sadly this mod has lots of issues that hasnt been resolved since previous patches and well as someone mentioned before in this thread one of those problems is the community being toxic and doing negative things to the mod like ddosing, or ppl that abuse of tking , and theres no real way to control this behaviour, i wish there was a new implemented system for the login in this game like an account system with pin and well i think that would be a better way to ban ppl for good perhaps? then the other issue is the dueling system its way too complex and sometimes annoying, its only fine for those that are way too experimented with the mechanics even when they change the dueling system over patches ppl that were op with saber are always op with it, because they have so many years under that department, i think they really need to make the dueling system in particular more user friendly ive said this before on the feedback area because i think ITS really required in order to make ppl become more interested of it, im sure there are many more problems but you gotta fix them one at a time with quality and not quantity.
It's hard to strike that fine balance between easy to learn, hard to master, 80 is easy, the other 20 percent is hard and what differentiates skilled players. I believe that the future saber revamp will address this to some degree. It's not about complexity per se, but the ease with which a new player can pick it up and play it. Also, what makes people feel like it's really complex and crazy and weird and hard to learn is undoubtedly also linked to the fact that they feel completely out of their depth when they meet someone who's extremely good at the game, and they overturn everything they ever knew to do and nothing the new player does seems to work and that frustrates some people, because like in chess, understanding is directly linked with ability in the saber system. In order to fully understand the system, they have to learn the system. In order to learn the system they have to understand the system so they can practice the required mechanical skills, refrain from what doesn't work and emphasize on what does work. It's a strange thing, but it doesn't work the other way around. Say you have someone who knows all the numbers and details like how much each swing does. That is not necessarily correlated with 'understanding' the system itself, because understanding also comes from knowing the implications implicit in the aforementioned numbers and how they then affect the system itself.
So we should ideally have a more userfriendly version of the blocking system, a harder version of the blocking system. An easier way to attack and a harder (but more rewarding) way to attack and so on. We do have the easy way to attack atm, it's called holding mouse 1 and adad. But I believe that it's stupid how these swings drain more BP than swingblocked attacks, since swingblocking a 4 hit combo takes considerably more skill than just holding M1 and adad. With the blocking system we have an easy way to block aswell, simply holding M2. However, perfect block as it is with the aimed PB zones is rather unintuitive in the beginning, but makes alot of sense to experienced players. That is why I believe the introduction of a secondary blocking system that is perhaps easier and less rewarding than the aimed PB, and maybe less reliable, would go some way towards making it easier for newer/less skilled people to get into. You need only think a weaker version of the old PB. Does it not make intuitive sense to you that if you hit your opponents lightsaber, it should drain less BP than if you hit his body? Perhaps hitting the lightsaber shouldn't even give you ACM since it is not actually a bodyhit but a saberhit/collision. I feel this would bring alot of things to current sabering, and possibly help with the new player learning intuitively, cause it simply makes sense that if you hit the opponents blade it does less damage than if u hit his body directly etc.
There are a number of changes being worked on in the beta that look promising, but of course I am not at liberty to elaborate.
But getting back to the pop problem, as Antraxo said. It's not like there are so few playing that it's impossible to find a game. But if we don't act soon it might be too late and the pop might not recover. If we act now, crack down on trolls/lamers and those who abuse new players etc, reform the TK system to be more user friendly (Or simply disable it and have a call admin function), we might be able to increase pop again. Also with the disabled TK system players on the server would be able to take justice into their own hands without being afraid of TK points. So at the start of a round if tehre is 1 or 2 lamers the whole team can just quickly dispose of them then proceed to play. That probably makes more sense atm than having the super punishing TK system in place? I dunno.
![[SO]Bane](/data/avatars/m/0/8.jpg?1443379761){kind=avatar}
