TheOzoneHole Posted October 2, 2015 Posted October 2, 2015 "Shock Resistance protects against energy damage, caused by laser weapons, electrification, and lightning. Note that plasma weapons inflict both types of damage, and lightning also causes radiation damage and can lead to ghoulification." -Vault 111 Armorer Mod page I'm sorry, lightning? This is finally a thing? I have to actually be careful of not getting caught out in the rain? And ghoulification...of players?
Gameplayer Posted October 2, 2015 Author Posted October 2, 2015 "Shock Resistance protects against energy damage, caused by laser weapons, electrification, and lightning. Note that plasma weapons inflict both types of damage, and lightning also causes radiation damage and can lead to ghoulification." -Vault 111 Armorer Mod page I'm sorry, lightning? This is finally a thing? I have to actually be careful of not getting caught out in the rain? And ghoulification...of players? Theory right now but it could be a thing yes. Also its said that there might be creatures that can be mounted such as You Gia. Who knows though until we have the game in hand, for a while.
Guest Posted October 2, 2015 Posted October 2, 2015 Well, Fo3 was oblivion with guns . I can bet that FO4 will be an enhanced Skyrim with guns and vaults. With some in game simplified CK stuff like creating buildings and weapons while playing.
Aria Posted October 2, 2015 Posted October 2, 2015 More like Skyrimification of Fallout. My biggest worry, dumbed down run&gun simulator with zero challenge
Leito86 Posted October 2, 2015 Posted October 2, 2015 I wish they weren't even making FO4, then I wouldn't have to worry about it.
panthercom Posted October 2, 2015 Posted October 2, 2015 I just hope there are pristine variants of all the cars available in the GECK, because the cars are fucking beautiful, and I want to put one in my livingroom when I build my player home I love what I've seen so far of the 'industrial design' of machinery and buildings. Skyrim looks beautiful, and you can make some great looking characters now, but it just isn't sexy to me. I need rust and decay to get my rocks off properly.
gregathit Posted October 3, 2015 Posted October 3, 2015 The bar fight has been scrubbed out. This thread will be unlocked tomorrow and all are encouraged to "behave". It is possible to have a debate and NOT insult the thoughts and opinions of others. If you are not capable of doing this, then move on and don't post here.
Sacremas Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Was deleting my new thread of much use without even a notification? I mean a new thread could have helped what with this one being 74 pages. Anyway, reposting; http://bethesda.net/?utm_source=youtube.com&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=092215-Zur#en/events/game/fallout-4-behind-the-score-with-inon-zur/2015/09/22/30
GrimReaper Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Well, Fo3 was oblivion with guns . No, not really. I'd say that Oblivion and Skyrim are rather shooters with swords, bows and sorcery and that's why the gameplay is so bad. You can't use run-of-the-mill shooter mechanics in a game like Oblivion or Skyrim. It's not only Bethesda that fucks up these kind of games, though. The only games that have good melee combat that I know are Dark Souls and Mount&Blade. Dark Souls circumvents the issue that most games with melee have by adding fixed movesets and combos to the game, which works most of the time but sometimes it doesn't. Depending on which weapon you use, fighting in narrow hallways becomes an issue because you can't freely control your weapon. If the moveset says a thrust attack happens only with the third attack while the first two attacks are broad horizonal sweeps you're fucked unless you use another weapon that has a moveset that accomodates narrow spaces. Mount and Blade on the other hand lets you freely chose which attack you want to perform, the result being a somewhat clunky combat with telegraphed and simple looking attacks which are needed because you clearly need to see from what direction the attack is coming to block accordingly. Fancy and varied moves would make it look better, but then you couldn't block as reliably. Oblivion and Skyrim however didn't take into account that you need to do something with your weapon other than attack - heavy attack - block to give some depth to the game. Fallout 3 had working gameplay, Oblivion didn't. Unless you consider gameplay that reminds me of a generic MMORPG without auto attacks, manual aiming and without skills to use during combat working as intended, of course. It speaks volumes that ESO has a lot more depth to the combat than Skyrim has. A shooter is something that's very easy to do, at least as far as the fundamental gameplay mechanics are concerned. Pressing a button emulates your character pulling the trigger, there's no depth you need to add to that.
carnifex Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Well, Fo3 was oblivion with guns . No, not really. I'd say that Oblivion and Skyrim are rather shooters with swords, bows and sorcery and that's why the gameplay is so bad. You can't use run-of-the-mill shooter mechanics in a game like Oblivion or Skyrim. It's not only Bethesda that fucks up these kind of games, though. The only games that have good melee combat that I know are Dark Souls and Mount&Blade. Dark Souls circumvents the issue that most games with melee have by adding fixed movesets and combos to the game, which works most of the time but sometimes it doesn't. Depending on which weapon you use, fighting in narrow hallways becomes an issue because you can't freely control your weapon. If the moveset says a thrust attack happens only with the third attack while the first two attacks are broad horizonal sweeps you're fucked unless you use another weapon that has a moveset that accomodates narrow spaces. Mount and Blade on the other hand lets you freely chose which attack you want to perform, the result being a somewhat clunky combat with telegraphed and simple looking attacks which are needed because you clearly need to see from what direction the attack is coming to block accordingly. Fancy and varied moves would make it look better, but then you couldn't block as reliably. Oblivion and Skyrim however didn't take into account that you need to do something with your weapon other than attack - heavy attack - block to give some depth to the game. Fallout 3 had working gameplay, Oblivion didn't. Unless you consider gameplay that reminds me of a generic MMORPG without auto attacks, manual aiming and without skills to use during combat working as intended, of course. It speaks volumes that ESO has a lot more depth to the combat than Skyrim has. I'll take Dark Messiah of Might and Magic over Dark Souls and Mount and Blade combined when it comes to melee combat, and this game doesn't give you much more in the way of basic attack options than Skyrim does - it just makes them more satisfying through better balancing, more responsive controls and better, more believable enemy reactions, then kicks it up a notch by giving you fun powers to wreak havoc on the battlefield and allowing you to murder motherfuckers creatively through scenery use. It's tight, it's tense, it's immensely satisfying when you pull off something cool without it being anal like Dark Souls or QTE without prompts like M&B. Dishonored, another game by the same studio, also has great melee combat despite simplifying the controls even further, and again it achieves it by tight controls, believable enemy behavior, and powers that let you take control of the battlefield if used properly, adding extremely satisfying contextual moves you can pull off without breaking a stride. And again, level design plays an important role in how it plays out, both by forcing you to choose your battlefields carefully and using scenery elements to your advantage. There's more to creating depth in combat than adding more basic options, is what I'm saying. Also, I really like how Arkane handles things in their games and hope Bethesda asks them for some pointers in making the next TES game, just like they claim they've asked id Software for tips on making gunplay better in Fallout 4. Which brings me to... A shooter is something that's very easy to do, at least as far as the fundamental gameplay mechanics are concerned. Pressing a button emulates your character pulling the trigger, there's no depth you need to add to that. There's so much more to good gunplay than just "press to shoot". Recoil plays a pivotal role both for balancing weapons and making them feel more powerful and satisfying. Weapon balancing is equal parts science and art, where ideally no weapon ever feels useless but some of them are clearly superior for certain situations, and each weapon should have different risk/reward ratio - just like in Dark Souls you don't want to be swinging a greatsword in a narrow corridor, in an FPS you don't want a rocket launcher when melee enemies try to swarm you in tight space. Movement needs to be carefully planned, whether it's "never stop moving" of oldschool FPS like Doom and Quake or the tactical approach of modern military shooters where finding a proper firing position can be as important as having good hand-eye coordination. Then, maps have to be designed properly both to facilitate your chosen movement style and let you take advantage of all your arsenal - arguably, modern military FPS do it quite a bit worse than classic shooters, where finding pickups and powerups was also of critical importance, making map design more important for the overall quality of gameplay. Ooh, I forgot to mention locational damage... but I hope you get my point anyway There are single mechanics that become a game's selling point, but they never work in a vacuum, and a great game needs more than one good subsystem to make combat work. TES games don't have horrible combat because they're limited to simple attack/defense options, they're horrible because these simple options get unleashed on boring damage sponge enemies that don't react in a satisfactory way, because the controls are sloppy and the visuals of combat are unappealing.
afa Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 I much rather take a stat driven system in a rpg than the active action approach.
carnifex Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 I much rather take a stat driven system in a rpg than the active action approach. Stat-driven systems work great in tactical RPGs like Infinity Engine games or classic Fallout titles, not so much in first/third person games like Bethesda makes. Morrowind had one of the shittiest combats ever in an RPG because the stat-driven underlying system was creating a dissonance between your actions and their effects.
afa Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Yes all of the TES combat is a bit clunky and, for the most part, simple, I will still take that over the combat of other action games for TES/FO Replace the text command entry of a "classic" or tactical rpg with a simple swing of the weapon works to recreate the rpg feels plus it really brings out the whole character building to life in a sense that it is the character getting better at fighting not the player getting better at handling the game. And as flaw as it seems I feel like that's what makes these games unique, it walks a fine line of having direct involvement in the world without menu commands, but at the same time captures the character's abilities in the world. There are already plenty of other games with fantastic combat with an entire game that builds around that. For TES and FO to chase after that I think would be unwise. You can't just rip the combat system of a game and then dump it in an open world game like TES/FO and expect it to work even if the system is good. Dark Souls works because the game is built around carefully design levels with spaces both narrow and large for the player learn every little details of the combat, enemies, and traps to stay alive with some trial and error. Unlocking checkpoints and shortcuts to proceed. To some extend even its story is built around dying and repeating. It is more about the player's knowledge and execution even though it has character stats, and all the pieces work together.
Aria Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Yes all of the TES combat is a bit clunky and, for the most part, simple, I will still take that over the combat of other action games for TES/FO Replace the text command entry of a "classic" or tactical rpg with a simple swing of the weapon works to recreate the rpg feels plus it really brings out the whole character building to life in a sense that it is the character getting better at fighting not the player getting better at handling the game. And as flaw as it seems I feel like that's what makes these games unique, it walks a fine line of having direct involvement in the world without menu commands, but at the same time captures the character's abilities in the world. There are already plenty of other games with fantastic combat with an entire game that builds around that. For TES and FO to chase after that I think would be unwise. You can't just rip the combat system of a game and then dump it in an open world game like TES/FO and expect it to work even if the system is good. Dark Souls works because the game is built around carefully design levels with spaces both narrow and large for the player learn every little details of the combat, enemies, and traps to stay alive with some trial and error. Unlocking checkpoints and shortcuts to proceed. To some extend even its story is built around dying and repeating. It is more about the player's knowledge and execution even though it has character stats, and all the pieces work together. While i understand what you are saying, i dont agree as it simply sounds like an exuse for bethesdas "dont give a fuck" policy. A combat can by simple and fun true, but especailly skyrims combat is just a bare skeleton of what could have been actually a fun combat system. Lets just take for example mages and their spells, they dont really react to the world, casting an ice spell will slow down your enemies but it never actually makes them trip over a frozen ground wich such a spell would normally do and same thing goes for the most part with all of the skills and spells. They are there but their impact on the surroundigns is minimal and simplistic to a point where i feel it was just thrown in so there is atleast something. Im not saying we need combat like asscreed or other games, but i never felt like bethesda cared about expanding this simple combat with more impact, adding more depth, they made it actually even more simpler by removing the whole spell crafting like it was in oblivion...then again this goes for pretty much everything they do, from combat and magic, to crafting, questing etc. Its this dumbing down and handholding trend they are so focused on now, wich worries me.
GrimReaper Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 I'll take Dark Messiah of Might and Magic over Dark Souls and Mount and Blade combined when it comes to melee combat, and this game doesn't give you much more in the way of basic attack options than Skyrim does - it just makes them more satisfying through better balancing, more responsive controls and better, more believable enemy reactions, then kicks it up a notch by giving you fun powers to wreak havoc on the battlefield and allowing you to murder motherfuckers creatively through scenery use. It's tight, it's tense, it's immensely satisfying when you pull off something cool without it being anal like Dark Souls or QTE without prompts like M&B. Dishonored, another game by the same studio, also has great melee combat despite simplifying the controls even further, and again it achieves it by tight controls, believable enemy behavior, and powers that let you take control of the battlefield if used properly, adding extremely satisfying contextual moves you can pull off without breaking a stride. And again, level design plays an important role in how it plays out, both by forcing you to choose your battlefields carefully and using scenery elements to your advantage. There's more to creating depth in combat than adding more basic options, is what I'm saying. Also, I really like how Arkane handles things in their games and hope Bethesda asks them for some pointers in making the next TES game, just like they claim they've asked id Software for tips on making gunplay better in Fallout 4. Which brings me to... There's so much more to good gunplay than just "press to shoot". Recoil plays a pivotal role both for balancing weapons and making them feel more powerful and satisfying. Weapon balancing is equal parts science and art, where ideally no weapon ever feels useless but some of them are clearly superior for certain situations, and each weapon should have different risk/reward ratio - just like in Dark Souls you don't want to be swinging a greatsword in a narrow corridor, in an FPS you don't want a rocket launcher when melee enemies try to swarm you in tight space. Movement needs to be carefully planned, whether it's "never stop moving" of oldschool FPS like Doom and Quake or the tactical approach of modern military shooters where finding a proper firing position can be as important as having good hand-eye coordination. Then, maps have to be designed properly both to facilitate your chosen movement style and let you take advantage of all your arsenal - arguably, modern military FPS do it quite a bit worse than classic shooters, where finding pickups and powerups was also of critical importance, making map design more important for the overall quality of gameplay. Ooh, I forgot to mention locational damage... but I hope you get my point anyway There are single mechanics that become a game's selling point, but they never work in a vacuum, and a great game needs more than one good subsystem to make combat work. TES games don't have horrible combat because they're limited to simple attack/defense options, they're horrible because these simple options get unleashed on boring damage sponge enemies that don't react in a satisfactory way, because the controls are sloppy and the visuals of combat are unappealing. You misunderstood me, I'm afraid. I wasn't talking about the gameplay as a whole, but about the very basic and fundamental foundation on which a game works. Dark Messiah is a somewhat bad example, because the shallow gameplay attack - block - kick is masked by environmental hazards you can use to your advantage and good level design. I'm not saying that these things are not important, I'm just saying that I didn't talk about these things. Getting the combat of Dark Messiah into Skyrim would require an extensive overhaul of the world and level design and it still wouldn't add that much to the game. Sure, it would be fun kicking enemies into wall spikes and chasms, but only for the first few hours or so. Dark Messiah worked because it had a very specific level design catered to this specific game, something that's hard to do in an open world setting. But again, that wasn't what I was talking about. And saying that the gameplay of Mount&Blade is essentially QTE is stretching the definition of QTE so thin that it can be applied to every single game that was ever made because you have to press buttons sometimes. There's so much more to good gunplay than just "press to shoot". Recoil plays a pivotal role both for balancing weapons and making them feel more powerful and satisfying. Weapon balancing is equal parts science and art, where ideally no weapon ever feels useless but some of them are clearly superior for certain situations, and each weapon should have different risk/reward ratio - just like in Dark Souls you don't want to be swinging a greatsword in a narrow corridor, in an FPS you don't want a rocket launcher when melee enemies try to swarm you in tight space. Movement needs to be carefully planned, whether it's "never stop moving" of oldschool FPS like Doom and Quake or the tactical approach of modern military shooters where finding a proper firing position can be as important as having good hand-eye coordination. Then, maps have to be designed properly both to facilitate your chosen movement style and let you take advantage of all your arsenal - arguably, modern military FPS do it quite a bit worse than classic shooters, where finding pickups and powerups was also of critical importance, making map design more important for the overall quality of gameplay. Ooh, I forgot to mention locational damage... but I hope you get my point anyway There are single mechanics that become a game's selling point, but they never work in a vacuum, and a great game needs more than one good subsystem to make combat work. TES games don't have horrible combat because they're limited to simple attack/defense options, they're horrible because these simple options get unleashed on boring damage sponge enemies that don't react in a satisfactory way, because the controls are sloppy and the visuals of combat are unappealing. Again, I was talking about the very core of the gameplay. There are more things you can and should do in a shooter, but those are things that are added on top of the core, meaning they can be fixed by tweaking numbers rather than fixing the underlying system of the game. The amount of recoil a gun has can be modified, as well as the bullet spread, rate of fire and damage. But you can't fix the inability to make meaningful decision by tweaking some numbers and that's why Skyrim and Oblivion are doomed to have a shitty gameplay, no matter how many gameplay overhaul mods you might install. Melee combat is all about making important decisions in a splitsecond. Have a video about what's possible with a sword and you'll understand why at least directional attacks are so important to make a good game with melee weapon combat: You don't need to think about stuff like that when you do a shooter because the underlying mechanic - press button to pull the trigger - is all you need as a foundation. It's not all you need to make a good game, but depending on the depth pf the underlying mechanics, you're severly limited on what you can add to the game and what you can't. I don't know if you ever played RUNE, but that game had an enemy that would only stay dead if you cut off the head. Problem was you did have no control over the direction of your attacks, meaning you had to rely on luck to get the attack that killed the enemy to be a slash roughly at the height of the head. That's a prime example of trying to add some depth to the game without the core mechanic being able to give the player the control and options to deal with it.
Aria Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Mouse to Weapon responsiveness is what makes combat suck when the controls were meant for a console controller not a mouse and keyboard combo. (and using a controller for PC doesn't help much either) it's not that any game dev. "doesn't give a fuck" it's just most games are not made FOR PC strictly or even FIRST. then converting the bloody controls FROM console to PC is where it goes to shit in a hand basket. If games were made for PC first in today's world (with the tech where it is today) things would be a whole lot different. Everything about the older games were clunky right along with combat. It would be hard to find a game today that wasn't developed around a console (unless it is a PC exclusive). I don't know about prior to Morrowind but it was built with the console in mind and ever Bethesda game since has been. Yeah true the main focus are consoles, but i was mostly talking about adding more depth and options to spells/skills wich arent restricted because it was done for consoles. I mean i cant immagine running 200hours in skyrim as a pure fire or frost mage with two spells that have problems to do any dmg at higher leves due to no balancing and because there is nothing else to choose from. Most people go for mixing classes because atleast that way they get some form of depth that is lacking in pure builds. Not long ago i found the mod Ordinator that adds more perks and does it in a really fun and creative way, thats how immagined it should have been and thats how i hope will be (atleast a bit) in FO4. More active stuff then the boring passivness for skills.
bjornk Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Mount & Blade has the most intuitive melee combat system I've ever seen in a computer game, it's not even close to QTE combat at all. It's purely based on skill and timing. It may look clunky due to its simplicity but considering the scale of battles in M&B you can imagine that you cannot make it too complex if you want to run it on today's hardware. It can however be made to look a bit better by adding skill based variations to combat animations. As for its mounted combat, you can easily see its influences on games like Skyrim and TW3. I'd also like to mention that combat mechanics is the core of the game in M&B and everything else are built around it. If the combat sucked nobody would care about that game. I'm not sure if this is true for other games mentioned here.
TheOzoneHole Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 I realize that Assassin's Creed games are pretty much just parry - stab - repeat, but the way combat was done in those games: bloody and fast, that whole feeling of "kill and move on" was what I was really hoping for with Skyrim after playing Oblivion. I feel that Oblivion was far worse than Skyrim with the damage sponge enemies. That may simply be my perception as I played with SkyRe installed for quite a while. It does still annoy me to a degree, with steal attacks in particular. And while I agree that the combat system in Morrowind wasn't great, part of the advantage of that system is that it did take many more factors into account with each attack and the fact that more recent TES games don't rather disappoints me.
carnifex Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 I'll take Dark Messiah of Might and Magic over Dark Souls and Mount and Blade combined when it comes to melee combat, and this game doesn't give you much more in the way of basic attack options than Skyrim does - it just makes them more satisfying through better balancing, more responsive controls and better, more believable enemy reactions, then kicks it up a notch by giving you fun powers to wreak havoc on the battlefield and allowing you to murder motherfuckers creatively through scenery use. It's tight, it's tense, it's immensely satisfying when you pull off something cool without it being anal like Dark Souls or QTE without prompts like M&B. Dishonored, another game by the same studio, also has great melee combat despite simplifying the controls even further, and again it achieves it by tight controls, believable enemy behavior, and powers that let you take control of the battlefield if used properly, adding extremely satisfying contextual moves you can pull off without breaking a stride. And again, level design plays an important role in how it plays out, both by forcing you to choose your battlefields carefully and using scenery elements to your advantage. There's more to creating depth in combat than adding more basic options, is what I'm saying. Also, I really like how Arkane handles things in their games and hope Bethesda asks them for some pointers in making the next TES game, just like they claim they've asked id Software for tips on making gunplay better in Fallout 4. Which brings me to... There's so much more to good gunplay than just "press to shoot". Recoil plays a pivotal role both for balancing weapons and making them feel more powerful and satisfying. Weapon balancing is equal parts science and art, where ideally no weapon ever feels useless but some of them are clearly superior for certain situations, and each weapon should have different risk/reward ratio - just like in Dark Souls you don't want to be swinging a greatsword in a narrow corridor, in an FPS you don't want a rocket launcher when melee enemies try to swarm you in tight space. Movement needs to be carefully planned, whether it's "never stop moving" of oldschool FPS like Doom and Quake or the tactical approach of modern military shooters where finding a proper firing position can be as important as having good hand-eye coordination. Then, maps have to be designed properly both to facilitate your chosen movement style and let you take advantage of all your arsenal - arguably, modern military FPS do it quite a bit worse than classic shooters, where finding pickups and powerups was also of critical importance, making map design more important for the overall quality of gameplay. Ooh, I forgot to mention locational damage... but I hope you get my point anyway There are single mechanics that become a game's selling point, but they never work in a vacuum, and a great game needs more than one good subsystem to make combat work. TES games don't have horrible combat because they're limited to simple attack/defense options, they're horrible because these simple options get unleashed on boring damage sponge enemies that don't react in a satisfactory way, because the controls are sloppy and the visuals of combat are unappealing. You misunderstood me, I'm afraid. I wasn't talking about the gameplay as a whole, but about the very basic and fundamental foundation on which a game works. Dark Messiah is a somewhat bad example, because the shallow gameplay attack - block - kick is masked by environmental hazards you can use to your advantage and good level design. I'm not saying that these things are not important, I'm just saying that I didn't talk about these things. Getting the combat of Dark Messiah into Skyrim would require an extensive overhaul of the world and level design and it still wouldn't add that much to the game. Sure, it would be fun kicking enemies into wall spikes and chasms, but only for the first few hours or so. Dark Messiah worked because it had a very specific level design catered to this specific game, something that's hard to do in an open world setting. But again, that wasn't what I was talking about. And saying that the gameplay of Mount&Blade is essentially QTE is stretching the definition of QTE so thin that it can be applied to every single game that was ever made because you have to press buttons sometimes. There's so much more to good gunplay than just "press to shoot". Recoil plays a pivotal role both for balancing weapons and making them feel more powerful and satisfying. Weapon balancing is equal parts science and art, where ideally no weapon ever feels useless but some of them are clearly superior for certain situations, and each weapon should have different risk/reward ratio - just like in Dark Souls you don't want to be swinging a greatsword in a narrow corridor, in an FPS you don't want a rocket launcher when melee enemies try to swarm you in tight space. Movement needs to be carefully planned, whether it's "never stop moving" of oldschool FPS like Doom and Quake or the tactical approach of modern military shooters where finding a proper firing position can be as important as having good hand-eye coordination. Then, maps have to be designed properly both to facilitate your chosen movement style and let you take advantage of all your arsenal - arguably, modern military FPS do it quite a bit worse than classic shooters, where finding pickups and powerups was also of critical importance, making map design more important for the overall quality of gameplay. Ooh, I forgot to mention locational damage... but I hope you get my point anyway There are single mechanics that become a game's selling point, but they never work in a vacuum, and a great game needs more than one good subsystem to make combat work. TES games don't have horrible combat because they're limited to simple attack/defense options, they're horrible because these simple options get unleashed on boring damage sponge enemies that don't react in a satisfactory way, because the controls are sloppy and the visuals of combat are unappealing. Again, I was talking about the very core of the gameplay. There are more things you can and should do in a shooter, but those are things that are added on top of the core, meaning they can be fixed by tweaking numbers rather than fixing the underlying system of the game. The amount of recoil a gun has can be modified, as well as the bullet spread, rate of fire and damage. But you can't fix the inability to make meaningful decision by tweaking some numbers and that's why Skyrim and Oblivion are doomed to have a shitty gameplay, no matter how many gameplay overhaul mods you might install. Melee combat is all about making important decisions in a splitsecond. Have a video about what's possible with a sword and you'll understand why at least directional attacks are so important to make a good game with melee weapon combat: You don't need to think about stuff like that when you do a shooter because the underlying mechanic - press button to pull the trigger - is all you need as a foundation. It's not all you need to make a good game, but depending on the depth pf the underlying mechanics, you're severly limited on what you can add to the game and what you can't. I don't know if you ever played RUNE, but that game had an enemy that would only stay dead if you cut off the head. Problem was you did have no control over the direction of your attacks, meaning you had to rely on luck to get the attack that killed the enemy to be a slash roughly at the height of the head. That's a prime example of trying to add some depth to the game without the core mechanic being able to give the player the control and options to deal with it. Where I disagree with you is, I think you're taking a very reductive view of what constitutes a "core mechanic", and this leads you to a very simplified and ultimately unhelpful view of what creates a deep, engaging gameplay. Consider the recently popular "Arkham style" of melee combat, used in such games as the Arkham series, Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max and many other. What you'd call a "core system" is the same across all of them - one button for attack, the other for timed counterattack. Considered at this level, all these games are the same, yet some are praised for this combat system while others are considered subpar imitations. Why? Well, one thing is definitely responsiveness, a basic quality of implementation if you will - in Arkham or Shadow of Mordor, the character responds to controls instantly, and the animation transitions are butter smooth, giving combat a satisfying feel. Another thing is the number of permutations the system introduces along the way, from Arkham's enemies that have to be dealt with with a particular contextually activated "special move" to different enemy weaknesses and resistances in Shadow of Mordor. Ultimately, even camera work is pivotal in whether this system works great or bad, and dismissing all these factors as "non-core" will not lead us to any helpful conclusions on how to make a good fighting game. For a non-combat example, Mirror's Edge has arguably the best, deepest and most satisfying movement-based gameplay I've seen in a game, yet it's basic control scheme is identical to that of any FPS out there. If you'd like to analize what makes it great, saying the core mechanic is "press button to jump" is so unhelpful it's basically a non-statement. The issue with Rune is actually a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You see this issue and take from it that directional attacks are important for adding depth to the gameplay, but there'd be no need for directional attacks in Rune had there not been this element of locational damage introduced, and the issue would have been equally resolved by removing the decapitation requirement. Gameplay has to be analized hollistically, breaking it down into arbitrarily defined elements makes you miss the forest for the trees. Good combat mechanics, whether melee or shooting, are a careful balance of many elements, from the responsiveness of controls to quality of animation to enemy AI to weapon balancing and many more, and there's more than one way to achieve great user experience in the end.
Sacremas Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Skyrim's combat system wasn't all that bad, bad came to damage sponges and hitting a level 50 bandit 20 times. The basic attack-power-block with Stamina as a pool is a perfectly viable but like Carnifex just said things need to build on that. Reactions to weapon impacts like stagger based on both weapons and body part hit, weapons meeting weapons when not actively blocking (the weapon being a physical thing as you swing it, so a two-hander can be an issue in a tight corridor or low ceiling, the classic example is how it's so stupid for classical dwarves to favor axes and hammers when spears and shortswords would be way more useful in their tight corridors of their mines, axes are only useful when you have the room to swing it, a "realistic" dwarf would both look and behave more like a goblin), weapons and shields breaking in combat, fire spells setting enemies and the environment on fire and spreading, ice spells making them fall over paralyzed (sooner than the 20 % health treshold for vanilla), all spells reacting differently to what the target is wearing with fur armor warding off ice attacks but being able to catch on fire easily and metal armors conducting shock or leading to DoT from frost and fire, etc, etc. However, something to keep in mind is... the xbox 360, and the Papyrus and memory system of Skyrim. The previous generation consoles kind of suffered even under the strain of the vanilla game, a game like Asscreed has a lot more resources available because it doesn't have to deal with magic and dragons and a huge open world and all kinds of different armor and weapons, the developers knew exactly what weapons Altair or his descnedants would use and what damage they would be able to take. There are mods like Action Combat, Fire & Ice Overhaul, tons of combat overhauls that beings to do a few of the things I listed above (which was just the start of course), and they are devastating to the papyrus system and highly unstable mods even on a tricked out PC, you need serious know-hows and optimizaitons to even consider running many of them together. For this, the Shooter is a lot easier to pull off than a melee based game. But we've seen in the trailers they've actually improved melee as well. We saw the Dweller swing a baseball bat at a raider's head, and the raider getting knocked aside from the impact in a natural direction like he would be in real life, we saw bodies reacting to bullet impacts naturally, etc. How it works in game we've yet to see, but maybe this generation's consoles opened up for a lot more possibilities when it comes to physics.
GrimReaper Posted October 7, 2015 Posted October 7, 2015 Where I disagree with you is, I think you're taking a very reductive view of what constitutes a "core mechanic", and this leads you to a very simplified and ultimately unhelpful view of what creates a deep, engaging gameplay. No, I'm talking about what prerequisites need to be met to make a deep and meaningful gameplay possible. Precise control over what the player can and can't do and different options as to how the player can approach challenges within the game are necessary in my opinion. Consider the recently popular "Arkham style" of melee combat, used in such games as the Arkham series, Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max and many other. What you'd call a "core system" is the same across all of them - one button for attack, the other for timed counterattack. Considered at this level, all these games are the same, yet some are praised for this combat system while others are considered subpar imitations. Why? Well, one thing is definitely responsiveness, a basic quality of implementation if you will - in Arkham or Shadow of Mordor, the character responds to controls instantly, and the animation transitions are butter smooth, giving combat a satisfying feel. Another thing is the number of permutations the system introduces along the way, from Arkham's enemies that have to be dealt with with a particular contextually activated "special move" to different enemy weaknesses and resistances in Shadow of Mordor. Ultimately, even camera work is pivotal in whether this system works great or bad, and dismissing all these factors as "non-core" will not lead us to any helpful conclusions on how to make a good fighting game. I do consider all these games shallow. I've only played Arkham Asylum and Shadow of Mordor of the games you mentioned, both got very boring after a few hours because there was no depth to the combat. Sure, it looked nice and all that, but it wasn't enough to carry the games for me. Shadow of Mordor especially is more eye candy than everything else, with all the kill moves, gorgeous animations and whatnot, but once you've seen every animation a couple of times it got old really fast. There was no depth to accompany the fancy looking combat. There were no meaningful choices to be made in these games. It was a casual experience of the instant gratification type. You play them for 20 hours and never come back because there's nothing to come back for. For a non-combat example, Mirror's Edge has arguably the best, deepest and most satisfying movement-based gameplay I've seen in a game, yet it's basic control scheme is identical to that of any FPS out there. If you'd like to analize what makes it great, saying the core mechanic is "press button to jump" is so unhelpful it's basically a non-statement. Mirror's Edge works because FPS control schemes work. A working core mechanic is the prerequisite to make a good game, not something that makes a game good. The issue with Rune is actually a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You see this issue and take from it that directional attacks are important for adding depth to the gameplay, but there'd be no need for directional attacks in Rune had there not been this element of locational damage introduced, and the issue would have been equally resolved by removing the decapitation requirement. Gameplay has to be analized hollistically, breaking it down into arbitrarily defined elements makes you miss the forest for the trees. Good combat mechanics, whether melee or shooting, are a careful balance of many elements, from the responsiveness of controls to quality of animation to enemy AI to weapon balancing and many more, and there's more than one way to achieve great user experience in the end. I see the issue with RUNE as a confirmation - the devs tried to add depth to the game with locational damage and dismemberment yet failed to deliver the tools for the player to utilize these mechanics. Removing locational damage and dismemberment would fix the problem, but would make the game more shallow in the process. Adding a meaningful choice to the process of attacking (i.e. directional attacks) would have solved the problem without taking away anything from the game, instead you would've added more depth and options to it. If you have a simple core (like Skyrim) it limits how much you can add to it. It's like wanting to paint a picture but you chose toilet paper, water and your fist as tools to draw a picture. Fancy and flashy combat movement and animations will only get you so far before the player looks right through it and sees how barren und simple the gameplay actually is. Like I said, it works, but only for a limited amount of time and for a game that you are supposed to play hundreds of hours it's simply not enough. Also I'd like to point out again that you said Mount&Blade is basically just QTEs because you press buttons sometimes, making your point about how one should look at game as a whole and not as a sum of individual parts pretty ironic.
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