Reaching a stable saber system via minor tweaks

[Stassin]

This is my spec/possible changelog on how to obtain a stable saber system from 1.4.5, designed and simplified primarily with open mode in mind, with the least amount of minor tweaks possible (meaning the current 1.4.5 general design for sabering mechanics would remain the same). My primary reason for writing this small spec is that the dev team intends to settle the saber system design issue sooner rather than later, and as such intends to refrain from implementing major revamps which could easily require a few more years to fully balance. I believe Tempest (currently the one other dev bent on designing the saber system) has somewhat taken that to heart recently, but regardless i wish to write down my own spec down independently from his vision on needed changes, and i hope in the end a reasonable and simple compromise will be found so that we can finally and happily stop touching the saber system.

This would normally rather be intended for private dev discussions and is more specifically meant for Tempest and other devs interested in gameplay, but since there are few of us i believe it is appropriate to post it publicly.

Design keywords for this spec: minor tweaks, simplify, open mode.


######## Changelog ########

General tweaks for saber vs saber:

• Removed perfect parry.
• Reintroduced semi-PB and nerfed it (25% or 50% damage instead of 0%, if needed).
• Reinstated fast PB counter on every full-PB rather than only on mblocked swingblocks, and it drains normal damage (instead of the increased damage from 1.4).
• Increased global parry drains by giving them 25% (or possibly less, if that is still too much) of the damage of a bodyhit.
• Reintroduced chaining direction restrictions: general restrictions reverted to a gap of two quadrants between consecutive swings as it was before 1.4, instead of 1 or 0. Some styles (Red, Purple, Cyan, Duals) have different restrictions, see Style tweaks for details.
• (Possible: introduce some sort of visual-only nudge in order to address the issue of sabers idling into people and passing through each other when blocking or idling)
• (Possible: make mblocking swingblocks flinch - not stagger, flinch is less disabling - the opponent for all styles)

Style tweaks:

• Blue: removed all perks (reverted max swings in a chain to 2 if 3 is too strong).
• Yellow: removed all perks.
• Red: removed all perks. Increased AP and decreased BP (if needed). Added chaining direction restriction: 3 quadrants between consecutive swings.
• Purple: removed current perks and added a single perk dealing with ACM gain and loss. Increased AP and decreased BP (if needed). Added chaining direction restriction: 1 quadrant between consecutive swings to make it harder to PB (possibly).
• Cyan: removed all perks. Increased AP and decreased BP (if needed). Added chaining direction restriction: 3 quadrants between consecutive swings.
• Duals: removed all perks, kept only the higher defense arc vs both sabers and guns. Added chaining direction restriction: 1 or even 0 quadrants between consecutive swings. Reduced BP for balance (possibly).
• Staff: removed all perks (possibly kept mblocks requiring only correct movement and timing, to see), kept the higher defense arc vs both sabers and gunners. Reduced AP for balance (possibly).

General tweaks for saber vs gun:

• Reduced the FP regen debuff period when shot to 0.5s from 1s.
• Kept the low FP drain cooldown (50ms) but reinstated a middle-ground from v0 (where the FP drain cooldown was 200ms) by having all additional shots only drain about 0.5x FP during a window of 200ms after having been shot once.
• FP drains when blocking/running tweaked to balance the above change.
• Reverted Deflect 3's FP draining to 0 (it still prevents FP regeneration). Added Deflect 1's 5 FP drain to Deflect 0, so it applies all the time to mblocking.
• Reverted the removal of saber melee moves while flinching.

######## Explanations/Spec ########

Goal: reach a stable and simple saber system designed primarily for open mode, via MINOR tweaks from 1.4.5.

Principles: "defense" refers to aiming for a win (in any type of fight) over time, prolonging engagements and relying on superior stamina while taking little risks. "offense" refers to aiming for a win (in any type of fight) quickly via heavy power at the cost of bigger risks and the inability to endure for long.
Principles for tweaks: basically take styles as they currently are without major changes (swing speeds, animations, HP damages, movement slowdowns etc. which are the defining factors for the styles), and deduce the role that each one should have, from which their needed features for a simple, structured and yet still highly challenging saber system stem from.

Notes:
- Style switching is fine even without nudge since you can't switch while in a blocking animations i.e. while being pressured.
- A "quadrant" just refers to a possible direction for a saber swing.


General tweaks for saber vs saber:

• Keep nudge removed for all styles.
• Remove perfect parry (completely unreliable feature that doesn't add anything to any role, the only style it can almost reliably be done with is cyan with its full swings but it still isn't really reliable, but in general it does nothing but slightly favour parrying stalemates).
• Reintroduce semi-PB and nerf it if needed (make it take 25% or 50% damage instead of 0%). Semi-PB is necessary to allow some intermediary blocking potential while in an attacking combination, so as to be able to close in on the enemy more easily as well as engaging at a longer distance. The fact that camera aim-based PBs are easier to land on attacks which come from a distance should be addressed by not tweaking PB itself but favoring better attack options from long range. Feints and swings in the air are the currently existing mechanics which can help with that, they need to see more use and be buffed if that's necessary (mostly for slower styles); reinstating semi-PB does buff them.
• Reinstate fast PB counter on every full-PB rather than only on mblocked swingblocks, and have it drain normal damage instead of increased damage. This makes duels much more dynamic and allows for proper defense against an enemy swing chain since a normal counter will often be interrupted by such a chain (depends on the style).
• Increase global parry drains by giving them 25% (or possibly less, if that is still too much) of the damage of a bodyhit (1.4.3 proved that 50% was too much already). This buffs heavy styles allowing them to break the parry spam stalemate against lighter styles and further nerfs the ability to evade an enemy via parry spam as a tactic used for comebacks, since being parried with too low BP will prevent further chaining. The ability to bait an attacker into chasing while not even having low BP yourself is more than powerful enough a tactic and should not be viable while having low BP.
• Reintroduce chaining direction restrictions: general restrictions should be reverted to a gap of two quadrants between consecutive swings as it was before 1.4, instead of 1 or 0. Give some styles (Red, Purple, Cyan, Duals) different restrictions. This helps introducing limiters, obstacles to learn for new players, its removal was generally rather poorly perceived; also it buffs PBing in general which is good to further reduce parry spam, and it can introduce differences between styles while respecting their roles.
• (Possible: introduce some sort of visual-only nudge in order to address the issue of sabers idling into people and passing through each other when blocking or idling)
• (Possible: make mblocking swingblocks flinch - not stagger, flinch is less disabling - the opponent for all styles)

Style tweaks (note, this keeps in mind style switching):

• Blue (the most defensive, excellent mobility and interrupting potential, best style for constantly pressuring targets - with interrupts and ACM in particular vs sabers): remove all perks, keep a max of 3 swings in a chain if it appears balanced (against gunners & saberists), revert to 2 if it is too strong.
• Yellow (middle ground, decent mobility and excellent burst damage against gunners, best style to adapt to all situations): remove all perks.
• Red (the most offensive, huge burst damage against both saberists and gunners with low mobility and stamina, best style to quickly finish an opponent which isn't correctly prepared or gain a sudden significant advantage): remove all perks (strong parry damage removes the need for a stagger, since red will be able to damage all other styles significantly, while being severely prone to interruptions from faster styles - that is all other styles). Potentially tweak its AP and BP vs sabers, to make it more damaging if the current values aren't enough. Chaining direction restriction for Red: 3 quadrants between consecutive swings. (Red is still able to perform counters against gunners now that nudge is gone, so its potential other than the decently quick top-right swing isn't nil; on the other hand the harder chaining restriction helps opponents with PBing Red since parrying it is dangerous)
• Purple (defensive style vs saberists, offensive style vs gunners, vicious style with low raw stamina but the ability to gain or lose ACM very quickly, excellent damage against gunners despite much faster and mobile swings compared to Red, excellent style to deal mobile burst damage vs gunners and to strategize high ACM pressure vs sabers): remove current perks and add a single perk dealing with ACM gain and loss (able to gain ACM on every bodyhit of a chain, or able to gain ACM via full PBs, or something similar, and able to lose ACM faster than other styles in some way aswell). Tweak AP and BP values if needed to reduce its stamina and potentially once again increase its damage (more middle-ground between Yellow and Red). Chaining direction restriction for purple: possibly 1 quadrant between consecutive swings to make it harder to PB, but it could just keep the standard 2 quadrants.
• Cyan (offensive style, fastest full swings for excellent quick engaging potential vs gunners and sabers alike - very difficult to PB - with high mobility but weak chaining in the air, excellent style for engaging): remove all perks including perfect parry, increase AP and decrease BP if needed (so that it deals pretty decent damage against saberists despite being a fast style, yet still gets defeated by heavier styles when it comes to parries, and so that it is unable to tank like Blue, or even possibly like Yellow). Keep the reduced max swing chain count (4). Chaining direction restriction for Cyan: 3 quadrants between consecutive swings. Cyan's defining trait lies in its super-fast starting swings, this aspect is reinforced by weakening its chains.
• Duals (a powerhouse with the same type of role as Yellow but more offensive, fast and damaging swings against both sabers and gunners, weak defense vs sabers, uses both raw damage and ACM gain for quick draining): remove all perks, keep only the higher defense arc vs both sabers and guns. Chaining direction restriction for Duals: 1 or even 0 quadrants between consecutive swings. Possibly reduce BP for balance.
• Staff (a tanky style with also a role similar to Yellow but much more defensive, decently fast swings and good damage vs gunners, great defense vs sabers, medium damage vs sabers but uses superior stamina to overwhelm in the long run): remove all perks (possibly keep mblocks requiring only correct movement and timing, to see), keep the higher defense arc vs both sabers and gunners Possibly reduce AP for balance.

General tweaks for saber vs gun:

• Reduce the FP regen debuff period when shot to 0.5s from 1s, still have it ramp up to 2s or maybe 1.5s from being shot several times consecutively.
• Keep the low FP drain cooldown (50ms) but reinstate a middle-ground from v0 (where the FP drain cooldown was 200ms) by having all additional shots only drain about 0.5x FP during a window of 200ms after having been shot once. Will greatly help with jedi/sith 1vX.
• FP drains should remain quite low when blocking (1.4.5 standard is probably ok given the FP drain cooldown tweak above which nerfs it) and high when running, but will have to be tweaked (nerfed) given the buff above.
• Instead of having deflect 3 drain FP when the FP regen debuff is active, simply have it drain something like 1 FP per second, or just revert it to no FP drain (but still prevents FP regen of course) given the global FP drain tweak above which may nerf deflect (reminder: level 1 can't deflect at close range, can deflect one shot every 750ms and drains about 6 FP per second; level 2 can deflect at close range, can deflect one shot every 500ms and drains about 3 FP per second; while level 3 can deflect 1 shot every 250ms). Also add Deflect 1's FP drains to Deflect 0, so that mblocking vs sabers always has a cost (and Saber Deflect thus improves mblocking on top of deflecting).
• Revert the removal of saber melee moves while flinching. It was intentional, as you are completely vulnerable against shots while slapping even though flinch allows you to block shots if pressing altattack, so slapping in that situation is most often not a free advantage.

 

[Jaikanatar]

Making pb counter as it was but with normal swing damage, yes yes yes.

Half damage even. If there's a way to make it viable again but not op, yes yes yes. I think it is a good combo interrupter and gives the opponent less incentive to swing combos upon combos like a wildman, as there would be more risk in doing so again

 

[takuta pls]

Making pb counter as it was but with normal swing damage, yes yes yes.

Half damage even. If there's a way to make it viable again but not op, yes yes yes. I think it is a good combo interrupter and gives the opponent less incentive to swing combos upon combos like a wildman, as there would be more risk in doing so again

half, imo

i'm still not a fan of how fast the swing is but if it does come back it needs to be severely nerfed, the whole system should not revolve around how good you are at pb countering

 

[SeV]

This is my spec/possible changelog on how to obtain a stable saber system from 1.4.5, designed and simplified primarily with open mode in mind, with the least amount of minor tweaks possible (meaning the current 1.4.5 general design for sabering mechanics would remain the same). My primary reason for writing this small spec is that the dev team intends to settle the saber system design issue sooner rather than later, and as such intends to refrain from implementing major revamps which could easily require a few more years to fully balance. I believe Tempest (currently the one other dev bent on designing the saber system) has somewhat taken that to heart recently, but regardless i wish to write down my own spec down independently from his vision on needed changes, and i hope in the end a reasonable and simple compromise will be found so that we can finally and happily stop touching the saber system.

This would normally rather be intended for private dev discussions and is more specifically meant for Tempest and other devs interested in gameplay, but since there are few of us i believe it is appropriate to post it publicly.

Design keywords for this spec: minor tweaks, simplify, open mode.


######## Changelog ########

General tweaks for saber vs saber:

• Removed perfect parry.
• Reintroduced semi-PB and nerfed it (25% or 50% damage instead of 0%, if needed).
• Reinstated fast PB counter on every full-PB rather than only on mblocked swingblocks, and it drains normal damage (instead of the increased damage from 1.4).
• Increased global parry drains by giving them 25% (or possibly less, if that is still too much) of the damage of a bodyhit.
• Reintroduced chaining direction restrictions: general restrictions reverted to a gap of two quadrants between consecutive swings as it was before 1.4, instead of 1 or 0. Some styles (Red, Purple, Cyan, Duals) have different restrictions, see Style tweaks for details.
• (Possible: introduce some sort of visual-only nudge in order to address the issue of sabers idling into people and passing through each other when blocking or idling)
• (Possible: make mblocking swingblocks flinch - not stagger, flinch is less disabling - the opponent for all styles)

I agree with removing Perfect Parry. It's stupid and superfluous. I also agree with re-instating Semi-PB and putting it at around 80% dmg reduction instead of PBs full 100%.

Fast PB counters are problematic in a system without nudge to provide offensive momentum, and is partly responsible for a defenders advantage. It also works similarly to how PB combo breaking did with regards to removing momentum of attackers. This wasn't a problem for me in 1.4 due to how nudge existed. Rather, because of nudge PBs became harder to perform and so went up in value thus meriting larger rewards. Alas, this is one of the mistakes you committed post 1.4 to make sabering less balanced in terms of the offense/defense effect ratio which should be somewhere like 60/40 or 65/35 in the favouring of offense over defense.

I think 25% of bodyhit as parry dmg is still far too much. The parry drains should be more like 5 or 10 % of bodyhit, with added weight depending on styles. It can be 10% for styles within the same category, and add 5% to the heavier style from fast to medium, and another 5 when doing fast vs red. So if fast and heavy parries clashed, blue would do 10% bodyhit and red would do 20% of bodyhit. This takes into account ACM, and I'm also assuming blue might get upgraded from wet noodle status AP wise.

Not really a fan of swing restrictions either to be honest. Visual only nudge, no. I'd rather have a fully working nudge/clash ala RC1 style. Freedom to attack and not attack is a problem, but if that can be fixed having nudge with clashes would be very good. Also, nudge on first swings would be halfswing speed and not as insta as before.

I dunno about Mblock flinching instead of merely combo breaking or whatever. It's visual clarity is a boon, but over all I would want to steer sabering AWAY from things like staggers and flinches and that kind of thing. Staffs mblock perk is already kind of an abomination. The problem lies in how much it deters attackers if applied across all styles with no nudge. I'd be for things like this and fast PB counters if nudge existed in some capacity (Not just visual).

Style tweaks:

• Blue: removed all perks (reverted max swings in a chain to 2 if 3 is too strong).
• Yellow: removed all perks.
• Red: removed all perks. Increased AP and decreased BP (if needed). Added chaining direction restriction: 3 quadrants between consecutive swings.
• Purple: removed current perks and added a single perk dealing with ACM gain and loss. Increased AP and decreased BP (if needed). Added chaining direction restriction: 1 quadrant between consecutive swings to make it harder to PB (possibly).
• Cyan: removed all perks. Increased AP and decreased BP (if needed). Added chaining direction restriction: 3 quadrants between consecutive swings.
• Duals: removed all perks, kept only the higher defense arc vs both sabers and guns. Added chaining direction restriction: 1 or even 0 quadrants between consecutive swings. Reduced BP for balance (possibly).
• Staff: removed all perks (possibly kept mblocks requiring only correct movement and timing, to see), kept the higher defense arc vs both sabers and gunners. Reduced AP for balance (possibly).

::Sadface:: For a final sabersystem to not even have perks, to say nothing of specialized lightsaber forms buyable with points. Very sad if MBII sabering ended up in such a state, permanently stuck with something that has potential but never gets to exhibit said potential. Revamping perks is fairly easy, espeically if we give a modified version to certain styles as perks. I am thinking specifically of red, whose primary problem of slow first swinging despite being an offense oriented style, would be insta fixed by giving it a halfswing based nudge slightly slower than a chaining nudge. In truth I'd like for most styles to get that, but saber devs for some reason don't want nudge. Btw, nudge in saber vs gunner also a boon I believe. So all in all, absolutely not a fan of removing perks like that for a final build, yuck. I would do modifications, maybe make a few things count as perks like giving blue 3 hit combos but taking from it the stupid PB perk. Same with red, do away with the retarded stagger style and give it halfswing nudge instead. And as for the other styles a few changes and should be good. Just do that for a public test.

General tweaks for saber vs gun:

• Reduced the FP regen debuff period when shot to 0.5s from 1s.
• Kept the low FP drain cooldown (50ms) but reinstated a middle-ground from v0 (where the FP drain cooldown was 200ms) by having all additional shots only drain about 0.5x FP during a window of 200ms after having been shot once.
• FP drains when blocking/running tweaked to balance the above change.
• Reverted Deflect 3's FP draining to 0 (it still prevents FP regeneration). Added Deflect 1's 5 FP drain to Deflect 0, so it applies all the time to mblocking.
• Reverted the removal of saber melee moves while flinching.

I've been saying for ages to make the debuff 0.5s or remove it entirely and just base saber vs gunner on a more volatile quick regen quick drain gameplay. But I mostly agree with these changes, except on deflect. Leave my Mblock alone.

As my final note: PB fast counters don't increase the dynamic nature of a duel, but decreases it drastically if nudge doesn't exist, due to making offense super risky. Why attack when u can wait for the other to attack and PB counter him and get an easy advantage? Fast PB counters only work under constraints such as Mblock due to the skill it requires to pull off, or conversely if offensive actions were harder to PB such as under a nudge system where a nudge allows the user to go straight to a halfswing instead of the usual full windup.

Another note: For more dynamic duels, a fast halfswing 'prodding/poking' style move like Yellow A swings in 1.3, is needed in my estimation. Even if the activation restrictions are in place, having such fast halfswings of one direction/limited directions, works wonders for the dynamic nature of duels even if the swings were penalized with less dmg and meant as a prod/poke/jab rather than a full punch.

I'll leave that for now, but I must say it's rather basic stuff and far too simple for a saber revamp. Also the fact that many implications regarding having nudge vs certain mechanics in comparison to not having nudge vs certain mechanics is rather jarring. I sure hope what you layed out doesn't come to fruition, but there are some good ideas mixed in of course. But as a whole, no.

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

So 1.4 but more boring without perks?

Your best patch was 1.3, yet for some reason you're convinced it was bad and are constantly attempting to go into the opposite direction, a real shame.

• Reintroduce chaining direction restrictions: general restrictions should be reverted to a gap of two quadrants between consecutive swings as it was before 1.4, instead of 1 or 0. Give some styles (Red, Purple, Cyan, Duals) different restrictions. This helps introducing limiters, obstacles to learn for new players, its removal was generally rather poorly perceived; also it buffs PBing in general which is good to further reduce parry spam, and it can introduce differences between styles while respecting their roles.

I agree with, that's about it.

 

[SkeeSilentT]

I can tell you definitively: removing more Dueling perks isn't the answer. I see perks as something of a bandaid to help the styles' innate flaws, not just "give all stances either one or none because everything is balanced yaaay."

Tweaking the perks more? Making changes to the saber styles themselves? That may be a step in the right direction.

The problems with the current build are BP Regen being too high and base saber damage being too weak; you basically require ACM to finish someone off, no matter what stance you use. This is why 2v1s are nearly impossible (even for those who've played for years against those who are relatively new) unless you mblock disarm or get a back whack.

IMO, when the modern day, easy-as-pie-to-pull-off Perfect Block system was implemented, BP regeneration should have been reduced, not increased, in order to account for the BP one saves. Now against two duelists of equal skill, duels can last upward of 2-5 minutes. All you need to do is land just enough body hits to prevent your opponent from getting ACM, and your innate BP regen will ensure you weather the storm. Single-swing, swing block spam parrying with intermittent Perfect blocks thrown in here and there, is the present meta and it will stay the meta until slower styles are given an answer to having their swings interrupted by faster styles which are just as, if not more, offensive (speed > base damage) while making NO sacrifices defensively themselves.

Let's be real, the top dogs right now are Blue, Cyan, and Purple (because of how incredibly powerful ACM is in this build.) Yellow is in a tier of its own because of how good it is at generally everything, and Staff and Duals follow close behind Yellow. Red is at the back of the pack, only excelling at killing Wookiees and killing destructible objects on maps in open.

Let's look at why Red sucks right now.

.: It doesn't have nudge:
-- Red needed nudge in order to be offensive. Without nudge, Red is little more than a counter attack stance that must wait to be attacked before it can attack.

.: It has the slowest, most telegraphed animation for its 1st swing:
-- This makes Red arguably the easiest stance to read, predict, Perfect Block, and Manual block disarm.

.: It has reduced movement speed while swinging/comboing:
-- As if swinging slowly wasn't bad enough, this basically punishes you for swinging at anything faster than an SBD. Those two things make red pretty nonviable in open unless the entire enemy team is wookiees.

.: Its damage output is a wet noodle compared to what it used to be.
-- compared to v1.0 - v1.3, Red's damage has shrunk by somewhere between 33-50%, after factoring the 20% base damage reduction in v1.4, and the 0.5 x AP modifier reduction on its combos. If you need ACM to finish off a target with any stance, what difference does having slightly higher base damage than yellow make?

.: What you propose @Stassin: remove Red stagger.
-- Without stagger or Nudge, Red would be utterly helpless against being spammed by faster, and more efficient styles. All they would need to do is face-hug. It doesn't matter how much BP damage the stance does, if you can't land a body hit, the fight is over.

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

BP Regen is fine, needs higher damages though.

Cyan isn't one of the top styles: Purple>Staff>Blue>Cyan>Yellow>Duals>Red atm.

Red needs maybe 35% more damage, and 10% more defense, and it'll be fine. Red should be a glass-cannon.

Also, believe it or not, Red/Purple counter the faster styles pretty well, red just can't deal with Staff/Yellow/Purple at all.

 

[Stassin]

So, i'll answer the main points that were raised (and by the way i'll repeat, the whole point of this is that we DON'T want another big revamp, but MINOR TWEAKS from 1.4.5, otherwise we'll never be stable for years and years to come):

- 25% of bodyhit damage on parries is only natural, 10% or less would only equal to 1 or 2 BP drain for a basic slash, which is what we already have. It should be more around 5 BP drain, because the point is for parries to drain more than what we currently have.

- I'm fine with nudge, i'm fine without nudge, both can work. The reason why i'm saying to keep nudge removed is because of the overwhelming feedback against it mostly from 1.3 players, i totally understand where you're coming from Sev. With nudge, there are more options against both sabers and guns, the system is more challenging and more complex, however that isn't necessarily always what we are looking for. I feel that removing nudge healthily simplifies the system for new players and better caters to open mode psychology where you have many other things to worry about. Yes, i've tried many things including many things that were never in the releases over the years i've messed with the saber system, and from experience what we should be trying to create is a system as simple and easy to pick as possible, AND DESIGNED FOR OPEN MODE PRIMARILY. Which in no way means it will be terrible for saber duels. Something that was relatively common in v0 and has almost completely disappeared from dueling due to all my perk additions and complexifications, STYLE SWITCHING, is more than enough to compensate for the loss of all these new artificial mechanics, which do nothing but complexify the wrong way.

- Even not considering the fact that they tend to kill style switching, perks on every style are USELESS for the design and a completely artificial overcomplexification that adds literally nothing new or interesting to the gameplay. If there was only blue/yellow/red, there would be no need for any perk at all, we all lived fine that way in v0 and the dueling community had many happy vets. These three styles don't need any perk, their base features define them already. What matters is the difference between styles not how a single style is. Cyan's perk can easily be considered to be its default hyperfast starting swing which again defines the style. Purple, if it is to be a defensive style, needs some ACM perk to allow it to gain the advantage in the long term, or some other perk that allows for the same effect; however, that is only because i've marked it as a defensive style. If we'd want it to be more of a duplicate of Red, as it was in the past, then it would need to be reverted kind of like how it was in the past: even lower BP than Red and even higher AP than Red, without any need for a perk, making it the most high risk/high reward style. However i don't like that idea because Red intuitively gives the vibe of needing to be the strongest style, not purple. As for Duals/Staff ? Variants of Yellow, Duals is fast and chaotic so that defines it more than well enough already. Staff, as a more defensive Yellow, is still kinda too similar to Yellow when it comes to basic features, so it should be decent to add some spice to it for differentiation. That's it. Add too much spice and it becomes worse than without any spice.

- Fast PB counters. They are not problematic in a system without nudge. Just like Red without nudge and without a perk is not problematic in a system without nudge. Just because there is no nudge, doesn't mean "attacking first" suddenly becomes terrible and implies you'll get hard-countered everytime you do. Except with Red, for all other styles it's all a matter of "attacking first close" or "attacking first far away". Without nudge, attacks started up close are still very hard to PB, the result is basically the same as with nudge (sure, an opponent can use the advanced strategy of quickly running backwards to try to have a better chance of PBing the swing you started up close, but that is also quite a risky call, he might very well get hit while running). So there is no issue with "PBing first", which you all call "defense" (but defense is a much more general term to me), being OP, it's just a matter of learning how to attack up close and making your attacks harder to PB. It was easier with nudge, SURE, but in fact it was so easy that it made trying to PB nudged attacks almost pointless and random. Even though i don't personally dislike nudge, i believe it may even be better without nudge because of this, and i think that's the main argument of people who do dislike nudge anyways.

- Now, on the same topic as the paragraph above, but regarding attacks from long range from all styles OR Red attacks without nudge even from close range, which both suffer from the same problem: they are too easy to PB. The problem being the speed of the attack which is too easy to see coming. Well, people, it's time to learn how to attack from long range. There are in-built mechanics and features which can help you there, and need to be used instead of relying all the time on facehugging and nudging. I'm talking about purposely missing swings in the air to bait PBs or even simply to get the faster attack, i'm also talking about feints (which is probably worse than missing swings in the air most of the time, but it's still an option). Attacks from long range are still never going to be as effective as ones from close range, however they are a necessary step when your opponent won't easily let you close in. And that's why SEMI-PB is absolutely necessary. It gives a huge leeway for still negating damage even when you get interrupted during a combo, which is a risk you have to take when you are the one starting an attack from long range. You start comboing and plan to hit with a halfswing or a chained-in-the-air swing, rather than a starting swing because it is slower, so you leave yourself open to interruptions and without semi-PB that is completely disencouraged by the fact that you can no longer negate any damage apart from parrying as soon as you've started a combo. Which means, without semi-PB, attacks from long range are very risky and your "defensive play being too strong" becomes a problem.

- Still on the same topic: Red attacks from both close and long range without nudge ? Precisely, use feints or miss swings in the air to get the faster attack, and you still have semi-PB to help you against interrupts. This still makes Red clunkier to use than other styles and still makes it more of a countering style for sure but that's fine, after all it has the absolute upper hand compared to other styles when it comes to exchanging parries, since with these changes i'm writing, parry damage would be based on bodyhit damage. Red just needs to be appropriately balanced in terms of AP and BP, so that it really does sufficient damage.



- Minor comments: swing chaining restrictions depending on style would work as a better replacement for idiotic "number perks" with +1 ACM or -5 BP or a stagger here and there. More generally, reverting to the old restriction of 2 quadrants instead of 1 is good as an obstacle to overcome for new players so that they are forced to learn better movement, and for the gameplay it basically makes PBing stronger (and would give some more PBing options against red spam since Red would have the upper hand in parry spam; and Cyan also having more restrictions like Red is basically to slightly counterbalance its defining starting swing which is the main strength of the style). I'm fne with the restrictions remaining as they currently are, but i think the above arguments are worth it for the design of the system, as currently PBing isn't too easy (compared to some earlier builds - 1.3).





In summary: no nudge and insta counters on full-PBs are fine but for that we need semi-PB for Red and attacks at long range (attacks at close range, executed properly, are good enough even without nudge), and we also need parry drains based on bodyhit damage. The system needs to be simplified with open mode and new players in mind, which at the same time will help style switching to bloom once again for more than enough depth at high dueling level. This is much better design to begin with, as "saber forms" are a dream for another game with much more focus on only saber vs saber; in mb2 they would just be far too intrusive given the already existing complexity of the overall gameplay.


On that last point, and for the record, when i first joined the mb2 team, the old forums were still intact, and i could read dev discussions from many years ago. One of them was from Azuvector, about implementing saber forms. The topic, the discussions and his and other people's amazing amount of ideas were nothing short of overwhelmingly huge so i could never read it all. In the end if i'm not mistaken, nothing was coded. Not surprising, given how just the discussions could go on for years. Really, it's for another game. The only reason why i even introduced perks in the first place in v1.1, was because i added Cyan/Purple into open mode and redesigned them to be balanced (they weren't very balanced in FA), it was nothing more than an artificial and overall bad idea to try and differentiate styles due to adding duplicates of Blue/Red. It wasn't an attempt to implement anything anywhere close to "saber forms". Some interesting things still came out from trying it out and in hindsight maybe a few features can remain, but that's it.

 

[SkeeSilentT]

Achilles:

- - - - -

BP Regen is fine, needs higher damages though.

I agree that the numbers can be tweaked here and there, and maybe the amount of regen present is perfectly fine, but the damage-to-survivability ratio is out of whack, and damage would need to be increased more significantly in that case.

When BP Regen was increased, the value of holding still and turtling was dramatically increased -- mind you, this is along with Perfect Blocks being insanely easy to do now. It also made running away a more viable tactic because once you get enough distance from your aggressor, one can easily regenerate half of their BP in about 5 seconds, while they regen none trying to catch up to you.

Cyan isn't one of the top styles

Cyan and blue do not have any BP drained when single-swing spamming. In a dueling meta that encourages single swing swing block and parry spamming, Blue and Cyan are the best stances defensively, and if you can reliably swing block and land body hits, they can be the best offensively as well. It's nearly impossible to mblock disarm a Blue or Cyan duelist because their swings are so fast, and the system encourages them to spam single swing blocks which for their stances only, drain 0 BP.

Also, believe it or not, Red counter the faster styles pretty well, red just can't deal with Staff/Yellow/Purple at all.

Can you tell me what mechanically makes red good against Blue or Cyan? I don't see how it has any advantages mechanically speaking. I mean it does more damage, but it's slower and it actually costs BP to swing. Single spamming isn't viable with red; they have to combo and can only cause stagger if the 2nd swing is a body hit. Cyan on the other hand, staggers every time a perfect parry occurs, regardless of swing type: swing block, parry, spam or all 3.

- - - - -

Stassin: I think you're doing a good job and thank you for sharing these changes with us, and for being stepping up to be a piñata of a sort for community feedback. Sorry if it sounds like I'm being too critical -- just sharing my 2 cents.

. . . what we should be trying to create is a system as simple and easy to pick as possible, AND DESIGNED FOR OPEN MODE PRIMARILY. . . STYLE SWITCHING, is more than enough to compensate for the loss of all these new artificial mechanics (perks,) which do nothing but complexify the wrong way.

If style switching is going to be implemented as a philosophy to balance out the crappier styles for Open mode, are they going to continue costing 8 points per stance? For example, if I spend 8 points on Red, am I going to have to spend another 8 points on Blue or Yellow? If so, what beyond the threat of a grand wookiee invasion would ever encourage me to ever pick up Red stance over Yellow stance in open mode?

perks on every style are USELESS for the design and a completely artificial overcomplexification that adds literally nothing new or interesting to the gameplay.

Then why is Purple getting "a single perk dealing with ACM gain and loss." Why does it, among the many other styles, get the only perk, and a dueling-centric one at that?

The system needs to be simplified with open mode and new players in mind, which at the same time will help style switching to bloom once again for more than enough depth at high dueling level.

No. Just No.

If anything, the system has been oversimplified enough already. It's user-friendly, intuitive, and essentially engineered for the lowest common denominator. The skill gap has been closing up at an alarming rate between veterans of builds past and new players ages 14 and under. How much more can you dumb down a system before you completely iron out all of its charming imperfections? A lot of the mechanics, and exploits (or learning curves, depending on how you look at them) which have been removed from the game are fondly missed by veterans. Do not think for even one moment that just simplifying things makes them better; you just wind up making a stupider game for stupider people.

Bring back mobile melee animation holding, old Red stance combo restrictions, old Luke NPC long jump, and cancel-able katas/DFA's.

You guys sure keep on taking out the more fun bugs and "exploits," but for can never fix the most annoying issues: join bug and kyle bug to name a few.

It's about what's most fun, not what's most simple or what ever fixes your OCD. F-U-N. Fun takes precedence over simplicity or any anal retentive sense of mechanical "working as intended" perfection.

 

[Rosh+]

Design keywords for this spec: minor tweaks, simplify, open mode.

Stopped reading right there.
Mod's been simplified enough over the years.

It's about what's most fun.

You see, that's the keyword.

Currently, most of the old community is gone, a community that has played games like Quake III, or some other such game, but generally games with a high learning curve, so generally, they enjoy a more challenging MP experience.

However, on the other side of the coin, we have a bunch of new players, who have come from JKbase, since it's only fun with many people, and currently that is somehow even more dead than MB2, or who have come here by seeing a video on youtube, and expect the game to be super fun, and nice, and at the very least, better than COD or whatever pile of shit they're tossing out today.

So, on one side, we have a bunch of good players, who want the game to stay as it is, and was, and who want a challenging experience. On the other, we have a bunch of cuddle bears who don't want any swearing to happen, or to have to die in the game, because that makes them mad, and that's bad, and shouldn't happen, and they think the game should be changed.

In the middle of it all, we have the devs, and they want to do something, and they pride themselves on listening to the community. One part of the community is a silent minority, and the other is a very loud majority. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.

So, after listening to my long, 5 minute (to type) spiel, I want you to answer this question:

If the devs pride themselves on listening to the community, and the only real outspoken, collective part of the community is this loud majority of cuddle bears, and very bad players, who are the devs going to listen to?

I'm going to make it clear: What they consider fun, is not what YOU consider fun.

 

[Stassin]

There is literally nothing new in my book for me to answer. We are trying to reach a stable saber system quickly and easily precisely so that we can have a bit more manpower focused on other things soon. As for fun, everyone will have their own definition for it based on their own experience (well, that is if they actually try to define it, it's not as easy as you seem to believe to make the connection between the feels you get from playing and the actual existing mechanics and features - in fact, you haven't really explained what exactly IS fun for you in the saber system... what i'm seeing is merely direct and marginal reactions to some changes or removals of features you were accustomed to, nothing more... and that's natural, that's how i started making saber system changes too, by marginally noticing things that felt out of place or that could have been better; but the bigger picture of what we may call the "gameplay experience" is a little more complex to grasp than that), the design that i'm trying to do here is based on a large compilation of experiences and feedbacks from which i have slowly started understanding what principles will lead to a better (more fun to play) system for everyone. It isn't what i personally consider fun, at all, i would certainly enjoy saber forms and a hyper dueling-focused game - i enjoyed OJP Enhanced, if by chance you know what that is - however i am doing this current design with clear goals in mind: open mode first (hence simplifying) and only minor tweaks from 1.4.5, you might think having "open mode first" is a bad goal to begin with, but that's what mb2 is primarily about, so i will make sure it stays that way regardless of the opinions of extremely biased people in particular those who literally only play saber duels. In any case, this goal, and simplifying, doesn't necessarily mean the system won't be fun in practice, even for you, just because you hate seeing features taken away on the paper. As a very simple example, in v0 the saber system literally had half the features it does now, and people still considered it very fun, so what you are saying about oversimplifying means nothing at all to me, sorry.

About style switching, there is absolutely far more potential for that to bring fun to gameplay than there is to artificial perks, so by trying to encourage it i'm actually not simplifying the system at all. My experience in particular from v0 and before makes me sure of that, even if you might disagree. In sabering duels, will there be a problem buying several styles for 8 points each ? No. In open mode ? Of course there will, and that is balanced, since having several styles makes you much more versatile and stronger.

About Red style ? It is indeed rather difficult to make it work versus gunners without nudge compared to the others, but you still have its decent forward+left swing. More importantly, you can use counters with Red when you are shot, just like with sabers, and these are quite fast. This makes Red a more technically difficult style to benefit from in open mode versus gunners, and that is fine, since it's high risk high reward and can destroy saberists quickly by design.

Then why is Purple getting "a single perk dealing with ACM gain and loss." Why does it, among the many other styles, get the only perk, and a dueling-centric one at that?

You didn't understand what i meant at all, and i guess that's normal since i'm literally talking in riddles due to having many layers of insights on the design...

I meant that it is absurd for the basic styles, blue/yellow/red to have perks, because their basic features already allow them to fulfill their roles very well, and the point of perks is to help differentiate the styles due to having potentially duplicate roles given the basic features of the styles (swing speed, animations... which aren't things we want to ever touch, these would be MAJOR changes): blue/cyan, red/purple, yellow/duals/staff. Cyan already has a very special feature, its super-fast starting swings, so it's easy to make its role opposite from blue and have it be offensive with higher AP and lower BP, and it already naturally has higher aggressiveness against gunners because of that. Purple ? It's slow, just like Red, though a little bit less. In order for it to be defensive, it needs to be able to gain the upper hand in the long term, and at the same time have good survival potential, so it needs some perk dealing with ACM gain for example. ACM gain on PB is decent because it's a deterrent for opponents just attacking you recklessly, as they might be feeding your ACM and giving you the long-term win.

You might say, why does cyan have to be an offensive style and purple a defensive one ? Well... because in their basic features (swing speeds...), they are similar to blue and red respectively, and it just so happens that blue and red are defensive and offensive respectively. Do we want literal duplicate styles with the same roles ? We have blue, a fast and defensive style, and red, a slow and offensive style. Diversity screams for cyan to be a fast and offensive style and purple a slow and defensive style, just so the defensive and offensive roles are represented amongst both fast and slow styles.

 

[SkeeSilentT]

Thanks for the clarification. Go ahead and roll out the patch. I know you think these changes will be for the best, and maybe youre right.

It's taken all of us some time to understand the power balance (or lack thereof) in the current version of mb2 and the sooner the version you're talking about is released, the sooner we can begin openly critiquing and improving upon it.

I hear you on the asymmetrical balance between the styles: defensive vs offensive and what not. That much makes sense, but there are other ways to make purple defensive beyond "lol i have acm and you don't just because i can pblock with impunity because combo damage has been halved." Talk about arbitrary and arguably overpowered. How about making the dueling system less reliant on ACM to secure kills? Why not reduce purple's base BP modifier by 10%, but make purple completely immune to the effects of enemy ACM, but with the added caveat of also being incapable of building ACM of its own instead? That way its purely defensive and not best of both worlds ACM god mode.

Just know, simpler is not always better -- what's the point of dumbing things down to appease newer players if it alienates mb2's long-time player base?

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

I agree that the numbers can be tweaked here and there, and maybe the amount of regen present is perfectly fine, but the damage-to-survivability ratio is out of whack, and damage would need to be increased more significantly in that case.

Damage to survivability ratio is out of whack because combos do almost no damage since 1.4, and all of the damages of every style were nerfed substantially as well, without any replacement. So we're dealing with low damages, that is the only real problem. High BP regen is super important, because it allows you to fight multiple saberists more reliably.

When BP Regen was increased, the value of holding still and turtling was dramatically increased -- mind you, this is along with Perfect Blocks being insanely easy to do now. It also made running away a more viable tactic because once you get enough distance from your aggressor, one can easily regenerate half of their BP in about 5 seconds, while they regen none trying to catch up to you.

Tbh turtling is impossible against a good player in this patch. It was possible in 1.3 if you were *extremely* good at PBing, but now it is impossible. If your opponent can half swing and/or yaw, then you'll lose rather quickly. Running has always been a problem, and I've always wanted a chase mechanic, but it is important not to confuse footwork for running.

Cyan and blue do not have any BP drained when single-swing spamming. In a dueling meta that encourages single swing swing block and parry spamming, Blue and Cyan are the best stances defensively, and if you can reliably swing block and land body hits, they can be the best offensively as well. It's nearly impossible to mblock disarm a Blue or Cyan duelist because their swings are so fast, and the system encourages them to spam single swing blocks which for their stances only, drain 0 BP.

Blue is the best offensive stance, not the best defensive. Cyan is decent when used defensively. I have disarmed many blue/cyan users personally, but you shouldn't base whether a style is good or bad around mblocking. I have no trouble beating cyan users, blue is difficult though.

Can you tell me what mechanically makes red good against Blue or Cyan? I don't see how it has any advantages mechanically speaking. I mean it does more damage, but it's slower and it actually costs BP to swing. Single spamming isn't viable with red; they have to combo and can only cause stagger if the 2nd swing is a body hit. Cyan on the other hand, staggers every time a perfect parry occurs, regardless of swing type: swing block, parry, spam or all 3.

Red is faster than blue/cyan, and you can destroy them through interrupts/trades.

 

[SkeeSilentT]

@{Δ} Achilles

Yeah, We'll just have to agree to disagree here; I still see it as:

Blue > Cyan > Purple >> Yellow >> Staff > Duals >> Red. (where >> indicates a Tier shift)

I'm sure somewhere between both our observations is the truth. I'm obviously biased in favor of red and you're biased in favor of cyan, and that's fine -- it's human nature to defend that which is near and dear to you. I'm just glad we both see eye-to-eye concerning red being worst overall in the present build.

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

@{Δ} Achilles

Yeah, We'll just have to agree to disagree here; I still see it as:

Blue > Cyan > Purple >> Yellow >> Staff > Duals >> Red. (where >> indicates a Tier shift)

I'm sure somewhere between both our observations is the truth. I'm obviously biased in favor of red and you're biased in favor of cyan, and that's fine -- it's human nature to defend that which is near and dear to you. I'm just glad we both see eye-to-eye concerning red being worst overall in the present build.

I have fought many users of all of these styles from all skill levels, which is where I base my tier list. I am not biased in favor of cyan, as I main staff, however I defend Cyan against mindless complaints about it when it isn't even remotely close to being as strong as blue. Staff is insanely overpowered, as is purple. Red and Duals are the worst, but it isn't impossible to win with them against high level saberists.

 

[Stassin]

I hear you on the asymmetrical balance between the styles: defensive vs offensive and what not. That much makes sense, but there are other ways to make purple defensive beyond "lol i have acm and you don't just because i can pblock with impunity because combo damage has been halved." Talk about arbitrary and arguably overpowered. How about making the dueling system less reliant on ACM to secure kills? Why not reduce purple's base BP modifier by 10%, but make purple completely immune to the effects of enemy ACM, but with the added caveat of also being incapable of building ACM of its own instead? That way its purely defensive and not best of both worlds ACM god mode.

Given the "role" i laid out for it, purple needs something in order to be defensive yet still retain "slow" and "relatively high AP and low BP" properties, so a perk of some sort is kinda needed, but of course it doesn't have to be ACM gain on PB specifically, it has to be something that gives purple short-term survivability and long-term potential to overwhelm. Making purple immune to the effects of enemy ACM is a very interesting idea; and in that case it shouldn't be incapable of building ACM of its own. Enemies would still gain/lose ACM against the purple user normally, but it just wouldn't apply in terms of BP damage when their current style is purple. It somewhat gives more of a long-term survivability than short-term, and doesn't necessarily help too much with long-term potential to overwhelm since purple won't be getting much more ACM than the opposing style but it's still a bonus. So the best answer against it would be burst, short-term damage, and purple would still be weak against that (no deterrent like ACM on PB) so i'm not sure, the idea lacks something in that department.

If anything, the system has been oversimplified enough already. It's user-friendly, intuitive, and essentially engineered for the lowest common denominator. The skill gap has been closing up at an alarming rate between veterans of builds past and new players ages 14 and under. How much more can you dumb down a system before you completely iron out all of its charming imperfections? A lot of the mechanics, and exploits (or learning curves, depending on how you look at them) which have been removed from the game are fondly missed by veterans. Do not think for even one moment that just simplifying things makes them better; you just wind up making a stupider game for stupider people.

To answer this, you are confusing things here. Mostly you are talking about bugs and unintended features being removed as "oversimplification", including things not pertaining to sabering like melee holding bug. But in terms of features and mechanics, it's the opposite, in v1.1 and after that, many things were added. Too many, literally making style switching fade away which was the most horrible loss.

In terms of feeling though (which is closely related to having fun when playing), i believe i know where you're coming from, and it's mainly because mechanics were changed, not removed, in order to massively increase their reliability. Parries in v0 literally only happened when sabers actually clashed (which meant that very often, mutual swings with similar timing would hit and drain both players instead of cancelling out), now they happen regardless of that as long as the swings are both in their middle, threatening phase, which removed some "precision" feel of control over your saber. What else: new PB, aim-based rather than saber clash-based, which gave totally different feels and in particular once again the feel of having less precise control over your saber (but in return, was far more reliable as a mechanic). And finally, the removal of nudge, that was indeed a removal (not even intentional at the time tbh, just to temporarily get rid of saber lag issues...). These three things (the first two were, like you said, somewhat "imperfect" and unreliable before v1.1 and that contributed to the feels), i am pretty sure, are what totally changed the feels of the saber system from v1.0 to v1.1, and caused people accustomed to these feels to be bewildered. This could be said to have been the oversimplification that you are actually referring to, and also the cause of what you refer to as "the skill-gap has been closing up", but that isn't true in fact, because these mechanics were simply unreliable and couldn't be fully controlled (because saber animations are too fast and chaotic so you can't humanly control in a real duel the position of your saber well enough to make use of these old mechanics reliably), so most of the "skill and feels" that were believed to be a thing were in fact just "being accustomed to the unreliability", and literally playing around with randomness; in v0 with simple left-right spam you could reach the highest skillcap due to that, so it's the same as now, it just "felt harder" because the mechanics, instead of being clear, were unclear and uncontrollable (in the case of parries, you'd sometimes get a parry, sometimes a mutual bodyhit, and that couldn't truly be controlled especially since interruptions weren't a thing; so it "felt" like more happened, like it was harder than now, but these additional things that happened were basically random so it wasn't actually harder than now, in terms of what you could control it is the same). On the other hand, all the perks and whatnot ? These things have literally no impact on feels and are just there for balance and slight variety, that's why i keep saying they aren't important, artificial, and mostly a braindead overcomplexification when added on styles that don't need them to fulfill their intended roles.

I chose reliability rather than "feels" and "fun" built from literal randomness. Maybe that was a poor idea, and it wasn't so bad to have some unreliability in favor of keeping this closeness of control over your saber. No, i'm sure it wasn't so bad at all. It's a difficult line to draw. If you consider open mode, the gameplay is complex enough, and reliability should be the priority; that's why i did all this, in v0 countless times my opponents would get a random PB due to the chaotic animations, sometimes a parry would save them and sometimes not. It was annoying, despite the feels. I can guess that people who didn't try to look into what was happening very closely wouldn't notice these inconsistencies and just accept them (i didn't truly understand them either until i actually got the see the code to really fully understand what was happening), so to them only the feels have been removed and that's pretty bad. Well, what's done is done, and we won't make big revamps anymore, just minor tweaks, that's what this thread is about. For a saber system to have this closeness of control while still being quite reliable, it would need to have better and less chaotic animations and possibly be slower too. That's not what we have with jka's base and we don't want to slow down the gameplay as it is on par with gunning and needs to remain that way since you know, "open mode".


Anyways, let me just take the example of nudge from v0 and the basic thought process i went through until now regarding nudge. In v1.1, i removed nudge, the overwhelming majority of the feedback was outraged. So nudge seemed like an important fun factor, buidling timing and rhythm and a technical obstacle to overcome for new players, giving decent depth to the system; at the same time, it makes reasonable sense to be granted faster swings at close range. So i was planning to bring it back once the glaring saber lag issues were resolved. What happens next ? 1.3. Large afflux of players due to Ep. VII. Then what ? Feedback at the time still had complaints about the system having become "arcade" compared to v0, so i teamed up with SeV and started thinking of how to integrate some of the past mechanics that brought more "fun" to the saber system. From v0, nudge; from RC1, blocking animations which led to counters. Mainly (and also some other attempts which were totally new, like removed chaining restrictions, the uniformization of halfswing speeds in all directions, and two types of counters, one instantaneous and one based on a halfswing; ... and also faster blue chaining and reduced number of swings in chain for blue, etc.). And so, v1.4 is created. Immediately there is an outrage about nudge being horrible from the 1.1-1.3 players, and even from older players which doesn't surprise me since it wasn't all about nudge but also modified parries and PB compared to v0. But i believed i knew what i was doing together with SeV, given our testing for the design, and the system was decent with the potential to be stable despite the feedback, so i was planning to retire after 1.4.2. But Tempest joined for more changes, which due to some circumstances forced me into a half-baked release of 1.4.3 where things like PB combo-breaking were removed due to feeling bad in hindsight, and the high parry drains were actually an attempt to imitate the v0 occurrences of "mutual bodyhits" which were due to an unreliable parrying mechanic but had the benefit of making parry spam risky, rather than a stalemate as it was in 1.3. Since then i haven't had a part in sabering changes apart from 1.4.4's saber vs gun ones, and now in 1.4.5 Tempest has removed nudge, once again. When i designed 1.4 i believed nudge was an important rhythm and fun factor, but i have mixed feelings now, and not having nudge caters well with simplification for open mode's sake and readability for new players. And in terms of gameplay, not having nudge is still pretty similar to having it apart from Red, since non-nudged attacks at close range are still fast and difficult to PB, just like nudged ones, though it is harder to accomplish and has no rhythmic restriction; so while nudge gives a specific rhythm and can be good if considered as an obstacle to overcome for new players, i believe it doesn't necessarily give more depth to the gameplay nor make it harder, in fact perhaps the opposite (i think 1.3 players have referred to it as a "crutch", and i partly agree with that when talking about players who are fluent with its use, which might not have been the case of the people complaining about it that way and feeling it was an unfair advantage to use it; but deciding whether nudge is "good" or not is more complicated than just that anyhow). So, i am still mixed, but in favor of 1.3 players who always make a huge fuss about this, and more importantly in favor of catering to open mode first, i think it's fine to keep nudge removed.


Lastly... this changelog i put here is in no way "the next patch", even if i personally hope for it to be. Tempest has a separate agenda, which i don't fully know tbh, nor agree with for a number of parts especially since it involves some major changes like introducing some compromise between modern PB and v0 PB. I'm not really coding sabering anymore, Tempest is, i'm just hoping this spec i made will somewhat be taken into account (and i might code some of it then... the changes are really simple to code anyways and that's on purpose). As for who makes that decision... we don't really know actually, since there are conflicting ideas. It's still up for discussion and somehow we'll have to make the decision with other devs and possibly more than devs.

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

That purple idea wouldn't work. Without ACM the opponent can run away forever, regen BP, and be back to square one. ACM should only be gained through offense, its purpose is explicitly to secure a victory that you've already assured.

ACM should never be tied to defense.

 

[Ginkobum13]

• Removed perfect parry.

Yea it only applies to cyan and red and it happens pretty randomly when doing combos, and cyan vs cyan it causes both to stagger which looks dumb.

• Reinstated fast PB counter on every full-PB rather than only on mblocked swingblocks, and it drains normal damage (instead of the increased damage from 1.4).

Right now PB counter doesn't do much because if you trying to PB counter someone while they're chaining you will get interrupted I think. And interrupts I like but I don't like them just plainly resetting swings, I think it should cause flinch that would allow a gunner to take advantage of a well timed interrupt.

• Reintroduced chaining direction restrictions: general restrictions reverted to a gap of two quadrants between consecutive swings as it was before 1.4, instead of 1 or 0. Some styles (Red, Purple, Cyan, Duals) have different restrictions, see Style tweaks for details.

I like this idea alot because it makes cyan/red more easy to pblock and just makes people have to think more about where they should swing.

• (Possible: introduce some sort of visual-only nudge in order to address the issue of sabers idling into people and passing through each other when blocking or idling)

I don't really like the visuals of nudge i'd rather have no visual it just doesn't look good to me, also could you also fix sabers clashing when they aren't even intersecting.

• (Possible: make mblocking swingblocks flinch - not stagger, flinch is less disabling - the opponent for all styles)

I don't know if thats really necessary I don't wanna get flinched on a swingblock and get shot up by a gunner when he could shoot me while im swinging anyway.

Style tweaks:

I'd like to keep red stagger but it's kind of stuipid perk anyway it only works sometimes and if you aren't parried/pblocked on one of your 3 swings. Purple's perk is kind of OP since you gain ACM so fast from pblocking then with instant pblock counters you would gain ACM even faster with Purple so maybe just give purple slower pblock counter or something.

• Reduced the FP regen debuff period when shot to 0.5s from 1s.

Why do you guys add so many complicated mechanics im not gonna notice my fp regen slowing down for 0.5 I can't even get close to enemy team if they got more than 2 gunners, force regen needs to be faster I think.

• Kept the low FP drain cooldown (50ms) but reinstated a middle-ground from v0 (where the FP drain cooldown was 200ms) by having all additional shots only drain about 0.5x FP during a window of 200ms after having been shot once.

You lost me on this one another over complicated mechanic of force regeneration what does that even mean, like what is the point of all this. Maybe its just me but it makes things hard to understand there are so many layers to this game.

• Reverted Deflect 3's FP draining to 0 (it still prevents FP regeneration). Added Deflect 1's 5 FP drain to Deflect 0, so it applies all the time to mblocking.

Deflect 3 already doesnt drain force im pretty sure and I don't think this is necessary because if you mess up a mblock you already get more damage so why do this?

I had a question do you believe Gunner vs Saberist is balanced? I think jedi could use better force powers, mindtrick aint that great and nobody really uses it. And also, I have an idea quick getup should give you Q3 for the entire animation. Also a problem with swingblocking while getting shot at, it won't block if the swing is almost finished and you get shot up regardless of holding block especially with red.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I personally don't care much for what's under the hood as long as it's deep and compelling.

But I do think there are things that need to happen above the hood.

• Better visual cues for players to understand when they are dealing damage
• Better visual cues for players to understand when they are defending properly

Purely visual microstaggers which can be overriden with any subsequent input or animation event would tremendously increase the sense of impact for body hits.

It would also be key to decide whether we want players to be in the dark on their opponent's BP or not.

 

[SeV]

So, i'll answer the main points that were raised (and by the way i'll repeat, the whole point of this is that we DON'T want another big revamp, but MINOR TWEAKS from 1.4.5, otherwise we'll never be stable for years and years to come):

- 25% of bodyhit damage on parries is only natural, 10% or less would only equal to 1 or 2 BP drain for a basic slash, which is what we already have. It should be more around 5 BP drain, because the point is for parries to drain more than what we currently have.

It might be alright with 25% percent, I just want cheaper parries. 1.4.3 parries were a bane upon sabering just as 1.4.4 swing drains were. Parries scaling with ACM also needs to be taken into account, aswell as halfswing dmg vs combo damage. But parries being based on bodyhit dmg of styles solves alot of problems and is a tremendous boon even if we think numbers should be slightly different. 25% will certainly be alot better than 50% of bodyhit dmg thats for sure.

- I'm fine with nudge, i'm fine without nudge, both can work. The reason why i'm saying to keep nudge removed is because of the overwhelming feedback against it mostly from 1.3 players, i totally understand where you're coming from Sev. With nudge, there are more options against both sabers and guns, the system is more challenging and more complex, however that isn't necessarily always what we are looking for. I feel that removing nudge healthily simplifies the system for new players and better caters to open mode psychology where you have many other things to worry about. Yes, i've tried many things including many things that were never in the releases over the years i've messed with the saber system, and from experience what we should be trying to create is a system as simple and easy to pick as possible, AND DESIGNED FOR OPEN MODE PRIMARILY. Which in no way means it will be terrible for saber duels. Something that was relatively common in v0 and has almost completely disappeared from dueling due to all my perk additions and complexifications, STYLE SWITCHING, is more than enough to compensate for the loss of all these new artificial mechanics, which do nothing but complexify the wrong way.

I agree, but you also seem to think perks are primarily responsible for style switching going away, when it is clearly the ACM revamps fault. Before, ACM was not a thing until you dominated your opponent completely. Think back to the old ACC stuff and you'll remember. When ACM became style dependant and instantly scaled the BP damages, that's when style switching died. I really wish style switching came back like in V0, because it would enable us to make it more rock paper scissors isntead of trying to completely balance all styles against each other to be 100% equal in potential, which is nearly impossible unless you give them nudge as an equalizer, fiddle with dmges and BP and make their speeds more uniform. So what we really need to bring back style switching would be an ACM revamp where ACM did not directly affect your swing damage unless you were ahead by x amount like 6 or 10 or smth high like that. Then leave ACM for special attacks like blue lunge power-ups or whatever or just leave it out completely. Then raise BP damage and lower BP regen slightly and you have a system wherein you can get style switching back, especially because I think red should have nudge as a perk. Just do it. Perk, quirk whatever but it immediately fixes it so u dont have to have all the stagger shit and trying to balance the style vs other styles with all sorts of crap.

Note: You can't have ACM in its current state to prevent run-resets, aswell as having style switching. They are mutually exclusive. You'd have to revamp ACM so it translates to all styles and somehow that doesn't result in cheesy mechanics. So you can't grind ACM with a fast style, switch to a heavy style and destroy. If that were somehow balanced ACM wise, could work I guess. ATM I am leaning towards style switching over ACM dependant gameplay, and increase BP dmg aswell as reduce regent slightly for better open mode experience. It's stupid design in the first place to have to grind ACM to slaughter noobs quickly and that is one of the biggest problems with 1.4 branches. In v0 as an example, it was incredibly good at quick vicious duels but vs skilled opponents you could duel for 5 minutes or 5 seconds. You sought to make a 'less random' as you call it, system, with a mind for competitive dueling and not open mode. That's why we've ended up here due to ACM revamp and ACM dependance. So you have to keep that in mind aswell when it comes to changes. If you wanna go back to V0 style switching there's no getting around the fact that you need to snip ACM dependency in the bud.

In any case, a system based primarily on BP damage as opposed to an invisible ACM buff, is FAR FAR FAR more intuitive to both new and old players.

- Even not considering the fact that they tend to kill style switching, perks on every style are USELESS for the design and a completely artificial overcomplexification that adds literally nothing new or interesting to the gameplay. If there was only blue/yellow/red, there would be no need for any perk at all, we all lived fine that way in v0 and the dueling community had many happy vets. These three styles don't need any perk, their base features define them already. What matters is the difference between styles not how a single style is. Cyan's perk can easily be considered to be its default hyperfast starting swing which again defines the style. Purple, if it is to be a defensive style, needs some ACM perk to allow it to gain the advantage in the long term, or some other perk that allows for the same effect; however, that is only because i've marked it as a defensive style. If we'd want it to be more of a duplicate of Red, as it was in the past, then it would need to be reverted kind of like how it was in the past: even lower BP than Red and even higher AP than Red, without any need for a perk, making it the most high risk/high reward style. However i don't like that idea because Red intuitively gives the vibe of needing to be the strongest style, not purple. As for Duals/Staff ? Variants of Yellow, Duals is fast and chaotic so that defines it more than well enough already. Staff, as a more defensive Yellow, is still kinda too similar to Yellow when it comes to basic features, so it should be decent to add some spice to it for differentiation. That's it. Add too much spice and it becomes worse than without any spice.

Perks done well can give tremendous flavour to the system and individualize styles, but have they ever been done well? I'd say no to that. I also would much rather have purchasable lightsaber forms instead of perks, and let those be independant of the styles themselves but I know that that is unlikely to ever happen. In any case all the crap depending on ACM is whats wrong with perks. They should be more quirks relating to the style like Red having nudge or blue having 3 swing combos and a lunge that powers up with ACM or whatever. Purple's perk could be counter related so its more of a defensive counter-based style instead of arbitrarily relying on cheesy ACM mechanics. Out the window with such things I say. Or redesign ACM to be HP drain dependant, where the tug of war is HP drain HP gain instead of AP drain/gain, lolol. Then we could also throw heal and hp drain back into the game.

- Fast PB counters. They are not problematic in a system without nudge. Just like Red without nudge and without a perk is not problematic in a system without nudge. Just because there is no nudge, doesn't mean "attacking first" suddenly becomes terrible and implies you'll get hard-countered everytime you do. Except with Red, for all other styles it's all a matter of "attacking first close" or "attacking first far away". Without nudge, attacks started up close are still very hard to PB, the result is basically the same as with nudge (sure, an opponent can use the advanced strategy of quickly running backwards to try to have a better chance of PBing the swing you started up close, but that is also quite a risky call, he might very well get hit while running). So there is no issue with "PBing first", which you all call "defense" (but defense is a much more general term to me), being OP, it's just a matter of learning how to attack up close and making your attacks harder to PB. It was easier with nudge, SURE, but in fact it was so easy that it made trying to PB nudged attacks almost pointless and random. Even though i don't personally dislike nudge, i believe it may even be better without nudge because of this, and i think that's the main argument of people who do dislike nudge anyways.

We obviously disagree here. I think its too much of a demerit atm without nudge and too much of a deterrent for attackers. A good player can read ur movement when u try to get close enough to Attack without getting ez-PBd. This allows him to react, dodge or start an attack earlier. So you have to constantly fake run in and out and attacking becomes an unbelievably retarded chore when it should be an intuitive and natural flow. Stating they are not problematic doesn't make it so, I'm afraid. Also about nudged attacks, if they were halfswings it would be nearly the same as a super close yaw start. That's good enough imo. Add what tempest is working on and you get a system wherein nudge is much more viable as a blanket solution than before in any aimed PB iteration.

- Now, on the same topic as the paragraph above, but regarding attacks from long range from all styles OR Red attacks without nudge even from close range, which both suffer from the same problem: they are too easy to PB. The problem being the speed of the attack which is too easy to see coming. Well, people, it's time to learn how to attack from long range. There are in-built mechanics and features which can help you there, and need to be used instead of relying all the time on facehugging and nudging. I'm talking about purposely missing swings in the air to bait PBs or even simply to get the faster attack, i'm also talking about feints (which is probably worse than missing swings in the air most of the time, but it's still an option). Attacks from long range are still never going to be as effective as ones from close range, however they are a necessary step when your opponent won't easily let you close in. And that's why SEMI-PB is absolutely necessary. It gives a huge leeway for still negating damage even when you get interrupted during a combo, which is a risk you have to take when you are the one starting an attack from long range. You start comboing and plan to hit with a halfswing or a chained-in-the-air swing, rather than a starting swing because it is slower, so you leave yourself open to interruptions and without semi-PB that is completely disencouraged by the fact that you can no longer negate any damage apart from parrying as soon as you've started a combo. Which means, without semi-PB, attacks from long range are very risky and your "defensive play being too strong" becomes a problem.

- Still on the same topic: Red attacks from both close and long range without nudge ? Precisely, use feints or miss swings in the air to get the faster attack, and you still have semi-PB to help you against interrupts. This still makes Red clunkier to use than other styles and still makes it more of a countering style for sure but that's fine, after all it has the absolute upper hand compared to other styles when it comes to exchanging parries, since with these changes i'm writing, parry damage would be based on bodyhit damage. Red just needs to be appropriately balanced in terms of AP and BP, so that it really does sufficient damage.

You talk about making a system for open mode, but what you're describing is COMPLETELY only for 1v1 isolated duels, otherwise defense with fast pb counters is uber superior in any open mode situation, esp since attacker can easily get shot in the long windups. Meaning a jedis best option when encountering a sith isn't to try to nudge swing drain rape with red or anything, its to go up to the sith and stand there like a dummy and wait. Because with ACM dependant drains u have to grind halfswings to deal any significant BP dmg and even then he can just retreat easily. Many things about 1.4 branches do not lend themselves well to open mode as was the case with V0. Also, another point. You made RDFA jumping pointlessly difficult without any reason and now you're making similar arguments for attacking, saying its just an L2P issue and u have to wiggle and jiggle and poke and expend extreme effort to just attack a normal dude blocking and STILL take tremendous risk. The fact that u have to jump swing attack, feint or airswing feint to attack someone is just proof that the system is overwhelmingly biased towards defense with a fast PB counter meta thrown in. Defenders advantage in that way stultifies and kills dynamic momentum in saber duels. I made this argument before. I think 1.4 was the best version of the 1.4 branch even now in 1.4.5. This is because 1.4 had things that worked together. But I look away, and you remove all the things that are balancing out stuff like fast pb counters, PB combo breaking and so on. (Nudge specifically). A sensitivity to the system as a whole is needed and brutal manhandling of mechanics without looking at their implications spawn abominations like 1.4.3 and 1.4.4 which are among some of the worst builds I have ever played. And thats saying something given that I've suffered through b19 and the stagger patches. You HAVE to look at the implications and what is the opposite balancing mechanic, like nudge for attacking vs PB combo breaking/fast BP counters. They cancel each other out. So if you remove nudge you have to remove the other stuff probably including shit like staffs swingblocked Mblock staggers and that crap. The reason why 1.3 was far superior to whatever the hell u did with 1.4 after I left, is because it atleast had the balance of offense vs defense close to right and that no mechanic dominated.

- Minor comments: swing chaining restrictions depending on style would work as a better replacement for idiotic "number perks" with +1 ACM or -5 BP or a stagger here and there. More generally, reverting to the old restriction of 2 quadrants instead of 1 is good as an obstacle to overcome for new players so that they are forced to learn better movement, and for the gameplay it basically makes PBing stronger (and would give some more PBing options against red spam since Red would have the upper hand in parry spam; and Cyan also having more restrictions like Red is basically to slightly counterbalance its defining starting swing which is the main strength of the style). I'm fne with the restrictions remaining as they currently are, but i think the above arguments are worth it for the design of the system, as currently PBing isn't too easy (compared to some earlier builds - 1.3).

May not mind it, might. I get what you're arguing for here though and sort of agree. Especially for fast styles, but I also enjoy the freedom of comboing that comes with what u did when you unlocked attacking. It should definitely not be a blanket restriction, but applied with sensitivity to the different styles as appropriate. It's true though that players that play blue and only use one combo when attacking can be PB'd like 95% of the time so this suggestion applied properly would help with things like that.

In summary: no nudge and insta counters on full-PBs are fine but for that we need semi-PB for Red and attacks at long range (attacks at close range, executed properly, are good enough even without nudge), and we also need parry drains based on bodyhit damage. The system needs to be simplified with open mode and new players in mind, which at the same time will help style switching to bloom once again for more than enough depth at high dueling level. This is much better design to begin with, as "saber forms" are a dream for another game with much more focus on only saber vs saber; in mb2 they would just be far too intrusive given the already existing complexity of the overall gameplay.

I disagree about insta counters on PBs for reasons mentioned previously. But I agree wholeheartedly with parries based on bodyhit percentages, that is amazingly versatile and makes halfswinging with good timing when getting combo'd to parry a single hit, worthwhile when it's currently not. Details though.

If you want to make MBII dueling better for open mode again you need to throw ACM as you implemented it out the window, jank up the BP damage and slow down BP regen. That's the only way you'll get style switching back other than reworking ACM to somehow transfer from style to style in an non OP cheesy manner. As long as your ACM that affects the DMG and builds exclusively on styles exist, you won't have style switching. It has nothing to do with perks.