I like to 'spectate' from the corner too. Sometimes even going as far as pinching another weapon from the dead corpse. Laziness perhaps? Or just simple tactics to preserve my own health?
Would you care to elaborate on what you mean by 'not very realistic'? By my own experience and 'historically' the shield was the first and most important defense of any warrior and only dropped out because of the advances in plate armour technology. It is rather realistic that shield users come on top (especially so if both combatants have similar armour) as they have the ability (or at least possibility) to simultaneously defend and attack.
Venerable Homiccus,
It is not wise to give so much credit to shields in the context of late 14th and early 16th century. The shield might in fact be the best choice for Arena fights up and until Adept level but past that your character can obtain very good plate Armour or at least cover himself in multilayered cloth, mail and leather Armour which might not be very historically correct but it would definitely fulfill its role if made properly.
A large shield user can utilize either a short one handed weapon or a spear (not in exanima) in either case if his opponent's polearm were to connect
once with his head, torso, leg, shoulder it would be pretty much the end of him, and don't forget that IRL polearms are FAST and PRECISE. IRL cold steel has no movement limitations like in Exanima either. A shield user would not have any noticeable advantage against a well armored enemy with a two handed weapon, especially not to the point where when two enemies of similar skill clash the shield user would come on top in 8 or even 6 cases out of 10. If that were the case everyone would use shields at least up until the first half of the 17th century. Everyone would consider other weapons or combinations of weapons to be a folly you know. I do know about bucklers being very widely used and then being replaced by left daggers which also played that role.
Because of exanima's limitations on how you can swing the polearm and how precise you can be with it the shield does become far more useful than it really ought to be, your weapon is destined to hit the shield more often then it otherwise would. I also suspect that after blocking an incoming hit from a polearm for the 3rd time I might not be so fresh and fast anymore, nor would I expect my left arm to be in a normal shape.
Sincerely,
Greg
P.S. Scratch that, shield combat mechanics must be integrated into general combat mechanics which means there is no way of nerfing them or adjusting them, doing so will inevitably weaken the geneal responsiveness of the AI overall. And it's not like I want to see any nerfs, it's just when shield users prevail once again in the arena my immersion suffers a little.
