Combat Systems

Made this to take the convo away from crafting proffesions.

So atm im arguing between 2 systems ill explain the basics. There are 2 main game examples im putting up. remember these are my opinions not yours.

Skyrim, the battle is determined by the player skill and how he uses his equipment.

WOW, ESO, GW. the battle is determined by who can press the buttons to activate the most damaging Abilities the fastest.

Melee Combat:

Skyrim -

The Basics
Skyrim, like previous Elder Scrolls games, is a bit strange where combat is concerned. That’s because it operate as a first person fighting game (there is a tedious third-person view available, but it doesn’t change the combat mechanics).

There’s no combo system, and few special moves. For the most part, it’s all about the basics. When you swing your weapon, you must make sure that you’re aiming it at the enemy. When they swing back, you should try to dodge or block.

Still, there are some special moves you can make. A Power Attack can be accomplished by holding down your attack button, which will cause your character to make a heavier blow that does twice normal damage, with a chance to stagger the target. However, stamina is used by these attacks - quite a lot, actually. Most characters can only do one or two power attacks at first level before running out of juice.
You can also make sneak attacks if you are hidden when you pounce on your prey. Sneak attacks can be accomplished with any weapon, but better damage bonuses can be unlocked with perks in the Sneak skill tree. Bows can be used to accomplish sneak attacks, as well.

You also will be able to unlock some extra moves by investing into perks in the One-Handed, Two-Handed and Block skill trees.

One-Handed w/Shield
Skyrim Sword’n’Board
If you decide to go with one-handed weapons for combat, you have two options in front of you. You can either go sword-and-board, or you can decide to go dual-wield.

Warriors who choose sword-and-board will be able to block easily, which means that you can absorb damage from blows. Blocking is accomplished by holding down the right mouse button or left control pad trigger. Because you have a shield, you can block both melee and ranged attacks. You can’t block spells without the right perks.

It’s wise to use block generously when you go this route, because it’s a great defensive boon. As a one-handed warrior with a shield, your damage output isn’t great, but you can decide the pace of combat with your shield by allowing enemies to exhaust themselves on it.

There are several special moves you can learn besides standard power attacks. In the one-handed skill tree, you can pick up Critical Charge once your skill level is 50. This is a double-damage power attack that is activated when sprinting at a target. At skill level 100 you can pick up Paralyzing Strike, a backward power attack (you must be moving backwards, then perform a power attack) that has a 25% chance to paralyze your target for a short time.

In addition, you can attack with your shield with a bash. You do this by pressing your normal attack button (left mouse or right control pad trigger) while holding your shield up. A bash will stagger an opponent, interrupt attacks, and do some damage. At skill 30 in the block tree, you can take the Power Bash perk. This unlocks the “power bash” which can knock down an opponent and does more damage. At skill level 100, you can unlock a Shield Charge that knocks down opponents. It’s a lot of fun - kind of like turning yourself into a bowling ball.

One-Handed Dual Wield
If you go one-handed, you can drop the shield and pick up a weapon in your off-hand. If you’re doing this, you’ll want all of the perks that you can obtain from one-handed, plus you will want to take the dual flurry perk, which drastically increases dual-wield attack speed. You can grab it once your skill level in one-handed weapons is 30 and take a second tier of it at skill level 50.

However, if you dual wield, you can’t block at all, not even with your off-hand weapon. This is an entirely offensive style, and as such, you can be vulnerable when overwhelmed by multiple opponents. You might want to find some other means of defense. Grabbing a magical skill like Alteration can increase your armor. However, a lot of players ignore it because dual wield does so much damage, that there’s hardly any need to defend.

Otherwise, your offensive one-handed attacks remain the same. You can still access perks like Paralyzing Strike and they’re activated in the same manner.

Two-Handed
Skyrim Two Handed Guide
Your final option for melee combat is a two-handed weapon. These do a lot of damage in a short period of time, but they are slow, so they don’t do as much damage overall as someone dual-wielding two one-handed weapons.

Basic attacks with two-handed weapons, like power attacks, are the same as one-handed. Of course, they do a lot more damage because of the higher base damage on a two-handed weapon, and the first power strike from a two-handed weapon user can be nasty. It becomes even worse when you reach skill level 50 and can unlock the Great Critical Charge perk, which causes your power attack to do double critical damage if you attack while sprinting. You should always try to get a charge attack in as your first strike - often, you can one shot an enemy with it.

At skill level 70 you can unlock the Sweep perk. If you perform a power attack while strafing, your attack will hit multiple opponents in an arc in front of you. It’s incredibly useful for dealing with groups of weaker enemies. Finally, at skill level 100, you can unlock a Warmaster perk which provides a 25% chance to paralyze a target when you perform a backwards power attack.
You can block with two-handed weapons, but with a reduction of usability vs. a shield. Shields can block arrows and you can pick a perk to reduce elemental spell damage, but you can’t do those things when blocking with a two-hander. It’s only effective against melee. However, a two-handed weapon can be used to perform a bash, and also benefits from the Power Bash, Deadly Bash, Disarming Bash and Quick Reflexes perks in the Block tree. Shield Charge doesn’t seem to work, however.

Don’t Forget Sneak!
If you are playing a thief or simply a stealthy melee character, sneak will be of great benefit. But even if you aren’t, you may want to raise the skill a bit to obtain some useful perks.

At 30 skill in sneak, and with a previous tier of the stealth perk, you can obtain Backstab. This increases sneak attack damage with one-handed weapons to 6x, which is pretty handy for any melee character who ever sneaks, even if stealth isn’t always your mode of attack. At skill 40 you can obtain a 3x multiplier for bows, and at skill level 50 you can unlock the Assassin’s Blade perk, which increases dagger sneak attack damage by a whopping 15x!

You also can obtain Muffled Movement at skill level 30, which decreases noise from armor by 50%. This leads to Light Foot at skill level 40, which prevents your character from triggering pressure plates. If you’re clever, this makes traps a boon to you, as you can lure enemies to traps.

But the one I find really useful is Silent Roll, which lets you execute a forward roll if you sprint while sneaking. It can put you in melee range quickly. It can also be used as a poor man’s dodge.

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Well good thing you dont sound biased at all… well whatever

Here is a video of basic combat for those who havent played the game

you might notice the very nicely made ‘‘stop combat to switch gear and eat cheese’’ element of the combat, also if you search on ‘‘skyrim combat’’ you might notice that almost every single video is a mod improving combat cause it is kinda ‘‘meh’’

Well i said what i wanted to say in the other thread but i dislike the way you look at it saying ‘‘this requires skills but this doesnt’’ does skyrim require skills? yeah it does, does hotbar combat games such as wildstar require skills? hell yeah it does, does first person shooters? yes, what about pacman? yeah they do, even tic tac toe requires skills. but its just different skill set for each and every game.

even a game such as darksouls which have an insanely simplistic combat system (i know the players hate when you say that) requires massive amount of skill, but its skill in terms of dodging and parrying and almost nothing else, which leads to parry battles in darksouls

just gonna leave it at that since its a very subjective matter, but for those reading this. what is shown in the video and what kerpie explained is everything there is to the system, also to take note of is that it is from a singleplayer game which is why it can be like that, most of the Elderscrolls game uses this system, but when they made it online, even they made hotbar skills because they realized that it was kinda necessary

(i can find almost 0 first person combat for the game, that is what happens if you allow third person as a toggle option xD)

but time will tell. since it seems its going to be based around aiming and not having tabtarget of softaim there might be things that are necessary and things that cant be applied :smile:

for skill system i am still in love with Darkrepulser’s gem slot idea https://forum.oortonline.com/t/introducing-shard-magic-system/1314

Now ill explain what i like about the combat in both i know i didnt go over wow but i couldnt find anything to base it off.

Skyrim.

Pros:

  • The battle will be determined by the ability of the player himself with a side factor of his equipment.
  • Has more immersing battles. Range for example you need to think about factors including, drop, distance, speed at which opponent is running etc.
  • Along with the simple skills it has progression through the skill tree, which adds passives such as more damage output, faster attacks etc which don’t need to be activated every time.

Cons:

  • New MMO players suffer as they are use to clicking a button and the game doing it for you.
  • It takes alot of time to get used to.
  • alot of players fighting styles may be the same.

MMO (GW, WOW, ESO).

Pros:

  • Easier to learn, so casual gamers have more fun as it is simple.
  • Possibilty to be different from other player builds, instead of keeping same fighting style.
  • Better for ‘MMO’ type games that include roles such as Tank, DPS, and Healer.

Cons:

  • There is little immersion, and most battles seem repetitive as you use the same abilities over again.
  • Bad for projectile player skill based combat as it has guaranteed hits.
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wooow… ah well, i give up on this thread for now.

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I did state ll this is my opinion

You are aware of the fact that you are doing the same thing?
Also your Skyrim video shows someone who is playing on the lowest dificulty, where enemys hit with (i think) 25% dmg and you deal double dmg. That´s the same as when i would post a video of a max lvl ESO character that does some low lvl grinding. Also not that spectacular huh?

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oh and here is a better vid for the combat that shows everything happenign without switching

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If you want to demonstrate skyrim’s combat at its best you should really check out either requiem mod or SKRE.

also its a thread you can go and add your own combat system for another game…

here is my main point i have a hatred for abilities it takes away the immersion and makes combat boring especially for archers.

Indeed, i match the bias of my opponent, isnt it nice ?

now to get serious, i guess

@Kerpie that is a nice video, i honestly had problems finding combat at all wasnt boosted by mods,personal opinion, without a doubt.

Skyrim Combat

Pros:
Have a nice weight in the system, you can feel your hits and the combat feels good

The drop of arrows are really nice and requires some skill to hit with (ofc not if you shoot them point blank XD)

there is no variation in fighting style within the same weapon, which means you can master a weaponstyle of fighting

It fits very nicely for the game

it have a more ‘‘realistic’’ feeling because the amount of flashy stuff you can do is limited

Cons:
Its a system made for singleplayer games, you can literally oneshot backstab people (as you saw)

if you choose a weapon you have no customization in combat style, a sword is just a sword and there is very little variation in combat

While the system is good for a singleplayer game in my personal opinion it is less than ideal for an mmo, if there is no difference then it will feel bland and there is no room for personalizing your playstyle

Hotbar abilities:

Pros:

Allows people to customize their own builds if done correctly

It makes way more focus on playstyle and what you fight the most effective with rather than forcing people to play one way and mastering that

Cons:

If you force people to pick a class like wow and then allow them to have all abilities on the hotbar at once it can get very overwhelming and you will end up being one of many

While freedom of build allows for many different playstyles you will always have min/maxers who find the ‘‘optimal’’ build for a given situation, and those who want to be the most offective will always use these builds. not too bad in pvp since builds breeds counterbuilds that breeds counterbuilds etc…

While it will benefit the game it will also take more time to add and it will be rather hard to balance 100% if they allow for you to create a build however you want.

well then its not gonna be much of a discussion is it? i wouldnt say i hate skyrim combat, its quite enjoyable in skyrim, but its also just horrible simplistic, it haves the whole easy to use impossible to master gameplay style which fits many games :smile:

No more arrogance from my side, just kinda annoyed on how he phrased the original post and argument, i could also go ‘‘Freedom of build vs a pitiful leftclick spamclick system’’ its not nice is it? well lets both promise to play nice then and see what we can figure out :smile:

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true for the last point and a good amount of other point in the pros cons area

i personally despise the wow system where you have these 100 skills slottet and trying to figure out when to use what, that combined with tab target kinda removes the twitch skills of the game (blocking, aiming) but it also enforces the tactical skill of the game (figuring out when to use what)

i really want a skillbased combat system for oort, without a doubt, but i also want to be able to craft a build that defines me as a player, a fighter and the likes, but they should be skills you need to aim meaning that an insanly good person can dodge all of the heavy hitting ones, that is what i would like to personally see :smile:

so to enforce again, Skills does not mean tab targeting or auto lockon

i dont really like both systems but I prefer the skyrim one ^^ How about skyrim combat with 1-3 abilities?

alright by skills do you mean abilities, or player skill?

from now own lets use abilities which represent predefined skills you activate

and then skill as in player skill

In a way the whole thing about what defines a charachter possibly the skill slot system that dark repulsor did, i would like something which does not involve predefined abilities that help you instantly in combat but passive skills, that help and benefit your character is what i like (kinda like in skyrim how you can assign perk points to each specific skill when you level it but it doesn’t give you hot bar abilities)

Skyrim:

MMORPG:

I think it´s the exact opposite.
ESO (and any other MMORPG) advertised with “build what you want”, “dozens of possible builds” and “build your own unique character” but it came down to (as in any other MMOPRG) 2-3 viable builds that dealt the most dps and in order to get into good groups you basically had to use those builds.
Skyrim on the other hand is a little bit like LoL or DOTA. Yeah everyone that plays a certain champ has the same abilities but everyone uses them in his personal style so even if you play against the same champ over and over again every fight feels different.

In ESO my 2H nightblade was also able to (almost) oneshot standart mobs…so this argument is invalid.

@Predatoxic In Skyrim you actually have 1 skill/abillity to supplement your combat style (like the small forst “nova” shown in @Kerpie s video at 0:09)

look at this for example http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:One-handed

That is another thing with freedom of build, it allows for truly unique playstyles, i think its wrong to say you only have 3 viable builds, cause that is not the case, but you have a certain amount of min/max builds for the truly hardcore and then lots of builds you can use. but with freedom of build you can also make something truly miserable in terms of build, but should you really restrict players from not doing that? shouldnt they be grown enough to decide how to play. but oh well.

also using mobas as an example. hundreds of different characters combined with thousands of different item builds… yeaah… not quite the same as skyrim xD

EDIT: i have to admit that you guys have really good arguments and admit defeat, it seems i cant convince you that skills are a good idea, i will keep hoping and if they ask i will definately write it, if it does end like skyrim then i fear that it will just turn into a massive statfeast where playing tank is not viable cause its just about pure dps stats (which you used as argument against abilities)

Well written Kerpie :smiley:

I want skyrim combat with 1-3 abilities :slight_smile: That would make everyone happy :stuck_out_tongue: