Official 1.4.3 Feedback thread

[LoU]

We will be happy to hear some feedback from you. What have we done wrong/good and... WHY. We want you to share your feeling about new version, but remember Feedback doesn't mean to go rage mode. So keep conversation at least on decent level.

If you want to tell us how much you love us or hate us, then feel free to do it here:
https://community.moviebattles.org/forums/dev-req/



CHANGELOG (23-10-16)

Gameplay

• Pistol changes:
  • Basic pistol:
    • Change: Level 2 secondary fire is now a charged shot which ramps up from 26 damage to 48 damage in 5 seconds.
    • Change: Level 3 primary mode primary fire damage decreased from 48 to 40 (also affects FP drains).
      
    • Change: Level 3 primary mode secondary fire is now a charged shot which ramps up from 26 damage to 60 damage in 2.5 seconds, afterwards it no longer drains ammo nor increases damage until 5 seconds of charging where it auto-fires.
    • Change:Level 3 secondary mode secondary fire rapid shot burst now costs 4 ammo.
  • Westar pistol:
    • Change: Level 2 secondary fire charged shot ramps up from 28 damage to 53 damage in 5 seconds.
    • Change: Level 3 charged shots ramp up from 28 damage to 53 damage in 5 seconds for both pistols.
    • Change: FA-only: Akimbo pistols' base damage is now 40 instead of 48 and their charged shot ramps up from 28 damage to 80 damage.
• Dodge mechanics overhaul:
  • Change: Dodge is now an active ability manually triggered by holding class special 1.
    
  • Change: Costs 4/6/10.
  • Change: No cooldowns on activation/deactivation/reactivation.
  • Change: Runs on a separate resource of its own, Dodge Points, which are displayed below the botton right hud.
  • Change: While active, 50 DP drain per second, thus full bar in 2 seconds (if the player is in a state where he can dodge, otherwise no drain).
  • Change: Passive regeneration while not active nor poisoned, full bar in 15 seconds when running or jumping, 10 seconds otherwise.
  • Change: Basic DP cost levels 5, 10, 15, 25, 50, 75 for dodging projectiles.
  • Change: Dodge Level 1: base standing/crouching still costs 15, 25, 50 (legs, torso, neck/head).
  • Change: Dodge Level 2: standing/crouching has 1 level less worth of costs, walking has the same cost as above.
  • Change: Dodge Level 3: standing/crouching now has 2 levels less worth of costs, walking 1 level less, running/jumping same cost as 2 lines above.
  • Change: Sniper shots increase the DP cost level by 1 compared to all other projectiles.
  • Change: Can't dodge while scoping or poisoned.
  • Change: Starting from 400 distance, the closer the enemy is the costlier dodge becomes (linearly), until reaching 160 distance (80 for dodge level 3) where dodging is impossible (costs above 100 DP).
  • Change: Ability to move freely while dodging, ability to dodge again while already in a dodge animation (does not replay an animation but still drains DP), ability to attack freely while dodging.
• Dash changes:
  • Change: Dash Level 1 now costs 44 stamina (33 before).
  • Change: Dash Level 2 now costs 33 stamina (25 before).
• Quick Throw:
  • Change: Now assigned to new command /ability1.
• FA tweaks:
  • Change: Dexterity cooldown is now no longer activated when trying to roll/dive while attacking with a saber (in FA).
  • Change: Dash/Dodge can now be given to any class in FA.
  • Change: In FA, when a class has Saber Defense with a saber, or Stamina, the regeneration rate of BP and Stamina prevails over the regeneration rate of Dash; when a FA class has regenerating fuel, its regenerating rate prevails over all others (all of them share the same bar).
  • Change: In FA only, in order to prevent some ability conflicts, Dexterity and Dash are assigned to /ability1 (Dexterity is given priority over Dash at all times) whenever the class has access to flamethrower, wrist laser, saber-out melee moves or tracking darts.
  • Change: In FA only, saber-out melee moves (note: jumpkicks with saber-out are still always activated via class special 2), gunkicks and tracking darts are assigned to /ability2 whenever the class has access to flamethrower or wrist laser.
  • Change: In FA only, poison darts are assigned to /ability3 whenever the class has access to dodge, mandalorian rocket or stamina.

• Droideka/SBD tweaks:
  • Change: Droideka power management now regenerates 20 armor for 1 ammo and 2 ammo for 10 armor instead of 10 armor for 1 ammo and 1 ammo for 10 armor.
  • Change: Ion blobs no longer disable Droideka shields, launched pulse grenades now stun SBDs/Droidekas and disable shields of Droidekas for slightly longer, manually thrown pulse grenades now stun and disable shields of Droidekas for slightly longer.
  • Change: Droideka FP drains reduced by a 0.8x factor.
• General Jedi/Sith changes:
  • Change: Cyan/Purple/Staff/Dual styles are reworked into "specialist" styles, more powerful than the basic Blue/Yellow/Red. Fast Styles, Medium Styles and Strong Styles thus now all have the following cost: 8/8/6.
  • Change: Cyan style now has a synergy with Saber Deflect. Buying Saber Deflect with Cyan makes deflecting no longer require tapping attack but simply holding attack, with no FP cost. With Saber Deflect level 1, Cyan can deflect 1 shot every 750ms and cannot deflect at close range; level 2 can deflect 1 shot every 500ms and can deflect at close range; level 3 can deflect 1 shot every 250ms and can deflect at close range.
  • Change: Purple is now granted Q3. Q3 is the ability to automatically deflect projectiles while attacking without holding block. Q3 can be disabled for a swing by holding Class Special 1 during this swing. Q3 has good synergy with Saber Defense 3 because Saber Defense 3 reduces the extra FP drain on shots that are blocked while attacking (without Defense 3, the FP drain is doubled on these shots for both Q3 and swingblocks; with Defense 3, the FP drain is no longer doubled for swingblocks nor Q3 non-swingblocks).
  • Change: Duals now deal 360 damage per swing instead of 260. Duals no longer have an increased blocking arc.
  • Change: Staff now have a 270° blocking arc against projectiles (including thrown sabers) and 300° against saber swings.
  • Change: Cyan now has the same forward running animation as Staff, and Purple has the same forward running animation as Duals.
  • New: Nudge is now enabled by default on spawn and can be toggled on/off via /nudgetoggle.
  • New: Blocking animations are now triggered on saber/saber collisions.
  • Change: The duration of the flinch stagger is now dependent on the damage received.
  • Fix: MBlock deflecting will no longer drain FP when the deflect cooldown is still active.
    
  • FP drain and regeneration changes:
    • Change: 1.0x FP regen when unable to auto-block (saber off, knocked down, idle, etc.).
    • Change: 0.7x FP regen and 1.2x FP drains when able to auto-block but not holding altattack.
    • Change: 0.2x FP regen and 0.4x FP drains when able to auto-block and holding altattack.
    • Change: FP drains are capped at 40 when holding altattack and 80 when not holding altattack.
• Saber vs Saber changes:
  • Change: Non-PBs now result all the time in clash sound effects on a saber/saber collision, instead of alternating between bodyhit/clash sfx depending on non-PB/PB.
  • Change: Perfect Block (PB) no longer combo-breaks.
  • Change: Parries now drain BP equal to half the amount of a bodyhit.
  • New: Perfect Parry (Blue crosshair and BP bar indicators): done by matching the incoming swing (quadrant-wise) with the matching outgoing swing. Will negate parry BP drains.
  • Change: Manual Block (Mblock) now allows for combo-breaking vs swingblock and also deals 6 BP damage to the attacker when successful. Failing a Mblock (vs any swing) drains BP (4 vs Fast styles, 6 vs Medium styles (and Purple), and 8 vs Red).
  • New style-specific perks/features (these replace all previous ones):
    • Change: Blue style: Loses 1 ACC when PB'd except against Blue/Cyan. Drains 6 BP from attackers on PB (including against chained consecutive swings).
    • Change: Yellow style: Doesn't suffer from Mblock BP drain on failing.
    • Change: Red style: No BP drain from being Mblocked on a swingblock. Causes a stagger on the third consecutive bodyhit.
    • Change: Cyan style: Combo-breaks other styles on a perfect parry.
    • Change: Purple style: +1 ACC on PB.
    • Change: Dual style: Consecutive swings deal 0.75x damage instead of 0.5x.
    • Change: Staff style: Successfully timing and matching movement directions with a Mblock counts as a Pblock, even with incorrect camera aim. Staggers the opponent on a successful Mblock vs a swingblock.

Servers

• Change: SMOD mute now also blocks voice_cmd, gestures and name changes.

UI

• New: Added new ability keys (moviebattles) and nudge toggle (weapons) to controls menu.

Models

• New: Added Grand Admiral Thrawn to Commanders (thrawn/default) and Outcast's Tavion to Sith (tavion/default). Tweaked TFA Han's taunts.
  
• Change: Re-enabled a few alternate skins for existing Sith models (alora/default, darthmaul/default_robed).
  
• Fix: Swamptrooper model's footsteps are no longer silent.
• Fix: Updated seasonal hat positioning for model changes after v1.3.2.
• Fix: Some minor shader errors.

Official Maps
All (where applicable)

• Change: Re-enabled charge shot on FA classes with akimbo pistols.

mb2_cloudcity

• Fix: Blocked area allowing players to escape the map.
• Fix: Minor VIS adjustments to tunnel between Eastern Commons and South Lounge.

mb2_duel_cc

• New: Added carbonite freezing sequence. Activated by using one of the control panels.

mb2_deathstar

• Change: The FA has been redesigned to make every class useful instead of a few dominating ones and many weak classes. For example, C3PO, R2D2, and the prisoner have been buffed. The Imperial team has also been changed to have as many unique classes as Rebels.
  
• New: Two FA-specific features have been added for this FA. First, Force Power sound overwrites now exist (currently only available for Sense / Deadly Sight) and are used for C3PO. Second, a special classflag for making a class run faster while in melee was added for the Imperial Pilot.
• Fix: A shallow pit of death trigger allowed survival in rare circumstances.

mb2_duel_office

• Fix: Added clipping to portion of ceiling that may have made it possible to escape map.

mb2_jakku

• New: Original map by Plasma based on the village attack at the start of The Force Awakens.
• New: Capture Point Objective: The final objective on this map requires the attacking team to stand within the village square to capture it. The defending team may stop the capture by also standing within the capture point.

mb2_undeadstar

• New: Reimagined map by Plasma. Will our heroes manage to survive the horrors that await?

Unofficial Maps
All (where applicable)

• Change: Re-enabled charge shot on FA classes with akimbo pistols.

mb2_cmp_arena

• Change: Split soundset for C3PO / Battledroid hybrid models.
  
• Fix: Restored classic FA icons.

sm3_venom

• Fix: Spiderman and Venom now use the correct model.

ultimate_showdown

• Fix: Spiderman and Venom now use the correct model.
• Fix: Resolved some shader errors.

Changed Files ( Server downloads ) ( Linux OpenJK server lib ) ( ARM OpenJK build )

--MBII
031_MovieGameMappack.pk3
FAMBModels.pk3
MB_Effects.pk3
mb2_cmp_assets2.pk3
mb2_cmp_assets3.pk3
mb2_cloudcity.pk3
mb2_deathstar.pk3
mb2_duel_office.pk3
mb2_jakku.pk3
mb2_undeadstar.pk3
mb2_um_assets3.pk3
MBAssets2.pk3
MBAssets3.pk3
MBHilts.pk3
MBII.pk3
MBII_Mac.pk3
zz_MBModels2.pk3
cgamei386.so
jampgamei386.so
uii386.so

Changelog Legend
New - New feature or addition to the game.
Change - Changes to the game.
Fix - Bug fix.
Remove - Removed feature.
Feature - New feature name

 

[Liniyka_xddd]

First of all, ion blob nerf. Just why.

Second, shotgun snipe removal. Completely uncalled for, you could only kill unaware jedi this way. This was one of my 2 main reasons for playing BH (second one being kick with gun out), so I guess now I better find another class to have fun with.

Third, cyan auto-deflect. I remember devs talking about making jedi/sith harder to play, and this is what you came up with? Now cyan feels like a style for people who have no idea how to even play saberist. Just block vs gunners and swingspam vs other saberists. If you add this new FP drain/regen change on top, you have a style that's extremely hard to beat as a gunner, unless you have poison darts.

Dash, dodge and P3 nerfs are welcome.

All in all, this update pissed me off a little. It did not introduce anything fun (maybe pistol 2), and instead brought a lot of new annoying stuff to deal with. As a gunner, I rate 4/10, it's okay - IGN

 

[Preston]

Idk why everyone is complaining about pblock not stopping combos, it was only like that for 1 update.

 

[Lessen]

until better times...

It's not a total nerf, pretty sure your FP now lasts considerably longer under direct fire while blocking. Basically the change increases your ability to block in the short term and decreases it in the long term, so you can't just run around as infinitely now. In theory.

 

[DaloLorn]

Open mode is still the main mb2 mode, and i hope this will never change. When you trying to make some saber changes you have to keep in mind not only isolated 1 vs 1 honor duel scenario but first of all the rich arsenal of factors hidden in the open mode. Previous build had too much emphasis on duel mode, because of that we have lost the previous pace of gameplay in open mode. Right now, on the first glance, changes positively affect the gameplay.

I kinda liked being able to hold off half an army in 1.4 with deflect 3 and yellow - there were a few DotF instances where while my team was marching down the side corridor, I was somehow managing to survive a gunner-backed saberist or multiple saberists, and sometimes even inflicted casualties despite the gunners forcing me to completely abort any pretense at counterattacking. Fun times. (There's also things like Enclave FA, where for the first time I was capable of holding my own against some lesser Sith.)

Between having to throw out as many attacks as my opponents, not being able to reduce the amount of attacks they can throw at me, and taking heavy damage through either parries or gunner support fire, that sort of thing is definitely gone for good, for better or worse.

Exactly. Even with slowed consecutive swings, if PBs are trivialized to the point that they don't rly matter much and that it's just expected that you PB a certain amount, then it really doesn't prevent a spammy playstyle at all. This is the reason for why we did combo breaking in teh first place and why I am once again making suggestions along that path.

The idea of slowing down transitions is interesting. I'm not necessarily opposed to it, but this should be a stand-alone decision and not something to slap on as a patchwork fix. It would have to be tested, but anything that makes transitions clear instead of teleported is nice isn't it? It's better to see than to be blind.

Yeah, slowing down transitions is a must-have in 1.4.3 and might have been nice for 1.4 mechanics too. (It'd certainly make me more likely to try mblocking rather than dismissing it as an impossible feat.)

Bodyhits no longer giving ACC but PBs giving ACC is an interesting idea but it seems counterintuitive. Would have to try it out to see how it feels as I can't imagine reliably how that would play out. So a bodyhit will drain 1 ACC and PBing will give 1 ACC? I'd honestly prefer if PBing drained ACC instead as that seems more intuitive. That means if you focus on defense, you can get a strong defense, and if you focus on attacking and accumulating ACC you can get strong ACM going. This seems like a more reasonable interplay of offense vs defense than tying attack to PB. What I'm suggesting is kind of what we had for yellow vs yellow in 1.4, which imo was very nice.

A system where you get ACC by attacking and bypassing PB (Attacking skillfully) and drain the opponents ACC by PBing (defending skillfully), seems more balanced. I rly think yellow vs yellow in 1.4 was a good example of this dynamic at its best, and I miss the -1ACC PBs.

Trouble is, a lot of duelists despised yellow for it. I have on several occasions witnessed complaints about yellow's 'indestructibility' in duel servers, and may or may not have been the target of such complaints a couple of times myself (my memory's failing me).

Mind you, I do like the idea. Maybe, if people feel the pacing is wrong, the saber styles' offense/defense values can be tweaked, or ACM can grant a bigger damage bonus than the current 10%?

 

[kvinto]

Dueling feedback:

Spoiler

• Saber vs Saber changes:
  • Change: Perfect Block (PB) no longer combo-breaks. - Love this one but the thing is it promotes spam with swing directions unlocked. Not like in 1.3 where you could predict almost whole enemy combo.
  • Change: Parries now drain BP equal to half the amount of a bodyhit. - Like this one. Makes duels faster.
  • New: Perfect Parry (Blue crosshair and BP bar indicators): done by matching the incoming swing (quadrant-wise) with the matching outgoing swing. Will negate parry BP drains. - Good it doesn't stop combos but it makes it something that will appear 2-3 times in a duel due to pure luck. Pretty useless.
  • Change: Manual Block (Mblock) now allows for combo-breaking vs swingblock and also deals 6 BP damage to the attacker when successful. Failing a Mblock (vs any swing) drains BP (4 vs Fast styles, 6 vs Medium styles (and Purple), and 8 vs Red). - I don't like punishing players for doing what they're supposed to do(swingblock) but the punishment for failure is good.
  • New style-specific perks/features (these replace all previous ones):
  • • Change: Blue style: Loses 1 ACC when PB'd except against Blue/Cyan. Drains 6 BP from attackers on PB (including against chained consecutive swings). - Didn't duel against good blue users yet so i will edit this one later.
    • Change: Yellow style: Doesn't suffer from Mblock BP drain on failing. - Way better than the previous perk. Less turtling and makes yellow a good style for learning - perfect.
    • Change: Red style: No BP drain from being Mblocked on a swingblock. Causes a stagger on the third consecutive bodyhit. - I think that 3rd swing in combo staggering was better. Tempest mentioned she wants to bring feinting back. In 1.3 red was about feinting (or pb and counter, depends) and the 3rd swing stagger felt really cool.
    • Change: Cyan style: Combo-breaks other styles on a perfect parry. - I don't like this one. From 1.1 to 1.4 and now 1.4.3 cyan always had some kind of stupid perk. Tbh the bp drain on pb was better than this. It's just annoying that cyan users can just cancel your combo out of pure luck, slap you beacuse you need some time to react to this and then getting free combo on you.
    • Change: Purple style: +1 ACC on PB. - Wasn't it the same?
    • Change: Dual style: Consecutive swings deal 0.75x damage instead of 0.5x. - Great. More spam. no
    • Change: Staff style: Successfully timing and matching movement directions with a Mblock counts as a Pblock, even with incorrect camera aim. Staggers the opponent on a successful Mblock vs a swingblock. - Previous perk was really cool and i think it wasn't op beacuse of nudge(and feinting in 1.3).

Also i still think nudge should be removed and combo directions should be limited.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

Dodge:
Great to see Dodge return towards its original fantasy. However, it's unusable simply because of the way it works. I doubt many have the fingers and dexterity to move freely with WASD while holding down Dodge and shoot while using the occasional walk, crouch and jump.

Make Dodge something you press once to activate. It will take out a set amount of Dodge points and remain active for roughly 3 seconds and then expire. This way it remains an activated ability, becomes more readable and easier to use. Also combine the resource pools of Dash and Dodge. This game is not an RPG or RTS where you need to keep your eye on 5 resources at once (Health, Armour, Ammo, Dash Points, Dodge Points, I mean c'mon ). It's a shooter.


Starting out with Saber vs Gun:
Doing harsh number changes like this to a well-established mechanic (FP drains/FP regen) that has been iterated to the point of near-perfection during the past 10 years just doesn't seem right. If you want to encourage blocking over running, the tools necessary were already in place. Just tweak the blocking/running IDR values towards your desired metagame. I implore you to revert this one and use pre-existing modifiers to reach your goal. It's not doing what it's supposed to.

Every weapon and every possible movement state and combination of said states is a variable you can tweak for FP drains to reach desired results. Use them instead.


Saber vs Saber:
Initially it's feeling like something's not behaving like it was in the previous patch that made the fights feel so fluid. I'll need to have more duels to see what exactly feels off. However, the general feel is that fights are not as fluid now.


Jakku:
Fun map concept. I would decrease the size of the map by 50-60% to centralize the combat. By decreasing the size of the map, it should also be possible to decrease the tri count towards more acceptable levels. Right now the fight scatters too much with everyone skirting the edges of the map instead of crashing into each other head on. Imps need to reach the hills first so they have the uphill advantage for shooting down on the village.

Remove the highgrounds from the defender. Remove the objective of destroying the huts or drastically reduce the number of huts.

In general it feels like the map has a lot of great ideas, but the flow seems wrong.

 

[Sammy]

My one thing: Maybe take back the changes of fp regen? Now it seems a bit too nerfed. The old regen rate seemed fine.

 

[agentoo8]

FP Regen rates need to be reverted. Completely nonsensical.

Got back into dueling today and it feels okay...not too sure why so much was changed though?

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

1) Nudge should simply be removed. The toggle was a dumb, and redundant idea since I first heard of it, and upon closer inspection, it is still a dumb and redundant idea.

2) Cyan needs to be nerfed by Swingcount, and BP

3) Swing restrictions needs to be reintroduced from 1.3, no more WA WA WA WA WA WA.

4) Perfect Parry needs to be more intuitive, and use Mblock quadrants (SA for WA), and it should stop BOTH player's combos (With the exception of Cyan of course), but allow half-swing afterwards.

5) I believe that the FP Regen/Defense of Running and Blocking are a bit too extreme, and should be smoothed out. A little less defense for blocking and a bit more regen, a little more defense for running and a bit less regen.

6) Blobs/CR were made rather overpowered in this patch due to the Regen changes.

7) Hero is still a pain to deal with, especially with the low defense while running, however, this should change with 1.5's chase mechanic introduction.

8) Cyan and Purple's open perks need to go, you should *never* have passives that negate the need to use a mechanic. Perhaps Saber Deflect 3 could allow for costless saber deflection (or near costless deflection), like Cyan's perk does now, but you should *never* have it done automatically.

9) Blue should be reverted back to 1.3, and nerfed slightly in the way of BP count, and keep its PB damage perk.

10) 16 Points for Staff/Duals/Cyan/Purple is dumb.

 

[Sammy]

1) Nudge should simply be removed. The toggle was a dumb, and redundant idea since I first heard of it, and upon closer inspection, it is still a dumb and redundant idea.

2) Cyan needs to be nerfed by Swingcount, and BP

3) Swing restrictions needs to be reintroduced from 1.3, no more WA WA WA WA WA WA.

4) Perfect Parry needs to be more intuitive, and use Mblock quadrants (SA for WA), and it should stop BOTH player's combos (With the exception of Cyan of course), but allow half-swing afterwards.

5) I believe that the FP Regen/Defense of Running and Blocking are a bit too extreme, and should be smoothed out. A little less defense for blocking and a bit more regen, a little more defense for running and a bit less regen.

6) Blobs/CR were made rather overpowered in this patch due to the Regen changes.

7) Hero is still a pain to deal with, especially with the low defense while running, however, this should change with 1.5's chase mechanic introduction.

8) Cyan and Purple's open perks need to go, you should *never* have passives that negate the need to use a mechanic. Perhaps Saber Deflect 3 could allow for costless saber deflection (or near costless deflection), like Cyan's perk does now, but you should *never* have it done automatically.

9) Blue should be reverted back to 1.3, and nerfed slightly in the way of BP count, and keep its PB damage perk.

10) 16 Points for Staff/Duals/Cyan/Purple is dumb.

I agree with a lot of your points, mainly on the fp regen, reintroduction of swing restrictions, and removing nudge. No point in making it toggleable if it's an advantage, everyone will use it. I liked 1.4's fp regen better than the current state. However, there are many nice things to this new patch also.

 

[Megatron (The Shredder)]

Do you think we could make separate threads for some of the major changes, so that people can get more specific feedback on maybe the class specific changes?

 

[Jiube]

Exactly. Even with slowed consecutive swings, if PBs are trivialized to the point that they don't rly matter much and that it's just expected that you PB a certain amount, then it really doesn't prevent a spammy playstyle at all.

So, the main point is PB is very hard to do and therefore needs to bring some compensation for the skill, and to actually matter.

I absolutely agree with you, although I do not think bringing back combo breaking on PB is a very good idea either, mainly because then it starts making too much of an impact for a mechanic that is unreliable. Basically, I do not like the current way PB works, neither do I like what we had in 1.4.2, and I suppose the search for the place of PB in dueling still has a long path in front of it. Nobody has an idea of PB mechanics that would satisfact all the different concerns people raise on the matter, at least at the moment.

Yet another topic for further research.

 

[agentoo8]

So am I right in thinking Red now needs 3 consecutive bodyhits for the stagger to work? If this is the case, why?

 

[Jiube]

Doing harsh number changes like this to a well-established mechanic (FP drains/FP regen) that has been iterated to the point of near-perfection during the past 10 years just doesn't seem right. If you want to encourage blocking over running, the tools necessary were already in place. Just tweak the blocking/running IDR values towards your desired metagame.

"Old" and "has been here forever" does not mean "good" and "makes for interesting gameplay". And I completely disagree that it was that finetuned. In fact, in the latest version all the saber versus gunner balancing was basically circling around the idea of flinch, and FP drains were so low as well as regen was so fast FP simply made no difference.

I understand why you may feel it as "not right" to change FP mechanics, but if you take into account the direction that was taken in some of the earlier patches, you will see it is actually a logical and consequential approach and it is something along the lines of what I had in mind when writing all these walls of text about saber versus gunner balance in the earlier versions. If you remember, I was talking about fixing the backbone of the gameplay system on the mechanical level, the fundamental level, that being interaction between saber and gun leaving all the other complications and fluctuations aside. This goal was successfully achieved with introduction of flinch. The next logical step, the next layer is bringing FP as a skill-based system into equasion.

What I had in mind back then is just modifying FP drains and regen to make FP some kind of time limit for the attacking jedi, as well as allowing the jedi to survive team on team combat and still be useful in different ways. The changes that are done here are even better, because they bring additional skill measuring mechanics to the mix. And it is one of the best kinds of skill, i. e. decision-based skill.

Just to take a quick peak at what I had in mind for further development of this interaction, it would actually be the role of force powers, abilities, etc. What you would call the icing on the cake.

So, as to the mechanics that was introduced, it is not about blocking versus running, as you suggested. It is mostly about giving jedi/sith more options, and distinct mechanical ways to achieve these options. Simple drain/regen adgust does not cut it! Basically, after this general idea will get better polished and balanced a smart and skilled player will be able to utilize the differences between drain and regen values these different modes provide and will be able to achieve particular goals, where unskilled or unaware player will fail to do the same.

It adds additional level of decision making, since the player now needs to ask additional "how" questions when trying to do something. For example, I have low FP, I'm in no condition to fight at the moment, how do I retreat to regen? In earlier builds you would just run for your life trying to dodge as much bullets as possible, use cover (perhaps, opponents saberists as an improvised cover) and force powers occasionally. This adds the following kinds of decision making: how many gunners are there nearby? what are they doing? how far is the safe spot? in conjunction to all the previous questions, what is the best way to reach it? Jump for it? Run for it? Block and carefully walk for it? Stay in place as if you are high on FP and impact the teamfight while trying to regen? Some combination of the previous ones?

All of these would make much less difference in the previous builds, and I absolutely feel these are good changes and make for a better experience for the game on all sides.

 

[Szunti]

I love dodging with commander.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

And I completely disagree that it was that finetuned.

Iteration is not finetuning. Finetuning is using existing mechanics to reach the goal. This was all that was needed.

There was no balance issue especially after the previous patch made it easy to play gunner. Changing for the sake of change when the current state is ideal does not sit right with me.

The only scenario I was not happy with was 1 v Multiple for Jedi, as it had a tendency to snowball due to blocking FP drains being a tad too high in medium IDR. Now it snowballs even more.

From a pure game design standpoint, I believe our goal should be to simplify the game and not complicate it with yet another layer of modifiers to take into account. Especially for something like FP, for which it is crucial to create an internal timer that you can reliably follow. Now that the regen rate fluctuates, it is very hard to keep track of the available FP. Luckily for my K/D, I'm just going to be expecting them to have more than they should.

For example, I have low FP, I'm in no condition to fight at the moment, how do I retreat to regen? In earlier builds you would just run for your life trying to dodge as much bullets as possible, use cover (perhaps, opponents saberists as an improvised cover) and force powers occasionally.

At least in earlier builds you were able to retreat. Now that's out of the question. You can not regenerate. The moment you enter IDR, you're committed. You win or you lose, there are no in-betweens. FP regeneration that came with evasion and well-timed blocks was the key.

Now that FP drains are even higher than before for running - and by extension jumping, there is hardly a situation where you can regenerate. Any shot that lands on you during running will essentially break your Force Block threshold for FB1-2 and make you vulnerable to Grip/Push/Pull. Since blocking no longer regenerates FP, you can not mitigate the damage with that either.

For example, I have low FP, I'm in no condition to fight at the moment, how do I retreat to regen?

Worth noting this type of gameplay was deemed horrible 8 years ago. The removal of Heal had one key goal. Keep Jedi from retreating out of the fight due to necessity. Encourage them to stay in the action as much as possible.

Now that you're instantly committed to a fight, it's best to remain out of it and act as nothing more than a Push/Pull/Grip/Seeing whore for your team.

 

[Stassin]

At least in earlier builds you were able to retreat.

Keep Jedi from retreating out of the fight due to necessity. Encourage them to stay in the action as much as possible.

FP regeneration that came with evasion and well-timed blocks was the key.

It is far more the key with these changes. In previous patches the reality of the gameplay was that jedi simply kept running around gunners because the FP drains for running weren't high enough and the FP drain decrease for blocking was too small to make it worthwhile (not always but alot of the time) given that it slows you down.


From most of what you are saying, it seems clear that the type of gameplay you wish to encourage is precisely what the current changes bring, much more than previous patches. It just seems like you haven't realized it yet.

 

[Jiube]

From most of what you are saying, it seems clear that the type of gameplay you wish to encourage is precisely what the current changes bring, much more than previous patches. It just seems like you haven't realized it yet.

Yeah, I kind of got that vibe too, but I will still provide argumentation to why this specific change is good.

Changing for the sake of change when the current state is ideal does not sit right with me.

But that is what you missed, Ben! It is absolutely not just "changing for the sake of change"! More like changing for the sake of more interesting gameplay and making more of the in-game mechanics actually matter during the game. Have you already forgotten the fact jedi and sith could just run around a gunner indefinitely in 1.4.2, literally not just within IDR, but right in the face of a gunner? He could do it for 3-4 minutes out of a 5 minute round.

But flat change of drains is not a comprehensive way to fix it. I mean, I am playing this mod since RC3 P3 (perhaps P2, I can't quite remember), and for all of its history devs are searching for the perfect balance of FP drains to keep all the aspects of gameplay good, interesting, and balanced for all sides, to enhance skill's impact, etc. And fail one time after another. And if you look closely you can see why: the very amount of options and choices the basic idea provides, even enhanced with IDR concept, on its own is actually very very dull: either you are far away from gunner and safe to do anything you want, or you are close and you should retreat or attack. This is the absolute extremum amount of decisions available for the system.

If you remember, I mentioned the concept of leverages a couple of times in those walls of text during discussions and suggestions about previous patches. To refresh everybody's memory, the main idea is that one of the better ways to make interesting gameplay that also works for asymmetric systems (like in our case), due to being quite a general and all-purpose way of thinking about such systems, is the concept when each side of gameplay has certain specific goals to achieve as well as specific well definted means to do it. It is necessary to note here the provided means and opitions should in their majority be skill-based, i.e. one side should be able to apply some kind of skill or effort to achieve the result, and at this point the particular option becomes a leverage.

To apply it to our situation, we have saberist and gunner, for simplicity's sake (affordable to assume while we limit it for this example, although definitely not applicable for the actual in-game balance and situations) lets pretend it is 1v1. The goal for each of them is to defeat the opponent. What aspects go into the mixup? Effective range difference, which leads to positioning; survivability and the nature/implementation of the weapons used; the nature of time, timings, timelimits, as well as its role for gameplay; any additional abilities to tip the balace to ones side.

What leverages does gunner have on these? Movement for positioning, as well as to counter some of abilities; flinch and correct usage of walk for the timing aspect, as well as drains to FP to set time limits for the jedi; the abilities unique to particular gunner that help in the matchup in different ways (blobs, grenades, force invulnerability); and most important, his aim. Aim is his strongest and most impactful skill, the core mechanic. Without aim gunner is close to useless, aim defines him. And the good thing about it is it is skill-based by its nature. So, we have many different areas where skill can be implemented, and therefore many leverages on the situation, one of which is major, core, defining, but also most skill dependent. Other aspects can also have skill applied to them, and most of the time the result you are getting is proportional to the effort.

What leverages does jedi have on these? Movement for positioning and gap closing to get into distance; timing combined with positioning to counter flinch and use force powers; FP drains and regen for survivability; abilities = force powers for the class; the nature of his weapon is the major issue: it is a one hit kill, which is hard to miss. So, the usage of weapon is pretty straightforward and there is no room to use skill here, and this means jedi does not have a single "core" object to use skill on. Flinch does a good job of adding mindgame to the play, but this fixes the problem only partially. The problem here is that for most of these aspects it is gunner who has the active leverage, i.e. can use skill to improve his chances. All that is left for jedi is to try and catch gunner on his mistakes, or place a bet on those few of the skills that he can actually leverage: flinch timings, force power usage and timings, positioning. In the previous builds pretty much everything of that (except for mind-games based flinch) was either quite simple (like positioning) and gave easy positive feedback and advantages, or there is nowhere to implement actual skill. FP drains and regen goes to the second category.

What this particular change does is it actually brings this skill-based element to the game for the jedi's sustain by allowing him to use different tactics, styles, as well as different approaches for different situations. Since modes can be changed from the side of jedi this makes proper timing and application of these modes a skill in and of itself, making it a leverage. Now, it comes to balancing, and the balancing lies in finding roles for each particular mode and situation to allow jedi/sith as much choices as possible while keeping it balanced against gunners.

For example, due to low regen of FP for a blocking jedi, the support forceuser is overnerfed. And this should be addressed as fast as possible, because survivability of a good support jedi is key for team-based gameplay.

Worth noting this type of gameplay was deemed horrible 8 years ago. The removal of Heal had one key goal. Keep Jedi from retreating out of the fight due to necessity.

Perhaps it was just a bad example, I also assumed the jedi has teammates next to him here. FYI, you can still chase the jedi with the current version if he is low on FP. It is quite easy actually. So, he dies anyway, in fact, the mentioned changes help with it.

 

[Lervish]

The Heal analogy Ben/Stassin is not entirely accurate in my opinion. Retreating to use Heal in B17 and retreating to regenerate FP are different cases. Heal especially slowed down duels and gave Jedi an advantage against Sith, at worst leading to slap spam and/or saberthrow whoring mid-swing, then retreating to heal and repeating until the Sith was dead.

In my mind retreating to regenerate FP isn't nearly as problematic as healing was. Instead it's basic resource management which is inherent to the class due to FP being there in the first place. Making this resource harder to manage by inconsistent regeneration rates is not a good design choice, neither gameplay nor UI wise.

Have you already forgotten the fact jedi and sith could just run around a gunner indefinitely in 1.4.2, literally not just within IDR, but right in the face of a gunner?

I have to disagree... For this to happen the gunner would have had to be incredibly incompetent.

 

[Crusade010]

I played it for a bit and have to say that playing jedi/sith now feels incredibly bad, the only thing you can do is stand around and hold block if you try to take a gunner on while running your fp get drained in a few seconds and if you jump to try and get a different angle it drains even faster, now with this slower regen it just puts you into an impossible situation if you lose fp, add this to flinch and saberists are pretty useless in all ranges now, gunners have the advantage overall, you either sit behind the team using force or die at the front.

I don't know why no one brings up deka's or sbd's either, with all classes except wook (which is also grossly overpowered) they are near impossible to go 1 vs 1 with them since jedi cant run or jump at them because of the pulse and fp drain, they have no chance, any other class can just unload all their ammo into the shields and nothing will happen, also the sbd has slap which does less damage granted but you can spam the hell out of it, if the jedi is still crouching you can just flinch them as it takes like 6 hits to kill one.
Same sort of thing with wook, against a sith all they have to do is knock them down and its a free kill, if they dont land all the punches it still leaves the sith with around 10-20 hp, someone said a while back that they should either be able to get health 3 or strength 3 not both which i thought was a good idea.

The ion nerf was completely unneeded as they werent even that good to start with and were one of the only things that helped take down a deka.

The p3 and dash nerf was well needed.

Sabering imo should go back to 1.4 or even 1.3 as there are way too many elements to it now, but even with these new additions you can just spam duals or swing block single hits with blue or cyan and win.