What is Combat Design?

Combat Design is the discipline of crafting how players engage in conflict — not just through attacks, but through rhythm, clarity, decision-making, and space. It’s about designing systems of threat and agency, where every strike, dodge, or tactic has weight and meaning.

Combat designers shape the player's moment-to-moment experience, coordinating mechanics, enemy AI, feedback, and level flow into a system that’s visceral, readable, and skill-expressive.

1️⃣ What makes great combat?

Combat is a dynamic feedback loop: player action → enemy reaction → player adjustment. A good system balances mechanical precision, psychological tension, and aesthetic payoff.

📍Core characteristics of well-designed combat:

Trait	Description	Example
Responsiveness	Player inputs feel immediate and impactful	God of War — heavy axe throw & return
Clarity	Telegraphs, animations, and hitboxes are readable	Sekiro — deliberate windups, clear parries
Skill expression	Player mastery improves performance	Devil May Cry — combo depth and style ranking
Variation	Encounters change over time	Hades — evolving boss phases
Tactical decision space	Multiple viable approaches	Elden Ring — melee, ranged, stealth, magic

2️⃣ Combat Design Approaches

Combat design is multi-disciplinary — blending system design, feel tuning, animation logic, AI scripting, and level collaboration.

Common design strategies:

Define combat verbs (attack, block, dodge, cast)
Create enemy archetypes with distinct behaviors
Prototype movement and attack timing early
Design feedback systems (VFX, SFX, hitstop, camera shake)
Map encounters to spaces that reinforce pacing

📍Combat design is as much about the space around the action as it is about the mechanics themselves.

3️⃣ Who is a Combat Designer?

A combat designer builds the interplay between player and threat. They choreograph how agency, pressure, and skill collide — making sure fights feel fair, tense, and expressive.

They work across disciplines to make mechanics come alive: from weapon feel to boss behavior to damage feedback.

🟠 Key Skills

Deep game feel intuition (timing, input latency, responsiveness)
Enemy design and behavior scripting
Understanding of animation timing and transitions
Spatial thinking (arena layout, line of sight, verticality)
Balance tuning and skill curve shaping
Pacing design — when to breathe, when to overwhelm
Collaboration with level design, VFX, and AI teams

🟤 Who is this role for?

Combat design fits people who:

Obsess over hit feel, dodge timing, and enemy reactions
Enjoy thinking through 1v1 dynamics and encounter pacing
Are both technical and artistic in how they express mechanics
Like iterating hands-on — tweaking values until it "feels right"
Want to make combat that is felt, not explained

🟢 What does a combat designer actually do?

Task	Description
Define combat mechanics	Attacks, mobility, stamina, lock-ons, targeting
Script enemy behaviors	Archetypes, AI states, attack logic
Tune weapon feel	Swing speed, delay, impact, combo flow
Design encounters	Enemy mixes, ambushes, boss stages
Integrate with level design	Arena layout, cover, traps, sightlines
Build combat feedback	VFX, SFX, animation events, camera shakes
Balance difficulty curves	From tutorial grunts to final boss
Playtest for feel	Identify frustration or flatness through iteration

🟣 Typical Tools & Outputs

Tool/Format	Purpose
In-engine prototypes	Playable loops for timing and pacing testing
Animation blueprints	Syncing hits, cancels, and transitions
Enemy design docs	AI states, resistances, patterns
Combat spreadsheets	Weapon DPS, stamina cost, frame data
Level blockouts	Combat arenas and encounter scripting
Debug tools	Hitbox viewers, damage logs, enemy state overlays

4️⃣ Common Combat Patterns

Parry windows and risk-reward clashes
Mob vs Elite vs Boss layering
Weapon triangle or elemental counters
Attack tells and response timings
Resource tension (ammo, cooldowns, posture)
Mobility vs power trade-offs

📍Combat design is where mechanics meet pressure — and when done well, players feel like every victory is earned through skill, not stats.