Feedback Thread: Saber Open Beta - May 4th 2023

[MaceMadunusus]

Saber Open Beta​

Please be sure to leave your feedback for the saber open beta in the thread below!​

Changelog​

General

• Change: Speed lunge once again has the camera unlocked for looking up and down.
  • Can now look left/right after you've attacked during the lunge.
  • Trajectory is unaffected.
  • Added a 250ms delay before being able to attack during the lunge.
• Change: Cartwheels no longer deal damage until the end where the swings actually come out visually.
• Change: Saber v saber sweepkick vs block
  • If crouching and moving, will cause a stagger
  • If not crouching, requires the opponent to be in an attack to stagger
• Change: Saber v saber side/back kick once again staggers. Requires an opponent to be moving and attacking.
• Change: Thrown sabers now have their pullback timer scale based on how far away the saber is from the owner. Minimum of 1.5 seconds with a maximum of 3 seconds.
  • Disarmed sabers still have the maximum time to be pulled back.
• Fix: Special attacks no longer lose damage when hitting the same target multiple times.
• Fix: Fixed autotaunt when acquiring ACM not triggering again unless you lost all ACC on the style you acquired ACM.
• Fix: Some adjustments to crosshair indicators that should fix some missing visuals when spectating players.
• Fix: Force Focus no longer builds when you have an invulnerability bubble.
• Fix: Outlier cases involving BP drains with invulnerability bubbles should be fixed.

Visual Damage

• New: BP damage can now be seen with the cg_visualDamage cvar. Requires being in a private duel.

Duel Mode

• Can no longer challenge a player to a duel when they have an invulnerability bubble (in order to prevent getting put into a duel by someone who respawns close to you without manually challenging them back).
• Can no longer do melee moves immediately after a duel starts.
• Change: Force Repulse
  • Now additionally enabled outside of private duels if a server password is set.
  • Now additionally enabled if g_PrivateDuels is set to 0.
• /ignore prevents duel challenges.
• All single styles can now be chosen simultaneously in Duel Mode.

Overall Sabering system changes

• General
  • Doing a special2 move will now reset your swing count instead of carrying it over and potentially locking out attack inputs.
• Back attacks
  • Can now also be activated while inputting crouch + only backwards movement + attacking. Manually activated back attacks will be the following for each style:
  • Red and Purple styles do the current crouched swing that staggers.
  • Duals, Cyan, and Yellow styles do the standard backswing.
  • Blue and Staff styles do the standard backstab.
  • Slow movement and ability to turn are now unlocked at the end of back attacks.
  • Change: Back attacks no longer hit targets in front of the attacker.
• Counter swings
  • No longer trigger in the following circumstances:
    • If you've passed your style's swing count
    • If interrupted (hit in startups)
    • When hit during a special2 move.
• Parry Refactoring
  • Change: Window for parrying is now more precise. Hits will now land more consistently (instead of being parried) at the beginning and end of swings.
  • New: Parries now deal 10% base damage (body hit damage without ACM bonus).
  • New: Parrying and taking more BP damage than the amount of BP you have will cause you to lose your saber.
  • Duals' offhand will deactivate if it tries to parry when this triggers while you don't have your mainhand equipped. This is disabled for players in FA/Legends if both do not have at least Saber Defense 1.
• Spoiler: Special attacks

  • Fix: DFAs don't trigger in cases where you've been knocked upwards without doing jump inputs.
  • Fix: All special moves will now hit the proper maximum amount of times (e.g. downstab will never hit twice).
  • Change: Knockback on special moves reduced by 30% (100 -> 70).
  • Blue’s lunge attack remains at 100.
  • New: Most special moves now cost BP to activate as shown below. Specials activated under these thresholds will deal 25% damage.
  • Blue Lunge:
    • BP: 7
    • FP: Reduced from 35 to 20.
  • Cyan DFA:
    • BP: 10
    • FP: Reduced from 25 to 15.
  • Yellow DFA:
    • BP: 10
    • FP: Reduced from 25 to 15.
  • Red DFA:
    • BP: 15
    • FP: 25
  • Rollstab:
    • BP: 10
    • FP: 25 reduced to 15.
  • Dual Forward Jump Special:
    • BP: 10
    • FP: 25
  • Staff Forward Jump Special:
    • BP: 10
    • FP: Reduced from 25 to 20.
  • Staff Left Butterfly:
    • BP: 10
    • FP: Reduced from 25 to 15.
  • Staff Right Butterfly:
    • BP: 10
    • FP: Reduced from 25 to 15.
  • Dual Crouch Kata:
    • BP: 15
    • FP: Reduced from 25 to 20.
  • Staff Crouch Kata:
    • BP: 15
    • FP: Reduced from 25 to 20.
  • Duals Front/Back Stabs:
    • BP: 8
    • FP: Reduced from 35 to 25.
  • Duals Side Stabs:
    • BP: 8
    • FP: Reduced from 35 to 25.
  • Purple Kata:
    • BP: 15
    • FP: 20
  • Red Lunge:
    • BP: 15
    • FP: 15
• Damage Modifiers
  • Change: Damage modifiers relating to blocking/not blocking/running/walking have been simplified to the following:
  • If not blocking while running, the defender has a 1.20x incoming damage modifier.
  • Change: Incoming damage increase for getting hit while crouching reduced from 1.5x to 1.25x.
  • Change: Outgoing damage multiplier for attacking while crouching reduced from 0.80x to 0.75x.
  • Change: Consecutive swings now also drop to 0.50x if you've parried your opponent (no longer just after scoring a body hit on the opponent).
  • Airborne damage multipliers now exclude hitting someone that's in a special move or while damaging with a special move (since all of the moves these would apply to already have their own damage multipliers).
  • Change: Incoming damage when knocked down reduced from 1.35x to 1.25x.
  • Change: Special moves no longer benefit from ACM.
• ACC/ACM
  • Change: Light styles no longer lose 2x ACM when body hit by non-light styles
  • New: ACC modification changed to the following:
    • 1 ACC = 1 ACM. Once you hit 4 ACM, you gain the following damage increase:
      • Light Styles (Blue, Cyan): 1.08x
      • Medium Styles (Yellow, Staff, Duals): 1.10x
      • Heavy Styles (Red, Purple): 1.12x
  • During a combo, If you've already landed a body hit, been parried, or are using Yellow's fast A halfswing, you build partial ACM.
    • Defensive Styles (Blue/Staff): 0.25 ACM
    • Balanced Styles (Yellow/Cyan/Purple): 0.50 ACM
    • Offensive Styles (Red/Duals): 0.66 ACM
    • Partial ACM is not drained from defenders unless it’s on a neutral/half swing.
• Spoiler: Manual Block

  • Successfully Mblocking vs Duals when it only has its offhand active turns it off.
  • New: Failing now has orange blocking crosshair indicator.
  • Now adds 1.15x bonus damage on the counter attack from the Mblock. Only applies when matching the PB zone.
  • Change: Invisible Mblock cooldown timer reduced from 1500ms to 200ms regardless of failing or succeeding.
  • New: Mblock Defense
    • Requires doing the correct timing + correct movement vs incoming swing
    • Builds/Drains partial ACM.
    • 0.75x incoming damage multiplier
    • Won't disarm opponent
    • Has a yellow blocking indicator for the defender
• Blocking
  • Instead of triggering a Perfect Block in the return (if not feinting), now does the following:
  • 0.75x damage multiplier
  • Has a yellow blocking indicator for the defender
  • Can only be done if you've landed any kind of hit (body hit, parry, been blocked, etc) on the opponent already.
• Saber Styles
  • General
    • Change: Staff and Duals no longer cost an extra 2 points to purchase.
    • Change: Consecutive swings are no longer instant across the board.
    • Movement speed adjustments for Red/Purple:
      • Purple:
        • Now has the same movement speed penalty as Yellow/Green/White styles when attacking while moving backwards (0.45x changed to 0.60x).
        • Now has the same general movement penalty for attacking while moving as Yellow/Duals/Staff (reduced, 0.7x to 0.85x).
      • Red:
        • While attacking and moving forward without strafing, now has the same general movement penalty for attacking (reduced, 0.7x 0.85x)
        • While attacking and strafing with no other movement, remains at 0.7x speed penalty
        • While attacking and moving backwards, penalty reduced from 0.45x to 0.55x
    • New: Can now change between styles with Staff/Duals while saber is off..
  • Spoiler: Blue

    • Offense Rating: 6
    • Defense Rating: 55
    • Swing count of 4.
    • Change: Blue no longer has instant halfswings from all directions
    • Perk - Delays BP regen on PB:
      • 400ms (equal to 1 tick of normal BP regen) until 4+ ACM:
        • Every 2 ACM afterward increases the delay by 200ms.
      • Mblock counters now delay BP regen by an extra 200ms on a body hit.
    • Perk - Mblock counters now grant an extra 0.25 ACM on a body hit.
  • Spoiler: Cyan

    • Offense Rating: 8
    • Defense Rating: 47
    • Swing count of 3.
    • Perk - Deals a minimum of 5 BP damage to opponents on parries.
    • Perk - Benefits from ACM on parries.
    • Perk - Receives no BP damage on parries. Will not get disarmed if parrying with 0 BP but won't be able to chain an attack after.
    • Change: Now has the Stab special move for forward + crouch. Damage multiplier of 0.60x. Costs 10 BP and 15 FP to activate.
    • Only gains 0.75 ACM on neutral/half swings instead of 1.0
  • Spoiler: Yellow

    • Offense Rating: 10
    • Defense Rating: 50
    • Swing count of 4.
    • Perk - Has its old fast A halfswing. This swing is treated like a consecutive as far as damage and ACM being affected.
      • Initially gated to just being able to be done after A/D swings. After passing 4+ ACM, can be done off of any previous swing.
  • Spoiler: Duals

    • Offense Rating: 8
    • Defense Rating: 50
    • Swing count of 3.
    • Change: Duals’ jump + forward special move can now turn after the initial jump time.
    • Perk - Doing a half swing before you’ve reached max swing count resets swing count to 0, allowing for another set of swings.
    • Perk - Gain 1 additional max swing count at 4 ACM. Max swing count vs your opponent increases for every 2 ACM you build afterward. At max ACM, you have no swing count limit.
    • Perk - Special moves have bonus scaling from ACM
  • Spoiler: Staff

    • Offense Rating: 9
    • Defense Rating: 53
    • Swing count of 4.
    • Change: Slowdown on spins is removed while moving forward and lessened from 0.5x to 0.75x in other circumstances.
    • Change: Halfswings that change sides can now spin. A to D or D to A are exempt from this.
    • Perk - Non-special move spinning saber attacks have a 1.75x outgoing damage multiplier.
    • Perk - Can use Mblock to trigger PBs without matching PB zones. Won't disarm if not matching PB zones.
    • Perk - Can stagger with Mblock vs swingblocked swings when matching PB zones. Requires ACM.
    • Can now be thrown. Will be horizontal with both blades active and do the default throw with one blade.
  • Spoiler: Purple

    • Offense Rating: 12
    • Defense Rating: 48
    • Swing count of 3.
    • Change: Crouch + forward special move changed from the stab to its previous twirl attack.
    • Perk - Can fully Perfect Block in returns (still requires holding block).
    • Perk - Can continue countering past its swing limit but can’t chain swings after these counters.
  • Spoiler: Red

    • Offense Rating: 14
    • Defense Rating: 48
    • Swing count of 3.
    • Change: Red hop FP (feint + rdfa combo) drain split from RDFA. Now drains 15 FP instead of the full cost. RDFA still retains the full FP cost.
    • Perk - Red can now stagger on hits in certain circumstances. Does not trigger against special moves. The duration of the stagger scales with how much ACM it has:
      • On first body hit (excluding attacking from cartwheels) landed in a combo if it hasn’t been parried.
      • Any spinning attack.
      • Any hit if the attacker’s velocity is at least 225. For comparison, walking is 70, running is 190.
    • Perk - On the first swing of a combo, has the following traits if the swing is PB’d:
      • Does 50% damage through PB. Will not disarm the opponent. Will stagger the opponent if they have less than the BP required to take the hit.
      • Builds partial ACM for the attacker
    • New: Now has a crouch + forward attack. Big wind-up swing with large damage that causes stagger and knockback. Requires 15 FP to use and drains 15 BP when activated.

Changelog Legend
New - New feature or addition to the game.
Change - Changes to the game.
Fix - Bug fix.
Remove - Removed feature.
Feature - New feature name.

 

[Bully]

As of 05/05/2023
- All saber anims seem off, especialy so with purple style.
-

Holding down attack while getting interrupted or staggered locks you into a weird swing loop where no swing actually is made (video is old but it still works the same)
- Red startup swings seem super fast
- Slapping at high ACM (?) seems to stagger the opponent, have experienced it with yellow vs yellow (nvm this is a yellow perk, I don't like it though it feels too strong)

 

[kvinto]

as for bug reporting:
new hitboxes seem kinda buggy, at least for red

and please remove the spin on red SD swing its so terrible
and ignore the guy above about red being fast hes old
also please increase purple chain speed it gets interrupted by literally everything like last version AND BRING THE STAB BACK

 

[Karus]

Hate to say this, but I just don't like it.
I feel like Live only needs a few tweaks and it would be fantastic.

Also, I think a different workflow would probably be more beneficial.
Instead of tweaking things constantly, over a long period of time, you should implement minor tweaks and push them through to live.
If there is a negative response, you could simply rollback the changes.
You could push each small change individually. No need for massive changes in one go.

The only downside to this would be...
Well, I'm not sure how you guys actually manage to do your work; perhaps it's very tedious to rollback changes (?) in which case, this is probably a bad idea.
But, if it's easily done, I don't see a problem with doing it that way, as opposed to working on a massive patch over a long period of time, that people might end up disliking.

Alternatively, you could use the same idea, but instead of pushing tweaks directly to live, push them to the Open Beta launcher.
This would make more sense. My thinking with pushing changes to live is just that you could gauge a larger amount of feedback by pushing tweaks and monitoring what happens there, as opposed to having a limited number of people giving feedback in a smaller group.
But yeah. You could just apply the same thinking (small changes each update) to the Beta, instead of live, if there are concerns with that.

Essentially, I don't think duel needs that many tweaks. Maybe I am biased here, since I play Yellow.
Though, considering the vast majority of duelists use the Yellow style anyway, perhaps the focus should be on that, first and foremost.
Once that style is as close to perfect as it can be, work could be started on improving the other saber styles.
Working on everything at once, especially when it's just one dude doing everything, who is also attempting to please a substantial amount of people, seems like it's always going to backfire.

I believe that I understand the thinking behind it all.
I just think there is a better way to go about it.

Edit: Just wanted to add something else that popped into my mind.
When you make a bunch of changes, it instantly makes it more difficult for people to provide good feedback.
That's pretty much the only reason I've shyed away from participating in testing for this build over the years.
When you give feedback for one thing, you have to take into account this other thing, and then this other thing.
It's just too much to deal with at once.

 

[Tempest]

Did some adjustments after watching dueling and what I thought might need to be adjusted:

• Red startup speed reduction (was 1.45x increase -> 1.25x). Should still be noticeably better but not quite as overbearing.
• Removed the ACM all contact part of Yellow slap perk.
• Removed extra damage on failing Mblock
• Allowing the partial PB in returns after making any contact. Also removed the ACM gain for the attacker to see where things stand. Going to be looking at this feature overall quite closely as collision gets fixed up more and more.
• Being interrupted shouldn't cause you to get stuck anymore. If it does crop up again, I have some further ideas for how to fine tune the adjustment I did to improve it.
• I did some further examination of the 1.4.9 collision and found some discrepancies where I hadn't before and it already feels much better.
  • The instant counters may also have been indirectly cut down by a large amount but I don't want to speak on this before seeing lots of people playing around with it.
  • I did identify when some of the remaining faster hits were happening and why and will continue working on cutting that down.

There'll be a ping tomorrow when these are pushed out.

 

[Jvne]

-

Holding down attack while getting interrupted or staggered locks you into a weird swing loop where no swing actually is made (video is old but it still works the same)

was just about to report this, can happen pretty frequently

 

[Bully]

As of 05/05/2023:
You can instantly interrupt a swing by executing a jump cartwheel attack:

Cyan swing animation changes if the saber is not ignited, hitbox seem unaffected? (could just be a trick with the saber ignition taking some time)

Sometimes counters feel way too fast, could still be the counter swing bug but I'm unsure. I didn't manage to capture footage of it

 

[Tempest]

Another update:

• Reverted Mblock timer back to 1500ms. Keeping in the punishment for whiffing but making it more or less once per combo should relieve a lot of the frustration happening currently.
• Red:
  • Movement re-adjustments. Seems to be a bit too slippery now with the newfound freedom so dialing that back a bit without completely removing the intention of being better in Open as far as gap closing (overall still a net buff)
    • While attacking:
      • If moving forward without strafing, still have normal movement speed
      • If strafing, penalty of 0.70x (was 0.85x)
      • While attacking and moving backwards, penalty of 0.55x (was 0.60x)
  • Doesn't stagger special moves by default.
• Duals:
  • Can now trigger its extra swing perk when it only has its offhand.
• ACM:
  • Instead of a 5% bonus that increases at 4+ ACM with variance between the styles, going to try just a flat 5% across the board. Damage feels like it ramps up a bit too quickly at 4+ so I want to see if this helps smooth things out. I can look at redoing the splits between styles after seeing how this lands.
• Special moves:
  • Dual stabs BP cost reduced from 10 to 8.
  • Purple kata BP cost reduced from 15 to 12.
  • Duals stab damage modifier increased from 0.8x to 1.0x (13 damage to yellow up to 16)
  • Blue lunge damage modifier increased from 1.0x to 1.2x (12 damage to yellow up to 15)
  • Purple kata damage modifier increased from 0.5x to 0.6x (12 damage to yellow up to 15 per hit)
  • Red DFA damage modifier increased from 2.25 to 2.65x (63 damage to yellow up to 75)
  • Downstab damage increased from 60 to 75.
  • Roll stab damage increased from 40 to 60.

Going to be tackling special moves a bit more in-depth in my next set of adjustments after some discussions.

 

[Bully]

As of 06/05/2023
- The average duel is too fast for my liking, people are suggesting to raise BP regeneration but I think that will just encourage running more. I like the idea of lowering the ACM multiplier and gradually increasing it until it feels perfect
- A lot of EU tryhards are harping on the fact they feel punished for PBing peoples counter swings during a return. Especially after they hit their swing limit, their only recourse is trying to PB and they still take damage even though they predict their enemy perfectly

 

[tR killlasaur]

As of 05/05/2023:
You can instantly interrupt a swing by executing a jump cartwheel attack:

Cyan swing animation changes if the saber is not ignited, hitbox seem unaffected? (could just be a trick with the saber ignition taking some time)

Sometimes counters feel way too fast, could still be the counter swing bug but I'm unsure. I didn't manage to capture footage of it

Semi-off topic, but what do you use to make your key inputs show up on screen like that?

 

[Bully]

Semi-off topic, but what do you use to make your key inputs show up on screen like that?

Input Overlay

Input Overlay is a plugin for obs studio that shows keyboard, mouse and gamepad inputs on stream. It adds a new source for visualizing inputs. How does it work? The plugin uses a texture and a config file to create the overlay. This means that...

obsproject.com

 

[SeV]

My initial feedback and suggestions.​

1. Bodyhits should cancel the ability to counter-attack. Only PB/Mblock should allow you to counter-attack. Furthermore, an Mblock counter should guarantee a counter-attack into a full parry to allow people to fight back. Some sort of consistent ability to 'return fire' is necessary in dueling to not get locked out. Nudge would also perform this function well, and with the timings how they are, we almost need it.

Elaboration: Currently, you can insta off of bodyhits with staff WA, and it works with other styles and swings too. It breaks the dueling dance completely and looks nonsensical and spastic to just exchange single insta hits until someone goes down. I re-iterate. You should NOT be able to attack/counter off of a bodyhit, but should be able to do so consistently off of PBs and Mblocks!

2. Timings need to be consistent and predictable. (specifically, attacks and combos)

Elaboration: When you bodyhit the opponent, the combo is a consistent speed, but when parries occur, it deeply messes up the timing, often causing insta swings and if you're playing properly (tapping attack and swingblocking), this essentially breaks you and forces ppl to just hold mouse1 like noobs to try and mitigate this issue. *Timings need to be consistent!
For example, in scenario 1 where you hit a 'parry' timing, you can literally insta WA+SA+WA with red style and drain someone in one second, but in scenario 2 where it bodyhits, you get a super slow grandma style swing that takes forever to land. Not only does it feel absolutely ass to have these inconsistencies, but it is clearly terrible for dueling as a whole. Timings need to be predictable, and consistent, not this random buggy flaily sometimes insta sometimes super slow mess of timings that is in currently.

3. The parry window should be extended, possibly to the same as live.

Elaboration: When two different timings meet each other in a combo exchange, one will parry effortlessly while the other will get interrupted every single combo, greatly handicapping the ability to play the game. This is so grave a problem that it makes the game unplayable in certain situations, and there is no reason this should exist. Furthermore, it also cripples slow-yawing because it just doesn't register the swing attack past a certain point. If you keep this timing, only nudge will save this system and you don't want nudge, do you?

4. If you cartwheel and the opponent starts an attack, he gets auto-interrupted if the timing is right. Obviously an unintended bug that should be fixed, but this suggests other great underlying problems with the system, if such wonky auto interrupts can occur. Public feels much better and more consistent in this regard.

5. ACM is too dominant a mechanic, and yet is invisible and convoluted.

Elaboration: In the old system, you could count the opponent's approximate ACM, but with things how they are in tempests, it's impossible to keep track of what is going on with this invisible, arbitrary damage scaling thing. ACM was originally invented to finish off one-sided duels and stassin made it a more intimate part of the dueling system, but it still was predictable to an extent. Now, we have an invisible, arbitrary mechanic that spikily scales damage and again, is unpredictable like the absolutely ass combo/swing timings. What is the purpose of ACM in tempests patch? Can it justify its existence or is it just there to add extra random maths under the hood for the pleasure of the programmer, but with no discernible purpose in actual duels? The way ACM currently works also undermines the intention behind nerfing the slap dmg multiplier, because if someone slaps you down and holds mouse 1 on you, it's almost game over due to how the ACM builds currently. It's very badly designed and serves no purpose imo.

Suggestion: Either remove the ACM mechanic entirely, or make it consistent and predictable across the board so that you can count the opponent's ACM by their swings. If you remove ACM, then you could add a penalty to BP regen when someone drops below a certain point, say when they're at 1/4 or so. If you decide to keep the current convoluted mess, at least find a proper purpose for it. To make it palatable, I suggest you make perfect blocks drain it partially at the very least.

6. Remove the failed Mblock penalty. It's fine in theory, but not in practice. The accidental mblocks is a major, invisible unnecessary irritant, and is especially horrible when the server is laggy and decides to auto-mblock your swingblock because of its 20ms delay. Simply have a timer on Mblock, why can't you add a visual line next to the slap cooldown or something?

7. Speaking of visual things. There is a lot of bloated shit popping on the screen constantly. In my ideal world, you would be able to tell everything that is going on in the duel with sound design and visuals like the sparks coming off of an interrupt, but not christmas tree dots and world of warcraft damage numbers (though they are a nice touch when testing).

Sound design is simple: You put a distinct sound for bodyhits, pbs, parries, saberhits, counters etc, so you can intuitively tell by ear what is going on. Did he get bodyhit? I can hear it, I don't need to see red shit on my xhair. Did I properly Mblock counter? I can hear it from the impact of the swing.

8. The new code?

It feels like the performance is significantly worse, and there is frequently a 100 ms delay on every PB effect and various other things in the game, like the game has to calculate for a long time before deciding what to do. Whatever is happening under the hood, it feels way worse and way more delayed than in public. I don't know if this code optimization has had the opposite effect, but it feels like it. Hit registration is overall better, but sometimes the delay is so huge that it hardly matters since it felt like playing with 125ms instead of 25 ms. I know others have also felt this, and I beg you to look into it. This lag/delay is really bad.


9. Initial thoughts on the styles.

Yellow: It plays fine, and what is wrong with it is mostly meta issues. As usual, if you fix the meta issues above, you fix yellow.

Blue: Good design and well balanced, but combos other than WA+WD and SA+SD feel a bit gimped. I would like to see +W combos be faster so that the blue user can once more use it to control the distance.

Cyan: I do not mind this design, but Cyan's first swing is too fast and has t-rex arm range. Perhaps the short range is part of its disadvantage. Having only 3 hits in the style gimps it a bit in normal exchanges, but if you use the parry perk well you can hang on. It's fairly balanced, but I would like to see a more well-balanced swingspeed to make parries predictable. This style would be largely fixed by extended parry windows and a bit slower first swing.

Staff: Interesting design but the spins may be slightly over the top? Unless you take opponents off guard, the halfswing spins do not work in actual duels, as I suspected, and you are relegated to Mblock countering. I would like more speed on the spins, but nerf their damage to compensate.

Duals: Spammy garbage that rewards people for holding mouse 1 and just adad'ing around the opponent. Very rock paper scissors due to the issues with the meta, such as the parry timings being wonky. The reset is very quick on duals, so they can parry like nobodys business, but if you try to counter-combo with yellow, your combo gets interrupted. Your only choice with yellow is to run away and make long range attacks. You can't engage it close range right now due to the broken timings. If this issue is fixed, I suppose it would be okay.

Purple: Animations are broken/weird, so I haven't touched it.

Red: Along with Duals, red is currently the most OP style. If you get the buggy timing right, you can pretty much insta combo the same sides like WA+SA+WA and remove all of someones bp in one combo. The main issue with red is how horrid the wildly inconsistent swing timings feel, from the first swings, to the fast or slow combos and the odd stagger mechanic. If I were to design red, I would make it a proper Djem So style with 4 swings and nudge, designed for aggression and constantly attacking and applying the pressure. Fuck this slow, gimped stagger shit and the sudden barrage of insta hits that follows.

 

[Tempest]

Did some testing with different variations of the ACM mechanic and settled on this:

• Keeping it similar to live where there's no damage boost until you have 4+. The points on both sides gaining ACM which leads to very swingy exchanges and making it hard to track the momentum of the duel were spot on.
  • Perks and other mechanics aside from the base damage will still benefit from building up that pre-threshhold ACM.

Other stuff:

• Cyan's parry perk wasn't actually functional but now should be fully working as intended.
• Removed cartwheels doing any damage. They don't have any kind of visual animation that would indicate they can do damage and it has historically caused weird behavior. They will still have the benefit of being able to functionally halfswing out of them on demand.
• Did a bit more polishing of the fixes to the stuck interrupt stuff so hopefully it should be basically squashed at this point.
• Made more progress on the behavior that's leading to the sporadic fast clashing. It should be a lot better but wasn't quite able to completely get rid of it yet. Still narrowing it down.

 

[Bully]

As of 07/06/2023 (recorded before the latest update today)
Recorded an instance of a "counter" swing mid combo

 

[SkeeSilentT]

This is the best dueling has been in a long, long time.

While I can't say I'm a regular player of MBII any more, I have played many builds and I have seen several shifts in what's meta between them all. 10 years and some 3,000 hours on Steam (more if you count the time before actually buying the game lol.) Sometimes when someone like me boots up and tries to play the game like it's 'the old days', we get stomped. My style has often been described as very JA+ with, lots of acrobatics: Luke NPC jumps, backflip attacks and attack cancel into rolls-- fancy maneuvers which used to be ( and with the inception of this new patch, is once again ) lots of fun.

What I'm trying to say is, be weary of anyone decrying anything as unbalanced or under, or overpowered. This sort of talk often has good ideas walked back to the drawing board and can derail good implementations made with good intentions. This beta build is fresh-- constructive and very detailed feedback is required to continue to improve it.

That said, I will take advantage of this open forum to offer my take on what I've experienced with this Open Beta.

ACM:

I like how ACM is much more commonplace. It also lends itself to quicker, more intense duels, which I'm a big fan of. To me, it doesn't feel as arbitrary as some other(s) have suggested. But perhaps some more details on the mechanics should be posted so others, myself included, can better wrap our minds around the new logic in place? I'm sure there's nothing arbitrary about it-- lol.

And yet somehow, ACM doesn't feel like the death sentence it was in previous builds. I've had momentum shift mid-battle several times this build and it feels good. Saber hits for all styles across the board feel more impactful which is a net positive in my book.

The Stances:

Blue: Feels so, so strong. While it definitely misses its half-swings from all directions, any stance with a passive which rewards PBlocking is obscenely strong in the right hands ( Anyone else remember 1.3 / 1.4 ? lol. ) That, combined with it having the highest defense score encourages a unique 'turtle' play style which can be effective against spammers. While strong on its own, I feel it is absolutely disgusting when paired with a more offensive style, and switched to specifically when on defense.

Cyan: Feels like it will be strong in the right hands. This style has a lot of potential. Poke is fun and thematically appropriate when LARPing as Count Dooku lol. **I think a fun idea would be to make it not take any BP to perform its DFA attack ( Which honestly kind of sucks anyways, ) allowing the user to potentially reposition themselves if they're backed into a corner at no significant BP cost. Should still cost FP in case they spam it-- Just an idea, as Blue still seems better overall, and both the hitbox and the damage of Yellow's aerial attack is objectively superior yet still costs the same.

Yellow: In a great place. It's nice to see Yellow restored to its former glory ( not that it has ever not been the best ) as its old A-Swing half-swing was a lot of fun and it's good to see its return. Really not much else to say here. It has incredible overall stats and the speed of its animations along with it having the second longest reach behind the significantly slower Red makes it a natural pick for the intrepid Shadow-swing technique (in other words: "you're in range of my attacks, but I can strafe out of range of your attacks" style of gameplay.) Slap stagger is a nasty mechanic and feels satisfying to pull off.

Duals: Strong. Feels a tad spam-happy, but I see the intention here. I love anything conducive to a unique style outside of the traditionally shadow-swing centric meta. **Maybe the longer the combo gets ( 4+ swings, ) the slower and more powerful the swings become. ( Move speed modifier possible after a set amount of swings as well? ) Land-slap-or-die can be an un-fun save-or-suck mechanic; if the attacks get slower, it doesn't matter if their combos are infinite-- they will be easier to block. However, the damage should increase to balance the risk vs reward for the attacker.

Staff: I like the idea of making spinning attacks actually useful for something. Would be nice if they could be slightly quicker? Spins still seem very dangerous to pull off. We've all been training not to spin for years, after all. Outside of that, I have to say I hate to see MBlocking more encouraged than it is already. I personally dislike disarm as a mechanic of MBlocking, at least not right off the bat at full BP. **Make Mblock's default benefit a stagger for all stances and only become a disarm once the attacker's BP is below 50% (for Def 3-- Def 2 could still be 100% for example.) For staff, perhaps it could drain 10-15 BP on successful Mblocks, as well as stagger the opponent. It could also perhaps disarm earlier than others, e.g. under 75% BP. Outside of its Perks, staff currently feels like a slightly worse Yellow with shorter reach.

Red: I recuse myself from speaking about rebalancing Red, as I am certainly biased, but I will say I love the new Crouch attack; it's awesome. I've also had my ass handed to me in this build ( mostly by Blue, and Yellow users, ) but this patch is still so very young, and we're all still so inexperienced with it. Historically, Red has suffered without nudge, and giving it stagger again definitely helps make up for its weakness when compared to higher tempo styles capable of landing more swings in a trade. My biggest gripe is that it's still close to impossible to chase down 0-bp runners with this stance. 'Still needs to be paired with a quicker style for those guys. **Just an idea, but maybe ACM should reduce or entirely remove Red's movement-speed-while-swinging penalty to potentially remedy this weakness.

Purple: Like with Cyan, it feels like it will be strong in the right hands. I don't have much experience with it otherwise, as I find myself drawn to Red by forces unknown to me. Its perks definitely seem the most boring out of all other stances, though. **I would love to see it get a DFA Attack. Palpatine DFA please?

** : Indicates a proposal. See Cyan, Duals, Staff, Red, and Purple

 

[-!-Sekundus]

I agree with most of Sev's feedback.

I have tested the beta for a few hours now and I actually think this has potential to become truly good.

Admittedly I've mostly been playing around with Yellow and I feel like duels ends to quickly, often anywhere between 6-30 seconds, I believe the damage can be toned-down a bit as one mistake gives little to no room to work your way back in the fight, unless one of the duellists significantly out-skills the other player.

The attack chain multiplier is indeed somewhat hard to keep track off and it ramps up to quickly. Perhaps a course of action could be to halve the effect of acm and slowly fine tune the numbers as we go along ?

As for dual sabers I have to say that it currently is a bit messy to play against. Dual-wielders litterally just spam non-stop randomly and the best way to guarantee a win now is unfortunately to run and utilise the longer reach provided by single sabers.

All in all I think this is headed in the right direction, but it needs some more polishing in order to become truly great

 

[RogueWookiee]

​

8. The new code?

It feels like the performance is significantly worse, and there is frequently a 100 ms delay on every PB effect and various other things in the game, like the game has to calculate for a long time before deciding what to do. Whatever is happening under the hood, it feels way worse and way more delayed than in public. I don't know if this code optimization has had the opposite effect, but it feels like it. Hit registration is overall better, but sometimes the delay is so huge that it hardly matters since it felt like playing with 125ms instead of 25 ms. I know others have also felt this, and I beg you to look into it. This lag/delay is really bad.

this , all collisions feel so much more delayed than compared to live. feels like 90 ping dueling on what im playing at on the us server (40-50ms)

 

[Bully]

(written before the ACM changes last Sunday)

I'll write up a more complete summary of my thoughts about the open beta later but before I do that I want to put some criticism out there on a specific system.

ACM, ACC and how it fluctuates

I think a lot of things the build does right is bring fresh ideas to the table that haven't been tried before but I found the change to ACM kind of missed the mark for me. When I see ACM I see a mechanic that is designed to indicate the momentum of the duel, reward proactive play, discourage passive play and help bring duels to a close. This is where my first issue stems from, both live and the beta suffer from this.

Issue #1: Visual feedback
The current ACM system does a bad job communicating to the player it exists, what it does and why it does it. I've had a lot of encounters with players well in their second year of playing not know what ACM is. Granted on live it works quietly in the background but in the open beta it has taken a front row seat. A few perks are tied to ACM now and not knowing if you hit the ACM threshold is a huge deal. Usually I refrain from making suggestions as that can be a big part of the fun developing a game but to throw some ideas out there have a look at the following concept (excuse the art, I'm not an artist and my stable diffusion model couldn't generate this for me)

Issue #2: Partial ACM & The removal of ACC
I think there is a fundamental issue with partial ACM taking the place of ACC. Notably fractions are hard to imagine in a pinch and they make counting the enemies ACM (and your own) hard. I think rewarding the player for comboing is a good thing but the way it's currently laid out is hard to keep track of. I strongly encourage you to find a clever way to make ACM easy to count even for a casual observer, bonus points if you can work it into the UI in some way. I also think having different partial ACM gains per style might be the biggest hurdle you have here.


Closing thoughts
Just my two cents on the issue, take it with a grain of salt I mostly play open on live where ACM is used like a pepper spray against enemy saberists. I do want to state that I don't think ACM doesn't have a place here like a few others suggested. I think sabering would be much worse without it.

As a last point I want to encourage anyone interested in the design of the system to do some looking around, ACM as it stands doesn't have to stay like this or like it does on live and there are a bunch of systems out there that might do a better job at fulfilling its goal.

 

[Duckshark]

Personally feel like the faster duels are something that is a necessary step. I understand it feels like a huge step because mistakes are so much more punishing, but personally I think this increases the stratification between skill levels and also accelerates the Jedi vs. Jedi TTK, which is important to consider for Open and other non-Duel modes, where dueling is basically a nonfactor outside of stray mblocks, sidewacks, and end-of-round 1v1s. Obviously it is fun to have a minutes-long standoff with a partner of similar skill level, but I think those tend to artificially rely on low damage/low regen BP setups, which can end up being passive when players try to regen, or certain mechanics that artificially inflate survival (PB while whiffing swings, special 2 moves that stagger, katas doing free BP damage with little risk, etc). Also the GOAT dueling patch v1 had a similarly high TTK..... but I'm biased on that account lol.

Agreed with Bully that ACM desperately needs visual indication of some kind, partial ACM is just: ?_?

What if Blue PB damage only worked once you had ACM? I think it is good to incentivize Blue to need some sort of active role in order to gain access to its perk similar to staff mblock stagger, given that the perk itself semi-rewards turtling and more passive PB + counter playstyles.

IIRC (my laptop is broken rn so I can't check) purple and blue combo animations had some scuff, I would recheck the animations/speeds/timings or something in code.

What if, instead of speeding up spins on staff, you allowed it to have 1x horizontal speed instead of 0.75x? That way masking spins becomes much more effective and the speed of the spin itself is unchanged, allowing it to still serve as a timing changeup while making it harder to defend against, especially when chasing where only holding W isn't really viable most of the time.

Also @SkeeSilentT is back? WTF???

Here's you getting youtuber'd by old alt-frag lol.

 

[agentoo8]

After having had a chat with Tempest re Blue, it may be better to lean away from a perk that requires nothing other than PBing, and more towards making use of regular hits (agree with Duck re incentivising an active role), with greater importance placed on the BP regen perk instead, i.e. scoring bodyhits with Blue to reduce your opponent's BP regen. Fits the theme of Soresu - outlasting one's opponent and 'keeping up constant blade movement' (Wookieepedia on Soresu) - and doesn't simply promote backpeddle PB.

You could also tie the BP regen perk to PBing, but perhaps the former option is better as it requires the user to be active (I know the goal is to move away from boons promoting passive play).