First Person Melee Combat: Can it be done well?

[hanselthecaretaker]

So I haven't heard much on the Kingdom Come: Deliverance game that's been in development for quite a while, in quite a while. Today though, developer Warhorse released a new clip detailing the combat system.


My first impression after watching it is basically, high attention to detail...but the execution still seems to have a ways to go. The "initial" release date is currently scheduled for February 13, 2018. Hopefully they can polish it up between now and then. I remember playing the beta build around a couple years ago, but there wasn't much of a melee system yet.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Well, Chivalry has better PvP than Dark Souls. In first person view, there is no auto-aim, which in a way cheapens the fight.

Dark Souls actually has really great pvp hampered by bad netcode and poor balance. On LAN it works great.

But pvp has never exactly been the primary focus of the games, which is why these things are accepted.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

While it was a good video, that made me somewhat interested in it, I still don't know how that actions translates into a mouse and keyboard or controller setup. If it's one gesture move, which needs vigiliance and continued input from players, a rythm type where you press the right button at the right time, or pre-"rendered" action moves that executes from a single button push.

These things should matter as well...right?

I'm going to date myself here but I thought Rune did it very well!

 

[sanquin]

Okay, I watched the video now. It looks pretty good, but I fear that with so much complex freedom of movement, there are gonna be unfortunate exploits that are difficult for the team to take care of. Edit: Oh, this doesn't have multiplayer. Then I guess it doesn't matter. To be honest, knowing it's an RPG kind of turns me off. For some reason, I don't believe this is gonna have a compelling story or fun progression.

Depends on the type of rpg. It could not have levels/abilities at all. Only better equipment and your experience as a player, but instead have a good story where you can actually roleplay like in the rpgs of old. That would still make it an rpg, though a lot of people would start calling it an action/adventure game at that point.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Honestly I feel like first person melee is very difficult to work with since its missing a key element that is necessary for it to feel right, namely peripheral vision. DoF can only do so much but in melee combat there are visual subtleties that the FPS camera still doesn't quite emulate well enough.

 

[Hazy992]

Go play Shadow Warrior, the katana is the best part

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I actually think that Skyrim and even Oblivion did it fairly well for their time.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I've never played a first person game and enjoyed melee combat or traversal/climbing. First person is good for shooting, but its awkward for anything else, because the screen can't replicate human depth perception, so its always hard to know how far away things are. If I'm going to be climbing and navigating complex terrain, I much prefer third person.

 

[Squilookle]

It can be done well, but will never be better than the same done from 3rd person. That's why is so sad to see Kingdom Come follow this path. They may have pretty graphics, a living world, and the writers of Mafia, but they're taking on Mount and Blade Bannerlord, and from day one the Mount and Blade games have always offered both 1st and 3rd person perspectives.

Pretty much nobody plays 1st when there's the choice. The proof is in the pudding.

 

[Zhukov]

That video looked better than I was expecting.

Still wish it had a bit more animation polish though. That system combined with the animation chops of Dishonored would be something special.

As for existing games that did first person melee well, I'd say Mirror's Edge Catalyst and the aforementioned Dishonored. Although neither of those systems would fit the goals of Kingdom Come.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I think the question shouldn't be if it can be done. (It can.) But whether it should be done at all. Third person melee works very well and besides maybe for immersion, I don't see why we should change it. Sure, first person melee can definitely work but third person just simply does it better in almost every area except perhaps, again, immersion.

I actually think that Skyrim and even Oblivion did it fairly well for their time.

This, although the biggest problem with Skyrim (and Oblivion by extension) was the huge lack of feedback from most of your melee swings. You hit an enemy with a regular attack from your greatsword and they won't even flinch. Now, there's actually a good reason for this. If you could make enemies flinch badly from all your melee swings, you could immediately abuse that right at level one to take down any enemy with a bunch of stunlocks, given enough time. It would also be annoying if it was applied to you. Nevertheless, the problem of little feedback from enemies remain.

 

[American Tanker]

Well, I can think of one game that did first-person melee really well.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

But that game was entirely set in a prison, featuring mostly small improvised weapons.

 

[CritialGaming]

Well, Chivalry has better PvP than Dark Souls. In first person view, there is no auto-aim, which in a way cheapens the fight.

Dark Souls actually has really great pvp hampered by bad netcode and poor balance. On LAN it works great.

But pvp has never exactly been the primary focus of the games, which is why these things are accepted.

Dark Souls PVP can eat a bag of dicks. That fucking game. It took me hours to get through the first area in the second expansion, simply because people kept invading me. I would be find with being invaded if people came to fight me, but 95% of invaders don't fight you, they run into packs of enemies and wait for you to try to come to them, or jump you when your fighting something else. That's not PVP that's ganking and it's bullshit.

Even when fighting on even ground the games netcode is so trash that people can hit you from a mile away, and take zero damage when you hit them because the game seems to favor the invader at all times. It's utter nonsense.

Also FUCK ANGELS, those flying asswipes can gtfo of my game thanks.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

Shadow warrior and Riddick did best first person melee.

otherwise im very much looking forward to kingdom come. its bieng develop by mafia 1 developer so im expecting a very good storyline.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

That video looked better than I was expecting.

Still wish it had a bit more animation polish though. That system combined with the animation chops of Dishonored would be something special.

As for existing games that did first person melee well, I'd say Mirror's Edge Catalyst and the aforementioned Dishonored. Although neither of those systems would fit the goals of Kingdom Come.

Yup, animation is key here, especially when physics-based. It looks like there is very little animation blending going on. They just sort of "spring back" to their default position after getting hit too much.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I kinda liked the first person melee in Dead Island. Obviously one-sided, but still.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

That video looked better than I was expecting.

Still wish it had a bit more animation polish though. That system combined with the animation chops of Dishonored would be something special.

As for existing games that did first person melee well, I'd say Mirror's Edge Catalyst and the aforementioned Dishonored. Although neither of those systems would fit the goals of Kingdom Come.

Yup, animation is key here, especially when physics-based. It looks like there is very little animation blending going on. They just sort of "spring back" to their default position after getting hit too much.

What moves could be done in Dishonoured, though? It's unfair to expect something like Kingdom Come's more realistic approach to mirror what could be a set of very simple canned animations.

Some of the transitions look a little rough, but that might be a compromise needed to support the complexity they're aiming for.

I'll almost certainly get Kingdom Come as I'm interested in it from a HEMA perspective; games' depictions of armed combat is mostly complete garbage, ditto TV and film. So even though - from the looks of it - KC's system should be even more restrictive (it certainly doesn't represent some ideal for me), the novelty of a proper SP RPG trying to approximate historical systems is probably enough for to hand cash over to give it a go.

As for FP melee combat in general? As has been namechecked already, Riddick:EfBB did it quite well, but I feel in general it's simply not a good fit. TES's first-person melee combat is risible in terms of barely having any mechanics whatsoever, but it's a generic example of how FP melee is mostly focused on a vague sense of inertia, dramatic 'immersion' and contact as opposed to having any applied system depth worth a damn.

Mods can tweak Skyrim's melee combat into something more satisfying, upping the ante with improved AI, altering effective contact range (and angle) between weapon types, and increasing damage to ensure combat is more consequential, but obviously that's not doing anything about the barely-there controls and mechanics, so it's tinkering with the edges.

I'd love to see a TES try Kingdom Come's approach, but I know there's about as much chance of that as there is of Bethesda going back to Morrowind era core design.

edit / also... Isn't this thread in the wrong place? It's in the spamfest write-off than is Gaming Discussion.

 

[Majestic Manatee_v1legacy]

Shadow Warrior and Dying Light and Condemned did first person melee very well and I would not prefer them in 3rd person at all.