or watch the History Channel sometimes (When they're not showing reality TV :brokencomputer: )

The most common form of punishment for soldiers who ran away from battle were decapitation by katana and very rarely did it take more than one swing.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps3/demonssouls hardcoe mechanic is present as one of best game features, and can show "Tedious Combat" as well as Morrowind can and Oblivion can, but if player not prepared,
Archer can shoot hundred of arrows in DS to kill enemy, as well as in Morrowind unskilled and badly equipped character will
while in DS such will be "hardcoe Feature" why in Morrowind it will be flaw of system and need to be removed instead of fixing?
Or even more when some say features was unbalanced or unpopular because of bad stats and then they become removed (enchanting, weapons variability, spells variability, equipment slots) for example Spears some says they was overpowered because of long reach and staggering (while staggering in DS is presented as good feature over Oblivion or Morrowind
) while they have below average stats in compare to different equipment,
DS have also overpowered spears does the become removed from Dark Souls? No they doesn't, and both games features Multiplayer so balancing always needed so why remove spears from game when it Single player only, when better was to fix them, thats applies to most of features thats was removed from previous TES games and become Forbidden for next games in series.

That's what I don't understand, yes game has such flaw in mechanic and there is ways to improve mechanic and fix flaws, but instead of brainstorm and give different solutions how to fix, peoples just start flaming like

devs take its into account and completely redone system with loosing all previous good features instead of fixing flaws, even more some flaws from previous system may return in new system as well.
Thats was done with many features from previous TES games, thats good we still can return such features back with mods at last partially.
Maybe thats just different vision of game developers see, From Software see something different I assume.

?

How is a decapitation with a sword not realistic?

There is NO doubt that a heavy sharp claymore can take a head clean off with a good swipe/hit.
In Saudi Arabia they execute people with large swords, it seems to be working, nasty I know.

Now whether one want that in the game or not is a matter of preference, but about questioning the realism of it is not, it IS realistic.

I wouldn't mind if one of the finishing moves was a decapitation if you use an axe or sword, it makes sense.

There should be weapon specific finishing moves that makes sense.
A dagger should be a stab or a short sword, big swords and axes dismemberment including decapitation at times.
Mace and clubs and hammers should be blunt crushing moves with heft and big hits.

These finishing moves shouldn't happen all the time, but when it is right , like the enemy health is perfectly matching the last blow in damage vs health etc, then triggering the finishing move.

In any case, I think the games combat will be interesting, already more dynamic with choices such as dual-wielding etc, and they do have confirmed finishing moves, so great.

I still don't understand what your point is, some of what you say is true and some is based on your view of it, but what is your point? That we need a morrowind type system back with enemies actually dodging the blow visually?

And in DS, spears are not OP, they are one of the crappiest weapons in the game, fun to use but terrible damage and attack width is terrible too, it's the shields used with the spears that make them usable, still not over powered though.

My point is with the morrowind miss system that it's frustrating, annoying and doesn't make sense what so ever.

This! This a thousand times over!

Dark Messiah had the best first-person hack and slash combat system that I've played. And after I played Dark Messiah, my experience with Oblivions combat system was very sullied.

Okay, I looked up some gameplay videos of Demons' Souls, and it didn't seem to have any hit-roll in it, if you hit your enemy he's hit...
The only big hardcoe features are that it's like Nethack, you can die easily and dying have severe consequences (like perma-death)

So, either I've completely missed the point, or I didn't saw something...

as an aside, all this talk of Demon's Souls inspired me to take a look at some youtube gameplay videos. Boss fights/etc.


....wow, that doesn't look like a game I'd enjoy at all. :sadvaultboy:

That whole "study the Giant Boss's attack patterns so you can dodge fourteen attacks then run in to attack his Weak Spot; rinse and repeat" action/twitch gameplay is pretty unpleasant.

That's right. There used to be large heavy execution swords just for the purpose of decapitation especially in spain and germany. Of course not generally used in combat but anyways. Onto a lighter subject...

Dark Messiah was REALLY good, I loved that game.

The fighting was always fun, the story, the settings.
Definitely a game the is among the most fun game I've played, I wished they would make a sequel.

Well, if you want realism, this is how it would go

*Bandit Stabs you*
You take big hit in health and steadily loose more
*Bandit stabs you again because your recoiling in pain from previous stab*
You die.
*Bandit steals your gold, your pants, and has non-consensual six with your dead body*

Do you really want that much realism?