I played Skyrim to death with over 360 hours and marveled at the world they had created but was always frustrated by the combat system . I started as a Mage but struggled with it as I got to lvl 30 as the spells did not scale up in power, but this is the topic of many other threads. Next I made an archer which worked rather too good and enemies fell like wheat before the sythe. It was when I tried to make melee characters especially dual wield ones that the problems appeared. I had hoped and expected from what was advertised prior to release that the dual wield system was revolutionary and awesome. The poor design of the system became more apparent when I tried characters using dual melee weapons and even two hand weapons. The cut scenes failed to integrate smoothly and the animation was well, clumbsy.

Every time that my level of frustration raised to boiling point over the awful combat graphics and mechanics i remembered a clip of the devs talking about the creation of the combat system. There are three Devs and one of developers was of Chinese origin so they decided to use him to do the combat choreography as he had some experience of martial arts. They also talk of having him stand on a desk to simulate fighting a dragon and stabbing it in the head. And this is exactly what you get, a very cheap badly presented Chinese man killing a desk.

I recently started playing StarWars The Old Republic and every time I see my beautiful and graceful dual wielding Jedi Knight slice through enemies I wonder how much better Skyrim would have been, if they had left the Devs behind the desk instead of on top of it and got a choreographer to do the battle scenes.

But Kotor is turn based....semi, you seem to be talking more along the lines of cutscenes...which I myself have seem the sillyness in since early last year.

A active dodge/roll feature would of been nice...

Agree with OP. I was concerned about the combat system from the very first demo of Skyrim and I was right =(

He is talking about TOR and not Kotor. He is also comparing animations and not mechanics. Although a light sabre wielding jedi/sith is something different than a medieval fantasy dragonborn, imo he has a point.
On the other hand... Bethesda was never really good with combat mechanics and animations in general.

but.....swtor svcked....the only good things were PvP and story.

active roll
active dodge
counter attack timing
parry/riposte
directional attacks
locational damage
combat skills and abilities
casting cycles (casting diversity)

better ai
more enemies
more frequent encounters
enemy ambushes
better enemy placement
more enemy pathing instead of SITTING IN CHAIRS

He said "Star Wars The Old Republic" not "Knights of the Old Republic"....It's the new MMO thats come out recently.

It's not the best by far but I do still like taking someones head off with my mace.

I enjoy the combat. Its fun.

360hrs...cant have been half bad then can it. My cut scean of grabing the Dragon by the horn and swing round and up to ride him and bring the axe down for finale KILL twice now out of 3 times.awsome and fighting just great...This game rocks..shame you find it disapointing..Ilove it,cant wait to get home. 353hrs to date 2nd char

You're comparing two very different products there.

I personally really enjoy both dual wielding weapons and two handed weapons. To each their own...

I hope that mods like Deadly Reflex, KSTN Stylized Stance and DMC Stylish - Animation Replacerwill be released for skyrim. This would be more then enough for me.

These changes would make SUCH a positive difference to this game for me. The combat is just horrible in Skyrim. I don't get it. Why do great combat and great roleplaying have to be MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE??? So many games seem to absolutely fail at a good combat system.

I think a good "lock-on" feature would be great as well.

One of the worst things about the combat is the complete lack of "realism" as far as NPC reactions to getting hit. It's like you're whacking at a moving statue. There's no sense of actually fighting another human being. It's such a huge letdown and takes you out of the gameworld every time you fight someone.

The Witcher 2's system is far from perfect, and it relies too much on rolling around, but it's MILES ahead of Skyrim. When you fight, you FEEL like you're fighting, when you connect with someone, you FEEL like you're connecting with them.

All of the Elder Scroll games in my experience have been awful when it comes to melee combat, and Skyrim doesn't improve on it much at all.

I enjoy the melee combat quite a bit.

Subjective opinion is subjective.

Out of legitimate curiosity, and not trying to devalue your opinion, what do you enjoy about it? What do you think makes it a good combat system?

Some people just have lower standards.

The combat system is solid, they could make improvements but I do like it. If your talking about turn based for the sake of animations.. Please die away from me

Kotor is RT/w pause. There is a significant difference between the branching actions by the PC in KotOR, and round based evaluation where the player gets to look back on the entire time segment and make choices with the remaining time they have left to commit, and base their actions on all of the previous choices of their opponents during the round.

I prefer smooth and interesting animation... but there is something to be said for crafting both texture art and animation that is just enough shy of being epic to be plausibly repeated throughout the game and not stand out like a sore thumb.

Skyrim's combat feels incredibly simplistic. I may sound like a troll here, but in a way I almost miss the constant blocking in Oblivion. At least there was some sense of pacing. Combat encounters in Skyrim tend to devolve into mindless slashfests - directional attacking is practically meaningless without perks, control is wrested away from the player whenever they do a power attack, not to mention blocking is relatively meaningless when your character can bash a shield/torch into your enemy's face every 2 seconds.

The second point has been a big issue for me since Oblivion. Sure, it's fun when an enemy charges at you and runs off of a cliff, but I find the constant staggering, and screen shaking whilst your character blindly runs into a wall incredibly frustrating. It makes some sense when handling weapons with a great deal of momentum (i.e. warhammers), but I wish you could interrupt or "step out" of an attack - like in Mount & Blade. I know some people think this system makes Skyrim's combat rewarding for those who use timing and guesswork, but we're not jousting here - we're playing as people. The ability to improvise, to segue out of different attacks/directional movements and quick reflexes ought to be rewarded, not wholly ignored.

It's hard to put into words- I just enjoy doing it.

I can control every aspect of it. I can control when I swing my sword, when I raise my shield, when I bash with it, when I try to dodge, and how- either side stepping or stepping back. I can see when the enemy is about to swing, and if I'm fast enough, I can raise my shield to block it. I don't really see how it could be done better, unless there was some kind of VR controllers where I could control all those things by actually doing them with my hands and feet. I know there's something similar to that, but it appears to have serious limitations, and doesn't seem that easy to set up.

Out of honest curiousity, how do you envision combat? What would make that better?

You can sidestep? That's something I haven't experienced. Maybe because I'm using a controller (on a PC)?

Anyway, I definitely prefer real-time, player-controlled combat over turn-based, which I personally do not enjoy at all, so Skyrim has that right for me at least.

For me, what would make it much, much better are a few things:

1. More options with how you attack, i.e. an option to thrust and stab, and option for upwards strikes, options to swing from the left or right whenever you prefer, so if I wanted to strike from the right with successive blows, I could do that. Skyrim simply defaults to left-right-left-right, and I find the two choices of melee attack (swing or power attacks) to be far too few and limiting.

2. A lock-on feature. I'd love to be able to lock onto a target when I'm fighting someone. Again, the Witcher 2 had this, and it was very helpful. I'm always having trouble maneuvering my character back to face my foe. It just seems clunky to me. Would love to just lock on to a foe and not have to worry about following him around, just worry about blocking his strikes or avoiding them, then striking back.

3. More realism. When I connect with someone, it feels and sounds like I'm connecting with a piece of metal, not with flesh, as gruesome as that might sound. And yeah, I know opponents wear armor, hence the sound of striking metal, but that's not really what I'm referring to. It probably has more to do with the fact that the NPCs don't seem to react well to being hit. It's like you're fighting a walking statue/robot that has no pain receptors. Also, the same wound animation appears from the same place every time, no matter where I strike, and they don't stagger back or react in any way until you finish them. Archery is great, but melee just doesn't feel fluid or satisfying to me.

Again, the perfect game for me would be a combination of great, robust combat with great, robust story and setting. Skyrim gets a lot of the latter right, but falls way short for me with the combat engine.

I actually agree with you. It's good, but one thing's for sure. I don't if you noticed but Oblivion's Blocking system is much better than Skyrim's.

Actual combat/gameplay is one of the series' major downsides, I agree. It's gotten marginally better with Oblivion and Skyrim, but only marginally. Sneay archers are probably the most interesting characters to play right now because they reward smart use of your environment and using tactics that extend beyond mindless click spam and potion chugging. Casters use to be more interesting, but we lost interesting tactics like casting value 1 levitate on an enemy to kite them around.

Ok, I can see how some of those things might make it feel more realistic. Perhaps it's because I haven't played many single player games, but I would have thought detail like that would requite considerable programming time, so I wouls assume would be out of scope for this game, unless other things were left out. I noticed similar things myself, though. For example, in some games, when you walk through the snow, you leave footprints (that disappear in a few seconds, but you leave them, nonetheless). Skyrim doesn't seem to have that, and it was a bit disappointing.

As to the side step: yes, I'm on PC, but as I understand it, there is the same thing with controllers, unless I am misinformed about how they work. As I know it, the right stick is essentially the same as the mouse, while the left sitck does the same thing as the wasd keys. Is that not the case? On a PC, movement is w for forward, and moving the mouse left and right to turn left and right. Using the a or d keys makes you sidestep left or right (aka strafe). I.e., you move left or right while still facing the same direction, instead of turning left or right. Combined with a slight nudge on the mouse, you can even continue facing your target while you sidestep.

Lockon feature: I'm asuming this means you "have a target"? So that no matter where you or the enemy goes (within a certain distance), you'll still have their name highlighted, and can then cast spells or shoot arrows at them without them being directly in your crosshairs. Is that what you're thinking for a lockon feature? If so, some games are like that, but I think they chose to make Skyrim work differently on purpose, as it gives more challenge. Your attack, whether it be a spell, arrow, or weapon swing will always go directly in front of you, making it necessary to "aim" the attack. This is simply a matter of taste, IMO. Neither system is "right" or "wrong", they are just two different ways off handling attacks. I can't really say I like over the other, but I guess I've gotten used to the Skyrim method, so don't have any problem with it. If you're used to targetted attacks though, it can definitely be hard to get.

So yeah, I agree it could be more involved, but to be honest, I don't think I'd like it as much. I have enough to deal with in moving around, keeping the enemy "in my sights", and timing blocks and swings. If different types of attacks, as well as from different angles was added, I don't think I'd be able to get very good at it. At the very least, I'd probably use a single angle and single type of attack 90+% of the time.