Combat Animation/Points System

[wasa7]

Hello everyone! I posted this thread in KotOR and KotOR TSL forums as a mod request, and I have already posted it in TOR forums hoping someone takes this into consideration. I am a big fan of the first two games but there is one thing that keeps bothering me: during a fight, characters get sliced by light sabers over and over until health points are over. I believe that when someone gets hit by a light saber, that's it. Light sabers cut through flesh like a machete through a banana!

I think this can be easily corrected by changing combat animations during the fight, replacing the cutting through animations for light saber parrying and clashing animations. Only the final death blow will have the cutting-through-slicing-stabbing-impaling animation kind of thing. Health points can be deducted the same way, only the combat animation would be changed.

I know, some of you may say that there is no sense in loosing health points if you don't get hit. Well, what if we change the name of those points, from health points to stamina points. It is the same, but different. Stamina represents endurance, the more you have, the more you can go on on a fight. This would mean that during a fight, you first get tired (loose stamina) by parrying and avoiding the opponent light saber blows, and when all your stamina points are over, you can not defend yourself anymore, and you get killed by the next blow, just as if health points were over. The same principle applies when facing ranged attacks. Players can deflect laser bolts for as long as they have some remaining stamina, after that, you get killed by the next shot.

Furthermore, you can have both stamina and health points (which makes even more sense). You can loose health points by sickness, poisoning, or whatever, and this will also affect the stamina losing rate... less health means a fast stamina loosing rate, and so on...

If you wonder how this would affect using KotOR powers, I think it could be like this: Receiving wild power attacks would make you loose more stamina than a normal attack, Force Lightning would make you loose both health and stamina, Force Choke makes you loose only health, Flurry attack makes you loose stamina off course, Force Cure will restore your health and part of your stamina, and so on...

Anyway, you may completely dislike my idea of health and stamina points, but please consider my suggestion about combat animations. Seriously, even the strongest of Jedi would die after being cut through the chest by a light saber. Don't you think?

P.D. Does Bioware or Lucas Arts actually read this? Are our suggestions really taken into consideration? I am just curious...

[PastramiX]

That's actually a great idea, and it makes a lot of sense, really.

P.D. Does Bioware or Lucas Arts actually read this? Are our suggestions really taken into consideration? I am just curious...

Yes and no. They heard that we wanted KotOR III, but they decided to give us a KotOR MMO. Either they were lost in translation, or they heard it from an unreliable source.

[Titanius Anglesmith]

I had an idea similar to this a while back for KotOR III. I still think it would be a pretty good change.

[Jeff]

I definitely like the idea of lightsabers or other weapons clashing until the final blow. I wish they would have done something like that in KotOR. Not sure if they will implement this in the MMO though from the gameplay footage we have seen.

[Tommycat]

The only problem is that it would work only for melee. Two people shooting ranged weapons at eachother don't have the luxury of saber deflect.

Plus what about when the saber wielder comes within striking range of the ranged attacker. Does the ranged attacker automatically lose?

[Un4tun8]

Originally Posted by Tommycat

Plus what about when the saber wielder comes within striking range of the ranged attacker. Does the ranged attacker automatically lose?

Not necessarily. The ranged character will animate as dodging the saber wielder attacks. And losing stamina in the process. Although his/her chances are indeed much lower than for the saber wielder.

On the other hand, ranged character might have sonic component to the ranged weapon that will slower the saber wielder and make make swing less precise. Besides, swinging melee weapon should reduce stamina of the melee weapon wielder. And that effect should be greater than for the ranged weapon wielder (except when ranged weapon is a heavy weaponry). SWG used that idea (action bar) at some point. Lately it somewhat changed so that only special moves/actions consume action bar.

Alternatively, there might be armor elements containing cortosis (that's in reference to Jedi Outcast). So animation, where lightsaber connects to a bracer with cortosis, would show deflection (and loss of stamina).

And finally, some sort of energy shields could be used.

Perhaps the best presentation of fight between lightsaber wielding character and ranged weapon one is Jango Fett vs Obi-Wan.

[wasa7]

Hello again. Tommycat has a point. I must recognize that my idea fits the melee vs melee combat situation, but not the ranged vs melee or ranged vs ranged combat situations. I like Un4tun8's idea on how to solve that issue. Dogging animation would be the right thing for ranged characters, who will loose stamina while dogging, instead of receiving direct impacts one after another, ranged or melee.

Combat between ranged characters wouldn't be such a problem. Both character's combat behavior should be similar. Furthermore, ranged combat could be really improved if players could use the environment to cover, thus getting stats bonuses to ranged combat, instead of just standing still and shooting like in KotOR games. Don't get me wrong, I love both KotOR games but maybe ranged combat could be taken to a next level, more like Mass Effect (obviously not as complex).

Now, I realize that melee vs ranged combat would be really unbalanced. Even though almost every ranged fighter gets killed by Jedi in the movies, there must be a way to balance this for TOR. For example, when in close range, dogging fire and bolt deflecting would be harder than in long range, thus costing more stamina. Take as an example Jango Fett defeating Council Jedi Master Coleman Trebor, during the battle of Geonosis. Was Trebor too close to Jango to be able to deflect or dodge fire from the Mandalorian bounty hunter?

Anyway, I leave this issue open to suggestions and again, I really hope someone inside Bioware is reading these threads. Thank you all.