Why TES game's combat system so bad?

[Permanent Marker]

After playing games like M&B Warband, Chivalry, Dark Souls and even Pirates Vikings and Knights!!! where you can feel the weight of your weapon, you can controll if you want to swing, or slash, or you have mechanics like parry, dodge, block etc... Instead of that in TES games you smash your M1. Its killing the game for me, its too static and not feel natural at all.

For this reason i could not get into Oblivion, and after playing 30 min of Skyrim i feel the same thing. Any suggestions? Mods that make the combat more fun?

[♥ Barney ♥]

Lots of combat mods that make the enemy ai alot more challenging, or make the enemies alot tougher. Combat Evolved, Duel Combat, Revenge of the Enemies are pretty decent. I think theres also a mod that adds new combat moves to the game, like dodging etc, can't think of the name though.

I've always found Skyrim's combat pretty decent, you can do a normal attack or power attack, bashing with the shield, blocking etc. Its not brilliant i know, but adding combat mods like the ones above, prevents you from running at enemies and mashing the mouse button. Instead you have to use a bit of strategy to defeat higher level enemies.

[GamerGamingGamerGame]

You must have the diffuculty to low for you increasing it will force you to use things like blocking and healing spells which make the game alot more intuitive and fun. If that dosent work then get combat mods along with that.

[Shadow♥]

i think the combats pretty good myself. i agree with raptor man you need to up your difficulty level.

[Randox]

There are mods, and they do make the game a lot more fun, though admittedly at the end of the day it's built on a pretty basic system, so don't expect mods to turn the game into Mount and Blade mouse controlled weapons and stuff.

For me, I'm currently still using SkyRe as my combat overhaul (it's an older mod), but there are plenty to choose from. PerMa, ASIS, Requiem, and Combat Evolved are some others off the top of my head, though I'm only really familiar with PerMa (same author who did SkyRe).

On top of that, I use Deadly Dragons, and Custom Difficulty. Dragons because SkyRe doesn't touch them, and Custom Difficulty because I hate how increasing the difficulty in vanilla decreases the damage you do; it makes generic combat tedious and boring, so I have it setup for an all around glass cannon style.

I also have a semi complete setup ready for PerMa and Dragon Combat Overhaul, which promises to be a far more punishing experience, but there are issues in that loadout I have yet to resolve.

To get you started, a link to SkyRe: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9286/?
And a link to PerMa: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59849/?
And here's one for Requiem too: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19281/?

[L0G1STX aka MAGA Man]

Originally posted by Permanent Marker:

After playing games like M&B Warband, Chivalry, Dark Souls and even Pirates Vikings and Knights!!! where you can feel the weight of your weapon, you can controll if you want to swing, or slash, or you have mechanics like parry, dodge, block etc... Instead of that in TES games you smash your M1. Its killing the game for me, its too static and not feel natural at all.

For this reason i could not get into Oblivion, and after playing 30 min of Skyrim i feel the same thing. Any suggestions? Mods that make the combat more fun?

There are many mods that improve many elements of the gameplay. Skyrim was actually designed for modders to take free reign, that's why the base vanilla game feels so shallow, has so many "useless items" and open spaces. It was intentionally designed that way so that those of us on PC could customize our own experience. So yes, there are a number of combat mods, even mods that make the ragdolls look more realistic. Go to google and type in Skyrim Nexus, there is an entire portion of the website dedicated solely to skyrim. Have fun! also, make sure to add the dynamic things mod and experiment with the cooking and crafting mods to make some of those useless items, useful. you could actually mod your game to the point where every item in the game can be used to build, craft, smelt, or improve something. I even use those burned books for starting small fires when it starts snowing (its possible to freeze to death in my game)

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Suggestions:
Play without hud.
Without the hut stealth become's alot harder(no eye to warn you)
You cant tell what is and isnt stealing.
You dont see your health, mana and stemina(so you have to gues)
You dont have a crosshair making aiming alot harder(try hitting a deer from a few meter's, if your off by a Milimiter you will miss)

Use sword and sheild.
I found that sword and sheild combat is a bit more engagin as blocking, counter attack, and sheild bash spice things up a bit.

Self imposed limets.
For example:
No healing magic or potions.

I played mount and blade warband.
Most fights whent like this:
Archers hold this postion(hill)
Infanrtry move forward ten paces(so the archers dont shoot them in the back)
Lacht at enemy suiced charge.
In multiplayer people where mostly running around trying to hit things.
Rohrik units where anoying because there triple shield.
I never felt the weight of my weapon.
Sure it is more complext combat.
But on a whole not that different from skyrim.

For example in mount and blade warband you use a sideway attack be moving to the left and pressing left.
In skyrim you do a sideway attack be moving to the left, hold the buttion. hope/pray you have enough stamina.

In order to have fun in skyrim combat i suggest you change your combat style.
The only time i was spamming m1 was with dualwielding.
Sword and sheild is more about block, counter attack, location.
Bow and arrow(atleast without hud) is all about maxing out that first hit.

Sneaking around is a challange(if you dont put any perks in sneaking)

Magic has illusion, conjuration, restoration.
Playing as a healer in skyrim can be fun.

I dont know your playstyle so i cant suggest what you need to change to make it fun for you.
I tryed playing on legendery once's.
Start at level one.
Enemy had brickwalls worth of health and could one shot me most of the time.
It made me alot more carefull and reliant on my companions.
I also gain a far larger appraication for armor, weapons, and health potions.

Likewise a personal challange of me is trying to kill a bandit leader without getting caught.
You can also limet yourself by favoring a few items/spells.
Q opens for favorite menu.
You can click a item/spell and press 1-8 to number that items/spell.
You can then use the number to activate that item/spell.

Playing with a rule you cant open invantory/spellbook/favorite menu while in combat.
Increases the challange because you have to pick 8 things you are going to use for the battle to come.
It means you have to prepear and adapt.

[L0G1STX aka MAGA Man]

Originally posted by Permanent Marker:

After playing games like M&B Warband, Chivalry, Dark Souls and even Pirates Vikings and Knights!!! where you can feel the weight of your weapon, you can controll if you want to swing, or slash, or you have mechanics like parry, dodge, block etc... Instead of that in TES games you smash your M1. Its killing the game for me, its too static and not feel natural at all.

For this reason i could not get into Oblivion, and after playing 30 min of Skyrim i feel the same thing. Any suggestions? Mods that make the combat more fun?

Okay i loaded up my game and dug through ALL of my files to tell you this:
Duel- combat realism esp and Locational Damage esp

There was probably a better way to do this but there you go. I highly recommend these two mods especially the latter. The locational damage mod is great because it has many custom options. you can actually change the chances for critical strikes for every body part. combned with duel-combat realism, it is a must have.
I remember there was an old mod called Requiem or something like that, and it was combat based, but i cant find it. it was a very popular mod, but i cant find it on Nexus, if you see it, snag it up and send me a link.

[Captain Cockslap]

It's indeed a frustratingly basic system after you've played games like Chivalry and M&B.

Many combat mods are out there claiming to address this issue but in reality all they do is change enemy AI and tweak a few values here and there.
Now there's like 100 'meh' combat mods out there whereas if they had worked together we would have 2-3 GOOD combat mods out there.

I've tried every single one of them and they were all too scared (or simply too simple) to actually change anything other than a few variables. Blocking is more effective. Blocking can be timed. Enemies block more.
There are no mods that properly modify weapon weight, speed and adds different attacks to the game. Not that the Creation Engine could handle such precision anyway.

---

Being a Chivalry player myself, the best thing I found for Skyrim is to simply download SkyTweak and crank the damage modifiers up a bit. If I'm playing on Master difficulty, then I edit the damage values so that I deal THREE times as much damage as I normally would, and I take FOUR times as much damage as I normally would.
It obviously doesn't add a huge amount of depth to the combat but at least you now require strategy to win and don't find yourself slashing through naked barbarians 20 times before they die.

[smr1957]

Originally posted by Metal Militaires- Rebel X:

Okay i loaded up my game and dug through ALL of my files to tell you this:
Duel- combat realism esp and Locational Damage esp

There was probably a better way to do this but there you go. I highly recommend these two mods especially the latter. The locational damage mod is great because it has many custom options. you can actually change the chances for critical strikes for every body part. combned with duel-combat realism, it is a must have.
I remember there was an old mod called Requiem or something like that, and it was combat based, but i cant find it. it was a very popular mod, but i cant find it on Nexus, if you see it, snag it up and send me a link.

Re: Locational Damage

"Locational Damage - Rating: One (1) [One (1) - Completely unstable no matter the circumstances or usage]
Another mod that has potentially dangerous complications in long term saves. Locational Damage while great in concept, is not stable within the Skyrim engine and over time it starts to build up extreme script latency, which causes a slowdown in the games processing and can start to cause CTDs and major problems in combat with enemies not reacting properly.
There is no direct replacement for this mod, however some of the combat overhauls do include a similar feature which is slightly more stable however can have problems of their own and as such I do not recommend using them."

from:
Masterlist: Dangerous, Outdated and Superseded Mods - v4.2 UPDATE by Nazenn - http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/523890681422555089/

[entropy3ko]

I think most people here are whining needlessly.

Skyrim might not have the best combat in the world, but it's not bad either compared to tons of other games.
It's a HUGE improvement over Oblivion and especially Morrowind in terms of combat. Mind you I F-ing love Morrowind, but the combat was just clunky... like D&D from a first person perspective.

Although I hated how limited magic was in Skyrim, I think they DID make it more satisfying in combat. In Oblivion and Morrowind mages sucked ass except at extremely high levels. In Skyrim magic actually does some decent damage.

FYI: there are a lot of people complaining Dark Souls is boring too. You know why? Because in the end even DS is just a game. Once you get the patterns down that's it.

Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying Skyrim's combat is perfect, it could be much much better, no doubt about that, but it's not "bad" either.

Now if I have ONE complaint about skyrim is perhaps that there is too much combat. I think they should have had more variety in quest types or how you deal with stuff.

[Серега Фильтрат]

Originally posted by ♥ Barney ♥:

Lots of combat mods that make the enemy ai alot more challenging, or make the enemies alot tougher. Combat Evolved, Duel Combat, Revenge of the Enemies are pretty decent. I think theres also a mod that adds new combat moves to the game, like dodging etc, can't think of the name though.

I've always found Skyrim's combat pretty decent, you can do a normal attack or power attack, bashing with the shield, blocking etc. Its not brilliant i know, but adding combat mods like the ones above, prevents you from running at enemies and mashing the mouse button. Instead you have to use a bit of strategy to defeat higher level enemies.

It is like adding seasoning to a pile of feces. At some point it starts to smell not that bad, but the original taste is there. Every combat mod makes the fighting a bit more clunky as well, because added through skse systems always have little lag.

[cwsumner]

Skyrim is not actually a combat game, it is an exploring game. They did the best they could with combat, without damaging the exploring and scenery, and I think they were right... 8-)
I couldn't remember a hundred different key combinations, anyway, particularly not in an engagement. Point and shoot!

[Alkpaz]

Originally posted by Deliverance Prayer:

Originally posted by ♥ Barney ♥:

Lots of combat mods that make the enemy ai alot more challenging, or make the enemies alot tougher. Combat Evolved, Duel Combat, Revenge of the Enemies are pretty decent. I think theres also a mod that adds new combat moves to the game, like dodging etc, can't think of the name though.

I've always found Skyrim's combat pretty decent, you can do a normal attack or power attack, bashing with the shield, blocking etc. Its not brilliant i know, but adding combat mods like the ones above, prevents you from running at enemies and mashing the mouse button. Instead you have to use a bit of strategy to defeat higher level enemies.

It is like adding seasoning to a pile of feces. At some point it starts to smell not that bad, but the original taste is there. Every combat mod makes the fighting a bit more clunky as well, because added through skse systems always have little lag.

Don't use a wireless mouse/keyboard. Invest in a SSD 1TB+, use a wired modem. Use wired speakers. Us a wired controller. Don't use WiFi. Get more and faster RAM. Upgrade your CPU. SKE does not cause that much "lag" if you upgrade and not go wireless all.

[ministrog]

If you compare skyrim to any of those examples mentioned in OP, then the difference comes down to what they wanted to shine in their games. What were their key features?

Souls series dev, Hidetaka Miyazaki was known to have very different design methods to other games designers. Even still, the first couple of games From software did have a few hiccups in their combat, so they're certainly not perfect. For bethusda or TES games, they wanted to give players 'more' things to do. So many things that they'd feel like they can inmerse into the world. Magic in Dark Souls is utter garbage, despite what fans say about the melee combat. In TES, magic could crafted, and have quest associated to it.

[cyäegha]

Originally posted by Alkpaz:

Don't use a wireless mouse/keyboard. use a wired modem. Use wired speakers. Us a wired controller. Don't use WiFi.

literally none of these would affect the game at the engine level at all