Skyrim's combat and the action RPG genre

[lady man lady]

I would like some improved jumping and platforming, with more vertical areas. Also, I think that the combat in Daggerfall was worse than the combat in Arena, and Morrowind onward has been a steady improvement.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

As for examples of action-RPGs with better combat... Deus Ex Human Revolution

That was a stealth/action game. Even if God descended from heaven and proclaimed it an RPG it still rips off splinter cell like fucking paper towel.

Mass Effect 3

The additon of heavy melee finally transitioned Mass Effect into a full blown GoW ripoff. Take cover, shot, take cover, shoot. Heavy melee (Chainsaw bayonet anyone? Go ahead tell me how different they are.) when the husks show up. I fail to see how it's any different from running up and wailing on you enemies.

Witcher 2

I've never actually played the Witcher because watching a Let's Play of it almost put me in a boredom induced coma. I can't refute that based on lack of information.

Dark Souls

Hold up your shield, enemy hits your shield, you get 1 or 2 hit in, you put your shield back up. Repeat 500 times. This excludes bosses of course. Then you add a few dodge rolls. (replace the shield with dodging if youre a dex build of course)

Kingdoms of Amalur

Honestly it felt like Dark Souls and Skyrim had a bastard child. All you do is run up and wail on enemies occasionally using a WoWesc special move in case the combat wasn't easy enough already. It's more or less Skyrim mash the attack button combat with the Dark souls impractical extras (Parry etc)

OT: I like Skyrims combat. It just needs more weight. It disconnect was fine in morrowind with the hilariously retarded dice roll first person system. But if it is always going to connect, they need to make that connection matter. If they did that they would probably have the most realistic portrayal of melee combat I've seen. (I would love to see anyone here dodgeroll in 30 pounds of armor lol) It's a bit repetitive but so is every rpg. At least were out of spreadsheet gaming....-shivers-

 

[w00tage]

Skyrim's combat is improved over previous TES games. But to say that is to applaud the makers of a machine gun for doing better than the Chauchet.

Arena (or was it daggerfall? Someone will probably correct me) had combat where you moved the mouse itself to swing your sword. It was dreadful.
Morrowind had combat where literally everything was controlled via dice role. Swinging a sword at all cost fatigue as did moving faster than a stroll. Blocking was only accomplished by having a shield and hoping it did. . . something.
Oblivion ensured that all attacks that logically hit actually hit and that blocking was an active action and introduced power attacks. Player input in combat was officially above "tap button for swift victory or terrible defeat"
Skyrim offered still more options including a number of new power attacks, significant changes to magic and so forth and is finally, after a mere five games, somewhere around "ok" mechanically.

Of course, there is and always has been a fundamental problem with TES games. They are not, at any point, designed around intelligent combat mediating progress; instead, they confer advantage by intelligent build. The increased depth of the system is welcome, but like any elder scrolls a player who plays properly will rapidly gain such a significant advantage with particular skills that playing smarter is irrelevant. Why play smart when one can get Chillrend to do more than 450 damage in a single swing?

Daggerfall. It was AWESOME I had the best darn fight at the end of the starting cave where they pop two skeletons on you and all you have is rusty crap you picked up on the way. It was like an Errol Flynn fight.

 

[w00tage]

If you're a melee-focused character, melee combat's a breeze.

And this is a good thing ?

ANY rolling in combat is too much for my tastes.

I don't like excessive rolling either but adding options other than just mashing the same button over and over while occasionally blocking is a good thing.

Skyrim's combat is Visceral you say ?? It's anything but. Visceral combat would actually show some visual damage getting done when you attack something. That's not even taking into account the terrible hit reaction and overall weightless feel of the whole system.

Yup, but if you're on PC, a combo of the Duel - Combat Realism and PISE's NPC Tweaks mods changes that considerably for the better. The enemies use more advanced attack strategies and retreat and heal if they can, and if you take an unblocked shot with low stamina, you WILL be staggered (but can still block and even counterattack during the recovery). Makes for a pretty fun fight, although I could wish for a little less "stagger-cam" lol.

The AI isn't quite as good as Deadly Combat where the enemy seems to use "perk" powers, but that mod has what I consider a major stagger-spam problem that the author thinks is realistic/isn't seeing it like I do, so that's not changing

 

[Risingblade]

I actually liked the combat in Skyrim and oblivion, I wouldn't change it.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I think the combat was passable at first but becomes terrible quickly.
Bethesda should look at this game:

(Skip to 0:17)

A god damn indie company, on their second game can do better!

It's inexcusable for a game with 5 years of development, with a company that has over a decade of experience in exactly this.

Holy shit, that looks fucking amazing! I have to learn more about this game. Take something like THIS combat system and put in an epic RPG, and I'll be one happy camper.

 

[paislyabmj]

who wins in an elder scrolls fight is based almost entirely on what the people have equipped at the time. I thought this was just what could and should be expected from a first person perspective mele focused game until I played dark messiah of might and magic which has a skill based ,amusing , visceral and extremely fun first person combat engine that blew TES games out of the water.
skyrims combat difficulty depends on what kind of character you roll and how many dungeons you have looted. I don't think it can be fixed and made more of a challenging but balanced system because doing that would probably necessitate scaling down the world a bit but it is still frustrating having such bland,stale and shallow combat system in a game world that can at least lauded for a bit of depth at the worst of times.

 

[mooncalf]

Mount & Blade is my exemplar for melee combat, lacks triple A polish but it's complete and uncompromising. fighting one enemy? straightforward. two? risky but manageable. three? no hesitation allowed. Four? This is why you put extra points in athletics.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Something I like about Skyrim's combat is that it isn't all about blocking and dodging - passive defenses are important too. Combat's simple and visceral: If you're a melee-focused character, melee combat's a breeze. If you're not, it can be a real challenge to survive, not just a "At least I can completely outmaneuver and pwn this guy anyway, despite my complete statistical lack of melee ability". There's some strategy involved, especially when dealing with multiple foes, but for the most part, you can fight intuitively while your character's strengths or weaknesses ultimately carry the outcome of the battle.

I think that, intentionally or not, this paragraph lays out the main problems with Elder Scrolls melee. Maneuvering doesn't really matter, strategy doesn't really matter, interesting build/gear decisions don't really matter - it all comes down to who has the bigger numbers. (Or in the PC's case, potions to chug instantly). It's like a bad JRPG where you select the attack option (and occasionally the heal option) until you grind the other guy's HP away, except in first-person and real-time.

 

[Zhukov]

As for examples of action-RPGs with better combat... Deus Ex Human Revolution

That was a stealth/action game. Even if God descended from heaven and proclaimed it an RPG it still rips off splinter cell like fucking paper towel.

Mass Effect 3

The additon of heavy melee finally transitioned Mass Effect into a full blown GoW ripoff. Take cover, shot, take cover, shoot. Heavy melee (Chainsaw bayonet anyone? Go ahead tell me how different they are.) when the husks show up. I fail to see how it's any different from running up and wailing on you enemies.

Witcher 2

I've never actually played the Witcher because watching a Let's Play of it almost put me in a boredom induced coma. I can't refute that based on lack of information.

Dark Souls

Hold up your shield, enemy hits your shield, you get 1 or 2 hit in, you put your shield back up. Repeat 500 times. This excludes bosses of course. Then you add a few dodge rolls. (replace the shield with dodging if youre a dex build of course)

Kingdoms of Amalur

Honestly it felt like Dark Souls and Skyrim had a bastard child. All you do is run up and wail on enemies occasionally using a WoWesc special move in case the combat wasn't easy enough already. It's more or less Skyrim mash the attack button combat with the Dark souls impractical extras (Parry etc)

Ugh.

First off, like I said to the other guy:

If you want to argue about what genre particular games fit into then I'm afraid you'll have to go and find someone who gives a flying fuck.

Secondly, even your unflattering descriptions make the combat in those games sound more appealing to me than the 'mash attack, drink health potion' routine of Skyrim.

Thirdly, if I wanted to tell you how different ME3's heavy melee is to Gears' chainsaw bayonet I would start by pointing out that the chainsaw is an instant kill on anything it hits, renders you invulnerable while the animation is playing, can be revved up in advance and only works on some enemies. In contrast, the heavy melee merely deals a high amount of damage, does not render you invincible, can be used on anything within range and can't be prepared in advance.

 

[Legion]

As somebody who has not played any of the series before I have no major criticism of it personally, it is not perfect, but I thought it works quite well.

My only dislike I find is with moving power attacks, the character moves too much and frequently ends up over-lunging and missing completely.

 

[Something Amyss]

The combat has gotten better with each game.... but it is still terrible.

Indeed, but there's only so much they have to work with.

 

[RatRace123]

Combat's still pretty bad. Even in this day and age, Bethesda is still stuck in the old First Person combat mode of "press the attack button enough times until whatever's in front of you dies."

It's tolerable though, and stealthy assassinations along with the new kill cam make it very enjoyable. I just find straight up combat to be not all that good.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Something I like about Skyrim's combat is that it isn't all about blocking and dodging - passive defenses are important too. Combat's simple and visceral: If you're a melee-focused character, melee combat's a breeze. If you're not, it can be a real challenge to survive, not just a "At least I can completely outmaneuver and pwn this guy anyway, despite my complete statistical lack of melee ability". There's some strategy involved, especially when dealing with multiple foes, but for the most part, you can fight intuitively while your character's strengths or weaknesses ultimately carry the outcome of the battle.

I think that, intentionally or not, this paragraph lays out the main problems with Elder Scrolls melee. Maneuvering doesn't really matter, strategy doesn't really matter, interesting build/gear decisions don't really matter - it all comes down to who has the bigger numbers. (Or in the PC's case, potions to chug instantly). It's like a bad JRPG where you select the attack option (and occasionally the heal option) until you grind the other guy's HP away, except in first-person and real-time.

I just want to point out that maneuvering makes a huge difference. In Oblivion, a scary Ogre that can kill you in two hits is no threat at all if you position yourself carefully to avoid its hits between your attacks. You can do the same against most enemies in Skyrim, but it's more difficult. Many strong enemies also have long ranged melee or ranged attacks now, probably for that reason.

You may or may not think all that makes for great gameplay, but maneuvering is a big part of the action. There's some truth in the rest of your post. I would quibble only over the degree. Certainly when magic and enchantments get involved, your choices have a big impact and you'll probably find yourself switching your gear around. Also, playing on a difficulty that challenges you will help break up the routine of standing around drinking potions while everyone around you drops dead from boredom.

There is lots of room to improve but I think the combat in Skyrim is unique and satisfying.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Certainly when magic and enchantments get involved, your choices have a big impact and you'll probably find yourself switching your gear around. Also, playing on a difficulty that challenges you will help break up the routine of standing around drinking potions while everyone around you drops dead from boredom.

Although that's another issue entirely - Elder Scrolls magic introduces the "I win button" problem, where certain abilities instantly end fights against certain enemies. There's also the potion problem - instant health/mana/buffs through the pause menu is a terrible design decision. IMO, there should be a time cost for potion use, along the lines of how Witcher 1 and most turn-based games use consumables.