Improve fighting system brainstorming

[johndh]

Just dance around punching with one hand?

There are actually three different punches, which correspond to the three attacks with weapons. IIRC, moving backward or forward (like a thrust) will produce a left-handed punch.

There should be off hand attacks/blocks or even the ability to throw a kick now and then.

I'm ambivalent about kicks. Some martial arts systems use them, while others don't, so either way is fine with me. I'm strongly in favor of some kind of block/parry system other than the one Morrowind has. A block that the player controls is vastly better than a block that just happens every once in a while (and quite rarely at that).

Here's another thought I had: it would be nice to see more options for nonlethal combat.
...
I'd also like to see the possibility of getting into bar brawls without everyone pulling out weapons and trying to murder you. I think that might have more to do with the crime system than the combat system, though, which is also in need of a major overhaul.

Absolutely. Basically, we need levels of conflict. If you steal a loaf of bread, the response should not be a battle to the death, and the average fist-fight should rarely end with a corpse. Nonlethal submissions would be nice, but grappling is another whole kettle of fish, including sleep spells I suppose, and badly wounded enemies should usually yield rather than fight to the death. "Whatever you want, just take it and leave me alone!" Heck, you draw a knife on an unarmed, unskilled peasant, and they'd probably throw their coin purse at your feet and run away.

[Ravenwing]

As being the author of Travel Mode shows I don't like too much the Fatigue consumption outside combat. I feel it's just a bother, on the other hand in fights it's an important resource (overall if you use mods like Realistic Health and Fatigue (those are for oblivion, but show the point well).

So borrowing the "dash" idea I'd implement like this: Walking -Stamina always regenerates-; Running -Stamina stays stable unless you really running uphill-; Dashing -Consumes Stamina-. Actually the Running/Dashing speed is the same, but you are Dashing when if run in combat, Running outside.

How is this significantly different than Skyrim's implementation? I rather liked their system because it didn't needlessly bog you down like in Morrowind, and it didn't require too much planning like the dual fatigue system (which I would still be interested in for some play-throughs) but still penalized draining your fatigue all the way.

I am always a fan of "less is more" and merging Fatigue and Magika is indeed promising. I sense a problem though, in the imagination wizards are often old and fragile guys that yet are very dangerous thanks to their magic; in this setting it would happen that wizards are athletic to be able to cast more power spells. It's fantasy so everything is "fine" however, it would be quite different from the usual ideas.
I guess one can work around it making the spell-cost-on-fatigue a percent instead of of an absolute value. So, with the same intelligence/willpower/magic skill value two wizards would cast the same amount of spells even if one is an hyper athletic hulk and the other is a fragile senior.

I actually really love the combined magicka and fatigue bar idea. I think my favorite (standard) magic system has always been like the one used in Eragon (as mediocre as the books themselves were). Basically spells fatigue you proportionally to to how tiring that task would be normally. Lifting a 30 lb rock would not be difficult up close, but throwing it a quarter mile at oncoming troops would be exhausting. I think the key to implementation would be scaling fatigue cost to the actual skill and attributes. If you're a skilled mage, casting a fire spell should be easy, but if the mage doesn't train physically, running and sword fighting would be exhausting. I believe the cost scaling is how Morrowind does it already, but the balance would have to be revisited if magicka and fatigue were combined.

As for the actual combat ideas in this thread, I think as much as the current system is unrealistic and unintuitive I think we need to remember that Morrowind was made to mimic tabletop RPGs and their rules. I think regardless of what you all decide to do, it would be nice if the system was modular, because there are a million mods that "overhaul" different things where I'm interested in one aspect, but hate another.

[ezze]

How is this significantly different than Skyrim's implementation?

...explain, don't ask. I never played Skyrim.

[Capostrophic]

...explain, don't ask. I never played Skyrim.

In Skyrim running and walking both do not deplete stamina, and if the character is walking his stamina should regenerate faster. There is also "sprint" option, when for a short amount of time and at cost of stamina character runs even quicker.

[raven]

Imho fatigue should be affected by all actions but to a varying degree, depending on character strengths and weaknesses. So the effect of physical/mental actions on fatigue would scale with the physical/mental strength.

This way you can have a physically weak but mentally strong mage casting spells all day long. But you wouldn't want him to use a sword as he would be exhausted pretty quickly.

[ezze]

I guess this is well possible and makes lots of sense both from verisimility and gameplay points of view.

A simple way is to fix Fatigue and Health to 1 and scale the cost of events depending on the relevant attribute. As raven mentioned if you have a higher skill (plus relevant Attribute) that would mean less effect on Fatigue; similarly having high block/armor/unarmored skill (plus relevant Attribute) would reduce the effect of hits on Health.

To simplify even more we might get rid of Attributes altogether as in Skyrim (right?), but in my opinion this makes the character too much of a specialist.

[Ravenwing]

...explain, don't ask. I never played Skyrim.

In Skyrim running and walking both do not deplete stamina, and if the character is walking his stamina should regenerate faster. There is also "sprint" option, when for a short amount of time and at cost of stamina character runs even quicker.

That pretty much sums it up. Additionally, in terms of penalty for running out of fatigue completely, the fatigue bar would flash and prevent any regeneration for a second or two. It's kind of a weak penalty but it at least hints at the exhaustion idea presented before.

I agree with the idea of cost scaling rather than simple increases in fatigue. Correct me if I'm not reading this correctly, but you are saying fix fatigue to %100 and skill use is a percentage decrease that scales with attributes and skills? And health would work in a similar way?

I'd really like a magic system overhaul as well, but maybe that would be a different mod for a different discussion.

[ezze]

I agree with the idea of cost scaling rather than simple increases in fatigue. Correct me if I'm not reading this correctly, but you are saying fix fatigue to %100 and skill use is a percentage decrease that scales with attributes and skills? And health would work in a similar way?

Short answer: basically, yes.


Long answer:
little recap; in Morrowind there are three levels of competence: "Luck" is your ability of doing anything, don't think too much about the literal meaning imagine it means factotum, "Abilities" it's a bit more specialized but it still represents your ability of doing a fairly wide area of things (Endurance, for example, is your ability of doing anything tiring for a long time), "Skill" is the most specialized set of abilities (Security, for example, is the ability of opening locks, disarm traps or fake sigils, it's fairly specific).

Every action you do in the game is essentially a weighted sum: Luck + Relevant Ability + Relevant Skill. This already gives a lot of flexibility that in my opinion is not used enough. Fixing health/fatigue and scale the costs would be a nice solution because it would allow to represent a lot of different characters, even merging Fatigue and Magika.

Examples include a warriors that are nigh-invulnerable when in full armor, but significantly weaker without it because from Luck + Endurance + Heavy Armor their defense would become Luck + Speed + Unarmored that in our example would be much lower, so every attack (that hit) would hurt much more.
Similarly it would allow to represent fragile wizards (because Luck + Willpower + Destruction/Alteration is very high), but since the physical stats are low they'd fall down with a little run, this because spells will cost little Fatigue, physical action will cost a lot of it.


Of course, while I think it'd work very well it pretty much impossible to do because it'd mean to remake every NPC in the game according to this new rules.

[AshSlave]

The more I think about this idea of fixed health/fatigue the less I like my own. Mine probably wasn't even worth testing, since its sole benefit - possibility to exhaust/damage one attribute without affecting others - is too small. I wonder if I should test one bar representation of whole body instead, where points - "short term" and "long term" - go from "green" to "red" zone. So at first actions are just more likely to fail, then they have the chance to damage corresponding skill/attribute, and at the end of the "red" zone is death.

[GeorgeTheWarp]

All of you guys have some pretty great ideas (especially the realistic damage system you proposed before), but did any of your ever think about directional fighting like M&B? I mean, M&B directional fighting wasn't perfect either, but it was rather good.

The whole idea would be to add a dodge button. The dodge command would work with the WASD keys. So dodging forward would be jumping toward your enemy. Dodging backward would be jumping back to not be hit by a leg strike. Dodging to the side would be to dodge any attack coming from the opposite side.

Also, with that whole idea, it might be cool to expand upon the original idea and add timed blocks and parries. We already had some kind of parrying system in warband, where we would attack the same direction as the other character was attacking to counter attack. Well, keep this idea, but also had a timed block system with synchronized attack that would stagger the other character and drain half of the remaining stamina you have.

Along with this, you might make the legs weaker for characters using shield, while the body is impervious. So using shield, you'd only have to block for the legs.