1.4.5 Open Beta Dueling Feedback

[SeV]

When I first heard blue changes I already knew I gonna hate this.
RIP agressive blue. I have spent 3 years developing my style and now im getting this "walk backwards and pb" thingy. Now it feels like I suddenly lost something important.

Even though some things are good in this update, and I might be able to like it someday, it just doesn't feels right yet. Need more testing.


Later on this week I'll write a huge post describing my thoughts on this idea of "baseline playstyle" thing I keep hearing about. Like this nice little thoughts that blue should be a "defensive" style, or whatever. (Pro tip: defensive / agressive is how you play your style, not the characteristic of the style itself.)

Ofc I will defend agressive blue, and spit some more sour hatred itt. I just can't help myself.

WHOEVER DID THIS TO ME SHOULD BURN IN HELL

Cyan has taken over as the boss of fast style retardo spam. It's basically like the old aggressive blue playstyle you talk about in that it is based around many fast attacks and aggression. It's just a bit different with the parrying stuff, but it is basically the same kind of idea. Now, I'm not saying lul just go play cyan, but you can't deny that there are many similarities between current cyan playstyle and your old blue nudge aggressive spam. Both ways of playing, current cyan and old nudge blue, don't give a fuck about PBing and pretty much just ignore it completely in favour of just spamming attacks. The issue is in that old nudge blue aggression was harder to use, and harder to play against, but the base premise seems to be the same so your playstyle still exists somewhat.

 

[SK5]

RIP agressive blue.

Blue was op

 

[DaloLorn]

I can now be Obi-Wan/Dooku without feeling ashamed of myself.

More seriously, my experience with the revamped styles:

- Blue is fantastic for defense now. I feel like the PB zones could do with a little expansion, but that may have something to do with my complete inability to block Aaron or SK5 - against most of the other people I've dueled with, it was more or less okay. (As soon as I stopped trying to fight the enemy swing-for-swing and started focusing more on my PBs, at least.)

- Cyan is as focused on parries as blue is on PBs and counters. Once I started paying more attention to my combo timings, I held my own against almost everyone except Aaron, maybe Kas and SK5. Aaron flattens me whatever style I use - given my pre-1.4.5 experiences, it's entirely possible that Kas would have done the same if he were using SD2...

- Staff is... hmm. I still can't mblock if my life depends on it, so my performance was relatively unchanged.

- Duals seem to fall apart easily, but my only data sources there were SD1 Kas and my shitty self. It's also possible that I haven't figured out their trick yet.

- Yellow now needs a bit more offense for me to be viable. This is because I used to rely on PBs, short combos and counters to gain the upper hand before I'd start a proper offensive. I guess it was fine once I figured that one out, but overall I'd say there was little change in performance.

- Red is a coin toss if your opponent is half-decent at PBing. I have no idea what decides a red-vs-red match (unless it's me against Aaron), but overall the style burns hot and fast, so you need to get a decisive advantage quickly (within your first couple of combos) before you run out of fuel. DO NOT get caught on the defensive.

- Purple lasts a bit longer than red, but unless you can get that advantage soon, you're still going to wish you took a lighter style.

 

[jewbacca]

Cyan has taken over as the boss of fast style retardo spam.

Yeh, I kinda noticed that. But cyan is a different style with other animations, which is quite important.

So I guess cyan isn't blue.
And the thing is... blue animations seem quite good compared to cyan. Making blue any sort of defensive style = wasting them.


Thanks but I'll stick to the idea that I can make you guys see things the way I see. (I have some good points!) I need some more testing tho.

 

[Tempest]

man, cyan is tu stronk now, with all these slow combo chains it's kinda ez to get AP with shadowswings (doesn't mention ez body hits since cyan has wide angle).
also red feels useless (i may say stagger is op but compared to whole style - nope)
same with blue although not as much as red.
yellow is SHOOOOOOW SHLOOOOOOOW.

like new bp drain on dfa and damage indicator.
but basically - i think it's more to balance now than it was before.

p.s. plz bring back an old A-halfswing animation. srsly. just try it - u will see that animation stumbles because saber change his position before play animation. it's a waste of some precious 0,3 second.

Did you try out Red after the small patch? I went through all of its animations and tweaked them individually to try and make them feel better/smoother without being too strong.

Eh, it's okay. I'd need to play more in order to find something I like about it. I don't necessarily think it dumbs down the saber system, as it does make it harder for people with less experience in the saber combat aspect, and while I appreciate trying to make it more evident that skill can outmatch numbers, less skill, etc, I can see that going this route is going to end up scaring new players, or people who don't care to work up the effort to learn the new saber system away from Sith/Jedi, or even the game itself; If you continue to make it much harder than this, I don't think that new players who come in here, looking for a good Star Wars game(cause, let's be honest, there hasn't been a 'good' Star Wars game since JK3 first came out, and the dawn of MB2) will quickly find that the aspect of the Star Wars universe that drew them to the game(mostly Jedi/Sith) is near impossible to play against anybody with a lick of experience.

On the other hand, this will probably divert people away from Jedi/Sith, which is something that is sorely needed in open. The fact that I can just walk into a 32 man server, and see that one or both of the teams is almost entirely Jedi/Sith is just unacceptable. I'm GLAD that making the saber system harder will divert people to the Gunner classes, but I'm not glad that it might turn some people away from the game entirely, after they rage quit a few times.

Now, onto the stuff I really like:

Now that almost ALL saber swings are slow as hell, forcewhore is so much more viable as an actual team player in open, and I loooooooovvvvveeeeeeeee it.

Yeah, that's about it.

I'm not necessarily trying to make it vastly more difficult to play Jedi/Sith by default (I guess the correct thing to say would be that I'm not trying to inherently raise the skill floor by a huge margin). I am however trying to make it so skill is a much more obvious factor in success (which I guess by default, would make them harder/more difficult in some manner). I'm trying to get sabering back to a state where it resembles gameplay from a few years ago where you put time into learning Jedi/Sith and it actually showed. Watching good saberists in Open is what actually first inspired me to learn how to duel in general. Good saberists were terrifying because they could 1v3 bad/less experienced ones and destroy them with skillful execution of blocking/interrupts/etc. That is the kind of thing I'd like to see. Having anyone able to pick up Jedi/Sith and basically pubstomp just by chance is something I find very distasteful :/.

 

[SeV]

Did you try out Red after the small patch? I went through all of its animations and tweaked them individually to try and make them feel better/smoother without being too strong.


I'm not necessarily trying to make it vastly more difficult to play Jedi/Sith by default (I guess the correct thing to say would be that I'm not trying to inherently raise the skill floor by a huge margin). I am however trying to make it so skill is a much more obvious factor in success (which I guess by default, would make them harder/more difficult in some manner). I'm trying to get sabering back to a state where it resembles gameplay from a few years ago where you put time into learning Jedi/Sith and it actually showed. Watching good saberists in Open is what actually first inspired me to learn how to duel in general. Good saberists were terrifying because they could 1v3 bad/less experienced ones and destroy them with skillful execution of blocking/interrupts/etc. That is the kind of thing I'd like to see. Having anyone able to pick up Jedi/Sith and basically pubstomp just by chance is something I find very distasteful :/.

I'm 120% with you on that. It's good that sabering is becoming more accessible to new players, but it is no good to ruin skill depth in the process. If you are really, really beastly good, you should be able to show it through your plays instead of having the beastly skill culled by mechanics.

 

[----Kas----]

New thoughts:


- Yellow is clearly the strongest in this update. I only ever see people hit and run which kinda makes the fight completely boring. Its chained swings deal so much damage ( 4 chained hits = 80BP lost). You should probably lower the damage on yellow because I feel so cheap when I use it.


* I will probably give more of my opinions later on in the week, so stuff might change for me *

You feel cheap because other people do not pblock when they should

 

[Tempest]

I may have also slightly overnerfed defending in lieu of the planned+upcoming adjustments to PB/body hit logic/mechanics (which would also solve a lot of the problems with Cyan as one point). I am currently working on some tweaks to things based on the feedback as well as discussions + my own reflection on things. Hopefully these will make the gameplay a bit more fluid/enjoyable for everyone

 

[Aizencin]

IMO, yellow should have a perk on drain ACM in pblock or something, yellow MUST be the style where you can have an aggresive or defensive playstyle, and at the momment, it feels that with the 6 acm per combo, only thing you can make to develop a defensive style is hit and run. Please, buff defensive yellow, its quite hard to be defensive when one combo already will kill you because the stagger thing.

Ok with everything else.

 

[Crusade010]

Played it a bit earlier, tried out all of the styles and am really liking it so far, it feels much more skill based as it punishes mistakes to a much harsher degree, also 2 v 1 is possible again.
I agree with aizen that the yellow acm is a bit over the top atm and needs a few tweaks but it looks very promissing

 

[AODVIX]

Red: A very strong style that will destroy new players, can be pbed or slapped easily by experienced players to avoid stagger. I like the idea behind it being very strong, but feels like it will either be only against new players rather than trying to duel good people.
Blue: I was testing against Otter and noticed that it can parry lots of swings because of their speed. I thought this was meant to stop spamming swings, but it actually made me feel like I could parry all swings and make my opponent take away his bp by pure parry/slap(swing at him knocked down)/pbcounter.
Yellow: Have nothing to say about this rather that just saying that it seems slow.
Cyan: I like the 4 swing combo, no other comments at the moment.
Haven't tried out as much the other styles.
General dueling: I dislike how the beta is on dueling right now. Low bp stagger even when pbed is a feature that seems dumb in my opinion. I like that nudge is gone, at least if it is coming back, it would be nice to see nudge toggle, because it messes with pblocks and mblocks. I liked the semi-pb system but I do agree that it helped extend dueling a bit too long than it should and is a bit unrealistic.

I hope most duelists agree with me that the speed of the swings should remain as they are now. I do not want people thinking because I like to spam (you can pretty much spam already). Changing the whole system will bring joy and anger to different people. This is just my opinion.

 

[AaronAaron]

Blue was op

I dont get why people say this... lol. Blue took a bunch of skill to use in 1.4.4. You were forced to learn how to play defensively and offensively which made it such a great style. Styles like Blue and Staff in 1.4.4 were probably the hardest to use. ))))xddddddddddddddd)))))

 

[Karus]

Literally the only things I'm not liking right now are the new pb zones (it makes certain styles e.g. red fucking intolerable to fight against) and the steering towards aggressive play.
The patch seems to be a bit of a fuck you to defensive yellow atm.
Other than that I think you've done a good job.

 

[vasya]

wawawawa-it, why is nobody mentions that yellow is slow as hell? no hate here but its just encourage hit 'n' run playstyle.
also it could be a bit of problem in open (yes, yes, open for flinch between swings in combo), didnt try open tho' so might be wrong.
thing is im readin' this thread and i can't actually believe ppl is ok with yellow in current "slow" state. can understand red, even purple. but yellow...meh..dunno.

 

[kvinto]

wawawawa-it, why is nobody mentions that yellow is slow as hell? no hate here but its just encourage hit 'n' run playstyle.
also it could be a bit of problem in open (yes, yes, open for flinch between swings in combo), didnt try open tho' so might be wrong.
thing is im readin' this thread and i can't actually believe ppl is ok with yellow in current "slow" state. can understand red, even purple. but yellow...meh..dunno.

It's ok with slowing other styles but not yellow beacuse... you use it?

 

[AaronAaron]

wawawawa-it, why is nobody mentions that yellow is slow as hell? no hate here but its just encourage hit 'n' run playstyle.
also it could be a bit of problem in open (yes, yes, open for flinch between swings in combo), didnt try open tho' so might be wrong.
thing is im readin' this thread and i can't actually believe ppl is ok with yellow in current "slow" state. can understand red, even purple. but yellow...meh..dunno.

Yellow's speed is fine as it is. If they were any faster, you wouldnt even last 1 second in a duel once you get locked in a combo. The only problem with yellow is how much damage it does. As soon as you're locked in a 4 hit combo by someone who looks down and yaws, you're dead. As much as I love yellow, its way too strong for me to enjoy using it.

 

[Szunti]

I like the stagger on low bp idea. You just have to look at it as max bp is reduced, but there is a zone where you can still leave the fight instead of dying. It's a visual indicator for your teammates that you need help. Currently if I'm a gunner I either watch a duel and wait if my teammate starts going backwards (probably low on bp) and start shooting the opponent to let him regen or shoot into the duel if I know that my teammate has low or no chance to win. But people usually don't get out and just die and then the opponent kills me too. I hope this will fix it and add teamplay. Also looks good in FAs where a boss fights multiple saberists.

 

[Sammy]

I dont get why people say this... lol. Blue took a bunch of skill to use in 1.4.4. You were forced to learn how to play defensively and offensively which made it such a great style. Styles like Blue and Staff in 1.4.4 were probably the hardest to use. ))))xddddddddddddddd)))))

In 1.4.4 blue was odd to say the least. It was able to chainsaw and interrupt like a madman, and it just was unbalanced for some reason. Sure,it took skill, but it also could be abused.

 

[vasya]

It's ok with slowing other styles but not yellow beacuse... you use it?

nice judging here
because its not red or purple.
and how one guy said on 1st page - feels like u duel in ocean.

btw i wasnt ok with other styles, i just don't actually care about them. if u want red to be faster u should say about it. i guess.

 

[agentoo8]

The changes to blue I welcome: it should be a defensive style.

BP drains for backwacks are nonsensical. The inherent risk in doing a backwack is that you expose your back to the enemy; you don't need BP costs to exacerbate that. I also think that red DFA should be immune to BP drains, given that it has the same inherent weakness (back exposure).

Shall test red now and get back to you.

RED
* BP Costs for RDFA need to be reverted. As explained above, it is an unnecessary penalty when we take into consideration the risk involved (exposing one's back)
* I like the slow, strong swings. However, against a good opponent I can see red suffering GREATLY without the nudge.
- LOTS of effort required for it to work against a good yellow/blue, or a good PBlocker in general. As said above, you really have to mask your initial hit.

Red seems to be a sort of hit-and-run style now, you want to make sure your combos go through and aren't PB'd. However, against a good opponent, you will get PB'd a lot, which negates the stagger thing/huge BP DMG for loss of nudge component.

It doesn't seem too bad right now, and it has sort of allowed me to bring out my aerial red style that has been gathering dust for a while.