Anyway, the 1h+shield combat looks rather bizarre. More like showfighting with it's 5-6 angles of attack and wide swings and whatnot.
With plate armor/coat of plates/brigandines and plate-based protection of the limbs in the game, I hope there'll be a good number of two-handed weapons... It's already strange that 2 fully armored guys go at each other with swords in a regular grip meant for unarmored fighting.
I gave Vavra my money because he seems like a good dude, but was hoping he'd push the envelope a bit more in terms of the fighting tbh. Banging on people's helmets with the blade of your arming sword until they get bored and surrender or keel over from the noise looks silly. You can already do that in m&b etc.
Have you ever read any average comment on their Youtube channel or under any mainstream article about KCD? Truckload of people are already worried the combat is too complex and "clunky". Your typical konsole market doesn't want realism, they want something "smooth" and "non-clunky" - translation: mindless, frenzied button mashing.
KCD is not an indie game, it's cost many millions of dorra, it can't afford to lose konsoletards. Can you imagine being in Vavra's shoes and trying to find a compromise between something smart and complex and something that the xboxers and playstationistas would enjoy?
I get what you mean, but I actually *think* there might be a way to make combat much more smooth and non-clunky and also more realistic.
Warning long post ahead...
So normally, rather than swing weirdly like in the kcd vids you'd cut to the longpoint without winding up a swing etc. The way combat works in M&B and this one involves a very telegraphed windup (hold button and move analog stick or mouse in a direction to raise the sword/weapon there, release button to swing from there) and a delay before the attack happens.
In order to block you usually need to press the right mouse button or controller equivalent, and in some cases you need to block in the direction of the swing (depending on game/setting).
Thing is, you don't really control the blade via mouse movement and the striking animations and blocking animations are fixed basically. Only mouse control of the blade is general point of aim (middle of the swing or thrust) and cardinal direction (or 5 directions in kcd) from where to swing or where to block, but no really direct control.
My idea would be (obv. take it with a big grain of salt) to instead do the following:
1)Stance would be much more forward and aggressive of course, the weird upright stance in kcd makes no sense, restricts reach etc.
You would hold the blade towards the enemy instead of upwards at your side, with arms somewhat bent so you can thrust or cut without drawing back first.
2)You control your blade movement directly with the mouse for the purpose of deflecting blows (no straight up blocking, interfere with the opponent's blade properly) with no button press required. If the enemy blade is to your right, you keep your blade close to it between him and you, on the inside for example. If you blade is too far from his and he swings full force of course yours may get pushed out of the way, so you need to keep yours close to his or directly push against his if necessary.
This is all just mouse movement.
The blade moves independently from your view, at least in combat. Either the game has lock-on (consoles) to take care of the general view direction, or you can have a system like in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic or... Arma? idk. where you have to move your weapon somewhat to the edge of the screen to change your view. This is so that you don't spastically turn around all the time along with your blade (see m&b awlpike fights in multiplayer lol...) and so that you can actually see what your enemy is doing with his blade relative to you and so that you can accurately judge distances between blades/objects.
You always see where the enemy blade is so you know what attack(s) he can do and from where. If his blade is aimed directly at you, it's gonna be a thrust unless he wants to move it etc.
3)In order to attack there are 2 ways to make it work I think, depending on whether you have a mouse or a controller, as well as lock-on (could have lock-on on pc as well if you really want).
If you use a lock-on system then that locks you onto the longpoint automatically for cuts etc.
In order to cut the opponent from the right, move your blade to the right of the longpoint via mouse/analog stick (again, no button pressed first) just a bit, as much as you'd do for a real cut (i.e. not much at all, you don't want to leave yourself open). Now press button one and you will execute a swift cut to the longpoint.
Secondary button can be thrust (you just position your blade where you want to thrust at, so it won't auto go towards the longpoint in that case), and mouse wheel may switch to half-swording for thrusts and half-swording for poor-man's-pollaxe/murderstroke as appropriate (or you use key on the keyboard perhaps).
If you don't use a lock-on system (or even a soft lock-on where attacks are directed towards the enemy with imaginary longpoint but no hard view lockon) or if you have a mouse that can move the blade faster on it's own then it may be better to let attacks happen simply by mouse-movement (again, view only changes if you move mouse towards the edge far enough, so that you don't turn around like crazy). You'd imagine the longpoint yourself and cut towards it manually.
Thrusts would still be on a button though etc as above, just not cuts which are done by mouse movement. RMB could then be something else, like moving hands overhead with the point still forward.
Shift or some controller equivalent would boost you forward in a lunge or some such (I don't know what the right word is), maybe with the forward button together, or just on it's own idk. You hit that together with a thrust or even a cut to increase the power a lot.
4) For a pollaxe and short halberd on the otherhand what you would do is: Normally you have the pointed lower end and left arm forward and the head at your shoulder in reality.
So you would go: Primary button is a thrust with the spike at the bottom of the shaft. You also use the bottom of the shaft to deflect blows, like a swordblade, but held differently. Secondary button is a blow with the hammer head (or axe head if halberd. If you have both on one weapon, use a button to switch which one attacks). So you distract the enemies' weapon with the shaft, and when it's out of the way try for a blow at the helmet, or hit the left shoulder a lot. Positioning and footwork would be a factor here for the swing as it'd be fixed length.
Mouse wheel can be switch mode to move the head forward. Then you can use it like a short halberd instead. Or use keyboard key.
If you go head-forward, what you can do now is cut with axe blade or strike with hammer just as with the longsword above, or thrust with the headspike... And use a rear spike if you have one or axe blade inner point (towards you) to hook an enemy.
Primary button would be thrust with the head-mounted spike (remember, lunge/boost button+forward button should be used with this and all other direct attacks if possible), you hook him by thrusting past him and keeping the weapon extended (keep primary button pressed), then moving it into position.
Now there's a few ways the actual tripping/pulling could be done... Either just releasing the primary button forcefully pulls the weapon towards you if you kept it pressed before rather than just hitting it quickly, or the secondary button would do the forceful retraction. Alternatively you could keep the weapon extended and use the boost button (shift or whatever) together with the move back button/analog stick to move your entire body back fast.
Either way, if your enemy does not boost himself forward into you he would be tripped or end up stumbling or even falling.
Shaking off a hook like that is also possible by forward boost if he is fast enough, and of course he can just deflect the weapon... Or lunge into you and grapple or thrust into weakpoint/hit your head with pollaxe (dep. on distance)/push you out of the way and make you stumble instead while you are trying to move your weapon past him to hook him. As would be the normal response in reality.
Using the head attack (secondary button) when you're shaft forward rather than head forward could maybe also automatically switch you to head forward posture for quick followups? Maybe make a setting in the options menu for this idk.
5) Longer Halberds, billhooks and such can hook the same way as a pollaxe/short halberd but at longer range obv.
They would normally be held head forward, right shoulder/arm forward.
No over-the-shoulder attack and no attack with the bottom end of the shaft normally, too long!
Mouse wheel thus doesn't switch stance but instead adjusts how far from the head you grip the shaft, so you can adjust to close attackers. Have to be careful with the shaft though, it can bump into stuff obv. Then again, you could switch between a shaft high and shaft low stance for some polearms, maybe a different key. Not super important but the option is nice. Avoid bumping into the ground with the shaft when gripping close to it if in high stance basically, or do thrusts from above that way...
Striks/cuts are normal fare just as with the sword or head-forward pollaxe/short halberd stance.
If cavalry is in game, maybe automated bracing of the shaft against the ground if you crouch.
6) If you have a shield, then your blade(or mace or whatever) and shield would move together (as there aren't any huge tower shields used in normal combat, no big roman shields obv that can't move as well) during the later periods iirc. Easy to do it just like the real thing, same principle as above with longsword example I think. Sword would move in a semi-circle around it's side of the shield, depending on shield size/design. Shield would trail behind a bit on movement, the further towards the edge of the screen you have the sword the larger the distance from the shield, but the shield moves as well and isn't static... Just doesn't move as much towards the sword side. Or something like that, you get the idea.
Spear would be easier with shield because you just thrust pretty much. Some spear designs allow for some cutting, maybe, and would be used more like the sword (mousewheel controls where you grip it then).
Sorry for the long post, but I hope I was able to describe this properly. Wish I had the programming/animating/modeling/texturing chops to make a demo out of this... Maybe I should waste less time on shit games and make it happen haha
Really surprised that no one has tried something like this though. Maybe because HEMA was totally unknown until recently and still kind of is.
Die By The Sword tried to have you swing the sword around via joystick or keyboard keys but it was trash tier implementation and idk if you could even thrust. No lunging either etc.
Advantage of this way of doing things: Faster and more fluid and you can make attacks fast with no exaggerated drawing back of the weapon or exaggeratedly long swings with long recovery times because the player can react fast and easy and bind/control your blade etc. It'd look a lot less silly, too.
Less dark souls and more fencing.
Ideally armor would work properly too, so that you'd actually have to either get through uncovered/weak areas (armpits, visor slits etc) or do something like the hammer blow to the side of the helmet like with a pollaxe. Unarmored fighting would be very different from armored fighting then.
Edit: Just realized, but if you don't like the deflecting enemy blade via your own, you could keep the old "secondary button parries/blocks" scheme... And now for thrusts/cuts you make blade position the main thing. Primary button = attack with thrust if weapon is aimed directly at somewhere on the enemy model, cut towards model if it's aimed at air to the side/above/below the model I guess. That way only one button is needed for attacks.
May work better for consoles.
Still no holding the button to hold a blow/draw back. Just move blade on your own and then press button to attack.
Only held blows would be the ones from pollaxe or short halberd or some such that come from your shoulder if you are in shaft forward stance, but those are basically almost always held at the ready anyway unless you are currently in an attack with the shaft-spike. So no need to hold button there either.
Edit 2: Grappling? Don't know for sure how to implement that, maybe if you barrel into the enemy you can switch to dagger/halfsword thrust grip but IDK. how to do the actual fighting then with direct control like above... Dagger into armpit/eyeslit -awesome button could work but that would break the above principle of being able to defend against it because you always know where the enemy blade is and can move yours accordingly. Not sure. Maybe just not necessary to have at all, idk.
