1 swing-multiple hits?

[Beowulf1990]

I seriously cannot believe we are even discussing this...how is this not intuitively obvious? that weapon through one target, let's say you JUST happened to hit the exact point where a blade can pass through the elbow without touching bone, that's as good as it would get, agreed? Can you actually picture yourself then being able to, without actually intending to do so ahead of time (because you'd never be able to plan something like this), then keep that weapon going to inflict injury on another target that is standing nearby? This is not a lightsaber, it will not pass clean though things. You will have lost momentum. I think you can agree it's a pretty lucky thing for that to happen right?

Now I would argue that the likelihood of this actually happening is not nearly high enough to warrant letting every single penetrating blow in the game....let that sink in....pass through enemies like it was above mentioned lightsaber and continue to inflict damage. That is the system that is being discussed here. Not the occasional heavy two-hander blow to the arm that passes through, but every penetrating attack, even when made on a plate-armoured torso, as I understand it, will be able to do this.

This is insane.

I don't care what gameplay reasons you might have, but stop arguing it is even remotely realistic.

[reis91]

No specific aspects were discussed here to allow for such a conclusion to be formulated.

[S0ny B1ack]

Calm down guys, i would say lets wait for the beta to start and lets see how it works out in the game itself, i think you have stated your opinions (and teh devs have seen them ). If it prooves to be bad during beta, i guess it can still be changed

[Kamikazuh]

I'm against it too. When I read that this was possible, my first thought was that I would have to block enemy's hit even if there was a ally in the way. That's just stupid. And for me , it takes away from the teamplay this game is aiming for. In warband, if this situation happens, I can trust that the ally will block the hit, either with his weapon/shield or his body, allowing me to hit the enemy. So, teamwork > He blocks, I attack.
Now, if I can't trust that the swing will stop before me, I have to block it, if it possibly comes through. So the situation is the same as if I wouldn't have the teammate next to me.

With my clanmates, I can trust that they will block, and we work in team almost always so this doesn't have too much affect on that. But with random people, the system doesn't achieve anything good.

But yeah, waiting or the beta.

[Salahudin]

Its blowing me away how the devs might even consider this lol
Robin, everytime I read your post I get tingly on the inside, and I want to write more about how it doesn't make sense =p

For this particular feature, I'm not really sure what you guys are aiming for.
But hopefully, Beta will expose things.

As for argument, its what forums are for =p Granted that you are a developer, and I'm just a gamer stating opinions.
But again, its not realistic, and wont benefit gameplay, so why have it? <-- Logic I'm following.

EDIT:
Also, Robin, if you answer some of my questions, that's not really arguing lol.
I just want to hear a dev opinion on them.

[reapy]

Was thinking that I have no clue what warband does when you hit a person. I can't recall it at all. I know it continues through the person and doesn't bounce, but not sure if it hits the next person in line.

We havent tried the game with it bouncing on a successful hit, but I imagine like they said it is jarring and confusing that your attack landing and being parried would essentially have the same result.

So follow the logic that now you allow swing throughs, it would look weird to arc through someone cleanly on the success hit, then bounce back the way it came off someone else.

I think though you could probably tweek this out such that the majority of clean hits would mean 0 damage on the next target it strikes. I think if that were the case we wouldn't care...though the situation where you have a friend between you and the swing would be odd for sure.

I find that in practice when I'm with a group of people coming at someone 2 or 3 vs 1, I just block every attack anyway, you never know when they will twist or lunge in your direction to hit you specifically, so its worth it to block. If i'm not blocking then I'm probably spamming them since they will typically turn to attack my buddy after they block one of my attacks.

Another factor is the weapon length. Short /med length weapons wont have this problem so much I think because the swing arc probably won't be large enough to hit two people, in addition if you are close enough to hit both people there was probably another problem to begin with. As people get better in 2 vs 1's they spread out correctly and give a wide enough berth for their friend's weapons while they try to surround.

It will be a problem with longer weapons though. It really depends how long they go and what the animations look like. If there is some sort of AOE keep at bay style halbert, it's really going to look kind of stupid to be doing dynasty warriors style swings. Again this can be kept at bay or tweaked based on how much they reduce the power of the second hit though, so again might not really be a big deal.

I think the part that might have the most concern is damage soak on dead enemies. This was something warband tried to address with a patch or two, but I honestly don't think it ever worked. This really is a common scenario... you strike a target, kill him, and your buddy is on the other side swinging just as well. Your weapon got there a hair before his and made the kill, and you are moving forward past the guy you just killed. You immediately take a solid whack from your teammate THROUGH the corpse of the other guy, and this just sucks.

That is when you really notice the uber cleaves of weapons and the illusion gets shattered. I think in that situation it would be ok to bounce your weapon off 'dead' people without being jarring or confusing.

I thought a lot in the past about warband and the idea of weapons being more 'real' and sticking half into targets and stuff. In my head those animations look cool but in practice if you are using hit points and don't have some uber gore model, it would just be weird to stick the guy with a weapon and not see him collapse in some way.

Imagine a side hack into the guys midsection and the blade goes half way in. The guy continues running around blocking and attacking... would feel odd. I think generally you don't want the blade to sink in to anything unless you are doing a killing blow or unless you have a ton of code in there for some sort of damage result.

All in all I think 'magic blades' will be ok, just have to be extra careful with long weapons and how much power they have coming out of a person.

[froggyluv]

Still trying to digest how this is physically possible.

Are you saying that swings that are fully penetrating the plane of the enemy (thereby splitting them in two if torso or fully dismembering if extremity) will continue on to penetrate another that is standing beside them? That sounds highly unlikely almost to the extreme. I could see it if twas a superficial slash (not buried in full trunk flesh) as a possibility but even there most of the lethal force would still be lost.

Also would attacker have control over this being able to 'put the brakes' on the swing if he knows their is a friendly on the opposite side of the enemy?

[Schro]

thats not how it works.
in a real fight, you slice your opponent, not dig your 10 feet MMO sword deep into him. so its quite possible to hit multiple enemies. Of course, the second target hit would not feel as much force as the first one, but in M&B it became kinda annoying to see the sword hit two players in a horizontal slice but ony one gets hurt.
If you slice your enemy should depend on your weapon and your distance to the enemy of course.

[Beowulf1990]

thats not how it works.
in a real fight, you slice your opponent, not dig your 10 feet MMO sword deep into him. so its quite possible to hit multiple enemies. Of course, the second target hit would not feel as much force as the first one, but in M&B it became kinda annoying to see the sword hit two players in a horizontal slice but ony one gets hurt.
If you slice your enemy should depend on your weapon and your distance to the enemy of course.

That's not how it works either.

You wouldn't slice through anyone at all unless you were exceptionally lucky. Warband doesn't damage after the first hit because that makes no sense at all, they let you seem to slice through enemies for the very simple reason that it would basically look shit for you to abort animations whenever you hit, it doesn't work very well with that game.

[Schro]

thats exactly what I mean. "slicing" doesn't mean you go full force through the body of your enemy. Except in MMOs maybe... and the old M&B to be honest..
to make it more understandable, I did some painting!

thats how I wish it to be

the 2 upper ones on the left and the first one on the right have still the chance to hit something with less force depending on your movement.

and this is the current status in M&B


your pseudo-realism-patriotism is actually making you blind to what I mean and how it really is.

[Salahudin]

Schro, what you showed there is exactly how it should be.
However, in this game its not going to be what you drew. It will be the opposite extreme. Your blade will go through EVERYTHING on its swing arch, so yeah. The wizard yellow thing on your picture will get hit too by that huge blade.

[Beowulf1990]

So I think you'll agree my confusion was understanfable

[Th3o]

the wizard and the dead will just switch places. the wizard (high armor/hp) will survive unlike looser behind him

[Salahudin]

Lol imagine if the front guy was actually better armored, and the swing manages to hit him for low damage, but kill the person behind him who happens to be less armored.
Oh. How terribad.

[Digu21]

I wanna see how this plays out though, because if you hit a second guy with low speed after attacking the first guy with highspeed then the sword still hits the second guy even with low speed and possibly really low damage or zero damage, but it still hits him. Cant see this feature as a killing blow to the second guy that gets hit.

But still wants to see how this works in the game !

[Kamikazuh]

The main problem is that the swing, even if it did only 1 damage, interrupts your swing/movement. So it becomes much easier for the guy fighting several opponents, he just has to make the swings a bit longer so they hit both/all of the enemies.

[Cathal_Brugha]

What about using a two-handed Warhammer? Wouldn't it be possible to say... hit an archer who's wearing essentially just a leather jacket and the blow carrying him into his mate? It wouldn't hurt the poor lad getting hit by his mate's corpse, but still, it would knock him over or some such.

[ZechsMerquise73]

You're lucky if the game includes more than one hit box. Most games have lazy devs.

[chunkynut]

What about using a two-handed Warhammer? Wouldn't it be possible to say... hit an archer who's wearing essentially just a leather jacket and the blow carrying him into his mate? It wouldn't hurt the poor lad getting hit by his mate's corpse, but still, it would knock him over or some such.

Many fights such as these would cause the target of a swing to foul their allies fight and give an opportunity of attack to the other enemies. I can't see this being a problem if damage is caused rather than being mired with an allies body and as the dev stated the subsequent blows cause less damage.