Original Post
Before I start, I would request that everybody who intends to come in with a comment along the lines of "We should entirely remove combat from being the focus of games" just not bother. I find combat in games quite enjoyable. My thought, however, is that perhaps if some of this were taken into account it would make combat a much more risky affair, with much graver concequences.
That being said, the point of this post is that I think combat would be a lot more enjoyable, and possibly have an additional wow factor, if it were made somehow much more realistic. These thoughts were really spurred by another posting in the General and Game Programming Discussion board. These are some thoughts drawn from my personal experience with armed and unarmed combat.
I have never seen the differences among weapons and advantages of individual weapons modeled anywhere near accurately. For instance, consider two people in a battle starting at distance, one armed with a yari (a spear, generally about a dozen feet in length) and the other with a long dagger. At first it might seem like the person with the spear has the obvious advantage, being at distance and all, but what if I tell you that a dagger used properly can be a very effective weapon against a spear? This battle could generally go three possible ways, all things being equal, depending on the relative skills of the combatants:
Skilled dagger, unskilled spear--the person with the dagger will EASILY be able to quickly and efficiently close distance, at which point the person with the spear will no longer stand a snowball''s chance in hell.
Unskilled dagger, skilled spear--the person with the spear will know how to keep proper distance and will eventually catch the more agile dagger wielder.
Roughly equal skill--the fight will turn into a complex distance game, the person with the dagger constantly closing, and the person with the spear constantly opening--possibly a VERY long fight.
Place the person with the dagger agains someone wielding, say, a staff, and the situation changes drastically. My point being that every weapon has its peculiar strengths, weaknesses, and techniques against every other possible weapon. Sometimes one weapon will be obviously inferior (as is a bastard sword to a katana), but most of the time any weapon can be equally deadly. It is not about the "power" of your weapon, but how you use it that will 99 times out of 100 determine who wins the fight.
Another often overlooked aspect of combat is distance. Ask any experienced swordsman and they will tell you that maintaing proper distance is THE most crucial aspect to fighting successfully. Opening distance, closing distance, maintaining distance--these are all very central concepts to armed combat. Being able to do these things skillfully is as difficult as it is important.
I said I was going to talk about unarmed combat, so I''m going to make this simple. Against an armed opponent it''s simply not done by itself. It''s just another thing on the list of ways to get real dead real fast. In conjunction with weapons, though, it can be an immensely useful skill. Your sword isn''t always going to be the most handy thing to hit an opening that you see with. A well placed kick, if it doesn''t cripple your opponent outright, will generally induce a gaping wide opening in their defense for a swift cut.
Finally, in combat no enemy is ever harmless. Ever. That little 3'' goblin with a knife can kill you just as dead than that 20'' gigas with a giant magical longsword +5. Trying to swing through foes--any foes--with reckless abandon will get you killed. I repeat, it WILL get you killed.
So, if anybody managed to make it all the way through this post, I''d like to hear any thoughts as to how practically this could be applied to a game. And for that matter, what it would add to or remove from the game if it were.
