How would dueling have to be fixed/adjusted to make it easier to tell when and what your mistakes ar

[Tylenol]

I dropped this sort of question in the MB2 discord and it turns out this is something some people have actually noted.

At the moment, dueling and overall lightsabers are off-putting to me due to the fact that you never really know what your most common mistakes are. Ignoring flinch and other mechanics, sabers have a number of issues related with animations and hitboxes. And *with* flinch and etc it just gets more complicated. I'm not educated enough on this topic to go in deeper but I think I said enough to help get the point across.

 

[MuscBodypillow]

Most of the time to know such things you must either put in lots of hours to get the feel of things or get some people to train you in duel servers, or both.

 

[SK5]

When it comes to learning your mistake you really need to have full knowledge of the mechanics.

There is a lot of visual feedback coming to you through your crosshair.
Green -> u pbd (took no dmg)
Red -> u damaged ur opponent and in most circumstances gained acm
None -> your opponent pbd you or you clashed sabers mid air (parry)
Blue -> irrelevant

Flinch is open mode related and means that you got hit by a blaster while swinging next to someone. It will cause a short stagger and you can negate it by swingblocking.

Other than that i fail to see what exactly your problem is and what do you mean by animations and hitboxes exactly?

 

[Lessen]

None -> your opponent pbd you or you clashed sabers mid air (parry)

A point of confusion for me was the fact that no indicator can ALSO mean that you got hit during the very early windup of your swing and took Big BP Drains.

... at least I think this is what kept happening to me.

 

[norad]

When it comes to learning your mistake you really need to have full knowledge of the mechanics.

There is a lot of visual feedback coming to you through your crosshair.
Green -> u pbd (took no dmg)
Red -> u damaged ur opponent and in most circumstances gained acm
None -> your opponent pbd you or you clashed sabers mid air (parry)
Blue -> irrelevant

Flinch is open mode related and means that you got hit by a blaster while swinging next to someone. It will cause a short stagger and you can negate it by swingblocking.

Other than that i fail to see what exactly your problem is and what do you mean by animations and hitboxes exactly?

I thought blue was a perfect parry which is not irrelevant if you are using cyan

 

[Tylenol]

Flinch is open mode related and means that you got hit by a blaster while swinging next to someone. It will cause a short stagger and you can negate it by swingblocking.
/QUOTE]
Except flinch is unreliable, and is no longer a mechanic that makes Jedi more careful when interacting with gunners, it's just something they work around with different tricks and stunts.

As for the animations and hitboxes, it's mostly just smaller things that happen from time to time, like sabers going through people and not actually damaging the or akimbo lightsabers in general.

There is a lot of visual feedback coming to you through your crosshair.
Green -> u pbd (took no dmg)
Red -> u damaged ur opponent and in most circumstances gained acm
None -> your opponent pbd you or you clashed sabers mid air (parry)
Blue -> irrelevant

Visual feedback back is cool and all but stuff like ACM doesn't have any visual and by the time you notice it your BP drains, you're already losing.

 

[kvinto]

I thought blue was a perfect parry which is not irrelevant if you are using cyan

yeah but if you use cyan you're irrelevant instead

 

[Kryst]

I think it would be neat to have some sort of way to see the difference between a parry and pb, but not entirely necessary. The system is already very clear. You will have a full understanding of your mistakes after enough gametime. They are not super hard to spot if you know what to look for.

ACM doesn't have any visual

You can already see your own ACM. As for the opponent's ACM, I would argue it falls under game sense. You usually have an estimate of how much of an ACM advantage your opponent has on you. All characters will also use a voice line automatically when they reach +4 ACM, which makes it even easier to estimate.

using cyan

lol

 

[Tempest]

I think it would be neat to have some sort of way to see the difference between a parry and pb, but not entirely necessary.l

PBs only happen when the defender is blocking. Parries only happen while swinging. Pretty visible difference there.

 

[Lessen]

PBs only happen when the defender is blocking. Parries only happen while swinging. Pretty visible difference there.

If there IS a difference between a parry and "getting hit during windup and taking a ton of BP damage", there should definitely be an indicator, since it looks exactly like a parry and happens in the same situation.

 

[Tempest]

The differences will be plain to see (both via indicator as well as visuals).

 

[PuNk]

If there IS a difference between a parry and "getting hit during windup and taking a ton of BP damage", there should definitely be an indicator, since it looks exactly like a parry and happens in the same situation.

This. Many times I cannot tell if I have been interrupted or parried because crosshair is the same. Sometimes it is plain obvious but often it is not.
So I am happy to hear indicators will be clear on that.

 

[Lessen]

The differences will be plain to see (both via indicator as well as visuals).

oh good, glad to hear there'll be an indicator added, cuz in the saber beta I still found it something of a hassle trying to keep track of whether I was interrupted or parried. Even though, yes, there's a visual difference if you're watching your own character, I'm not used to watching my own character while dueling. I'm busy watching the enemy.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I've been thinking of other fighting games and what they do to better create an intuitive, transparent system.

Tekken 7:

• Visible health bars
• Distinct effect for blocks
• Getting hit mid-attack plays unique sound effect and sends player flying or leaves them open for a follow-up hit
• Getting hit plays unique sound effect and causes victim to stagger
• Brief animation-lockouts upon getting hit regardless of blocking or not

Mount & Blade:

• Blood flies upon hitting someone, distinct pain sound from victim
• Brief animation-lockouts upon getting hit regardless of blocking or not
• Characters take HP damage upon failure to block perfectly, 1-2 hits generally kills

For Honor:

• Visible health bars
• Distinct effect for blocks (character flashes white, sound of weapons clashing)
• Target who gets hit gets staggered regardless of blocking or not to grant momentum for the attacker
• Bright orange flashes and unique sounds upon counter-hits

Things I would do:

• Show enemy BP
• Create more distinct effects (audio + visual) for counter-hits and body-hits to signify severity of impact
  
• Body-hits cause very brief staggers to signify that you made an impact (whether it causes an animation lockout is a design question)
  
• Counter-hits cause slightly longer staggers to signify that you made a heavy impact (whether it causes an animation lockout is a design question)

Obviously some of these ideas are drastic and I doubt many would like them. I would like them and I am pretty sure most new players would as well, since the fights would be far easier to read and spectate. Whether these are too drastic steps is up for grabs, I suppose. I can only assume our resident hardcore duelists like @Tempest, @Stassin and @SeV to be foaming at the mouth already

Assuming animation lockouts were included in staggers the meta could shift towards animation-timing based combat with less emphasis on BP management and hidden, poorly visualized mechanics like ACM and Perfect Block. At lower levels players will enjoy the clarity and visual experience with clear impacts for hitting and getting hit. At higher levels players would enjoy perfecting their combos, timings, feints, defense and counters just as they do now.

Visible BP bars would reflect a real fight situation where fighters can see fatigue and resolve. It would also in turn help players better see the impact they are causing with each attack. Visible BP gives better feedback for the player. It would make more players open up their defenses to try and pound a low BP player. As a result the defensive player is given more psychological openings against less patient opponents.

Better audiovisual cues for the different types of hits would also go a long way. Just hearing and seeing a hit go WTFBOOM tells you that you just did something even if you don't know what exactly.

 

[Stassin]

• Show enemy BP

• Create more distinct effects (audio + visual) for counter-hits and body-hits to signify severity of impact

• Body-hits cause very brief staggers to signify that you made an impact (whether it causes an animation lockout is a design question)

• Counter-hits cause slightly longer staggers to signify that you made a heavy impact (whether it causes an animation lockout is a design question)

Yes, having more visual/audio clues as to how much dmg is actually being dealt would be awesome, whatever the form it takes. However, impeding controls as a part of it, any more than it already does, would be the opposite of awesome whatever the form it takes. About showing enemy BP, well i'd say that's a big no, we want to keep the BP mind games in; with good visual/audio clues on dmg, it wouldn't be hard to guess the enemy's BP correctly tbh.

 

[Hexodious]

I agree with Stassin.

 

[PuNk]

I agree with more distinct effects but not with visible BP bars and staggers.
Visible BP bars would ruin mind games behind duels. The whole point is to predict and tell how much BP your opponent is at based on movements, aggressiveness, opening room for behaviours opposite of what your actual situation is, risk - reward. It would be of help but they still have a message of how much BP their opponent was at after they lose and also other indicators you suggested would be of major help for everyone to know what they did right or wrong.
As for staggers, don't we already have enough staggers? Slap stagger, cyan stagger, staff stagger, DFA stagger, enough's enough. And you already get a flashing red crosshair when you score a body hit to show that you made impact, this isn't needed. Imo staggers are the most annoying thing in dueling.

 

[Tempest]

Stassin covered it but I just wanted to add that we've already gone through staggers on body hits in a number of different forms. None of them have been good/fun to play. Just leave them alone in the past along with the suffering they caused.

Also, things that work in/are designed for 1v1 fighting games aren't likely to translate well into MB2.

 

[n00b]

Stassin covered it but I just wanted to add that we've already gone through staggers on body hits in a number of different forms. None of them have been good/fun to play. Just leave them alone in the past along with the suffering they caused.

Also, things that work in/are designed for 1v1 fighting games aren't likely to translate well into MB2.

- Yeah, no staggering please. It's horrible, thank you.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

things that work in/are designed for 1v1 fighting games aren't likely to translate well into MB2.

For Honor and Mount & Blade are not 1v1