Combat: Stamina, Speed, Sensitivity and Control

[Mask]

The game is getting close to completion. If people are having any problems with the combat, I figure they had better speak soon. Otherwise, you will have to wait for mods.

The combat has a lot of promise. What it needs I’d say, is just a bit of refining and tweaking.

Stamina
The stamina is pretty taxing for attacks, causing you to spend a lot of time waiting and sprinting/running/backing away from the enemy. This makes it less interesting, and feel less real. The recent demo, where the devs keep running away in the middle of the fist fight shows how bad it can get. That just looks silly, and isn’t engaging. It gets worse still when you lose health, and only have stamina for a couple of attacks.

My suggestion would be to have stamina recover more quickly, or lessen the penalty for acting without stamina. Another possibility would be to have it recover in bursts rather than linearly. So, with each gasp of breath, the stamina bar swells up large. That way, you only pause in a fight for one second (for a couple of breaths), which is closer to real fencing. If you pause longer, it’s because you’re being thoughtful and considering your options, not because you are too exhausted to fight after less than a warm-up.

The stamina bar in games is used for very specific reasons. Dark Souls is one of the few games that has done it well. The main reason for a stamina bar is so that you can’t block behind a shield forever. But since Kingdom Come has directional combat, that aspect is not important to it.

Speed

The combat speed is pretty slow, compared to similar combat games. Chivalry, Mount and Blade, Of Kings and Men, etc… The intention may be for it to speed up later in the game, which would be good.

Notably, one reason I think you’ve kept it so slow, is some people are complaining that the combat is hard to use already, despite being slow. This might be fixed by refining the tutorial, but it’s possible the controls’ sensitivity needs improvement. I recommend looking at Of Kings and Men’s example of directional combat. The game is in EA hell, but they still have an improvement over Mount and Blade’s directional fighting.

Those are a few starting points for discussion. I do hope people are interested in discussing the game’s combat, as it’s getting close to the point where we won’t be able to expect further tweaking. Mods can tweak it further to our desires of course, but I want the game to be as successful as possible and so want us to discuss how to improve its vanilla combat.

[Kaven]

There are some valid points, but I doubt there will be some major changes in there. I expect that current stamina bar also simulates attacker losing “momentum” … when attacking you always gradually lose rasance because of your strikes being blocked, the sword not ending where you want it, enemy changing distance etc. If you look at hema (but also many other fighting sports), you always see the same pattern - close in, exchange some strikes, go back, wait and look fo opportunity. It is not due to low stamina of fighters, but it looks the same. Even professionals have hard time in keeping a long uniterrupted series of attacks.

Speed - thay say that fight is intentionally slower then in reality. Because in reality you do a lot of things instinctively, based also on what you feel (like where enemy pushes your blade etc.). In game, your senses are limited only to what you see, and also control is more difficult. They compensate it by slower pace of fight. I think they said that if you level up on combat skill, enemies will be slowed down - in order to make you faster then them, but keep whole thing controllable by player.

[Mask]

Yeah, only some minor points can be tweaked at this stage. And even that is cutting it close.

Momentum: Depends how aggressive the players are. You can continue to pressure and attack an opponent, as long as you’re willing to. Most people do stop periodically, but that’s because they want to mentally regroup and form a new plan. But I’ve often kept on a guy continuously just to freak him out (thought normally they back up, and end up breaking it up). The thing that makes this less apparent, is normally it results in a fight that ends quickly, and both players separate because one was hit.

When people separate, the amount of time they separate isn’t arbitrary either. Sometimes guys will freeze for like twenty seconds. Most frequently, they stop for a about a 0.5~2 seconds, reassess each other, then start feinting.

Speed: I agree totally in making it slower than reality, for the sake of gameplay. But, I figure you should make it as fast as the player can handle. Mount and Blade has demonstrated players can manage a whole ton faster. The combat is more complex, so it probably does need to be slower… but I don’t think it needs to be this much slower.

Difficulty Settings could allow the player to choose the speed of the combat animations, I’d say would be a good solution.

As it is, the slow animations mixed with stamina recovery makes things feel pretty bogged down. I think it could feel a lot more exciting, with some tweaks to increase the tempo of the action. More blocks, more strikes, shorter breaks between them, and faster reaction times.

Of course, not everyone will want the same tempo, so options and stats to control it would be optimal.

[Mask]

Suggestion: Lean Controller to Look Around.

For the people playing with a controller that can sense leaning (namely, the PS4), I suggest tipping the controller allowing you to look around, while locked onto an enemy. This would just be the equivalent of turning your head. This way, you can look around a little with very simple controls, to try and maintain situational awareness.