agreed! very well put. hopefully beth feel the same way. infact, i would bet if todd reads your post, he will say "my thoughts exactly" .

It would only "svck" if you're unskilled with that weapon type, and it would still be better than an unenchanted weapon of the same type. If you want to use an enchanted sword to its full potential, shouldn't you have to know how to use swords? If you're better with maces than swords, then use enchanted maces instead of enchanted swords.

Contrary to what a lot of the "action" gamers keep saying, adding in "die roll" effects COULD be implemented in a much better and less intrusive way. Bethesda could avoid the blatantly "wrong" feel that both the traditional RPG and the newer "arcade" systems suffer from, now that both computers and game design have progressed beyond "pen and paper" mechanics.

The biggest problem with MW's combat was that you missed a lot at low skill levels, even though your weapon passed right through the opponent, and regardless of how pathetically slow or easy to hit your opponent was. That's solvable with just a bit of work.

First, and most difficult to do, there should be animations that show WHY you missed: either the opponent sidestepped, blocked, or rolled with the hit to minimize the damage, or you just made a bad swing. Second, the DIFFERENCE between your attack skill and the opponent's agility should matter, so if you're swinging at a lethargic Mudcrab, you should NEVER miss, regardless of how little you knew about the weapon. Against a skilled fighter, your raw and untrained character should swing ineffectually, or have swings blocked, as routinely as it was in Morrowind. If I'm going up against a nimble "acrobat" or blademaster, why should I expect to land a hit on them? If I'm attacking an inanimate object, or a creature that's pretty close to inanimate, why should I miss?

OB merely traded one problem for another. Hopefully, the next installment in the series will consider BOTH the RPG and Arcade aspects of combat, and make it work.

I like the way you think. I also like Mount&Blade, which pretty much calculates inertia of weapons and targets, and where a hit is a hit. Jolly good battles in that game, and realistic. And dependant on character skills. I see no reason for TES5 to be any worse, after all Bethesda IS a real game studio while M&B was pretty much created by two people.

The flip side of this is the sense of achievement when you do begin to hit. That feeling is utterly and entirely missing in Oblivion. A character hits just as often and just as easily at level 1 as at level 50. When my character swings a sword in Oblivion I do not feel that my character is learning to use the weapon more effectively.

This doesn't dismiss from the fact that you'll likely be killed by a rat simply for choosing to run there

Mounted combat for well combat with the real advantages of it not eliminated for balancing.

I had no sense of achievement in that at all. I didn't feel like "YAY I hit" but more "FINALLY, a hit", less like I accomplished something but that the game lost at CHEATING.

Its a laugh watching my dad play Oblivion, when hes in combat the mouse goes nuts and he swings all over the place and constantly misses. But he has fun.

DaMuncha: I bet the discussions here would be entirely alien to him, too. Am I right? Do we debate decisions/features that he isn't even aware of?

The thing I feel that has to change the most is the clicking. Really, when you think about it down to its most basic function, they all really played out the same. With Morrowind, the mass clicking came from the missing blows. Oblivion the mass clicking generated from the huge amount of hp targets seemed to have/damage you seemed to deal. While Oblivion had a bit more functionality and utility behind it, down to its core it was still just mass clicking. I'd like to see something interesting with combat.

Don't confuse the desire for that dreaded word 'immersion' with the desire for a genre. People want dice rolls and skill checks in RPGs because they are meant to represent your avatar, as in the character you are playing not your actual skill. If people want their own skill to determine how effective they are then they can play action and shooter games, that's why those games aren't RPGs. If they want to play with skills and dice rolls that check those skills then they play an RPG. To say "why should we use stats in an RPG" is like saying "why should we use cocoa in a chocolate cake". It's not an RPG if your capabilities aren't dependant upon your avatar's skills.



Very good idea actually. The Oblivion engine already made use of the 'perks' given for levelling up every 25 points. It isn't a far stretch to add this requirement to weapon and armour enchantments the same way they had the level of locks dependant upon lockpick and hacking computers dependant upon science for Fallout 3.

On the whole "the skills represent your character" thing I was always of the impressions that YOUR input represents your characters conscious and controlled actions, your skills are subconscious and instinctive actions.

So for example, swinging your weapon and where you aim to is a conscious action, this is what YOU do.
The precise aiming at weak points, balancing the weapon and balancing your strength-to-stamina output is a subconscious action, this is what your skill does.

Pretty much what you control is "interactive", what your characters skills control is "reactive". All those major controlled actions performed, walking, attacking, blocking and evasive jumps, choosing what to say, repairing your gear, shopping etc. is what you do as the player. All actions that happen uncontrolled like balancing on uneven ground, contorting, twisting and turning your body to avoid a hit, how your character uses his mimic and wording, where to use your tools on your damaged gear, how he has to talk to the shop owner to get a little discount etc. all is controlled by your skills.


So in combat, your skills would theoretically increase what damage you do but NOT by suddenly upping the damage number on your weapon, it's by finding weak points in your opponents armoring, finding the right balance between strength and stamina you use so you can hit harder and fight longer, having the weapon balanced better in your hands so you have a better grip and can place a hit much better, all that would be skill based. But when you attack is player controlled and IF you hit should not be based on a coin toss but on if your weapon made contact or not. If it did and managed to penetrate or carry over enough energy through your opponents armoring you'd do damage.

The thing I hated the most about Morrowind was the combat... it felt extremely boring. Then out came Oblivion! I was excited when I first heard that you had more control in combat since I like real-time calculated damagerather than dice-rolls under the hood... that is till I saw that bashing a dude's skull or his pinky toe had the same exact effect and that the things they added from Morrowind was that you could always hit and you could block when you wanted to. Slightly more elaborate but boring nonetheless. I don't really see what's the point of prasing one over the other if both of them are terrible.

But luckily SkyCaptain created Deadly Reflex and TheTalkieToaster created Locational Damage...

What I want for TES5 is a more elaborate combat... think Dark Messiah of M&M with it's kicks, bashes, impalements and finishers combined with Warband's speed based damage. We could finally have horse-combat. Imagine the sense of acomplishment when you have this huge orc swinging a warhammer at you, you slowly tiring him out till you see an opening, you dodge out of the way his "chop" attack, then rush forward to have some momentum and just bury your axe in his exposed skull. Or maybe your characterr's skill isn't high enough and you miss your opportunity and your balance for which you are severely punished by the orc. No combo systems, just you thinking out your fights looking for openings, making your enemies loose their balance and using the environment to your advantage. Add free-running similar to Assassin's Creed 2 (doesn't have to be as elaborate) for characters that prefer stealth, agility and acrobatics to open up more possibilities to take out or avoid your foes or to complete quests... something like the climbing skill from past games.

enchantments could scale to the ENCHANT skill, but not the weapon skill.

When my Destruction skill is at 5, the rat takes one or two spark spells to kill (not even sure of the spell name, been so long. Flare?), but when the skill is at 100, I need many, many spells to kill a same sort of rat.

Are you talking about Oblivion or Morrowind? "Flare" makes me think you're talking about Oblivion. If so, I find that a little hard to believe.

Rats do not scale in Oblivion. They are always level 1, at all times. I can't see why you would have to use more spells as your character increases in Destruction skill.

People have to understand that its an RPG (Role-Playing Game). You play someone else, not yourself. therfore if your CHARACTER (not you) is unable to use something. then he shouldnt kick ass with it just because its enchanted. its just logical. someone who uses a sword everyday is more likely to hit another person than with a battle axe or a spear because the character has no knowledge of how to fight with those weapons proprely. in an RPG your CHARACTER's skills are tested not YOURS that is why it is a broken mechanic and why he should fixed one way or another. no one here said to forget real time fighting.

IMO: i think that if you use maces when youre good with swords they should just make the enemies more intelligent. they would be harder to hit they would dodge and block more. with the engine revamped i guess this is possible.

There needs to be a balance. All I'm getting from that is that you want TES:V to be a point and click game

I'm conflicted. For one, I do appreciate a system whereby someone who is more used to using one kind of weapon will be more effective with that weapon. However, I also believe that someone who is a master swordsman can probably swing an axe fairly well, too. He's not going to pick it up and be like "What the heck do you do with this?" However, if the one swordmaster were to use an axe in a fight against another swordmaster using a sword, all other factors being equal, he probably would lose. It just depends on where you draw the line.

Definitely true.

Face it, TES is a ACTION BASED GAME.
Really if you want coin toss fighting and NO locational damage you could just as well change it to the "click and watch" combat system seen in MMOs as that would take away the constant clicking as well as constantly having to aim.

But realistically even Daggerfall pretty much had a even more action based combat as you could change how your weapon hit with your mouse. Sure it still had coin toss decided hitting but still you actually did even more.


PS: I REFUSE to call it dice roll system as dice rolls have a range of outcomes (1 - 6 on a six sided die), I will keep saying "coin toss" as that is much more accurate to what happens (a "yes or no" decision with a % based coin).

So you're saying if two level ones were fighting, and one had Mehrunes Razor, if he gets a clean hit he shouldn't be able to use its magical capacity? That makes no freakin' sense whatsoever. Artifacts and enchanted items are just this, static. You can scale the accessibility of such items and enchantments, but not scale them directly.

did you even read what i wrote? i did'nt ever say that. I said that to keep the game play real-time enemies should be more intelligent when you have a weapon youre not good with in-hand to show the fact that your attacks are easier to dodge with something youre less trained with. point me where i said that magical item shouldn't be static

Of the three ES games that I've played, I thought Daggerfall had the best idea with regard to combat. Though you would see your weapon pass through your enemy at times much like Morrowind, there were also sound effects that 'explained' what happened during the dice roll. And, unlike Oblivion, your skills as a player were less relevant than your character's skills in determining the outcome of battle. I think a system that could incorporate combat mechanics similar to Daggerfall or Morrowind, with good sound effects, and the addition of decent block/parry/dodge/evade animations would be an acceptable compromise between the RPG and action crowds.

read my whole post. i suggested to make the AI better when you have a weapon your less proeficient with so that it shows that youre more predictable and stuff like that with a weapon your'e not trained in using. its still real-time but using a weapon youre not trained in will add challenge (enemies will block or dodge more often) this way, your character is more tempted to use weapon hes good with. again, its an rpg you live with your choice and the consequences of them if you decided earlier in the game to be better with swords and found a magical mace your character shouldnt be as likely to hit with it. and the only solution to keep the game real-time and not to make it point and click is to make the AI smarter when you have an weapon youre lower level in.



personaly if it was only me tho it would be point and click like morrowind because im a real RPGer but i know its impossible with the actual market so be it. my suggestion is the best compromise so far and im hoping for someone to suggest something even better. It is a fact. the combat mechanics are broken because they reflect the player instead of the character and its not supposed to since its a RPG and you play a role, not yourself.