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[WillowLuman]

Ninja'd by umiman

It's rather awkward to perform a chopping motion with something as long as a halberd. Fauchards and glaives maybe, since they were shorter, but the swing/chop damage reflects the sub-optimal slice of the halberd well. It's a relatively small chopping surface positioned on the end of a long lever, a place of inferior leverage for it compared to handaxes and battleaxes. Sure it could chop, but the best thing to do with it was really to stab people. It was not, as commonly depicted, the battleaxe version of the naginata. Many RPG weapons called halberds are used more like pollaxes.

[Mech#4]

It's odd that you couldn't use a spear in a dungeon that's designed for stabbing, but you can find and use two handed swords.

If there's one things Total War and Mount and Blade has taught me it's that a lot more soldiers ran about poking with a spear then they did slashing with a sword.

[umiman]

Many reasons for that.

Spears had many massive advantages over more elaborate weapons like swords or rapiers or crossbows or axes or whatever else you could think of.

1. They were extremely, stupidly easy to make. And cheap! We've been making them since the stone age and the design was more or less perfect then. Still perfect now. This might seem like a triviality for arming one guy, like say some super saiyan rpg adventurer hero, but when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of soldiers or even millions.... then cost and time to make each weapon is the most important aspect of the game.

2. The second most important aspect of a weapon is how easy it is to actually use the weapon. A spear, though simple, is stupidly easy to use and train with. Especially considering most if not all the soldiers were peasant levies or drafted men or even prisoners and slaves. Of course, if you practiced for years, a soldier could be an expert spearmaster, but that's not what armies needed. They needed huge contingents of men who could march in formation and poke at things. So all a peasant had to learn how to do with a spear was follow his fellow soldiers in lines and poke at things. No slashing. No advanced guarding. Maybe a little bracing, but mostly just poking.

3. The spearwall, pikewall, pokey-stick wall, was the single most feared infantry formation for over 1,500 years. Not just to fight horses, like Total War would have you believe. It was primarily developed to smash through thick infantry lines while taking minimal losses. Invented by the Greeks, everyone from Romans to Celts to Egyptians to Germans and even the Chinese used it. A tight ball of pokey-death is extremely hard to face. It had many weaknesses of course, but hey... as I mentioned earlier, we kinda used it until guns could shoot more than 1 shot a minute.

So yeah. People used WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more spears than swords back in ye olde days. In fact, owning a sword was usually considered a sign of nobility. Had to be pretty rich to own one. Most of these fancy weapons we see in games today, a person back in the middle ages would have considered far beyond their status. Like a gold AK47 for us today. For them, it's all about spears, horses, and what new way we've discovered to throw things at the enemy.

Once again, sorry for the detour.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Heh, I love our ability to throw things. I just imagine what effect a pro baseball pitcher and a good supply of fist-sized rocks would have on a lion. Nowadays a simple 6" stainless steel kitchen knife is a deadlier individual (mechanical) weapon than anything nature's been able to manufacture.

+1 to the 'time's better spent elsewhere, even when implemented it's prone to weird behavior & still clips, takes a lot of processing power' stuff. I haven't really seen any games that demonstrate easy, cheap, & flawless cloth/strand physics. And games with physics-based movement are really wonky. And at this point in time, unless the movement (and generally the whole game if they're taking that route) is physics-enabled, it's just window-dressing.

As for clipping, probably also has something to do with control systems- without physics enabled, if a sheathed sword kept you from turning there would be ALL KINDS of butthurt. And we'd need a chivalry-style control scheme if we wanted environment-weapon interactions, which takes up buttons.

Really we accept it because it's the best option.

[forsaken1111]

Another game I just remembered which has physics-based animations and movement.. Starforge.

In that game, when you run around it is fully physics enabled. You will sometimes be running and just fucking.... fall. Or be vaulted 30ft into the air. For no reason. A single floating point error resulted in a tiny change to momentum which the game decided means you fell, or you were actually flying. You can see something similar happen sometimes in KSP, where a spacecraft will perform perfectly for years ingame and then suddenly fly apart because the physic engine (all physic 'engines' are just best-guess approximations anyway) did some tiny thing wrong which multiplied and multiplied until the forces exeeded the programmed tolerance of the part linkages and boom. Shit everywhere.

Have you noticed how you can fall or shoot forward or 'slip' and take damage when walking over physics objects in skyrim? I've seen it especially things like bones. Imagine that, but every time you walk. And randomly when you swing your weapon. It is very very hard to do right. It SOUNDS simple but it really isn't.

[Gamerlord]

I love your avatar forsaken. Where'd you get it?

[forsaken1111]

I love your avatar forsaken. Where'd you get it?

I found it randomly on a website a few years ago and shamelessly stole it for my 'cool things' folder.

[Gamerlord]

I can watch it forever...

[forsaken1111]

I can watch it forever...

*pulls up chair and popcorn next to gamerlord to watch as well* nom nom nom...

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hehe, speaking of starforge and physics, decided to dust off fraps and see how well my computer handles with my recent upgrade. Turns out: pretty darn well. Unfortunately internet wasn't upgraded so upload speed is abysmal.
In about 2 hours I'll have a 30-second video to show off.

[Frank2368]

The lack of pole weapons in Skyrim is presumably because of the presence of magic. The Phalanx formation probably wouldn't work out too well when people are shooting fire at you. Spears are also poor weapons for small scale combat, so they're rarely used.

[forsaken1111]

The lack of pole weapons in Skyrim is presumably because of the presence of magic. The Phalanx formation probably wouldn't work out too well when people are shooting fire at you. Spears are also poor weapons for small scale combat, so they're rarely used.

If that were really the case, militaries would just churn out staffs which can sustain a warding shield for a while and use those to guard against magic.

Really not much about our reality holds up when you add magic in.

[WillowLuman]

The lack of pole weapons in Skyrim is presumably because of the presence of magic. The Phalanx formation probably wouldn't work out too well when people are shooting fire at you. Spears are also poor weapons for small scale combat, so they're rarely used.

EVERY Elder Scrolls game has magic. Every. Single. One. Both magic and spears have been in that world since the dawn of time. The reason they didn't have spears in the game was because Todd Howard didn't see a way to make them sufficiently distinct from other weapons in terms of gameplay. I heard they're going to experiment with them in TESO to find a way to work them into TESVI, though.

Also, lore-wise, powerful destruction magic isn't something that just anybody can use. It requires lots of training and a bit of natural talent.

[Gamerlord]

A possible reason for spears being in Morrowind only might be because of the 'primitive' Ashlanders using them.

[forsaken1111]

Man I imagine war against a magick heavy empire would be brutal. Imagine issuing black soul shards to your elite soldiers so they can refuel their enchantments with the SOULS OF THE ENEMY