blocking in Morrowind was, in my opinion the best. It also left a controller spot open for magic (I think. Haven't played Morrowind in a while; lent it my neighbor just before he went to boarding school...) It makes it more like an RPG than an FPS: you don't tell your character to block, but if an attack is coming from in front of you there is a random chace that you'll move your seild to intercept the blow.

I really don't see how it's better to have a dice roll determine whether you get your shield up in time, than it is to use your own reactions and press the button for your character to raise his shield. Dice roll blocking would work better in turn-based combat, but in realtime you should eliminate as many dice rolls as possible. Basically I think that any character action should be determined by player reaction, and then dice rolls could to some degree impact the magnitude of those actions. For example, you see an enemy is about to attack, you press the button to raise your shield...

1. You don't get it up fast enough and the hit does potentially full damage (slight variation determined by dice roll)
2. You do get your shield up fast enough
--? Your shield is powerful enough to absorb the blow of the sword, and you take no damage but your shield is damaged
--? Your shield is not powerful enough to absorb the blow, but it is powerful enough to divert some of the energy (you take diminished damage based on a dice roll)
--? Your shield is too weak to effectively block the blow and you take almost full damage (again, slight variation determined by roll)

If you just keep your shield up indefinitely, it should be less effective, operating on the assumption that your enemy is able to find the best way of damaging you by getting past the shield, targeting weak areas, etc. This is both realistic and it encourages players to use the shield more strategically in real time. In addition, there would be other potential possibilites, like a solid block knocking the attacker off balance or jarring his weapon loose, or a poorly timed block causing the defender to stumble or drop his shield.


Also, I think that the same rules should hold true for when I attack my enemy. If they have a shield, they should sometimes try to deflect/block an attack, and based on their timing and my timing, along with the strength of my weapon and their shield, and our respective statistics, any of the above scenarios would play out, and depending on which one it is, a dice roll could have some impact on the outcome, but the general effect is determined by action and reaction.

I'm talking about http://www.designtoscano.com/product/zoom.do?productID=108651 with that, not hand and a half swords like http://life.halcode.com/wp-content/images/katana.jpgs or http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081207103836/inheritance/images/e/e8/Hand-and-half.jpg. I'm not sure how you would hold the one handed sword very well in two hands, you'd just be grabbing your other hand. Fencers hold their hand behind them for balance because their sword fighting doesn't benefit from power swings, and grabbing it by two hands for them would leave them exposed even. The precision decrease I mean is that your second hand on the weapon prevents your recovery from the larger swing you'd use, and you'd have to change your fighting stance to adopt that position, meaning you'd make slower stabs and be unable to lunge.

Also from http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm I've looked at, medieval fighting wasn't about clanking weapons together. They'd get torn up too quickly. Their method let them deflect when they had to, and quickly go for the strikes. Not much was done about defense on the smaller scale fights because they'd expect to kill their enemy before they'd need it.

One of the problems with you and me trying things with our swords is that we're both probably practicing with those unbalanced wooden katanas, right? I'm not saying I'm an authority on anything, I'm just figuring based on what I've read.

It wouldn't hurt more because as a bladed weapon, it doesn't take a lot of power to cut someone deeply. The weight is on the other end so you can whip the tip around fast. If you wanted to do more damage with two hands on a blade, you'd want to hold it from the other end to slam them with the weight.

Why not just click and the battle happens? Don't strawman. Highlighting their areas to hit is artificial and would be goofy looking, it works in fallout because they have the computer. Look at this video of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z3ewNnuNfs and tell me how you'd target their elbow with a swing while it's highlighted. You couldn't, you'd swing your sword at their arm and your character skill would determine whether it would hit the weak spot or not.

The problem is that if you have low skill, it just never rose because you'd never block. I'm in favor of the idea to make the block button instead be the block/parry/dodge button depending on your combat setup. That would rock.

Dicerolls>Oblivion Combat.

Dice Rolls are the best system. People wouldn't complain so much about Morrowind if there was an animation for you actually missing or them dodging...

• Primary target is skills must show,
  
• Secondary target would be making combat not flat but dynamic,
  
• Third, giving the player some of the control, mostly fun side of things.

Morrowind's combat needs physics and Oblivion's combat needs some enrichment and both need animations.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Complete_Damage_Formula

I can't see agility. I can't even see luck. Luck is a constant bonus in this system. Where is the randomization? I can only see fatigue which can vary but Oblivion's fatigue is also very forgiving.

I would like to see "manual block" option instead of "always use best attack" in Morrowind for example because I think it is good to have both options. But Oblivion's auto launched power attacks made me feel my control was taken away, I would prefer to be in control at my timing at least. And then some more on accuracy, at least up-down, maybe head, arms, legs... Nothing fun was in my control. Taking out agility and luck; and with only showing hits with the addition of simple physics wasn't satisfiable, it is total laziness.

Morrowind's system is not perfect, I even say "What combat?". But it has a feeling and mind you when you get your skills high enough to pass that threshold, which misses mostly disappear, it becomes more Oblivion like, except there is still some variation.

Morrowind's system wasn't based on random chance, skills and attributes mattered the most. It would be nice to have randomization directly inside the physics engine but still random chance is accessible at creating unique outcomes. We only have mouse button. If we were using, Wiimote or Move, our movements would be, maybe, enough to create a unique outcome.

Even simulations use random numbers, we shouldn't be calling it unrealistic just like that. If you want to use a more deterministic algorithm, I suggest a formula 2 pages long at least(still leaving room for randomization).

And it won't take terabytes of data like Daedric Prince Azura said, nor it is about how powerful our chip's processing power like Daniel Kay mentions. It is about development time. Morrowind took close to 100 man-years to create and we all knew its combat. Any parameter must be set for every item uniquely, by hand... or randomization(again randomization)? It would be time consuming. We should draw a limit somewhere, realistically. And to help us, consider random numbers which is the nature of simulations and off course LUCK.

my wish for TES V well in oblivion i thought that orcs wasn't well done the grafix i'm writhing about a nice try though the darkelfs to need some artist hands behaves take a look in dungeon and dragons monster Manuel could help
i think being Abel to go several parts whit skill like choosing different perks skills when you reach an amount of need-et skill like take the blade skill it goes like this 25 50 75 100
on skill level 50 you could say pick ether daggers 1hand sword 2hsword one of thees that you would ex-seal in bonus to damage whit one of thees particular weapons skill level 75 you would make faster hits ore if 2handet crushing blows and so on get the drift ?

i to think that there should be duel wielding daggers like in dark mesia

i hope to see improvement in the magic system where one could make ones own spells again but that you had to earn the right to do so

i think the special combat moves you can make in oblivion are pretty hard to time them right needs some work i don mind some randomness sliders for specie ls moves that one could turn of if wanting more control

i like how the monsters was done in oblivion really awesome keep it at that

if its skymir TES V is going to be about im sure there going to be some real fantasy horror instead of just more core

Well a huge problem I see with dice roll mechanics is that as they where used in Morrowind they only know TWO results, "Yes or No", Hit or Miss, Succeed or Fail...
There should be a whole RANGE of outcomes, a success can still be seen as a failure (hitting someone with a weapon but only scraping him) and a failure can still range into a success (Someone manages to evade your weapon but trips leaving him open for a kill).

THIS is my big problem with dicerolls, If they'd give you a realistic RANGE things would be fine but if they're just yes or no you shouldn't call them dice roll but coin toss mechanics.

This thread has undergone a bit of housekeeping. Just a reminder that posting responses about the substance of a given post are welcome, while posting responses about the style of a given post are not.


Carry on.

To clarify on my previous post a bit more:


If you look at what Morrowind did you REALLY can't call that "Dice Roll" mechanics, you did simply "succeed or fail".
Yea I can hear you now "No it was not succeed or fail, you had a % based chance", NO, while this did alter your CHANCES more favorably when you climbed in skill you STILL only had success of failure as an outcome. In that I say it was not a dice roll it was a coin toss.

Even if you'd just take it as an allegory, look at a normal die, it has 6 sides so you could have 6 outcomes, not two. Sure you could say "1-3 is fail, 4-6 is succeed" but why cut it down like that, you could again just use a coin like this because your chances are 50-50.
And of you look even further, Tabletop games, where dice rolls come from, DO use a "range of success". They at least have 4 outcome "Critical failure - failure - success - critical success". Though if I recall correctly there was a "critical hit" like mechanic in Morrowind but that ITSELF was based on a "yes or no" mechanic.

So again, what I say is have a RANGE of success, not a simple "yes or no".
While this is something dice rolls could work for it's still quite arbitrary.

As mentioned before there can be "failures with good outcomes" and "successes with bad outcomes":
-You swing your sword at a wild mountain lion, you hit but it only scraqes it causing a small cut that in no way is dangerous to the mountain lion but now it's REALLY angry at you, you successfully hit but the outcome is far from good.
-You swing your weapon, the opponent you aimed at can evade by jumping back a bit making you fail the hit, but evading he lost balance, stumbled and fell down so now you can pin him down, a failure with a favorable outcome.

And those are not just "things that could never happen", with the correct mechanics in play those things CAN happen, especially the stumbling could be quite possible if you fight on uneven ground, and animals getting angry when in pain is quite "realistic" too.

But how could you work this into a dice roll system? I think it is possible but again you would require FAR more factors, and that's what it again boils down to, FACTORS.
So if you'd already have to include way more factors why base them of an arbitrary system? If you have many, many, many, MANY factors that can change from situation to situation, your condition, your targets condition, the condition of your environment, the condition of your gear, your skills, your opponents gear and skills... why build a randomizer in there, when there are so many things that can always vary you don't need a randomizer.


So pretty much if you say "I want dice roll mechanics" give it some thought what you REALLY want. Like it or not, Morrowind did NOT have dice rolls, it had a coin toss with increasing chances.

dice rolls or coin toss like Dan said are a big fat NO NO in the next ES , why!!!

because in an action rpg game you should go forward not back, and morrowind and oblivion systems must be gone, we need something new, something amazing, something more realistic.

I want location damage, weapon weight and speed affecting outcome, NO MORE HEALTH, but instead you have a body (like fallout3) and you see damage directly on the body areas (arm is slightly hurt its yellow, leg severely injured its red and your limping and bleeding..etc)
magic should be like bazookas and grenades DEADLY AOE DEATH OF HORROR with amazing effects.
Stealth should be like in the thief games... ok let me rephrase that, stealth should be EXACTLY LIKE in thief 3.

we need more skills/spells more "perks" more engaging combat/environments (barrels, spikes, deadly falls, ropes, windows you can climb into, and BETTER BODY ANIMATION)

ALL the ideas I listed above are already found in many games (fallout3, dark messiah, thief 3..etc) they are not impossible, actually they might as well be OLD ideas by now.

Sorry if I don't reply to the whole thing but I just want to throw in something quick.

I often mention factors... and THIS alone, locational damage, can bring a TRUCKLOAD of factors. Every little injure can influence you or your opponents, the movements, regenerations, stamina, reaction time, strength in arms/legs/body can be altered ever so slightly, and if injures get harder or accumulate the results can change more and more.
Managed to block a heavy blow but it took a heavy blow to your arms to catch that force even with a shield which can slightly alter how you will fight afterwards. A cut in your leg can make you limp slightly meaning a little influence on your running speed and jumping. That beating on your chest took the wind out of you meaning your stamina is regenerating a bit slower.
And the same time this can pump "adrenaline" a little making you fight even harder.


And that can only be a LITTLE part of factors locational damage can have on you.
If you take your opponents values on LD alone in mind this doubles the possible values already. Then there is your gear and your environment which can influence thins just as well.

And so far we're just talking about combat, there can be tons of factors playing into other skills as well, for potion making the quality of your ingredients and the quality of your tools, for archery wind and slight deformations in the arrows can come into play (one reason to get higher quality arrows), if there was crafting the quality of the block of wood and your carving knife can change the outcome...

As you can see, your problem is not chance/probability/randomness. It is with Morrowind's combat. I have problems with it too if you've noticed. I am certainly not thinking dice rolls. Using random number generation for simulations is a normal practice. But I can see Morrowind's system was rooted in older RPGs not simulations. I hate them all for the record. At least they didn't show the numbers on screen but it was still awful. Oblivion taking luck and chance out became extremely flat.(in what system was it rooted? The complains about Morrowind's combat mechanics)

I read your second post:
What we can do, however, after deciding if it is a hit or not(which can be seen as a coin toss mechanic why not? There are only two outcomes. hit or miss. But of course the actual mechanic is very different. The probability of getting a number from a dice roll is 1/6. If you think it as 123 and 456, yes they can use a coin instead. It is now 3/6 = 1/2. But with a formula like Morrowind's:

(which I am sure not complete, fatigue?)

This is infinitely(relatively) more complex than a dice roll. Just taking skill and 2 agilities, there is already 100*100*100 combinations but off course the outcome is still limited to one number. But anyone know about some mathematics knows that this doesn't make it a 50-50. Actual permutation from combat to combat is scaled by the enemy so I think the important parameters can be defenders agility and defenders luck. Skill has the biggest multiplier so it is the most important. Luck has a small importance.)

We can now go on and decide what we are gonna do with the "hits"(think a whole range of outcomes defined by many parameters.) and what can be done with the "miss"es.(think a whole set of animations) We can take out skill from above formula. Or re-use it with agility and some more parameters.

I think any game can use these mechanics. I think a FPS game should go ahead and add skill system just like TES style with adding chance to calculations making a FPS simulation.(You can add as many parameters possible to the moment you start to squeeze the trigger till the bullet comes out of gun's barrel and some more until bullet reaches the target. I would find it more realistic than current systems.)

PS. I know why people like counter strike, for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvKpAWW-EJk: You can miss an entire clip while the guy is standing right in front of you!!!

Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta = Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss

PPS. I actually hate it. (CS: Source is better at aiming mechanics.)

PPPS. Two posts in one:

The problem is while the basis is much more complex the OUTCOME was a yes or no which just brings it back to the same problem. I think the damage you did varied a little but there we are still with the problem that damage didn't do anything aside how fast the fight was over, and having to go by pure luck doesn't really help.



My keyword there is Euphoria which calculates animations on the spot. Every hit and every evasion would be calculated by physics and be unique every time. For reference, GTA4 and Red Dead Revolver.

The outcome is hit or miss. It is a yes or no, sure. But this is a decision we should make. What we are gonna do with a hit can be varied by further calculations. This linear approach is necessary to create software. While talking/thinking about it, you can do all at the same time but implementation is hard and must done this way. This system can satisfy your needs believe me.

We can run hit chance calculation for all hit-boxes separately. This way we can separate local damage from a global hit mechanics. We can add many outcomes after deciding the hit.


I haven't play Red Dead Redemption. If you read my post I said Natural Motion use simple push physics with their Euphoria engine. We can't apply it to swords and axes, they are too complicated. Maybe arrows and to some degree with blunt weapons and shielded combat can benefit from it. The tech of Euphoria is inside the topic "blending animations", it is available to develop for anyone. They are still blending predefined animations(poses). Just because they do it the best(imo) doesn't mean they are the only ones who can do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RpqbC5-Z0E

Add a script system that dynamically selects poses according to values came from physics engine and awareness of environment(AI) via blending between pre-calculated limits for ragdolls plus a backdoor for physics to achieve further alteration. Yes, it is really complex, Euphoria is more complex. But it is possible to create a game without traditional linear blending for ragdoll situations. In ragdolls they go full [censored]. Never go full [censored].

http://aigamedev.com/open/editorial/naturalmotion-euphoria/

And how do you think the physics simulator creates unique outcomes? It uses random numbers as any other simulation.

A yes/no result IS dice rolls. It comes from D&D, where the number you rolled went against the target's defense to determine whether you hit, so moving away from the "coin toss" effect is, if anything, going further from dice rolls. Which I only say because my demonic lust for semantics compels me to, since I'm not in favor of dice rolls for the next TES.

There are lots of things we can't assume about the next game, but something we can is that it will be first person and not turn-based. That system alone is not the best environment for dice rolls, just as locational damage is of little use in, say, a Diablo-style game. There's no point, since from that angle and distance that sort of precision is impossible and useless. Dice rolls are often in friendly company in turn-based, and can combine locational damage with that angle like in the early Fallout games. First-person, free action, and locational damage, though? Dice rolls do not fit there.

People complain about removing them somehow making it "more of an action game", but the form of combat has nothing to do with the prevalence of combat. Whether I have choices and consequences or excellent stealth or immersive roleplay options is not affected by how the computer calculates my damage in combat. There are plenty of ways to keep focus on character skill instead of letting it be taken over by player skill. Potentially more so in some ways over turn-based dice rolls, depending on the specifics of the system.

Didn't Andanorcil have a very big list of great suggestions, too?

Combine Oblivion, Thief and Assasins Creed and youll have an A grade game right there beth :clap:

What about increasing in size as you get more experienced?

You start off half the size of the maximum height and your muscles grow as you get stronger.

If you do not use your muscles a lot they deteriorate and comes more into the physical view of the people than actual strength however you could incorporate a strength deduction in skill level.

TES V for mac would be good

increasing in size and muscle build like in the game fable would be great all-so being able to grow a beard and ones hair grows long and behaves getting a cloak on ones back
not to mention dagger duel-wielding short-sword/dagger dagger/dagger

This would be a good starting point however I was thinking more in terms of your skill levels affect height using the formula
XY
----- (this is as close to divide as I could get)
X-Y

Where X is your total skill level and Y is one eightieth of X

This means that you start the game as a Feeble weak person and develop to be as tall as the limits of your race.
Meaning that you could get a fully developed bosmer taller than a feeble imperial.

This idea needs a bit more thought but I think it's almost there.

That's not true, I would still complain. Why, because it makes absolutely no sense that you miss that often on some targets.
I often take the mudcrabs as an example, they where huge in Morrowind and slow. It would have neither made sense if that thing suddenly managed to jump aside and then back into position, nor that you can miss that huge thing so often. What would have made sense is your weapon not penetrating it's shell but that would still be a hit, and for that they would need a more complex system of what hits actually DO instead of just chopping off HP. With the old system you would require the mudcrab to either have a insane defense or a huge bar of HP, both would just make the combat even more tedious.

The thing here is the dice rolls in that direction make absolutely no sense, why does my low skill make someones evasion better? Sure you could say they see it coming better and my aim is off, but as with the mudcrab example that just doesn't work. How does the guy I pinned in a CORNER evade my attacks, why can't I hit the one who lies unconscious on the ground and is not moving...

It's NOT just about the animations that show what happens, it's also about the system actually making sense.

And for that I advocate a Locational Damage and Damage Effects system, hits on different body parts do different things and different KINDS of damage do different things. That mudcrab, it now has a very hard shell that can't be penetrated well by most weapons, a hammer can do the trick most likely and is quite lethal against them, but in turn they won't be such deadly animals anymore as, unless you fall unconscious in a whole group of them for a few hours, all they could do is pinch you in the legs... and you could still just step on them (Or flip them over and stab in the belly which is softer)

In addition to that, DON'T make every single animal out to kill the player, it's ridicules that everything is trying to kill you no matter what. Have most animals just snarl or threaten at you to go away and leave you be when you do, just have them attack if you really pose a threat to them.
And in a way I'd even extend that to "monsters", hell why not become "friends" with goblins, you bring them metal and wood which they can use to build tools, weapons and furnish their lairs and they give you those glittery shiny rocks they found but are not useful to them.

I had an idea that the attributes would influence your appearance, with you starting out as just a regular person.

Strength: biceps and abs, as well as your traps get noticeably larger. with level-ups It also reduces fat.
Endurancrance: reduces fat majorly.
Intelligence: your frontal lobe becomes slightly more pronounced, but not freakishly.
Personality: smoothes all parts of you body: IE: if you have a nose that just out or random bumps, perhaps brought on by disease, leveling up personality smoothes them out.
Speed: your soleus and tibilius exterior become more noticeable: IE, it make you have stronger legs.
Agility: makes your fingers get longer, to reflect Hand-eye acordination and such.
Willpower: makes you overall taller.
Luck: slowly makes you skin "shiny." Not very noticable until a high luck level.

can anyone remember the card game tower in the heroes of magic games would be nice if there was something like that in TES V all-so something like Dice Poker like in the game The witcher playing games to win gold behaves fame to should be something you could do in the next TES V i think

Fable 1+2 did this. Unfortunately (as is the case with the fable series), they did it very poorly. If you so much as put one point into a skill, the game will take it to a extreme. If you leveled up strength, you look like a obsessed bodybuilder. If you leveled up Skill, you become a giant and if you leveled up Will, you turn blue. Not good.
Instead, they could allow you to adjust those things you mentioned (your appearance, not your stats) in character creation. That way, you don't get the blue, bodybuilder giant scenario again unless you choose it.


Also, it might have been said before, can we have the ability to make a summon permenant (as in, into a companion)? It could cost a lot of money and magic and might be one off, but it would be cool to have a clannfear as a pet in game. Other than that, more summons or include polymorphing (the scripted spells mod in morrowind is a very good example) or Necromancy (put the undead summoning spells in here if possible too).

Disagree with skills/attributes/level changing your appearance. In a roleplaying game there's no reason for the chosen appearance to be taken out of the player's hands by such a dramatic degree, taking along with it the role the person is trying to play. People spend too much time fine-tuning exactly how they want to look to have the game immediately start changing it, plus, high-level characters would start blurring together and all looking the same, which is already too common of a problem. It's enough to let you choose these physical factors during character creation, and have services in the game (such as barbers) to let you change them if you want to.