I almost love you for what you have wrote Pestilience ;P
And as zhai explained in his latest post fighting is mainly about dodging and parrying. How to implement this?
Should we have system messages about eighter dodge or parry till the final killing hit happens? I don't think and never thought this being a good idea.
I hate looking at the system messages checking if i didn't caused some HP loss.
What i believe is much more reasonable solution is the HP bar which is decreasong because of parrying and dodging, later also scratches leading at the end to the final blow. In some other thread, with i think Karyuu help, i came to a conclussion that maybe its the stamina bar which should decrease and when it is very low the HP may start to decrease.
Why this idea?
Simply to know if you are loosing or not. I'm talking about real now. You usually know how good is your opponent when you face him in a fight, basing on how successfull you are defending or attacking.
System messages won't provide this feeling.
When we are at system messages, i think damage would be much more informative, if it was given in percentage values.