Opinions on dueling/duel mode

[DCM]

This is unorganized

Dueling
Dueling is terrible. It's only now after a small break from MB2 that I see every bit of fun has been sucked out of it and it's been transformed into something horrid.

Perks are horrible and need to be removed. They unbalance the gameplay and give perks that have no right being given. I switch my style to Purple and suddenly I take 35% less FP drains? I switch to red and suddenly I get a 40% resistance? The idea makes no sense. Remove Red and Purple's saber perks. These are not defensive styles, they are strong styles and, if perks are kept, should be given offensive perks. Gaining ACM for a perfect block or reducing the opponent's BP just further discourages offense in dueling, forcing everyone to be cautious.

Remove Kata BP-Drain immunity. Turns dueling into "let me just wait for you to finish that move )) ". Fact is, if I hit someone, they should lose BP. There's nothing special about "special moves" other than them having a pre-made animation, and thats how it should be looked at.

Offense has been ripped out of dueling and instead we now have "let me just stare at you, wait for you to attack and then counter". Nudge had to be removed because it caused lag issues and was never very well defined - it was just a happy accident at the time, but something needs to be made to replace this (OJP had a nice idea with power attacks allowing the direction to change - perhaps this but at the cost of extra BP, or being MBlocked disarming you whether or not you swingblock, or something). Red has lost all potency because its attacks are so easily perfect blocked, making it rely on counter attacking and it's cheap 3-hit combo to be of any use.

Purple and Cyan are horrible styles. It's clear why these were never in the main game and it's due to their attacks being so bad, especially cyan with it not knowing whether it wants to be fast or slow. Staff and Duals are also rubbish styles but these have been in since the beginning, and have a "woah looks cool!" factor, so I guess they are here to stay.

Duel Mode
Duel Mode is the worst thing to happen to dueling imo. I feel partially to blame as it was my implementation and never fully completed, but anyway.. Before Duel Mode, you had one life and if you died, you'd be waiting up to 4 or so minutes again to play. This was annoying, right? And that's what made it great. With one life, you made sure to put 110% into each and every duel because you knew if you didn't you would be spectating everyone. With Duel Mode it's now just 'meh I'm dead who cares' and from being on Duel servers, it's turned into FFA with very few people caring about it.
Suggestion: Remove timer completely. Allow spawning at any time. After death, there is a 1-2 minute timer - this does two things: 1) Encourages you to be careful with your duel. 2) Frees up the areas of duelists running all over the place. 1-2 minutes is long, but not so long that it becomes a nuisance.

Just to be clear - I am not having a go at anyone for this.Many of these were things agreed upon by the team when being developed and seemed to be good at the time. This is just my opinion as a mb2 player, and I think too much has been done, and some steps back are needed in simplifying and removing things that aren't immediately obvious to people in game.

TL;DR:
Remove Purple, Remove Cyan
Blue - Fast, defensive
Yellow - Medium, Medium
Red - Slow, offensive
Remove Perks, or at least make them a little better
Remove BP-drain resistance while in a special move
Remove Duel Mode or implement timer between death

 

[SeV]

All mappers are gunners....didn't you know

True dat. I can't recall a single mapper who hasn't been mostly a gunner

 

[Preston]

These are additions I wouldn't mind at all. A server with 16+ people all dueling in dotf hangar can cause FPS to drop quite significantly, not to mention the amount of space available and people sometimes colliding mid-duel. As long as non-duelers are able to see duelers then that's good. We don't want to completely ruin the dueling atmosphere ^_^ I would however, sacrifice some 'atmosphere' for higher fps on very populated servers. Besides, when you're dueling you generally dont want distractions in the form of other players. I'm sure hlev will be against this though, since he won't be able to mario people mid-duel anymore

Honestly, it makes sense to me if we put an infinite timer on duel mode + 1 min respawn time and the japlus challenge feature. Ofc you'd still be able to duel outside of the challenge mode. It's just something extra for dedicated ppl who want to avoid being interrupted by lamers (Hey guise we found a solution to the lamer problem!)
That would make for an interesting duel mode. It would provide a little bit of a jamp FFA feeling and allow people to just chill and talk in-between deaths which I think would appeal to a large majority of players. This way the game would feel more social, which is good. Removing the timer from duel mode would also mean no more annoying time-interruptions

Oh this just sounds so amazing, like can we please implement this pleaseee lol it just seems so perfect, only different I would persoanlly like is maybe 30 seconds between deaths instead of a minute. Or maybe better even make it so servers can decide how long the wait is?

 

[M@crobyte]

These are additions I wouldn't mind at all. A server with 16+ people all dueling in dotf hangar can cause FPS to drop quite significantly, not to mention the amount of space available and people sometimes colliding mid-duel. As long as non-duelers are able to see duelers then that's good. We don't want to completely ruin the dueling atmosphere ^_^ I would however, sacrifice some 'atmosphere' for higher fps on very populated servers. Besides, when you're dueling you generally dont want distractions in the form of other players. I'm sure hlev will be against this though, since he won't be able to mario people mid-duel anymore

Honestly, it makes sense to me if we put an infinite timer on duel mode + 1 min respawn time and the japlus challenge feature. Ofc you'd still be able to duel outside of the challenge mode. It's just something extra for dedicated ppl who want to avoid being interrupted by lamers (Hey guise we found a solution to the lamer problem!)
That would make for an interesting duel mode. It would provide a little bit of a jamp FFA feeling and allow people to just chill and talk in-between deaths which I think would appeal to a large majority of players. This way the game would feel more social, which is good. Removing the timer from duel mode would also mean no more annoying time-interruptions

Yeah, but if they did this, it would make since to just add FFA mode as well. I thought the whole point of keeping the timer was because the mb2 team didn't want to implement any further modes than siege/duel and didn't want it to be like JA+ where the majority of the player base is meditating. Dueling mode is only a step away from FFA anyway in it's current state. It's not like JA+ where you would initiate a duel and then become "ghost" so the only person you could hurt is the one you are dueling. At any given time, you can be easily backwhacked by some random.

 

[andrew]

i wouldnt hate the respawn timer if there was no map time limit and ja+ duel challenges that phase you out from other players

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

These days I am of the opinion that the old mindset of restricting MB2 solely to Siege mode was a bad idea for the mod's growth. Siege has its audience and Dueling has its audience. Sometimes these two interests overlap, but there are times when they don't and MB2 didn't cater to this much until as of late. Multiple game modes would help grow the game, not dilute it as it was feared in the past.

If someone joins for the duels, he might eventually end up joining a siege game and find that he enjoys it as well. This may also occur vice versa. At the end of the day what we should want to see is our community growing bigger and better.

As such I wouldn't be opposed to removing the map timer from Duel.

 

[agentoo8]

^ Agreed.

I still remember people who would say 'MB2 isn't about duels', completely disregarding that about 25-35% of the population duel 90% of the time/duel solely.
Two completely different games within the same game that each require separate attention.

 

[NoSafeSpac]

Please don't give players a safe space. That'd be so lame.

 

[M@crobyte]

Please don't give players a safe space. That'd be so lame.

aka: "please keep it as it is so I can continue to backwhack people."
There is definitely no other reason to not add this feature.

 

[NoSafeSpac]

I don't backwhack nuhbody. FFA be the true backwhack fest.
180 blocking a surprise attack, maneuvering around other duels, beating a guy then suddenly it's him+ 3 buddies cuz boy got mad, or ganging up on the repulse whore palpatine are the endearing things in the unique experience of movie battles.
Vote Kick would be cool
Safe space would be whack.

 

[M@crobyte]

I don't backwhack nuhbody. FFA be the true backwhack fest.
180 blocking a surprise attack, maneuvering around other duels, beating a guy then suddenly it's him+ 3 buddies cuz boy got mad, or ganging up on the repulse whore palpatine are the endearing things in the unique experience of movie battles.
Vote Kick would be cool
Safe space would be whack.

No one, who is not an admin, should be given the ability to remove anyone from the server as it gets abused far more than if an admin is on to take care of the issue. People even fail to use RTV/RTM properly. Creating a "safe space" would eliminate the problem. The "ganging up" that you are referring to should only be happening in FFA situations if the server is properly moderated. If everyone involved is fine with that environment, fine. But as it is, people backwhack to regain BP and go on "laming" fest.

 

[slutman]

I don't backwhack nuhbody. FFA be the true backwhack fest.
180 blocking a surprise attack, maneuvering around other duels, beating a guy then suddenly it's him+ 3 buddies cuz boy got mad, or ganging up on the repulse whore palpatine are the endearing things in the unique experience of movie battles.
Vote Kick would be cool
Safe space would be whack.

What if they renamed the current dueling gammode to FFA and then built the duel mode with infinite timer, challenging system and all that to replace the old one?

 

[Phelps]

I have talked about this in slack and something similar is pointed out by Ben in here.

Using the bow/taunt (?) move from JK:JO, locked two players in a duel.
Untouchable from the others, there is no need to make other players disappear.
Just make those locked in the duel little bit "ghost-like"/transparent, so they are distinct from "unlocked" players, and it's alright.
Best way to avoid lamers. Admin is not really a solvable stuff. Most of the lamers come back through the backdoor with dynamic IP.

 

[SeV]

These days I am of the opinion that the old mindset of restricting MB2 solely to Siege mode was a bad idea for the mod's growth. Siege has its audience and Dueling has its audience. Sometimes these two interests overlap, but there are times when they don't and MB2 didn't cater to this much until as of late. Multiple game modes would help grow the game, not dilute it as it was feared in the past.

As such I wouldn't be opposed to removing the map timer from Duel.

I like what you're saying here. The old mindset was without a doubt wrong. I don't know exactly who subscribed to it, but I know they hard-coded the time-limit to get rid of roleplayers in MBII because they hated them. Whatever other excuse was given is just that, an excuse. That is the origin of the current hard-coded timelimit. By your same logic ben, would it not be in MBII's best interest to remove the stupid hard-coded timelimit or atleast only keep it for open mode? (Make it usable for FA and duel mode).

FYI the biggest communities that exist in JKA outside of MBII consists of ROLEPLAYERS. But these people don't have cool gameplay to go along with their roleplaying. I think MBII's lost atleast 200 players over the years due to the hardcoded time-limit decision, perhaps even more than that. In a game as small as MBII 200players is an incredible amount of players...

Why? All because a few close-minded hateful devs of old decided they didn't want roleplayers in ''their'' game... Ladies and gentlemen. It is time to forget your stupid prejudices and think of MBII's future. Modified FA files are perfect for roleplaying, MBII's well-developed saber system is perfect for roleplaying... and there are atleast 100 players of basejka who would HAPPILY move to MBII if they knew that we had something so awesome here.

Using the bow move from JK:JO, locked two players in a duel.
Untouchable from the others, there is no need to make other players disappear.
Just make those locked in the duel little bit "ghost-like"/transparent, so they are distinct from "unlocked" players, and it's alright.
Best way to avoid lamers. Admin is not really a solvable stuff. Most of the lamers come back through the backdoor with dynamic IP.

You could even add an internal timer. Make the translucent duel mode last for 2-3 min to prevent getting stuck there with some undesirable personage of trollering intentions and keep the flow of new duels coming.

 

[AgentGibbs]

As i already told DCM in-game, i totally agree that cyan/purple/staff/duals look unfinished, much less polished than blue/yellow/red. Having a system with only those 3 styles and no perks whatsoever would be excellent, clean and simple, that should have been the direction taken before (removing duals/staff) rather than wanting to make use of what the base game had to offer (blue/cyan) at all costs. It would make the saber system look much more like a "finished product" (more like mb2 gunning) without messy animations and overkill diversity. It wouldn't even be a problem to do in fact, as the balance wouldn't be affected much at all (and just balancing 3 styles is much easier to begin with).

I don't know if it's possible to consider. If there's enough support among mb2 team and beta team, it might. Removing things always gives a very bad taste to the community so we would have to endure that.

As for base dueling mechanics, changes are coming, thanks to SeV/beta team/dev team for that (looking at you, nudge). And since cyan/purple/duals/staff aren't going to be removed just yet, perks are also going to become less impactful at least in open mode.

Special moves might be the only point where i don't agree. Fact is, if immunity is removed from them they are simply going to be useless again, in which case what's the point of them being there in the first place ? Cosmetics (actually why not, fancy way of killing opponents weaker than you) ? If them being as strong as doing normal swings, with smaller skill requirement, really feels bad, then from a practical point of view they should just be removed, not turned useless.

As for duel mode, well, nothing more to say, agree with everything the OP said. 1 mn wait after dying is perfect, takes away the old several minutes you may have had to wait when dying early, while keeping the advantages. No changes coming that way just yet though.

All the styles need to stay imo they create a diversity that is fun to play with and prevents most of the repetition we saw in the RC builds. As for the special swings if you want to keep the attacker 'immune' to being attack at lest make the swings mblockable again so that there is a way to defend yourself from them.

As for the duel mode i really like the idea of transparent duelists locked in a private duel, this would eliminate the problem of lamers and running into other duels, but it will need a timer for transparency as mentioned above to prevent someone running forever (or better yet a way to cancel the duel).

I do not want to repeat my many other posts from sevs thread so ill leave this one be here and just say I look forward to an update and hope the devs actually took what the community was saying to heart.

 

[Cat Lady]

Most of the lamers come back through the backdoor with dynamic IP.

If server is properly moderated, the can be easily range-banned. RPis and Bg are using this method to great effect (yes, no more ich bin fapman).

 

[Phelps]

If server is properly moderated, the can be easily range-banned. RPis and Bg are using this method to great effect (yes, no more ich bin fapman).

But there is a risk, that you will ban an IP of well behaving player. It has happened in the past and not just once. And it has happened to me, so I'm not making this up.

 

[TwiceDead]

I like what you're saying here. The old mindset was without a doubt wrong. I don't know exactly who subscribed to it, but I know they hard-coded the time-limit to get rid of roleplayers in MBII because they hated them. Whatever other excuse was given is just that, an excuse. That is the origin of the current hard-coded timelimit. By your same logic ben, would it not be in MBII's best interest to remove the stupid hard-coded timelimit or atleast only keep it for open mode? (Make it usable for FA and duel mode).

FYI the biggest communities that exist in JKA outside of MBII consists of ROLEPLAYERS. But these people don't have cool gameplay to go along with their roleplaying. I think MBII's lost atleast 200 players over the years due to the hardcoded time-limit decision, perhaps even more than that. In a game as small as MBII 200players is an incredible amount of players...

Why? All because a few close-minded hateful devs of old decided they didn't want roleplayers in ''their'' game... Ladies and gentlemen. It is time to forget your stupid prejudices and think of MBII's future. Modified FA files are perfect for roleplaying, MBII's well-developed saber system is perfect for roleplaying... and there are atleast 100 players of basejka who would HAPPILY move to MBII if they knew that we had something so awesome here.




You could even add an internal timer. Make the translucent duel mode last for 2-3 min to prevent getting stuck there with some undesirable personage of trollering intentions and keep the flow of new duels coming.

I kinda doubt Roleplayers would have a good time in MBII regardless of whether the ones in charge supported it or not, unless they have their own private-servers. On public servers they'd likely be lamed/harassed by people who don't get what they're on about... From what I can gather, a lot of the banter in public matches while it initially seems toxic, is actually just people making fun and nobody taking actual offense to it, but occasionally there are toxic people who go out of their way to piss newcomers off (I see this daily, usually the same people) and without admins to look after people like that I'm pretty sure they'd be discouraged from Roleplaying on MBII unless they get their own monitored servers. If you want roleplayers in your game you'd almost have to advertise for it and demonstrate that people won't fuck your shit up as soon as you type a line.

 

[Cat Lady]

Actually, private/password protected semi-roleplay servers thrived, until people behind MB2 at the time decided they know better and made setting arbitrary round time impossible - basically killing the scene. Go figure.

/Cat Lady

 

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

The old mindset of less game modes was not necessarily wrong. It depends on the player count.

Currently due to the larger playerbase having more game modes would be a good thing but when you're struggling to fill a server having 5-10 of them just splits the already small player base. Right now is the best time to try more game modes because of all the new players.

 

[TwiceDead]

Actually, private/password protected semi-roleplay servers thrived, until people behind MB2 at the time decided they know better and made setting arbitrary round time impossible - basically killing the scene. Go figure.

/Cat Lady

Ah, in that case I... Am wrong.