Combat suggestions

Gameplay
#1

I have been looking forward to KCD for a very long time (since about 2013), and pre-ordered it, and have been playing it quite a bit this past weekend. Overall, it’s a very interesting game, that does a lot of things well, but is certainly not without its issues. Some issues I can live with, after all when you get a deep, mature open world game, you expect some flaws and problems. I am ok with waiting for a month or two for bug fixes and optimizations, and other stuff like that.

But one thing I would very much like to see the developers address is the improving the melee combat system in an intelligent way. The way I see it right now, the melee combat system suffers from a couple of very serious issues. One is that it just not very difficult for seasoned gamers, once you get the hang of the basics, and the other is that despite its goal of realism, it’s not very deep in its current manifestation. What I mean is, while it has all this fancy stuff like combos, and feints, and chain strikes, fundamentally, the way it’s set up right now, all you need to do is learn to use the fairly simple parrying system in combination with perfect block/masterstrike stuff, and you can win any fight. You watch the other guy, hit Q as soon as he starts the attack, and then it goes into slo-mo, and you can get an unblockable attack. That’s it. So after all the effort Warhorse put into various aspects of the system, it boils down to something just as simple as Witcher 3 or Gothic 1/2 combat. And that’s unfortunate.

But the good news is that the fundamental system is very sound, and in my humble opinion, with a few slight tweaks, you can change the whole thing into a much more challenging and interesting system. The tweaks are as follows (again, this is just in my humble opinion):

  1. Make blocking directional - they already have a directional system in place for attacks, so by simply having the player orient the weapon accordingly for the parry to be effective you already make parrying much more challenging and in-depth.

  2. Remove masterstrikes, perfect block slo-mo, and other stuff like that that interferes with the basic flow of fencing. The idea is to have a sequence of strikes, parries, counter-attacks, parries of those, and so on, until one side makes a mistake and fails a parry. Point 1 would make this much more likely, since parries would be directional.

Now, I wasn’t born yesterday, so I realize that Warhorse wants to have good sales (that they are having now), and a really sophisticated and challenging system would drive away a lot of more casual players. So my suggestion would be to add the things I talk about above as an optional higher difficulty setting (kinda like Death March in Witcher 3). This way, casuals can have their simpler combat system, and more hardcore/serious gamers can have something that’s challenging for them and more realistic.

Anyway my two cents as a longtime RPG player.

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#2

Generally agree. The perks (eg blood lust and sword combos) seem at odd with git gud realism approach

#3

Some perks are definitely over the top. “Cuman Killer” is a particularly egregious one, since it increases your damage against Cuman opponents by a staggering 50%, which is retarded for a long list of reasons. Heavy Swing is another perk that needs the axe, since it’s a flat 20% damage increase. In fact, most of the damage increase perks need to be removed and/or replaced with perks that make a little more sense / demand more player engagement than passive buffs.

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#4

Think the perk should be to reduce probability and severity of successful strike. Not to inflict more blanket damage

Example, stealth kill. Love it. Harvest tons of Cuman and bandit equipment with it. But, come on. A noob (Henry wasn’t an assassin apprentice) stealth killing a bandit in mail and cuirass? Yeah, maybe Henry can successfully get off an attack on a guy and get some damage but to get a fatal attack against a heavily armored guy 9 times out of 10… not credible

#5

I’ve never actually been to a bandit/cuman camp at night because I haven’t yet felt the need to be stealthy, but at night are they all sleeping or do they have someone on lookout?

#6

One or 2 look out at night. You can’t stealth kill whole camp at once. Others wake up. So you have to hit and run or switch and go aggro. I don’t wear plate and strength not high for killer swords/bows so I opt for hit and run.

In forest SSE of Talmberg, there are 2 Cuman camps. One is right next to path; other path runs right thru camp. Try it

#7

I wonder if they have energy stats also. As in, if they’re up all night looking out, I wonder if they feel tired during the day. Or even hunger stats… I wonder if you steal all their food, they’ll hunt in the day to fulfill their hunger. I want to test it, but I don’t have the patience for that.

#8

I’ve played a tank too many times. Wanted to play horse archer/assassin

#9

Blocking is already ‘semi-directional’ - firstly it takes less time to form a structured block on the side the attack comes from (though it is typical in German fencing to take an opposing guard and to counter cut rather than dead parrying) - secondly the guard which will block is set at the instant you press the block key. Which is what makes feints work, and also the final strike of a device.

Masterstrikes are a fundamental part of German fencing. Covering and striking in the same tempo.

Currently much of the subtlety is lost because of mid-late game damage scaling. Fighting against full harness soon after you get first access to devices and masterstrikes and with less than stellar weapons is a lot more ‘fun’ than later in the game, when their armour is irrelevant.

Eliminating ‘weapon’ stat explosion with ‘level’ bolstered by damage buffs from stats, skills and perks would go a long way to opening the way for devices to take a more central role in combat - especially if the last strike was given a mild damage boost (or a flat ‘small’ damage delivered in addition to the normal damage).

The time dilation works well as a substitute for the three dimensional ‘flinch causing’ motion, and haptics of weapon contact in Indes. It works better than having ‘real time’ reactions, and allows entry to devices from Indes.

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#10

The game already has negative damage modifiers (eg using Cuman bow when not strong enough). Seems like elaborating on that is better approach than current leveling leading to stat-perk explosion. To me, until Henry becomes proficient, he should suffer reductions in probability of successful hits and reduced damage upon successful hits. Leveling is just reducing the negative damage modifiers. That way you don’t have to create arrow and sword sponges that level up with Henry

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