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

 

[M@crobyte]

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.

This is irrelevant, because back then (when this mindset was created) mb2 had a lot more people. But, the mb2 team at the time was comfortable with the way they currently did things and were not open to new modes. Now that mb2 is coming pretty close to balanced gameplay (IMO), now would be a good time to test out official servers with modes already built into the JA. Like CTF.

 

[PuNk]

We are probably going off topic a bit, but I must express that I would love to see new modes from JA MP. It reminds me of old days when I was a kid and was playing capture the flag against bots.

 

[Supa]

One of these days I'll have an American player show me the dueling ropes again. I've been out of it since v0.

 

[andrew]

>mfw supa thinks he was in it

 

[Supa]

Hey, I was okay back in the day. :|

 

[Firestrike]

haha

 

[Tempest]

In a nutshell:
1) Cyan perk is way too strong. 0 risk for 100% reward with very minimal counterplay. This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if there's actual testing with dueling for these things beforehand.
2) There's basically 0 incentive to actually try and be aggressive in dueling. If you try, people just counter and then wait. Repeat til time runs out (this is sadly, not a complete exaggeration).
3) Maybe make AP/ACC/whatever term you want to use for the ACM threshholds prevent people from being able to pblock? I've had plenty of times where I've gotten at least the first level of AP/ACC/whatever and hit people multiple times (non-pblock and not parried) and it seemed like it did nothing. Also been on the other side of that where I've survived with 10% or less BP because of random pblocks mixed in with parries (an actual effort made to stop those swings?!).
4) Can we have interrupts actually be a thing again? People shouldn't get swings interrupted and still be able to just chain swing like nothing happened.

As it stands, it seems that the only enjoyable duels don't involve cyan or people just staring at each other for >50% of the 'duel'. Maybe the EU side has less of it but I haven't had time to catch up on that side of things.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Perks suck. Perfect Block Sux. Camera Block Sux.

I've already stated why so I won't say anymore.

Make a poll and lets see people vote what perks go, what perks stay, what perks get tweaked and what do to about the rest.
But that would imply feedback is actually worth something anymore.

Woe to me. And I didn't win a billion either. ffs.

 

[M@crobyte]

4) Can we have interrupts actually be a thing again? People shouldn't get swings interrupted and still be able to just chain swing like nothing happened.

As a Jedi/Sith user, I 100% agree with this.

 

[Preston]

Perks suck. Perfect Block Sux. Camera Block Sux.

I've already stated why so I won't say anymore.

Make a poll and lets see people vote what perks go, what perks stay, what perks get tweaked and what do to about the rest.
But that would imply feedback is actually worth something anymore.

Woe to me. And I didn't win a billion either. ffs.

Pblock is good, but perks are horrible

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Pblock sucks. How am I supposed to defend when I throw myself against 5 jedi? And if you say, don't throw yourself at 5 jedi then, you sir, have no soul.

It's all fine and dandy in duels, even though that still sucks, but against more than one opponent - It cripples your chances and kills the fun.

Nothing brought me greater joy than to bunnyhop into a herd of sith and watch them tear themselves apart as I laughed maniacally to myself bouncing to and fro, wallrunning, doing flips and flipping them off, occasionally blocking 2 or 3 sabers at once, only to slice and dice the last few fools.

Those were the days.

And then several years of nerfs we get this crap. Another f'ing nerf Nerfed grip. Nerfed speed. Nerfed jump. Christ, its all been just nerfs!
Oh wait, they buffed stat costs.

 

[TwiceDead]

Pblock is good, but perks are horrible

I think the perks are interesting, and if executed well they don't need to be as breaking as they apparently seem to be, but they're just too powerful.
They should be very minor, subtle differences besides their moveset, not what attracts you to a style to begin with.

 

[Preston]

Pblock sucks. How am I supposed to defend when I throw myself against 5 jedi? And if you say, don't throw yourself at 5 jedi then, you sir, have no soul.

It's all fine and dandy in duels, even though that still sucks, but against more than one opponent - It cripples your chances and kills the fun.

Nothing brought me greater joy than to bunnyhop into a herd of sith and watch them tear themselves apart as I laughed maniacally to myself bouncing to and fro, wallrunning, doing flips and flipping them off, occasionally blocking 2 or 3 sabers at once, only to slice and dice the last few fools.

Those were the days.

And then several years of nerfs we get this crap. Another f'ing nerf Nerfed grip. Nerfed speed. Nerfed jump. Christ, its all been just nerfs!
Oh wait, they buffed stat costs.

nah you can handle multiple jedi, if ur pblocking skillz are high enough :7

 

[Preston]

I think the perks are interesting, and if executed well they don't need to be as breaking as they apparently seem to be, but they're just too powerful.
They should be very minor, subtle differences besides their moveset, not what attracts you to a style to begin with.

In a way yes, for example red I think should remove the drain bp on pb perk. But should also nerf the stagger perk where if you pblock the third swing it wont stagger any more. Cyans perk is just bad and needs to be removed from mb2 completely. Blues is pretty good, Purples is stupid tho, gain ap on pblock. That needs to be gone aswell. Duals slap bp drain is meh, Staff's mblock stagger perk is dumb and should be removed.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

If perks are to remain, why not just take the plunge and let the player decide which perk he wants for all his sabers

Meaning he chooses which one in config and thats that. Mwhahahahahahahhahahahhahaa.

nah you can handle multiple jedi, if ur pblocking skillz are high enough :7

Can't look in 2 different directions at the same time. I'm not cross-eyed.

Not to mention fps. Can't block if I can't even register what swings are coming at me. Don't you tell me to disable glow! It makes things pretty!
At 20 fps

 

[Preston]

If perks are to remain, why not just take the plunge and let the player decide which perk he wants for all his sabers

Meaning he chooses which one in config and thats that. Mwhahahahahahahhahahahhahaa.



Can't look in 2 different directions at the same time. I'm not cross-eyed.

Not to mention fps. Can't block if I can't even register what swings are coming at me. Don't you tell me to disable glow! It makes things pretty!
At 20 fps

Well yea it would be difficult with 20 fps

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Yeah, when am I going to ever be able to play this game with decent fps and fx?

Huh, devs, huh?

The only concessions I made is resolution, disabling antialiasing and using the medium enhanced effects. And it still!

When 2 release mb2 for console?

 

[Tempest]

My laptop from 2008 can play mb2 on full high settings with 200 FPS. IDK what kind of stuff you're using but it's definitely not the game being limited.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

I think you added an extra zero.

 

[agentoo8]

In a way yes, for example red I think should remove the drain bp on pb perk. But should also nerf the stagger perk where if you pblock the third swing it wont stagger any more. Cyans perk is just bad and needs to be removed from mb2 completely. Blues is pretty good, Purples is stupid tho, gain ap on pblock. That needs to be gone aswell. Duals slap bp drain is meh, Staff's mblock stagger perk is dumb and should be removed.

Agreed with removal of BP Drain perk for red.
Stagger should stay. Otherwise red becomes a style that is easily countered, does not dissuade opponent from attacking them, etc. In previous patches this is how red was, and it was pretty bad.
Cyan needs removal.
Purple's is not stupid, it promotes a counteroffensive style that - if well executed - is very fun to play.
Stagger's stagger could do with an increased cooldown, and perhaps staff's BP damage should be nerfed. That's about it.