If there is a most important mechanic then there is fail at balance.
Is there ? I don't feel like balance has much to do with there being a most important mechanic, just maybe diversity (or actually even not, because there can very well be 1 mechanic that everyone must know, and then lots of less important ones that will make all the difference between players).
In any case, did v1.3 have several most important mechanics ? Not really, the most important thing was spam, i.e. combos (or swingblocked combos at high level), that was the most powerful tactic both defensively and offensively. Now the most important mechanics can't really be said to be nudge alone, rather nudge + PB (offense + defense).
I am pretty sure that we pointed out the major problems along with the suggestions for improvements to shape 1.4 in a better way where we are not forced to follow certain technique over others simply because it works better.
I so totally agree that it is much better to have several techniques that are powerful instead of just one (like in v1.3 for example, spammy spam).
Perhaps you should know your community enough to not generalise it and putting ''immature'' tag on everyone?
(maybe with nicer words but who cares, the meaning will be the same)
..anyways, i will not go ahead and answer every single suggestion and explain why it is bad, because i have already experienced this kind of thing in v1.1 (which was mostly the same as v1.3 and everyone thought it was horrible at the time, despite what you are defending nowadays; so i'm afraid i cannot help but genuinely believe that this is simply due to ppl being used to the system and feeling their hard work taken away, which again is a totally natural concern but it cannot be helped at this point).
Let me just answer this shortly:
I couldn't agree more with agentoo8, this update literally promotes; facehugging instead of footwork, spamming 1-2 hit combos with nudge and killing mblock aspect of game where staff gets affected most.
In brief, new core mechanics limits the freedom of duelers and alters the versatilty when it comes to aggro/defensive techniques.
- Facehugging IS footwork, it is part of footwork, it makes footwork more diverse and complex compared to before; it simply makes all the sense in the world that close range should be dangerous and where offense shines because that is how it works in reality. You may not see this because it requires more advanced techniques but scoring bodyhits when not in close range is still absolutely possible even against the best players, it is all about using footwork as well as feints (not literally pressing reload, but playing in an unpredictable way is what i mean) to confuse the opponent's PBing aim, and baiting him to use your own PBing offensively.
- How is spamming 1-2 hit combos with or without nudge (yes it also works if you are unpredictable enough) worse than spamming 4 hit combos all the time (resulting exclusively in parry i.e. cancel-out spam all the time) because it's the most powerful thing ? At least now both single hits, 2hit combos and 4hit combos have some purpose, since using 4hit combos as well as 2hit combos from time to time will confuse the opponent's timing by interrupting him, while single hits are more the backbone of your offense in trying to gain ACM. Of course this is only talking about yellow/purple/staff comboing, other styles are different especially for example red (benefits more from 3hit spam), duals/cyan (benefit more from spam than other styles, for these styles multiple hit combos are just as good as 1hit combos), blue (benefits most from 2hit combos).
- There were complaints about staff perk being too powerful, i get that those complaints didn't come from you since staff is your main but there we go, staff perk got nerfed indirectly. Nerfed too much, you might be very right about that but we can't know that over just a few days of practice; though in any case it has lost quite alot of its meaning due to PB combo-breaking being general, indeed. It may be good to change that into something else or buff it in some way (maybe allow to plainly disarm swingblocks instead of just staggering them ? Dunno, need to think about it more)
- New mechanics limit the freedom of duelists ? Well no, it is the opposite. Now PBing actually matters. Single hits actually matter. 4hit spam (unpredictable one otherwise you get PBed of course, which is why we have more freedom in comboing directions to help with that) matters especially when you get ACM. Before in v1.3, only 4 hit combos actually mattered, trying to PB them was just a waste of time, what you needed to do was parry them using your own 4hit combos; very diverse and interesting, wouldn't you agree ??
To take some of your suggestions:
- To stop combos with pb dueler must mblock as well as pb instead of just lucky pb stopping all aggro.
Really ? You said yourself that mblocking had become alot harder with staff, which makes it even harder for other styles; and now you want something as game-changing as stopping combos (which is the main reason why something else than 4hit combo spam is actually worth trying) to be triggered by mblocking, i.e. something much less reliable than just PBing ? A change like that will once again make spam prevalent, as the only thing to defend against it will be spam itself.
- I believe nudge was removed for a reason and this feature killed footwork when people started to abuse nudge by facehugging, this creates very clunky dueling which feels dull.
Already answered that about footwork.
- Styles should be resricted on swing directions because combo was something to learn in 1.3, now with one nudge people just spam combo in any way. This also hits mblockers hard because there are way too many combination of attack direction it is mostly luck based (Again makes staff perk useless)
Already answered that about spam being nerfed due to PB stopping combo, yet buffed at the same time with directionless comboing (which for once also makes the system more casual player-friendly, something rarely seen in the saber system changelog).
In this whole thread only 2 useful suggestions have caught my eye:
- Innovation 1: Parry triggers blue flashes on the crosshair and BP bar.
- Innovation 4: Add the opportunity to get up after melee kata the same way like after slap.
More generally, you are very correct about PBs being "random" to some extent given how fast attacks are, PBing some swings reliably will just not be humanly possible and at the same time you might get PBs you didn't directly expect to get. Yes, this is something that cannot be helped and it is due to the attack speeds especially with nudge. But it does reward skillful play quite alot; even if you can't always PB reliably, you can very much attempt to predict the opponent's attacking pattern which gives alot more depth than just mechanically PBing every swing (and if that was possible the system would be extremely flawed anyways, it would mean the highest level players could negate any offense just by PBing).
Again, i have already seen this pattern when releasing v1.1, so i am very much convinced that most of the feedback is due to having learned a particular system and being sad to see it taken away. You believe v1.1-v1.3 is interesting and good, let me assure you that when v1.1 got released, pretty much everyone firmly believed that v1.0 was awesome and v1.1 horrible (because nudge removed so no more visual feedback, because visual saber clashes removed, because the old unreliable PB was removed, because perks, because whatever).
Here are my thoughts on what changes should see the light of day for the system to be more universally likeable and overall cleaner:
- Cyan/purple/duals/staff need to go because they are unpolished styles from the base game to begin with, the animation sets are much messier than blue/yellow/red and with those 3 styles alone there is enough diversity in the system (and at the same time it becomes much cleaner and less complex).
- All perks need to go as a result because blue/yellow/red have enough differences between them (light/medium/heavy).
- Special moves need to be dealt with properly (made interruptable, nerfed heavily).
- Possibly, it would be better to once again decrease all swing speeds so that PBing is more reliable and at the same time remove or nerf PB combo-breaking at the very least.
- Also change bodyhit gfx/sfx into something more movie-like as it used to be, the current ones aren't really the best even though they allow to recognize bodyhits by sound pretty well.
With those changes, the system would be much cleaner and much more in accordance with mb2's general gameplay without such overwhelming complexity focused on saber vs saber fighting. But even i will not dare push towards such changes because of how huge they are, i don't believe there is any way they would be accepted by the dev team itself so late in development, and it would also mean a huge undertaking to rebalance saber fighting as well as saber vs gun.
This is a nonprofessionally-developed mod and has been taken over by different generations of developers who have different views, that is why, as frustrating as it can be, we are seeing major changes so late (after over 12 years of development), and that is also why we are able to see the gameplay evolve for the better by learning from past mistakes (again, 1.4 attempts to keep many old mechanics that were considered good in saber systems from the last 10 years, while keeping the bad points out). The huge changes i suggested above also go in that direction, even though you may view them as plainly horrifying due to staff being your main style.
Try to gain some perspective in viewing this matter. It might not really be possible due to not seeing why spam is still viable and footwork is not degenerated (quite the opposite), and why v1.4's system actually brings so much more diversity to the gameplay. Because you don't have the in-game skills to make those things work. But try.
Similarly i suppose i could say the same thing about me, i am not able to see very well what the gameplay looks like at a less experienced level of play, because then these techniques cannot be pulled off so the system might look degenerated. Still, there is no freaking way it is as degenerated as v1.3 at any level of play, and i am confident everyone who lets go of the v1.3 ways to play and learns the new ones will not think v1.4 is worse than v1.3. You just need to focus on different things in your play, that is all. The plateaux of skill that need to be reached in order for any given tactic to work well are different. Offense is definitely harder to pull off, swinging alone will not work as well. But how about using PB offensively ? Everyone is saying how PB is so easy to do, well then, rely on it to weaken your opponent's balance, rely on counters to attack him. If the opponent is backing off, carefully rush towards him as if you're going to attack to bait a swing from him, PB that swing and gain the advantage. At this point these are simply learn to play issues.
In the end this is not about a system being "worse" than another from your perspective, but rather about having the will and curiosity to learn something new. Seemingly, you had that will with v1.3's system, you might not have it now anymore and it is very frustrating to see all your previous learning process gone to waste, but nonetheless other people will have it and continue playing. At the same time, realizing that all the hours you spent on this game to gain skills is lost to some extent, might push you towards dedicating those hours back to RL or other matters; obviously this was the case for many of us across mb2's history as we got older, a chunk of gameplay changes come and we lose interest in learning something because we already did in the past, which is a good excuse to quit (even though we still love to bash ppl making the changes nonetheless).
