Ok, the title may be excessive.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Skyrim but I disliked the combat mechanics and have been very frustrated by them.

* Exclusive animations : stand up from the crouched position AND swing ? Jump AND shout ? Raise your shield AND hit with your dagger? Not possible. One animation. Then another one. Boring and frustrating.

* Magic : equip, then cast, then release. Seriously, that's boring, I would like to just hit a key and "bang!". It would be faster paced, funnier and it would allow me to quickly fire different kind of spells, including situational ones, rather than repeatedly using the same ones. The combat in Skyrim could have been something like "push back the warrior rushing at you, shoot the wizard on the back, quickly raise a short-living barrier against the fireball coming at you". But in the end, it is like hitting one key every two seconds, or constantly holding your mouse button (basic destruction spells), or running around while your summoned daedra kills everyone. The most sophisticated magic gameplay seems to involve switch between three spells (balance + healing + offensive spell).

* Shouts, or how to ensure there won't be any fun. Ten, twenty or thirty seconds cooldowns for the funnier part of magic? They should have been less powerful but with shorter cooldowns.

* Want to play destruction magic? Well, great, I'm just sorry it takes you two minutes to kill a dragon that any two-handers can two-shots. I'm caricaturing things a bit there but you get the point.

* Using a dagger? Just click like crazy, who cares about powerful attacks (tip : one double hit every two seconds < three hits per second)? As a result, ignore those useless perks and click-click-click. Now, what about your second hand? You could try to use magic or block at the same time but remember exclusive animations? So just click, do you hear me? Ok, maybe 1h + shield still makes sense, sometimes, rarely, I didn't play that. My one-hand phase is currently played with destruction magic in the left hand: it's ineffective but it breaks monotony a bit. What I would have loved? Interesting combos triggered with fast key combinations (quickly press arrow + left click, no holding down and waiting), quick dodges (double arrow), or magic+1h combos (see the suggestions about "magic").

* Using a two-hands weapon? Well, you can't use magic so you can only bash and bash, great. Sure, you can buy perks to gain moderately useful alternative power attacks but, really, moving for two seconds at a 10% speed while you hold the button is boring so just ignore them. Instead, use powerful attacks when possible or regular attacks otherwise, and ignore those useless perks. Oh ! Wait ! Anyway there is that bug with two-hands weapons that forces you you to hold the button a bit in order to fire a regular attack. So, whatever your stamina is, you just have to hold your button until you swing, rinse and repeat. Very deep and enjoying, isn't it? Sure you could block and push back the enemy, it was a nice idea. Unfortuntaly, half of the time you would push back the enemy too far away to hit him and he's not staggered long enough to let you use a power attack. So, really, do not try to block, do not try to use special moves, just hold your left button and hit him like crazy. Anyway, even if he blocks you will end up crushing his defence and his skull. What I would have loved? A nervous exchange of blocks and swings, quick dodges, the ability to still use some magic and gain more choices, maybe less effectively.

* Looting? Who cares about loot? Any weapon you will find in the game is still largely inferior to that unenchanted ebony sword you forged at level 15. And if you ever forged (forging only, let's not mention the enchanting and alchemy combos) a daedric weapon and armor you either stopped using them or left the game because even on the hardest difficulty level it was still too easy. On the contrary, if you never raised forge, then you're pretty stuck with crap items until you're level 50: at that point you should finally gain something about decent. Ok, now, if you're a mage, the situation is very different, robes with 250% mana regen and -70% destruction cost are so common nowadays... The problem is kinda obvious: you shouldn't be able to forge stuff 50 levels before you can get it, the ingredients for it should be in the same places than the items themselves. Besides, crafting should be there for customization and easiness (not depending on random loots) more than optimization (the very best craftable items shouldn't be more powerful than very rare artefacts).

* Sneaking... Surprisingly it's fun! Really, if you want to enjoy combar in Skyrim, go for sneaking. It's weak at the beginning, overpowered in the end, it just does not work at all in some place and quests but you will still get fun from it many times.

* The Ui is lame, everyone knows that, but when it comes to combat it's even lamer: totally not suited for the independent two hands, causes many mistakes and require an unnatural sequence of two keys to switch from one configuration to another Besides, was it that hard to give PC players more then eight shortcuts? I guess it would have required something like ten lines of code to change! And the "w" shortcut for shouts, what a bright idea! Especially since changing it is buggy...

* Perks: I already mentioned how many of them are lame for melee players. Those are actually good news since you shouldn't have to wait thirty hours before you enjoy an interesting gameplay. Sneaking, however, suffer from that problem: it's highly uneffective until you get some of those perks. Magic, now, has the worst perks: you have a horde of perks but most of them half the mana cost for only three to five spells. In the end, most of perks are just weak or not interesting, some are mandatory arithmetic bonuses, very very few are fun.

* Too bad, we cannot even regulary mod Skyrim to change most of those problems since many things are hard-coded. Mods that wil be able to fix those will require a lot more work and will need to rely on skse or dragon script and it's troublesome as long as Skyrim is still patched regularly. Besides those mods require a lot of more work and will only appear months after Skyrim was released. More importantly, we shouldn't need mods to get a decent, fun, combat system.

* Balance: I already emphasized the difference in difficulty depending on how you play and the unbalanced loots. In the end, I think Bethesda still has to dedicate efforts to balance styles up and figure out how to use autoleveling properly when it comes to itemization (maybe set up a logarithmic progression rather than having a linear progression on 80 levels).


Now, I am aware that many of those points are caricatural and it's possible that some of them are partially wrong: I only have 100+ hours of game and one character and I only maxxed out a few gameplays (sneaking, 2h, 1h + destro/resto), some of them I started only after lv50. Besides, some people may actually prefer the slow-paced gameplay where you only have to press one key every two seconds. Still, I think many others share my frustration and will think I made many good points.

Some of the points you made would actually make the game even more unbalanced than it already is.

Many of your points seem to come from you having (by your own admission) not tried many of the playstyles the game has to offer.

The game is an open-world RPG, not God of War. Combat animations are simple because developers also had to create a living, breathing world in addition to the combat system. And some of the animations you want (raise your shield and stab at the same time) are kind of pointless, because you can't actually do those things in combat in the first place.

I agree on alot of these points , I was pretty disapointed with the combat too

Really? I thought you needed 80 Smithing to forge ebony weapons. If you can do that by level 15, you've been consciously power-levelling smithing. It's a system you're free to exploit, but there's no point complaining after you've sat there churning out endless iron daggers and leather bracers just to get smithing as high as you can as fast as you can.

I don't see any reason for that: the game has been pseudo-balanced around its current gameplay, a different gameplay would mean different spells and opponents. You can of course achieve a nervous and balanced gameplay.

I was actually not thinking to god of war, it doesn't suit the first-person style. Nor I don't want plenty of complex animations, I only want them to allow composition, something that, I think, can be done by just adding informations to existing animations since they're skeleton-based, and something we see in most games since twenty years. They could even disable the third person view during combats if it can help, it doesn't matter if only the player can do some things. And if the animations are the reason behind some of the disappointing mechanics, I suggest to just lower the animations quality. Finally, regarding the dagger + shield, you can do it if you hit low (kidney, leg, etc).

I just thinked that spending my gold to buy metal bars was the best use I could do of it: anytime I was going back to Whiterun, I was buying iron bars and raising smithing. I don't call that powerlevelling, especially since I only started late and since I only realized lately that forging an iron dagger was as efficient as forging a steel cuirass to raise smithing.

Oh, and that.

If you power-level crafting just to get the best stuff, don't complain that you feel overpowered.

Many of the combat-related things you mentioned have some good points, but this part is the most disappointing to me, personally. The ease with which the game lets you gain imbalanced weapons right away (even without exploiting anything), and the feeling that what you can craft or even buy at a vendor is always going to be better than anything you'll find. Uniques are laughable. This takes a friggin LOT away from the fun of doing dungeons, caves, anything- you know the 'rewards' will be nothing but vendor trash, no matter what. You certainly don't run stuff for the thrilling and engrossing quest stories inside... so take away the loot anticipation by knowing there is no chance that the boss or the end-chest or even a random mob along the way might drop something significantly better than anything you already have... and you've gutted a huge part of the fun out.

The combat mechanics bla bla bla IF bethesda improved the mother [censored] [censored] [censored] AI. For the life of me i cannot figure out why a weak-ass bandit would try to take down the arch-mage alone. It takes me about 2 sec to dualcast a fireball which in 100% of the times will blast him all the [censored] way to hell. Why are NPCs so [censored] stupid?

If i have baseball-bat and I see a man with an fully automated assult rifle up the road would I:

1.) Run at him and try to hit him?
2.) Try to sneak up on him and take him down?
3.) Get the [censored] out of there?
4.) Start picking my nose and praying to God for a lightningbolt to stike down on him?


Even tho I can cast some of the most powerfull spells, wear the arch-mages armor, are known all over Skyrim as the dragonborn who can infact shout flames etc Im still considered an unarmed idiot who cant defend myself. If it atleast were 5-6 bandits trying to take me down it would sound more logical.

Sorry, but actually try physically miming this right now. Raise your imaginary shield (with enough strength to block an attack), and simultaneously stab with your imaginary dagger.

You can't keep your left arm (I'm right-handed) in front of you and still stab far enough past that arm to hit an opponent who isn't hugging you. More importantly, your body is turned the wrong direction, which means you aren't stabbing with any force. It sounds like a cool move, but it's not actually possible to perform effectively.

Your slow, boring, and unbalanced.

I've found Skyrim's melee system to be very clunky and unresponsive. It's actually worse than Oblivion's.

Since when has TES ever had a good combat system? It's always bin trash, but it almost seems to be on purpose. If your looking for really good combat TES isn't where you should be looking. I do hope they improve on it, but I don't hold them to any standards.

Why not? Is the vastness of the open world scenery the only thing they are ever going to try to improve upon?

Why would I hold a series that has never shown prominence in combat to any standards in combat? Yes, like I said they should, and hope they will improve on it, and I'm sure eventually they will. But this isn't a series you play for combat. If they use to have really good combat, and switched to garbage I would defiantly be ranting about it, but again. They haven't ever shown any skill with creating a decent combat system, so I don't expect it from them.

True, in five years of development you would expect that you would look at other games and pick up a few ideas...I'd like to see it changed to either:

-a more rpg-style combat where you assign orders and tasks to your character, and his or her stats determine most of the outcome
or
-a more action style combat system with combinations, special attacks and other moves that the character can perform

The current system feels very outdated, it has more or less not changed since Daggerfall (other than the governing skills and whether to assign the skill or stat as a to-hit modifier or damage modifier).

I'd like to see a few advanced techniques like counters, timed parrying and a timed dodge. Feints/cancelling attacks would also be helpful, especially for the slower two handed attacks.

Should have more directional strikes and some basic combos, but nothing too flamboyant.

Yeah, they've kinda become the Microsoft Flight Simulator of RPG's. You buy it for the flying around and looking at the cool scenery, not for hot combat vs. enemy planes. My personal bar for RPG/action games is a bit higher, but that's just me I guess.

1/If enemies starting fleeing in terror at the sight of higher level opponents, by level 40 nearly every single hostile NPC (apart from undead as they're mindless) would run away from you. Clearing a bandit dungeon would involve every one of them running for the hills or cowering in a corner. This would hardly make for a fun game experience. this is so obvious I can't believe I needed to type it.
2/How do they know anyway? I've come across enemies that don't look very formidable -a master vampire looks like any old mage from a distance. How do they know how powerful you are? Why would they know what an arch mage looks like? It's more remarkable that guards in cities you've just arrived in seem to know who you are than bandits don't. It's not like they'd all be on Twitter catching up on the latest gossip. Even if you'd heard some legendaty character was slaying dragons, how would you know what they looked like? Their Tamriel Facebook page?

If you could combine the beauty of the TES graphics with the combat engine of something like CoD then I don't think many would complain. As it is though you have a choice of one or the other. TES is an RPG and I didn't buy it for the combat system, RPGs are more than that.

Haven't tried melee or mage yet, but archery without sneak is great fun and probably the most balanced gameplay you'll get out of vanilla skyrim.

^ They nailed archery in this game. Great stuff.

I'm also disappointed in the combat with the exception of the Bow which is much better and useable then it was in Oblivion. I feel that Beth had a chance to make Combat fun in Skyrim but nope they just went with an improved version of Oblivion 2.0, which isn't bad but it's not extradonary.

Thanks for the tip. I gave it a very quick try but left it aside because I was sneaking and the "eye" icon is over the "target" icon (seriously, Bethesda, please revise your QA process, there are some serious flaws). Is it why you mention "without sneaking" ? Anyway I will give it another try.

I actually like the down to earth realistic way of combat in Skyrim. The only part i agree about is the animations bit, but that goes for everything not just combat.

If you want an RPG with great combat then i suggest Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning. Though i feel as an overall package Skyrim far surpasses it.