[Suggestion] Melee Combat Movement Revamp and Weapon & Swing Sweet Spots

[Stabbing Hobo]

I don't agree with the sweet spot of the weapons. the 'forte' or middle part of the blade is a good place to hit someone and the parts of the sword that are left white should do good blunt damage instead of slice or w/e its called (cut?).

No, the forte is from the crossguard to the midpoint, and most deflections and all oppositions should be done with it.
The striking is done with debole, which is the other half of the blade. The strongest point for cuts is usually somewhere around 2/3 towards the tip. Last four inchest or so are used to thrust and slashing cuts. The strongest strikepoint can be found by making the blade vibrate (wobble) and looking where the node is.

{Guy Windsor, The Swordsman's Companion p.40-41}

 

[Merlkir]

Drag that ax on someones neck and thats an instant kill. Its a much better system then having the wood do damage which makes little sense.

Why must you contend with everything I say, even when what I say is sensible?

No, not really. Your suggestion doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Dragging an axe to hurt your opponent is not a very common technique, there is no reason why it should be made so for all attacks. An axe dragged across the neck won't insta kill you, that's idiotic - it's an axe, not a razor.
Why wouldn't the wood do damage? If someone beats you with a stick, you get hurt.

And I haven't "chosen" to oppose you, don't flatter yourself. You just happened to post two posts I strongly disagree with, that's all.

 

[omzdog]

Its been more than two post, I can assure you.

Dragging the ax, perhpas I should say any hooked weapon, such as the sickle and bardiche, would be a viable way to kill an opponent. I'm not saying to put it into the game, but I did relate it to the OP's suggestion in saying the 'sweet spot' should include the handle because the weapon CAN be dragged and at the neck, could inflict a lot of damage or perhaps could stun them. Thats all I said. And no the wood at the handle will do no damage at all to an opponent. Swing a stick at somebody by the handle. It won't hurt them trust me. It will just swing around them.

 

[kingofnoobia]

Drag that ax on someones neck and thats an instant kill. Its a much better system then having the wood do damage which makes little sense.

Why must you contend with everything I say, even when what I say is sensible?

No, not really. Your suggestion doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Dragging an axe to hurt your opponent is not a very common technique, there is no reason why it should be made so for all attacks. An axe dragged across the neck won't insta kill you, that's idiotic - it's an axe, not a razor.
Why wouldn't the wood do damage? If someone beats you with a stick, you get hurt.

And I haven't "chosen" to oppose you, don't flatter yourself. You just happened to post two posts I strongly disagree with, that's all.

I can imagine drawing the axe would do some damage with specific axe heads. The Great Axe would perhaps be able to cause a serious cut, due to it's curved head. But that's about the only axe with a head that could do that, I can't imagine the Two Handed Axe and Two Handed War Axe (lets not mention the long axes) doing that.

I don't know about medieval war axes, but high quality modern axes are often sharp enough to shave yourself with them. I can well imagine a well-made medieval axe would be sharp as a razor.

The haft of the axe could do some damage, but I think it would be minimal because the swing speed is rather low in the middle.

 

[ares007]

You wouldn't have time to draw the axehead back across. By the time you start drawing it across, they are already stuffing their sword blade down your throat.

And yes, the haft can hurt you to an extent, but the major damage of a staff is where the axe-head is. Once you pass the axe-head, the damage you receive from the haft quite steadily declines. Also, a staff swings through the air much faster than an axe. The haft from an axe won't do as much damage as an actual staff.

 

[omzdog]

Well I admit I've never tried to drag an axe head on anybody's neck, but I've handled an axe and if I swung and the handle hit a guy, my first instict would be to drag the axe head back and get his back. Perhaps this would do 'nothing' I don't know.

 

[ares007]

It's not that it wouldn't do anything.

Why do you think you would hit the opponent with the haft instead of the axe-head? Assuming your opponent is a decent fighter, it's probably because he stepped inside the range of the axe-head and attacked. He decided to take the damage of the haft and simultaneously deliver his own lethal blow. Drawing the axe-head back might do some damage, but you'd likely be dead before you had the chance to do it.

Of course, realistically, rather than take the blow, the opponent would more likely move quickly into very close range in-between your attacks and then your attack wouldn't do squat while he cuts into your neck.

 

[omzdog]

Its not so much as your fully engaged to another man but he is off fighting and you miss your axe swing and overestimate his distance, the swing shouldn't hurt him considering all it is is the closer part of the handle, but it should still be considered a part of the sweet spot because you can drag the weapon back to inflict damage. Honestly it doesn't even matter anyway. I'm pretty sure this was just a suggestion I made on the previous page that got argued against, I tried to defend it, and it turned into an agreement, in which no one really understand what anyone is talking about. Don't worry about it.

 

[Eagle114th]

Excellent suggestion, I wholeheartedly recommend this!


Eagle out...

 

[SockMonkeh]

I'll give my support to this idea.

 

[Valerin]

Sure why not.


Though I don't quite understand why your swing power gets lower as you get nearer the end of your swing.  The follow-through will contain all the momentum past where you currently have the red spot and deceleration of the attack is much quicker than implied there.  The red area should be larger at the end of the swing IMO and then drop off rapidly.

Think about it this way.

It's 1351, your feudal lord just decided the next one over looked a little weak and rich.

War.

Now, in these days, cleanliness was absent-The smallest cut became infected. With a good slash, you'd die within days.

You've had a couple of weeks of training, and you think you have the gist of it. But you know your leather armor will be cut to shreds the second a good, solid blow lands on it, and you really do love your wife and kids.

That shield is the only thing between your enemy's steel and your arm. Would you really want it anywhere else beside in front of you?

That, and you can only turn so much and still keep a stable footing.

But I support, with the exception of mesh sweet spots on swords. I think the tip would have the most damage[Not much momentum, I wouldn't think], but then again, keeping the sweetspot where it is now would encourage people to get closer, instead of trying to swipe as far away and as far to the side as possible.

 

[Night Ninja]

Striking with the tip gets you reach. Striking with the centre of percussion gets you power.

 

[duracell]

Another thing that would be helpful is weapon swing sweet spots; weapons would do more damage during certain parts of the swing.  Hitting someone with the tail end of the swing animation would do significantly reduced damaged compared to hitting them in the middle of the swing.  Hitting them with the very beginning of the swing would generate no damage.

This.
Thank you.

 

[Jack_Merchantson]

Though I don't quite understand why your swing power gets lower as you get nearer the end of your swing.  The follow-through will contain all the momentum past where you currently have the red spot and deceleration of the attack is much quicker than implied there.  The red area should be larger at the end of the swing IMO and then drop off rapidly.

It takes just as much time to decelerate a swing as it does to accelerate it.  Assuming a weapon of consequential mass, and that you want to hold onto it, you need to start decelerating well before you intend the weapon to stop. 

Accelerating a weapon all the way to your limit of motion is a technique known colloquially as "throwing".  It is somewhat incompatible with keeping one's grip on the weapon, unless one is unconcerned with keeping one's own balance or avoiding joint injuries.  It's why you get better penetration on a wooden target when you throw a knife as opposed to stabbing it.

 

[Stabbing Hobo]

Though I don't quite understand why your swing power gets lower as you get nearer the end of your swing.  The follow-through will contain all the momentum past where you currently have the red spot and deceleration of the attack is much quicker than implied there.  The red area should be larger at the end of the swing IMO and then drop off rapidly.

It takes just as much time to decelerate a swing as it does to accelerate it.  Assuming a weapon of consequential mass, and that you want to hold onto it, you need to start decelerating well before you intend the weapon to stop. 

Accelerating a weapon all the way to your limit of motion is a technique known colloquially as "throwing".  It is somewhat incompatible with keeping one's grip on the weapon, unless one is unconcerned with keeping one's own balance or avoiding joint injuries.  It's why you get better penetration on a wooden target when you throw a knife as opposed to stabbing it.

Also, when you hit at the right time you can use your full body weight with the strike. One can test it by holding a sword in "end swing" position and have someone apply pressure to the blade and compare that to other positions.

 

[L-J-F]

Damage should depend much more heavily on range/weapon/speed/rotation of the body/part of swing etc.

 

[Alma69]

Thats the best sugestion around much needed. In the first day and until now annoy me that i take full demage from long wepons on a point blank range.

 

[Crazed Rabbit]

Well I've played some more so I'll add some thoughts.

It seems like hitting opponents with the side of your weapon is less prevalent now.  However, there's still the problem of long weapons and wide swing animations leading to a player being able to kill someone behind him with something like a long axe at the very start of the swing.

So I think altering damage during the animation is still needed.  Damage should be put down to very low or non existent for the first part of the swing.

And another problem that still occurs is getting the full force of damage from a long axe even if you're right on top of the person swinging.  So I think we still need some more weapon mesh sweet spots.

Finally, my suggestion about limiting turning movement while swinging a weapon doesn't seem as necessary now.

If it were possible, I'd love to have these features added so that modders could play with them after release.  I think there was something with weapon mesh sweet spots added before.

I know the devs must be extremely busy right now.  So while I still think my original ideas are good, I think the most needed are altering weapon damage during the animation (and decreasing it greatly at the beginning), and altering  weapon damage over the length of the weapon (namely lowering damage when the shaft of a long axe hits someone).

CR

 

[Rath0s]

I was about to start a thread with the same topic, I agree with you 100% here.

 

[QuixanoFurioso]

For what it's worth i think the sweet spot idea is pretty good, especially if it's not a big nerf.  Really if the difference between Red and Yellow were reasonable it would reward good hits and penalize haphazard ones.  It's true that some bits of realism are just impossible and I think that it's true that the easy adjustment of a pole weapon is something that cant be realistically controlled on a keyboard.  But I tend to think that a player has enough control with the WASD keys to aim their swing.

But it's for that reason, I would like say that I don't like the idea of "solid footing" for an attack.  I mean, charges and moving into your attack are a huge part of the game and that would change it entirely and really not make much since.  Movement in combat is a really good thing, standing still is not something that should give you an offensive bonus. Solid footing for defenders makes a lot more since.  if you have good footing it's a lot easier to absorb the shock of an attack.   

What about solid footing for defenders?  What if, a defender who was moving had a chance of staggering or being knocked down?  Or what if a defender who was standing still ever so slightly staggered the attacker?  that may be too drastic a change.

As far as limiting movement during a swing, I think some limit would be reasonable, maybe depending on weapon.  I can see someone with a dagger changing his swing more easily than someone with a pike or a 2h sword.