Mkay, in regards to combat and player-skill vs character-skill, I'm currently toying with an old idea I had some time ago regarding how AI packages could be intermeshed with mechanics. One that I would call, for lack of a better phrase, soft dice-roll combat.

Firstly, this idea somewhat assumes 4 things.
1. Fatigue playing a far more integral role in combat success (or success at anything else that involves physical activity and/or concentration). Doing anything with zero or almost zero fatigue should be next-to-impossible.
2. A return to Morrowind's gimping of weapon damage if the player doesn't allow the weapon to fully draw back (note that this is separate from power attacks).
3. The actual speed of a weapon's swing being dependent solely upon the player's skill with that weapon.
4. Different styles of attack that are controlled by player motion when attacking.


Okeh, so let's say you're going up against a bandit, and as you come in range with your blade, you click your mouse button (or whatever you console people do) to attack. In that instant, the game notes whom you're attacking by determing the NPC whom the crosshair is pointing at. It fetches the following variables: The player's fatigue, weapon skill, agility, speed, and luck, and the NPC's fatigue, agility, block skill, speed, and luck (perhaps more, but I'm kinda figuring out the formula components as I go along; I won't even try to stamp out an actual mathematical chance-to-hit formula in its entirety).

Basically, let's define what it means for the character to "miss." If the character has missed, then the NPC has likely successfully dodged or blocked. Let's say that, in this example, our formula determines that the NPC manages to dodge. This has either happened because the NPC in question is incredibly agile or swift, whereas the player character might not be, or the player's swing (via weapon skill) was fairly slow and inexperienced, allowing the NPC to anticipate the swing and move, or the NPC in question was rather lucky as compared to the player. Either way, the formula has determined that a dodge should occur, regardless of the reason.

How does this dodge happen, then? Instead of Morrowind's "blade swinging through solid object" or an animation providing a mask for "blade swinging through solid object," an AI package will be enabled on the NPC, telling them to retreat in a given direction immediately. The direction will be determined by the type of attack the player is about to engage in; the NPC will move in the opposite direction, or the direction that will be the hardest for the player to reorient towards (with some randomization). Keep in mind this is all happening right as the player clicks their mouse button to attack.

So the NPC retreats as the player swings, thus giving an actual, tangible, physical and sensible explanation for character missing, one that still has its foundation on dice-roll mechanics and yet is devoid of its unexplained occurrences and isn't a slap-on fix. But our scenario is not yet perfect. What if we have a player who has experienced the game long enough to develop his player-skill enough to successfully reorient his attacks and hit the NPC anyway, even though they dodged? This is what I think should occur. If the player manages to accomplish this feat and overrides the character skill (rather comparable to how an experienced player can unlock any lock in the game regardless of skill in Oblivion by working with the system long enough), then the hit should still count, but the total damage should be cut to around 1/8 or 1/10. After all, the character-relevant skills determined a specific outcome should have taken place. Yet the player is still getting somewhat of a reward for overriding that outcome with player skill, just not near the same reward as what would normally be there.

This is what I imagine when I think of possible future combat in TES. Character-skill dice-rolls given form by short AI packages. While this example only highlighted a "dodge" roll, block and parry are just as feasible, as are other, more complex uses of AI driven by skill/attribute formulas.

1. Fatigue playing a far more integral role in combat success (or success at anything else that involves physical activity and/or concentration). Doing anything with zero or almost zero fatigue should be next-to-impossible.

2. A return to Morrowind's gimping of weapon damage if the player doesn't allow the weapon to fully draw back (note that this is separate from power attacks).
3. The actual speed of a weapon's swing being dependent solely upon the player's skill with that weapon.

4. Different styles of attack that are controlled by player motion when attacking.

Basically, let's define what it means for the character to "miss." If the character has missed, then the NPC has likely successfully dodged or blocked. Let's say that, in this example, our formula determines that the NPC manages to dodge. This has either happened because the NPC in question is incredibly agile or swift, whereas the player character might not be, or the player's swing (via weapon skill) was fairly slow and inexperienced, allowing the NPC to anticipate the swing and move, or the NPC in question was rather lucky as compared to the player. Either way, the formula has determined that a dodge should occur, regardless of the reason.

How does this dodge happen, then? Instead of Morrowind's "blade swinging through solid object" or an animation providing a mask for "blade swinging through solid object," an AI package will be enabled on the NPC, telling them to retreat in a given direction immediately. The direction will be determined by the type of attack the player is about to engage in; the NPC will move in the opposite direction, or the direction that will be the hardest for the player to reorient towards (with some randomization). Keep in mind this is all happening right as the player clicks their mouse button to attack.

So the NPC retreats as the player swings, thus giving an actual, tangible, physical and sensible explanation for character missing, one that still has its foundation on dice-roll mechanics and yet is devoid of its unexplained occurrences and isn't a slap-on fix. But our scenario is not yet perfect. What if we have a player who has experienced the game long enough to develop his player-skill enough to successfully reorient his attacks and hit the NPC anyway, even though they dodged? This is what I think should occur. If the player manages to accomplish this feat and overrides the character skill (rather comparable to how an experienced player can unlock any lock in the game regardless of skill in Oblivion by working with the system long enough), then the hit should still count, but the total damage should be cut to around 1/8 or 1/10. After all, the character-relevant skills determined a specific outcome should have taken place. Yet the player is still getting somewhat of a reward for overriding that outcome with player skill, just not near the same reward as what would normally be there.

This is what I imagine when I think of possible future combat in TES. Character-skill dice-rolls given form by short AI packages. While this example only highlighted a "dodge" roll, block and parry are just as feasible, as are other, more complex uses of AI driven by skill/attribute formulas.