Does TES need an overhaul of combat?

[Zen Bard]

I think they need to decide if they want good combat or rare combat. Right now, it's neither. The current mechanics are mindless and boring; you just trade hits with stuff while quaffing the appropriate potions, or you abuse some ridiculously overpowered combination of abilities and trivialize everything. At the same time, you're constantly forced to engage in combat. Most quests and virtually all exploration ends up pitting you against dozens of the same idiotic mobs. Whereas fighting monsters in Dark Souls is a huge part of the fun, it only gets in the way of Skyrim's good bits.

This sums up my "Skyrim" experience perfectly! And I agree, the constant repetitive combat scenarios the game funnels the player through do not enhance the gameplay experience. They just make it tedious. I cannot count the number of times that, upon arriving at a quest location and realizing it was a tomb, I sighed with despair knowing full well that it would be yet another Draugr slaughter-fest. At that point, I'd either wander off and do something else in game or just save and quit entirely.

So yeah, for the next game, they need to change something. I'm in the camp that says they should focus on what their games do well (exploration, roleplaying, quests/guilds/factions, etc.) while simply removing a majority of the combat entirely. What's wrong with exploring a tomb or cave and finding traps, puzzles, lore, treasure, npcs, and virtually no enemies? Then, when combat does occur, they could make it more immediate and dangerous. I'd much rather things were decided quickly, with my rapid decisions making a real difference, than a drawn out drinking contest posing as melee.

That's not a bad idea either. Although it's doubtful that Bethesda will ever remove the majority of combat because a) the world of Tamriel is supposed to be a "dangerous place" and b) part of "broadening the appeal" of TES series to gear portions of it to fast twitch gamers.

However significantly reducing it and intensifying those encounters would definitely make it feel more visceral. I also think it would be nice to have some more options in response to a hostile situation besides "running up and hitting things". Morrowind, as broken as the combat was, at least had teleport, levitate and invisibility options. So if you weren't in the mood to fight, you didn't have to (or using levitate, could significantly change the odds of success).

Eh. Who knows? Maybe Todd Howard and team are secret members of the Escapist community and are reading these posts...

 

[IFS]

I know some of these ideas have already been stated, but I'd like to contribute my opinion. TES combat is fun, but it can get very repetitve, and while I think Dark Souls has a vastly superior combat system I don't think all of it would translate well to an Elder Scrolls game.

I do think that adding weapon attack patterns, as opposed to all the weapons have the same pattern, just some swing slightly slower or faster (but do extra damage so the difference is marginal at best), would be a great improvement that would allow players to find weapons that they can master, at the very least this would make the weapons feel different. I think this would be especially interesting if the Daedric Artifact weapons had their own unique attack patterns, for example how cool would it be if Volendrung's heavy attack had you slam the weapon on the ground causing a shockwave?

Another addition to TES that I think would be welcome would be the addition of a few other types of attacks, for example adding a timed block mechanic like in Kingdoms of Amalur to either negate more damage or stagger enemies for longer would be a nice touch, as would say plunging attacks like in Dark Souls.

Magic also needs to be improved, firstly by adding back some of the types of spells that were in oblivion and morrowind, I can live without being able to create my own spells but I would like to see a greater variety of existing ones. Also I've seen this suggested above but the ability to blend two different spells together (at least for destruction magic) would be pretty awesome. Say combining a fire and lightning spell to do both types of damage, or combining flames with fireball to get a fireball that continues to spew fire in the area it hit after detonating.

In order to improve stealth they'd have to improve enemy AI, I'd look to a game like dishonored for how to do that sort of thing better, although I really don't mind how powerful stealth is.

In a similar vein to adding back spells from previous games I would also like to see unarmed, unarmored, and acrobatics make a return, unarmed and unarmored could probably be dumped into one tree. I like being able to platform my way about in Oblivion and Morrowind, and while it is possible to ue the fists of steel perk to beat people to death I would prefer to see a more developed unarmed option.

Finally TES needs better enemy variety to keep the combat interesting, preferably with some better AI to go with it, but just providing enemies that have more varied tactics, weaknesses, and abilities would go a long way to keeping combat interesting. How about some enemies that heal others, or enemies that use stealth to ambush the player? Enemies being less of damage sponges would be nice to, but personally I'd like to see level scaling of enemies and loot removed entirely (with the possible exception of bosses).

Oh and speechcraft sucks and should be improved, I'd like to see them use a system more along the lines of Fallout NV speechcraft. for its involvement in combat I'm not sure if tying it to shouts makes any sense lore-wise, but it would be nice if you could at least yield more easily with speechcraft. Oh and if some enemies would actually surrender when they yield, instead of just taking a breather before attacking you again.

The things I don't think would work for TES would be to adopt the increased lethality of Dark Souls combat, and while I think bringing back acrobatics would allow more dodging options for combat I don't think making combat exclusively third person would be a good idea, though I'm certainly not against improving the third person view.

I apologize for the length and rambling nature of this post, it went on for far longer than I expected it to.

 

[SajuukKhar]

or enemies that use stealth to ambush the player?

files relating to the Dragonborn DLC describe tree ambushed were presumably tings come out of trees to attack you randomly.

 

[Darkbladex96]

the only thing combat in DS has on TES is that some weapons have special RT attacks is two handed and that the classes of weapons have different swings.

That doesnt translate well into first person though.

basically, all you guys are asking for is TES to have combat like condemed. I dreaded fighting things in that game for all of the right reasons.

 

[endtherapture]

the only thing combat in DS has on TES is that some weapons have special RT attacks is two handed and that the classes of weapons have different swings.

That doesnt translate well into first person though.

basically, all you guys are asking for is TES to have combat like condemed. I dreaded fighting things in that game for all of the right reasons.

Every action, every swing of your weapon or sidestep is an important action in DS combat.

In Skyrim you can just wail on enemies, you might get staggered occasionally but that's about it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Does it need an overhaul?

Melee combat does, badly. So very very VERY badly. I call medieval Slapfighting for a reason.
But it isn't an easy fix. First-person melee-combat is VERY difficult to get right; maybe two or three games I can think of TOTAL have done it well.

Bow combat pretty good.
One thing I never much complained about was the physics of archery in TES games.

Magic...ugh. I don't know how I would alter magic, if at all. I'm thinking of a few old FPS mods that did magic decently, but it's another subject where the first person perspective kind of limits it (difficult to explicitly target areas, mostly).

 

[Naqel]

IMO something midway between where it is now and, please don't kill me, Fable 3 would be the best direction to head.

Specifically, make different melee weapons actually feel different, and allow us to on-the-fly mix in some magic and ranged combat(hand crossbows, a return of throwing weapons, ect.).

Also: 2 hands, dedicated block, dedicated magic, dedicated "belt items", dedicated gimmick(think shouts from skyrim).
I don't really care how they fit it in on consoles but all those keys HAVE to be separate buttons, TES games on consoles are a sub-par experience anyway.


Another thing to take from Fable 3: the ability to lose a fight, without losing the game.

Sure, a Brotherhood assassin would probably make sure they finished the job, but when a town guard or a common thief beats me up, I want to wake up naked in a cell/ditch, and be able to continue without reloading(opens up space for co-op too, like having the other guy fend off the attackers, and help you get up).

Likewise, I want to be able to knock someone out without killing them, and without a dedicated convoluted mechanic.

 

[SajuukKhar]

and allow us to on-the-fly mix in some magic and ranged combat(hand crossbows, a return of throwing weapons, ect.).

that was sort of the point of the favorites menu, for you to mark different items, spells, potions, scrolls, and access them without having to go through the entire menu.

 

[Naqel]

that was sort of the point of the favorites menu, for you to mark different items, spells, potions, scrolls, and access them without having to go through the entire menu.

It required you to stop the game to do it, breaking the flow of an encounter.

Even if you play on PC and use up all your number hotkeys, there still was that one spell or weapon you had to open the inventory to pull out.

What I'm talking about is pulling out a crossbow or flinging a knife while you still hold the sword in your other hand.

 

[endtherapture]

and allow us to on-the-fly mix in some magic and ranged combat(hand crossbows, a return of throwing weapons, ect.).

that was sort of the point of the favorites menu, for you to mark different items, spells, potions, scrolls, and access them without having to go through the entire menu.

With a VATS style system, the favourites menu would've actually been cool. It just broke up the flow of the mediocre combat as it was though.

 

[42Weasels]

While the combat is fine in the TES games I've played to date (sadly only Skyrim and Oblivion - I hear great things about Morrowind and I feel I've missed out), there are several things I believe DO need to be addressed. Wall of text incoming!
1. Magic in combat. This is something I feel is tricky to address because it contrasts so much with your standard weaponry, both in style and other ways. You need to make it exciting and, well, magical, without making other options less rewarding. Oblivion's spell system was strong. Gamebreakingly so, but Skyrim pulled a 180 on that and made spell-casting at high levels about spamming as much fire or lightning at your enemies as possible. Illusion magic had two of the most easily abused spell effects I've ever seen in game, namely paralysis and chameleon, but Illusion in Skyrim is not useful. Muffle is easily recreated, invisibility as well, and both are surprisingly unreliable. The rest of the school requires the expenditure of a great many skill points to gain and value as well.

2. Stealth. I feel this will get improved much more in the future, after playing Dishonored and seeing someone has got the right idea, so its not as big a deal as it would have been to me a couple months ago. Still, the idea that I can use a dagger to kill elder dragons in a single strike is crazy.

3. Melee combat in general. Swords axes and clubs are a little more unique in Skyrim than in Oblivion (that is to say they are different in any way other than attack speed), but as many have already said, it breaks down to standing and clubbing one another to death and chugging pots. I would love to see a dodge mechanic introduced (or rather reintroduced, they had it in the acrobatics tree in TESIV) and introducing polearms would be a great addition. It would require you to worry a little more about position when facing off against or with weapons with that reach. I really enjoyed the shield bash and charge options in the block tree, because they really broke apart combat, using the staggers (and rag doll inducing shield charge) to get the edge in close combat.

4. Ranged combat. I'm actually happy with this aspect of combat in Skyrim, as the perks available to archers lend themselves to both kiting enemies around and out maneuvering them in the heat of combat, as well as sniping away at the unsuspecting bandits. And with crossbows from Dawnguard, even more so.

Sorry for the tl;dr, had to be said.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

I honestly don't mind the combat. I know it's flawed and a little boring at times but its possibly the most balanced fighting system I've used in a game.

You attack and do damage.
You power attack, you do more damage, but lose some stamina.
You block, you take less damage from attacks and stun/open the enemy for a counter.
And all that works for the enemy too.
So if you hit their shield, you're open for attack.

It's like the Kalashnikov, it may be simple, it may be crude...
But it bloody works!

 

[SajuukKhar]

With a VATS style system, the favourites menu would've actually been cool. It just broke up the flow of the mediocre combat as it was though.

VATS really isn't that fun though, the only use it had was like for kill cams, and Skyrim kill cams work through normal attacks. I almost never used VATS in Fallout 3, or New Vegas, it just makes the game.... boring, unless I wanted to see headspolosions.

What Skyrim needs to do is
1. Give enemies hidden +damage perks that makes them do more damage as you level up so you actually have to block, and make enemies block/power attack/shield bash more as well.

2. Make weapons stagger more with normal attacks, probably based on your stamina level or something.

3. Make the different power attacks do something by default, that gets upgraded with perks, instead of having the different power attacks special abilities be perk only.

Mostly number 1, with some slight number two, the biggest problem Skyrim combat has is that enemies do so little damage, that with 80% damage resist, most bandits do like....5 damage with their crappy iron swords, thus you don't have to block, or use an of the other systems the game has, thus causing the game to turn into a "run up an spam M1 to win."

I found the game becomes so much more fun as it is when I started using my shield for something other then just its armor rating, actually having to time my blocks so that it causes enemies to stagger, shield bashing guys as they are swinging to cause longer staggers so I can attack them in the time it takes them to recover, actually using the block runner perk to mow down enemies when I get swarmed so I can focus on blocking one guy while the others get up, and the disarm via shield bash perk as another form of delayer.

Enemies need to do more damage so you actually have to use the blocking/stagger/disarming mechanics the game has, and enemies need to use blocking, and shield bashing more, to interrupt your attacks so you cant just run up and spam M1.

Skyrim's combat's biggest fault isn't that there isn't anything to do beyond run up and use M1, its that you don't ever HAVE to do it, which still is a step up from Oblivion which had nothing to do but use M1.

Now, I don't want it to be like dark Souls where you have to be some block master to not die, but making you need to block, and time your blocks so you stagger your enemies when they attack, would go a long way.

 

[Korolev]

The Combat does need an overhaul, but unfortunately it's difficult to do first-person melee combat. Now, true, Skyrim and Oblivion both than Third-Person Cameras, but I think I speak for all of us when I say that's not the way you should play the game. The Game is more or less designed for First-Person.

Could you put Dark-Souls style combat in TES? Sure, you could, I guess, but do most TES fans want that?

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

This thread is made of stupid.

I keep trying to make an on-topic post, but every time i do it devolves into angry swearing and bannable rage.

So until I can sort myself out, I'll just ask how Sneak is OP

 

[SajuukKhar]

I'll just ask how Sneak is OP

Because with a high sneak skill, and even one or two sneak perks, or sneak items, you can literally walk right in front of people's faces, and they don't see you.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

I'll just ask how Sneak is OP

Because with a high sneak skill, and even one or two sneak perks, or sneak items, you can literally walk right in front of people's faces, and they don't see you.

No. No you can't. You could in Morrowind, when it was all dice rolls, but now, walking in front of people causes them to see you.