Does TES need an overhaul of combat?

[endtherapture]

Frankly, combat in TES is crap, no disputing it. It's mechanically broken, and incredibly boring to boot. You just wail on your enemies to die whilst tabbing out to drink healing potions occasionally. There are a ton of exploits you can use completely accidentally without minmaxing and there's not any spacial awareness or positioning at all. There's also very little difference between various weapons. It's probably my least favourite part of the games.

Having started Dark Souls recently, I've realised how much more fun, rewarding and in depth the combat is. Every weapon feels completely different and there are a variety of moves you can do. Spacial positioning is incredibly important as is verticality and knowing when to dodge and when to parry. It's a lot more fun and rewarding than TES combat.

Now I'm not saying to make TES combat like Dark Souls, incredibly unforgiving and brutal, but do you think it should be more like Dark Souls, rewarding positioning, learning the moveset of your weapon, and the patterns of attack of your enemies and generally making it better than just wailing on your enemies?

Would you like to see the system changed/improved or would it ruin the franchise?

For me I'd love to see it changed, the combat isn't the thing that makes the games unique, it's the exploration that's the key to the series.

PS: Dungeons are crap in TES, they should have them much more non-linear, unique and complex like in older games like Baldur's Gate...thoughts?

 

[GoaThief]

No, I'm fine with the combat in TES.

I don't want an intense experience, I want chill (not to say I want no tension at all) - it suits the mood of the game, which to me is mostly exploration and immersion.

 

[Zhukov]

YES!

Walking up to each enemy in turn and left clicking until they die while sipping on the occasional potion is not a good combat system.

Niether is abusing the grossly overpowered sneak function.

 

[Yokillernick]

I don't mind combat in TES as I rarely use it. 99% of my enemies die from my overpowered sneak, enchanted daedric bow attack. But yeah melee combat should be kept the same because the day they change it to Dark Souls style is the day that I will stop buying TES.

PS: Rage quitted Dark Souls after exiting the starter prison as I got uber raped by 4 enemies on the castle walls over and over.

 

[veloper]

The third person view for combat is a good idea. TES already has an option for 3rd person view, so fix that clunky thing and make a good combat system.

Alternative: make combat more like the combat found in DMOM&M. Then you can keep first person always and the game won't suck.

 

[Hagi]

The Elder Scrolls needs to take a long good look at some of the combat overhaul mods available.

They add a lot of good stuff there that uses the basics already provided and expands on it.

Instead of just whacking each enemy in turn until they die you have to manage your stamina, if it drops too low you'll start getting staggered frequently. You have to manage your positioning to keep facing all your enemies, getting hit in the back seriously hurts. You have to time your hits, enemies will be blocking more intelligently. You have to time your blocks, enemies will wait for openings themselves.

Stuff like that I'd be definitely in favour of, it would greatly improve the combat whilst keeping it uniquely Elder Scrolls.

Turning it into a purely third person experience however I wouldn't be a fan of.

 

[endtherapture]

The third person view for combat is a good idea. TES already has an option for 3rd person view, so fix that clunky thing and make a good combat system.

Alternative: make combat more like the combat found in DMOM&M. Then you can keep first person always and the game won't suck.

DMOM&M? What is that and how does the combat work?

 

[veloper]

The third person view for combat is a good idea. TES already has an option for 3rd person view, so fix that clunky thing and make a good combat system.

Alternative: make combat more like the combat found in DMOM&M. Then you can keep first person always and the game won't suck.

DMOM&M? What is that and how does the combat work?

It's Dark Messiah of Might & magic. It's a first person action spin-off from the M&M series.
Youtube could explain it best I think.

 

[evilneko]

Melee combat in TES needs fixing.

Magic's ok in Skyrim. Sucked in Oblivion.

 

[Brendan Stepladder]

First, I would give potion drinking an animation. You could still drink 50 health potions at a time, bu they would all stack into one animation. (IE: you select 101 potions, but you get all of the health after completing the animation for drinking just one potion.) Second, I would remove the ability to regenerate health over time.

There need to be more uses for stamina. For example, a dodging system when a simple tap of the sprint button causes your character to hop to the side. Giving the AI this ability would also make them more fun to fight. There should also be a system to make stamina ore like your character's energy, rather than a consumable like magicka. I would do this in two ways: first, if you completely exhaust your stamina, you have to wait a few seconds longer until it begins regenerating. When your stamina is exhausted, your attacks should be slower, and it would also marginally impact movement speed. Maybe also make your character huff and groan more in combat to drive the point home. Also, the player would be more prone to staggering and knockback.

Blocking is also a tool that needs to be used more seriously. Shield bashes should be used to counter other blocks somewhat, with combat turning into a contest of who has more stamina. However, power attacks should be able to shatter blocks and leave the victim more vulnerable to regular attacks. (While on the subject of power attacks: they should do less damage but cause more staggering). However, if you perform a power attack and miss, you are left very vulnerable to a counter-attack for a second or so. If a player or enemy is hit in this state, they will take a bit more damage and be superbly staggered.

 

[WoW Killer]

Yes. It's my main issue with the series as it is. I also agree the third person mode should be better. You can judge distances so much better in third person.

 

[TrevHead]

Yes combat in TES does suck, but explorating the world is the main draw of the game. However exploring Bethesdas worlds gets rather stale after a while so having a good combat system would help in that regard.

That or revisit Vardenfall.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

If the system would be a little more like Mount & Blade, but not quite as complex due to Elder Scrolls' simplicity, then it would be fine. I abso-fucking-lutely loathe combat systems where you still receive damage when you block or parry (they call it "damage reduction". Stupid shit). It really makes the combat feel like no matter what you do or how skilled you are, you're still going to receive a tonne of damage regardless (unless you exploit the pause-time-and-drink-potions bullshit). All they need to do to fix this is add in a proper parry feature. Reduce the health a little as well and there you have it, shorter but more skillful fights instead of the current long, boring drawn-out ones.

But yeah, they really need to fix this potion madness. I'm surprised they still haven't fixed it over the course of these games, to be honest. Pausing time to drink potions is ridiculous. It needs to have an animation, that takes a second or so to complete. Thus the player would need to temporarily retreat from combat, get behind cover to take a drink from his potion and then resume combat. It would increase the challenge and the tense-nature of combat. This would add to the player trying to avoid receiving damage at all, playing skillfully by either evading or parrying blows rather than sucking them up.

I have difficulty putting this shit to words, but I'm sure some of you know where I am going with this.

 

[The Abhorrent]

A Dark Souls-esque combat system would almost certainly benefit the franchise... but in all honesty, combat has always been a secondary focus for the series (at least the last couple of games). It's there, it's functional, it's not detrimental to the experience (usually); however, the game is definitely more built around exploration and immersion. Even with the copious amounts of combat in the games, it's almost never "the point" of playing the game. Compared to a game like Dark Souls, combat (and difficulty) most certainly is the focus; there is exploration and immersion elements as well (particularly if you take note of the lore buried in the game), but that's secondary to the combat.

Anyhow, better combat would still benefit the series.
However, a few details must be adhered to:

- Not oppressively difficult. Dark Souls is a great game, came out just a month before Skyrim and has superficially similar gameplay (hence the comparison)... but The Elder Scrolls series doesn't need its difficulty, period.

- The combat should still be (relatively) easily modded. And yes, modders can make it as hard as Dark Souls if they want.

- The combat AI has to be greatly improved. Not the series strongest point, if you think about it. Keep in mind that this is separate from non-combat AI, which is better (if still prone to bizarre quirks).

- The game(s) need to be much less glitchy and more consistent/stable. This is probably the biggest and most damning issue, as TES games are famous for their glitches. Mostly taken in stride right now (because they're often funny), but if the combat gameplay gets better glitches can become severely detrimental to the experience. If you can't beat a foe because it's glitchy, it's frustrating; doubly so if the gameplay requires some finesse.

 

[endtherapture]

You're just realizing it's shit now ?

Being such a combat focused game, they really should concentrate on making a good combat system, you would think. Their RPG mechanics are weak and shallow anyway, so scale back on them more (if need be) and make a fun action/adventure type game with good combat, more enemy variety and some magic, instead of a 'rpg' that tries to do alot of things, but doesn't do anything particularity well. (besides exploration) But even the exploration falls flat when it just leads to boring encounters/bad combat/crap loot system.

TES tries to do everything and spreads itself too thin.

It's trying to do combat, exploration, RPG elements, multiple races, wide open world, guilds, magic, lore, monsters etc. but just ends up skimping on everything and only really suceeding in a giant open world.

Other games focus on story and characters and do that very well (eg. Dragon Age Origins) whilst Dark Souls focuses on combat and monsters.

TES needs to spread itself less thin. Like cut all the food and stuff out of the game. Who cares about the food in the game?

 

[Hargrimm]

TES combat has pretty much sucked since the beginning.

Some good names have already been dropped, like DMOM&M, Chivalry and Mount&Blade. To that I want to add Severance: Blade of darkness and Die by the sword.

Now, TES is in the position that it has both a first-person and third-person perspective to work with, which means that elements from any one or multiple of those mentioned games are possible to include.

Mount&Blade has a robust combat system that allows swinging and blocking in four different directions and also takes the momentum of the character in count to calculate damage. It's not my favourite really, but it is simple and easy to understand while still allowing for challenging fights, especially against multiple enemies.

Die by the sword's combat system has mouse-movement as it's central feature. Instead of clicking or pressing a button, the weapon is swung by directly moving the mouse to execute a swinging motion. On top of that is a very detailed collision detection that many different bodyparts and their respective armour coverage into account.
While this allows for very intense fights, it might be bit ill-suited to elder scrolls. Since the mouse is used to control the swing of the weapon, this naturally raises the question of how to turn your character and still allow strafing. One possible solution might be to only allow swinging while holding down the left mouse button and including a lock-on feature to allow for circle-strafing and making fights against groups more managable.

As for DMOM&M, Severance and Chivalry, I haven't played those games yet, so I need someone to explain the systems of those in order to better compare them with the others.

The most important question that needs to be answered in regards to that would certainly be whether or not melee should be done in first-person, third-person or both.
This limits the number of systems to be taken into account, but also saves time discussing the merits of every single one of them.