I have been reading through all this and im just gonna list some changes here that seem good or bad imo.
-Customizable round timers is a must. It will only benefit the community. At least give the option to set it from 5 minutes to around 1 hour. It would help out clans a lot and allow them to hold more custom events and take use of large custom maps.
-Knockback > flinch for previously stated reasons.
-As Sev said perks can be a really good thing if implemented correctly, i personally would like for them to exist but it might be better to put them on hold until a stable system is in place.
-If special moves will continue to only cost fp, there definetly needs to be a way to block some off the damage like NB as Tempest stated.
-ACM getting removed is probably a good thing.
-Increasing bp drains and making bp important from the beginning of the duel is great.
-Swing restricions seem like a good idea and fit well into my suggestion below.
Now heres a suggestion, i mostly want there to be a distinct feeling of being defensive and aggressive. That could be done by just giving a simple temporary buff to defence and attacking.
Defence buff: Pblock gives a temporary bp regen boost that stacks up based on how many consecutive pblocks you land. For every 1 consecutive pblock your bp regen gets increased by 5% for 5 seconds. So if you landed 4 pblocks in a row, you would have 20% more bp regen for 20 seconds.
Attacking buff: Every successful single hit/halfswing/the first successful hit of a combo would grant you a 5% damage buff for the next combo. So lets say i did 4 successful halfswings, my next combo would do 20% more damage. If you step outside of combat for around 5 seconds, your stacks of damage would diminish rapidly. Basically it would be similiar to how you gain acm at the moment.
Now both of these buffs would be capped around 20% to not make them too powerful but i believe these could really make the combat more varied and overall more "rich". The reason the attack buff is better than good old acm is because it wouldnt restrict style switching but actually promote it and it would vanish if you were to run away and regen bp. It would even encourage skillful style switching by gaining stacks of damage with something like blue, then switching over to red to release a much more powerful combo. It would also promote skillful pblocking rather than parry spamming as you would actually gain something from pblocking.
You might think that this is "overcomplicating" but its really not. To simplify it, the more you pb, the more bp you get and the more you attack the more damage you do. I think this would open so many more doors to have your own unique style of playing and just make the dueling system simple with a high skillcap which i believe is the goal currently. Other option is that you might think this is completely unnecessary, which it is but it would only make the gameplay more rich. Note that the numbers are completely up to debate.
If you do think that this is worth considering, i would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Also
this please.
