Mace is actually right about sabering

[noel]

Agreed.

Either we leave duelling as this very niche thing with tons of intricate mechanics only about 20-30 people half understand and don't even seem to fully enjoy (and more complexity/obfuscated mechanics is often their answer to solve it all, I couldn't help but notice), or we do remove some of the too subtle and more illogical-looking mechanics/make them have some kind of easily recognizable visual or audio feedback. There's a fine line between dumbing things down and making them enjoyable.
As it stands, the burden of knowledge in order to master the sabering system is too heavy compared to its rewards, linked to the lack of reliability/accuracy of execution for most people - it might work for some very dedicated people who have very good cocaine connections and know every odd behaviour of the engine, but most of the playerbase simply doesn't enjoy it any more compared to the arguably simpler earlier versions. Duelling servers have been visibly less populated recently.

Then again, I'm pretty sure the dev team is aware of this, and we can only hope the next big patch will fix most of our common complaints.

My two cents on the matter is that most mechanics can be maintained so long as UI improves. We've already seen implementation of new crosshairs, crosshair colours and so on which help matters signifcantly when it comes to seeing pb zones, knowing when you have been pbed and so on.

The most obscure mechanics left in the game are essentially mblock, swingblock and things like half swings.

As to how we make these mechanics clearer through the UI, I don't know. But I don't think that removing them or dumbing down the system is the answer.

I think that the number of people who don't understand the dueling system is often embelished. I don't personally believe that the mods mechanics require anymore understanding than a succesful, intricate game like LoL or For Honor.

I think the best way to continue to guarentee further 'ease of access' into the game, is to provide such information ingame, instead of on the forums. Tool tips, tutorials and so forth are the best way of doing this.

The reality is however, that in this day and age I believe people are drawn to complexity. No one ever complained that you had to look online to learn League, or to get better at For Honor past its tutorials.

That's why I believe 'ease of access' to such learning is a stumbling point of this mod, one cannot simply google 'how to jedi in mb2' and find an entertaining, informative video on youtube like you can for something like FH, and instead a trip through the forums might find you (at best) mine or SeV's semi-outdated, long guides.

To mb2 community, make good videos on how to duel. To mb2 devs, make good tutorials on how to duel (which I believe it is now public knowledge that they indeed are).

 

[MaceMadunusus]

To mb2 devs, make good tutorials on how to duel (which I believe it is now public knowledge that they indeed are).

A sabering tutorial is indeed planned, but it is the absolute last thing on the list. Constant changes NEED to stop for the tutorial to be created. I am not going back and redoing an entire tutorial of a topic that will take more work than 5 tutorials to do every year or two with things changing all the time. I am also not going to even start work on it until changes are entirely finalized.

 

[WaceMindu]

My two cents on the matter is that most mechanics can be maintained so long as UI improves. We've already seen implementation of new crosshairs, crosshair colours and so on which help matters signifcantly when it comes to seeing pb zones, knowing when you have been pbed and so on.

The most obscure mechanics left in the game are essentially mblock, swingblock and things like half swings.

As to how we make these mechanics clearer through the UI, I don't know. But I don't think that removing them or dumbing down the system is the answer.

I think that the number of people who don't understand the dueling system is often embelished. I don't personally believe that the mods mechanics require anymore understanding than a succesful, intricate game like LoL or For Honor.

I think the best way to continue to guarentee further 'ease of access' into the game, is to provide such information ingame, instead of on the forums. Tool tips, tutorials and so forth are the best way of doing this.

The reality is however, that in this day and age I believe people are drawn to complexity. No one ever complained that you had to look online to learn League, or to get better at For Honor past its tutorials.

That's why I believe 'ease of access' to such learning is a stumbling point of this mod, one cannot simply google 'how to jedi in mb2' and find an entertaining, informative video on youtube like you can for something like FH, and instead a trip through the forums might find you (at best) mine or SeV's semi-outdated, long guides.

To mb2 community, make good videos on how to duel. To mb2 devs, make good tutorials on how to duel (which I believe it is now public knowledge that they indeed are).

We completely agree on the necessity to have more in-game feedback about sabering, because as it stands even the very best duelists don't agree on certain behaviour patterns/bugs, you can see even the very best regularly calling bullshit on stuff happening during duels; and the constant debate that's been going for years now about what miraculous feature that'll fix it all and make sabering feel good again should be included or removed is a pretty good sign that this complexity isn't fully controlled by those who created it in the first place.
I love difficult games too, I only play those pretty much, and I don't want MBII's saber system to be dumbed down or to degenerate into something easy just because it'd make it easier for people to get into. I don't want Dota 2 to become LoL either, as a comparison.

You do make a very good point about the lack of resources, I have to say that your guide ( thanks for writing it by the way ! ) and SeV's are just invaluable, but even after reading them 20 times, there are so many inconsistencies and odd behaviours which are linked to the ancient engine the coders have to work with, and just the sheer complexity of the mechanics making most of it almost unreadable.
Regardless of "external resources", the point you're focusing on is also pretty much the accessibility of the regular player-base to this formidable complexity: it is pretty much null. One would have to practice every hit, combination of hits and whatnot for dozens of hours with a partner willing to waste that time to start getting some idea of how the sabering system actually works number-wise - and that's pretty much how the best duelists came to be, but then again every patch throws it out the window, and some will leave out of disgust/lack of motivation to git gud again. Investment is necessary in order to get good at anything which requires skill, but I don't think this particular type of investment is enjoyable. Hence, not many people populating duel servers any more, and I'm not fully sure that has to do with the patch in itself - not more so that any previous debatable patch. The flow of a fight is almost undecipherable unless you're a master yourself - and even then they don't always agree on what move/hit actually caused that BP drain and whatnot.

I don't believe we can push this engine and the basis for the sabering system much further without it starting to be too unreliable like it is at the moment: can you even tell when a halfswing happens, most of the time ? It takes such a good eye that I couldn't help but joke about the cocaine: at this point, you really have to be a monster in terms of focus in order to properly follow a saber fight, provided some odd bug or engine oddity doesn't happen and fuck it all up, and I don't think that should be the case whatsoever. If the information required to understand a move isn't sufficiently readable within the game itself, then something's wrong.

Despite being incredibly complex, a game such as Dota 2 can be pretty quickly understood and the skill involved in it can be immediately appreciated from a spectator's perspective, despite the fact that this spectator can't even dream of pulling it off - yet, seeing and partially understanding it makes you want to someday reach that level. Whenever I watch a duel in recent patches, I'm more like "I don't get it, and I'm not sure I even want to", and I don't really want to try to catch up to the masters like I used to before. It could be a lack of visual response, a lack of clearer animations, the addition of useless/half-baked additional sabering styles which made it further unreadable, I don't know.
I'm not fluent in duelling enough to be saying "this is what needs to be done !", and it appears even the most knowledgeable ones can't seem to really agree, but I do remember that sabering did use to be a little less complex/easier to follow, and my enjoyment of it was a lot higher regardless of the drastic changes every patch introduced.

But perhaps, considering our playerbase and the longevity of this mod, this duelling system is meant for a happy few who can understand how it works and whatnot (they're just not many, and their numbers inevitably go down every patch), and then all I've said is pretty much irrelevant

 

[Blazer]

Nice replies.
I think I said this a few years back, but a big problem to me, is that whenever I died while dueling someone, 9 times out of 10, I never truly understood WHY I died. There was so much going on and it went so fast where I didn't have any time to recognize what I needed to do, how to do it, then execute it. Every time I died It was usually followed up by me leaning back into my chair, sighing then saying something like "how?"
Then i sipped my mt. dew and wiped my dorito freckled hands onto my XL orange, (but WAS white) T-shirt.

 

[kcaz759]

About 120 players playing max each day... 80 votes in total. 67% percent of the population voted on here. since this is more than half we can take these numbers into account. Guess we'll have to update 1.3. You guys have no choice, Democracy at it's finest! Mob rule!

 

[MaceMadunusus]

Your numbers might be a bit off

 

[kcaz759]

Your numbers might be a bit off

I'll believe it when I see it mace, 3129 unique players playing this game is laughable at best.

 

[noel]

Your numbers might be a bit off

are we really still doing this lmfaoooooooooooooooooooooo

there is absolutely no way that there are 894 players playing every 24h on this mod. when was the last time you launched the game and actually looked at the server browser????

itt: noel turns from 'mace is right' to 'mace is WRONG'

 

[MaceMadunusus]

there is absolutely no way that there are 894 players playing every 24h on this mod. when was the last time you launched the game and actually looked at the server browser????

Every day at least 20 times a day while making this for the last month. Pretty god damned sure I looked at it more than you did in the last month. I was constantly tracking and monitoring the output of every server vigorously. Not everyone playing each time you look at the server browser is the same person and people do not play for 8 hours a day like you think they do. People playing are a revolving door of people and across the week Sunday is the highest amount of players and Wednesday/Thursday being the lowest. Its very easy to hit those numbers with our daily average player counts. For 3,129 players that is about 19 different people starting mb2 per hour. You think thats unrealistic?

 

[WaceMindu]

Goddamnit not this silly conversation again, where one side actually comes with stats and numbers while the other remains in constant disbelief because it's either stubborn and will never be convinced or just straight-up trolling.

Why does it seem so impossible to some people that we have ~3000 unique players playing on and off ?
JKA was a really popular game, the only decent SW action game available to play online, that's veryyy easily pirated and MB2 is pretty much its only remaining active online gaming community.
That can easily sum up to 3000-ish players, perhaps a little less with VPN trolls/dynamic IPs, but definitely no less than 1500 players. The MB2 players have always been more than the ~150s who play it seriously and actually interact with one another.

I mean, from the moment you equal the 120 players playing at a single time with the entire playerbase, you've lost me.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

That can easily sum up to 3000-ish players, perhaps a little less with VPN trolls/dynamic IPs

That 3,200 number is with a few hundred uniques removed because of VPNs and stuff. This number also doesnt account for people who join using /connect, MBConnect, or multiple people on the same local network. So multiple pluses and minuses in either direction but a good enough approximation.

 

[WaceMindu]

That 3,200 number is with a few hundred uniques removed because of VPNs and stuff. This number also doesnt account for people who join using /connect, MBConnect, or multiple people on the same local network. So multiple pluses and minuses in either direction but a good enough approximation.

Oh okay, thanks for the clarification, definitely a good approximation if this doesn't count people using console or MBConnect

And if "you'll only trust it when you see it"
.. you're actually seeing it every time you play.
During a one hour session on pretty much any populated server, you're bound to see at least 20 players come and go within that time span - way more if it's the fullest server at the time. Which is perfectly in line with Mace's numbers

 

[Liniyka_xddd]

It's actually 129 unique players and 3000 VPNs of Bob Billy

 

[Def!led]

About 120 players playing max each day... 80 votes in total. 67% percent of the population voted on here. since this is more than half we can take these numbers into account. Guess we'll have to update 1.3. You guys have no choice, Democracy at it's finest! Mob rule!

Quick reminder that the poll data is skewed and if you look at the individual posters in this thread you can see that mostly all of the players that actually played RC1 voted for RC1 over 1.3. There's a higher acceptance ratio for RC1 than there is for 1.3 if you read the posts. This is especially true for the people in here who played both builds. There's more votes for 1.3 because the playerbase from RC1 unfortunately doesn't play and/or use this forum anymore.

As stated above 1.3 might be the most revered because the majority of the population currently playing MB2 started AROUND that time. If 90% of people who played RC1 were still around, they would vote for it. Almost everyone in this thread alone who legitimately did play RC1 publically announced their support for it. That should speak volumes alone. You have maybe 6% active players who have actually played RC1 on these forums which makes the whole poll data skewed. Like Frenzy touched on, the title and poll are misleading.

This poll leaves RC1 vets looking like

 

[kcaz759]

Quick reminder that the poll data is skewed and if you look at the individual posters in this thread you can see that mostly all of the players that actually played RC1 voted for RC1 over 1.3. There's a higher acceptance ratio for RC1 than there is for 1.3 if you read the posts. This is especially true for the people in here who played both builds. There's more votes for 1.3 because the playerbase from RC1 unfortunately doesn't play and/or use this forum anymore.

exactly, so why would we switch to RC1 if no one from RC1 played anymore.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

So we can bring the actually cool people back. Duh.

 

[noel]

they're not coming back

 

[Stassin]

And why not have a sabering where both old and new mechanics coexist so that everyone can find something they like, instead of forcing aimed PB mini-game that only current hardcore mb2 duelists are interested in

And why not have a sabering intricately built around open mode instead of blindly wanting it specialized for 1v1 saber vs saber only in a mod that's primarily focused on gunning

 

[Firestrike]

exactly, so why would we switch to RC1 if no one from RC1 played anymore.

The point you made here isn't new but it's concerning for a few reasons.

I'm pretty sure he was making the point that RC1 was the most "widely accepted" build and that this poll is skewed. I'm pretty sure there isn't a plan to do a hard revert, even though I agree with Supa's post about reverting.

These are mock numbers but this example should clarify. If over a 10 year test period, 75-90% (refer to this thread's voter results) of a population preferred one build (RC1), and quit the game over drastic overhauls from v1.1 that bled into 1.3 and onwards, to the point where people from that long ago are still saying RC1 had the best feel/playstyle to them, is that not worth consideration?

RC1's population dwarfed V1.3 and onwards, with an extremely high acceptance rate.

V1.3 had a considerably smaller population, and there is mixed review and seriously volatile disparity about which patch (ranging from V1.1-v1.5) is better. Some even went so far as to say V1.4 killed dueling for good. All the while most of the current playerbase doesn't have a relative scope of RC1 and prior builds.

What do you value more as a developer who's seen all of it?
A) The generally proven unanimous acceptance rate of a build with a large population / sample size.
B) The mixed and capricious acceptance of a string of builds with a considerably smaller population / sample size (relevant note: the smaller population is a direct result to the changes in the first place among other factors)

The current concern in this thread is the position that the current active playerbase didn't play in RC1, they either wouldn't like it, or would seem to foreign to them, or they simply saw videos of certain mechanics and don't like it (nudge, halfswings, etc). These are specific reasons picked out from this thread. You have people in this thread who willingly acknowledge that a build with a larger sample size and higher acceptance rate exists, and still choose to lash out against specific, and seemingly quirky reasons listed in this thread. In my opinion, that is pure narrow-mindedness without the ability to see a wider frame of reference. The players who don't know what sabering was like in its universally accepted prime are actively speaking out against it because they think they know better than an entire population of players that eclipse the current community in terms of playerbase size, population, collective game hours, and strength of community as a whole.

Simply put, on this forum we have 5-15 "duelists" with no prior personal experience of old builds recklessly and ignorantly discarding the concentrated and distilled opinions of an entire community of duelists who played MB2 in its prime, easily hundreds of active duelists from B17-RC3 because they presumably aren't open minded enough or they seem like know better than history or the data itself.

It makes me feel bad for the devs.

So we can bring the actually cool people back. Duh.

they're not coming back

I think he is joking, hence the duh. On page 2 Defiled already responded to your argument about returning players. Few to none of the older playerbase are going to come back after the rollercoaster of damage already done. That is nowhere near the context or message of posts and it's already been refuted. I don't know how or why you're still fixated on that after the fact.

Nowhere in my post did I even once suggest that all of the players from RC1 would "magically" return. I have said it multiple times in other threads that there is no bringing back the majority of those who have moved on. The community has dwindled down since RC1 and I don't think that's a coincidence when you consider what has happened to the saber system since then.




Defiants post sums up what is wrong with the sabering system, something that has been wrong since v1.1.

I'm pretty sure all Defiled is saying is that we have a statistically proven universally accepted saber build that unfortunately got phased out. It's even been stated before that it'll be near impossible to get a hard revert of older builds. I think the point is that these poll numbers are ambiguously skewed and he was trying to clear the air of the abundant revisionism in this thread.

 

[WaceMindu]

The point you made here isn't new but it's concerning for a few reasons.

I'm pretty sure he was making the point that RC1 was the most "widely accepted" build and that this poll is skewed. I'm pretty sure there isn't a plan to do a hard revert, even though I agree with Supa's post about reverting.

These are mock numbers but this example should clarify. If over a 10 year test period, 75-90% (refer to this thread's voter results) of a population preferred one build (RC1), and quit the game over drastic overhauls from v1.1 that bled into 1.3 and onwards, to the point where people from that long ago are still saying RC1 had the best feel/playstyle to them, is that not worth consideration?

RC1's population dwarfed V1.3 and onwards, with an extremely high acceptance rate.

V1.3 had a considerably smaller population, and there is mixed review and seriously volatile disparity about which patch (ranging from V1.1-v1.5) is better. Some even went so far as to say V1.4 killed dueling for good. All the while most of the current playerbase doesn't have a relative scope of RC1 and prior builds.

What do you value more as a developer who's seen all of it?
A) The generally proven unanimous acceptance rate of a build with a large population / sample size.
B) The mixed and capricious acceptance of a string of builds with a considerably smaller population / sample size (relevant note: the smaller population is a direct result to the changes in the first place among other factors)

The current concern in this thread is the position that the current active playerbase didn't play in RC1, they either wouldn't like it, or would seem to foreign to them, or they simply saw videos of certain mechanics and don't like it (nudge, halfswings, etc). These are specific reasons picked out from this thread. You have people in this thread who willingly acknowledge that a build with a larger sample size and higher acceptance rate exists, and still choose to lash out against specific, and seemingly quirky reasons listed in this thread. In my opinion, that is pure narrow-mindedness without the ability to see a wider frame of reference. The players who don't know what sabering was like in its universally accepted prime are actively speaking out against it because they think they know better than an entire population of players that eclipse the current community in terms of playerbase size, population, collective game hours, and strength of community as a whole.

Simply put, on this forum we have 5-15 "duelists" with no prior personal experience of old builds recklessly and ignorantly discarding the concentrated and distilled opinions of an entire community of duelists who played MB2 in its prime, easily hundreds of active duelists from B17-RC3 because they presumably aren't open minded enough or they seem like know better than history or the data itself.

It makes me feel bad for the devs.





I think he is joking, hence the duh. On page 2 Defiled already responded to your argument about returning players. Few to none of the older playerbase are going to come back after the rollercoaster of damage already done. That is nowhere near the context or message of posts and it's already been refuted. I don't know how or why you're still fixated on that after the fact.



I'm pretty sure all Defiled is saying is that we have a statistically proven universally accepted saber build that unfortunately got phased out. It's even been stated before that it'll be near impossible to get a hard revert of older builds. I think the point is that these poll numbers are ambiguously skewed and he was trying to clear the air of the abundant revisionism in this thread.

Wholeheartedly agree with this.