Based on Supa's and your response, does that mean you're keeping the new perfect block system intact and retiring the old one for good? I think it'd be a good idea to go back to the old PB system and focus on making it consistent instead of keeping what you have now, even though you created it.
The only opposition I saw in previous threads about hitboxes being tied to the saber was Sev's comments saying that it would be too friendly for yaw'ing and people would hold block and wiggle their mouse left and right to block. But currently the core strategy of getting through this new PB system is doing extremely fast, high sensitivity yawed swings in an attempt to connect them before your opponent can angle their camera in time - this is the most yaw relevant and intensive build to exist as of now...
I'm afraid if you leave the old PB system behind you'll leave behind part of a very strong foundation of MB2 dueling with it, and what you'll keep is the 3 saber savvy testers telling you it's good (exaggerated, but the point is there), and the swarm of new players who also think it's good because they've never played the previous builds. Most of the duelists I've seen on NA have retired the saber with this new PB/perk system, and most of the ones who love it didn't really pick up dueling until now.
Are you planning on keeping PB how it is?
I had some idea while working on the upcoming revamp, which would be to make saber hitboxes temprorarily larger when looking for saber/saber collisions when swinging, so that the old PB method would actually be reliable (because otherwise it is not reliable at all). But didn't go through with it, didn't even try in fact.
And i will have to correct your argument: aiming so that your swing hits as fast as possible isn't tied to the current PBing system. It is as its description suggests, to make swings hit as soon as they reach their threatening phase, and not slightly after. It was used just the same with the old PB system. On the other hand, abusing animation chaos by moving the camera alot to bypass PB is not possible with the current PB system (other than trying to confuse the opponent with it) while it was with the old one. Why ? Simply because the base game is like that. Saber animations are pretty diverse and saber hitboxes are tiny, you can't expect a reliable blocking system relying only on saber/saber collision with the classical animations from base. All animations would need to be carefully designed so that there is no room to abuse camera position to bypass PB, and they aren't. And if they were, what do you think the end result would be ? PB by aiming with your saber roughly where the incoming swing is located, which is what the current system's PB is trying to simulate.
In the end, this "old PB system" we're talking about is actually nothing more than the blocking system inherited from base. And it is something very unpolished. If it were polished to the point of being completely reliable (not sure if really possible at all, i see only the possibility of making saber hitboxes bigger atm), i would see no disadvantage in having it; only the advantage of being visually better i suppose.
But there are many possibilities anyways, you know ? Why would "having sabers clash" be the most intuitive way of opposing an incoming swing's power ? Shouldn't you rather match opposite movement with your legs to counter its force -> PB system based on movement directions (i don't know much about real sword fighting but
@SeV does i think) ? Or it could be done the same way as this upcoming JKO mod that looks so great (can't remember the name -
@ent can you remind me please), i.e. if i'm not mistaken trigger a blocking animation when camera accelerates/moves in a direction; so you'd PB if you moved the camera in the right direction (in this mod i think PB detection still relies on saber/saber collision, but due to blocking anims triggering in correct directions based on camera movement, PBs do trigger reliably when blocking swings from the appropriate directions - well, would need to test extensively to really know). This system is really good because the PB detection actually uses the blocking animations, rather than having to aim your idle saber into a swing then a directional blocking animation triggering that looks off because it displaces your saber in another direction slightly. However is having blocking animations trigger in the air all the time due to camera movement plausible for a mod like mb2, i'm not so sure about that. In any case this JKO mod is probably the best that the "old PB system" can get. We would have to see, but there's a chance that it's actually a reliable system. I don't see any other way, using the animations from the original game, to make a reliable blocking system based on saber/saber collision (except again making saber hitboxes larger).
More practically, if you are worried that offense is too weak and PB is way too easy to perform in the current patch, then new things are addressing that in the new patch. For starters the PBing zones are also being made smaller.
In any case i should say this: PB detection is still subject to change even after next patch. If a reliable method can be found and tested appropriately, which has advantages compared to the current one, then i have no problem with it; after all it doesn't really change the balance of the system at all, as long as the difficulty to perform successful PBs remains similar.
EDIT: i remembered the name of the JKO mod,
Boothand. Actually the developer has been trying out several types of blocking, not just the one i described but also blocking based on movement.
