This is only an idea, because I have no idea if we can alter the AI, Stamina, and add in the necessary debuffs to make this work.
Simply put: I dislike how over 50% of the combat is waiting… waiting to recover your stamina after you blocked. Waiting to recover your stamina after you attacked. Waiting to recover your stamina after you ran up to an enemy…
it’s a whole ton of waiting around, starring at each other like the filler episodes of Dragon Ball Z. That’s not how swordfighting works… no one gets exhausted after six swings, not even very unfit people. A blacksmith’s son and local tough will be far more capable.
So, here’s an idea, and a discussion, for a possible reworking to make the fighting more action-packed and authentic.
There are two possible routes.
Faster Pace:
Much faster stamina regeneration, maybe more stamina as well. Stamina might regenerate four times faster. So, instead of waiting up to four seconds after a long combo, you’re going to be waiting one second.Now, to make this style of combat work, the enemies will have to be more aggressive, regularly attacking you. This will make groups of enemies far more intimidating.
Slower Pace:
Alternatively, we could have a slower paced stamina system, which is more strategic and more like the real nature of fatigue. Basically, your stamina regeneration rate is shrunk to 10% of what it was. However, you now have approximately 100x the maximum stamina.Stamina damage essentially represents being beaten up, bruised, having the wind knocked out of you, and maybe losing your balance. You don’t recover all that fast, from being beaten about with a sword while wearing a tin-suit. Fighting itself can be exhausting, but not in the way KCD presents, where you get exhausted after swinging four times…
As a fight goes on, and you beat each other up, you will both get more tired and slower.Enemies would, again, need to be somewhat more aggressive, and need to adjust their behaviour to match this system. Otherwise, the player will just back up for 40 seconds, instead of backing up for 4 seconds.
Additional ideas which may be useful in either style:
Bruising Debuff. Long-term Stamina Damage:
A major function of stamina in KCD, is that when you run out of stamina, your armour loses its effectiveness. Armour basically converts HP damage into Stamina Damage. It’s a cool idea, and I like the concept.
So an important point is to maintain this quality in any stamina redux. One way would be through creative debuffs, like a Bruising one. It’d be similar to Crippling people’s head, harms, legs and torso. It would have a shorter duration, and it’s main effect would be to lower your maximum Stamina. The debuff would recover fairly quickly, and your maximum stamina would go up as it wore off. Effectively, this would be stamina damage that takes longer to recover from.
The point of this is simple enough. It’s to give the impression of being beaten so sore you can hardly recover. In KDC, when you get whacked with the murder-stroke of a sword and lose all your stamina, I don’t get the impression of dazing head-trauma which is the real-world example that’d stick with you a long time into the fight. Instead, it feels more like when your buddy comes up behind you and gives your a hard smack on the back. Really surprising and disorienting, but only for one second. That’s how stamina damage and recovery feels, in the game.
Now of course there is HP damage which lowers your maximum stamina, and that covers some of this. But wounding that lessens your ability to fight is generally pretty serious, and takes days or weeks to recover from. That’s why I’m suggesting this middle-ground, form of damage, which you see simulated in some sports games and the like.
I think that’s enough talking points for now. One thing I would like some help with, is understanding the damage formula of KCD. I’m not sure how armour, damage, and stamina all come together.