Another sabering poll
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![[SE] Maren](/data/avatars/m/5/5287.jpg?1595402847){kind=avatar}
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Hessu unironically now, ask them to sell the mod to me
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God forbid you ever get your hands on MB2
And if you do
I'll find you
Hessu
Internal Beta Team
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Which of those ideas were bad, and why -_-
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All of them.
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yes
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Anyways,
Out of everything in this thread just wanted to highlight this, its almost expected anything we do is going to be LOUDLY contested by a certain percentage, a certain "invalid feedback format white noise" is something I've personally had to set up to differentiate between what is *actual* valid feedback and what is "Game sucks/do better". Valid feedback has to be filtered further, as you take into account the limitations of an over 17 year old game and even older base engine coupled with a code base that is cross wired more than the Falcon on a bad day (think perpetual ESB falcon in constant breakage as other things are added and fixed). Unlike Unity and Unreal we can't easily drag and drop new assets and code in, everything has to be carefully compiled, linked, pathed, condensed (you have no idea how close to the engine limits the coders are hitting right now trying to do things and thus even maps have to "slim down" on entity usage, assets combined or removed for redux), tested, tested, retested, final tested, then day of tested because something public release was different from beta release.
Not counting of course the fact everything is done on a volunteer basis in this crazy new era of uncertainty, I have to treat the invalid feedback as a comedy act half the time just because its hilarious by comparison to actual issues being faced XD
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Alright explain some, i have valid arguments for most
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no one cares
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Honestly, outside of the top duelists nobody knows wtf they're doing and what should be tweaked and fixed in sabering to make it better. Further issues arise because the current sabering system is not consistent in its design. It is a chimera of various mechanics patchworked together into a grotesque monster. I think the devs don't see just how bad the system is because they are not good duelists. If you're low or mid-tier then you're just putting along and everything is just sort of OK, but the better you get, the more you start to see the cracks, the flaws and the absolutely atrocious design. The game is not worth playing any longer, and hasn't been for some time.
Stassin had the right idea when he said that it needed to be redesigned. I had some good talks with tempest and stassin a few years ago about cohesion and consistency (Not that anything came of it, LUL).
The system needs to fit together. Rather than having different mechanics clashing in clunky ways, the system should be cohesive, consistent and precitable. Designed logically.
An example of this chimera-style design impacting the gameplay was when nudge was removed, but we retained instant MBC from 1.4 to 1.4.4. In 1.4 the powerful insta MBC was countered by being able to initiate with nudge. Take nudge away and you get DEFENDER advantage out the ass. On top of that, in 1.4.4 we had swings costing BP for some reason and it really boggles the mind wtf the devs were thinking. This is an example of a chimera degenerating the saber system and it is why you need a complete, cohesive system that makes sense in both open mode and dueling mode and that caters to all levels of play, rewarding progression through the skill levels and having sufficient depth to keep the skilled players entertained for more than 5 minutes. You can't just randomly slap 1 mechanic on or take it away, or adjust numbers and expect things to just work out.
About accepting feedback. Over the course of my soon to be 5 years in the beta team, I have observed time and time again, the devs making wrong decisions and listening to the wrong feedback. I have no confidence left in them to make the right choice when it comes to listening to feedback because they rarely if ever listen. Speed lunge is the latest and greatest example of their stubborn stupidity. Pretty much 100% of the player-base wanted it reverted. I haven't seen a single person who thinks the new broken speed lunge is better than the old, perfectly fine one. Despite the community being pretty much 100-0 on this, speed lunge is not looking to get reverted properly.
And speed lunge is just one force power. Imagine this muleheaded, blinkered attitude applied to the much more complex and interconnected sabering system. Almost everything I've ever said or suggested has fallen on deaf ears, and I am not making outlandish suggestions either. Quite often I try to work within the frame of whatever the current saber system is and whatever the current saber dev wants. My suggestions have always taken the surrounding system into account and come as a package. When I suggest number tweaks to AP, I include all of the steps and whatever else needs to be adjusted based on this change. I did many suggestions in packages that should be taken whole but instead, the devs selfishly 'took inspiration' and just added random shit from what I've suggested. I swear if I was a dictator in charge of the saber system this degenerate shit system would never have come about because it's all about the cohesion between mechanics. Everything is connected, but this seems to be lost on devs somehow.
Example: For 1.5 stassin basically did the opposite of what I told him to do, and as a result, 1.5 was a wasted piece of shit patch when it could've been a glorious one. The exact case in point is the reversal of the Attack multiplier values. I suggested that we have 1.6x BP damage multiplier on getting hit whilst running, 1.3x for non-swingblocked interrupts and 1.1x for swingblocked interrupts (something like that, numbers off the cuff). THIS WAS REVERSED SO THAT IN 1.5 YOU HAD FUCKING 1.6x INTERRUPT DAMAGE. I mean, what the fuck? Of course, this interrupt damage came on top of weird, unreliable halfswing timings and insta saved hits completely breaking the game.
As a result of this trash, I left the game for awhile and come back to find that in the current patch we've somehow gone back on what was good about 1.5 and only retained the shitty part of it, namely the reliance on interrupts. This is the most open mode unfriendly, illogical garbage system ever. You have to PB by aiming at invisible boxes in the air, okay. But why does my saber not do anything? If my opponent hits the tip of my saber, it is the same as if he slashed me in teh belly with a bodyhit. Illogical SHIT. Saber blade should block some amount of damage. In addition, relying on interrupts for damage makes it hard to burst people in open and makes the game feel like you're just killing yourself whenever you lose. And wins don't feel satisfying either because it either comes as a result of these trash timing interrupts or as a result of drawn out ACM gaying. TRASH.
What I wanted for 1.5 was to go back to the old days of BP drain being the primary way of winning. I wanted to do away with ACM gaying and have every attack being measurable and predictable in terms of its damage. I wanted dueling to be a battle between who could drain BP and prevent BP drain with defensive skill. If you PB, you prevent BP damage and maybe get some BP back. If you Attack, you drain BP. If you attack your opponents weakpoint (bodyhit as opposed to saberhit) you do more damage! That should be logical, and yet we're circlejerking around in ACM and interrupt hell with this degenerate chimera piece of shit sabering system that is a disgrace to MBII's past glory.
Design-wise, the saber system is yoyoing and being chimera patched randomly all the time by people who don't know what the fuck they're doing or cannot go far enough with the changes. When you can go back 2 or 3 years and say that we had a better system back then, objectively, then you know something is fucked up. I think 1.4 is better than current patch, 1.4.5 certainly is, and so is 1.4.9. Of course, we can go back further and find 1.3. I'd even say that was better than current one. Despite 1.3 being unbalanced, it had interesting perks at least. The current system is so fucking dull, bland and only fun for those who have not yet mastered it and seen through it. Once you get good, you can see just how flawed and fucked the current system is.
Right now it's a broken and shallow piece of shit system and the fact that the developers do not hear the alarmbells going off and don't immediately attempt fix this shit once and for all is testiment to their ignorance about the many flaws in the sabering system. They also misunderstand the charm of MBII. For many players, open mode is fun. I know most duelists play open mode as a side thing, but I often see more online on dueling servers than open mode servers. Devs should own up to the fact that a large part of the appeal and staying power of MBII is the deep and competitive dueling system not on offer ANYWHERE else. I think most of us star wars nerds dreamt of being a jedi or a sith, and having lightsaber fights. I honestly believe that one of the main appeals of MBII is the fact that you get to play a jedi and a sith in the star wars universe against gunners and also against other lightsaber users. Lightsaber duels can get really epic, but I cannot see the devs appreciating this aspect of MBII much when all they do is add tutorials nobody cares about, random models and hilts and maps and FA modes. I mean, those things are good and I am all for them, but the ship is sinking and you guys are busy painting it and making it more pretty as it's going down. The hull is full of holes (Open mode and dueling gameplay broken, gameplay is central and its not good atm, NOT GOOD do you hear me?) Getting your priorities straight is tantamount. Gameplay and fun should come first. I think the devs are genuinely too bad at the game to realize just how shit it has become, how degenerate and broken the gameplay actually is. From that angle, they can perhaps be forgiven for not fixing the game since they apparently think it's fine so they can work on other things. But I maintain that the current dev trajectory is like going fishing when your house is on fire.
The only thing that is going to change this is a change in dev mentality and extensive open mode testing with weekly adjustments. This applies both for sabering and also for open mode. The beta team is incapable of properly testing gameplay properly and the devs are incapable of making good decisions based on that limited feedback. Open beta needs to happen for things to go anywhere.
I haven't played in awhile, and I don't see myself returning to MBII unless things change. I might just play WoW shadowlands if it's any good, or look elsewhere for my hobbies. But MBII as it is these days does not deserve my time. I am really sad to say this as a veteran who played MBII since november 2006, but the game is just a waste of time for people like me.
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I am glad we are in agreement that it is probably best to design a saber system we actually want from the ground up. I appreciate your support in this matter. Of course some people have tried what is commonly referred to as "Tempests Build" and want that to become the basis of the saber system going forward. This is why an Open Beta will be held to gather community feedback and determine if this could be the basis of the saber system going forward, a stop gap whilst something fundamentally new is created or same shit different annoying quirks scenario. Of course that takes time, but since a sizable amount of the community are voicing their opinions that it is the right way forward, I should be and am listening to them.
I absolutely agree, i have talked at length about systems theory and how any sufficiently complex system will resist its own proper functioning. In other words any complex system you design will have unintended consequences and any corrective action to those consequences will lead to further unanticipated functionality and the cycle continues. You cannot tweak your way to good design.
I cant speak for the whole 5 year period you are claiming here, however, i do know that this narrative is not entirely true. First it is more than a little arrogant to say that you, as an individual have all the answers whilst everyone else is wrong. People have different opinions, people imagine different solutions will work best often no one is entirely right and no one is entirely wrong. What we try and do with beta feedback is listen to the problems and come up with the best solution which takes into account the whole effect on gameplay. Do we always get it right? Absolutely not. Lunge as you say is a perfect example of getting it wrong. Red was very quick to come out, hold his hands up and say it wasn't fully thought through. There was an issue we wanted fixed, but I am more than willing to accept that with hindsight the cure is worse than the disease. In lieu of better solution i am more than happy to revert the behavior on this. The main reason it hasn't been done already in what the beta team has visibility of is that the person best placed to do it was hounded by certain people on the beta team that he lost motivation to do it. There are three main issues here in my opinion. First is the expectations some people on the beta team have that they can simply tell us what to do and we will do it. We are open to discussions but obviously the presumption that an offered solution is ideal or even good in the wider context of the game is not the place to be starting from. Secondly as developers we do not always communicate clearly what the outcome of any given piece of feedback was. This is a feedback loop that i would like to close as i feel it would give the beta team more confidence that they are making a difference. Finally not everyone on the beta team wants to listen to what developers say. Again they join thinking they have all the answers to all the problems but no amount reasoned discussion from developers or other beta testers will dissuade them from believing they have the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe and everything.
Fun fact, the only substantial changes to the saber system that have happened since then were the things directly identified by the beta team. I literally asked them what everyone agreed would bring the saber system to a better place, there was a two hour discussion, about half a dozen things were identified. Tempest had most of the work done that night, we tested, saw the improvement and released. If my memory is correct, you contributed some items to that list, and didn't object to anything else that made it onto that list.
I too long for the days when the saber system was good. But i don't think there is anything new in here that i have'nt addressed already.
I am struggling to follow your logic here. Alot of what you are saying contradicts its self in the very next sentence. Duel mode has seen by far the most new features in the past two years. I'm not talking cosmetics here. I am talking private duels, multiple lives, mid-round joining and so on. Also if sabering is so bad as you say (and i might even agree), then why is it, again according to you, popular and giving us staying power? Some people clearly like it to some degree, your personal panic therefore clearly doesn't represent everyone. Things are much more nuanced than your personal point of view.
Moving on - Models, Maps, FAs etc. etc. You of course realize that the guy making new sabers and new models cant work on any of the things you think need urgent attention? I mean what do you expect, me to stop anyone from adding any more models that takes nothing away from anything else because...? What?
The one thing that really took code effort in your list is tutorials. That was strategic given the nice bump in player numbers we got when new films were released. Those people who were picking up JKA for the first time probably didnt know what to expect from a game released in many cases before they were born. So adding things to make new players more comfortable and confident, especially given how hostile some people in this community are for any person new to it asking a question seems like a sensible thing to do. Alot of those features are and will be useful in other places as well.
I don't think personal attacks on developers are helpful. If you really think developer skill/game time matters that much i think it is worth pointing out we have developers who are new, and developers who have been working on this mod for their entire adult life. We have developers who are distinctly average in game, and developers who are god tier.
So have we gone fishing whilst the house burns down? No. What we have done, or more specifically this is coming directly from me is to say, we have been non-stop building this house for almost two decades. Its getting increasingly difficult to know ahead of time that we are not ignoring problems that make our house unsafe. Maybe there is stuff in there we already missed, but the people (i.e. beta testers) looking out for that stuff now are not finding it as easy as they used to - so lets get smart. Lets slow down on building new floors and knocking down walls - Lets start building feedback points into our house so we can know better ahead of time what needs fixing and if there is anything you missed. To use your analogy, some people suspect there is fire. No one can actually agree, so we are installing smoke detectors to end the debate.
What that means, as the beta team already are aware is we plan on starting to gather real world data about various things to inform gameplay design and to highlight any problem areas that might otherwise get lost in the noise. This will be coming in a dev diary Soon(tm).
Again, as a member of the beta team you should know that open betas are coming soon. Hopefully before the end of the year. Does developer mentality need to change? Largely i would disagree. We need better information, better communication and less flagrant alarmism like your post.
I mean i think we basically agree on everything. The major difference between us is i am not running around like a headless chicken pretending anyone is evil and out to kill the mod either through maliciousness of incompetence. I am open to suggestions on what would reduce your personal level of alarm, perhaps not talking about our approach publicly sooner would help? But as a member of the beta team there shouldn't be any part of this which is a surprise to you, and to my knowledge you have not expressed concern via the usual beta channels? Either way i am listening, just let me know.
Hessu
Internal Beta Team
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When we were asking for dueling mode fixes, you agreed that we can fix very minor things. Instant counters were fixed and bp regen on pb removed. That improved the patch a little but its still really bad. I applied to the beta team because 1.5 was so bad that i wanted to help fixing it, but i've been a bit disappointed on you devs and how you react to feedback. Sev made great points above
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It's nice to see such a response from you. My memory is a little hazy on exactly what happened that time, but I recall that we weren't allowed to make any serious changes. You asked for something that was very quick and easy to implement as an improvement, and honestly almost anything was an improvement to the system at that point because it was so terrible. I believe I suggested some changes to the attack multipliers that were implemented, which was nice. However, you didn't relent on everything I wanted to change and I also did not suggest much due to the nature of that being a very quick, surprise patchwork fix. If I had known we'd be stuck with it for a long time, I'd have pushed harder to get more changes in, but the past is the past.
Look. I am not trying to personally attack anyone, I am just flabbergasted at what's going on and grasping for any sort of logical reason as to why things have gone they way they have for the past 4 years. The only thing I could come up with was that you guys don't play the game the same way I and other people do. This doesn't just apply to dueling but also to open mode. Some of the changes that were made over the years were things indicated dev incompetence to me, because no one good in open mode in Europe would go for those changes (qwerty, moo etc)
I was also ventilating my sheer frustration with this impenetrable swamp of degenerate gameplay, because I have seen so many patches come out with none or very few of my suggestions in it, and they are almost always implemented in a bad way so that they don't work and often even have the opposite effect. (Effects like the nudge and MBC example). Sorry if you feel personally attacked, it was a bit of an off the cuff rant and I'm happy that you've responded so well and not exploded from my hotheadedness.
I was one of the first to push for open beta way back in 2017. From my perspective 2020 is not soon at all, you know? It's three years! I'm not immortal. I want to play a good version of MBII dueling again before I go quietly into the night. It's not really alarmism when the gameplay has basically been stagnant at a low point for years. It is just not in an acceptable state either open mode wise or dueling wise. My post is not alarmism. I'm ventilating my frustration with the lack of improvement over the course of several years, during which improvement was actually possible but never once happened. How long ago was it that stassin proposed his saber system? Was that actually in 2018? I can't remember, but that shit he cooked up was so much more fun than the current system. I saw these flashes of what could potentially be, but it never came to fruition. We were just stuck with a really unpleasant dueling system and open mode was slowly being tweaked with weird out of touch changes (of which speed lunge is the best example, but other things like the sniper damage changes count as well).
But yeah about the beta team, I still think things need to change. Gathering data is a step in the right direction, though I don't know fully what that entails on your end and how much it helps you, but it sounds reasonable.
However, I know blizzard has been fooled by their data on several occasions, for example, they implement a thing that you can farm a lot to get more of a power currency. The thing itself is boring to do, but the reward is very good for high end players, so you see a lot of people grinding that thing. Blizzard looks at their data and sees 'wow so many ppl are playing the thing we did, so it must be successful' So they repeat the same mistake a few expansions in a row because they were blinded to data. I don't know how to achieve this, but there should be a balance between data driven changes and soul and feeling. An MBII example of this is that you guys start gathering data on what ppl play in open mode and what loadouts. You see people playing mostly EE-3 as mando and then come to the conclusion that you don't need to tweak it cuz it's fine, right? So many people use it after all, so we better fix westars instead. Just an example but hopefully you get what I mean. The data does not always show the core of the issue. I hope you can navigate it with prudence. Though I guess you can hardly come to worse conclusion than previously. It should be an improvement for sure.
Anyway, around 2018 I began truly feeling like the beta team was just for show. Could find a few bugs, sure, but gameplay testing was basically impossible. I'm wondering if having a closed beta like we have now is even a good idea given how tiny our community is. The community itself is small enough to all be a beta testing team. What you have now is a few motivated individuals and the rest having lost all hope and motivation to beta test because of how it keeps producing these bad patches. There are things people care about and things people don't. For beta testers I think most who joined care about gameplay of some sort, open mode or dueling but we rarely if ever see anything there. Only bug tests or running around randomly on a map or something. I don't think the current beta testing procedure works very well because of this problem. If the pool of beta testers was much larger (say the entire mb2 pop) then testing would be so much better. I cannot really test anything open mode gameplay related properly in the beta, nor have I ever, over the course of my soon to be 5 years in here, been able to properly test anything dueling related. It's ALWAYS only been a bug hunt. In order to test anything gameplay related properly, I need to dive deep and play for awhile. This applies both to open mode and dueling. And someone with my experience grasps things several times faster than others when it comes to dueling and what implications a change has on the way the game works. So if I half-assedly pareto it, 80% would need twice as much time as me or longer to properly get a grip on what the gameplay changes actually do and how they impact the meta. This cannot realistically be achieved in a closed beta environment unless you set up a permanent dueling server with a dueling build and continually tweak it based on feedback. And even then, this should just be done openly and available for everyone, because the larger the pool the better.
My beta-testing apathy is linked to my conclusion that closed beta testing in such a small mod, with people who have different interests that split them further, is not working very well. I believe that thinking of the entire game as it stands currently as a beta, is better. So that anyone who plays MBII currently is essentially beta testing. It's not a commercial product that you have to be very careful tweaking, and you don't have the resources to run proper QA either as patches are constantly released with fatal bugs and only through the entire playerbase actually playing the game, do those bugs come to light and get fixed in the next patch. My only hope for any proper testing is the open betas, and I've had this opinion for over 3 years now. The only way the beta team such as it stands, could work, is if it was people's actual job to do it and that there was a direct line of comms between devs and beta testers. This is not going to ever be the case, so the only hope for proper testing is open betas. Again, end of 2020 is not 'soon' for me as I've been thinking and saying this for over 3 years now.
Jaikanatar
US Official Server Admin
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Awesome to hear and is in direct contrast with the vibe that we were getting with the attitude toward player feedback that was mentioned. As a base foundation Tempest's patch in simple terms *feels* more fun and intuitive. That is the response that many have and is why there are now nearing 70 votes in favor of it. Thank you for recognizing that a sizeable amount of the community are saying that is the right way forward, as that was the whole reason I am bitching for the people in the first place. It felt like there was no recognition of that and instead dismissal of it. Mace and Lindsey raise good points about needing to take feedback with a grain of salt as well as the inaccuracy in sample sizes below 100 people. However I do still believe that the community is quite small and within the context of the community we have it can get muddy when applying larger scale logical rhetoric to a very unique demographic.
While it is completely logical to apply this to statistics, the social result ends up being many people feeling dismissed and their faith in future changes and decisions becoming negative as there is a rift created. I'm redundant in saying it but it needs to be said again, these folks are the loyal consumers of your guys' years of hard work, its not just 65+ people as a statistic, each one of these guys has played for years and often times used to play daily
for several years straight.
Honestly if Defiant's quote here is true and we stay on that same page then I'm pretty optimistic about the future regarding sabering/acknowledgement of what the true longstay players want. Thanks for being open to seeing it.
Hessu
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Added another option to keep the current build on the poll, if anyone is crazy enough to want that. (current dueling build is 1.5.2, hasn't been changed since)
EDIT: nevermind, kinda messes up the poll, should have added it in the first place
EDIT: nevermind, kinda messes up the poll, should have added it in the first place
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lol, oh lord.
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