Poll: REALISTIC medieval combat

vivalahelvig

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Swords were basically useless for late medieval period combat. It can't easily pierce armor, which everyone had by that point. It wont do much when slashing at chainmail or plate. The 2-handed sword is a different story though, some of those things were massive and could definetely lop of limbs and do damage.

But then you would have to deal with the map longbowmen and crossbow men, the latter could pierce plate armor. Then there are early guns, which werent too common but were dangerous.

Medieval combat wasnt just about swords and axes, there was a lot more, blocks of pikemen, musketeers, crossbowmen, longbowmen, double pay soldiers, germans, etc.
 

someonehairy-ish

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I wouldn't want medieval combat to be as realistic as possible. But at the same time, I get bored of the usual melee combat styles you see in games: Slow first person mashing away with a weapon (Skyrim) or 3rd person spinning around and darting all over the place (Prince of Persia) - neither of which require much in the way of tactics.

The way I figure I'd like a melee game to work would be like this:

Your left trigger button would control your left hand. Your right trigger button would control your right hand for attacking. Any combination of weapons can be used, and one hand can have a shield. The 'second triggers' or shoulder buttons would also control your respective hands and be mostly for blocking, but some kind of context-sensitive grab could work too.
The little d-pad (arrow-key things) would control targeting. Specifically, you'd auto-target the general torso area on the nearest enemy that you're looking at. The up arrow would switch you to targeting the head. The left and right would target enemy arms. The down arrow would target legs.
You'd also have a stamina bar which would deplete on blocking, attacking and possibly things like climbing or dodging. Wearing heavy armour or carrying a heavy weapon would not cause your stamina to reduce faster, but it would mean you start off with a smaller initial stamina pool.

Blocking could work one of two ways: Either it has to be timed correctly to work, but doesn't deplete much stamina, or it can held but will continuously deplete stamina.

So combat would revolve around trying to create an opening, either by coming up with a series of attacks that leave your opponents' weak spots open, or by outmaneuvering them, or by forcing them to drain all of their stamina. This would lead to quite diverse combat with a suitable range or armour and weapon options. Sometimes you'd have a protracted melee with huge chains of attacks, blocks and counterattacks. Think energy sword duel on halo but better. Other times you'd have more of a David vs Goliath scenario- your opponent has a huge maul and will crush your kneecaps in one go, but if you manage to dodge him you'll likely kill him.

I think a game working this way could match the pace of COD's multiplayer (hopefully without so much brokenness) - a series of dodges, blocks and attacks is a bit like taking a series of movements between cover and timing your shots.

Wow, big post. Well done if you actually read all of this.
 

mad825

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vivalahelvig said:
Medieval combat wasnt just about swords and axes, there was a lot more, blocks of pikemen, musketeers, crossbowmen, longbowmen, double pay soldiers, germans, etc.
Musketeers in the medieval era? Maybe in Asia but definitely not in Europe. Arbalists and archers were still the ranged units on the battle field.
 

DoomyMcDoom

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If you want awesome sword combat with complete realism in application.... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang?ref=search I and MANY others like me helped fund this.

otehrwise Mount and Blade Warband, and the soon to arrive war of the roses game, are awesome choices.
 

Mordekaien

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mad825 said:
Musketeers in the medieval era? Maybe in Asia but definitely not in Europe. Arbalists and archers were still the ranged units on the battle field.
Nah, they were used in 14th century as well, problem was they were prototypes, slow, unwieldy and most men didn't have training with them. But yes, I agree that main ranged force were crossbowmen and bowmen, and the guns started to be more important in 16th century.

Also, I want a simple game, like barbarian was. Can't go wrong with two musclemen in loincloths fighting with bastardswords :D
 

kortin

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The problem is, only a select minority would like that sort of game. You can only go so far in realism before a lot of people start bailing on it. :\

You also have to take into consideration that a lot of game companies make games that sell well, not exactly the games they WANT to make.
 

Ryan Hughes

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It is a good idea to create a "realistic" medieval game, but there are several issues that you would have to address. First, basically that "realism" is never reality itself, and that there will always be distortions when the media, like games, tries to portray things. For example: did you know that Alexander the Great only lost 750 men due to battle injuries during his entire drive eastward? The media tends to romanticize medieval and classical combat, but in many cases, it was well-trained and armed soldiers fighting against rag-tag combatants. Alexander lost far more men fue to construction accidents and disease then he ever lost to the sword.

Second: As far as Medieval Europe is concerned, no one has any real idea of what the combat looked like. Almost all the writings on combat techniques have been lost, and martial training was largely kept as a secret handed down through families of the aristocracy. They felt it was something like a military secret to train people widely beyond basic blocks and strikes. A colleague of mine is actually involved in an effort to reconstruct German Zweihander combat techniques from some of the few books we have on the subject that have survived. Combat techniques did not have the importance then that we seems to place on them today, even Rene Descartes once wrote a book on the art of fencing, and no copies are known to survive today. Needless to say, if a famous philosopher like Descartes -who's books are often treasured- has works on the subject that did not survive, then there is little hope to find any medieval books from martial experts.

Third: Armor is not all it is cracked up to be. There are documented cases of British conscripts being lavishly armed at great expense, only to have them toss the armor away at the first opportunity before battle. Heavy Armor looks great sitting in the hall of your castle, and even better when you wear it. But it requires tremendous training and strength to use properly. Also, at least by the 1300s, armor became something of a show, portraying heraldry and religion rather than actually serving a purpose in combat. Really, most people taking part in the actual battles kept their own armor to a minimum, just enough to protect against arrows and glancing blows.

Still, it is an interesting idea, and would likely make a great game.

*edit, whoops I made a typo. Alexander lost about 700-750 men to battle in his drive east, not 75. Well, that is still really awesome. BTW, the source is Ardant du Picq in his "Battle Studies."
 

A Weakgeek

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kortin said:
The problem is, only a select minority would like that sort of game. You can only go so far in realism before a lot of people start bailing on it. :\

You also have to take into consideration that a lot of game companies make games that sell well, not exactly the games they WANT to make.
Obviously, this concept would never be made into an AAA game. I'm not expecting a company like EA or Activison to pick this up, but even a smaller studio could do this, especially if it was an arena style fighter (Like Clang) They make sims that are way too complicated for most of us for everything else, why not medieval combat?
 

Lazarus Long

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I'm tellin' ya, the time is so very right for a respectful remake of Bushido Blade. It sounds like you're suggesting something between that and Dark Souls, and I for one would play the bejesus out of that game.
 

NightHawk21

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Shadowcreed said:
There's this new kickstarter

CLANG!!!

CLANG should bring us realism to the medieval floor, hopefully. Not sure about the swinging in my dorm room though.
Ya that's what I was going to say. Also realistic melee combat the likes of which you described are not something that's easy to do.
 

A Weakgeek

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Seems like clang is trying to do something along the lines of what I hoped for:

We would like to support the highest level of accuracy with regards to damage that we can, while balancing it with performance and development expense. Being able to target vulnerabilities in the joints of plate armor and so forth is a pretty important element of effective longsword fighting. We would love to see severed bits of our opponents flying off of them as appropriate.
That fills me with hope, though I dislike the idea of having to buy a 100? controller.
 

mad825

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Mordekaien said:
mad825 said:
Musketeers in the medieval era? Maybe in Asia but definitely not in Europe. Arbalists and archers were still the ranged units on the battle field.
Nah, they were used in 14th century as well, problem was they were prototypes, slow, unwieldy and most men didn't have training with them. But yes, I agree that main ranged force were crossbowmen and bowmen, and the guns started to be more important in 16th century.
The closest thing to gunpoweder weapons was a shitty version of a cannon. Training with guns? Look, this isn't the English Longbow.
 

Kroxile

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No, because "realistic medieval combat" would consist of not being able to move for jack and shit in your heavy armor and very clumsily swinging around your sword until you get hit once and die gruesomely. OR moving around lithely with no armor on and very clumsily swinging your sword around until you get hit once and die gruesomely.
 

Aprilgold

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Kroxile said:
No, because "realistic medieval combat" would consist of not being able to move for jack and shit in your heavy armor and very clumsily swinging around your sword until you get hit once and die gruesomely. OR moving around lithely with no armor on and very clumsily swinging your sword around until you get hit once and die gruesomely.
While I don't agree with clumsily swinging your sword or not moving on the basis that the armor while weighing thirty pounds [I am talking chain] Knights or people who were able to actually fight in that were trained too. A knight isn't some random peasant in Plate, he was trained to wear said plate around and swing whatever tool he wanted.

However your second point is mostly true because of infection and what not.

--------------------------

Without pointing out Mount and Blade, War of Roses and CLANG there are several that exist, their just all indies and aren't popular.

Honestly, War of Roses and Mount and Blade are the closest that got combat from that era correct, CLANG gets the swordplay right but I wonder how dead-on they'll get that era.
 

Mordekaien

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mad825 said:
The closest thing to gunpoweder weapons was a shitty version of a cannon. Training with guns? Look, this isn't the English Longbow.
So you're saying that handling of guns from that era doesn't require any skill?
And as far as bows go, most nations weren't going for pinpoint accuracy shots, but for volleys of arrows, making sure some of those arrows land in on something in that area it hits. Sharpshooters were much less common.
 

antipirate

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Abandon4093 said:
EDIT: Also the way you're toting this it sounds like you want a duelling sort of game. Well that cuts about half the weapons choices out. Because a lot of an armies choice of weapons wasn't what would be best in single combat, but what would be effective in group combat.
I just wanted to second this
 

Frankster

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There's a free game on steam called Age of Chivalry.

OP that might satisfy you, whilst it doen't completely answer your wishes it is biled as a somewhat realistic medievil multi game.
 

spartan231490

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Not to say that a game like that wouldn't have some novelty value, but it would be really boring. Not to mention prohibitively difficult. Also, if you wanted it to be truly realistic, you would have to take into account that piercing is not the only way to do damage through armor, you can just use a massive war hammer where the energy translates through the armor and deals some pretty serious internal injuries. In fact, you would almost certainly need to do some information gathering in the real world if you wanted it to be truly realistic.

For example, i had always thought that a sword or axe would go through chain-mail with a direct hit, but on that show where they compare ancient soldiers against each other, they had some "samurai" try to cut through some chain-mail and they couldn't. they didn't even come close. On the other hand, something like a very long hilted curved chopping sword would probably cut through to some extent. Don't know what it's called, the guy at the renaissance fair called it a "Mongolian long sword" but googling that gives a completely different image. Even then, a system like that almost completely reduces the game to nothing more than who has the best gear. Particularly since a truly accurate game wouldn't have "health" it would need to be something like a kill or not system, or perhaps health based on bleeding.
 

Caligulove

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It would be fun for a bit of entertainment, but I'd be lying to myself if I thought it could really have any lasting fun factor or that it could really catch on in popularity to make it anything other than on the level of a mod with a devoted fan base. Which is perfectly fine.
 

evilneko

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Jun 16, 2011
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Devoneaux said:
Honestly I think this search for perfect realism is just a misdirected effort. What we really want is "Logical" take for example, mass effect. It's not "Realistic" but it makes some kind of logical sense in the context of the game. "Okay, fictional element bends the rules of physics allowing fantastical feats of technology." You're able to suspend your disbelief because it -SEEMS- at least slightly plausible.
Bingo. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief]

Yeah. I just linked TVTropes. Mwahahaha.

Ryan Hughes said:
It is a good idea to create a "realistic" medieval game, but there are several issues that you would have to address. First, basically that "realism" is never reality itself, and that there will always be distortions when the media, like games, tries to portray things. For example: did you know that Alexander the Great only lost 75 men due to battle injuries during his entire drive eastward? The media tends to romanticize medieval and classical combat, but in many cases, it was well-trained and armed soldiers fighting against rag-tag combatants. Alexander lost far more men fue to construction accidents and disease then he ever lost to the sword.
No wonder his Ionian Hetairoi army was so massive!

And he also lost far more of them to "accidents" than to swords, too. Massive parallels!