Might as well post this here, too.
Chaos the Chaotic said:
So feel free to list your problems. The community awaits, and we even have a dev participating. If you want to be heard, the time is now.
I'm rooting for you!
WHELP, let's get started then.
Wookiee
We noticed that wookiees have been almost unstoppable while in Rage Mode, and a large part of this was because of their endless supply of fury, so we’ve toned that down a little bit.
- Change: Reduced fury gain from damaging enemies while in rage mode by 30%. Reduced fury bonus from killing enemies in rage mode by 35%.
- Which does almost nothing to nerf Wookiee. If a Wookiee goes into rage, then they either accomplish what they intended to do, i.e. slaughter a hallway of gunners, within a couple of seconds, or they don't, and wasted it. If you wanted to nerf Wookiees, you would either nerf their melee capabilities, or their bowcaster. My suggestion would be to nerf their movement speed in melee to be that of their caster, so that they can't outrun Gunners/Jedi/Sith with controlled use of charge. Fury should be their chase mechanic, not that poorly implemented charge and fast melee speed. I'd also be in favor of a complete mechanic change to Wookiee, where fury is buffed a bit, and builds from them *taking* damage, that'd be more interesting. Also, fix Godcaster+Fury, kthx.
Super Battle Droid
Super Battle Droids have always been a pretty strong class in comparison to their pure simplicity. Rather than toning down some of their upfront damage we decided to instead highlight their weakness at close range. Oh, and apparently one ability did not match up with it’s information tooltip; we’ve fixed that too.
- Change: Slap damage reduced from 30 to 10.
- Fix: Blast Armor now reduces melee damage by 20% in addition to 40% explosive damage reduction. Previously did not reduce melee damage despite its class configuration description.
- I'm okay with this, but I'd prefer you actually make SBD fun, something more along the lines of a Republic Commando style SBD. Thematic.
Mandalorian
Mandalorian has always lacked a degree of diversity. A contributing factor to this problem has been their lack of complimenting tools. The Flamethrower was always a tool we wanted to be diverse and work in a multitude of situations, while The Wristblaster sort of fell to the wayside. We’ve implemented a quality of life fix and tinkered with the values of Wristblaster to give Manda some of the diversity it’s lacking.
- Change: Wrist Blaster no longer has an initial delay before firing. Reduced ammo before overload from 5 to 3 and decreased its regeneration rate from 1 ammo per 3 seconds to 1 ammo per 5 seconds.
- Pretty much useless, barely works. Give it rechargeable infinite ammo (so long as it recharges slowly), and it'll be worth taking. Also, make rockets require a license please? I'm really quite tired of suicide mando squads, and getting TK'd in a duel by mandos with itchy rocket fingers.
Player Movement
For the most part player movement is in a pretty good spot, however there are a few areas that we’ve looked to improve the quality of life of.
- Change: Crouch now reduces force push/pull displacement by half.
- Change: Crouch/Dive can now be performed into walls and slopes.
- Fix: Wallgrab release inducing falling damage even when releasing from a close distance to the ground, when the wallgrab had been initiated from falling off a ledge rather than jumping off of it.
- A good fix, I like this change.
Armour
Damage to armour has been modified to improve consistency.
- Change: Armour mechanics have been altered so the reduction of location damage modifier always applies if armour remains. Previously the modifier was ignored if the damage received was higher than remaining armour.
- So... a buff to clones via bugfix. Neato. Dat armor. Although, a good fix...
Lightsaber System
Jedi versus Sith, Jedi versus Jedi, Sith versus Sith
While many of the core mechanics and basics in Version 1.4 will be the same, or similar to how they’ve always been, there have been changes made to halfswinging, countering, perfect blocking, swing chaining and ACC gains, the return of the formerly defunct nudge mechanic, and the return of the saber clash GFX and SFX for the sake of fluidity. These changes are mostly meant to promote more dynamic, reactive and varying styles of saber on saber combat, increase the overall skillcap of the saber system and address the lack of appealing visuals which previous versions suffered from.
- New: Yellow style now has a saber vs saber perk. Perfect blocks with yellow drain 1 ACC from attacks.
- Which is literally the most overpowered nonsense you could have possibly added *ever*. If you know how to barely pblock, you are absolutely invulnerable. You can drain full ACM from an opponent with 2 pblocks and a counter swing. I shouldn't have to tell you why this is fucking stupid. Think of something more imaginative, I know you have it in you... maybe.
- New: Saberists can now continue the swing chain with a halfswing after performing a swing feint (interrupting a swing by pressing reload).
- Which defeats the purpose of ever committing to a slow swing, since not only combos were nerfed, but single swings were made strong, and half swings are demonstrably better.
- New: Can now shut off saber when in nudge by pressing use + reload.
- Okay?
- New: Nudge has been reintroduced upon saber/saber or saber/body collisions, when not attacking.
- Looks disgusting, and is disgusting. Nudge is a terrible idea, and it should be removed, unless you can make it *not* cancer.
- New: Saber/saber clash SFX and GFX have been reintroduced.
- Okay.
- New: Perfect block is now called full perfect block. Being full perfect blocked now prevents the continuation of swing chains.
- Which is fairly dumb, it buffs turtle playstyles to a ridiculous degree. Again, with a combination of yellow's retarded perk, and this dumb idea, you can turtle *forever* and never die, so long as you know how to pb. I fought Kael, yellow v yellow, and we could *not* kill each other. When one of us gained the advantage, we'd just turtle up a bit and pb, and then drain the other's ACM, then go back to swinging. It was a never ending cycle. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
- New: Semi-perfect block: Similar to full perfect block, but can be performed when attacking, running, walking and rolling (not knocked down or in a getup animation), and only negates BP drain and ACC gain. Does not stop combos nor benefits from any perk such as purple ACC gain on PB or yellow ACC drain on PB. Semi-perfect block triggers yellow flashes on the crosshair and BP bar.
- And PB is easier than SPB. Also, I'm kind of okay with this, in the context of 1.3 it could work. However, it just makes turtling stronger, and more luck-based. The amount of times I've been saved from random semi-pbs is hilarious.
- New: Being hit by a non-parried saber swing now always triggers a blocking animation from which a half-swing (called "counter") can be performed.
- Okay.
- New: Half-swings performed from nudges, chain pauses and blocking animations are now of similar speed in all directions and spinning moves no longer occur in these cases. Swings chained in the air are unchanged.
- This is also quite retarded, because it means everyone is facehugging. There is NO purpose to ever being outside of nudge, unless you're low on BP. No one likes nudge.
- New: Counters performed off of a full perfect block are instantaneous and deal 1.2 times BP drain regardless of swing blocking, walking or running.
- Which is also retarded, ALTHOUGH, I do like that you can counter swing from any direction, that is nice. However, this instantaneous counter nonsense, with the damage increase, is a bit silly. Especially with how easy it is to do.
- New: Parrying now drains BP depending on which stance is being used with respect to the opponent's. For this feature, Blue/Cyan/Duals count as light styles, Yellow/Staff count as medium styles and Red/Purple count as heavy styles. Parrying against the same weight class or lighter results in 1 BP loss, a weight class one level above 2 BP loss, and a weight class 2 levels above 3 BP loss.
- Also retarded, it makes fast styles almost worthless. Parrying is now utterly pointless with such strong bonuses from pblocking. You may never have stepped outside your house and picked up a foil, let alone a historical sword, but parrying is a very important factor in sword fighting. Because you're redirecting the opponent's energy away from you, and then counter attacking.
- New: When reaching/having 0 BP after a parry/cancel-out or after being semi-PBed, it is no longer possible to continue on with the combo.
- Okay?
- Change: Force lightning now stuns Jedi/Sith equipped with a lightsaber if force focused or too low on FP (relative to FB level).
- A bit ridiculous, but I'm actually kind of okay with it, as long as you remove the blue perk regarding force focus, and replace it with something less intrusive. Maybe give blue a perk where they can take reduced blaster FP damage from force focusing a gunner? Or maybe allow them to move a bit faster while force focusing someone?
- Change: ACC gain is removed from all saber special moves except DFAs (Forward+Jump+Attack).
- Keep AC gain, nerf damage. A lucky yellow DFA can spell disaster, and is quite annoying in tight areas. Recovering from a lucky yellow DFA, or Red DFA, can be very difficult, as it essentially puts you at 30 BP. I'd much prefer recovering from an opponent that received some AC than an opponent that did over half my BP in luck-damage.
- Change: When pausing after a chain during a combo, the saberist now regains the ability to gain ACC for the next chain; a chain being a set of consecutive swings, as opposed to pausing then doing a half-swing; being hit and performing a counter also resets the chain, as does performing a consecutive swing in the air (while not hitting another opponent).
- Which is kind of weird, honestly. It feels like just trading blows at each other. It doesn't seem measured anymore, mostly just a counter swing fest, and is quite boring.
- Change: Consecutive body hits within a single chain now only drain 0.5x as much BP. Only the first hit of a swing chain drains the normal 1.0x amount.
- Which is kind of dumb, there are MUCH better ways to stop combo spam, than making it useless. As I said before, if you took 1.3, nerfed Red/Purple, and MADE IT SO SWINGBLOCKING STOPPED COMBOS, boom, no more combo spam, unless you screw up your slap/footwork.
- Change: Dual style slapping BP drain reduced from 16 to 8, dual now has the same increase in blocking arc as staff.
- That is fine, but keep in mind, staff/dual kick is rather hard to land against an opponent with good footwork. It should have some bit of reward.
- Change: Slightly reduced purple, staff and dual styles' attacking power. Significantly reduced red style's attacking power. Increased cyan's defensive power.
- You pretty much ruined Staff, and Purple should have received a similar nerf that Red did. Purple is 10x stronger than Red in 1.3, and is still strong in 1.4. Albeit not as ridiculously OP as yellow. The only OP thing about staff was the Mblock, and all you have to do is reduce the duration of the stagger slightly and it'd be fine. Cyan never needed an increase in defensive power, especially now that you gave it Red's dumb perk. Parry cyan was fine, if anything I'd prefer you increase the parry damage of cyan, decrease the combo size, and reduce its defense by 50 percent. Atleast it'd be fun then. Why do the devs have a crippling fear of parries? That is how you're supposed to sword fight.
- Change: Red BP drain on PB perk removed and given to cyan; cyan BP drain on parry removed. Red stagger on 3rd hit is now a shorter stagger (i.e. the player still cannot block blasterfire or PB swings during the stagger, unlike the flinch feature versus gunners).
- Absolutely nonsensical. Red was fine with it, gave it a reason not to spam swings, gave it flavor. The parry perk was demonstrably fine on cyan, and also gave it flavor, it made it effective against multiple opponents, and was by far the most fun style imo in the game. Cyan was not overpowered because of the parry perk, and good players had no difficulty in defeating it. Cyan was a weaker blue in 1.3, now it is a stronger blue in 1.4. Revert it. You literally made every style the same damned thing, and it is boring as all hell.
- Change: Saber stagger speeds are now the same in every direction.
- Okay.
- Change: Walking non-swing blocked saber swings now only deal 1.1 times more BP drain (down from 1.2 times), and running swings only deal 1.0 times more BP drain (down from 1.2 times).
- So another nerf to footwork, and a strange nerf to risk/reward playstyles. So now swingblock everything because non-swingblocking is pointless? I thought you people wanted to stray away from spam. I sort of agree with the running nerf, but you mostly just nerfed good footwork there, and made it harder to win 2v1s.
- Change: Perfect block (full and semi) zones have been made smaller overall.
- Well I personally find it easier to pblock in 1.4.
- Change: Overall BP drains have been increased by 1.2 times.
- Certainly doesn't feel like it. Maybe that is because the pblocking substantially outweighs the damage?
- Change: ACM offsets are now the same for all styles. ACM = ACC - 1 for all styles. One exception has been added regarding ACC loss behavior: Blue/Cyan styles lose 2 ACC instead of 1 when bodyhit by styles other than Blue/Cyan, and when perfect blocked by Yellow. Blue/Cyan still lose only 1 ACC when bodyhit by Blue/Cyan.
- Which pretty much makes blue worthless, and cyan almost worthless. Building ACM on those styles has always been absolutely necessary, and now if the opponent knows how to pb/counter you just instantly lose your work. The ACM seemingly is just back and forth from 1.3.
- Change: Slightly reduced the minimum delay between two saber strikes on a single opponent for blue style (other styles are unchanged).
- So... make it faster? I don't think you understand how blue works, and again, didn't you people want to stray AWAY from spam?
- Change: Blue style's swing chaining capacity is now 2 swings instead of 8.
- Meh, I kind of like this change. Feels better to me.
- Fix: Blue style's diagonal bouncing animations now work correctly.
- Okay.
- Removed: Direction restrictions for chaining swing combos have been lifted for all styles.
- Another stupid move. Now you have mindless spam, such as WA WA WA WA WD and whatnot. After fighting Kael, I pretty much could get around his near-perfect PB skills by just spamming retarded combos like that, because you *cannot* predict something like that. The direction restrictions made learning sabering a challenge, and made getting around an opponent's block a challenge as well.
Jedi/Sith versus Gunners
There are also a good number of changes to the way saberists and gunners interact, with a few value changes and the addition of a new ‘Flinch’ mechanic. We wanted Jedi and Sith to really commit to a close quarters fight and to punish them for misplaying, and to reward gunners more for consistently hitting shots and dealing damage.
- New: Jedi/Sith now have a universal 20% damage reduction in addition to the 0.75x when blocking. Does not apply when swing-blocking.
- So you pretty much nerfed every gunner weapon... in exchange for a flinch that only works well with weapons that have a high rate of fire. Why? Why should CR3 receive a bonus for hitting a Sith at point blank, over P1? Why didn't you just re-balance the weapons a little bit, THEN do something like this?
- New: Saber-out melee moves like slap and jump kick are now stopped and cause a stagger when shot by a projectile from very close range.
- Do you have any idea how hard it is to land a slap on a semi-decent gunner? Why punish skill? Jump kick I can partially understand, but most weapons have knockback that prevents it from landing anyway. Jump kick was one of the best methods to dealing with Hero/Mando.
- New: Flinch: Flinches are short directional staggers during which it is possible to use saber melee moves or block blaster fire if not pressing attack. Flinches now occur when a player who is not swing blocking gets shot by an opponent at very close range.
- Which only works well with weapons that have a high rate of fire. What are the odds of you hitting someone with one of the 50 CR3 projectiles you just shot, or the 1 T-21 primary you just shot? It is a poorly thought out system that only benefits a few weapons.
- New: When a projectile hits a lightsaber, it will trigger a block from the saberist if the shot was going to hit his body or pass very close to his body, both when not attacking or when swing blocking; otherwise it will pass through the lightsaber.
- Okay, I'm fine with that.
- Change: While meditating force sense level 3 no longer has an activation cost and does not impede FP regeneration.
- Why? What purpose does this serve? Are going to see a bunch of meditating Sith/Jedi camping around now? Why do you think this was a necessary change at all?
- Change: Base saber deflection arc increased to 180°.
- Why not decrease it? If you want to nerf Jedi/Sith, you could just reduce that, and nerf some of the more overpowered gunner classes. You're going in opposite directions from what would make sense. I am all for saber deflection taking skill, but at the moment, it would just buff classes like Clone/Hero/BH/Mando, more than it would other gunners.
- Change: Medium style point costs changed from 6/8/6 to 8/2/4.
- This is fine, I like it.
- Change: Purple style swing damage reduced from 440 to 320, red style swing damage reduced from 600 to 450.
- So you just made Red/Purple pretty much completely pointless for open. Gotta have that yellow boner, am I right?
- Change: Automatic blocking saber animations upon incoming projectiles now occur at all ranges, only when actually deflecting projectiles and not when projectiles pass close by, and they lead to half-swings similar to the nudging ones (no more instantaneous swings).
- Neat.
- Removed: All saber vs gun stance perks have been removed, with the exception of duals and staff which now both have an increased deflection arc. (Red style damage reduction, purple style FP damage reduction, cyan style acrobatics not requiring FP, blue style blocking blaster shots while performing jump kick with saber out, duals reduced FP cost of force powers and staff increased FP regeneration out of combat).
- Red damage reduction was more or less a sort of necessity. While extreme, you could have just toned it down a little bit. Or you could, if you were an imaginative person, make a set of skills that you could build into for these types of perks, to add more diversity. So essentially you just sucked out more life from the styles, congratulations. These were neat things that added flavor. Nope. No flavor. Some gunners whined. Remove it all. I don't even see how the Cyan acrobatics not requiring FP is even an issue... like really? Why is staff FP regeneration even an issue? I have never been killed by someone with Cyan/Staff and said "Damn, I wish they didn't have those filthy perks". The others I can sort of understand. Admittedly purple was absolutely stupid. However, again, just seems like a huge lack of imagination. You just took out a bunch of things that made the styles unique, and didn't replace them with anything. That isn't how you make positive changes, devs.
