You can have a simple combat system and a high skill ceiling, things like being able to cancel your own attacks to evade, or the ability to hit the block button just at the right time to make the enemy stagger, charged attacks to break guards and stuff like that will raise the skill ceiling a lot and the combat will still be just 3 buttons. I expect something similar to Dark/Demons Souls in that aspect, a simple combat system, easy to learn but hard to master.
Judging from the very early Alpha footage, it's going to be pretty much like Space Marine, but perhaps with blocking. Guess we have to wait and see, they might surprise us!
The only thing that put me off SM melee was how the animations would send you flying round the screen and past your target and never felt directed or landing at/on the target. Sort this out and it would be good as the combos would come from rolling, kicking, slashing and blocking. I think they've mentioned a clashing mechanic so animations will end infront of your intended target instead of flying around/past. They've already implemented blocking so that's a step in the right direction anyway.
*Gazes upon this thread -- and proceeds to notice the amount of Dark souls suggestions. Where the bloody hell were the rest of you when I created my thread?! (http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/close-combat-suggestions-for-ec-long-post.4478/) Wait, they did? Could you provide a source for that? For it would seem my render my thread rather redundant now. Completely concur in regards to Space marine's poor combat system!
I really don't understand how any of you process information. There are limits to WHAT and HOW things can be done when utilizing a world wide server. I really think people's expectations are way over the top as far as a detailed melee system... especially when we're mixing in ranged mechanics. You can't have the detailed melee of the games you're referencing because they don't mix with the pace/mechanics/balance of the game. Get over it. If you want detailed melee go play a medieval game with those mechanics. If you love 40K and want to see the IP succeed, embrace EC for what it will be and accept that you can't have everything you want. I love my fellow fans and believe me I'm eye to eye with you on the desire for skill based melee that immerses you into the character you're playing. But I firmly believe we're going to have to sacrifice ALOT of that want to see a balanced Massive Multiplayer Online game where crap is exploding everywhere and it's all out war. I do support the possibility of a separate dueling system that expands on melee and 1v1. Where you could have inter Chapter tournaments and award Champion status.. ect... but dueling melee will not and has never worked on the battlefield.
Agreed. Way too many delusionals in here. The greatest game ever. The pace of that game was awesome. If nothing else, the devs could take inspiration from the ranged perspective to be in 1st person while the melee would be in 3rd person.
Hmm, yes, maybe you're correct and my expectations of Eternal Crusade are too high. I'll take them down a notch or two I think. Seems fair, seeing as I'm not really sold on the whole close combat system I've seen in the Alpha footage. For me, the ultimate 40k game would be a heavy narrative/character driven first person game heavy in immersion. But this is not that game! That said, I'm really hoping this will be an awesome multiplayer TPS that I will enjoy for many years to come, I just have to expect it to be less.. awesome, than I think I would be - maybe then I'll be pleasantly surprised when the close combat turns out to be totally incredible!
Expectations in some cases may be too high, but there is still scope to make a more reactive and meaty combat system without sacrificing the game's pace and there is no reason at all why more player skill and interactivity can't be a significant part of the melee combat. Now my concern with the pre-alpha footage isn't that the combat is unreactive, but rather that it is visually disconnected and I see that despite your misgivings about introducing a massively complicated duelling system you would at least agree that having combat that seemed weighty, connected and which offered opportunities for greater player interaction is a distinct improvement over just spamming away with insubstantial strikes that seem to pass through the opponent without any sense of impact and where the dodge and parry mechanics (both of which we know are to be parts of the game) are more visually impactful than just holding a blade infront of your character or rolling about through blades. Since we know that Behavior consider 250ms the ceiling for latency (as they quoted that figure in connection with server side checks for a 4 rounds per second fire rate for a bolter,) we can safely use that figure as a rough ballpark value when trying to consider what can be achievable both in terms of interaction and synchronising the character animations. Furthermore we can probably assume that most melee attack animations will span between 1 and 2 seconds and you would probably look at making around the first three quarters of that time the lead up to the point at which the blow would connect so as to give the opponent sufficient time for the 'tell' to show despite the latency. Which leaves the last quarter the actual impact, probably followed by a 250 -500 ms recovery time. Additionally if blows which fail to connect actually extend the recovery animation (due to the follow through swing and recovery) then this can be used to make spamming attacks blindly a pretty bad idea since attacks that miss will tend to punish the attacker. A similar effect can be applied to an attacker when the defender successfully dodges. So (remembering our 250 ms latency ceiling) in a one second animation (a fast attack with a light single handed weapon) this effectively gives us the first 250 ms to gauge whether the attack would hit and the next 250 ms as a reaction window within which a player can opt to dodge or parry, followed by a further 250 ms for the player and the opponent's systems to once again be matched up. By placing the attack results in the last quarter of the attack animation this gives plenty of time in which the attacking character animation can be synced with the defender. As the actual animation side of this will be handled by the client side and reactions like, the parrying blade locking with the opponents, the attacker's weapon visually impacting with the defender, the defender dodging and the attacker stumbling off balance, or the defender getting hit and reeling from the force of the blow, this can all be handled very quickly. Which means you can still have combat that actually 'feels' like combat and where players can actively respond to attacks without defaulting to a weightless and unreactive spam fest. Darksouls has been mentioned a couple of times and the weighty and responsive combat is a definite feature of darksouls 2.. basically that sort of feel to combat would be ideal.
