Combat in 1.5

Combat system
#1

In the early versions and after you got some XP, it was possible to slaughter multiple NPCs in one bout without tremendous difficulty. A number of players said combat was (way) too easy and the perks needed to be nerfed.

For me, the difficulty in 1.5 is appropriate. Might even be spot on. Got impatient in last session. Paid for it. Still don’t like the strength of the ‘magnetism’ when target lock is engaged but otherwise feel there’s really good balance in KCD’s combat system

What are your thoughts now? Agree? Disagree?

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#2

Nope, It’s not for me. I’d prefer a storyline less interrupted by “you are dead” and another chance to watch a load screen. Given the ease of implementing difficulty settings I’m surprised that they have taken the “one size fits all” approach. Pleased the patch has improved other aspects of the game though.

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#3

Given how the vision was articulated, not surprised. Think this lead in part to a self fulfilling prophesy of being a niche game. Many of the early complaints were too hard-git gud in nature. I’m sure KCD would’ve sold better had (easy) difficulty settings been implemented

#4

the combat is a tour de force of awesomeness in 1.5. although ive only had two or so fights

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#5

I only killed my first after patch 1.5, so I don’t know difference. To me, it is hard, even against one opponent.

#6

Had a moment last night where i had an attack on the road, two bandits with little/no armor on. Managed a riposte on one of them and he died as my pommel hit his head. I was howling.

#7

I don’t think easy difficulty would benefit game. It would be struggling with exploration and story telling as people believe this is imitation of Skyrim, combat in there can be tweaked to be hard enough, here you have one size and example of Gothic 1 & 2 would be appropriate. There your enemies were gradually better as you progressed. Here it is hard at start and some say easy later. I guess, Gothic approach is what you want, but I can not imagine beginning of you slaughtering all Cumans with no stats.

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#8

I tried the mod to lessen the “magnetism” and found it kind of unstable. Without the
magnetism when you move the mouse to position your strike, you instead look in that
direction. When I went for an overhead strike I found myself looking up in the sky.
I removed the mod.

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#9

Such a thing wouldn’t benefit the game. It’d benefit the struggling/casual players.

The combat system is idiosyncratic. Having access to the Bernard training or better earlier would’ve helped some.

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#10

It’s early enough. Game can be finished with only one kill, so casuals should look up some walkthroughs if they do not want to learn to fight. Otherwise, gain stats by doing is good approach.

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#11

Thx for sharing. That’s my concern. The reason I say that is rush attacks avoid the target lock (magnetism), but rush attacks stink because the game doesn’t lock in your swings. That causes the early pre-magnetism attacks to largely miss

My game play struggle is to look on flank and then turn back to guy in front of me if flank is safe. Pressing O (PS4) gets rid of the lock/magnetism but there’s a lag that hinders making a quick scan right and then back to center. The inefficiency creates a lag that impedes combat effectiveness.

The closest example I can think of is soccer/futball or basketball. You want to position yourself with respect to the defender in front but you also want to take a quick look at your sides to make sure you’re not falling into a trap. I want that.

Field of vision is a major part of the problem. In RL combat/sport, we have peripheral vision. In RPGs, we have monitors. Installing 2-3 more widescreen high def TVs and syncing them isn’t in my to do list

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#12

My only experience so far was three poorly equipped bandits, that I killed with little difficulty.

#13

Visit battle spawn points and that’ll change. Depending how quickly you rush into the fray and how close you are to the center of all the hostile NPCs, bandit vs bandit battles can range from virtually impossible to mildly difficult. The bandits there often consists of at least 3 boss NPCs with expensive armor and weapons

#14

I think the combat in this game is plain awful. The lock on system is just really bad and because of that fighting multiple enemies is bad. Master strikes seem like pure luck, combos are annoying to remember and overpowered, because of weird scaling sometimes you’ll murder an enemy with a few hits while other times they seem nigh invulnerable. It maybe is at the worst midpoint between player skill/knowledge and in game stat balance I’ve ever seen in a RPG.

I think the majority of what is actually fun in the game is it’s story and quest content and it’s just locked behind a lot of unfun combat. The worst part is because this is a “historical” game this combat gets viciously defended because players want to feel like big tough men for mastering the game. Which I guess is just a matter of spamming combos (free hits) and getting good at master strike timing.

2 Likes
#15

They changed combat in 1.5?

#16

“some enemies are almost invulnerable” … isn’t it because they have better armor? Armor makes you relatively “invulnerable”, which is very realistic. Fighting against armor is very different even in real life; just look here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi757-7XD94 . If you want to kill someone in armour, you have to know how. Choice of right weapon (mace) also helps a lot.

2 Likes
#17

Don’t start with that crap again. It failed in the 3rd person view thread and will fail here.

I hope your not the one who claims to see out the side of your head.

As for the combat I just started the raid missions and slaughtered the first camp. They ran as always but the leader thought he wanted some. As usual 3 cracks to the skull and he was down and out. Decent armor on the leader and 1 other guy. The other guy begged for his life after 2 good smacks. Then he took a dirt nap.

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#18

Again? What are you on about? Far peripheral is from 60 degrees off center to over 100. Wide screens just don’t simulate that well

2 Likes
#19

i love the combat in 1.5 but i barely used it. literally my whole game i avoided combat unless i really had to do it.

i love how you can own some enemies easy then the other ones beat the shit out of you

#20

In normal game (at least in v.1.4.3), you can kill a knight in full plate armour only by stabbing with a short sword because the enemy was tired (stamina issue), where you shouldn’t be able to cause any damage at all… I need to test it for 1.5, I thought the game was going to have it like that. However, I hope that we can get the more realistic approach on Hardcore mode, forcing you to use specific sword combos on fully plate armoured enemies or die (same with arrows not penetrating the plate armours, only a small/margin change of penetrating it if it’s of very low quality, or if AI is using very good bows and penetrating arrows), or switch the weapon to axe, hammer, halberd, etc, while forcing you to specialise in several weapons/techniques in order to finish the game (if you want to fight, of course).

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