My thoughts on Balancing Combat

Combat system
#1

As many of us have already experienced there comes a point in the game where it literally goes from challenging combat to ridiculously easy in one fell swoop. Why does this happen? From my experience with the game and my testing with 2 different play lines this is what I think.

  • Leveling is WAY to fast. It’s possible to train in the arena with Bernard all day and level up with no risk involved. This should be removed entirely. After the initial training quest and duel with Hans you should no longer gain experience in the arena unless it’s at a super super super nerfed rate.

  • Remove strength, vitality, and agility based perk modifiers from the game and replace them with something more interesting. Combining these stat padding perks only pushes Henry closer to achieving “critical mass” where he can punch a Knight in full plate to death in 2-3 strokes. (Actually haven’t tried this but can confirm full plate knights die in 1-3 longsword attacks)

  • Remove any damage modifiers from gaining levels from all combat perks. Leveling up sword should not increase your damage, instead the reward for learning new attacks should be enough.

  • Strength should not increase your damage directly. Instead it should be only used as a requirement in using more powerful weapons, and the more powerful weapons should have higher strength requirements than they do now.

  • Perfect Blocks should be significantly harder for AI and the player. We need a more risk/reward factor for perfect blocks. If you manage to pull one off your opponent should pay dearly, but if you fail it could mean the end for you. Rely more on “regular” blocks would be more fun, more realistic, and increase the value of having combos, because the point of these combos are to help you fool your opponent and have a way to penetrate a defense.

  • AI needs HUGE IMPROVEMENTS. Wild game often stands around and just soaks up arrows, and they don’t even try to run much when you get close. Same with the Human AI. They are passive, predictable. I can literally run into a bandit camp and smack 2-3 guys around before the other guys take notice and start doing anything. Huge immersion killer.

Stats are important in RPGs. Unfortunately for KC:D it’s easy to evolve into Greger Clegane and cleave through plate cladded Knights with reckless abandoned, that’s not fun nor is it realistic.

I don’t think we need to upscale enemies or increase HP of them – I just think we need make changes to how Henry progresses, clean up AI, and fix up the armor/defense stat mechanics. Henry should get stronger as the game goes on and more formidable because that is natural for RPG progression – Henry should never become a Demi-God of mass destruction though under any circumstance. If the game is left in this state that will always be the case.

6 Likes
#2

I just added a mod that halvs my xp gain… and Iam not going to train with Bernard other than what I got to as part of the story and to get access to the spacial stuff
hope it helps… because Iam not that fare into the game and I can also sole camps with no issue… and it is ruining the immersion.

#3

The issue with that for me though, is it’s not gradual level scaling. One moment you’re being challenged, and the next level you’re utterly destroying enemies. I fought runt at 10 swordsmen ship, and got my ass beat, then i leveled my swordsmanship to 12, went back and beat him easily.

There’s really no middle ground, you either cannot beat them, or you easily destroy them.

3 Likes
#4

I think they just need to come out with difficulty settings. The moment I heard there would be no difficulty options I got a little worried that this might happen, and low and behold it has.

At the same time I don’t want them to make the game more hardcore for us masochists and consequently alienate the more casual gamers who would rather not be constantly dying. Easy, Normal, Hard, Nightmare mode, with appropriate weapon/armor balancing for each…problem solved!

#5

I agree with the OP to an extent, I still want to be able to train but maybe slow down xp gained. I really hate difficulty settings and hope we don’t get that. I just think Henry just needs some tweaks and toned down a bit.

1 Like
#6

I would make the training based on time/repetition…

I don’t agree that it should be removed completely. The fact is people DID train with these weapons. Modern soldiers train with weapons… The idea of killing it entirely makes no sense, realistically.

However, getting to high skill levels in a day or two is most definitely overpowered… like real training, base it on time and repetition as opposed to “XP” points.

That is after all, how proficiency in any martial art is gained… Time, practice, repetition.

#7

I WAS disappointed that after only a few game days… Captain Bernard, my “instructor”… is now a play thing for me to slap around on a whim. lol

Training definitely needs an overhaul to make it more time consuming and consequently more rewarding to reach that “student surpasses the master” phase.

1 Like
#8

AI needs HUGE IMPROVEMENTS. Wild game often stands around and just soaks up arrows

I thought rabbits were known for being skittish, I put a handful of arrows right between their little ears and they just stand there.

#9

I fought runt at 10 swordsmen ship, and got my ass beat, then i leveled my swordsmanship to 12, went back and beat him easily.

I put an arrow in his face and won immediately.

He should have worn a helmet.

#10

It’s highly unlikely that Warhorse is going to do anything about combat difficulty for the foreseeable future, so the questions are…

Can damage bonuses from weapon skill and strength be modified or removed via the game’s .pak files?

If so, does this need to be combined with an edit to weapon damage or armor values to keep the player’s damage in check? Is it even possible to modify weapon damage, for that matter?

Is it possible to remove or tone down certain imbalanced perks, such as Cuman Killer (+50% damage against Cumans) and Heavy Swing (flat 20% damage increase for weapons that require strength to yield)?

I think there needs to be a specific goal in mind when talking about “balancing combat.” Sure, the game is way too easy, but how can that be addressed in an elegant way? A health buff mod already exists that makes the game more challenging, but it also makes rabbits and other game laughably hard to kill – and it makes the early game far too challenging. It also lessens the significance of armor, since bandits wearing linen shirts are almost as tough as their plate-wearing varieties. That’s a huge, huge issue.

#11

There’s also the problem of cinches and unstoppable combos.

The skills - not the just the stats - need to be modified and rewritten.

Combat is actually very “stat” oriented which I didn’t expect, I thought it would be skill oriented and you’d unlock additional skills (i.e. Master Combos) through training.

You can become an unstoppable powerhouse really easy unfortunately.

#12

Ripostes are a big issue, too. You can beat the snot out of any opponent with one finger on the Q button (or whatever your block button is) and press it at the right time, and you get a free – and often devastating – attack that often one-shots enemies.

It’s hilariously easy. At one point, I managed to riposte 17 of Bernard’s attacks in a row, and I could’ve kept going. Beating the hell out of him was reduced to me having my index finger on my Q key.

1 Like
#13

It doesn’t even take that much time.

You don’t have to grind for a million years. The XP gain is just ludicrous.

I had 18 Herbalism before I even left Skalitz.

#14

There’s quite a few strength, vitaity and agility perks that are fine, however perks such as headcracker is too overpowered and should be removed or replaced.

I think strength should affect your damage as higher strength equates to a more powerful strike, however it can’t be combined with increased damage from leveling stats with each weapon.

AI in combat certainly needs improvement, but what also needs improvement is making it easier to switch focus from one enemy to another and make it more fluid. I would also like to see AI actively trying to surround the player making your death inevitable unless you get away from the encircling.

#15

I started a new game just to get that feel back of how the combat is intended to be. But alas, not even 10 hours in and I’m already 1 hitting opponents. It just makes combat more of a chore than an enjoyable feature.

For me it needs to be fast paced with that back and forth exchange of attacks and blocks. The closest you get to that is when training with captain Bernard but even he becomes sub-par with minimal time invested. It already seems a lifetime ago where I was actually cautious and a little scared of running into a bandit camp and now it’s just a case of “right, let’s just get this over with”.

I agree with the OP. His points seems like a very sensible way to improve this and not overdo it.

1 Like
#16

Three tweaked factors to make combat what it should be…

  1. Filter certain type of weapon damage (Stab, Slash, Blunt) by amour type being attacked. They released a video explaining how the combat system would only allow kinetic damage to plate and mail. The example showing how a sword was useless against plate. This was a selling feature in the marketing of this game. It appears this damage filtering has either been disabled for cpu performance or is not working.

  2. Make the AI more combat useful. Currently, they are as tactically intelligent as a doorknob.

  3. Take away any stat improvements from grinding in the practice pit with the Captain. It should be used only to learn the combat mechanics of the game and to practice as a player.

Higher tier NPC’s should have better armour, faster ai, better weapons and more HP.

My two cents…

1 Like
#17

Back and forth blocking/striking seems a bit too hollywood for me. It works great in movie scenes, but it’s not realistic. When two people go at each other with knives, swords, etc… in reality it’s NOT a long drawn out dramatic fight in which everything that happens is crystal clear and precise. It’s fast, chaotic and unbelievably dangerous for both parties… coreographed fights are designed to let the audience get a sense of what’s happening… the real thing happens too fast and it’s not flashy or pretty.

So, in some ways, the combat is very lenient in terms of realism… and if it were as devastating and chaotic as the real thing, not a lot of people would enjoy it. I DO still think training needs to be tweaked a bit so that it isn’t an overnight progression to master swordsman… but a cinematic, drawn out, dramatic sequence of blocks/strikes would be just as bad for me. That just doesn’t happen in real combat where weapons are involved.

#18

This ‘preventing rampant damage scaling’ is how I am approaching the issue in my trial mod.

1 Like
#19

Just found out your mod, made you a comment on Nexus :slight_smile: Going to test it more thoroughly now to find out which approach I like the best.

1 Like
#20

For the love of God, please tell me you’re a tech wizard and can independently port this to Xbox. :sob:

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