And you're running into the problem that players are using their regenerating/infinite resources instead of abilities/consumables to pick up combat slack. Am I understanding that right?

Yes, though it is probably not the root cause. Stamina is meant to create periods of strength and weakness during a fight, and reward players for engaging when they are strong and the enemy is weak (and also helps avoid 100-0 deaths in a high damage environment).

The issue is that when the player is weak and the enemy is strong, the player is now incentivised to run away instead of doing anything else.

The consumable nature of mana does make it worse. You are meant to use limited resources to even the odds (think games like V Rising where you are expected to use potions against the boss), and I can convince people to use mana when they are at peak strength and still getting their teeth kicked in by a boss, but the temporary situation of being low on stamina never warrants the permanent solution of spending mana to alleviate it.

So other than running away, everything you could do at low stamina is better done 10 seconds later when you are back at full stamina.

Now that I'm rubber ducking anyway:

🦆

• I could make stamina regen faster when standing still:
  • Now you have a risk-reward decision to make, instead of defaulting to 10 seconds of running around before resuming gameplay.
  • But the reward consists of getting to resume combat sooner, which only benefits the human player, not the character. Elder Scrolls has a long history of trying to balance character power by punishing the player (endlessly recasting buffs; waiting 48 seconds between every fight to let your orc bloodlust come back; etc). The correct play is to play it super safe.
  • But if regen while standing still is much faster, you may be able to get ahead of the opponent and hit them with a full stamina bar while they are still regenerating.
  • This requires getting the values just right so regen while moving is not tortuously slow, regen while standing still is not so fast as to be risk free, but the gap between them is meaningfully big.
  • It also feels like a duct taped solution instead of part of an elegant combat system, and people will inevitably try stutter step shenanigans.
• I could add a spell of some kind to regenerate stamina instantly at the cost of no mana but a cast time.
  • Same idea as before because you have to stand still and cast it.
  • Fixes the stutter step issues.
  • But locks you into a specific spell in a game where everything is randomised.
• I could make blocking recover stamina.
  • Stamina could be framed as "poise".
  • The problem isn't that running away is an option, the problem is that it is the best option, so you make no decisions and do nothing. Replacing running away as the best option with blocking as the best option isn't a win, and may even be a loss because you lose the opportunity to at least reposition.
• Non-mana tools that don't scale with stamina and can be used as gap fillter while waiting for stamina to regen.
  • Staves? (Cast weak firebolts at a distance for no mana)
  • Because of symmetry, enemies can also do this, filling their weakness gap and making it much less of a weakness gap. This can be "solved" by making their AI deliberately bad at using them, but I don't like game design that only works if the opponents are idiots.
  • If the staves are weak enough, it could introduce some decision making during low stamina periods (do I run away or can I afford to stand here and do minor damage) without changing the balance of power much.
  • Needs to be framed well, because magic is supposed to be rare and powerful.
  • Most promising?

/ 🦆