People just don't get it. It's not a matter of being able to hit the person WHEN THEY LET YOU. It's a matter of hitting someone when they don't want to be hit. Unless you are formally trained, I would like to see anyone here step toe to toe in a fencing match with a professional and actually get on the score board. Provided the professional doesn't give you a freebie or you simply don't get a lucky hit (beating the .1% odds).

The problem with Morrowind wasn't the dice mechanics, it was the physical representation of the outcome or rather the complete lack thereof.

Turn base is just a mechanism for order. To give the player time to select what they want to do because of how the game functions. Dice rolls don't need turn base mechanisms just as turn base doesn't need dice rolls. You could have flat out calculations instead. Dice rolls work just fine in real time games.

That scenario would still be less about the novice missing and more about the pro's ability to dodge/parry/riposte.

People do miss of their own doing, but at the extreme rate that Morrowind implemented?

Hell no, novice or not.

The difference is in practice.

So I have a system based on reflexes. Scientifically, warrior one has mastered defense for front attacks so his reaction time is only x milliseconds but he is bad on attacks from sides as his reaction is much longer. Warrior two has different reaction times and weaknesses.

So with a standard margin of error making reaction times longer or shorter and adding the random element, and I am also accounting all the player skill and tactics involved, out of 100 fights we get the statistics:
Warrior one has a %52 chance of hit.

Now if you make it the other way, that the statistics decide the combat results, then every fight becomes a case of chance.

So you are there standing, watching your friend one step away from being killed by the evil guy, you have your last arrow and it is the moment of truth. You will not miss. The statistics will say %90 chance. But it is not true, this is a shot that you will never miss. And you making the shot or not won't change the overall statistics anyway.

But if we let the statistics drive the results then it will be a moment ruined by dice. The two are very different, in practice. I am pro-dice but I also see the crudeness of it. For this level, it is too crude.

I wouldn't like that. I would like to eliminate the reasons behind the load, to make everything stay in the game. If players think it is fair, then they will stay. But I am OK for tracking in game repetitive actions and preventing that.

As I mentioned above, chance is ruining it. As it is about chance at core rather than skill. I like dice for the random element, not for a skill representation. It is about the margin of error which is not a hit or miss but +-3 degrees or +-20 milliseconds. If you positioned yourself in right position and attacked at the right time, you still score. This is player skill and chance but the skill mechanics produce these statistical results we were aiming for anyhow. This is about agency, the player will say he has the power and skill but he simply made a mistake. It wouldn't matter for him that our spreadsheet reads 2 out of 10 scores and if we give him better accuracy and better reaction times, he will score more. He is happy, we are happy.

Interestingly, sport games use player skill and character skill perfectly with this realization. They figured it out. We don't need that kind of player skill focus but it is possible to mimic that to a degree where players feel content about their influence. I personally hate hitting so many times with this always hit system. Damage sponges, there is no thrill to combat. Now with mods, as I block I feel powerful and as they block and the fight gets longer, it is more enjoyable. We both try to catch our breaths which is amusing. I wish I had a taunt button too.

Um, what YOU don't get is that the model of the weapon hitting the model of the target is in fact the crux here- whenever the wepon contacts a target, it is obviously proper to have the target register the fact. Dodging or parrying means, by definition, that the weapon did not strike the target!

What happens due to that contact is entirely seperate, but the 'realistic' outcome is not a clean miss when my characters sowrd has transfixed the target's head!

I never said that turn based combat necessitates ANYthing in this game, I said that it is a left over from turn based games, which it plainly is

Hitting the target and damaging it are two seperate things.

In your example, you pinpoint the flaw of the percentile dice system perfectly on several levels. I should not be registering a 'hit' on my fencing oppontent when my foil misses, simply becasue I have a high skill level. The button must make contact! In your percntile chance system, this is precisely what should happen if it is a true percentile chance system. Just as when my foil visually hits but I "miss" the percentile chance, I should also logically be able to "hit" when my weapon made no contact.

In a sophsicticated combat system, the chance to acheive damage must first depend on the weapon hitting the target. The entire point of swinging that sword is to make contact. The attacker's skill, the toughness of the target, and the suitability of the weapon against the target should be taken into account, as well as the target's ability to minimize damage by dodging, angling a sheild, etc, and the target's ability to defelct the blow- for eample, a prone target cannot easily dodge.

Simplistic, sterile percentile chance determinations made by random number generation are unrealistic, boring, and needless

If I pick up a sword and swing at my dog within striking distance, I will hit 100% of the time. Now if my dog is moving in and out of striking distance, thats when I should miss.

While playing MW I've had times where, at a low level, me and an enemy would sit swinging at each other- face to face- for half of a minute because my skill was low. It just isn't fun or appealing.

I like this system much more; it's more fluid and exciting.

How would a skill-based miss even look visually?

Your crosshairs would just jump out of the way or would the character drop their weapon or both?

Still seems to me, that the most logical conclusion would still be the enemy's ability to dodge.

A dodge is substantially a miss, right?

Thats what I'm trying to say here, its not about missing... its about the enemy's ability to dodge.

It would be awful hard to represent a miss visually when your crosshairs are directly on the target.

how can you call Morrowind's combat realistic, if you picked up a sword right now you would be able to hit someone standing a few feet in front of you

If you want to miss, aim away from the bad guys

I don't like this posts, but this lol.

and a big LOL at the person who said " i have no training but i can cut you in two with a katana " thats bull [censored]. It was even hard for executioners to chop of a head alone and many times multiple attempts had to be made

I meant something along these lines with Morrowinds miss mechanic with the fluidity of Skyrims combat. The enemies should have a dodge feature, they most certainly would not stand in place and let you pummel them.

Yes, you would actually need to 'slice me in twain' for your previous post to be nothing more than pointless boasting, and adding absolutely nothing to the discussion.

But why are you trying to equate the worthless practice of 'achieving a killing blow' on a target dummy versus a fight with something with a will to live and a desire to take your stuff? Seriously, what does that add to the conversation? What was that Bruce Lee quote about the guy getting bragadocious about splitting some boards? Being able to kill something that isn't alive, and is basically furniture, is meaningless. Bravo, you sure tore that couch a new one. That barcalounger will surely not give you anymore attitude.

But to say simply because you, the player, was able to put your cursor on a target, and managed to click a mouse does not mean the avatar on screen, the character, should hit that target. Simply because 2 pixels got next to each other. The character is not the player.

If you got your more realistic representation, you wouldn't like it. You would swing your sword twice, before anyone with any amount of skill and experience with a sword would know your limits. Neither one of those swings would land at all, in this scenario of the character being a sword newbie. The third swing would most likely be parried without any real effort, and the character would be run through. The character is dead. Game over.

That is the very definition of not fun. The dice rolls, approximated this nicely, without the fancy avatar dancing on screen. Why? Because real swordplay takes years to master, and has subtleties that damn near all of us would take forever to even begin to understand. We had to use our imaginations to fill in the gaps provided by the inability of the animations/game engine.

Agreed, and there is a dodge mechanic in Skyrim...

I have no idea why they didn't fully implement the feature, perhaps it was added as an afterthought to balance archery.

When I say they should add it they should fully implement it. I feel a lot of things was only halfway completed in this game to see how the community would respond to it, but I think the main reason is is the "cool" release date 11-11-11 that is the main culprit.

I cannot agree. Morrowind definately has some advantages over Skyrim, but combat is not one of them.

Obviously. But complex and dynamic determinations made by random number generation can be very realistic and interesting. And, just as importantly, is one of the few ways to guarantee the importance of character skill without leaving giant exploitable holes in the system.

Morrowind's combat was representational. Whether you see your weapon hit an enemy is immaterial. It doesn't mean you actually hit them. In the same sense that days on Nirn arent wizzing by in a real world hour, or how you can successfully stab people in the face dozens of times before they drop, or how you can fit hundreds of misshaped objects in your pockets without employing any sort of pack. Singling out the appearance of combat and suggesting that it's somehow more egregiously unrealistic than any of these other things is disingenuous. Could it have been implemented and represented better? Yes. Does it still make sense conceptually? Also, yes.

There may be much truth in this, really feels the same way to me. I don't even fault them for it actually, there were plenty of new ideas implemented with much promise to them. Skyrim may have actually been more of a way for them to complete the long running story of Alduin's return, and less about being an Opus of gaming. A stepping stone to a game that will hopefully be a masterpiece.

Now, if they actually learn lessons from Skyrim that carry over into TES VI I will be supremely satisfied with Skyrim.

If not though, Skyrim was outstanding enough for me.

Too cynical these days to hold out hope for a gaming company.

They learn with every installment. hopefully this time they learn not to set a rushed release date, among other things

2 things:

1: Morrowind also had hacks and slashes and thrust depending on how you were moving.

2: My avatar is a joke i don't really like to troll.(or be trolled)

I do not see how that works ~or is at all realistic; I just don't.
How can a 90% chance be untrue(?) or be a shot that is guaranteed one outcome over another? Its inherent nature is one of probability. I have not played Morrowind a lot, but for the time I did play it seemed fairly straightforward and behaved like I'd expect of an RPG. Oblivion did not BTW; and it was usually the gameplay differences that I found to be unappealing.


Why is it supposed to seem fair? Seriously... What's fair about a novice never getting caught pickpocketing? (What's fair about an expert never having a bad misfortune or making a mistake? Knowing... positively how easy it would have been... if only their mark hadn't reached back for his mints ).

What sports game out there is about playing last year's championship as the losing team's star player? (and playing to lose)
Sports games are not [often] RPGs

When I invest time in an RPG, I like it if the RPG gives a realistic presentation of the PC and what they are really capable of. I do not look for it to play out like an ego shooter. If my PC does not have the combat skills to defeat an ambush, then I expect them to die.

*And its usually pretty awesome if they manage not to... In my experience, it's never quite as exciting or fun if the game only pretends to have risks. When I played Morrowind's combat, my PC lived or died by their ability to defend themselves... and that's what I want in an RPG.
It is my opinion that in this respect, Morrowind's combat was more realistic... in that it better represents the PCs ability and outcome in a conflict.

So what you are saying is that the issue was never with your success at hitting being based on chance generated through calculation using the necessary skills of both your character and the enemy's. Instead it was just the visual of it. A miss should be seen as one and a hit should be seen as one. I think the issue here was simply program and maybe hardware limitations. I agree, a hit should be seen as one and a miss should be seen as one. Now in Oblivion and Skyrim, that's the way it is. The problem is that the combat system is clunky. I was dual wielding daggers just a few hours ago and it was sloppy. The double attack is a scissor chop and the power attack a 3 hit combo. Swinging the weapons individually and the right and left hand actions don't flow together at all. You'd be better off swinging just your main hand over and over (which is 15% faster than the off hand) than alternating. Even if you swing with the main hand twice then follow through with the off hand. When you perform the second swing with the main hand, you are swinging from left to right (first swing is from right to left) and the swing with the off hand is from left to right only. So a way to add fluidity here could have been to press the off hand after the second main hand to swing the off hand from left to right before the main hand is completely finished swinging. I think this game would have benefited better from using multipress combos. With each stage of the combo fluidly tying into any other. So you could do two forward attacks (completing the second forward attack combo move) then do a side attack for the third and final hit and actually have them flow.

However, more to the point of block, dodge and parry. The game doesn't have dodge (I never tried it in Oblivion but I heard it was quite lacking) and you either block if you have a shield or parry if you have just one melee weapon equipped (2 hander or nothing in the off hand). If I have a sword and board character, all three options should be available and not just one. Sword and board is the most defensive setup. 2 hander should be the most offensive while dual wield should be the in-between. If these three defensive skills existed (instead of just block) and worked with the offensive skill(s) to equate to a % chance to successfully hit, this would be the most realistic fighting simulation you can get short of actually dressing up and performing the moves yourself. So until they actually manage to make the holodeck a reality, there will always be variables left to chance rather than the skill of the player. Leaving them out, like they do in Skyrim, only makes the combat system more shallow and it shows.


Really? If you, who probably doesn't have any professional training, picked up a sword and tried to take a swing at someone who is a professional, you probably wouldn't be able to finish that swing before you were either on the ground or simply dead.

No, he's talking about this weird Matrix-like dodge that NPCs will sometimes perform the moment you fire an arrow/magic, even if they didn't hear. They simply slide to one side, safely out of harms way the moment you release your projectile. That is a dice roll system, except instead of MW's simple disregard of your hit, Skyrim at least makes a small effort to show you why your perfect shot didn't hit. Even if it's a totally lame, inanimate slide to the left/right.

I think it's just a glitch. Not a dice roll mechanic.

Seems more like something the devs implemented to make sneak/archery gameplay a little more interesting, tbh. What makes you think it's a glitch?

A glitch how?

It is an obvious dodge, and a large part of the answer to this whole thread.