Zero choices in six to ten clicks: battlefield duels are boring

[daisha]

Is the battlefield duel system just a placeholder awaiting a more detailed event tree, or is this the final form? Please tell me it's in progress.

 

[pottypie]

Last time I checked, you can choose to get involved or run away, and often whether to finish off an opponent or kill them, or to surrender or get up and fight again. If you find it tedious or pointless, don't lead your armies.

 

[daisha]

Yeah, like 10% of the dialog boxes that pop up during a battlefield duel ask me to choose among alternatives, the rest are just text-heavy interruptions. I like the idea of battlefield duels, they're just not particularly interesting as implemented. It'd be nice if each dialog offered a meaningful choice to the player. The button you're forced to click to dismiss the event narrates a choice for you, it would make the battles less tedious if you were making actual choices during these events.

I'd suggest that at any point in the battle you should have the choice to try to run away (success not necessarily guaranteed), to press hard, or to parry and dodge and generally get your opponent to wear himself out. Maybe press hard could be the superior tactic for people with high personal combat skill, and parry/dodge the superior tactic for people with high health?

 

[Foamybeard]

I have to (sadly) agree with daisha on this. It would be nice if there where some options for what to do. Further, I think it would be an interesting idea to be able to choose what weapons your character uses, and have different ranks of skill in them (1-4, much like the Renowned Warrior traits). Daggers, Spears, Sword, Axe, and Bow, with variations among the various cultures (as in English/Welsh/Cornish have Longbows, Norse/Danes/Swedes have a 'Dane Axe' for an axe instead of a handaxe), etc. The weapons could also give small bonuses to certain traits - A sword gives +1 to Diplomacy, seeing as it is a more noble weapon (as well as a +1 to personal combat skill), while a Dane Axe gives the player a +3 to personal combat skill because of how brutal a weapon it is. Daggers could give a bonus to intrigue, since it is a small, easily concealed weapon, etc.

I think that it shouldn't be too hard to do this either - Hooni, with his Rebels and Warmonger mod, already did such weapons and skills, as well as trait boosts.

Hm.. I'll take this over to the suggestion thread, I think...

 

[vukica]

Let me just cut you off here. The duel engine in Plus is old and *very* complex. It could use a little love and I agree with some of the stuff said here.

But, that said, I'm not touching it any time soon. I'm not working on the mod ATM, and when I start again, there's a whole list of stuff that needs to be finished.

 

[LordPeter]

I'm not gonna go on further, just wanted to say that it would be good to wait at least till after the next DLC is released anyway, as the next patch will likely add some more possibilities to influence battles which could allow for some more interesting effects.

 

[pottypie]

I suppose it could be made more like the "weird monk who turns out to actually be death and you have to beat him in a chess match" event chain, where you have to choose how to fight, with an aggressive strategy being high risk/high reward, and so on.