When I say it has the feel of a combat, I mean not just in the sense that there's a 'conflict' going on, which implies different parties to it, and means of resolving same, but that HW extended resolutions have much of the 'trappings' of the typical RPG combat system. We have 'rounds of combat', 'attacks', 'to hit rolls', etc. (And funkily different names for each of them.)
This may or may not be a good idea, but its similarity to combat systems seems undeniable.
You want some radically different alternative? Where's my large retainer? ;-)
One thing that I think HW _nearly_ managed was to unify single-roll and multiple-roll resolutions systems (cf. skill rolls vs whole combats), but unfortunately what it doesn't do is to make them in any way statistically interchangable. If one could choose between simple contests and extended contests on the basis of situational narrative need, _without_ making a huge different on the likely outcome, that would be a Good Thing. One could try and fake this with some sort of bonus to the better party in the simple test, but what this bonus should be is highly arguable. (Something of the sort of +d*n, where d is the difference in skills, and n is some Kludge Konstant arrived at by a rigorous statistical analysis that it's too late and I'm too knackered to even attempt.)
Cheers,
Alex.
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