Appreciate the thoughtful response! you’re absolutely right that combat feel starts with design philosophy, timing, and player expectations.
To clarify, I’m not outsourcing the design side of the combat. The core philosophy, timing goals, and interaction rules (hit timing, cancel windows, concurrency expectations, etc.) are already defined. Where I’m currently stuck is translating that design into a clean, responsive implementation in Unreal.
At this stage I’m specifically looking for help on the engineering side, structuring the systems (state handling, buffering, cancel logic) so the combat feels tight and extensible, rather than re-figuring out what the combat should be.
That said, I do appreciate the perspective, and I agree that aligning implementation with the underlying rhythm and feedback is critical.