I'm wondering... if instead of having the combos come up and block them as you see arrows, if it could be changed so that when your opponents combo starts they have a short delay before starting an attack and that is when you would block that certain attack. This would add a degree of visual skill so that players would need to watch and learn which attacks their opponents are doing in order to block them effectively.
Ex: "Dead or Alive" fighting sim.
This also keeps both players focused and into an intense gameplay. The attacker putting in combos, and the defender constantly blocking them as they come. This adds a much larger degree of skill to the game because the defender would have to constantly watch his opponents movements and stances to know the proper block. Therefore there would be more mess ups and hits connecting.
Although i'm sure that would take some animation tweaking I feel it'd be a nice way to handle it instead of simply blocking the hits as the arrows come and then watching it play out.
I really like that. It would also take time for player's skills to improve because they would have to study which stances and how an opponent moves determines which attack they are going to use next.
I don't think it would work in ESF for two reason though.
The first is that the team wants to reach as broad an audience as possible through creating simple yet fast gameplay that anyone with an average level of skill can jump into without being at too much of disadvantage primarily because they haven't played as much as some other people have. At least I think so, though I may be wrong or partially wrong.
The second is that the current melee system works the way it does so that even people who have a slow connection and lag a bit won't find themselves being owned because they're seeing what's happening 5 or ten seconds ago. Once again I'm not sure of this, I just think I remember reading something to this effect a few months ago.
EDIT: Actually, perhaps if the arrow system and the visual system could be combined then it could work. Players could use both at the same time while they're getting used to the melee system, and turn off the arrows when they're confident enough or want to build up their skills quickly.
ex. Arrow system = Training wheels