Improvements to combat mechanics

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Hado

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OK I've been playing this game like crazy for the past week .. I have a level 34 archer/pike guy in black armor and also a couple other characters in their teens and early 20's, and have noticed a few things with the combat.

Any experienced players here think that it's too easy to block? It's instant and there's no drawbacks at all for not carrying a shield, other than to stop bolts and arrows. You can just use your rusty spoon to stop anything, even a 200 pound heavy warhammer or a lancer charging at you on a warhorse going 60mph. Just hit block and *pink* attacks bounce off just like that. There's really not a reason to go with 2handed weapons or really any melee weapon because everything can be blocked so easily compared to my bow character which can solo 30+ dark knights/hunters without getting a scratch and is never blocked.. if they have shield I just snipe their horse or throw axes at them until it breaks.

I think there should be more ways to defeat blocking, especially when using the slow and heavy weapons. A sledgehammer, crouched lance or double axe should just crush right through anyone trying to block without a shield..after all what's the point of making it swing so slow? The other guy has nothing to worry about when he could just stab you for 1 damage with a rusty toothpick, interrupting you, and if you try to get out of range to make a swing, he can see it coming from 2 miles away and block it. You can't even stab with 2handers (to get in sneak attacks or interrupts), other than the big swords.

Maybe also give every melee weapon a slow, evadable attack that you can see coming but breaks or goes through blocking, like the overhead attack but your character pulls the weapon all the way back leaving himself open for a second. Or maybe have it so if you charge a weapon (hold the swing back) long enough it breaks weapon blocks (not through shields though). If you held back a hammer or giant axe long enough, you would do a massive swing that's a guaranteed knockdown but has higher recovery.

If you're really skilled and have perfect timing / aim you should be able to cut projectiles out of the air with a weapon attack :smile: You could also use the weapon block/parry button to stop projectiles, but you wouldn't be able
to just hold the block button down, you'd have to time the press for exactly when the missile's about to hit. So your chance of actually deflecting a crossbow bolt would be similar to what it would be in real life, unless you're Musashi or something.

On another note, I think that characters moving backwards should move half as slow as characters running forward, like how horses are currently.
It's really weird running backwards from a dozen angry raiders, plinking away at their helmets and knocking them out one by one without ever worrying about them catching up to you.

Alright I can't think of much else that could be better with the combat mechanics at the moment.. this game is damn addictive so I'm going back to play.
 
Hado said:
OK I've been playing this game like crazy for the past week .. I have a level 34 archer/pike guy in black armor and also a couple other characters in their teens and early 20's, and have noticed a few things with the combat.

Gehe, addict :wink: Anyway, this post should've been posted in the suggestions forum, just for the record.

Any experienced players here think that it's too easy to block? It's instant and there's no drawbacks at all for not carrying a shield, other than to stop bolts and arrows. You can just use your rusty spoon to stop anything, even a 200 pound heavy warhammer or a lancer charging at you on a warhorse going 60mph. Just hit block and *pink* attacks bounce off just like that. There's really not a reason to go with 2handed weapons or really any melee weapon because everything can be blocked so easily compared to my bow character which can solo 30+ dark knights/hunters without getting a scratch and is never blocked.. if they have shield I just snipe their horse or throw axes at them until it breaks.

It's a bit odd usually, but a charging lancer usually hits you back and breaks your shield. Damn. 30+ dark knights? What difficulty are you playing on man, that's too easy :smile:

I think there should be more ways to defeat blocking, especially when using the slow and heavy weapons. A sledgehammer, crouched lance or double axe should just crush right through anyone trying to block without a shield..after all what's the point of making it swing so slow? The other guy has nothing to worry about when he could just stab you for 1 damage with a rusty toothpick, interrupting you, and if you try to get out of range to make a swing, he can see it coming from 2 miles away and block it. You can't even stab with 2handers (to get in sneak attacks or interrupts), other than the big swords.
You don't stab with two handers, you'll prolly break your wrist trying to. Anyway, it would be nice is weapon power + char strength was combined so you could have more realistic and more challenging parries.

Maybe also give every melee weapon a slow, evadable attack that you can see coming but breaks or goes through blocking, like the overhead attack but your character pulls the weapon all the way back leaving himself open for a second. Or maybe have it so if you charge a weapon (hold the swing back) long enough it breaks weapon blocks (not through shields though). If you held back a hammer or giant axe long enough, you would do a massive swing that's a guaranteed knockdown but has higher recovery.

For sure, my archer can't dodge a huge sledgehammer, while he can run almost 2 times as fast as any other char and can fire a bow faster than anyone -_-;

If you're really skilled and have perfect timing / aim you should be able to cut projectiles out of the air with a weapon attack :smile: You could also use the weapon block/parry button to stop projectiles, but you wouldn't be able
to just hold the block button down, you'd have to time the press for exactly when the missile's about to hit. So your chance of actually deflecting a crossbow bolt would be similar to what it would be in real life, unless you're Musashi or something.
Deflecting a crossbow bolt would be hard, except perhaps on a long distance, but arrows can be deflected, usually they don't fly that hard. Come to mention arrows, the should be able to fly in an arch =] (And I'd like to see composite longbows, just to make up for it ;p)

On another note, I think that characters moving backwards should move half as slow as characters running forward, like how horses are currently.
It's really weird running backwards from a dozen angry raiders, plinking away at their helmets and knocking them out one by one without ever worrying about them catching up to you.
True, but fighting multiple opponents without a tactical withdraw is extremely hard.
 
A couched lance is not parry-able. A lance thrusted in normal attack, yes, but not a couched one.

I do think that weapons should break/fly out of your hands after a bunch of parrying, though, depending on the weapons' size & quality and the size & quality of what it's parrying. It really cheeses me off to have Bandit #4267 keep parrying with his cudgel as I ride him down swinging my massive blade at his head again and again. He's going to lose his grip on the damn thing - that or it gets chopped into bite-sized chunks!
 
A couched lance is not parry-able. A lance thrusted in normal attack, yes, but not a couched one.

Right. It's pretty easy to dodge side to side to avoid the crouched lance point, so often you or the AI switch to the regular thrust. You shouldn't be able to parry even a regular lance thrust if the guy is charging at full speed, especially not with something like a cudgel. A great sword MAYBE.
Usually you should have to get out of the way of powerful attacks, not just stand there, parry, and then block the horse so the rider can't get past and chop him up while he's stuck.

It really cheeses me off to have Bandit #4267 keep parrying with his cudgel as I ride him down swinging my massive blade at his head again and again.

That's really what gets to me. The slow swinging, supposedly powerful weapons where you HAVE to use your range (especially fighting a mob of angry hobos) and people can see your mega-weapon-swing coming from a mile away and parry it with a twig. Especially the war hammers and large axes. Historically these things were designed to penetrate plate armor and do damage through sheer force of impact, and here it can't even knock out someone's little wood? I mean c'mon! Lol.. At the very least it should knock the weapon out of the and stagger whoever tried to block it.. no penalties for not getting out of the way of a 20 pound brick-on-a-stick = sad Hado.

Damn. 30+ dark knights? What difficulty are you playing on man, that's too easy Smile
107% difficulty of course :wink: It gets really easy once you have lvl 7 power draw 7 horse archery 7 horse riding and over 300 bow skill, but even without high skill ranged units are much better because you can't parry arrows. Also the armor system doesn't simulate true penetration, it simply deducts the damage total from your weapon damage.. so say he has 25 armor and you do 150 damage, you still hit for a 125 headshot, killing him instantly. It's also really easy to kill horses because of the way armor works.. I'm sure the heavy armor used on warhorses was simply too thick to even penetrate with regular arrows back then. If you want to solo armies by yourself, just practice aiming with the bow while horsed and you will be unstoppable.

You don't stab with two handers, you'll prolly break your wrist trying to.
Hmm.. the great sword, Sword of War, etc are all 2-handed weapons with high thrust damage.

Deflecting a crossbow bolt would be hard, except perhaps on a long distance, but arrows can be deflected, usually they don't fly that hard. Come to mention arrows, the should be able to fly in an arch =] (And I'd like to see composite longbows, just to make up for it ;p)

Yea, I remember reading about Samurai using their weapons to deflect arrows from enemy archers. And if I saw an axe spinning towards my head, I'd probably use whatever I had at the time (my sword in this case) to bat it out of the way, especially if I was advancing.

True, but fighting multiple opponents without a tactical withdraw is extremely hard.

Right.. that's why skirmishers and archers should have to turn around to run, and make distance either with a horse or outrun them with lower encumberance before turning around to fire another volley. It's really silly seeing someone outdistance a crowd of people running backwards while throwing 9082141 rocks at their head until no one's left.. imagine if real wars worked that way :p

Seriously.. if you had a game between human players, you gave a bunch of guys black armor and the best weapons, balanced sword of wars, awlpikes, poleaxes, warhammers etc, and you gave one dude nothing but a sack of pebbles, the guy with the sack of pebbles would win by running backwards pecking them to death while they could never catch up.


Actually.. instead of nerfing backwards running wouldn't it just be better to have a sprint/charge button that is limited by a stamina meter, that only works while running forward? That way it would stop ranged units from just running backwards and firing all day, without interfering with regular movement.
 
I don't see how half backpeddle would work or make anything more realistic. Do you know how dumb it would look to walk up to a group, get a slash or two in, start to get overrun, so you run away for half a second, then turn around again and repeat? Because that is what you would end up having to do. It wouldn't make it any more realistic, it would just make fighting on foot in melee a pain in the ass and take 10 times longer. Other elements would have to be added for this to work, not sure what...but something. Although i do think that your accuracy with bow should be crap while moving, and on horseback for that matter. Something tells me no matter how much you practice you aren't going to be able to hit much beyond 30 feet while at full gallop(horse archery should still help alot, but at level 8 it should be about as good as it is at level 4 under the current system). If this game were online, nothing, and i mean nothing could stop a horse archer, every single character worth competing with would be a horse archer(hence, why it needs nerfing). Also, i seriously doubt that you could knock a projectile out of the air with your sword. Mainly because in real life you would never see it comming 9 times out of 10. Theoretically it's possible, but the chances would be so low its not even worth simulating. We're not jedi here...
 
I don't see how half backpeddle would work or make anything more realistic. Do you know how dumb it would look to walk up to a group, get a slash or two in, start to get overrun, so you run away for half a second, then turn around again and repeat? Because that is what you would end up having to do.

That's true. It wouldn't be good for melee, but there should be a way to stop ranged units from simply kiting backwards and killing everyone without any effort. Maybe a sprint button that only works running forward and takes time to regain your stamina meter. The AI would start charging when up close to a player.

If this game were online, nothing, and i mean nothing could stop a horse archer, every single character worth competing with would be a horse archer(hence, why it needs nerfing).

Most historical simulations (esp. the Total War games) model horse archers pretty accurately. Horse archers should generally have less to no armor to maintain speed, maneuverability and stamina. They are powerful for skirmishing, but also make big, easy targets for enemy foot archers and die easily once trapped. That and limited ammo balance horse archers out. I don't think you should be able to wear heavy armors as a mounted archer, either that or encumberance should slow down the fast, non war-horse mounts like coursers by a lot. And also have more accuracy drawbacks heavily encumbered.

Another thing is the armor penetration model, which is currrently very basic in M&B. Arrows (and only arrows, bolts are fine, throwing axes etc are fine) should not be able to penetrate heavy armor, especially the armor on warhorses so easily. Maybe give arrows a different damage type which is less effective against heavy/plate armor.

Other than that, I think the damage value, accuracy and skill it takes to use bows is fine right now. It's just that when you get to level 10 or so you can kill even black knight horses in 2-3 shots.
 
Slightly irrelevant, but i think any armour with a weight over 6 should give some penalty to your archery speed.

I've always thought it quite ridiculous seeing a guy in black armour with a quiver on the back.
 
I agree, the bow really shouldn't do nearly as much against heavy armor. Perhaps assigning all armor values such as light, medium, and heavy would fix the problem. Light armor (cloth, leather, etc.) wouldn't have any special modifiers other than base defense. Medium armors(chain mail and such) could automatically block 50% damage from arrows, and somethign like 25% of all slashing damage. Heavy armors (plate mail, coat of plates etc.) could block something like 75% of all arrow damage, and 50% slashing and whatnot. The calculations could be done as follows. A heavily armored character is hit in the chest for what would initially be 70 damage from an arrow. The heavy armor has a defense of 25, and blocks 25 damage leaving 45. The heavy armor further blocks 75% of that, causing the character to take about 11 damage. Something like that would add some balance to the game i think, even if my idea is a bit raw.
 
I'd like different arrow types for different targets. Big barbed arrows or fleh arrows are great against horses because of the pain it causes. Meanwhile, bodkins would be needed to pierce plate. Those types would get bonuses against these specialized targets and regular arrows just work low armor units.

Black armored HAs with big bags of bodkins and war bow with SoW as secondary is indeed practically invincible.

As for blocking, do the ram bastard on shoulder with horsie and do a turning slashing thing usually should work.

However, little wooden clubs should be smashed to flinders upon the first attack and thus not be around the second time. Other small weapons should also be beaten out of shape.

As for blocking arrows with weapons, that's too fantasy to be good for gameplay. Realistically, it's not doable.
 
I'd say an easy answer would be to give each weapon some number of durability points, just like shields. If you block a blow with a weapon, it takes an amount of damage proportional to the damage rating of the weapon that hit it, and the inverse of the attacking weapon's relative speed. Then when the weapon's durability is gone, it shatters. That way, if you're blocking a light weapon with a heavy weapon, the heavy weapon would be mostly undamaged, whereas if you block a heavy weapon with a light one, it'll break fairly quickly.
 
I'd say an easy answer would be to give each weapon some number of durability points, just like shields. If you block a blow with a weapon, it takes an amount of damage proportional to the damage rating of the weapon that hit it, and the inverse of the attacking weapon's relative speed. Then when the weapon's durability is gone, it shatters. That way, if you're blocking a light weapon with a heavy weapon, the heavy weapon would be mostly undamaged, whereas if you block a heavy weapon with a light one, it'll break fairly quickly.

Hmm, I think that's a bit extreme. You'd have to break their weapon firstbefore you could break their parries? Unless you could shatter someone's cudgel in one or two hits it wouldn't fix the problems with parrying..maybe in long 1on1 duels but not on the field. Also I don't think many players like losing their expensive weapons in combat. Once someone loses their weapon, they can't attack at all, especially the AI who only use one melee weapon..there's no fist combat so it will just stand there waiting for you to kill it?

The problem right now is how big, slow weapons that take a year to swing like heavy warhammers, giant axes etc can be parried constantly and never make hits. Forget about horseback vs horseback and forget about fighting crowds unless you have enough athletics that you can trick the AI into making swings. Parrying is pretty much a 100% infallable defense, so if you had two expert melee players compete no one would ever win if they just spammed parry all day.

A more dynamic, player-skill based system where you can break someone's block with a prepared attack or a knockdown type effect against parries with a heavy weapon would be better for gameplay in the long run imo.
 
The idea is that the cudgel comes apart when hit by a great axe even once.

Players wouldn't lose their big expensive pieces since those have great durability.
 
Say a player graduates from fighting groups of 20 river pirates to 20 swadian knights. Once enemies start using higher quality metal weapons with higher durability, the big, slow weapons are still going to be useless because they'll be parried all the time with say an iron spike instead of a cudgel. Fighting groups is still going to be a pain if you have to break each and every person's weapon before being able to hit anything. The AI really doesn't care that their weapons or shields break, they just swarm at you all the same.

I agree, weapon durability should be in the game as well, but does it completely fix the problem of parrying be a free "I win" button against heavy attacks.
 
I think a solution (sorta) for the footmen archer's who are gay and run backward's killing everyone , you could make an option where there is a chance if your running backward's that you will fall over. Thus giving a chance for the AI to cut your bloody head off. The charge thing would be nice to.

And the parry thing , i find quite rediculous. Recently ive been playing my knight guy , and he uses a polehammer. Now have any of you seen polehammer's? The end of them look like they could rip you in half. Yet i fight bandit's who just stand there as i charge past them on my spirited courser with a 30kg weapon swinging at them...just so it can bounce off there 10 cm long hatchet that they are clutching with one hand...

I think that they should make a system that calculate's strength , and weight of the weapon , and if it's alot (say a polehammer) it will at-the-Least- Knock the opponent over. Technically a polehammer would absolutely "Hammer" the crap out of someone wielding even a longsword probably.
 
Thinking outside the box, and seeing people don't like losing their expensive weapons, and the fact that an AI without a weapon is nothing but fertiliser...

What about asigning a 'parry' factor to troops...

So everyone starts with a PF of say 100, when parrying, this vaule is reduced, minimum of 1 per parry and modified by weapon difference...

So a cudgel has a parry value of 10, the giant pole hammer has a parry value of 75, end result the guy with the cudgel has his PF reduced by 66...
when this value hits 0 parries simply become useles...

In effect ones arm simply becomes too tired and sore to put up any kind of defense...

What annoys me more than the parry problem however is when charging some peasant with your war trained horse, the peasant does not have the decency to fall flat on his rear end... I dunno about you, but if a horse wants to even walk onto the bit of ground I occupy, i either move out of the way or get knocked over...
This is why we are seeing the problem of mounted units being swarmed and killed by a mass of enemy... In reality, the horse would be knocking at least half of them away and or down... This is what made inf-cav melee's such a bad prospect for the inf...
Damn it I want to trample some peasants... :twisted:
 
Yeah Hado, I agree, weapon durability alone wouldn't solve it. There should be some type of "smash-through" effect if you try to block an attack with a weapon that just can't take it. E.g., if someone's coming at you with a sledgehammer and you put up your cracked wooden staff to block it, that hammer should go through through and put your skull into your chest.

Actually, that seems like an even easier answer: just give weapons a maximum amount of damage they can block with a parry. Durable metal weapons could be given essentially-infinite blocking capability, while wimpy wooden ones would have little. If you block an attack with a weapon that can't take it, the attack goes through and your weapon is either knocked aside or smashed to flinders.
 
Good, well-balanced games have checks and balances that stop "turtlers" from just blocking/defending all day, either with tick damage, throws, special moves to teleport behind the opponent, etc. The tradeoff is that these moves leave you open and entice the opponent to actually attack you, which prevent battles from degenerating into who gets the most bored/impatient first.

While I like the durability idea for parrying, and I think it should be in the game, I think it's more important that each weapon type should have another of swing/attack that defeats parrying completely for the sake of good gameplay. Something that is noticeable and leaves the person using it open to interruption at the beginning and ends of the swing so it doesn't get spammed all day. Something that would make combat better than just block-block-swing-block-swing-block-block-block, and make it bit more involved.

For example in Die By the Sword (realistic medieval combat where you used the mouse to control your weapon arm) there was an "extend" button that let you pull your sword arm back even further, allowing a harder hit but left your chest open and giving you less time to block because your arm was so far back. If someone tried blocking an extended swing they might not have been cut by the sword, but you'd smash them across the screen, especially those little kobold bastards with dual weapons :wink:

In Jedi Outcast/Academy games, there were multiple sword styles you could use, the "red" sword style being the most powerful, cutting right through most blocks (if not completely batting the person out of the way) with the tradeoff being extremely slow and telling (leaving you wide open to hits at the start and ends of your attack). You could also do moves like unblockable kick/bodycheck type attack that could knock your opponent down, a backwards stab or jumping smash that were virtually instant kill and unblockable, but you also couldn't turn and missed easily.. if you missed the jumping smash in a duel you were pretty much screwed.

I think M&B should apply a similar system where you can make a carefully calculated, block/parry defeating attack but leaves you open. For example you could charge any swing on the war hammer like you currently do, but the longer you hold down the button, the higher the chance you have of smashing through someone's defense. Naturally, if you get hit or interrupted you lose your charge.. for weapons like daggers or swords, the charge would take longer, simulating someone taking their time to find a weak spot in an opponent's armor or adjusting to the opponent's rythm.
No new animations involved, and the only extra code you'd need is to check how many miliseconds a player has had his attack charged and base the percentage to break a parry off that.

Otherwise you could go all the way and add a few new attacks/animations to give different methods of breaking block/parries. For example with one handed weapons if you were close enough to someone you could do an unblockable "pummel", smashing someone in the face with the pommel of your weapon which would stagger him back a step or two, leaving him open briefly. With a giant maul you could do a mighty back-breaking overhead smash, where the character takes a couple seconds to put his entire body into the force of one swing..a guaranteed knockdown, or enough to cleave the person in half if you have a Sword of War :wink:

I think being able to break guards at will would add a lot of depth to gameplay, and possibly lead up to future improvements with the combat system as well.
 
That sounds great. I must say that the charging rate should be halved or something for horseback since you can charge all day long.

I personally hold down an attack while on horseback even now.
 
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