On immersion.

It is not a hard concept to understand.

You see a cave.
You imagine walking into the cave.
A loading screen happens instead.*
You see some bandits around fire.
You imagine sneaking behind the standing one and cutting her throat.
You do it exactly as you imagine.
You fight with the second bandit, you make a horizontal slash and your sword goes over his throat.
You imagine his throat slit open, the bandit, out of reflex, holds his cut and drops on his knees.
Instead he fights like normal.*

Since the game works as I imagine most of the time(for the things I can do), the irregularities will be immersion breaking. I can imagine shooting fireballs through my hands just fine and it works in the game. But swords working like chopsticks isn't really what I imagine.

I can see my arrow bounce from the armor yet the damage model ignores this. It is there, just not used.

I would like to see iron arrows bounce off extremely tough armor and ebony arrows penetrate the thickest armors with ease. Hit detection would work wonders with immersion. It would keep you on your toes thinking strategically all the time.

Is there anything you don't complain about, seriously, I've seen two threads with you complaining that the game isn't what you want it to be. It's not just how you want it, it's about how other people want it too, it's not designed and created specifically to fit your needs.

Is it wrong to complain about a game's faults?
I've only complained on two threads yet you say is there anything I don't complain about.
If no one ever complained about anything how would a developer know what to improve and what doesn't work? If anything Bethesda would love to hear people comment on weak parts of their game to further improve it.

Combat in skyrim is by far and away one of the biggest improvements this game made. Try Morrowind, that will make your head explode LOL. Great game, but combat was dreadful. Oblivion was better, but skyrim shows Beth making a big leap. I think there's a few ideas in Condemned 2's approach to FPS melee which they could cherry-pick.

When people mention immersion, I think of stuff like watching UFC, and one guy lands a solid punch on the chin and the guy is knocked out 19 seconds into the match. I could headshot targets with a bow all day long and never be touched. Yeah, its realistic, but its boring.

It doesn't have to be Lord of the Rings where those guys take on like 600 Orcs and don't even have a bloodstain on their shirt or like Superman and I get a building dropped on me and barely feel it, but there's a happy medium.

I'm the hero (or villain) of my skyrim story and I don't want to die because some chump nord manages to strike me in the head with a lucky shot.

Combat is one of the things that was handled (Not executed) perfectly within Skyrim. Absolute amazing blend of reactionary based-action and statistically forgiving RPG gameplay. Games like Kingdoms of Lamemar make it clear that perfect collision reaction makes an RPG far too easy (Permanetly stun-locking an entire group of enemies with a dagger), and games like Condemned: Criminal Origins focus on 1v1 combat, rarely throwing more than one enemy at you in a single melee. Mount and Blade style is even worse for Elder Scrolls games, and winds up being even more repetitive. The pattern of Dart in-swing for eye-dart out gets old after literally one engagement, that is to say nothing when two people constantly team up and faceroll everyone. Proper anatomy hit detection seems like useless fluff in a game where it's already possible to non-exploit on-shot everything with any weapon.

About the only combat system I actually enjoy more than Skyrim in an RPG is The Witcher 2, but they're as similar as TES and Mass Effect. Also, why can't my monster sword kill humans too?! (inb4 8 page essay from lorebuff)

I think the game does fairly well with headshots. When I was doing the dark brotherhood quest I made a point to assassinate every victim with an arrow through the neck. I appreciate how the arrows go where they were aimed.

The combat may be mediocre, but I have played plenty of games where it was flat-out not fun.

are people really defending skyrim's combat? enemies reacting to damages in a better and realistic way, and you don't think this would improve the game?

its the same damage regardless of where your arrow hits

Sure it would improve the game but I still really enjoy the combat as is.

This is such a ridiculously stupid argument. You compare bringing in locational damage to tons of stuff that doesn't fit in TES? Well if you want locational damage so you must have guns! Oh, don't want guns, well can't have locational damage obviously!

Have you ever developed a software?
There is a little thing the English world called "priority", which is the level of importance something needs to be done. Locational damage is way below enhanced water visuals, and I'm not trying to be sarcastic here

There are literally millions of things that can make the game "more realistic". There are a million "options", but making an OPTION is a million times harder than making things go linear

So, let's say you can do locational damage. It's fine and all. But can the enemy do locational damage to YOU?

So, you can headshot an enemy. It's fine and all, but can the enemy headshot YOU?

So, you can cut off an arm. That's fine and dandy, but can the enemy cut YOUR arm?

Will you scream obscenities at your monitor when your character lost his/her arm and can't grow it back the Piccolo way?

Let's not kid ourselves with the legendary Fallout Locational Damage. I've played New Vegas, used VATS and crippled the goddang head. Logically speaking, they're a little more than dead, but they kept MOVING and SCREAMING TAUNTS, despite with CRIPPLED HEAD. You can survive headshot wounds in real world, but you sure as hell don't survive a crippled head. Sure, their heads explode, but only when the shot kills them anyway. So, Skyrim way.

A fight doesn't last more than 5 minutes when each attack actually hits. Once you whack off an arm, your opponent has lost one of the most important way to hit you (the other three being his two legs and the other arm). People have already complained that things are TOO EASY even on Master, they can literally one-hit everything (which is the equivalent of Rambo-Neck-Slicing everything).

You can say it's Bethesda's fault for not balancing things nicely. But let's ask ourselves: locational damage, balanced difficulty, additional content. Which one would you like to come first?

Yeah, thought so, because we're talking about locational damage, right?

Let's ask ourselves again: "How would the locational damage work"?
1. I cut off an enemy's arm, he lost an arm (but can still fight instead of crying and screaming)
2. I cripple their arm, they can move (but does lower damage)
3. I whack their feet, they limp and scream

Out of the three, 2 are for visuals. See a pattern here?

I would take a balanced sandbox over localized damage all day every day.

no i haven't developed a game. no need to get obnoxious towards me, i was actually thinking that they should react to damage like dark messiah, so that it doesn't become repetitive. i didn't say anything about losing limbs or crippling.

Oh, sorry, only the first two sentences were directed to you. Should've put a separator there

What's hard to understand is that, apparently, this mythical "immersion" thing is so incredibly fragile that the tiniest, most trivial things (based on most of the complaints it's been used with) can "destroy" and/or "ruin" it.

I am spectacularly grateful that I'm not burdened by this apparent thing, and can actually enjoy games; since it seems like the people who do suffer from this "immersion" can't go five minutes in nearly any game without having their it broken and their game experience ruined.

I disagree. The only thing I can agree with to some extent is that the combat fits within the TES series. Meaning it was an improvement over Oblivion. Generally speaking however? Far from perfect in any way imaginable.


That has to do more with balance rather than the particular play-style they aimed for. And of course execution of said play-style. You're not going to go ahead and tell me that Ninja Gaiden's combat or Devil May Cry's combat is too easy, are you? With that being said, it's not a combat system I would like to see in a TES game, as that type of combat is more suited towards "action" games like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry (With a particular camera type and play-style, etc.) rather than a TES game. Wouldn't work in a first person view mode either.


I imagine that you're not that great at playing Mount and Blade to be speaking of it's combat in such a primitive way. Warband's combat is a combat style that would fit a TES style game (At least as far as humanoids are concerned; I haven't really given much thought to how other types of enemies would fit, but I imagine it's still within the scope of possible and doable). Even better than what's currently implemented I'd say. With that being said, I'd like to see something more fresh from the TES series.

I'd also like to add that any type of combat will get repetitive after some point. Some people will find certain combat system's to be more repetitive faster than other people, etc. Some people will find that they still continue to enjoy repetitive combat systems despite it being repetitive (To an extent), others will not. Different strokes for different folks.


I would say that it wouldn't exactly fit in incredibly well with what's already in place for Skyrim's melee combat system. You're not really given much options in terms of aiming your strikes at specific body parts. You're really not. This is especially true in third person as your strikes are never adjusted visually up or down. You aim all the way up into the sky and strike, you will see the same visuals as if you were aiming straight down.

Both Mount & Blade and Jedi Academy do a much better job at aiming melee strikes with precision and accuracy, with the latter being my personal favorite.

Honestly though, I don't think Bethesda is interested in delivering a fun, engaging, and complex combat system. It seems like they're far more interested in delivering useless fluff (Kill cams) that give a little bit more instant gratification but add absolutely nothing to the actual meat/core of a combat system.

Combat is anything but a tiny trivial thing in a TES game.

Certain things Bethesda does quite well, other things not so much

World design is excellent..
exploration is excellent.
Graphics are well done.
Character flexibility also well done.

Combat is poor to average at best.
Story and Writing ability is average at best but abysmal at the worst.
In the future Bethesda will need to do a better job with combat. They should probably hire better writers as well.

In that case, Bethesda knows how to make great environments, exploration, graphics (decent). But as far as providing real depth in the games they have much to improve.

You explained it in a much better way. I love exploring the world they have created. I just wish the stories happening in the world were more compelling. The combat does enough to entertain, but could definitely improve.

So, what are you going to whinge about next?

I do agree with combat, A little more versatile would of been nice. Real Counter attacks, not just staggering and limb weakening like Fallout would of been superb. It could even be a setting for those finding it difficult to turn off. Grabs where you can hold your enemy to recover stamina, disarm works really well, shame its a shout. There are lierally a ton of things that could go in to combat, there would be a fine line to over complex though, something I know Beth wouldnt want.

As for story I dont agree. I did a little creative writting when I was younger and recently obtained a film making degree where script writing was one of my skills for sure. But this level of writting is obscene. The amount of lore that goes into Skyrim and must not compromise past lore OR set future lore in a way that your players effects on the world, cannot be explained, for example choosing stormcloak or empire not having the same outcome in 20 years explained in the next game, it really is quite good work. If you read some of the best fantasy novels, then take a single quest from Skyrim, those quests almost act as a synopsis to a great novel.