RCO - Realistic Combat Overhaul [CONCEPT]

[Treblecyde]

Since perks ruin video games, remove them.

Introduction

I have this revolutionary idea: What if Skyrim rewarded you for being skilled? What if the casual crowd was dethroned, in favor of players who prefer a realistic combat experience?

As it stands now, "skill" in Skyrim equates to loading perks in your perk tree. With most mods that raise the difficulty, you are basically forced to run away from your opponent during combat until you've reached a certain level. Once you've picked enough flowers and caught enough butterflies, you can load up your perk tree, and return to engage him.

That is cancerous to gaming, and the absolute antithesis of skill.

Remove Melee Perks

A daedric warhammer without perks should be more deadly than an iron sword with perks, but it isn't. All one-handed & two-handed weapons, when aimed and timed correctly, should be 100% lethal when planted in someone's skull.

Add locational damage, and always aim for the face.

Completely remove 'Damage Resistance' from playable races. If the user doesn't swing in the perfect manner, it will lead to his death 100% of the time since the enemy will immediately retaliate from his failure. The only reason to ever use a power attack would be to possibly break someone's shield, or take down a much higher level enemy (ie Giant, Troll, etc).

Remove Blocking Perks

Blocking should be the forefront of all melee combat, and must be timed perfectly in order to be effective. By perfect, I mean that they should be drawn within a small window of <0.5 seconds before impact. Shields should break 100% of the time when attempting to block two-handed attacks. They should completely stop all daggers. If in good condition, they should stop all swords and war axes (except maybe daedric or other high damage/enchanted one-handers). Maces break lower-medium quality shields.

Shields degrade over time, rendering them useless. The higher the quality, the longer it can withstand usage and avoid breakage. Allow the highest quality shields to slow down certain two-handed attacks, and instead of death, cause staggering. The most efficient form of beating two-handers is to simply weave in and out of combat in order to attain the upper hand. Carrying a shield should slow down the player by a certain percentage. Shields degrade over time.

Remove Armor Perks

Add locational damage. Add more often, yet less intrusive staggering. Poorly timed/aimed swings are not lethal, but still remove a certain percentage of your health (preferably 99%) and create a staggering effect.

Heavy Armor should be minimally stronger than Light Armor, and should resist all daggers aimed at the body. However, you'll be forced to change your armor early and often if you wish to keep its durability. All armor that is looted should already be in poor-medium condition. Again, there's no helmet in the game that will block a well-delivered warhammer to the face.

Light Armor is 100% useless to most weapons, however, it allows you to weave in and out of combat more efficiently, dodging blows left and right. Also, it looks cool.

Remove Sneak Perks

If you're wearing light clothing, moving slowly, and out of sight, there is no reason you shouldn't remain undetected.

Make the Game Suck Less

If the game sucks less, you suck less. By removing these useless combat perks, it would force users to be skilled during combat. This results in a much more satisfying combat experience. Without combat perks, it would allow players to utilize perks that they actually need, like Smithing or Enchantment.

Of course, if I had it my way, I would remove all perks, and instead use a progression system that allows you to advance solely through experience. It would notify you when you have reached a certain level in any given skill, elaborate on what you've unlocked, and give you a progress report on how much more work is required in order to advance again. I would overhaul the entire smithing system, forcing people to smith a particular piece of equipment if they wish to increase their skill in making better quality equipment of that same kind. Instead of elemental advancement.

Conclusion

This is me just spit-balling, and it's the tip of the iceberg. So if it's possible, I'll indulge further. I literally wrote this in 5 minutes so I'm sure there are many inconsistencies, so I'd love any and all feedback on how to improve this concept.

For instance; I have no clue how Archery would work. Of course, you can't use this same formula with Archery, or else it would be severely overpowered, but I thought it was well-done in Requiem so I'd recommend that as a base. As a matter of fact, Requiem was the inspiration behind this concept. As a human, I am naturally intrigued by challenges, and Requiem certainly offers that. There is nothing more satisfying than being one-hit killed for not playing skillfully and tactically. However, the RPG-aspect of Requiem is lightyears ahead of vanilla, but I'll save that for a rainy day. Obviously high mod compatibility would be preferable, especially with ASIS, which would ensure great difficulty with this mod.

I've added a poll to see where others stand on this issue. I know that this community is into hardcore RPG-based elemental gameplay, so it won't be the most popular overhaul, however I'm sure that there are many people here who would love to see Skyrim question their true ability as a warrior, as opposed to having the combat be 100% dependent on perks.

Realistic Combat Overhaul

[Oubliette]

You've posted in the wrong sub forum, this is for general site feedback and suggestion. For Skyrim mod wips and concepts I imagine you'd want the Skyrim Mod Discussion sub forum. You can use the report feature to ask a moderator to move your thread. Good luck with your WIP.

[Treblecyde]

Thanks, can a mod please move this thread to its proper location and preferably delete this post as well as the last one. I'd love to see some feedback on this.

[EvilKempe]

Bumping this.

 

Because I highly endorse this idea!