R20+ Feedback

[Bully]

I played a bunch of MBII again recently so here's as much of my two cents whether you want them or not.

Gunner v Saber is pretty unsatisfactory. Saberists are rewarded for just powering through a good gunners aim by running and swinging at their opponent like a monkey. The only time knockback matters is if the saberist is swingblocking the blaster fire from my experience. God forbid you are playing legends where some saberists get armor, healing, passive health regen or knockback resistance, but I guess that's why almost every single legends gunner gets a saber-like weapon. It really feels like the buffs to gunners and nerfs to saberists have been misplaced in my eyes.

Force Attunement has been haunting me ever since the first time I laid my eyes unpon it. I'm still trying to figure out what it meaningfully adds to the game compared to the more free point allocation of before. It feels like it complicates what should be a rather straightforward point buy system for no meaningful gain. I think it would be more interesting to tie force focus, force pool and maybe force regen (in or out of meditation) to it and remove the force attune requirements from other skills.

Force Power changes I do actually like so far. Bringing push and pull more in line and giving push an aiming requirement saving a few points feels meaningful and rewarding. I must say however, the changes were a bit hard to figure out in-game as I pretty much had to dig through the patch notes to find out what they do now. I'll give the same praise to force speed and saber throw with some extra, they both feel good to use and look good while using them, is it possible to add some cool mist VFX to push and pull? The only exception here is force lightning, I tried some push 3 + lightning 3 gameplay and it just felt either bugged or I'm not understanding it yet fully, so I'll withold judgement for now.

Dueling seems fun and dynamic so far though I'm not really a 24/7 dueling guy so my feedback is limited. Only thing I'll say here is that I love that it's being actively worked on, and the only thing that has me scratching my head at times is how chaotic some saber exchanges can be with proper yawing and swing speed buffs from counters. Perhaps bringing the styles swing speed closer together could do some good for this? Or maybe just normalizing swing speed across styles? (light, medium, heavy)

Now one more big thing...
Open is getting too serious, I'm sure this patch would play great in balanced 5v5 or 10v10 more competitive matches, but with the addition of getups for all gunners you have (intentionally or not) effectively removed one of the more fun mechanics in open that is melee fights. I'm fully aware that this might just be an unintentional side effect like the removal of nade jumping (without annoying scripts) when secondary nade got changed many years ago, which is a change I still support, but these changes shouldn't need to come at the cost of beloved mechanics. So I would say, figure out a way to bring back nade jumping and melee fights but keep the balance changes you intended here, I truely believe it's possible and I would gladly help brainstorm a way to get it done.

 

[hera]

It's also important to know that getting killed/getting kills is zero sum. Every time you die to something and go 'I couldn't even get up!' somebody just got a huge dopamine hit for hitting that conc nade or whatever it was.

I just don't think 'I was stunned and couldn't do anything!' is a good reason. That's the entire point of taking nades, force powers, etc.

 

[hera]

Slap hasn't been nerfed at all...? And there are more ways to stagger using saber out melee move than before.

Players that are knocked to the ground no longer take bonus BP damage, correct? edit: I mentioned this earlier I meant in the context of duels.It's super besides the point.

 

[Leons]

Players that are knocked to the ground no longer take bonus damage, correct?

Yes, since R20, because Tempest didn't implement it in the first place. We can discuss all about how its either a bad thing or a good thing but one things for sure, no one would enjoy duels with this DPS if that did 1.25x more damage lol

 

[hera]

It's also important to know that getting killed/getting kills is zero sum. Every time you die to something and go 'I couldn't even get up!' somebody just got a huge dopamine hit for hitting that conc nade or whatever it was.

I just don't think 'I was stunned and couldn't do anything!' is a good reason. That's the entire point of taking nades, force powers, etc.

anyways this was the important bit and I really hope you all consider it with any changes going forward. What we don't want is a game where both players are bored because there's no way (or reason) to meaningfully interact with the opponent.

 

[NotJoel]

Whatever I guess. I just don't agree with it at all. I've never once gotten stun locked and thought 'omg this needs to change' its part of the game there are many ways to avoid it and pick classes that counter that stuff, and its been this way for a long time for a reason presumably.
If it were up to you guys, and this thought process, there would be no force powers, no nades (definitely no sonic or concs), no grip, no lightning, no stealth, no rockets that can one shot. Slap has already been nerfed for those same reasons you provided. I see this as a long slope towards the game being boring because nothing ever happens to anybody.

What does ideal gameplay look like to you?

Well I talk about the getup topic. I havent said stunlock should be removed (though its cancer), I just gave various points why the getups have a place in this game to at least have a small chance against that shit while it still exists. Slap got nerfed because of a different reason and that nerf was from tempest over a year ago ish before he dipped. And all it did was remove the knockup, i think the cooldown increase got introduced with r20 and despite that 1 slap pretty much ends the duel with the enemy. Not that it matters since hitting someone with slap in open/legends except its a saberist is pretty rare anyway

 

[Goosto]

It's more interesting to make decisions while chasing someone than just shooting up a turtle on its back. You've still put them in a bad spot and are tacking on damage but it's no longer a free kill in many cases. A new layer of depth in reads/reactions has emerged.

I get some people like hard punishes and play in a way where they limit as much of their target's options as possible. It's not for me. More interactivity more good

Still nerf push/pull though.

 

[Goosto]

Also, you should be able to affect your trajectory from knockback like DI in smash bros

 

[Cam'Ronin]

Have any pro decent duelists noticed any iffyness about mblocking?

Yes

MBlock timing felt noticeably tighter in R20 Open Beta. Never investigated though.

Me and either Liam or Joel had a bit of fucking around testing MBlocks with staff / yellow about a month ago. Seemed to us like it has a mind of its own, 50/50 chance of disarm - regardless of timing. Joel / Liam said that it could've been due to being tied with server latency / fps / whatever? Don't know, not a dev but made sense at the time

 

[Leons]

Yes


Me and either Liam or Joel had a bit of fucking around testing MBlocks with staff / yellow about a month ago. Seemed to us like it has a mind of its own, 50/50 chance of disarm - regardless of timing. Joel / Liam said that it could've been due to being tied with server latency / fps / whatever? Don't know, not a dev but made sense at the time

Doesn't rly make sense to me and that was before the crosshair gfx I assume. I can pull off MBs consistently fine, they aren't "broken" or anything, they are just tighter. There was also 1.5s cooldown on every MB, so attempting every halfswing was automatically impossible - you'd still be in cooldown

 

[Bully]

There was also 1.5s cooldown on every MB

Is this still the case? It would explain a lot, definitely noticed some blue circles missing when I try to MB a lot of swings

 

[Leons]

Is this still the case? It would explain a lot, definitely noticed some blue circles missing when I try to MB a lot of swings

For failed mbs yes

 

[Cam'Ronin]

There was also 1.5s cooldown on every MB, so attempting every halfswing was automatically impossible - you'd still be in cooldown

 

[2cwldys]

This is just a revival of the Open is dead thread, whining on the forums won't change a thing and all of Open's changes are privately organized by washed out AOD rejects anyway. It's evident by now that player feedback does not matter. Proj nerfs would have never happened. All these things nobody asked for happening to Open. Make all these open additions like beskar FA capable, revert attunement, revert to the old armor value changes pre-MACE. Revert to an Open players ACTUALLY liked, not just a privileged few.

I also still believe there should be two sabering devs, who combine feedback from NA and EU, both hemispheres, instead of solely relying upon one EU person for the changes, and alone handle all the feedback. There is an obvious disconnect there. The dueling styles are completely different and methods of dueling and preferences. John showed me how the dev cvars work for dueling and tweaking parameters. There's NA duelists that can step up surely. This can be done.

The only thing I can agree with Bully on here is that open is getting too serious. Hey our games dying, let's make it competitive slop in it's final days or highest population decline ever. Your guys priorities with this mod is all over the place. If this is the path MBII continues, then take the advice given to me and make your own mod to appease the competitive monkeys at this point.

 

[Leons]

No thanks, no NA devs are needed for sabering for some time. I think 7 years and R20 were enough.

Besides, having two devs changing sabering is the most terrible idea I've heard ever.

If there's ever an NA dev working on sabering and you're not sure if there is one, you can tell pretty easily from the playerbase drop

 

[2cwldys]

I find it interesting how becoming a MBII dev is like walking through a barrier and magically you’re unable to relate or comprehend on the players level of understanding. This is probably a top notch example.

Your rebuttal here is because one NA dev spent 7 years for the MBII team to release a cherry picked version among many he had, many versions which were working and heavily tested, perhaps far better, they had him release this one; that results in you saying no one from NA “can be trusted with it.” R20 was rushed all around. They don’t even test the changes they make I’m pretty sure judging by how they run the beta team.

And what's wrong with working with another saberist dev? If you’d discuss my talking points, It highlights the problems and disparity I'm talking about, so now that the EU is in charge of dueling its hell to all else? At least Tempest ran his duel beta discord to accommodate all types of feedback. I think you guys are isolating half of the dueling player base by hemisphere if I’m being honest with a “I know what’s best, therefore you do not” approach and it gets taxing reading those kinds of post everywhere.

If players feedback are invalid then this thread isn’t really going to go anywhere. The team holds a top down approach in development. It’s evident with Open and how pretty much every mode but Legends is ran. Why consult your players in what to do when you already know what in your mind, in your agenda, what you’re going to do yourselves? The whole “cool person club, but we’re secretly all scrimmers” beta team and the way the MBII team addresses feedback is laughable sham.

 

[Leons]

Can't take this post seriously at all considering we have a discord forum thread available to all and I hop on NA servers myself to gather what the people are saying, and I had several dueling discussions on NA dcs such as freaky. No "You only listen to EU players" can be used against me lol.

 

[2cwldys]

But you can turn around and say that another dev can’t be trusted to work on dueling either. I’m sure there’s plenty of NA dueling clans that wouldn’t take that nicely in the slightest.

 

[Leons]

But you can turn around and say that another dev can’t be trusted to work on dueling either. I’m sure there’s plenty of NA dueling clans that wouldn’t take that nicely in the slightest.

Yes, no EU dev either. Working on sabering in two is genuinely the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

 

[2cwldys]

Then we must begin the rule of two…

 

[2cwldys]

In all seriousness though, this WILL be a repeat of the Open is dead thread. The players need to highlight the common denominator.