what I mean about magic being harder to learn, is that if you want to be a mage, gaining magic and powers should be more difficult, not just go to a vendor and "buy" magic spells, you have to train and an elder mage will instruct you on the proper way to use the spell.

of course this will mean that the old magic system has to die and be buried in a shallow grave (which would please me)

and new spells and effects need to be created with much more complex spells and magic tree like "perks" for each main school.
OK example time :

your a beginner mage so you can cast your basic fire bolt, magic missile, and arrow shield
you want to be more powerful so you join the mage's guild and you speak with the destruction master, and he says u are ready to learn the new fireball spell, u agree and u both go to the training room where he casts the spell in front of you, then you try it, after success he explains to you that more use of the spell will enable you to guide the fire ball, and later on charge up its damage even...etc, and he shows you this.

I fight quite well with magic. The only problems are when the enemy as a reflect spell effect (*), or when you get mobbed (as AoE spells are typically weaker and cost more, and it's more difficult to run).

(*) Reflect Spell deals with a chance-to-reflect, and when it reflects, it does everything. So a 1% Reflect Spell means there's a 1% chance ALL damage/effects will be reflected back, which is not good when you're a hard-hitting, comparitively low-health mage. It also seems to include their weaknesses, so if you hit them with a fire spell, for example, and they have 50% weakness to fire, that extra damage goes back to you too. I can't count the number of times I've hit a Lich with my more powerful touch spells, and one-shot-killed myself while I was near full health. I really hate how that effect is implemented.

iirc reflect doesn't reflect reflected magic. often, enemies that use reflect, are also spell casters. As a heavy spell caster, one method is use reflect yourself and sit back and relax. summon a melee based creature and let loose.

traditionally in RPGs, magic is for the choice for the intelligent.

It requires thinking and knowing the intricacies of the system is required to be a master. Stick to hack and slash if that is too hard or complex :frog: , In both MW and OB it is quite effective, it may not be as easy or as simple as hacking away with melee and downing potions, but then it's not supposed to be simple.

From a combat system then you are saying it is about manipulating the game to your advantage and not using it to how it was meant to be used. That is a flawed way of using a "combat system" I know I can easily create uber spells in both games that no other NPC has but then I am not necessarily using the system in how it was intended and I take out the challenge in the game. (using weakness to fire and a fire damage over time type spell is quite simple) If I were to use the spells that were bought or otherwise I doubt I would have had the same experience as you guys. What I am saying is that you can improve it a "lot" from how it stands now. You wouldn't have to manipulate the game to make it work. This probably means taking out spell combinations or if spell combinations stayed there would have to be a strong magic user in order to pull it off. Question, I want to know what you think of the slider idea? Is that an improvement from the current system? If not why? If so why?



Ah, gotcha.

I agree but I think quests should be involved and reading might have to be apart of the process. Sort of if you want to learn it all then you need to go to some out of the way places and take the time to do it. After all realistically people would never be able to master everything anyway.

Well, I must say I really like the magic system of Morrowind (Oblivion made a great damage to magic system with those lousy perks). Making spells to be learned in some sort of a skill tree would be a terrible choice. This is one of the reasons why I hate the magic system in Dragon Age that does what you suggested (without the thing about a master). I would really love to see the system retained. I think that you should learn magic from mages. Spell vendors should work even in TES V, but it should be more clear that they are mages. I would not mind some fancy animation showing the guy is actually showing how the spell is being cast. But please no, NO, spell trees in TES, please. I love the fact that I can craft and combine my own spells. There is a lot of fun in this.

If you want to make the magic more difficult to learn, I would not mind less spell vendors outside guilds. If the devs recreate the guild system, we could see a system where most spell vendors and spell crafters are members of guilds and do not provide service unelss you are a memeber of the guild.

Nope. I am not saying that at all. I am saying magic is traditionally for the intellectual fighter. Not the savage brute. The magic system should not be shallow and devising powerful spells and setups that can tailored to any specific situation, is what a mage does. I am saying that manipulating the world and system to your advantage is just smart. I am not saying to use exploits as you seem to suggest I am.

No, well why are you so sure to think using weakness to fire and a fire damage spell is not within the design parameters? It's a bit presumptuous imo, i can almost guarantee it's not an exploit. It's actually quite an obvious example as it happens. And as it happens that very exact thing, fire weakness and fire damage is cast against you in the vanilla game. Which is blatantly within the scope of what the devs intended, because they actually did it themselves.. Did you think you were cheating the system?

Reflect just works how it worked. As a mage I did practice the limits of my magic. And at some point figured out how to adapt my magic to enemies who use reflect. I call this learning. Specifically, I don't think this is an exploit or even oversight. It's the result of trying to kill some damn lich as spell caster. Didn't take long to figure to try fighting fire with fire. Seemed obvious at the time :shrug:

so looking at these 2 examples, these are within the design of the magic combat system, and i would definitely use to my advantage. No exploits here!


I'm not saying the system can't be improved or exploited.
Spell combinations are one of the things that keeps the system from being boring and shallow.

Here's something I posted in the suggestions forum:



Now to tie that into the current discussion:

I think that the actions that you take in combat should be governed by player input. That does not mean, however, that stats don't have their place(aside from damage calculation). For instance, AI effectiveness could be determined by comparing the relevant combat stats of the player and the NPC. So sure, that enchanted warhammer may deal a lot damage, but does that matter when the NPC is dancing circles around you due to your low blunt weapon skill? Weapon strike speed could be affected by any number of stats. Enchantment effectiveness could be determined by the skill of the enchanter. If you wanted to really specialize things, you could give a bonus to the enchantment based upon weapon/armor skill as well (meaning that a skilled enchanter that is also skilled in long blade would be able to put a stronger enchantment on a sword than an enchanter who was not).

As far as dice rolls go... well, I personally don't think that random chance is really needed for anything other than maybe critical strikes in melee. I just think that stat relevance is more important than dumb luck when it comes to the RPG aspect of an Action RPG

Ah, gotcha.

I agree but I think quests should be involved and reading might have to be apart of the process. Sort of if you want to learn it all then you need to go to some out of the way places and take the time to do it. After all realistically people would never be able to master everything anyway.
[/quote]



yes a thousand times YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

I'm sorry, but I wouldn't even buy TES V if they used a system like this. This sounds more like a Japanese console fighter than a roleplaying game to me.

It's really not much different than what's already there. It's more or less an outgrowth of the Morrowind directional system combined with the Oblivion combat system. And the way I picture it, it would be nothing like a console fighter. To get a better mental image of what I'm talking about, take Oblivion's combat system, add Mount & Blade's weapon block system, and give shields a blind spot on the sword arm side of the body. This would create a need to use some strategy other than "block, power attack" in a fight. I imagine a fight with both opponents circling for superior position, throwing feints to force the opponent to open himself up... What I'm not talking about is big combo attacks and special moves.

Pretty much, the only reason that I suggested the layout you quoted is to support the rest of the stuff that you didn't. One thing builds upon another. Locational damage is pretty pointless without a way to attack specific locations. Being able to attack specific locations is pointless if it doesn't create new and engaging aspects to combat. Adding complexity in defense (but less complex in controls than even Deadly Reflex) gives meaning to directional combat input (as opposed to Morrowind, where there was no tangible reason to uncheck the "best attack" option).

There is literally zero difference between that control scheme and Oblivion's. The only difference is the attacks performed, and that one can combine up to two directions. Oh no, I'm pressing W and A and attack at the same time! Hell, if you can sprint and shoot in an FPS (W + Shift + Left Click) then you can do a combined attack in an RPG.

ya and maybe a more "realistic" damage system would be cool, making plate armor and shield very important for melee protection, while allowing light armor users the huge bonus of movement.

of course when this is the case magic needs a massive damage boost and also some control spells (fear, freezing, telekinesis push...etc), also arrows need to become deadly (in the right hands) and back stabs even deadlier.

the character needs to move more realistically as well, especially when wearing heavy armor (you can't dart around in heavy plate) and you can't run backwards in full speed, all in all the next ES 5 needs to make the player "feel" that he has a physical body, and that equipment really affects this.

One way to make combat more challenging would be to give the AI a better combat system for NPC's.
I would like to see them using advanced combat AI.
It would be great to be powering through a dungion and have a bandit sneek up behind me and do critical dammage on me or an archer retreat to the shaddows when they hear me coming, since that would make me act more carefully.
I would love to see the people I am fighting using the same birthsign powers that I have. If they include sneek Marksman bonus' then have NPC archers use that against me as well.
Making them smart and hard to kill and then combat will instantly be better.

A.I:
Needs to be linked with NPC level/skillset. I don't mean this in terms of decision-making in particular - though it would be nice, it's probably unrealistic to expect a "tiered" A.I. system. What I specifically mean is that the "response time" of the A.I. needs to be linked with wep skill/level. So a level 20 NPC with 80 longsword should be dodging/blocking power attacks.

Weap skill/attributes:
Better attributes and weapon skill = faster attack animation. Would make NPC battles actually exciting.

The system as a whole:
Needs some kind of dodging/parrying/blocking system so that combat is a more skill-based affair (also side effect is that its more visceral). Currently, in Oblivion, there is NO system in place. In practice, this means that I hold down block until the NPC throws out a slow power attack. Then I spam normal slashes or my own power attack. Rinse + repeat. Works against all NPCs. Except of course, better NPCs can stagger and damage me even when I do block. Which is actually far more RPG than FPS, but in a bad sense, in the sense that it doesn't really make sense nor all that fun to play.

An obvious staple of any melee combat system is parrying, which essentially means redirecting the swing path of a baddie's weapon. This requires reflexes and control - maybe some kind of mouse control over the direction which you parry. If timing is right, you parry successfully and throw off baddies' aim/balance. All of which is of course to a degree constrained by your stats. Blocking is the bastard step child of parrying and just requires holding down a single button. It does mean you get overcome by power attacks (as well as suffering damage to weapon durability etc.).

Dodging seems to be fairly absent in the Oblivion. A quick sidestep (as opposed to the less realistic, more precedent-appealing backwards roll) if done right = whiffed slash. Or maybe dodge + parry could be used together. So what you have in the end is a free flowing dynamic but simple combat framework, rather than a WOW-type I-spam-skill-you-spam-counter-skill. Which is still better than Oblivion's system because Oblivion didn't even have one.


Special/Power attacks: please add a bit more variety depending on weapon type. "locational damage" which has been suggested by lots of people should be kept VERY SIMPLE because of how difficult it actually is to target stuff like wrists, kneecaps, or whatever particularly when these parts are constantly in motion. Maybe something simple such as legs, head and torso for locational modifier. The way I envision it power attacks are modified by the location targetted by the attack. Example: target retreating = running power attack to back of legs = swipe to hamstring = speed penalty + periodic stagger. Other modifiers (possibly): whether enemy is blocking/attacking/casting spells. Whatever. The specifics don't really matter but i think the concept is worth some merit.

Morrowind gave you the ability to either "spam" attacks rapidly for minimal power, or to "hold" and "charge" the attack anywhere from that minimal attack strength up to full power. In other words, you had total control over attack power vs attack rate. You also had the ability to do alternate forms of attack by doing some awkward keyboard gyrations along with your attack press; unfortunately, it generally only made sense to use one type of attack for any given weapon, or just select "use best attack" from the menu. The game had all of the pieces in place to make a versatile combat system which combined player skills plus character skills, except that it didn't include the alternate outcome animations or any reason to use those alternate attack forms.

Oblivion gave you the option to either press "attack" and wait for the animation to occur, or to hold down "attack" and wait longer for the "power attack" animation to occur. Ho hum, boring, and I felt far more disconnected from the action in OB than in MW. At higher skill levels, you gained "perks": those alternate "move + attack" forms which you had from the beginning in MW, only with a purpose behind them. You had NO control over attack speed versus strength, however, so you ALWAYS did the same damage with every standard attack, depending on your skill level. The ability to manually block was a great idea, but also poorly implemented. Rather than pressing Block when the opponent swung, you could simply hold the button for whatever time it took until the attacker made his, her, or its move, then counter-attack. OB took away as much control as it gave, and while it looked much better, it functioned worse in my opinion.

I'd like to see the return of MW's "variable attack strength", along with the more involved set of animations from OB. As for "alternate attacks", I'd rather have the ability to launch them by pressing a second control button, NOT a movement one. It made NO sense in OB to launch a powerful strike while FALLING BACK. Normally, you'd lunge FORWARD to do so. The special (or alternate) attacks should be usable regardless of movement direction. Ideally, those alternate attacks could have a higher chance to avoid being blocked at the cost of doing lower damage, or vice versa, or various other tradeoffs to give them a real purpose in specific situations. Blocking should be limited in speed and duration by one's skill, so you can't just hold your weapon or shield up for half the combat and expect the opponent to always aim at it, with an option to "automate" blocking for those of us who don't want to play arcade games instead of RPGs.

A more dynamic combat system would help greatly. Distance of the player to the enemy vs the length of the weapon = range of damage. If you are within a certain distance you should do a good amount of damage. If the player hits an enemy with the tip of his sword then it should do minimal damage. Damage should also be scaled to skill as in Oblivion, but with a dynamic system.

As for enchantments, the enchantment on a weapon should generally be a weak spell to some enemies. But they should be primarily used to attack enemies with weakness to certain elements. Enchantments themselves would be weak unless used on an enemy with a weakness to that element(Brings to mind pokemon, but seriously it's a good idea in my mind) A flame enchanted sword would not work to well against a dark elf or daedra but may be perfect against another type of creature. Main point: The enchantment shouldn't make or break the effectiveness of the weapon. It should mainly be used to capitalize on weaknesses and avoid resistances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D89tGxHx0c&

I liked that game a lot and compared to Oblivion's combat system, it's was way superior.

Ehh, stop your complaining.

This is a type of thread that I would have expected just after Oblivion's release, not like 4 years afterwards. And there is no rule book of what makes an RPG or not, so get off your high horse and get over yourself.

If the suggestion is to rework the way enchanted weapons were in Oblivion, then I agree.

But if the suggestion is to make weapon skills the same as they were in Morrowind, I strongly disagree. The way weapon skills worked in Morrowind was nothing but frustrating. Having a higher skill grant BONUSES, instead of having to level up your skill to not svck, is what made Oblivion combat already 100x better than Morrowind. If anything, Elderscrolls combat needs to continue to add more dynamic features. Active blocking, not having to switch between magic and melee, etc. were steps in the right direction.

yes it was, killing those orcs with a freeze> kick of the edge never got old, and adrenaline telekinesis was epic, pick up an enemy and make him go splat on the wall.

i honestly liked combat in Oblivion more than I did Morrowind or Daggerfall before it. The only real problem is that the skills really didnt make much sense, and werent integrated the way they should have been. However, if they went back to Morrowind's style of battle (with the missing) it is far to unrealistic. You cant miss someone from point blank range if they dont move during your swing in real life.

I think they will simply update the Oblivion system (as it is the most popular and functioning of the series) and add aspects and animations to it. They may also add the miss factor but have it more irrelevant and based directly on chance, turning them into deflections instead of full misses.

On the contrary, hitting someone 20 times with a sword before they die is also unrealistic. In both games it's the same number of swings, it's just assumed in Morrowind that some were dodged or parried because it was a clumsy attack made by someone who's skill was low. The ones that do hit do a lot (somewhat realist amount) of damage.

I also remember taking out some creatures with 1 hit from a bow or sword. That only happens in Oblivion if you are sneaking, and using enchantments and poison. Even then it's only necromancers.

I'd hope that the next game includes that factor, as well as it being animated. I'd also like to see the chance to hit take into account the enemies skill with their weapon.

My Opinion on the Matter

I think the main issues were the lack of fleshing-out the combat in all aspects.

Nobody would charge into you and knock you down early-on, or have a lasting effect from being 1 point away from death. It was all so obviously a computer-implemented system, which is why it wasn't exactly good.

You had 6 options for fighting close-up:

• Block
  
• Hit
  
• Side-Strong Hit
  
• Back-Strong Hit
  
• Forward- Strong Hit
  
• Do Nothing

Those are completely fine, what else are you supposed to be able to do? The ability was there, just not the full possibilities realized.

Fighting up close should be harder than it is. For you, and for the NPC(s). You have to need to block and watch your back, you have to need to think strategically about how you need to attack, you have to sometimes run away from a fight because you picked the wrong one; but as we all know there wasn't much of that in TES:IV.

Anyway, armor and weapons should matter more (Dagger vs. Steel Armor?) (Arrows vs. Fur Armor?), as well as a few other factors.

Weapons Matter More
Simple really, the weapons do more damage when they land successfully, and put you in a sticky situation if they don't. I'm not saying "Go hyper-realism!" because that svcks unless you want it. What I'm saying is when you swing a wicked heavy sword and miss, it should be more than just *swoosh* with a wicked low amount of time until you can swing again. And thus power-attacks with heavy weapons should be high-risk (leave you open for longer) but devastating if they hit...

Leading me into:
Accuracy
NPCs missed sometimes in Oblivion... sometimes. That was usually because you were bouncing off the walls, screaming "Don't kill me!" and running to the nearest exit. If they were on the top of a hill, and you didn't see them, they'd nail you in-between the eyes every time. Which is GREAT, on a technology standpoint. Predicting movement like that is genius, and must have taken a lot of time to master. On a semi-realism standpoint... not so great. It didn't matter the NPCs skill, if they had a bow you'd end up being a pincushion to their slow-flying arrows. The arrows themselves were FAR too slow. They didn't fling forward, they glided at a moderate rate. But the NPCs themselves were also far too accurate. Seeing an enemy NPC with a bow, personally, makes me go: "Agggghhhh..." because they run away, can aim WHILE they're running away and facing away from you, and they never miss.

Skills
Combats skills were almost nonexistent. (If you do a side-attack you might disarm, and if you do a front attack you might paralyze!). They didn't have names or anything, and you didn't have to learn them from anybody. From hitting enough people with a blunt object you learned the advanced art of blade-acupuncture to paralyze them (but not permanently), knock them down (without a specific animation for doing so, or being able to try all the time), or blow the weapon out of their hand (but only sometimes).

I get that those kinds of skills shouldn't work all the time, or even most of the time. But when you do the same exactly thing you did before but now it knocks people down it's a little less... special. If we could learn moves like: Parrying, Disarming, Deflecting, Rushing, Stabbing (instead of cutting), and implementing jumping into the weapon skill it'd be a lot more fun. I can just imagine having a high acrobatics on a character and doing a side-flip while holding a bow and it going into bullet-time for aiming. Would that mean VATS? No, it'd mean I'd have a limited amount of slow-mo time to fire. Personally I think that'd be amazing.

Jumping
Same thing with jumping and swinging items, why not add special animations to them? (How many people do you know who can stay facing straight while jumping but swinging something that weighs 40 pounds?) I think if you're in mid-animation and you hit the ground, you should fall unless your acrobatics is high enough, in which case you can do a roll... Acrobatics should also be like... impossible in heavy armor. I don't think back-flips are conceivable when you have armor that weighs more than you on. I also think dodging should be less over-dramatic and (throw yourself into a dive), at least at lower levels. It should be available at lower levels, but be a simple duck/jump/sidestep, IMHO.

Health/Fatigue & You
Health should impact you greatly. I really like the locational damage in Fallout 3. Cripple somebody's arm? They're less effective and drop the weapon for a while. Cripple somebody's legs? They limp. It's brilliant. However, if they're 1 hit away from death they're still up and running, IMHO I'd have them get weaker and slower as their health goes down, maybe reducing to a shuffle, running away from you, or passing out (if you're using blunt objects, or fists).

Fatigue should recover much less slowly, but it shouldn't be impacted so greatly by actions. Running for a while (depending on your level of Athletics) should eventually tire you out. With swinging a little dagger, power attacks or not, it isn't that hard to do, you could probably do it for an hour non-stop. The weight of the stuff you have on you should also slow you down and make your fatigue greater, but (like I said before) they should be much more powerful. (Why didn't you sink if you were over-encumbered [or very close to it] in the water?)

Inventory Issues
Now, we're all guilty of it. You're really hurt, you're probably dying, but you've got a potion that completely heals you up. In fact, you've got 10! As great as they are, there should be a sort-of... "immediate inventory" (the stuff you have on) system that you can use, and when fights have started you shouldn't be able to enter your main inventory and take out specific things to help you out. There should be like... 10 potions, 1 other weapon, something like a wand, a few scrolls, and that's it. Of course they'd have to balance out the rest of the game, but I hated everything being a potion chugging-fest.

Thanks for reading!!

No weapon of war wielded by man weighs 40 pounds.


Even a full set of plate armor usually weighed no more than 45-60 pounds. Skilled knights were said to be able to do cart wheels and hand stands in their armor. It might be conceivable that a super skilled acrobat could do something like back flips in plate (although, obviously, it is an extra ordinary task, but something that a person of over 75 skill could achieve. Remember than lower 40's are considered average. Over 50 is getting into the abnormal, and over 70s are just far out. 100 is practically demi-god like skill).

They used war-hammers the size of small children in Oblivion. And even at a lighter weight like 20 lbs, it's still pretty hard. MY emphasis was on the animations, not the possibility of it being done. I know enough about lore that people can conceivably train to be strong enough to lift a carriage with their thumb and forefinger.

I know that they could do those things, but that's more of a transfer of momentum than a push into the air. They still technically stayed on the ground, because it's harder to get more weigh off of the ground.

Backflips in plate armor would be ridiculously hard, so I'd say that over 75 would probably be a good bet at a realistic skill setting.