Combat mechanics, a missed opportunity?

Grayphilosophy · May 2015

I feel like they've missed an opportunity to stand out from the crowd with their current combat system. While it is indeed different from auto-attacks and a million hotbars, it's still not really that different in practice.

At the moment, it seems to me like the majority of skills in the game deal a significant amount of damage in some way or shape, along with some kind of minor utility, debuff, a dot or something else. Meanwhile, regular attacks seem slow and dissatisfactory, and it's often just as easy, or easier, to kill things by spamming skills rather than using regular attacks at all.

Ideally, I believe it could've been made more interesting by increasing the damage output of regular attacks, a lot, as well as making them faster, more responsive and with less windup. Furthermore, by decreasing the stamina and cost of blocking you could achieve a more intense kind of combat. Blocking won't just be something you do to prevent power attacks and special abilities, it'll be a more integrated part of combat altogether.You'll be able to actually spar with your opponents based more on reaction and skill, instead of who has the most efficient loadout of nukes.

For skills, I would've liked to see most of the damage removed to let them focus a lot more on their utility, turning them into situational tools instead of wombo combos.

I'm convinced that with the appropriate adjustments to the current combat system and enemy A.I., the game could play a lot more like a TES game, suited for immersion and a first person perspective. This is of course just my humble opinion, what are your thoughts on the matter?

ArRashid · May 2015

I've always thought that attack's damage should roughly reflect 2 things - time put into performing it and amount of resources.

That's why I'm always saying they should have increased Heavy Attack damage to the point where it's actually NOT a DPS loss. I mean, sure, it's nice to have skills, but skills (at least in my mind) should be used for additional utility they provide, and not just because they're 4 times more dps-efficient than regular heavy attacks.

Not to mention you can't really block while performing them, so they DO have downside other than their long "cast" time and low damage.

Even builds that use weapon damage and heavy attack damage buffs hit like a wet noodle (well, not exactly, but if you can chain instant spells with light attacks you still end up doing more damage..), let alone those that don't use those buffs

Well but yeah, the main problem is still "weaving" (= animation canceling exploit) that Zenimax doesn't know even how to begin fixing (since that mechanic is NEEDED for tanks, but ruins the game if damage dealers use it), so they made a poker face and told players to use it.. if we got rid of that, actual heavy attacks could potentionally become better..

Honestly I'd prefer that.. it's the usual TES style of combat instead of this silly chaincasting even on weapon-based characters..

Cuyler · May 2015

PvE - Decrease blocking cost pls.
PvP - Stop perma blocking pls.

See the problem there? The game combat is fundamentally flawed in that PvP and PvE balance are intertwined. Often necessary changes to PvP are horrible for PvE and vice versus.

Grayphilosophy · May 2015

Cuyler wrote: »

PvE - Decrease blocking cost pls.
PvP - Stop perma blocking pls.

See the problem there? The game combat is fundamentally flawed in that PvP and PvE balance are intertwined. Often necessary changes to PvP are horrible for PvE and vice versus.

I see your point, but ESO also doesn't seem to have any kind of mechanic against blocking at all as far as I'm aware.

Adding one may just solve that problem. A kick or a shove that literally just disrupts blocking, and possibly does a knockback or stagger if you hit an opponent while they're blocking, might create incentive to use block more sparingly instead of just holding it down.

C0pp3rhead · May 2015

If you ask me, the problem lies not with animation cancelling, per se. Animation cancelling allows many players to significantly increase their PvE dps and overcome nearly impossible content. However, it also severely shortens the time to kill (TTK) in PvP with certain combinations of abilities. When I was running around with 2heavy/5light pieces of armor, I accepted this as a reality - I had little to no physical damage mitigation. However, I recently switched to 5h/2L, but can still be chain CC'ed and killed within 3s. Usually the combo goes: (Stealth) Crit Charge -> heavy attack (animation canceled) -> uppercut (animation canceled) -> light attack -> reverse slice.

If this is a L2P issue, I would like to hear some ideas about how to counter it. My groups usually count on my Templar heals in PvP, so many options are off the table:

Going full heavy armor would destroy my mana regen and spell cost reduction.

Using reinforced armor would force me to give up some of my nirnhoned armor, and wouldn't help that much anyways.

Sometimes I can manage to CC break and block in time, but 1 or 2 reverse slices will deplete my stamina, so I cannot effectively block the 3rd reverse slice.

I equip a 1h/shield on my off bar, which means it would be feasible to slot BoL on the same bar as my 1h/shield, but Healing Springs has to stay on my resto-staff bar. In small battles skill swapping is not difficult, but with lag the few moments delay in swapping skills can get you killed.

Many of these players are stamina builds, and any CC attempts are easily broken or evaded with dodge roll. When I do manage to CC these players (though short), I can usually manage to activate Blazing Shield, but they stealth up (Dark Cloak or Invis pots) until I let my guard down.

My best bet is usually: CC break -> Block -> (Block Cast) BoL until a teammate can get the player off of me. Does anyone have any strategies they use against these FoTM uppercut builds?