Logical Sabering?

[Duckshark]

Hi, I'm new here. I've been playing for a couple of weeks, but before that I wised up and read a bunch of guides on literally everything in this game. But I feel like dueling is still a problem, because I found out that running out of BP is countered by wildly spamming combos, and swingblocking feels unrealistic.

What if combos were limited to having the first hit not be PB'd? It doesn't make sense for a real sword fighter to have a strike blocked and then be able to swing another few times at a blocking person quickly, it'd make more sense if the individual hits were more precise and combos were follow-ups to strikes. The only real fighting where one can just whale on somebody else is boxing, because blocking a punch doesn't affect the aggressor.

Also, slapping in a duel only makes sense if the opponent isn't swinging. Who would consider a barehanded attack useful against an enemy swinging an indestructible laser sword? Slaps should only connect if the opponent is readying or following through a strike, or jumping/crouching.

Swingblocking seems like a sort of exploit, and really unrealistic. If you parry, then ok. But who blocks a slap by swinging a sword while blocking during the attack? By making slaps more opportunistic, it'd make sense for them to have longer cooldown, and swingblocking would be disregarded for pure offense when swinging, and the variety of PBs, MBs, and parries on defense.

Note that I am a total noob, but these solutions seem logical, not difficult to implement (comparatively), and it would make dueling less combo-based and more about precise strikes, because a single lightsaber strike is basically game over for the recipient.

If there are pros out there, and you see something I missed, feel free. Please don't write "dumb lol bye," though. I want to understand the dueling system, and I really like this mod.

 

[[tR]Motoko]

imgur album ny1onTV

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

Yup, as I said, I cannot play 1.5 very well. Stassin is vastly superior to me in this patch. How is that relevant to anything in this discussion?

Besides, I don't like 1.5, I don't ego duel in MB2 anymore due to 1.5. I certainly don't claim to be good in 1.5, either. I kill myself in 1.5 more than I kill my enemy because I try to do things that I could do in previous patches, and I refuse to dedicate the time to unlearning those habits in this horrendous patch. I'm certain many of the people here could probably beat me. I don't fucking care. The argument here is about swingblock which TRANSCENDS PATCHES, not about who has the biggest dueling cock.

 

[[tR]Motoko]

 

[Fear]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Starushka]

@{Δ} Achilles I completely understand the intentions to improve swingblock mechanic. Swingblock have no downsides compared to regular swing. In some previous patch (i don't remember which one) regular attack dealt much more damage, right now the difference is insignificant.
Swingblock is defensive mechanic. It makes you invulnerable for disarm and knockdown. The logical step will be decreasing attacking potential of swingblocks. Perhaps swingblock should lose the ability to gain acm.

Russian and American has spoken, the world must listen.

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

@{Δ} Achilles I completely understand the intentions to improve swingblock mechanic. Swingblock have no downsides compared to regular swing. In some previous patch (i don't remember which one) regular attack dealt much more damage, right now the difference is insignificant.
Swingblock is defensive mechanic. It makes you invulnerable for disarm and knockdown. The logical step will be decreasing attacking potential of swingblocks. Perhaps swingblock should lose the ability to gain acm.

Russian and American has spoken, the world must listen.

THANK YOU.

Personally I'd go for something slightly more extreme, and make it so that swingblocking prevents you from continuing a chain. So that you could swingblock single swings, and half swings, but if you wanted to combo, you had to commit and not swingblock. Which would not only reduce combo spam, but also make swingblock a conscious and VISIBLE decision to make a safe swing, instead of just something you do. New players would figure out swingblock much faster if it actually had a major affect upon their attacks.

However, your suggestion is fine, as long as there is some downside to it.

 

[GASHTI]

Isn't that literally all you do in game? I've known you since 1.3, and every single patch you hated the system, then proceeded to make it painfully clear to everyone how much you hated it.

I really like this one actually

However, you could just make a script that swingblock everything but 1 millisecond of startup time. Good fucking luck slapping that.

I dont think scripts should be part of the debate at all is what I'm trying to say. If we go with the baseball analogy that's like complaining about players using drugs to improve performance I guess. Not really part of the game, complaining about it achieves nothing.

People do that all the time. The difference is you don't have a bunch of major-league players walking up to you and laughing at how bad you are as an argument. "Haha get good." isn't an argument. Yes, new players lack the expertise of skilled players, but guess what, they could also have very viable fucking feedback for how shit a game is to get into. If you played a fucking MMO for 5 minutes, and then stopped playing it, leaving the critique "I literally couldn't understand what I was doing at all", then a bunch of dickheads go "HAHA GET GOOD", that doesn't invalidate his fucking opinion.

Yeah but like having a forum with 100 major-league players and then having people with as much baseball experience as me complaining about the game would be similar to this I asume. We dont really laugh at new players, there's plenty of people who help out or explain things in the comments, we're not all toxic. I'm pretty much done arguing here as we've come to the NA vs EU part of this thread, gf

 

[Torlo50]

While I can agree that making slap either have a longer cool-down, or other sort of prevention, swingblocking gets around it. Now thinking along the lines of swingblock in sabering, it is entirely designed against the slap mechanic. With this in mind, maybe forcing the person to not move at all for proper swingblock combos?

I mean, strange idea, but trading swingblock combos for mobility seems like it would be an interesting move. Make it so, at least while the swing itself completes, your model literally can't move. Would mess the idea of swingblock combo spams, but not make them entirely nonviable

Just food for thought.

Though, I do agree with you on several points @Duckshark , I think the mechanics are too ingrained by this point for that sort of change, since some people expect to be PB'ed on the first hit, and then avoid it on the other hits. Though, in the current patch, with PB beings as overpowered as it is, letting your opponent PB you makes any duel last quite a bit longer. You shouldn't be worried if someone is going to PB you, since you know they are low, but will be mid to high in the amount of bb they have if you attack. You shouldn't be worried about it, frankly. Though, that is just against BP regen in general on PB. It's simply a bad idea that was implemented to balance out the removal of perks, a few of which were PB based. Of course, if it wasn't to balance out perk removal as I expect, what IS it there for? Like, I would love to hear the actual reasoning on why it was considered necessary, instead of just "I would like it." (Since that is a terrible way to design a game.)

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

Hey, an actually reasonable response from Gashti.

I really like this one actually

What, how I took the piss out of Fear, or the patch?

I dont think scripts should be part of the debate at all is what I'm trying to say. If we go with the baseball analogy that's like complaining about players using drugs to improve performance I guess. Not really part of the game, complaining about it achieves nothing.

I was using the script analogy as an explanation of how over-bearing Swingblock is in MB2, and how easy it would be to abuse because there is no downside. You **could** theoretically create this script for easy-mode swingblocks, and there'd be no downside to doing it. That is what bothers me about swingblock, is that there is no reason not to do it, either in dueling, or in open. There used to be a reason not to do it in both open and dueling. In 1.3, for instance, you could make a conscious decision to either swingblock against a gunner to try avoiding damage, or you could eat damage to go for a potentially killing swing. That required thought and strategy. Not anymore.

Yeah but like having a forum with 100 major-league players and then having people with as much baseball experience as me complaining about the game would be similar to this I asume. We dont really laugh at new players, there's plenty of people who help out or explain things in the comments, we're not all toxic. I'm pretty much done arguing here as we've come to the NA vs EU part of this thread, gf

I see a lot of new players complain about things with MB2. I'm experienced enough to understand MB2, I was one of the better duelists in numerous patches, I'm 'qualified to have an opinion'. However I'm not going to laugh at a new player for his opinion. Obviously if someone goes "Man this game sucks. Fuck all of you. Your game is shit, maps are shit, everything shit. I'm leaving", then I'm going to ignore it. However, if a new player like the one who posted here has very legitimate complaints, even if they are shrouded in ignorance of the advanced mechanics, he still has a point.

A lot of new players complain about how obscure many of MB2's mechanics are. MB2 is a very difficult game to learn, the skill floor of dueling is so high it is practically in orbit, and it doesn't need to be. There seems to be a very obnoxious mentality in the EU dueling echo chamber, that dueling needs to have a really insanely high skill floor in order for there to be a high skill ceiling. That couldn't be farther from the truth. You can make dueling easier to learn/get into without making good duelists lose to new players. The good will still remain good if we tweak these things to stop being so invisible and obscure.

In NA in 1.4.9 there was this weird meta shift led by a number of players into doing counter-4 hit combos off of every swing, and crouch the startup swings. This rapidly went from gimmicky to a very real and annoying strategy. I was one of the better duelists in said patch, and I went from creaming those players to actually having a lot of difficulty. Because in order to beat them, you HAD to trade with them. You HAD to take damage, because you couldn't stop them from spamming their combos, and PBing was really quite difficult due to their facehugging yaws. When they almost lost, they would start shadow-swinging you, and if you chased them with low BP from the trade-fest, you would have a chance of dying just trying to finish them off. It was more dangerous of a strategy than it should have been, and while I could beat it, I didn't like it.

The issue behind those strategies, the issue behind all combo-spam at medium-high sabering level, has been swingblock. It is an obscure mechanic, that is often difficult for new players to grasp, and it has no restrictions to it, making it counter the very ability (slap) which is SUPPOSED to stop spam and face-hugging. I don't want to buff slap, because slap is fine as it is. The alternative is just nerfing/changing how swingblock works.

 

[Hessu]

I dont see swingblocking as an issue at all because i dont rely on slaps or mblocks

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

I dont see swingblocking as an issue at all because i dont rely on slaps or mblocks

Okay.

 

[Hessu]

Okay.

So are you relying on slaps and mblocks because you see it as an issue?

 

[Hessu]

Because if you dont, i dont see the issue here? Sure its mandatory if you want to be good but it doesnt take that long to learn and its easy to use

 

[Fear]

The only thing I have to seriously contribute to this conversation would be the instant multi hitting kata's such as blue crouch kata purpla kata and if u do a dfa as someone swings with cyan it can 100bp to 0 you cause it hits you 3 times. Thats all I would like to be fixed

 

[Tempest]

Because if you dont, i dont see the issue here? Sure its mandatory if you want to be good but it doesnt take that long to learn and its easy to use

It doesn't make you good to use swingblock as a mandatory mechanic. It's just something you have to do because there's downsides to not doing it but no downsides when you do use it.

I'm not sure what confuses/saddens me more: that people can't understand the importance of having trade-offs for things being good/bad or that there's people who think it's not a problem in any way for there to be something that has X number of pros (that, in this scenario, also have huge impacts on gameplay) while having 0 cons.

 

[Stassin]

Non-swingblocking already has a vast mobility advantage which can sometimes be crucial in order to avoid getting PBed. That said i don't disagree that non-swingblocking could use some other sort of advantage, though making it just more damage is pretty bland (that's how it already is with a small 1.1x, i'd rather remove that and add something entirely new, visible and more useful).

 

[Fear]

@Tempest @Stassin Are you guys working on anything to fix the multi-hitting of the kata and the cyan DFA?

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

Non-swingblocking already has a vast mobility advantage which can sometimes be crucial in order to avoid getting PBed. That said i don't disagree that non-swingblocking could use some other sort of advantage, though making it just more damage is pretty bland (that's how it already is with a small 1.1x, i'd rather remove that and add something entirely new, visible and more useful).

Non-swingblock doesn't need a buff. Swingblock needs a nerf. Not-swingblocking is already rewarding and risky enough.

 

[Hessu]

It doesn't make you good to use swingblock as a mandatory mechanic. It's just something you have to do because there's downsides to not doing it but no downsides when you do use it.

I'm not sure what confuses/saddens me more: that people can't understand the importance of having trade-offs for things being good/bad or that there's people who think it's not a problem in any way for there to be something that has X number of pros (that, in this scenario, also have huge impacts on gameplay) while having 0 cons.

i didn't say just swingblocking makes you good, but have you seen any good players who doesnt swingblock?

 

[Hexodious]

I don't disagree, I like the new system a lot for instance I love how fast fights can be as a non-duelist openmode/match saberist. But swingblock vs non-swing is no competition (and this is a many patch long issue), swingblock is much better than non-swingblock in most scenarios. The safety it provides it just too huge even considering mobility.