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]

Ooh snap somebody just got rekt hard

 

[Cat Lady]

...and we already have like 5 threads about saber system.

 

[andrew]

those purple and cyan perks you mentioned have nothing to do with dueling, but the other perks they do have make them defensive styles yeah

katas are only immune to bp drains because they parry wildly usually afaik

your own personal issues with dueling motivation shouldn't be a factor in how duel mode is designed. i don't care if you're incapable of taking every duel seriously with instant respawn, thats not a reason to put a long cooldown. duel servers turn into FFA regardless and did so before even when it was 1 life and done because new players don't understand what laming is and don't understand the purpose of a duel server

removing the timer and allowing spawning in at any time is great though, but the mb2 team has been extremely resistant to that

 

[hleV]

Sisi doesn't care. /thread

 

[agentoo8]

Ooh snap somebody just got rekt hard

Why do you always pride yourself on shutting people down - even in game?
Considering DCM helped implement the system, we'd be wise to listen to what he has to say about something he helped make - instead of dismiss it as 'another one of those topics'.

 

[YummyToast]

The timer in duel mode might help. Dual sabers needs to be made where spam is a less reliable tactic. Red is still one of the best styles. I can't ever find anyone who knows how to use purple so idk on that. Cyan really needs a nerf, the fact that it is only countered by a slower yet powerful style like red or purple is ridiculous. Cyan can outparry just about any faster style with wd and wa combos and therefore blue, and yellow just get fucked by it
It should be that each style has a way to counterplay it, not just a counterstyle. Staff saber seems to be really popular recently but once you take into consideration how many points it costs to get it might be fairish.

Maybe instead of just removing perks we need to add weaknesses to each style as well. As in a sorta negative opposite perk. Such as [Insert Style Here] loses [insert percentage here] of [insert statistic here] when [insert condition here]

 

[SeV]

Why do you always pride yourself on shutting people down - even in game?
Considering DCM helped implement the system, we'd be wise to listen to what he has to say about something he helped make - instead of dismiss it as 'another one of those topics'.

Why do you always make erroneous assumptions - even in game?

I'm also for changes to the system. As you know I've made many suggestions and I've always wanted to improve the system. For one thing, DCM's suggestion of infinite respawns is not such a bad idea imo. Something I've wanted since the devs took it out, was timelimits beyond 5 m, up to infinity. If server owners could set their own times on the servers, with the standard remaining 5m, then we could implement the infinite respawn idea with a slight cooldown.

But tbh the current system works well. The only problem with it is the inability to punish lamers without an admin present, for which the implementation of a vote kick would be one possible remedy.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Must have missed all that in:

Ooh snap somebody just got rekt hard

Vote-kick SeV

1. Yes
2. Yes

 

[Supa]

Why do you always pride yourself on shutting people down - even in game?
Considering DCM helped implement the system, we'd be wise to listen to what he has to say about something he helped make - instead of dismiss it as 'another one of those topics'.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

I was always against adding the additional styles to the game. I felt it would convolute gameplay, and while it may have spiced up the dueling scene a bit, the styles would have been either cheap knock-offs of the originals (cyan to blue and purple to red) or they would have simply replaced them. There was very little reason for them to be added from both a balance and design sense.

 

[Stassin]

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.

 

[andrew]

i have no idea why waiting after you die sounds like a good idea

its 3am, 2 people are dueling in duel mode. one person wins

"haha ok see you in 1 minute"

its 9pm, a full server. one person gets lamed

"glad i have a minute to think about how angry i am before i respawn"

 

[Princess Dymbesh]

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.

No shit, we've made dozens of fucking threads about how bad this sabersystem and unbalanced it is.

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.

Exactly, i loved that one.
I allways used those times Watching the players who Rekt me, so i could get better.
Thing is, i wouldn't add this now to this sabersystem, it would get worse.
Imagine getting rekt by xxxxYoloBrotherxxx With staff/red or cyan or what ever op style. No effort taken nothing, and for this one you have to wait now 2(for your suggestion) min. Great. I would really get frustrated because of this, would you?

its 9pm, a full server. one person gets lamed

"glad i have a minute to think about how angry i am before i respawn"

Andrew just make sure you're playing on the right server, with the right people on.
A little hint: Look on the serverlist about who's online, and then think about joining.

As for base dueling mechanics, changes are coming, thanks to SeV/beta team/dev team for that

Great, what kind of changes?
Is it so hard to tell us what kind of changes you're planning and ask for our opinion? You know what happened last time you guys just changed smth and turned the sabersystem into complete mess yes? Or are these the changes sev suggested in his thread?

 

[agentoo8]

Why do you always make erroneous assumptions - even in game?

I'm also for changes to the system. As you know I've made many suggestions and I've always wanted to improve the system. For one thing, DCM's suggestion of infinite respawns is not such a bad idea imo. Something I've wanted since the devs took it out, was timelimits beyond 5 m, up to infinity. If server owners could set their own times on the servers, with the standard remaining 5m, then we could implement the infinite respawn idea with a slight cooldown.

But tbh the current system works well. The only problem with it is the inability to punish lamers without an admin present, for which the implementation of a vote kick would be one possible remedy.

...erroneous assumptions? The only erroneous assumptions I've made in regards to you have only been trying to guess which nick you're using on any given day, lol.

The saber system as it is now is not a complete mess. The fact that we have more people on the dueling servers than ever before, eager to learn about dueling, clans dedicated to dueling (looking at you, eazy-e) speaks VOLUMES.

I await the next patch with eager anticipation.

 

[Princess Dymbesh]

The saber system as it is now is not a complete mess. The fact that we have more people on the dueling servers than ever before, eager to learn about dueling, clans dedicated to dueling (looking at you, eazy-e) speaks VOLUMES.

Not really. Just because we have a dozens of new players now who are eager to learn something doesn't mean that the sabersystem isn't a complete mess. New players don't know any better since they've never played the older builds who were godlike, right?.

 

[agentoo8]

But what makes you guys so pretentious as to say that the saber system is a COMPLETE mess? All the work that was put into it; ensuring it was as balanced as possible, that as many styles could be viable as possible, that PB isn't reliant on luck/saber stance and is actually somewhat intuitive?
That's a big punch in Stassin's teeth, to be honest - one that is not warranted.

Regardless: having so many new people enjoying the system must have an influence on any course of action. Change the saber system drastically again, and people may find themselves dissuaded from playing further (a la hlev/seth syndrome)

 

[Princess Dymbesh]

But what makes you guys so pretentious as to say that the saber system is a COMPLETE mess?

How about reading those 5000000 threads we've made so you will know it?

That's a big punch in Stassin's teeth, to be honest - one that is not warranted.

I don't blame sisi for this. She had good ideas, but those weren't really thought out and now the sabersystem seems like a rushed mess. We don't like it, and thats how it is. You can't please everyone but if the majority is against it, you've lost.

Regardless: having so many new people enjoying the system must have an influence on any course of action. Change the saber system drastically again, and people may find themselves dissuaded from playing further (a la hlev/seth syndrome)

By that logic we can't change anything to the sabersystem anymore, since people wont find themself playing further right?

 

[SeV]

Patience young padawans. I'm in the beta team and I give my official seal of approval for the changes made so far. They look very promising. We can thank Stassin's epic coding skills for some very interesting developments, but since I'm just a peon in the machine I can't divulge our secrets just yet. We're still working on it, so it would be problematic to give info that would be subject to change.

Still, you should all be hopeful and excited. The rennaisance may soon be upon us ^_^

 

[Princess Dymbesh]

love you sev <3

 

[Preston]

Please just nerf the perks or remove them completely, then things would be nice...