LE Skyrim Combat Overhaul

[peregrine111]

1. Revised Difficulty

- people are tired of enemies just hitting harder and having several times higher health whenever you move difficulty upwards

 

- remove Health and Magicka bonuses of NPCs on higher difficulties - it's ridiculous to meet a mage in torn cloth robe having like 5 000 HP and unlimited mana (or so it seems). You just try to cut them and block their attacks (and even if you block it, the PARTIAL damage you still take is enough to take down quarter of your health), while they hit you 2 times and you're dead (since even if you are stacking health, you still have very little..

 

To make it little more realistic:

- make their armor rating really count - you should feel the difference between hitting a bandit in fur "armor" and an imperial general in full plate or even a dragon.

- a lot of enemies (about 80-90%) should go down on 1 direct hit (real life difficulty), unless they have blocked, dodged or parried your attack. Same goes for you - you cannot expect to take 20 arrows in the chest and still stand to butcher them.

 

2. Revised Armor system

- current system works weird. completely. We have some useless "metal" categories that should judge the effectiveness of armor, so you virtually HAVE TO wear some ass-ugly daedric/dragonplate armor to stand a chance against enemies.

- I ask, does the metal REALLY have such effect on mitigating damage? Shouldn't the TYPE of armor be the main thing?

 

- the idea is to look at armor, and change it's armor value to a realistic value depending on the looks of it. As all current plate sets look kinda tank-like, you get the idea - the armor rating should be more or less the same for all - so 0 for cloth, basic value for light, and even more for plate (~4x more than light)

- to make those metals differ, I suggest we made up some bonuses for them, like, elven armor can be enchanted 20% better, daedric has 20% reduction for fire damage taken, etc. Not something game-breaking, but possibly worthwhile bonuses.

 

3. Revised Combat

- WHERE IS OUR ACROBATICS SKILL? I mean, being a giant and muscular warrior is nice, but they are apparently too proud to dodge an attack, or at least parry it..

 

- I guess it would be appropriate to change the skills in BLOCK tree (as they are all useless after these changes anyway) to following:

basic skill - Parry - You gain ability to Parry an attack, avoiding 100% damage. (When enemy is swinging his weapon at you, you have ~0.5 sec window before it lands to use, let's say, MouseButton3, which will automatically cause your character to parry an attack with most items - aka you can parry with a sword, axe, mace, staff, torch, or even a spell (telekinetically stop enemy's blade mid-air))

 

Improved Parry - After you successfully parry an attack, your next attack is 20/35% quicker. If you dual wield, you also damage your enemy with your left hand weapon when you parry an attack. (aka if you dual wield, while you parry with Right hand, you also stab enemy with left hand at the same time and also your next attack will come sooner)

 

Deflect - Spells bounce off your shield while you block, deflecting spell to random direction.

 

Dodge - You can now dodge attacks. (few new keybinds for this - basic dodge (to the back), maybe dodge to the left and dodge to the right too, but animations need to be cool!!! :D)

 

Shield Bash - same as now, but maybe with little higher damage. Right now it's not even noticable. I guess he would suffer more if stood on his foot..

 

Improved Shield Bash - Power Shield Bashing enemy who is trying to power attack will knock him down and disarm him. ( punch him in his fungly face with your giant shield with such force he will be sent flying, dropping his weapon in the process - ofc he will try to get the weapon back as soon as he get up from the floot)

...

 

3. Revised Spells

I guess I'm not the only one really unhappy with this damn spam system in Skyrim - spells are not getting any better.. in fact, you just can spam them more often.

so, I suggest:

<insert magic school> Skill should NOT decrease the mana cost (if you must, change talents to affect it more, but I guess 50% from them are more than enough), instead, make it affect effectiveness of spells

- Destruction spells doing more damage

- Restoration spells healing for more

- summons lasting longer/more summons at the same time

- longer buffs

- more effective spells like Stoneskin (or whatever the name is)

 

aka enhance the SPELL, do not nullify mana cost! That's the problem with this game - low lvl mages do nice damage if they hit. High level mages do nice damage, BUT they don't have to hit! They just spam the spell while running around till their target lies dead.

 

to effects:

Fire spells should fly somewhat slower (Oblivion style - coz in Skyrim they hit so fast you are burned to ashes till you can react), and that blinding effect (mainly on Fireball - that massive explosion that causes you to lose eyesight for 2 seconds) should be NERFED HARD. It's not so bad if you are hit once/twice. But high level casters have neverending mana, and that means being blinded and ignited nonstop (up to the point you are out of potions and become a charred husk)

 

4. Revised Archery

- bows are kinda useless in Skyrim. I mean, in Oblivion, you could snipe all day, as most enemies went down after arrow or two.. in Skyrim, you shoot, and shoot, and shoot.... and your enemy can apparently take more arrows than Boromir till he dies, even dodging most of them..

 

suggestions:

- damage could use a little buff, not high if you implement point 1 and eliminate those few thousands HP NPCs

- overall shooting speed needs a really big buff. I mean (again), in Oblivion, you could draw and arrow and shoot it in like 1 sec total. Now it takes FOREVER. And I mean it! Sometimes it feels the hero needs to go home, forge the arrow's head, get a straight shaft, couple of feathers, get it together, run back and fire it. Usually if you hit an enemy, till you can fire next arrow he is already bashing your skull by then..

- arrow speed also needs a buff.. I guess real life arrows fly like 2-3 times faster (so you can't really dodge an arrow fired from 3 metres from you.. yet in Skyrim, it IS possible. I very much raged few times when I was shooting and shooting and shooting and enemy kept dodging all the time by few centimetres)

 

- if possible, it would be nice to implement effects depending on part of the body hit:

-- headshot - instant death

-- chest - hole in lungs - stagger and bleed

-- arms - drop the thing you hold in that arm

-- legs - arrow in the knee - large movement penalty

-- back - knock you down

(joke: -- balls - large damage and blocked dragon shouts for a loooooooooong time - aka you can't shout without ballz! you can just scream like a girl.. heal to full and your balls might regenerate :tongue: )

 

5. Revised Stamina

Here we are, with the stat that is making PAIN out of combat

suggestions:

- make all actions take much less stamina (you are not supposed to catch your breath after 1 power attack! If some damn Gimly did this in the battle for Helm's Deep, he would cut 5 heads, not 42)

- nerf the combat regeneration of stamina by A LOT. The idea is to massacre all enemies while you can still hold a weapon, you may rest after that. Eventually you'll be capable of fighting nonstop for 20-30 seconds, but after that you will probably run out of stamina and get much much weaker

- blocking with a shield or parrying will take much less stamina when used within last 1-0.5 sec before strike. if you are blocking all the time, it will exhaust you faster. That also needs making blocking way faster (better instant). No more 1 sec between you rightclick and raise your shield

 

 

 

and possibly more changes (mainly AI of companions, which are dumber than a rock, etc)

Edited January 31, 2012 by peregrine111

[rptb1]

Your experience of Skyrim seems very different from mine.

 

1. Enemies hit for double and you hit for half on "master difficulty". That is all that master difficulty means. So if you took that away, there wouldn't be any master difficulty. I'm not sure what you want instead. (

would be nice.)

 

2. I play on master difficulty, and a lot of enemies do go down in one direct power attack with a warhammer.

 

3. I already dodge attacks all the time, using actual movement. I'm not keen to have WoW-style "chance to dodge" or "chance to parry" die-roll procs introduced to the game. I'd rather use my own skill. There's already plenty of interest: block-bash to interrupt their power attack (even with a bow), then counterattack, for example. That covers a lot of your "parry and stab".

 

4. Lightweight bows draw very fast once you have the relevant perk. Heavy bows draw slower, but hit harder. Many enemies do go down in one bow hit from stealth, even on master difficulty. They've done so throughout the game, even when my archery wasn't at 100. The high level draugr are total damage sponges though.

 

5. Arrow dodging cuts both ways. I find it very useful that *I* can dodge arrows, especially since I'm worth about two arrow hits at level 50. Good timing prevents enemies doing the same to you. I've been a real life archer (though not for some years) and the arrow speed doesn't seem unrealistic to me. But gameplay trumps realism anyhow.

 

All that said, try out the "deadly combat" mod. It has some of the things you want.

[peregrine111]

I just want it to be more "action" and less running away.

 

Blocking, parrying and dodging are supposed to keep you "safe" as long as you can use them at the right time. Combat would be more dynamic (have you seen ANY fantasy or at least action movie? Enemies usually go down when you cut their guts open. They don't take 20 swings with a giant axe to finally fall (not even "bosses")). On master difficulty, even a frikkin bandits can kill you if there is 2 of them, since one will make you busy with his giant health, and the other one will be casting/shooting nonstop at you).

 

I'm not saying that everyone wants an ovehaul like this.

[rptb1]

Yes, but that's exactly what makes "master difficulty" difficult: you either have to be much tougher yourself, or manage the fights better (distractions, followers, movement, etc.). Even on master difficulty, you can

. (Even in that fight, you can see one particular NPC takes about 10 point-blank arrows to kill.)

 

I do think "master difficulty" is pretty poor, since it only affects damage and nothing else. It doesn't make NPCs smarter, or more sensitive to noise, or more numerous, better equipped, able to self heal, etc. etc.

 

To simulate the effect you want (both you and enemies going down in few hits) use a *low* difficulty setting, and artificially lower your own health with the console, or take off your armour. I've played the whole game without armour (or alteration spells) for this reason.