I don’t know much about fencing but the boxing is hilarious. If the fencing is on any level similar to their boxing then I’d recommend these people not to take anything sharp to their hands in order to avoid self sustained injury.
Otherwise I’d say that some interesting points were raised. @prokybrambora has already invited @warhorse to comment on those and I hope someone will pick up on that.
I can only agree and I’m happy you raised this topic. These are also the points i was talking about. But people on this forums get really aggressive when you post something about fencing being wrong in this game. I my self have 5 years experience with Kunst des Fechtens. I attended workshops, tournaments so i should at least know something about fencing. I purchased this game as i thought it will be historical accurate as possible. I read about barrels, chickens, roads, clouds, stars atc… not beeping accurate but what about combat the most important part. Yes it should be fun and it is, its more accurate than other RPG games but as mentioned is still only stage combat.
To the point 3 i think this could be implemented as you sad it could be same mechanic as on time blocking but instead you would cut or stab into the strike.
Something that also bothers me is crossing of swords and having a face off and than pushing of your opponent away. Pure Hollywood stuff.
But even if nothing changes about fencing i appreciate effort spend into the game and beautiful looks. And i will have fun playing it.
While the counterattack simultaneous with the primary attack could be implemented and it probably wouldn’t be that hard (just another animation for block, possibly unlockable at higher levels of swordfighting), it wouldn’t work from a gameplay perspective.
Such an attack would probably have to be unblockable, because it wouldn’t be possible to attack and trying to block the counterattack at the same time. But if it would be unblockable, it would be unfair if AI had this move - completely unavoidable damage - and it would be overpowered if player had this move.
The current system gives all the entities time to react to both attacks and counterattacks, making the combat system less random or purely stat based.
I can imagine it could be somewhat adjusted (for example instead of holding a sword high above your head it could be held by the shoulder like the Slovaks in the video you linked, but i wouldn’t expect any changes to riposte mechanic, because having counterattack simultaneous with primary attack would hurt the dynamic of gameplay.
HEMA fighting combat isn’t random. Let me explain on a simple counter cut. (Zorn-ort) You cut - pc would use counter trust, you would push Q and you would avoid the blade or bind it. From here you could use another attack. Also the pc could miss the counter cut and would be hit or block (that would be an advantage for you). For every cut there is a counter cut and for every counter cut there is another technique following. Old masters were prepared that opponents would use counter-cuts on them.
@Anupev Yep this is how I imagined it also. Having a normal defence with Q mixed in to either bind and “stop” the blades for a while, or “calm down” the chain of strikes and counterstrikes seems like a good idea too and it isn’t that unreal. It might have effect of unwinding from combat, perhaps in combination with stepping backwards from your opponent.
I agree gameplay would require having some space between strike and counterstrike. There is of course some time between those in real fencing too, as one is action and the other reaction, be it milliseconds. That is why bullet-time would come handy and contribute to transparency (and enjoyment) of the combat.
I understood from WH that in current Alpha 0.4, your attack after parrying was supposed to be unblockable too. But it isn’t. I think counter striking a counterstrike in this manner would work just fine. Clickfest perhaps, but now it is Qfest.
The key change here from gameplay perspective is having a mouse click instead of Q key to counter (or parry). I noticed people have been complaining about the lack of user-friendliness of having Q for quick parry reaction (even without any historical accuracy connotations…)
Hi Elendor, thank you for your valuable feedback.
These are interesting points, so let me elaborate on those quickly and talk a bit about the approach we’ve chosen in Warhorse. First of all, I wouldn’t really agree with the claim some of your criticism is based on:
We are actually working with many swordsmen from around the Czech Republic; our main guide since the beginning was Petr Nůsek, master in Magisterium school (where Peter Koza is a grandmaster), with guys and girls around ARGO and AKA groups. The longsword techniques themselves (for MoCap and game purposes) are really performed and to large extent choreographed by DRC Brno, namely Robert Waschka, interesting and all around awesome person with 30+ years of experience in combat armed and unarmed – and yes, also in a stage fight. The main reason we work with him now is not only his awesomeness: he’s also dedicated gamer himself which made designing process much easier.
So for this point: no, we were not misguided by some stage fighting enthusiasts and made something we didn’t mean to make. 
Our main sources are people building their technique on Liechtenauer and Talhoffer with some modern approaches based on Guy Windsor’s, John Clements’ and others’ recent work.
On the other points though, I tend to agree with you more and I don’t mind confessing that we did some “shady work” on purpose.
First of all: basic attacking animations are not that perfectly great in swordfighting sense: body goes slightly ahead of the sword and the combatants do their “wrist work” much less than they would (and actually much less that our consultants want them).
There are two reasons for that: a) this is just the first act of the game and we want you to meet much more skilled combatants later, b) you need time to react. While “b” may seem as a lame excuse, it’s not: the first mocap session we had with swordsmen on our superfast cameras, each strike took about 2-3 frames. It’s just not possible to dodge, block or do anything with that, so we worked on the animations and made them more “game-friendly” with possible improvement further down the road. (Also as various people pointed out here, there is an RPG involved: lower level opponents have much slower animations.) I wouldn’t call these techniques “completely wrong” though, I see them as just being not as perfect as they could be if we could ignore the gaming side of the problem.
Our main blocking technique is actually “move away from the sword path” while “controlling the enemy blade with yours”. I cannot see anything wrong with that and especially not anything “stagy”. What actually is completely wrong is that clinch technique with crossed blades. We needed to include it in the combat system because there is a lot of situations that we cannot solve by game physics (enemies too close to each other, too close to a wall or an object or in a completely undefined position), so we just put them to the “clinch” and command AI to push / strike / pummel player ASAP so they are not there for long.
About the blades sliding on the sword / body:
I don’t understand your comment to be honest. If you strike the enemy’s armor (actually hitting him), your blade can a) get through and cut him in half, b) slide on it, wounding him in the process (depends on the armor quality / material). Of course you can continue attacking and get more strikes – but it’s already a gameplay, it’s nothing we want to do for you, you just need to attack more.
In this I just don’t agree with you at all. The fact that the word “riposte” didn’t exist at the time (which is btw interesting note!) doesn’t mean there was no technique how to 1) put the enemy sword aside, 2) counterattack. Of course “defense by the offense” is cool concept and we have something called “special parries” in the game (occur when you block the attack very quickly) that are actually dodges or parries with simultaneous counterstrikes, but we have also these “normal parries” which usually deflect the enemy sword from the way and prepare the route for striking back. They are all in slow motion (“adrenaline effect”) so they may seem quite slow – but in reality they aren’t and I cannot see anything “not historical” about them.
Note about “counterattacking instead of blocking”: while it may sounds tempting (to press the “attack” into the enemy attack) I’m not very sure how it would work. We would need to solve the conflict at situations when we are not sure that player a) wants to attack or b) is counterstriking. We actually have made some experiments around that in the past and in the end we’ve decided that “attack” means “attack”. It’s good that you can use it in the sense of “faster striking” – again, RPG involved, if you strike faster, you can actually stab your opponent before he’s able to finish his long overhead strike.
At the end I wanted to say that I really understand your concerns. We are still balancing between reality and game, and while we definitely want Kingdom Come to be “as real as possible”, the game is still some kind of “metaphor” for a real combat situation. We have no directional blocking because in reality you know where the enemy’s sword is (and to point a mouse to enemy sword and pressing a button is actually quite far from how real fencing feels). Enemy is slower when your character has higher level not because people around you become slower but because you perceive them to be slower. Etc. We want the player to feel like being in the real combat situation, not to reconstruct everything to the last part and fail in the end because you cannot strike with a mouse and keyboard. This is the main goal of the combat system of KC: to get you as close as possible and still let you enjoy that, feel that, be there, react.
I still can see a long way ahead of us and what we have here is just a first step. I wouldn’t say it may become something completely different, we are already too far in the development, but I’m quite sure we will improve this and that. I’m really glad that the community helps us this way.
Well said, and appreciated, response. Glad you understand that Elendor is trying to offer constructive criticism, even if there is disagreement on certain things. This is a good indication of a receptive development team that cares about its fans.
Ahoj Viktore, thanks so much for swift and thorough response on behalf of the dev team!
First the obvious - you’ve done and will continue to do fantastic job. I feel sorry for myself being too old now without chance to spend as much time playing KCD next year as I would love to. Youth dreams come true etc etc… My respect to the entire team.
Great to hear you had Petr Nůsek on board, that is a good authority indeed. It wasn’t really my intention to imply that Warhorse underestimated their research of 15th cent. combat, and I apologise if I did. But whatever your consultants told you or showed, the result is pure stage combat fencing. Just call Nůsek and ask what he thinks while playing Alpha 
It is in fact shocking how good of a stage simulator KCD combat is! 
I don’t want to go great lengths about the niceties of stage combat, but because you implemented the 1st person camera so faithfully and the stage moves are nicely mo-capped, I do actually feel like being back on stage when playing Alpha 0.4. It’s a bit awkward sensation to be honest. I must try this with oculus rift LOL.
Attacking
Interesting plans. Perhaps make sense in the RPG context. And I thought having Henry’s fencing style (not skill but style) to improve with time, as someone proposed, is asking too much of the devs
I understand and agree. Bullet-time may help greatly. But the moves are not only slower, they are completely different. I mean, in every possible aspect. Like which part of your body, arm or sword moves first, which later, how your hands react to the impact or hit etc. Why not having correct moves but just executed slower for the motion capture and gameplay purposes? Without having inside information about the caveats of technology etc., I’d like to believe there is some room for improvement here.
Blocking
Now, I know this will sound controversial and I expect loads of shit inbound - but the clinch may be one of the few aspects of KCD combat which are somewhat close to reality! I wanted to talk about this more in connection to armoured combat (I think the clinch is a fantastic and already implemented mechanics for building up wrestling techniques). Clinch as it is in Alpha 0.4 is not too far away from what I labelled as “binding” of opponents blade after your first strike in my post above. In German fencing this usually happens when swords meet above your heads, and the blades are touching at different places (the counterattacking blade would lie on its flat, preferably, and on its strong, while opponents blade would be on its edge and on its weak). But sometimes a low binding close to the crossguard at the level of your chest or waist can happen too (be it rarely). It looks, works and feels almost exactly as your clinch!
But it is not the “holywood” clinch or blocking that is driving me crazy most. It is the:
Parrying
I realised I made a terrible mistake having not elaborated more above, because this is already second misunderstanding that stems from my post. Baron Freix said about riposte (by which I understand parry and counter-attack as two distinct moves/events - I hope we are on the same page) this:
Now, the issue is not the timing of “invention” of riposte, but the fact that a technique such as riposte is not technology neutral. It became to be used in rapier (or even (much) earlier with some one handed weapons, it just wasn’t called riposte) because the mechanism of fighting single-handed with a light (stabbing) weapon is world apart from the physics, mechanics and logic of combat with the strong blade of a two-handed longsword (fechtbucher longsword is essentially two-handed…)
Why is this so? One handed weapons were either too short, too weak or both to provide you with what longsword does splendidly - cover and ability to hit at the same time. Interesting fact - parry and riposte had only extremely limited use in “smallsword” rapiers. Standard long rapiers used longsword techniques. Why deprive yourself of such a great advantage - especially if you don’t hit you opponent right away, it is already too late to attack after your parry because you will be immediately hit with his “nachslag”. In other words, parry and attack doesn’t exist in the longsword world. That is why I included a reference to J. Meyer’s fechtbuch from 1570 including no parry and riposte for longsword even at a time when arguably rapier riposte might have existed officially. Btw Victor, you mentioned taking some inspiration from John Clements - a great sword scholar indeed. Let’s see what he has to say on riposte - see point 29.
But in contrast with German fencing, parry and riposte technique has its perfect place and sense in stage longsword combat. It enables the spectator to better distinguish the phases of attack and defence etc, in other words, makes the fight more understandable. Which is incidentally a completely valid reason why have parry and riposte in KCD if you want to go that way…after-all, gamers are just spectators in some sense.
Oh I couldn’t agree more. Because there is no blocking in reality, there is also no directional blocking in reality. Directional blocking only applies for parry and riposte (quarte, sixte, septime, octave). As posted above, every counterstrike or counterstab with longsword provides cover (to your head) against any strike or stab from whichever direction. But what if you have parry and riposte… ?
The aim of this thread was to try figuring out how to implement real world fighting onto the existing mechanics. I hope it wasn’t a moot exercise. Animations can be changed easily, the concept of strikes, counterstrikes and how they should follow, binding of the swords, everything can be altered without tampering with the physics and even AI I dare say. There are limits, of course, RPG, reactions, technology and all. As you said, you have just made your first steps and I am enthusiastically looking forward to how this game will unfold in the coming months.
Unless there is some strong desire to prevent me from further spamming, I will follow up with armoured wrestling comments and suggestions in the forthcoming weeks…
Did you read what he said. HE HAS been their guide since the beginning! So the alpha combat was probably made off his advice .
Im curious as to why you havent brought this up before, seeing the trailer and the fighting mechanics being the spear head of the advertising for this game, and the fact you joined over a year ago when im assuming you had backed the game, why you have suddenly felt the need to bring up the “inaccurate” swordplay?
Like then nobody would wrote “Why you just cant wait with your for combat in Apha?”.
He asked politely. Viktor give him the answer, mentioned that he understand him and agree with him on some points. What do you want guys?
Seriously, I dont think he deserves all that “lawyering” you do, asking where he was last year, why he remeber incorrectly Jan but its Peter, taking his sentense out of contex… etc.
I wonder if it could be done automaticly, perhaps based on RPG skill probability (or similary as parry but with F), that one combatant will kick/throw/pommel strike his opponent automaticly without the clinch technique?
Coincidentally we’ve just made quite a long video interview with him about the game and combat in general last week It will take some time to prepare for some future video update, however small spoiler is: he’s happy so far.
Anyway, about blocking it’s maybe misunderstanding more than disagreement. I completely get the idea of “blocking by counter-attacking”, I agree with that, like it and we have it in the game. However, in KC: D it’s something for “higher skill” - in our internal terminology we call this “special ripostas” (yes, the word!), only some moves are currently in the Alpha (you will need to unlock them in actual game) and some of them are more like “dodging with counter-attack”. Typical “parries” at the end really are more of those “parry / riposte” style, you are talking about. To our defence I would say two points: 1) I wouldn’t agree they didn’t exist at all (based on our research and our combat sources, Clements in your link also doesn’t talk about the “counter-defence” exclusively), 2) again, gaming reasons. Actually those parries were originally captured and created as one animation together with counter-attack. Our design idea behind splitting them was more into “strategy” part of the combat. As we have a courage system in the fight you can actually make parries without counter-attacking to demoralize your enemy (just one way how to do that; you can also hurt him or kill his sidekick or outnumber him or maybe just look stronger).
But anyway it is interesting discussion and we can look deeper in the topic and talk about your suggestions while making more techniques for other weapons. Thanks for that.
Of course not in any way. Forums are for discussion and this is completely, perfectly and interestingly on-topic.
Unfortunately not possible. We need to align and position both combatants to get them out of a tricky situation so we actually need that part (to get fluently into clinch and then out of it). However we have some ideas of game-play here already (especially for more armored fights and also for unarmed combat) so it may turn out as quite interesting system at the end! 
good insights, thank you. so clearly why some strkes aren’t instant is to make it game play mechanic rather than qte, i’m glad warhorse took this route.
OH shit OH shit i feel hype growing again.
Thanks for clarifying the parrying point Victore, it starts to make sense. Also improving the fencing style as an RPG element sounds great. After all, in real life all fencers start with some pretty stupid movie like swinging with the sword before being ready to embark on German or other schools. Im looking forward to all this and to the video with Petr!
Hahah good question actually. I keenly pledged last year but haven’t followed the updates or the forum much since. I work long hours (as an attorney btw, so no worries about lawyering me ) i don’t play PC games. But when I saw the videos from Alpha, I took vacation for few days, rented a PC 
, played for about 5 hours to explore the combat inside out, and used the remaining time to write these massive posts. That is also why I will be only able to deliver comments on armoured wrestling later in August I think…
Btw my employer is already aware of the fact that I will take like a week long vacation sometime half 2016 and disappear in the woods
gotcha gotcha, and I didn’t mean to come off as a dick I was just very curious.
these were many good point in ur conversation!!!
