Truth is we wont know exactly what is calculated without going into the engine coding, but I would bet that Bethesda did NOT drop the ball on this one and that executions only happen when it was calculated that NOTHING you could have done would have prevented the death, including moving away or blocking.

Effectively the game thinks you died at the very exact start of the animation. You are dead, the animation hasnt even played and you are dead as far as the game is concerned. The animation is just a cinematic visual representation of you having your ass handed to you FROM AN ATTACK YOU COULD DO NOTHING ABOUT ANYWAY.

Again, for the billionth time. If you are constantly having your ass handed to you, you can 3 things.

1. Get more armor
2. Lower the difficulty
3. stay away from enemies that can instakill you.

You are dragonborn, yes, but that doesn't mean you are a master of combat.

Well, that's a fair point: we don't have the algorithm that determines these things to see if blocking is factored in.

There's one piece of evidence completely discrediting your defense of the system - The health bar remains full until after the animation is carried out. if you were dead before then, your health bar would be empty at the start.

The only reason we "Can't do anything about the attack" is because the game locks us into position and takes away character control. No other attacks are calculated at the instant the command is set - They're resolved upon hit-box collision. Have you seen the one where the Dragon finishes someone by biting them through a pillar?

Is this still being argued?

It seemes there was a concensus that the animation would play if, and only, if the hit would kill you.

Until someone can show that it ignores armor rating and such - and maybe someone can, I honestly have no idea - the what is the issue? The end result is, you died, with or without the animation.

The fact that you didn't get the chance to raise your shield or try to move becomes meaningless if you would not have been able to move far enough away, or get your shield up in time, or if the hit would kill you even if you DID raise your shield.

So until people can provide more information - such as exact health level, armor rating, distance from enemy, weapon used, damage potential and range of that weapon, its speed, etc. (basically, all of the things that go into the hit calculation in the first place) - saying its the game fault, or that the game somehow cheated you, really seems to me like nothing more than complaining because you died.

actually, that "consensus" has been discredited.

Distance from the enemy? Just within/outside melee range, while still backing up quickly, and being teleported into the middle of the attack.
Blocking? Shield already up half the time. I've never seen any attack, not even a Giant-Smash, take out more than a sliver of health while blocking.

I actually like that the enemies can get lucky critical hits that would kill you anyway and then seeing your characters head roll away.

Jesus, does this happen that often?

Over 500 hours of Skyrim playtime, and this has happened to me a total of maybe 5 times. I can really only remember one time it happened, a Bandit Chief of course, but I just don't remember this being much of an issue. Well, maybe if I didn't save obsessively it would have been... but I can't remember this being that big of a deal.

No details are known, we can make observations... but drawing conclusions from those without knowing the algorithm involved is like trying to explain why a bird flies without an understanding of aerodynamics.

(Birds fly because they are OP'd of course)

Yeah, I think we've hit a wall on this topic until somebody starts looking under the hood. I can see the validity of both sides of the argument well enough to be able to argue both sides, but until somebody knows how the system actually resolves this, I don't think we're going to get any further.

And thankfully it doesn't happen often, whether it's screwed up or not.

I can unequivocally tell you, this is not true. I have been executed multiple times when I had way more health than a regular attack could hope to touch, while moving in a way that would make a slow power attack impossible to land on me.

Precisely why I call it an instant-hit power attack. When the enemy decides they want to do a finisher, the game checks where you are vs where they are, the length of the weapon, and the maximum damage it could do to you if an attack hit at this exact moment. It doesn't take into account what you could do within the time it would take for the weapon to actually hit you.

Exactly the problem. The game decides to make you dead even if nothing could have killed you when all factors are taken into account.

Making low/no-armor builds unviable?

Making the game a cakewalk. The problem isn't the difficulty. I have no problem killing things. The problem is that I'll randomly die through no fault of my own from something that couldn't have realistically killed me. It's essentially as if the game randomly CTDs when I'm in melee range, forcing me to restart from my latest save (only difference is it gets to loading that save quicker).

Basically every human enemy in existence, some dragons, etc...

It doesn't happen often enough that it's unplayable for me, but it happens enough to be frustrating and removing it would bring a notable boost to the overall gameplay.

Thats better.

Im sick of being 1hko at MAX HP and anything above low... It's stupid. Executions against you should only be able to happen when your health drops below 10%... Because of this, the perk in Restoration where you are healed 250 points if your health is low once a day is rendered completely useless.

I think, ultimately, its an okay system. But it does need some rebalancing. As it is right now, it is far too easy to set up a situation where you do not have enough health to be able to stand up against a lot of enemies.

Well, 10% for what character? 10% for a warrior who has 300 points in health and a high armor rating is a helluva lot more than 10% for a mage who's got 120 HP and no armor.

Others have probabaly already said...

The only time I had a Finisher done on me at full health was when I was being attacked by 3 tough bandits at the same time. they whiitled me down so fast that the Finisher done on me was like instant. I reloaded about 4 times and the same thing kept happening, even when I parried since their blows were just too powerful.

It`s very rare it`ll happen though. You need to get to pretty low health before they`ll get that chance and they have to be pretty high level.

By the way, they`re not executions. executions are what`s done on a person who is already defeated and not fighting back. In a Finisher you are fighting back and just lose the battle big time.

Which is exactly what it feels like receiving one in the given circumstances.

Well that is silly. Its alright for the player character do finishing move to npc's but not the other way around. I glad that Beth let npcs do finishing moves to the players character to Skyrim and Fallout3. With my first play through after I got the decap perk after I do so many decaps to npcs, I glad my character my got decapped. I better be careful with my mage because she has 100 health and putting everything on magic.

Has anyone been exefinicuted by one-handed weapons? Dual-wielding or otherwise?

LOL

Should npc's get finishers taken away? No.
Should the game make correct calculations? Yes.

When you are fighting an enemy, the computer can not predict what you are going to do. They designed it now that block is more timely than before. Before, as long as you held your shield up, you blocked. Now, you only "block" for a short amount of time when you first raise your shield. The rest of the time is you with your shield up (so you can bash at any time, take advantage of perks, etc.) but the ability to negate the damage from a hit is gone.

Of course, this now means that if you want to block, you are doing so after the enemy has begun to swing their weapon. Unfortunately, if you health is low enough, a finisher can trigger the moment they begin their attack which doesn't give you the chance to block. It also doesn't give you the chance to drink a potion either.

So what would be the correct course of action to fix this problem? I don't think taking the finishers away from the enemy is a good solution. Instead, the game needs to consider a best defense potential for your character.

What I mean is the following...

If the next attack from an enemy could kill you but only if you fail to block successfully, then there shouldn't be a finisher triggered.
If the next attack from an enemy could kill you but you could heal up before they land it, then there shouldn't be a finisher triggered.

So the game would have to take into consideration your characters accessible resources at that time (the moment the enemy makes that next attack than could kill you) and come to the conclusion that there is or is not anything you can do to stop the attack from killing you before it lands.

So the things to consider are..
blocking
potions (healing, damage reduction, max health boosting, etc.)
swapping gear (swapping armor should really be locked out during combat anyway)
Magic and Abilities (but only when off cooldown)

Needless to say that, with everything at your character's disposal, this would pretty much eliminate finishers.


The alternative (which may be a better one) is that you don't die right away. When the next attack against you takes you to 0 hp (thus you would be dead anyway, finishers or not), you drop to the ground like flagged npc's. The enemy must then make one more attack to finish you off with nothing that you can do to stop it. This should then give the enemy the ability to pull of finishers against you and not take away your chance to block or heal to bring yourself back from the brink of dying like it does now.

This would then offer something else. If the enemy bring you down to 0hp and you drop to the ground, then you companion takes out the enemy before they get off that final blow, you then get back 1 hp once you (and your companion) are considered "out of combat".

Of course DOTs would simply cause you to die whether the enemy gets off that next attack in time or not.

HA! Someone was bound to laugh at my jokes eventually... but srs :

I don't remember getting smoked by one-handed weapons.

Okay, I only read this far, but I have to ask how do you know this is correct? Has Bethesda been publishing the code to the game or something?

Yes they should. Don't let them kill you if you dont want it to happen.

Yep. They can shove a one-handed sword right through you. It's pretty cool.

I made a typo that I fixed since you quoted. Should've read, "the computer can not predict". As for the block being a timed thing. Before release, it was covered on these forums. I think it was even said in an interview.

Yeah, it was the "block is temporary" bit that I was asking how you knew. Well, being mentioned before release is something, although it sounds like things change quite a bit during development. If that's correct, that's something.

Either way, blocking before a swing lands but after the enemy began the animation is still something you can pull off.