A revamp of melee combat.

This post is fairly long, it might take more than one sitting to read through and understand.


Ok, I've decided to put all my ideas for foot combat into one post. These suggestions are inspired in part by Rathyr's suggestions, and from other suggestions seen on the forum. They all cover details involving various aspects of foot combat.
There are other things i'd like to talk about, but I decided to omit them for brevity's sake.


Here's a brief rundown.


A change to attack speed: draw back time

Quick attacks and power attacks

Other influences on draw back time

Shields, blocking and the parry skill

Passive defense

Secondary attacks



A change to attack speed: draw back time

In the current game, slow weapons look ridiculous. They are swung quite slowly all the way through the attack. In real life, a heavy weapon would be swung quite quickly, but it would take some time to get it ready to swing again. For example, a sledgehammer is quite difficult to swing rapidly, even if individual hits may be made with quite a lot of speed.

This is what i'm proposing: Make the actual swing speed the same independant of weapon. Swing speed is determined only by character strength, power strike and weapon proficiency.

Now, after the swing, the weapon takes a certain amount of time to get back to the position where you can swing it again. This is what I call draw back time. It's the time it takes from when you first press the left mouse button and hold it down, to when the weapon is drawn back to its maximum and is ready to attack. Basically it's the time it takes to ready your weapon for any directional strike.

It's this draw back time that weapon speed affects. A sword's draw back time is shorter than an axe's, which is in turn shorter than a maul's. Draw back time is also affected by strength and weapon proficiency.

This way, a sword will swing just as fast as a maul will, but the sword will be able to get more hits in in the long run.


Quick attacks and power attacks

This idea is almost directly borrowed from the game Dark messiah. If you've played it, you'll know what I mean.

Basically, just tapping the mouse button performs quick but somewhat ineffectual attacks, while holding the mousebutton down will release a more powerful attack.

But while in Dark messiah these two attacks were quite different, in this suggestion they are just variations of the same feature.
When you press the mousebutton down, your weapon is pulled back in the direction of the on-screen arrow (as it does currently). The weapon takes a small amount of time (about half a second to a second) to pull back fully. If you release the mousebutton prematurely, you perform an underpowered quick attack. If you release it after it's been drawn back fully, you'll perform a normal 'power attack'. 
Note, that when I say a 'quick attack', i don't mean the swing of the weapon is quicker, rather the opposite is true. Because the weapon hasn't had a chance to build up momentum like it would in a proper attack, it actually swings slower than a power attack. But it is called quick attack, because it can be done more quickly from a stand still, and the weapon swings more frequently.


Other influences on draw back time

Aside from the speed of the weapon and the skill of the player, there are other environmental effects to draw back time. The nature of the object you hit can affect the draw back time on your next attack.

I have experience using a 10 pound hammer on a farm. When you hit something solid with a 10 pound hammer, the hammer tends to bounce back. It usually bounces back into a position where you can easily swing it again. As long as you're hitting your target, you can keep up a fairly decent rate of blows with a sledgehammer. However when you miss, you lose your balance, and it takes a small while to regain it again. Plus, it looks embarrasing. I have found that when I miss entirely, i often have to spin around on my axis to regain my balance.

Now, let's apply this concept to the game. If you hit something hard during your swing (like plate armour or a shield), your weapon bounces back, and less draw back time is required to get the weapon back fully on the next attack. 
If you miss completely, or are just swinging your sword around in air, the default time is required to draw your weapon back.
If your weapon gets parried by someone with high parry skill (more on this later), then your weapon is pushed forwards, and even more time is required to draw it back again.

It's different still, when a weapon hits something soft, like people. If hit with enough force, the weapon can become embedded in the person. All this means is that the weapon stops in the person, and has to be given a yank in the opposite direction to free it. I think this could be accomplished by just reversing the animation at that point and speeding it up/slowing it down to make it look like a proper yank.
Weapons embedding themselves in people would be somewhat rare, it would only happen if you did, say, over 35 damage to someone.


Now, this penalty to draw back time only applies to the next attack, if the next attack is performed immediately afterwards. Let's say it normally takes you .5 of a second to ready your axe again after a hit. If you miss, you have a .3 second penalty to your next shot if you perform it immediately afterwards. So next attack takes you .8 seconds to ready. If you wait .2 of a second before you attack again, it takes .6 seconds (.5 seconds plus the .1 second penalty left over) to ready your attack. If you wait .3 seconds or longer, it takes your usual .5 seconds to attack. Note that this .3 seconds is enforced; if you decided to do a quick attack after missing, you'd still have to wait .3 seconds to do so. Understand? I hope so.

Hitting/missing/parrying affects different weapons to a different extent. A sword would have a small missing penalty compared to a sledgehammer. I propose that a new weapon stat, called balance, be added. I suppose you could define balance as the position of the centre of mass on the weapon. A sword has a centre of mass close to the crossguard, whereas an axe has a centre of mass close to the axeblade. All this stat actually does, is determine the hitting bonus and the missing/getting parried penalty of the weapon. The higher the 'balance' stat, the further out the centre of mass is from the handle, and the larger the penalty if the weapon misses. COnversely, the higher the balance number, the higher the bonus when the weapon hits something solid. This would make a weapon such as an axe quite effective against a shield, because it would do damaging blows while keeping up a high rate of attack.


Shields, blocking and the parry skill

So far, all i've talked about is the weapon during attack. Similar effects come into play when blocking. If miss an enemy with your axe as above, it will take .3 seconds before you'll be able to block with your weapon again. If you had a shield, there would be no such penalty. Similar effects come into play depending on your skill in parrying and the force which your opponent hits you with.

Let's define the weapon impact 'force' as being the weapon damage at impact. Except, unless it actually hits you, it does no damage.

Whenever you block an attack with your shield, your shield gets pushed away from you, and it takes a small amount of time to bring it back. The distance it gets knocked away by, and the time it takes to get it back into position varies with several things, namely the amount of force (damage) the attack hit with, the shield speed, and the parry skill of the blocker. A similar thing happens with parrying with a weapon. If you parry an attack with your weapon, because the weapon gets knocked out the way there is a small delay before you can attack or block again. Again, this depends on the force of the attack, the weapon weight and speed, and the parry skill.

One important thing to observe here, is that the weapon is independant from the shield. If the shield has been knocked back, the weapon is still free to attack with no penalty. If the weapon was parried away, and there's a severe time penalty to bring it back, you can still use your shield quite freely. This makes using a shield preferential to not using one, because a weapon has to perform both functions of attack and defense. If your weapon is parried or knocked out of the way by a large force, you have nothing to defend yourself with for that brief moment.

Ok, let's explain this parry skill. Basically, it replaces the current shield skill, and makes it much more useful and functional. Putting points into this skill does the following:
Shields take less damage, shields recover faster from big hits and weapon parries recover faster after big hits. Also, as points are increased, blocks and parries get more responsive. While blocking, shields will actually try to deflect the incoming attacks, and so will weapons. At low parrying skill, the character will attempt to block as they do currently, by holding the weapon perpendicularly to the incoming attack. At higher skills, the character will make an active attempt at parrying to knock the weapon off course.
Ingame, what this means, is that the higher the parrying skill is, the longer the draw back penalty of the opponent's weapon. Basically you knock it off course and it takes them longer to recover. The effect occurs when defending both with shields and weapons, but it's more pronounced with weapons to make up for the disadvantages of not having a shield.


Passive defense

Rathyr's article: Passive Defense

My idea for passive defense is similar to rathyr's, except it plays less of a role in combat.
Basically, when in any combat situation (i.e. reasonably close to an enemy), you automatically hold your sword and shield in a neutral stance position, where both pieces of equipment are in a position of readiness in front of the body (as opposed to having your arms by your side)

Now, both the sword and shield have their own hitboxes, which means they can be hit by other weapons (or even projectiles in the shield's case). But when a character is idle, thay are not bracing their sword&shield for any impact. If an attack does hit a shield or weapon, it gets knocked out of the way. It gets knocked out of the way much further than it would if he was actively defending. So attacking a passive defender is simple. Just swing once to bat the gear out of the way, and the defender will be as vulnerable as a tortoise on it's back. Swing again and he's dead.

But what about if you hit a guy's weapon while he's shieldblocking, or hit his shield while he's attacking or preparing an attack? Something similar happens. The action itself isn't interrupted, but the object is pushed out of the way (more than if he was blocking, but less than if he was just passive), and if the person were to use the object immediately after, there would be a small delay.

Oh, and if two people hit each other's weapons simultaneously, they both bounce back, but otherwise no penalty is applied to anybody.


Secondary attacks

Destichado's article: Secondary attacks

Basically this is destichado's idea built into my model, with my embellishments. It isn't necessary to the rest of the article,
Ok, we've got the action key, default F, but I use shift (and i'll be referring to shift as the action key). This button isn't used much in battle, save for getting on and off horses. The action key is a good key to use for secondary attacks.

Pressing shift by itself does nothing. You have to press either attack or block while holding shift down to perform a secondary attack. You can also just press shift while holding down the attack or block button to perform a secondary attack.

A secondary attack is exactly what it says it is. If you press shift+attack, you do a bash with the pommel or hilt of your weapon, if you press shift+block, you do a shield bash. If you don't have a shield when you press shift+block, you just do a normal bash with the pommel or hilt. These attacks are quick, they do small (0-2) damage, but are used when enemies are closer than the minimum range for a proper attack, you want to push them back.
Draw back bonuses and penalties apply to these attacks as well. You can defend against them with a shield, but you can't with just a weapon.


Summary and gameplay effects

Make weapon swinging quick, but make the recovery time between swings variable based on skill, weapon etc.
You can perform lighter attacks by tapping the mouse button, or heavier attacks by holding it down.
the recovery time is dependant on what you hit, or how well it was parried by the enemy.
Weapons can get embedded in people.
Shields can also have a recovery time, during which they are not covering you properly.
Parry skill effects the recovery time of other people's attacks.
Secondary attacks are quick and designed to push enemies back. They are performed by pressing shift+attack/block.

There are several effects these ideas would have on the gameplay. First of all, it would break up the rather monotonous combat we have at present, and it would call for more judgement in battle, whether or not to give a strong attack, a weak attack or a bash to an enemy based on how well you and he are equipped. This adds variety to the game, and means there's always something more for experienced players to learn. It also makes the gameplay look more flash and realistic. The downside to this, is that it's harder for newbies to learn, unless they are taught it gradually. Another effect is that the outcome of a battle will be more skewed towards people with better stats. This is because attack strength, and parry skill affects how successful a block will be. A level 43 beserker with a bearded axe will be able to steamroll through a party of river pirates, because even if they are successful enough to block his first attack, their weapon will be knocked away so badly they won't have the time to resist the follow up attack.
I actually think this is a good thing, as it gives an added incentive to put skill into martial skill, and it also means a level 23 AI knight will actually be more than a match for a level 1 player-controlled squire. 


I haven't really thought about the implications for horseback combat, but I don't think it would be much of a difference from this.

If anyone wants to discuss any points made in this, it would help if they labelled what they were discussing.

This thread also gets papal blessing. Just one thing - I'd suggest switching the balance stat around, as it just seems more intuitive to call a sword more balanced than an axe or mace.

I mostly agree.
A couple of things though:

1) swords don't really bounce back that much in reality. Not enough to notice like...I hit his sword and we're both pushed back by the impact. Not at all.
2) I wouldn't go for the quick/power attacks. It sort of is in the game right now. If you have the space to perform a wide swing with a sword and you move in the direction, the damage is greater than when you just tap the attack and you stand near the enemy. In the second case you mostly happen to deal low or no damage and the sword ! bounces back a bit. So speed and motion counts more than holding the button down for a longer period of time. Which makes imho more sense and looks more realistic. You don't prepare your attack for two seconds activating every muscle and holding your breath or anything. You simply strike different, it takes a bit longer, but not that much. Motion and space.
3) the attack recovery shouldn't again be very long with swords. And should be different for different types of attacks and also should depend on the direction. For instance if you attack from the right side, you can attack quite quickly again from the left. If you'd want to be stupid and attack from the right again, you have to actually get the blade back to the right so it takes more time. (something like natural sequences/combos would eventually emerge this way.)

This article pretty much sums it all up, without having to change everything too drastically.

LOVE IT! well thought out as usual, Ingo!

Huzaah, the thread has returned from it's adventures

I'd suggest switching the balance stat around, as it just seems more intuitive to call a sword more balanced than an axe or mace.

Click to expand...

Perhaps I should rename it imbalance then?

In response to merlkir's points:
1. I agree that the bounceback/otherwise imbalance of the sword should be minimal. It should be much more pronounced with axes and maces though. The 'imbalance stat' affects the recovery bonus and recovery penalty. I'd imagine something small and well balanced like a dagger would have almost no recovery bonus/penalty.

2. Let me describe a bit better what I mean about power attacks. Dispell the RPG image in your head of an elaborate charge up, followed by a massive swing where the guy twirls around twice, yells like a maniac and produces a transparent red trail behind his weapon before slicing through everything.
A power attack is merely the same as the current attack in the game. You only need to hold it down for 0.4 seconds or the like before it is ready.

The point of the quick strike is that it's not powerful at all, but can be used to catch people offguard when a powerstrike would otherwise be expected. It would also be useful against unarmoured enemies like river pirates. Imagine you have an axe and your opponent is kitted out with sword&shield. You run at him and deliver a powerful overhead attack. He blocks it with his shield, but in doing so, his shield is knocked downwards, exposing his face and upper chest. Because of the recovery bonus from hitting something solid, you're able to do a rapid quick attack and hit him in the face before he recovers. He is now injured, and you can repeat the process over again.
There would be more distinction between quick attacks and power attacks in heavy weapons. Lighter weapons like daggers, there wouldn't be as much of a distinction, especially to a highly trained person. In that case, a dagger might take .15 of a second to pull back fully, and tapping the mousebutton instead will result in nearly powered up attacks instead of underpowered attacks, because the dagger charges up so quickly.

One thing i think I failed to make clear was that there isn't any clear cut distinction between quick attacks and power attacks. they're just points on a continuum.
Ok, let's say you got a badass two handed sword that takes 0.7 seconds to charge up fully. If you tap the mouse button, you unleash an attack almost immediately (because the weapon is still a bit cumbersome, this could take .2 seconds to hit its target). If you wait .7 seconds and then release, you perform a full power attack. If you wait .35 seconds before releasing, you perform a half-power attack. (that is, an attack whose damage is halfway between a quick attack and a power attack) You can alter the power of your attack by how long you hold the mouse button down before releasing. You will know when your weapon is fully ready, when the pulling back animation is finished.

I posted this idea, simply becasue I like the idea of quick but ineffectual attacks.

3. The attack recovery depending on which direction you swing is one that occurred to me. Yes, it does make sense that after a left slash, it would be quicker to ready a right slash than another left slash. But I left it out, because I feel it makes it just a bit too complicated for the newbie to learn. Besides, I don't have much control over my attack direction anyway. I would prefer it if attack direction wasn't crucial to winning a battle. It's a bit of a sucky reason on my part, but i'll stick by it.

Bravo!

thanks.

That shield example seems kind of silly to me from both a game balance and realism point of view. Getting stunned repeatedly by power attacks made oblivion combat horrendous. Combining that with a speed bonus for landing one makes it seem like first hit wins, even if it is blocked. As for the realism problems, there's a fair bit of give in the arm behind the shield, so the weapon won't bounce back as if you hit something bolted down. The quick attacks also worry me - imagine how annoying the game would be if random arm flailing could stunlock?

To be honest, i'd wish stunlock could be banished altogether, except maybe for the heaviest of attacks. Lighter attacks should disorient, but they shouldn't stop you from performing attacks.

What I neglected to mention in the example of axe vs sword+shield, was that the swordsman could still attack with his own quickstrike after the axeman hit his shield. In reality, that's probably what he would do.

And the quick attack would also be ineffective against armour. If stunlock is controlled in this game, a knight could quite easily ignore quick strikes even without any weapons or shields. The other point about quickstrike is that because it's a weak attack, it doesn't have a very good ability of batting away weapons and shields. Infact, someone passively blocking while idle might take several frontal quick strike hits before his gear is shifted out the way enough to land one on him. Someone quickstriking against an active defender is wasting their time.

More.

Weapon holstering and picking up.

One improvement I was glad of in the last version was the intoduction of scabbards and the like. But the drawing animation is still the bogstandard one where you reach for some invisible place behind you and a weapon magically appears in your hand. First, I'd suggest that each weapon has a drawing animation, and a holstering animation. If you want to change, say from your scimitar to your broad sword, the animation will show you holstering your scimitar, then reaching for your broad sword, then unsheathing your broadsword. This looks much better than the current setup.
Another key thing about this, is it takes a small while longer to perform. While the holstering animation for swords and the like will be reasonably short, it will be a fair bit longer for shields, longbows and polearms. This is an important detail, and I'll explain why this is so shortly.

Let's introduce a new button, the drop button. Press drop, and you let your weapon go instantly. Press drop while holding down block will discard your shield. Dropping an item is much quicker than holstering it on your person. It means that when you don't have the time to holster, you just drop your bow and pull out your sword.

As indicated in the module files, it might be possible to pick up weapons in the battlefield in the next version. When someone dies or  drops their weapon, it falls to the ground, does a bit of physics and then lies there. By walking up to the item, looking at it and pressing the action key, you can pick it up. If your hand is empty (i.e. it's a weapon and your right hand is empty, or if it's a shield and your left hand is empty), than you pick it up instantly. (perhaps with a corresponding animation)
If you already have an item in your hand, but room to change it in your kit (i.e. you have a slot free), you holster your item and pick up the new one. If you have no free slot, you can't pick it up and a message tells you that you have no space. You have to drop your current item first.

There are a few restrictions on these ill-gotten items. Firstly, if you drop your weapon in the field and don't pick it up, it will still be returned to your scabbard after the fight. Any weapons you do claim in the fight won't appear in your inventory afterwards. (in this sense, it's just like stealing horses. The horse you stole won't be with you after the fight unless you get lucky in the loot afterwards)
Also, if you go back to your inventory with a new weapon, it won't show up on your character, your old weapon will still be there. This is to stop the pilfering of the battlefield of every weapon you find on the ground before you get to the loot screen.

A couple of other additions: Polearms are limited. With the exception of smaller, holsterable (they appear on your back) polearms, such as staffs, the spear and double sided lance, you can't holster polearms, and you are allowed only one in your kit at a time. You start off the battle using this polearm. If you want to change your weapon, you HAVE to drop the polearm. You can't put it away. If you want it again, you'll have to find where you dropped it, and pick it up again. This makes weapons like the great lance on horseback more balanced. You can use it all you want, but as soon as you need to pull out a sword, you drop it. If you want it back, you'll have to dismount and grab it.
Note you can wear as many of the smaller polearms (quarterstaffs, boar spears) as you like, but you can have only one lance or pike or glaive at a time.

Actually, I wouldn't mind being able to offhand with a quarterstaff. Gandalf style.

Finally, you can pick up arrows, bolts and throwing weapons out of the ground, provided that you have the equipment to use them. ANy projectiles retrieved this way will have the 'bent' modifier.


Offhand weapons, and their gameplay mechanics

Eogan will like this one.
Some types of weapons (one handed only, no two handed or polearms) can be carried offhand for parrying purposes. Doing this requires at least a couple of points in the parrying skill.

How does this work in gameplay? First of all, this isn't proper dual wielding. The offhand weapon is used more for parrying attacks than making them. But they can still perform an attack in their own right, similar to a shield bash. The weapon is held just below the head (for axes and maces),by the hilt for daggers or upside down below the crossguard 'crusader style' for swords.

This setup contains similarities to both using only one weapon to parry, and using a sword and shield. It is similar to the sword and shield in that the weapons operate independant from each other. If the main weapon is knocked out of the way, the offhand weapon is still usable with no penalties, and vice versa. It is similar to using one weapon for parrying, because you still have to pay attention to the opponent's attack direction, and parry after he makes his attack. Also, the parrying ability is affected by the weight and speed of the offhand weapon, and it won't defend against shieldbashing or bashing with the pommel. Another difference is that the 'shieldbash', or in this case offhand weapon bash does a bit more damage than a shield bash, depending on the weapon. (but still far less than it would do if it were in your attacking hand)
I think to balance this a bit, parrying with an offhand is less effective than parrying with your main weapon, in that the opponent has less of a penalty to weapon recovery time.

The major hurdle to this problem is organising how you change between items. After all, a weapon can be both a weapon and a shield, it can be brought up by both the change weapon button and the change shield button.
There's several ways this can be remedied.

When you press the 'change shield' button, it cycles through your stuff, and picks the first shield or 1h weapon which you aren't currently using. When you cycle through weapons, it skips over those which are already being held on your offhand, so you don't end up with two of the same weapon in your hands.
Now that's simple enough, but how to handle dropping and picking up? We need a system that's intuitive, but doesn't require too many buttons, and can allow for every single possibility.

Pressing drop will drop your main weapon. Pressing block+drop will drop your offhand weapon. If you come across a weapon lying on the ground that can be used in either hand, it will be picked up by the hand that is empty.

This leaves just one more problem. What if you want to swap weapons? What if you have a sword in your main hand, and an axe in your offhand, and you want to swap the two over? In my current model, you'd have to put away the sword, cycle the offhand weapon from axe to sword, which involves holstering the axe and drawing out the sword, then weapon cycle to your axe to draw that out again. Cumbersome.
Ideally, you'd want to do it with one button press. But that requires a new button. There is one seldom used little button called the sheath button, which takes away your weapons and allows you to fight barefist. Could we use this somehow? Perhaps we could press aheath while holding down action, and instead of sheathing all our weapons, it simply swaps them around. If you try to swap them around when they can't go around (such as an offhand weapon plus a bastard sword or spear, or a weapon plus a shield), you get an error text. If both weapons require shuffling around, it's awkward and slow to watch as one weapon is shifted over at a time. If you've got a weapon in one hand, but nothing in the other, you can switch them over quite rapidly.

While I can't really see a flaw in the idea, I don't really like the action+sheath binding. It's quite awkward. I'd prefer it if it were something more accessible and intuitive.

Ingolifs said:

3. The attack recovery depending on which direction you swing is one that occurred to me. Yes, it does make sense that after a left slash, it would be quicker to ready a right slash than another left slash. But I left it out, because I feel it makes it just a bit too complicated for the newbie to learn. Besides, I don't have much control over my attack direction anyway. I would prefer it if attack direction wasn't crucial to winning a battle. It's a bit of a sucky reason on my part, but i'll stick by it.

Click to expand...

chosing the direction properly definitely SHOULD lead to victory and be a crucial part, that's what's called fencing. I can control it 95% times. Can't imagine why you couldn't. Maybe you should try inverse mouse movement, works best for me.

Agree on the holstering/dropping/picking up. I don't dig DW, but if you people need it, I won't mind..

Ingolifs said:

To be honest, i'd wish stunlock could be banished altogether, except maybe for the heaviest of attacks. Lighter attacks should disorient, but they shouldn't stop you from performing attacks.

Click to expand...

I agree, stunlocking is one of the biggest annoyances now. It's wrong from gameplay as well as realism perspective. Being hit does not have a chance to stop a blow in the midst, it's against laws of physics (although it can affect its direction slightly, or prevent further acceleration)
Instead, getting hit while performing a strike could affect its speed bonus, based on damage for example.

Ingolifs said:

This is what i'm proposing: Make the actual swing speed the same independant of weapon. Swing speed is determined only by character strength, power strike and weapon proficiency.

Now, after the swing, the weapon takes a certain amount of time to get back to the position where you can swing it again. This is what I call draw back time. It's the time it takes from when you first press the left mouse button and hold it down, to when the weapon is drawn back to its maximum and is ready to attack. Basically it's the time it takes to ready your weapon for any directional strike.

It's this draw back time that weapon speed affects. A sword's draw back time is shorter than an axe's, which is in turn shorter than a maul's. Draw back time is also affected by strength and weapon proficiency.

Click to expand...

I can't quite agree with this. Many people here seem to perceive some kind of seemingly obvious distinction between what they call 'recovery' or 'draw back', and the actual swing.

But in fact, they are closely related, that apparent 'recovery' is simply the point when acceleration direction reverses. The acceleration rate of a swing depends directly on circular momentum, that is distance to mass center times mass product, so, the lower the weapon's acceleration, the lower the speed in the mid swing.

The bad thing we observe ingame is because of something else - the swing speed is too invariable, like initial velocity is too great, while the mid swing velocity is too little. That makes swings look undynamic, powerless and puny.

This is of ultimate significance for long weapons, like polearms. Their big circular momentum makes them swing slowly, but thrust speed does not depend on momentum, but on the mass alone, so they should be able to be thrusted pretty fast. Unfortunately, in the game both swing and thrust seem to share the same speed statistics.

[EDIT] How could I forget about wristplay. Seems like there's no such thing in m&b now. the weapon is nearly parallel to the forearm all the time , like it was tied to it. Looks very unnatural. Seems like an animation problem, should be easy to fix.

Everything is good there, except Passive defense. Theres no really need for the sword being a hitbox, its actually a bit overwelming work into that. The shield is not, it should always cover for hits/arrows, but the sword is no really need to...

i agree with all of the 'concepts' not necesaril agreign with what weapons would have what balance and all that ( I think a staff would have excellent balance actaully), but something like a dagger definately not ever ever really bounce back.. I hope parrying icnluding blocking when using just a sword too and second...

a high parry skill should be able to nullify or resist someone else' parrying I also may agree with the fact of getting a delay before swining or extra 'ready time', but I dont agree this penalty would prevent you from blocking.. i believe nothing should ever prevent your from blocking whenver you want. As swings can easily be turned into blocks and plus game play just sucks when you cant block whenever you want in my opinion. Thats what i like about soulalibur they could be beating the crap out of you, but you could still block while being hit ( i know i shouldnt of brought soul calibur into this). Its easy to redirect a slice or ready movement or bounce off movemetn into a defensive position and you would never be in capable of doing so except for rare cases. Plus its fun to be able to defend after messing up (realizing you messed up and blocking just in time) because it makes for longer epic duels.

In my experience, if the opponent strikes your weapon when you are not expecting it (not actively attempting to block or parry the blow) they will easily push it aside and connect with your body.  (Also in my experience, there are few situations in which people swing to hit your sword intentionally when you are holding it in place.)  The only reason your sword would need to be a hit box for passive defense would be to add an animation where it shows your char having his sword knocked back before he is struck, so I personally don't see the point of implementing this until the very end as a refinement.  Now adding a hitbox for use when the sword swings meet mid-stroke is alot more reasonable, even if it doesn't happen all that often in real life.

What are you doing with a drawn weapon, NOT paying attention to your opponent?

If you're paying attention, then pay attention enough to click the button for active defense.  Besides this, it's not uncommon to be taken off-guard by an attack if you're being pressed by more than one opponent.