I was inspired by the thread "Player skill vs Character skill" and actually wanted to write this as a post in that thread, but it turned out rather lengthy and I think it deserves its own thread, since it is not so much about player skill and character skill anymore.
This is basically an essay on how close combat works in real-life (but always with the game in mind), and how you can turn this into an intuitive combat system with as few compromises as possible.

This is heavily rooted in the character system of The Elder Scrolls, with its attributes and skills. One of the reasons to write this is to describe the different effects that attributes, character skills and player skills should have in the combat system of an RPG. Of course, my views might differ from those of other people, but I try to write this based on my own perception of the most logical way of implementing these different stats.

The different Armor skills are completely disregarded, because personally, I don't think they make any sense. However, a system where Armor skills determine your effectiveness with a type of armor is not excluded by what I'm writing here at all (I just think it should be done differently, but whatever).

Somewhere along the way, I switched from second person to third person plural. I hope you forgive me for not changing this now, the text is just too long.


First, let's begin with the very basics of combat:

What can you do in combat?
- You can shield yourself against an attack
- You can parry an attack
- You can dodge an attack
- You can run away from an attack
- You can take cover
- You can attack your opponent(s)

Which factors affect these actions?
- Your character's skills
- Your character's attributes
- Your character's equipment
- Your own skills at playing

Now in my opinion, your character's skills should all influence how well you can do the combat actions mentioned above. Your player skills, on the other hand, should cover which of these actions you do at which moment in the combat. Your character's attributes and equipment should act as certain limits to what is possible.

Defense

Let's look at blocking an attack in some way. Of course, you need to decide when to block. Then the first thing that happens is that your Agility affects if you are fast enough to fully block the attack, or if it partly gets behind your block - this affects how much damage gets through directly, and how much needs to get through your blocking attempt first. Your character's skill at blocking then reduces the amount of damage dealt by the blocked part of the attack and determines the block's effect on your fatigue (which is based on several attributes and affects your character's skill). Even raising the sword/shield to block is tiring already.
If you don't block at all or if the attack partly gets behind your block, your armor affects the damage dealt.

For dodging, this is the very same chain of events, except that the "block" in this case fully removes any damage that did not get through - meaning that the only damage left is that for which you were not fast enough. The skill therefore affects solely your possibility to get away from the attack (for example, bending waaaaay out of reach instead of just bending slightly!). Of course, getting back to your opponent is part of the dodging skill as well (I imagine it as a way of avoiding damage while still keeping close to your opponent).
For the sake of completion, running away only involves your Athletics (loss of fatigue from running away) and your Agility and Speed. It is less attractive in close combat, because you can't make a good counter-attack, but for archers and fighters with long reach (two-handed weapons) it might be more attractive than dodging and blocking.
Taking cover is the same as running away - all that matters is if the weapon or projectile reaches you or not.

What exactly do the different skills do here, and how could it be implemented? It is only natural that dodging, using a shield and parrying with a weapon are very different things, and should therefore be covered by different skills.
Dodging could either be handled by Acrobatics, or replace the system that was used for the Unarmored skill in Morrowind. Either way, the button used for jumping could very well be used for dodging as well, since there's not much use for jumping during combat anyway. And if you do want to jump to safety, the key which will be used to trigger strong blows (see further below) could be pressed simultaneously. (This is very much like Assassin's Creed handles it, and I found it very intuitive.)
Parrying and using a shield could be done very similar to Oblivion - if you have a shield, you use it when pressing the Block key, otherwise you will parry with your weapon. I don't see any reason why that should be changed. The Block skill would govern both actions.


Attacking the opponent

The last action we need to cover is your own attack. Now this is much more complicated, because it involves two decisions:
- Which part of the opponent do I attack?
- How much strength do I put into the attack?
To answer these questions, we must be sure of our intentions, and if I'm not mistaken there are four possible intentions: Dealing damage, tiring out our opponent, disarming him or causing him to drop his guard.
- If we want to deal damage, the strength of our attack determines where we can hit our opponent to deal as much damage as possible. Where he has less protection, a weak blow might be just as effective as a strong one (it doesn't matter how strong you chop off his arm!), but maybe one of the better protected parts is more vulnerable, so that a strong blow to that part might deal much more damage than a blow of whatsoever strength to the unprotected part; a weak blow will have not nearly as much effect as it would have on the unprotected part, however. The whole assumption here is that a strong blow can overcome the protection completely, while a weak blow might not (depending on the character's Strength).
- If we want to tire out our opponent, it is because his guard is too good, and he keeps parrying our attacks or shields himself. We must therefore find a way to exhaust him, so that his blocking gets less effective. We can only do that if we have enough fatigue ourselves, and it mostly involves being quick and never resting; weak blows are therefore better suited than strong ones, especially since a blocked strong blow might cause us to recoil and give the opponent an advantage.
- If we want to disarm him (or cause him to drop his shield), we need to focus on his arms, but other than that it is very similar to dealing damage - with an additional rule: Strong blows will more likely be effective, but with a high skill weak blows might be sufficient. Protection does not affect the outcome for this.
- If we want the opponent to drop his guard, it basically means that we hit him so hard that he recoils or falls down. Weak blows might be sufficient if the attribute Strength is high enough or, if we aim for body parts where a good sword move might do the trick (arms and legs), if our character's skill is high enough.

If I didn't forget anything essential, then I think that we have covered all possible actions for our attack. We can finally determine how player skill and character skill should act together in this case. However, this is a field where many different games offer many different solutions. My proposed solution will be one that keeps player skill out of it as far as possible; this might be a subject to discussion.
In my opinion, we can see from the summary above that the strength of the blow determines everything that follows; by choosing the strength of our attack, we choose what options our character has. Therefore I think that this something that needs to be in the player's hands - we can't let the character decide this because then we would have no influence at all. If the character chose by himself to use the strong attack because a weak attack wouldn't deal enough damage, it might have a negative effect and it might be contradictory to the player's intention, who might have only wanted to exhaust his enemy with the blow, not actually deal a lot of damage.
But we also see that the decision which body part we attack must be in the player's hands, not in the character's. Same reason - it is crucial to our personal strategy, which can't be fathomed by the game.

This leaves us with a very simple solution to the attacking part of combat: We need to be able to choose the strength of our blow and the body part where it is supposed to hit. The former we can do with a certain key (also used as a trigger between jumping and dodging, see above), the latter with the cross-hair.
Tiring out the opponent, staggering or disarming him are all positive side-effects to these two decisions (body part and strength decision), so there is no need to exclude these possibilities from a normal damage attack (i.e. we don't need to put these into the player's control - although they could be limited to certain combo moves, but that's a different topic). If the player thinks the character is strong enough to get through any of the opponent's protection and/or to get those side-effects without using a strong blow, he can completely forget about that option; if the character is NOT strong enough for that, then the question is whether the player prefers a light combat style that aims at tiring out his opponent and causing damage where there is no sufficient protection, or if he wants to (occasionally) use strong blows to also deal damage at more protected areas and increase his chances of disarming and/or staggering his opponent.

Where is the character's weapon skill in all this? Basically, it affects everything except the total possible damage. It does affect how much of that total damage gets through, however: The character's skill directly determines whether you hit your opponent at all, and if you get a good swing at him or if you (for example) hold your sword too loosely and don't deal as much damage as the chosen area, your sword's sharpness, your opponent's defense actions and your strength would allow. To make this clear, if an opponent is standing completely still, the chance of really missing him should be very low (for central parts such as the torso, practically zero), and also the chance of doing less damage than possible because you don't have a good grip on your weapon should be rather low. I simply think that the skill should somehow play a role in this, but it's a rather small one.
The biggest effect the character's weapon skill should have is the circumvention of the opponent's defenses. The higher your character's skill, the less likely it should be that the opponent can simply dodge your attack or parry it, since learning how to fight with a weapon is mostly exactly that: learning to forsee the opponent's actions and acting correspondingly.


Summary

- Factors that determine the total possible damage:
Our character's Strength, the strength of the blow (weak or strong), the Damage stat of our weapon.

- Factors that keep the damage dealt from being the total possible damage:
The maximum damage value for this specific body part (for example, you could never deal more damage than 10% of the opponent's full health when attacking the arm). Our Fatigue. A small chance of (partial) failure based on our Weapon skill. The percentage of successful dodging or blocking done by the opponent. In case of blocking, the remaining percentage are further reduced by his actual Block skill. Non-blocked part of blow gets calculated against protection of original target, blocked part of blow against protection of shielded arm, now also affecting that body part.

- Factors that influence percentage of successful dodging:
Dodging skill affects maximum reach of dodge, Agility how fast you get there. Attacking person's Agility affects how fast he can react to your move (with penalty, since he has to observe first), his Weapon skill and his weapon's speed affect if/how much he can prevent the dodging of his opponent.

- Factors that influence percentage of successful blocking:
Attacking person's Agility and his weapon's speed determine how much time there is for a block, blocking person's Agility determines how fast he can raise his arm (if he is not already blocking).

Combat gameplay would come down to four keys: Attacking, Blocking, Dodging and Strong Blow. The Strong Blow key would be held while attacking in order to make a strong blow, if it is held down while dodging, you jump (as you usually do with the dodging key when out of combat). Holding the Dodge Key will keep you in focus with the opponent your facing so that after dodging you can attack him right away again, holding the Dodge Key AND pressing a direction button will turn you to another enemy or simply turn you around so that you can start running away right after dodging.


Did I make a mistake? Did I forget anything? Is anything unclear? Any comments on these thoughts?

Take it to the suggestion list.

I think combat deserves it's own thread, it's hardly an idea or a suggestion, it's essentially changing a fundamental aspect of the game. Anyway, I'll add my own post to this once I get on a computer as opposed to this iPod.

I thought Oblivion's use of only a single key for both attack and strong attack was convenient. I think having to keep track of a separate button for strong attacks would annoy me; I'm hardly a Baryshnikov on the keyboard. I thought the one-button block was nicely done, and I think I could appreciate a similar press-and-hold button for dodging even if it does require an extra button.

I hated that. I had to hold down the button for about 3 seconds before my character would attack, and for side swipes or trip attacks, by the time your character finally performs the attack you've run off the side of a cliff or bridge, or ur just too far out of the way to be able to hit them.

I would like the saber style from Jedi Knight to come back. You can choose your attack style, fast/weak , medium/medium , or slow/strong. And the longest you have to hold down the button for a special attack was 1 second.

This^

Controlling the strength of an attack was the one point where Morrowind's otherwise limited and clunky combat system shined in comparison to Oblivion's. The longer you held the attack button before release, the more time your character had to fully draw the weapon back and prepare the strike. You could "spam" the button for quick jabs, or hold it until it was fully drawn in order to do full rated damage. It was ridiculously intuitive, and gave you plenty of control with a single button. In Oblivion, I felt like I had LESS control over offense, even if it was much more player-driven on the defensive. In Oblivion's combat, you pushed the button, and after some delay, the character eventually decided to swing the weapon, always with the same amount of force (but with damage unfortunately dependent almost entirely on your weapon skill). Blocking, on the other hand, worked extremely well in comparison.

Faster but weaker attacks should be harder to block, but be more sharply reduced by armor protection, as in real life. A small "minimum threshold" value for armor would help represent that, where you have to do at least X amount of damage to penetrate the armor at all. Powerful attacks should penetrate or bypass the armor more thoroughly, and do serious "locational" damage, but should be easier to dodge or to block with a shield, and tend to leave you more open to counter-attacks in the mean time. The purpose of jabs and/or quick slashes is (and should be) to weaken or slow the opponent enough that they can no longer effectively stop a stronger attack, or mount an effective counter. At that point, one or two solid hits should effectively end the combat, rather than taking another 20 generic swipes to finally put them down.

Having a second attack button to do an alternate form of attack would be icing on the cake. The "power moves" in OB always felt "arcade-ish" and unintuitive, and I think that alternate attack forms could be implemented much better than by moving in different directions while attacking. If I want to do a forward "lunge", why would I back up? Why do I need to step left to do this special attack, when my character really needs to get over to the right?

How about you take it to the suggestion list. Do I have to do all the work around here?

Seriously though: This is not primarily a suggestion. This is a train of thoughts about how real-life combat can be represented by the Elder Scrolls system of attributes and skills. The aim is more or less to get a summary on which part of combat is governed by which factors. The words "player skill" could completely be replaced by "tactical/strategical thinking", and if we had a system where THAT was actually a character skill (in D&D, there is a skill called something like that, I think), then the consequence would be that, if we want to logically use all character skills available that are related to combat, we will in fact take control out of the player's hands completely. Heck, the character would even decide when to flee from battle all by himself.
But there is no skill like that in Elder Scrolls, which means that the player needs to make these decisions.

About the second key that determines the strength of an attack: Well, this is just one idea of how it could be done. But I have never liked those systems where you hold your attack button for 1 second to make a strong move. In fact, I would actually prefer a system where I can simply hold my attack button, and my character keeps on attacking. Like I said, I want as little player skill as possible in it, and placing the attack at the right moment is something that can be handled by Agility and Weapon skill, there's no need for player skill (the player already has enough to do by thinking about where his next strike should go and if he wants to make it a strong or a weak one).

Something that still bugs me is how blocking/parrying does not depend on Weapon skill. Because actually, you need to have some knowledge of HOW a weapon needs to be parried/blocked. I guess if you try to parry a warhammer in the same way as you parry a sword, you'll end up slicing yourself into pieces AND getting a severe blow to the head. So maybe your skill in the type of weapon your opponent is using could positively influence your blocking/parrying attempt?
That would finally mean that characters who train many weapon skills simultaneously have an advantage over those who specialize, because they know each type of weapon and can keep themselves from getting hurt by them more effectively. The advantage would of course be more noticable when parrying, since that requires more skill than using a shield does.

That is a terrible idea, and does not fit TES at all. Why do people want to change the way things are for combat, when combat in OB was honestly amazing. OB wasn't an amazing game but, the combat was pretty damn realistic.

I just wanted to let you know that as a person who has used hammers, axes, and bows (and swords if you count machetes) it is possible to swing a weapon with a varying speed and force.

OB offensive combat is a step backwards from MW but the defensive combat is a step in the right direction.

Learning when to use a certain type of blocking move is something the character would learn with his Blocking Skill. You don't need to have a high Blocking Skill yourself to know how to attack a blocking opponent, so why would you need a high Axe Skill to know how to block your opponent's axe.

Nice thread, though I don't fully agree with the minimizing of player skill, your suggestion would make a great combat system.

How can you go backwards from "roll a percentile against your skill and watch for the first five or so levels as two out of three attacks do jack squat"? To be sure, Oblivion's combat system had flaws of its own (a good deal of them coming from that bedamned level scaling system, as well as the issue of stat inflation that plagues RPGs in general) but I'll take it any day of the century over having to obey the whims of the RNG. And nuts to anyone who wants the Elder Scrolls to head back in that direction.

Of coarse it's possible to swing objects at varying speeds. You're talking to the team captain of my varsity baseball team who had a perfect season our last year, and got a athletic scholarship. I know how to swing things depending on my target.
What I'm saying is, it's getting to the point where these suggestions are just getting ridiculous. Pretty soon you all are going to start talking about how you have to stop and rub your hands mid combat because the vibrations of the weapons from the blows are making your hands go numb. There's a point where it's like..ok..lets just let Beth design the combat system.

Don't worry, I'm not that much of a stickler for realism in combat. I just don't want to see TES become a twitch shooter.

@ Sorenson:
I'm not advocating bringing back the "sword violates physics" missing aspect, merely the fact that the different weapons had varying damage values based on the swing type (which makes sense) as well as varying damage values based on how hard you swung (i.e. how long you built up your swing).

How was it really any better than Oblivion's system? Depending on just how you read Morrowind's damage system, a succussful attack either does the minimum damage (oft a piddling 1 point) whilst a charged one does max, or a regular attack rolls damage and a charged rolls damage against a multiplier (which one logically assumes ends at 2.0). And the whole "freedom to attack as you choose" aspect sounds good until you remember that as far as attacks are concerned all damage is equal - a skeleton is damaged just as bad by a thrust as by a slash as by a chop, even if its nature would reduce damage from thrusting and slashing weapons ala D&D. There's no reason to use a weapon in any way other than the way that gives the highest potential damage, as doing so was a DETRIMENT to you, and the game even gave you an OPTION to simply use the best attack.

The only difference between Oblivion and Morrowind in those departments you outlined is that Oblivion cut out a lot of useless filler: it uses its weapons in the manner most suitable for their nature (even if said manners all wound up looking the same way, but that's more an issue to take up with the animators) and it still lets you choose to pepper your target with a flurry of light attacks or smack the unholy junk out of them with one big attack done with all your might. Options are nice, but only if they're actually useful.

It was superior because the amount of damage dealt was variable for each attack (i.e. realistic) whereas in OB I only get one attack speed and it always does the exact same amount of damage (i.e. completely unrealistic). Essentially, Oblivion actually removed the tactical aspect to combat and replaced it with an arcade shooter scheme.

How do you "pepper your target with a flurry of light attacks" when all offensive moves are exactly identical in speed and strength, aside from "special" attacks? In MW, you could jab about 5 or 6 times in 3 seconds with a dagger, or wind up for around 2-3 seconds to do max damage for the weapon. OB had more overall combat options, and its combat animations put MW's to shame, but its offensive choices were "attack or not".

I'd like a little bit of each, if you please.

[ BTW - it sometimes made sense to use different attacks; such as when one had better minimum damage, and another attack had a better max. Spamming worked better with one, power swings worked better with the other form. ]

LOL
:rofl:
I don't know why, but I laughed out loud when I read that. It just sounds silly to say. haha.

I'm all for player skill in an evolving genre but I know a lot of people will disagree with that. In every combat thread I mention Mount and Blade but it really seems that no other game does it as well. It's the only combat that feels like combat, and not pressing buttons

"Realistic" does not equate to better, particularly for game mechanics unless the game is built around it and uses it as a selling point (Bushido Blade and Mount & Blade, for example). Space sim nerds get themselves up in a twist about Newtonian Physics and will go on about how it's a travesty that very few games actually use it to its full extent, but forget that for most games NP is a gigantic pain in the behind.


Unfortunetily, there's all of about 5 base weapons from about 100-150-200 where the attack type with the highest minimum attack isn't also the one with the highest charge attack, and I don't think there's a single one of those five where the increase in minimum damage is anywhere near equal to the loss in max damage, so no, that excuse doesn't fly.


Silly until you remember that we've got a game where weapons habitually LIGHT DUDES ON FIRE. Sometimes it does pay to just swing away, physical damage bedamned.

I think you should be able to grab people and grapple with them or something.

Also it would be sweet (and disturbing) to be able to strangle someone to death. Nice and quiet, great for super strong assassins. My brutish Nord, Wulfgar could use this ability.

Guys, this is not a "Morrowind's vs. Oblivion's combat system" thread.

And anyone who says that going back even the tiniest bit to Morrowind's system is insane needs to provide arguments for that statement. I gave a long (very long) explanation why and in which areas I think it is mandatory to do so.
Some people here, however, seem to argue "In Morrowind weapons went right through the body 2 out of 3 times, so anything even closely related to a system like that is wrong and should not be done". And that's just silly, because of course nobody wants that part again.

Let's simply look at one single question: Is it realistic that one swing of your weapon always does more damage if you have a high skill?
No, it is not, in any way, realistic. Take a highly skilled fighter, and a person with no fighting skills at all (but with the same Strength), and give them the very same weapon. Place these two person in front of a target (let's say: one doesn't move or defend itself), and have them hit the target with the intention to deal as much damage as possible. The skilled fighter will know how to do that, and maybe 90% of his hits will do maximum damage. The other person will NOT know how to do it, and as a result he'll just swing away. He will mostly not do much damage at all, but in a few cases, he will do just as much damage as the skilled fighter.

Being skilled in a weapon means knowing where to hit a target to deal as much damage as possible. It also means being able to hold your weapon steady and actually hit that point with all the force you put into your blow.
Not being skilled in a weapon, but using it nonetheless, means gathering all the knowledge you have about these things (which is incomplete) and trying to use that to your advantage. But it also means simply hoping for that one lucky strike.

The developers seem to think likewise, it is just that the way they put it into their combat systems differed. In Morrowind, all that counted were those lucky strikes; all other strikes did not count at all, because they were considered to be too weak or to miss their target. This meant that you often didn't do any damage at all. In Oblivion, it is almost exactly the same thing, with one difference: they simply calculated an average of damage you'll do with your weapon, and let you hit your opponent every time.

In short: In Morrowind, you had a 40% chance to hit, and then did 100% maximum damage - in Oblivion, you had a 100% chance to hit, and then did 40% of the maximum damage.

So it is obvious that both systems lack a certain amount of realism. Not hitting your opponent at all should be something like a critical failure - happens in 1 out of 100 cases, and usually when your friends are watching. But it is also not realistic that each strike does the same amount of damage. So in the first post, there's my idea of a combat system that gets as close to real-life as possible concerning this question and concerning other questions.
This is not"Which combat system is closer to real life, something like Morrowind or something like Oblivion".
This is "Given all factors involved in combat based on what is there and what is not there in an Elder Scrolls game - How does the perfect combat system look like, and would it be possible to implement that in an intuitive way?"


@Betrayer of Humanity: Of course, the developers have the final say in how it will be done in the next Elder Scrolls game. However, they are just humans like we are, and they don't have the ultimate knowledge on how a combat system should look like, so I don't understand what's wrong with us describing our own ideas. I mean, there are a few things about which I got really annoyed in any combat system of TES, so I don't think letting them simply design the combat and keeping my mouth shut is necessarily going to achieve anything good for me.
As far as I can see, there's also nothing ridiculous in my proposed combat system. You might have noticed that this isn't just a bunch of incoherent suggestions. I tried to design one complete, logical basic design for combat. One which would cover all the RPG aspects of our character and yet involve player skills.

@Crow: I guess you're right, it does make more sense that knowledge how to block certain weapons is governed by the Block skill. That is good, because it means that my initial combat system is still flawless
About the minimizing of player skill: Well, that isn't a general statement. What I meant was: "I will put into the player's hands what MUST be handled by him because there is no equivalent character stat for it." I don't want a game where you simply watch your character fight, but I also don't want a game where you even have to make a swinging move with your mouse if you want to attack.
Actually, I guess that the player in my combat system is slightly more involved than he was in Oblivion, simply because locational damage is a kind of important part of it. Other than that, it's very similar, with a few differences in gameplay (instead of running away from the enemy in order to dodge him, there's a convenient button that lets you use your Acrobatics or Dodge skill to achieve the same effect).

@Nightbeat: I might be mistaken, but I would think that those are more like special moves, and not really part of the *basic* combat. Okay, one could talk about grabbing/pushing people, but strangling someone to death? That seems like a special move for when you make a Sneak attack with your bare hands. And special moves are not really part of this thread, although I agree that that would be a very cool feature.
Grabbing/pushing people is something that falls into Hand-to-Hand combat, so at least that is easy. But the way I see it, the only way to implement it is to add another button that can be pressed for "left hand actions". You can't use any of the buttons that are already used for this, and limiting that new button to grabbing/pushing seems like a waste of a button. A "left hand actions" key would allow you to bash somebody with your shield, hurt him with your torch, or if you have nothing equipped, grab or push him (grabbing when you're not blocking at the same time, pushing when you're blocking... I guess, since the former seems to be an aggressive action, while the latter is more defensive).
Sounds like a possible extension to my current combat system, although I don't fancy it, since it's just one more button to press and doesn't seem all that useful to me. But I admit that it was missing before, and should be adressed.

And why, in your opinion, does the fighting system in TES:V have to be extremely realistic? Has it every crossed your mind that we are playing a damn video game? Bethesda will make TES:V the way they want to, and they will make it entertaining, and whatever is the most fun to do.

#1. People play games for various reasons, not the least of which is to escape from reality. Some people need realism in their entertainment in order to suspend their disbelief and enjoy it. Ergo, this is a personal taste issue and therefore whether it has crossed their mind that it is a game is irrelevant.

#2. You are putting a lot of blind faith in the assumption that Bethesda will make TES:V well. Especially considering that Oblivion was not the product of "entertaining and fun to do" but rather of streamlining for mass appeal (which is unfortunately the current industry-wide trend).

#3. He has repeatedly stated his opinion as to why he wants realistic fighting.

Cheers!

I'm about 99% sure that bethesda isn't going to design their combat system based on a post made from someone on the Beth forums. Just sayin.
Kind of a huge thing to let in the hands of someone who isn't a professional.
Todd Howard: "So steve, how's that combat system coming? Making some improvements since OB?"
Steve: "Yeah bro, this guy on the beth forums told me hao to du it."
Todd Howard: "Excellent."

And if you DO have a suggestion for how the combat system should be, why not put it in the suggestion thread like everyone else has been doing for the last, I don't know, 3 and a half years?
It's a crazy concept, I know.