1.4.5 Sabering Open Beta!

Tempest · Jun 18, 2017

Part of the reason the stuff has been delayed was because of the constant server exploding from bugs. I identified the general parts of the code causing said crashes (formal duel code) and we actually got to have a test complete without any major issues (first requirement to actually moving toward releasing things!).

Lessen · Jun 19, 2017

Oh, and that was the one test I've missed so far.

Well, glad one went well!

Helix · Jun 19, 2017

lessen said:
Oh, and that was the one test I've missed so far.

Well, glad one went well!

Nothing stops you from testing it anytime with some beta team buddy

-!-Sekundus · Jun 26, 2017

Hmm, is the saber system enjoyable now?

Jameson · Jun 26, 2017

-!-Sekundus said:
Hmm, is the saber system enjoyable now?

Better be. I see that they nerfed a lot of stuff. Hopefully for good

jewbacca · Jun 30, 2017

I hate how you guys destroyed blue :-/
Even after so much time passed since beta I can't stop hating this new direction. Who told you that there's a place for a "defensive" style in the game ?

I know, it looks good from lore perspective... soresu stuff, and everything. More importantly It also makes blue distinctive and unique amongst other styles. Selling points, yeh! But please, consider gamplay above everything else.

I guess your definition of a "defensive style" is something heavily reliant on
- PB
- Counters
- ACM management

Which promotes only one viable tactic:
1. PB / counter / interrupts
2. Wait for an opening -> punish
3. If opponent low -> finish

Old blue was broken, but I kinda liked it because of cool animations (gameplaywise good, not goodloking ffs) and some exceptional control over flow of duel. This is something that yellow have too.

I also know that you guys are very stubborn and it doesn't really matter what I say, so I'll just stick to the yellow for now.
Just because you won't so carelessly ruin yellow, considering how many good players actually use it. Nobody wants Hlevie to go mad anyway.

Sammy · Jun 30, 2017

jewbacca said:
I hate how you guys destroyed blue :-/
Even after so much time passed since beta I can't stop hating this new direction. Who told you that there's a place for a "defensive" style in the game ?

I know, it looks good from lore perspective... soresu stuff, and everything. More importantly It also makes blue distinctive and unique amongst other styles. Selling points, yeh! But please, consider gamplay above everything else.

I guess your definition of a "defensive style" is something heavily reliant on
- PB
- Counters
- ACM management

Which promotes only one viable tactic:
1. PB / counter / interrupts
2. Wait for an opening -> punish
3. If opponent low -> finish

Old blue was broken, but I kinda liked it because of cool animations (gameplaywise good, not goodloking ffs) and some exceptional control over flow of duel. This is something that yellow have too.

I also know that you guys are very stubborn and it doesn't really matter what I say, so I'll just stick to the yellow for now.
Just because you won't so carelessly ruin yellow, considering how many good players actually use it. Nobody wants Hlevie to go mad anyway.

have you even tested the blue that is currently being tested? if the answer is no than don't base your assumptions off of some numbers read in a post, there are changes.

DaloLorn · Jun 30, 2017

Sammy said:
have you even tested the blue that is currently being tested? if the answer is no than don't base your assumptions off of some numbers read in a post, there are changes.

He was in the open beta, he's basing his expectations off of that - it's not unreasonable.

That being said, there have been changes since then.

Sammy · Jun 30, 2017

DaloLorn said:
He was in the open beta, he's basing his expectations off of that - it's not unreasonable.

That being said, there have been changes since then.

Yes, but wasn't that beta a long time ago? It's understandable he posted that thinking no changes to blue were done in the past few months since the numbers here are the same, but I was replying to the current state of blue.

SeV · Jun 30, 2017

jewbacca said:
I hate how you guys destroyed blue :-/
Even after so much time passed since beta I can't stop hating this new direction. Who told you that there's a place for a "defensive" style in the game ?

I know, it looks good from lore perspective... soresu stuff, and everything. More importantly It also makes blue distinctive and unique amongst other styles. Selling points, yeh! But please, consider gamplay above everything else.

I guess your definition of a "defensive style" is something heavily reliant on
- PB
- Counters
- ACM management

Which promotes only one viable tactic:
1. PB / counter / interrupts
2. Wait for an opening -> punish
3. If opponent low -> finish

Old blue was broken, but I kinda liked it because of cool animations (gameplaywise good, not goodloking ffs) and some exceptional control over flow of duel. This is something that yellow have too.

I also know that you guys are very stubborn and it doesn't really matter what I say, so I'll just stick to the yellow for now.
Just because you won't so carelessly ruin yellow, considering how many good players actually use it. Nobody wants Hlevie to go mad anyway.

I kind of agree. Old blue was fun to play, powerful, required a bunch of skill. Overall quite nice. However it was also very annoying to play against. I think blue style would be better suited as a style that was based on higher interrupt damage and controlling the opponent, and I think the 2 hit combo limit is too restrictive for any style. It was bad with purple and its bad with blue. Blue having nudge and fast recovery makes it more managable, but still I would like it to have atleast 3 hit combos so u can do 2,1 and 1,2 combo flows. The thing with soresu lore is that it was a defensive style 'focused' on exploiting the weaknesses in the opponents stance. I think gameplay wise we should double down on this exploiting weaknesses thing so that blue is a more elegant, flowing style. Playing blue well shouldn't be, backpedal + PB counter. That applies to any style btw. Remember when red had BP drain on PB? Stupid. It also resulted in a backpedalling, passive red style that just PB'd and countered. Active things like the blue flurry of attacks or red nudge timings, give the game flavour and allow ppl skill. And moreover, it's more fun.

Also, I wouldn't say blue is completely ruined in 1.4.4. It's more an issue of the system in general being horrendous right now, which will hopefully be remedied to an extent with the next patch/release/saber system fix.

I mean, think about it.
Hypothetical question. If you have a style that deals 10 BP damage per swing, and drains 12 BP from you per swing, is that good design or bad design? Even at 10/10 or 10/8, this is still an extremely flawed design because it PUNISHES you for attacking and playing the game actively. This is the major issue with 1.4.4 right now. It punishes people who play actively, and rewards those who sit back, don't attack (conserve BP and let the opponent drain themselves I mean wtf dumb shit), and just rely on insta PB counters to win the day. It also annoys me to no end that I am unable to finish the duel with near to full BP unless I play super passively and let my opponent kill himself essentially. If I play properly I drain from myself nearly as much BP as I drain from my opponent, and that is one of the stupidest designs I have ever encountered in sabering. And I absolutely hate it.

Should definitely go back to a more active system with more skill, a system that encourages (and not punishes) attacking and defending skillfully.

jewbacca · Jun 30, 2017

SeV said:
I kind of agree. Old blue was fun to play, powerful, required a bunch of skill. Overall quite nice. However it was also very annoying to play against. I think blue style would be better suited as a style that was based on higher interrupt damage and controlling the opponent, and I think the 2 hit combo limit is too restrictive for any style. It was bad with purple and its bad with blue. Blue having nudge and fast recovery makes it more managable, but still I would like it to have atleast 3 hit combos so u can do 2,1 and 1,2 combo flows. The thing with soresu lore is that it was a defensive style 'focused' on exploiting the weaknesses in the opponents stance. I think gameplay wise we should double down on this exploiting weaknesses thing so that blue is a more elegant, flowing style. Playing blue well shouldn't be, backpedal + PB counter. That applies to any style btw. Remember when red had BP drain on PB? Stupid. It also resulted in a backpedalling, passive red style that just PB'd and countered. Active things like the blue flurry of attacks or red nudge timings, give the game flavour and allow ppl skill. And moreover, it's more fun.

Also, I wouldn't say blue is completely ruined in 1.4.4. It's more an issue of the system in general being horrendous right now, which will hopefully be remedied to an extent with the next patch/release/saber system fix.

I mean, think about it.
Hypothetical question. If you have a style that deals 10 BP damage per swing, and drains 12 BP from you per swing, is that good design or bad design? Even at 10/10 or 10/8, this is still an extremely flawed design because it PUNISHES you for attacking and playing the game actively. This is the major issue with 1.4.4 right now. It punishes people who play actively, and rewards those who sit back, don't attack (conserve BP and let the opponent drain themselves I mean wtf dumb shit), and just rely on insta PB counters to win the day. It also annoys me to no end that I am unable to finish the duel with near to full BP unless I play super passively and let my opponent kill himself essentially. If I play properly I drain from myself nearly as much BP as I drain from my opponent, and that is one of the stupidest designs I have ever encountered in sabering. And I absolutely hate it.

Should definitely go back to a more active system with more skill, a system that encourages (and not punishes) attacking and defending skillfully.

Wow. I mostly agree with what you said. I especially liked your points about "backpedal + PB counter" bs, and PB drain perk being cancerous.

SeV said:
I think blue style would be better suited as a style that was based on higher interrupt damage and controlling the opponent

I do like the idea, but however I cannot see how you can make blue being more "focused on exploiting the weaknesses in the opponents stance.".
I mean, take for example interrupts. There's already inherent weakness of slower styles in long windup time, but if you make interrupts somehow stronger, slower styles may have hard time against blue. That will result in some rock-paper-scissors bs, which im not sure about

Btw what's inherent weakness of faster styles that you can exploit? Blue, cyan, duals ?
I honestly don't know. I started to think that animation is the real backbone of any style. And, unfortunately, it is too expensive to change. So, basically, if your style have shit animations you're screwed (hi, cyan)

SeV · Jun 30, 2017

jewbacca said:
Wow. I mostly agree with what you said. I especially liked your points about "backpedal + PB counter" bs, and PB drain perk being cancerous.

I do like the idea, but however I cannot see how you can make blue being more "focused on exploiting the weaknesses in the opponents stance.".
I mean, take for example interrupts. There's already inherent weakness of slower styles in long windup time, but if you make interrupts somehow stronger slower styles they may have hard time against blue.
That will result in some rock-paper-scissors bs, which im not sure about

Btw what's inherent weakness of faster styles that you can exploit? Blue, cyan, duals ?
I honestly don't know. I started to think that animation is the real backbone of any style. And, unfortunately, it is too expensive to change. So, basically, if your style have shit animations you're screwed (hi, cyan)

This is quite true, the thing about animations and stuff. Rock paper scissors stuff isn't all bad in sabering, but it's not my preference either. With regards to cyan and purple they've been a headache since they were added, and I am of the opinion that they should never have been added in teh first place due to their wonky/unfinished animations. In the past, red dealt with fast style spam decently well because it had nudge to rely on, but there was still the issue of blue outparrying red style and it being pretty tough to handle blue with red.

Hopefully we'll be able to find some sort of working solution for the style balancing problem, but I think the main thing we should focus on as a small niche game is how the gameplay feels. Gameplay is by far the most important thing. Look at a pile of garbage like the star wars battlefront graphics simulator for example. The gameplay in that thing is laughably simple and boring and MBII is far superior to that half-assed thing. It is very important for us to not fall into that kind of trap, because a small community like this cannot afford to make gameplay worse. Gameplay, the fun of playing the game, is the only reason this little mod still exists. So lets try not to take that away

{Δ} Achilles · Jun 30, 2017

Blue is broken and boring with nudge and how blindingly fast it is. I would prefer it do very little damage, and be entirely about controlling ACM and defense.

DaloLorn · Jul 1, 2017

Blue doesn't nudge anymore, though, even in the public build?

(This reminds me of a recent dueling experience with Threepwood, actually - he was firmly under the impression that I was nudging with a staff, and started throwing out insults because of it, despite my insistence that I couldn't be nudging...

)

{Δ} Achilles · Jul 1, 2017

DaloLorn said:
Blue doesn't nudge anymore, though, even in the public build?

(This reminds me of a recent dueling experience with Threepwood, actually - he was firmly under the impression that I was nudging with a staff, and started throwing out insults because of it, despite my insistence that I couldn't be nudging... )

No, it doesn't nudge, but it also doesn't need to. Was replying to Sev.

jewbacca · Jul 1, 2017

{Δ} Achilles said:
I would prefer it do very little damage

Cmon, you would prefer blue not doing any damage at all.

It's not good for the gameplay, though :-/

{Δ} Achilles · Jul 1, 2017

jewbacca said:
Cmon, you would prefer blue not doing any damage at all.

It's not good for the gameplay, though :-/

I use blue, and I know some of the better users of blue, it should not do much (if any) offensive damage due to how fast it is. I don't mind it doing damage on PBs, as long as it is a reasonable amount, and the PBs are reasonably difficult to land. The way blue is now (and how it was in 1.4) is atrociously spammy, and much harder to deal with than it is to use.

jewbacca · Jul 1, 2017

{Δ} Achilles said:
PBs are reasonably difficult to land.

PB difficulty may vary significantly. It largly depends on style and opponent.
Examples:
- Easy to PB newbie with red
- Impossible to reliably PB good player with blue or cyan (dunno about duals and staff. They seem wonky enough too)

Both direction restrictions being lifted and enormous speed of faster styles makes them almost unplbockable in good hands. While I agree that it's a good thing, that skillful attack beats PB, I strongly disagree that focusing style around PB is a good idea. Like wut? I have to change style just because my opponent started using cyan or blue? That's not how duels work.

Well... SeV already said about why PB focused style is bs, but I dunno what to do since you seem to completely ignore his points :-/
uhh.

p.s.
Don't want to get it personal, but the way you act makes me think that you don't really respect people around you.

{Δ} Achilles · Jul 1, 2017

jewbacca said:
PB difficulty may vary significantly. It largly depends on style and opponent.
Examples:
- Easy to PB newbie with red
- Impossible to reliably PB good player with blue or cyan (dunno about duals and staff. They seem wonky enough too)

Both direction restrictions being lifted and enormous speed of faster styles makes them almost unplbockable in good hands. While I agree that it's a good thing, that skillful attack beats PB, I strongly disagree that focusing style around PB is a good idea. Like wut? I have to change style just because my opponent started using cyan or blue? That's not how duels work.

Well... SeV already said about why PB focused style is bs, but I dunno what to do since you seem to completely ignore his points :-/
uhh.

p.s.
Don't want to get it personal, but the way you act makes me think that you don't really respect people around you.

You're kind of missing the point. Blue in public is completely snafu'd, and the PBs/Other stuff in the patch are also terrible. I don't like a style as fast as blue being usable offensively, so I would prefer it be a strong defensive style. In 1.3 the PB zones were larger, and more consistent. Red had a perk where it did damage on PBs. If you were skilled enough at PBing (and your opponent wasn't good enough at yawing), then combined with the swing-direction-restrictions and larger PB zones, you could kill them through defense. Now the issue with that was Red had a double whammy of that powerful defense perk AND insane offensive damage (1 combo kills ftw), which is incidentally why purple was/is overpowered as well.

Blue on the other hand, would only have a powerful defense, with fast swings for parries, high BP count, and the ability to defeat an opponent through defense. Making it unique and enjoyable. Rather than how spammy it is right now in public.

I've already addressed Sev's points on that in the past multiple times. The issue with a lot of devs/testers and their arguments against perks is a level of severity, they often forget that one can tweak how effective a perk can be regarding BP damages. I do not want any other sort of PB perk, though, BP damage is at most I'll do. ACM Drain/Gain on PB is absolutely cancerous and cannot work due to how ACM is set up, and BP regeneration on PB would just be a boring tank match.

And I have been known to seem a lot meaner in text than I actually am. That is why I have a public relations person in the clan.

SeV · Jul 1, 2017

I think the real solution to Cyan and Blue is to slow them down slightly and give them a little more damage. I've said it many times but cyan is badly designed because of the first insta swing. Blue's nearly the same, except for the fact that blue's anims are less spastic and wonky than cyan's anims. I think slowing these styles down to a point where a human can use fast reactions to atleast notice the swing if not PB it, and as Jew said, to let animations carry the styles. Staff can be pretty damn hard to PB in facehug distance due to how its swings look/are animated. Also yawed yellow is pretty hard to PB. So even with a slowed down cyan it would still be hard to PB due to its anims and the wya ppl use it , but humans would have a chance to react to the first swing somewhat.

Also do note I am talking about first swings here, not the chaining itself, but I've mentioned many times that the way to make cyan more viable is to return it to a state it was in long long ago(EDIT: I am thinking of old JT FA cyan on anakin, before it was in the game as an option in open mode), where it was closer to yellow in speed than blue. Take purple as an example, and imagine a faster more 'light' feeling purple with the consistency of yellow and without the irratic, jerky instagib swings and gimmicky mechanics to carry it. Blue'd receive a similar treatment, slight slow down but not very drastic. And I would prefer styles be named Light, medium and Heavy, not fast styles. Because attacks being slow is not a merit in any way shape or form in fencing. A slow attack is also a weak attack unless you're swinging a very heavy blade around, but even then higher speed = higher damage. It is illogical to have super slow staggering red style like in OB#1, and it's also bad for gameplay to have such slow styles. The contrary is also true. Having styles so supersonically fast that u can't possibly even register the attacks is also an iffy design choice. Therefore, slow the fast styles down a notch and let them be carried by their animations and perks and make sure you hit that sweetspot where the style feels good to use and good to fight against. The reason why yellow has always been the most popular style isn't because it's always been teh strongest, on the contrary even in patches where other styles were rather OP and yellow was at a disadvantage, people still gravitated towards yellow. The question is why? Clean animations and that sweet spot speed that makes using it feel so good. I think too slow and too fast both present problems. Too slow, feels bad to use. Too fast, feels bad to play against.

I don't know the values, but I recently thought about going in game and trying how the styles felt on timescale 0.95x for example, in order to find some percentage speed nerf that would suit blue and cyan and perhaps even duals though maybe that one can be kept as the one true spasticus maximus flailing attack style. Then once you've got styles that feel good to play with, let them be differentiated by animations and perks and how they flow together, not by how fast or slow they are necessarily. And adjust their balance with AP dmg and the BP modifiers aswell as appropriate perks. Ofc this'd be a project for the future, but it bears thinking about since you brought up fast styles.

1.4.5 Sabering Open Beta!

Tempest

Gameplay Design

Lessen

pew pew

Helix

-!-Sekundus

Jameson

jewbacca

Sammy

Master of Whispers

DaloLorn

Sammy

Master of Whispers

SeV

Nerd

jewbacca

SeV

Nerd

{Δ} Achilles

Nerd

DaloLorn

{Δ} Achilles

Nerd

jewbacca

{Δ} Achilles

Nerd

jewbacca

{Δ} Achilles

Nerd

SeV

Nerd