Mounted Combat in Gaming.

[FrozenWinter]

As I was falling asleep last night, I thought about the random games I've played lately. Somehow I got into thinking about mounted combat from Mount & Blade to Conquer Online. I remembered the conversations I've had with people throughout the years about this game having great combat and this one sucking. I got to thinking, why were those good games different from the bad ones? How were they special?

So the question I pose to you all, what makes a great mounted combat system? Is it the speed? Is it having physics? How about running over people? Being able to shoot them from horse back or use snazzy spells? Variety in the mount? The mount being able to instantly turn to face another direction like a MMO or that the mount needs room to move around? Is it because of something else? What are your thoughts?

 

[Tayh]

Inertia, control of movement, control of aiming, attack directions, multiple way of engaging in fights(bows, lances, swords, etc).
Basically everything Mount&Blade did.
And everything that Skyrim didn't. Seriously, most atrocious mounted combat I have ever experienced.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Do you mean melee combat or fighting in general? As it was quite good in Red Dead Redemption, because auto-aim did all the work. The controls (on PS3 at least) let me move while firing and not have them affecting each other.
This may be controversial, but my favourite mounted section ever is probably the bit in Black Ops 2. It flowed well, the speed was right, the shooting wasn't affected too much and the level itself was structured well.

 

[The Madman]

Possibly the biggest thing about Mount & Blade's combat which makes it so good is that you always feel like you're in control and everything reacts the way you'd expect it to react, whether that's dealing extra damage swinging a sword from the back of a charging horse or dealing less damage because they're too close and the blade of the weapon isn't striking effectively. Everything feels like it makes sense and is something that is in control of the player.

By contrast most melee combat in games tends to be click a button and watch your character do something for you. Even games I really like such as Witcher 2 does that. You're not really in 'control' of everything, you're just telling your character what to do and hoping it works properly.