SeV's Saber System Fix

[SeV]

Bare with me and try to understand, as I lay bare some of my thoughts on the saber system. Please listen uncritically to a player who's cared for this game and sabering ystem for over 8 years. Btw, this spawned from a reply to the PB post by Apex, but the reply turned into this...

Introduction: Skip to suggestions if you want.

I think the current PB system is good, but as stassin mentioned you can sometimes accidentally PB. Another issue I see with this system is that attacking like a fucking maniac is 90% better than focusing on defensive play because of parries. In the saberclash-systems parrying happened less frequently because of halfswing exchanges. Also, Angling ur saber when both attacking and defending, and countering with proper timing was the old way of playing and I know stassin thinks it was more random than not, and therefore bad and didn't take skill, yet I disagree. The old system was full of depth and took a great deal of skill, just as the current one does. They're just different.

So why is spamming such a viable way of playing, as opposed to focusing on PBs, correct timing and skillful countering etc?
Well, because the fucking attacks PARRY and a parry is better than a PB (ignoring perks for now).

In alot of situations, alot of the time, maybe more than 70 percent of a duel, parrying blocks more hits than PBing. Parrying can block hits at 0 bp. It completely trivializes the current PB system, because at 0 BP you can just go Yoda mode and jump around, swinging and parrying, then jump to reset and repeat. With red u can use the stagger aswell for an added 0 BP bonus defense.

In essence, my gripe is not with the current PB system, but with how it was implemented and what is missing. Tweaks, not revamps or returns to old systems. If skilled veteran players all put their heads together I'm sure we can come up with improvements that'll make the current system as much fun as the old one.



So...

This list of suggestions isn't a take it or leave it whole course, it's a buffet of suggestions to somehow spice up the current rather dull and lifeless system. (it sounds like I'm saying it's bad, but what I'm saying is that it's more boring, not worse or that it takes less skill. Why do you think people left? Because saber system wasn't fun for them anymore, but it's fun for sisi I assume...)




Here are my suggestions for a better saber system.




#1 Non-Trivial Counters:
A successful PB allows the user to Counter. That Counter will 'override' a normal swing (pass through a parry) and deal extra BP damage. Only works on the first swing after a PB.

Comment: Not extra BP by a huge amount, but enough to make countering and counter-countering a desirable tactic for skilled people as compared to mindlessly spamming combos (whether they be 2 hit combos followed by quick resets to get ACM or not... it's still mindless spam that takes little skill. I don't think it's much different from 4 hit combo spamming with yellow, it's just an evolution of the same playstyle.)

On the BP multiplier, I don't know if 1.1 swingblocked and 1.3 unswingblocked will be enough, but the main point of this is not the increased BP damage, though that is a required thing to make counters less trivial and more desirable. The real focus is on the fact that this allows people who can PB+counter to BYPASS 0 bp parry spamming retards.

(Extra note: Check my youtube videos of sisi vs sekundus and you'll see alot of retarded 0 BP jump spam. Sometimse it lasts for 30 seconds spamming at 0 bp before sisi dies to sekundus)

#2 More low bp parry fixes:
Getting hit while running and swinging without swingblock causes the user to lose his lightsaber if he is below 1/2 BP and stagger if he is above 1/2 BP.

Comment: First, the values can be adjusted down to be 1/4 disarm threshold or even lower.

Reason and history: many have suggested that a jedi/sith's movement speed be slowed at low/0 BP in the past. This would interfere with open mode gameplay in a non-trivial way. My suggestion does not harm open mode gameplay, it just makes it slightly more important to be aware of your BP in-case of an enemy jedi/sith. I mean for fucks sake, a 0 BP sith in open can take on a bunch of noob jedi by spamming parries and using red stagger and BP is supposed to be for blocking lightsaber attacks. You shouldn''t be just fine without BP against a jedi/sith... as said before it trivializes PB and the entire MB2 system, returning us to a base-like state of retarded spam. This 0 skill shit has to stop, and suggestion #1 and #2 help solve this problem. There is no good reason not to implement.

#3 Cyan Perk
Yes, the cyan parry perk has to get the fuck out of here. it encourages a retarded, 0 skill noobish playstyle that I've tried to crush with suggestions #1 and 2.

Comments: If cyan has to be removed from the game as a useless style, so be it. But cyan's parry perk opposes all that is good about the current saber system and has to go.

#4 Cyan revamp
Cyan's first swing is yellow speed, blue dmg (ish), and with each swing in the combo/chain it increases in speed and damage until it is blue speed, yellow damage at around 4 swings? Upon reset, returns to being Yellow speed, blue dmg.

New perk:
Performing an Mblock (with PB), makes the counter start at blue speed, yellow BP dmg level.

Comments: Cyan is too weak without the derpy, SHITTY parrying perk. Revamping cyan is no small matter. My first suggestion is to make cyan's first swing slower, but each subsequent swing increase in speed within the combo chain. First swing speed starts out around yellow level , with blue dmg, and as we get deeper into the swings, speed and damage increase to reverse, blue speed and yellow dmg. This happens for combos and single swings alike within a given combo-chain (You know, before the reset. So you can combo ur way up to extremely fast halfswings). This would make cyan a unique aggressive style instead of the derpy, half-assed style that it currently is.

The perk requires skill to be good, unlike the disgusting parry perk.

#5 Staff changes
Staff mblocks no longer stagger the opponent. Instead, they get an active verson of the stagger on the currently unused saberthrow button.

Active stagger: Works like the mblock stagger, has a cooldown of 8 seconds, requires a PB+button press to succeed so that it still takes timing and some skill.

Comments: The current staff stagger mechanic is simply too overpowered considering staff's def and off stats. It also slows duels to a crawl. It is simply too overpowered. Yes it takes a little bit of skill to use, but if you practice it you can perform it just as easily as you PB and thus the amount of skill needed to execute it is not in proportion to how good it is.

My suggestion is a nerf to the stagger mechanic. Even if it got removed entirely staff would still be an excellent style because it has good defense and offensive stats. Also, the 8 sec cooldown can be shown like the slap cooldown is currently.

#6 Slap/kick
This one is simple, up the cooldown from 2.5 sec to 4 seconds.

Comments/reasoning: Slap is often spammed. Making the cooldown longer does not impact duels in a negative way, as there's no saberclash facehug anymore, just regular old facehug which doesn't have much of an effect. The second reason for increasing slap cooldown is that it helps guide players towards using the PB+Counter mechanic that I mentioned above. It also helps make revamped cyan playstyle more dangerous. It reinforces proper use of slap, combats spamming it constantly.

#7 Duals changes
Duals stab no longer gives the user an ACC.
You can only parry with the first swing in a combo.
Duals stab can parry+knockback. Main defensive mechanic on duals.
Duals have slightly more BP multiplier than before to compensate for loss of combo-spammed parries as a defensive mechanic.

Comments: It's quite simple really. Duals is a spammy playstyle that can completely ignore PBs. When playing duals, you NEVER EVER focus on PBing, instead only on attacking, parrying, stabbing, gaining ACM and running away to regen BP... Very gay style of play atm.

#8 Red changes
Red loses PB BP drain perk.

New Perk: The parry bypass from PBing+Countering lasts for the entire combo instead of for only 1 swing.

In addition, Red gets a new ability. Pressing the saberthrow button makes reds first swing a halfswing, exactly like the old weaponswitch/twirl trick, but HP damage is decreased to 50 HP. (To balance in open-mode) and movement speed is slowed to 80 percent for 2 sec after pressing the button. Lasts 2 sec before expiring. Takes 0.5 sec before you can attack after you've pressed the button and activated the ability.

Cooldown 8 seconds

Comments: The old red PB perk makes it a very strong stance and without the perk it's perhaps not strong enough. The Parry bypass perk allows reds counter-combo's to be effective and is a more attack oriented perk as it bypasses parry defenses. Also, the counter combo can be slapped making it a more risky perk with less success chance. All this serves to increase the skill it takes to play with and against red while slightly nerfing the defensive power.

The new halfswing ability is needed for red to give it a more attack-based flavour. I don't care what anyone says, red should have this ability. If an 8 sec cooldown proves to be too short, then increase it to 10 seconds, Idc. With such a long cooldown it is trivial in the actual duel itself, but serves to spice things up and keep players on their toes against red, knowing that at any moment the Red user can go brutal offense. It gives red more unique flavour similar to playing against the current stagger staff. If a style has a mechanic you cannot ignore, that gives personality to that style. Red is an iconic aggressive style so why not give it this ability? It is not overpowered at all compared to the 8+ BP drain on PB perk, and if implemented with the HP dmg nerf to swings in that combo it won't make the style OP in open either, though it'll give red users an opportunity to finish off facehugging gunners that they've deflected down to low HP. Another bonus, though not a dueling bonus, still worth noting.

#9 Blue changes
Make blue spins fast so that you can utilize those combos in combat and not be afraid of spinning.

Comments: Blue is already a good, unique, fun style loved by many. Perhaps it's a tad strong but that's to be expected because of the parry shit. With my PB+Counter suggestion bypassing parries for a single swing, it should help balance things out vs spammy styles like blue. The above suggestion makes blue users able to attack in more varied ways, and I know everyone would appreciate it if spinning didn't fuck them over with blue. It helps even the slight nerf that the PB+Counter introduces to blue in a non OP or otherwise annoying or roundabout way.

Extra note: It would be cool if you could slow down blue counters just a tad, and make blue users able to counter with a w swing in a proper manner. Think of a kendo strike, that's the kind of blue counter I'd like to see more of. Make this new blue counter as prevalent about as prevalent as the yellow left swing counter.

#10 Force powers.
Force Speed becomes a neutral force power.

Jedis get Force Heal.

lvl 1 cost 4 - drains 20 fp per sec, heals 5 hp per second. User is immobile (Kneeling heal stance)
lvl 2 cost 6 - drains 10 fp per sec, heals 6 hp per sec. User is immobile (Kneeling heal stance)
lvl 3 cost 8 - drains 10 fp per sec, heals 10 per sec. User can move while healing.

Note: I'd like speed to be implemented regardless of heal. There's an argument for giving Jedis force grip. Sith can use lightning (sith Sorcery), but all force users can use grip to some extent and as Kyle said, the forcepower itself is not evil, it's how you use it. So you can put grip in both jedi and sith if my force heal suggestion is not to your liking.

Comments: Why? Speed is needed in the current dueling system to counter the retarded backslash and with jedi's being the only ones to have speed, it makes sith less versatile in dueling. Also, the many implications in open recommend speed. If sith have speed... there are so many tactical implications. They had it before, they can have it again. It's worth a try. People want it, old vets, newer players, recognized MB2 personalities. So many ppl are asking for this. So give it to them.

The specifics of force heal balancing can be changed to suit the balance. My values are just placeholder suggestions.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

#1 Non-Trivial Counters:
A successful PB allows the user to Counter. That Counter will 'override' a normal swing (pass through a parry) and deal extra BP damage. Only works on the first swing after a PB.

Been playing a game recently that has near exactly this. Correctly time a block right, a perfect parry, your next attack does double damage while the opponent is slowed/stunned.


Though, one thing I did think of while reading this regarding combo spams...why not make each successive swing weaker than the previous?
So for a 4 swing yellow combo, the 4th swing would hold 1/4th the power of the original bp damage value. The saber can still function as a defensive parry but its attack power is diminished, decreasing efficacy.

It also makes sense in the regard that your first blow should be the most powerful and each following one weaker if you don't rest your muscles/hold block

#2 More low bp parry fixes:
Getting hit while running and swinging without swingblock causes the user to lose his lightsaber if he is below 1/2 BP and stagger if he is above 1/2 BP.

Fine for duel mode. Not a fan of it for open. Honorless dogs!!

#3 Cyan Perk
Yes, the cyan parry perk has to get the fuck out of here. it encourages a retarded, 0 skill noobish playstyle that I've tried to crush with suggestions #1 and 2.

Cyan...meh.

#4 Cyan revamp
Cyan's first swing is yellow speed, blue dmg (ish), and with each swing in the combo/chain it increases in speed and damage until it is blue speed, yellow damage at around 4 swings? Upon reset, returns to being Yellow speed, blue dmg.

Didn't even read this until after I wrote ^.

#5 Staff changes

Don't care either way.

#6 Slap/kick
This one is simple, up the cooldown from 2.5 sec to 4 seconds.

50/50 on this. One of the lazier styles I employ is simple waiting for them to slap and then combo spamming. Does my hypocrisy know no bounds?
A style based off of most players tendency to slap as soon as possible. Effective enough. And really not a broken mechanic, just habit and player choice. Spams are too effective. Slap...well timed slaps can dominate an opponent. Poorly timed slaps can just dig you deeper.

The other half of me from long ago still says slap should have never been implemented. It tainted the purity of sabers and delayed the inevitable.
The saber is all.

Raincheck on the rest. Gtg.

 

[Apex]

Nice post. I really like the idea of counters breaking through parries. That will definitely help this 0 BP flailing saber and blocking everything bs. I am also a fan of most of your stance revamp suggestions, cyan especially needing a rework and red stance does not need to drain BP on pblocks. I'm not going to go too much in to detail as I am busy atm but I'm not sure how I feel about the slap change, or the low BP running disarm. Mostly because of how it would affect open mode as Chaos said, dueling it wouldn't be too bad.

One thing I'd like to add to this, I don't think purple stance needs to gain ACM when PBlocking, or whatever the perk is. I don't use any stance really other than yellow so I don't know too much about the perks but it gains AP or whatever it is called now from PBlocking. Given how easy PB is now I don't think there should be benefits for a succesful pblock other than the negated BP damage and the ability to counter.

Overall, I would like to see pblock reverted, but that most likely will never happen. Changes like these will definitely help the saber system and I will be posting more when ideas come to me. Good thread, Sev

Edit: Oh and I don't think heal should be added, personally. Speed being neutral is fine but heal was in once before and it was removed for good reasons.

 

[Stassin]

I will agree on non-trivial counters, Cyan needing a revamp (boring to play, perk is retarded), slap increased cooldown (cooldown is already 3s as you requested some time ago btw; and i'm not too entirely sure about this because a larger slap cooldown means knocking down someone barely gives you any advantage, because the knocked downed player can start attacking without fear of a new slap as soon as he gets up, pretty much negating all advantage you had of hitting him while he was down; but yeah, besides that i think less slaps is better), i would agree on removing red stagger rather than the PB perk, agree also on neutral force speed.

I think alot of your other suggestions are pretty unrealistic regarding how overwhelmingly complex they would make the saber system (although you've toned that down quite alot compared to your previous threads about this); it's fine to think theoretically about new mechanics that would individually improve things, but it's not the same problem when dealing with the context of actual gameplay where everything is intertwined and happens so fast. For example, the current perks for saber styles already make the system pretty complex, even though most of them are simply passive things that do nothing but add effects to basic mechanics (PB, parry, MBlock). But now you want new active things that will allow you to suddenly halfswing instantly with a cooldown, and moreover use yet another key, the saberthrow key ? I think we'd be better off with implementing something general like OJP fake swings, your non-trivial counters, some basic fixes like changing cyan perk for something else simple, remove stagger on backwhacks and disallow speedlunge while staggered (+ reduce speedlunge BP drain).

Again though, parry spam with same styles is countered by offsetting your swing a bit so both swings deal damage instead of both cancelling out, and obviously with different styles it's a non-issue (blue style will easily kill a 0BP yellow spammer).

 

[SeV]

It's good to see that some of my suggestions are received well.
@Apex: Heal was removed when sabers did HP dmg cause it made jedi stronger than sith. Now it doesn't matter in that regard.

If all the changes Stassin mentioned are implemented, I'll be very happy. It'll be a big step forward. I see your point about the complexity of the system increasing, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Removing stagger from Red would be alright with me too. It'll still be plenty strong with the BP perk and 3rd hit stagger is what often makes Red hard to engage on equal footing with other styles.

As I said in the OP, this was a buffet of suggestions and as pointed out maybe not all of them are entirely realistic.

About parry spam, I know how to counter it, but it still takes alot more skill to counter than to perform and it's just not alright. So if you add non-trivial counters that pass through/override parries, that would be more than enough to deal with the problem. It would also make sense, as a counter/riposte would push away an enemy saber in the counter-attack.

 

[Princess Dymbesh]

"A successful PB allows the user to Counter. That Counter will 'override' a normal swing (pass through a parry) and deal extra BP damage. Only works on the first swing after a PB."
Nudgeee come back pls. ;_;

"#4 Cyan revamp"
Just... no, remove it allready omg (same with purple plox)

"Staff mblocks no longer stagger the opponent. Instead, they get an active verson of the stagger on the currently unused saberthrow button."
Nopls, staff is allready the most "opish" bullshit atm with that shit.
Wow, staggering the opponent 4 hit combo spam sucking all the BP because the opponent can't PB or simply do anything.
Such skill!
Fixing that wont do anything good, just remove it allready its hopeless just as cyan and purple.
#6 Slap/kick
"This one is simple, up the cooldown from 2.5 sec to 4 seconds."

Ye with that running drain suggestion thingy i could imagine that.

" Red loses PB BP drain perk."
Nice idea, good riddance.

"New Perk: The parry bypass from PBing+Countering lasts for the entire combo instead of for only 1 swing."

Ehhhm okay? not sure about that, and how it would affect the gameplay.
"#9 Blue changes"
Fine with that aslong as your other suggestions are taken.

"I think alot of your other suggestions are pretty unrealistic regarding how overwhelmingly complex they would make the saber system"
Overwhelmingly complex? Wutufk, did you even read the post?

 

[Stassin]

About parry spam, I know how to counter it, but it still takes alot more skill to counter than to perform and it's just not alright.

I guess you have a point there.


Overall though, there is something that just bugs me. I hear alot of complaints about the system being "spammy", skillless combos being too powerful, both PB and parries being bland because easy; and more importantly that the previous system was more interesting. I mean, this is just... funny ? Are you all oblivious ? I knew how to play the old system very well, and what mostly comes to mind is "left-right yellow combo spam", "facehug + nudge with almost only left yellow swings, pretty much completely disregarding what the opponent is even doing", "aim swings to the ground to avoid clashing with the defender's saber, works most of the time provided you're close enough". And i hear complaints about 0 BP spam ? Like, really, in the old system you couldn't even PB it consistently, it was at least as strong as it is now, and that's only due to parries being how they are now. And blue+yellow+red ? What, spam left-right yellow + immediately rush to facehug nudge a 3-swing red combo (always same directions because the nudged overhead red swing is fastest) + switch to blue and blue lunge to fend off the opponent's counter-attack + repeat forever; that was pretty much one of the strongest tactical combos in v1.0, wow much skill involved, much variety, much need to react to what the opponent's doing.

Like, i'm not saying the current system is good here, but arguing that the old system was better ? Just funny... just a matter of being used to it and ragequitting, or more like using the system change as an excuse to quit the game and move on to IRL matters, honestly. Too bad if some people couldn't let go of LEFT-RIGHT LEFT-RIGHT yellow, nudge and aiming low (and couldn't learn to do more diverse swings, be unpredictable etc.), i mean, there was alot of SKILL involved in that right ?

The funniest thing would probably be hleV, who "adapted" to yellow's random 3-4-5 combo, and could "skillfully" perform the 4th swing alot of the time after years and years of hard practice. Yeah well, too bad the reality in the code was these lines in PM_SaberKataDone:

if ( pm->ps->fd.saberAnimLevel == SS_MEDIUM &&
pm->ps->saberAttackChainCount > PM_irand_timesync( 2, 5 ) )
{
return qtrue;
}

( = yellow combo is marked as finished after PM_irand_timesync( 2, 5 ) + 1 swings, which in practice gave a random amount of swings between 3 and 5)

I mean the new system heart-breakingly took away all this great "skill" from him, what a horrible change.

 

[Princess Dymbesh]

The Fact that you deleted nudge from the game and force players to use 4 hit combos to defeat the Opponent doesn't give it much depth, its basically the same then.
Plus, the post wasn't about reverting the Sabersystem it was about Improving it and fixing it.
I really liked most of Sev's ideas, but i would love to see Cyan/purple being removed and Red/staff Nerfed until no one loves to use it anymore, before you do anything else.
Because i really find those the most gamebreaking styles atm, thus shouldn't we focus on this shit first then yellow which is kinda balanced/endurable atm?.

 

[Apex]

Overall though, there is something that just bugs me. I hear alot of complaints about the system being "spammy", skillless combos being too powerful, both PB and parries being bland because easy; and more importantly that the previous system was more interesting. I mean, this is just... funny ? Are you all oblivious ? I knew how to play the old system very well, and what mostly comes to mind is "left-right yellow combo spam", "facehug + nudge with almost only left yellow swings, pretty much completely disregarding what the opponent is even doing", "aim swings to the ground to avoid clashing with the defender's saber, works most of the time provided you're close enough". And i hear complaints about 0 BP spam ? Like, really, in the old system you couldn't even PB it consistently, it was at least as strong as it is now, and that's only due to parries being how they are now. And blue+yellow+red ? What, spam left-right yellow + immediately rush to facehug nudge a 3-swing red combo (always same directions because the nudged overhead red swing is fastest) + switch to blue and blue lunge to fend off the opponent's counter-attack + repeat forever; that was pretty much one of the strongest tactical combos in v1.0, wow much skill involved, much variety, much need to react to what the opponent's doing.

Like, i'm not saying the current system is good here, but arguing that the old system was better ? Just funny... just a matter of being used to it and ragequitting, or more like using the system change as an excuse to quit the game and move on to IRL matters, honestly. Too bad if some people couldn't let go of LEFT-RIGHT LEFT-RIGHT yellow, nudge and aiming low (and couldn't learn to do more diverse swings, be unpredictable etc.), i mean, there was alot of SKILL involved in that right ?

The old system doesn't need nudge to be good. It's the perfrct block concept that required actual saber placement as opposed to aiming your crosshair as if you're a gunner, that made it good. You can continue to call it "inconsistent" but personally I would much rather an "inconsistent" pblock system where the majority of swings actually hit the player as opposed to now where the majority are pblocked 70% of the time. This "inconsistency" (I continue to put this in quotes because I do not believe that it was inconsistent) comes from the sensitivity of the saber placement and the multiple levels of swing angling. It wasn't like now where there are three places you need to aim your crosshair to look at in order to perform a perfect block. The system was intricate and visually made sense as it would in a "real" duel. I'm sure these "inconsistencies" of the old pblock could have been adjusted anyway without changing the entire design to some simple 3-crosshair placement system.

Looking at the ground meant nothing for a defenseman that knew what they were doing. Low swings could be perfect blocked just like any other swing as long as you knew what you were doing. Having the option to adjust your swing angles slightly in several different ways to try and get around your opponents blocking encouraged swing variety more than there is now. So yeah, nudge combo-ing had nothing to do with what made the last system better, it's the blocking system. Do you not see how many people stopped duelng after they gave this system a fair shot? Does this not speak to you? I understand you put a lot of work into this system but sometimes changes don't work out and after this long seeing the effect of the saber system change I think it's fair to say that this one did not necessarily work out. And I don't believe this is a matter of ragequitting or any type of excuse to stop playing the game... If that's what you think people are doing when they tell you the old system was better, then you are deluded

 

[Stassin]

3-crosshair placement system

7-crosshair placement system.

Low swings could be perfect blocked just like any other swing as long as you knew what you were doing

Well of course as long as you hold that to be true... it was pretty common knowledge among veteran EU duelists how to bypass any PB defense by aiming (mostly) low and positioning yourself appropriately so there's just no possible way for me to ever agree with that unless you show how to do it against me.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Question!!!! Question!!

Before, to get ap, you had to get body-hits. Which were hits that hit the body and weren't perfect blocked.
What happens now? If I don't perfect block an attack by changing my camera angle...but it only strikes the end of my saber and not my body, does the enemy still get ap?



I had a vision. From the past. From the future. A vision...

Where we killed block. Instead of being able to hold block indeterminately, indefinitely, indefensibly, timing would be required. Cronus, why did they ban you?
Tapping block before an attack hits would rebound the saber away from you, giving you the opportunity to riposte. Yes, a Rip-O-sTe!
The only other form of blocking would be parrying the enemy's attacks with your own.





Smiley Face.

 

[hleV]

The funniest thing would probably be hleV, who "adapted" to yellow's random 3-4-5 combo, and could "skillfully" perform the 4th swing alot of the time after years and years of hard practice. Yeah well, too bad the reality in the code was these lines in PM_SaberKataDone:

if ( pm->ps->fd.saberAnimLevel == SS_MEDIUM &&
pm->ps->saberAttackChainCount > PM_irand_timesync( 2, 5 ) )
{
return qtrue;
}

( = yellow combo is marked as finished after PM_irand_timesync( 2, 5 ) + 1 swings, which in practice gave a random amount of swings between 3 and 5)

I mean the new system heart-breakingly took away all this great "skill" from him, what a horrible change.

There's such a thing called random seed. It may or may not make the RNG as random as you'd expect. Confirm that it works properly and you will have your point proven, until then I'm not buying it. When swinging against air I could only do 3 swings most of the time while when hitting somebody/something, it's 4 hits, especially when I got hit back during the combo. 5 was a rarity. It wasn't about skill, it was about knowing that 4th swing could be done often while other people didn't even try to perform it.

Anyway, your theory that people left because they couldn't be bothered to adapt to the new system is probably your lame excuse to justify the fact that you've pretty much ruined the system and reduced dueling community. I quite like that you now have a reason to use diagonal swings, but other than that the system is nonsensical.

Remove saber perks and we'll talk.
Make saber hits feel like they actually have an impact and we'll talk.

Until then you're just a guy who joined MB2 coders and screwed up, though it's more like you screwed us over, making us lose the one game we liked a lot.

 

[SeV]

Personally I think alot of people left, not because 'they couldn't adapt' but simply because the new system felt stale and boring compared with the old one. That was my initial impression aswell, due to the loss of nudge timing the sabering felt less hectic and reaction based. I know that's why I stopped playing when nudge was initially removed. It just didn't feel right.

But after awhile, and improvements to the system, it became fun for me aswell. I still think the old system was more fun than the new system, and that is in essence why alot of pp left. I think you underestimate top duelists if you say 'they can't adapt'.

 

[Stassin]

It would be weird for a RNG not to be fed with a proper varying seed, in this case serverTime.

I think you underestimate top duelists if you say 'they can't adapt'.

No, i don't and it's not about underestimating people's in-game skill (rather the time they are willing to spend playing). Let me give an example, shortly after v1.1 came out i could see N° (or other players, doesn't matter) on duel servers, doing the usual left-right left-right "spam" that made the old system so "fun"; well obviously it didn't work that well, most of his swings got PBed, and i can very well understand the frustration when doing something you've learned for a long time becomes irrelevant, let alone when you no longer fully understand what's going on and what to do. And something being "fun" or "not boring" is totally subjective, and heavily dependent on the person's experience. Players who joined in v0 and practised the system for years from there will obviously grow accustomed to it because that's what they've always known, that's what they were fed with from the start, and their first positive impression of the game got linked with their impression of the saber system as well, even if they were new at that time and didn't even know how the system worked. Massive changes happened in the past, how many people stopped dueling with the transition from RC3P4 to v0 ? It would be ridiculous to say that noone did, even with the overall population of the mod being higher at that time; and does that have to imply v0 was bad or boring ? Well no it doesn't, because people like you enjoyed v0 and the subsequent versions alot, even though whoever who left might have thought the opposite for whatever reason, say blocking animations being removed, nudge being introduced and i don't know what else.

@hleV Yes you can say that not being able to adapt is my lame excuse, and i can't argue that it's entirely true, but it's still partly true. You can't really say it's totally false.

Make saber hits feel like they actually have an impact and we'll talk.

Not really sure what you are talking about here.

Remove saber perks and we'll talk.

What's wrong about them, really; i can give you the reason (basically the only reason) why i introduced them, to make saber styles more different from one another, with the introduction of cyan/purple being replicates of blue/red. Can you give me a reason why this is bad, or if it's not, why saber perks are bad ?


That's the point... i'm not even trying to defend this current saber system, however i can give reasons as to why this and that is how it is. For balance, for diversity, for consistency (more crisp system, less randomness: PB, parries (yes you can say it wasn't random before, ok no problem that's actually true, regardless you still can't deny that now it's much clearer and straightforward to do for everyone; because sev, you say that bypassing parries by offsetting your swings in the current system takes too much skill compared to parrying, but then the old PB was too hard as well compared to how easy it was to land bodyhits with just left-right swings right ?)), to make things that were useless gameplay-wise no longer useless (looking at saber special moves, ACM). The one thing that i will defend about this system, is that it's much more polished than before, for these reasons. For example before, you could see alot of unpolished things (such as the random number of swings in combos, or the fact that staff/duals had the exact same AP/BP multipliers, or ACM's 9th level giving like a 15.0x BP damage multiplier), which doesn't mean anything bad, but simply that no time was spent on them, or they were not known or had been forgotten. Well i happened to be an avid duelist, knowing almost pretty much everything about the v0.x saber system even before having seen the code, and to have the will and time to code for it so i took that time to look at all of this and polish it.

So i would be pretty unhappy to have to revert to unpolished things, even if some people liked it (people really liked the melee hugging bug as well you know). On the other hand i see no problem in changing the system, i can code it as well as long as it's not too long to do. However i'm not willing to be the one doing all the thinking about balance and everything, or even the testing and tweaking, anymore, so someone will need to present clearly what to change with reasons and explanations behind it, AND get general approval from people who care about this topic; much like you are doing sev, but it's tricky because when you get to actually coding something, you may bump on unexpected things, you choose what values you put, you test them immediately to see if it's alright, you see all the rest and start thinking about balancing it all together; so when the one doing the thinking isn't the same as the one doing the coding, it can get pretty long, difficult and tiresome. So if you want it to happen i would suggest joining the beta team, and start giving change proposals one or a few at a time, testing them and pointing out necessary tweaks until these changes are polished. Otherwise as far as i know the only things that are going to happen to the saber system are the fixes i have had in mind for a while i.e. removing stagger on backwhacks, disallowing speedlunge while staggered, a few special move BP drain tweaks; maybe reducing cyan's parry BP drain a tad and removing red stagger but that's already tricky, because then i'd also have to power down purple, blue, and maybe even duals and staff to try and keep them on the same overall strength level, and i don't want to get into that much; might be simpler to just power up yellow style.

 

[hleV]

The issue is that you feel like you even deserve an argument. The new system feels worse. What, is this somehow not true because I can't be bothered to come up with ways to describe why and how it feels worse?

If you added a change and the playerbase decreased by 99%, would you still consider the change good unless people bother to come to you and explain why it is not? Get fucking real. The fact you don't see what we see is the reason we have so little faith in you.

Perks are stupid. They're unrelated to skill. They're passive bonuses. The fact different styles deal different amounts of damage, have different BP drains, different speeds, different animations is enough to consider them... different. Make more aggresive changes than that and it gets out of hand. Styles become situational and you can no longer be as effective with one than with the other.

Saber hits feel like they make no impact (because they don't) because with some practice, half or more of the attacks will be PBed/parried/whatever. Getting "ignored" becomes annoying. PBing/parrying is way too convenient.

 

[Stassin]

The issue is that you feel like you even deserve an argument. The new system feels worse. What, is this somehow not true because I can't be bothered to come up with ways to describe why and how it feels worse?

Yeah, exactly. Change is what feels bad, not the system itself. Or are you going to deny that this is at least partly true ?

If you added a change and the playerbase decreased by 99%, would you still consider the change good unless people bother to come to you and explain why it is not? Get fucking real. The fact you don't see what we see is the reason we have so little faith in you.

Too bad a duel server is often the 2d most populated server nowadays. Guess lots of casual/new players enjoy this system maybe because the base mechanics like PB or parries are alot clearer.

The fact different styles deal different amounts of damage, have different BP drains, different speeds, different animations is enough to consider them... different.

Is it ? Why did you write "..." as if you were unsure about this ? Not really surprising coming from someone who only cares about playing yellow style, anyways.

Perks are stupid. They're unrelated to skill. They're passive bonuses.

You are kind of oblivious. Perks are unrelated to skill ? Just because they're passive ? What about needing to adjust your playstyle to get the most effectiveness out of the perk, or defending against that ? Instead of getting only 1 most effective playstyle for every similar saber style, you get different ones. Just trying to make the game less repetitive. There might be other ways to do that, sure, and better ones, who knows. Obviously some of the current perks aren't quite the most interesting there could be.

Saber hits feel like they make no impact (because they don't) because with some practice, half or more of the attacks will be PBed/parried/whatever. Getting "ignored" becomes annoying. PBing/parrying is way too convenient.

L2P issue, facehug opponents using quick and varied combos. Anyways, in a similar way, people who wanted to play defensive pre-v1.1 using PB must have felt the same as you do now, because PBing consistently was so hard it was basically "ignored" most of the time against any attackers who knew what they were doing. That was pretty convenient for the attackers don't you think. Oh wait you were one of them, maybe your opinion and feelings are biased that way.

 

[hleV]

I changed my mind. The system is perfect. Thanks for all the hard work.

 

[Princess Dymbesh]

"Not really surprising coming from someone who only cares about playing yellow style, anyways."
The only reason someone would play Yellow only is that they wouldn't be oblivious no
The reason is that they're seeing that there is no kinda balanced style besides yellow atm everystyle got retarded since you added those perks, or how i call them "Unfair Advantage giver) And for those who aren't really playing yellow they're either oblivious, or just love to be OP with no skill.
"You are kind of oblivious. Perks are unrelated to skill ?"
No you are, perks are unrelated to the fact that you give Cyan the chance to cancel attacks out which makes the opponent lose bp, or that you give red the unfair advantage of only pbing and stealing the opponents bp with no slight of efford, or staff the ability to stagger the enemy with an simple mblock movement.
I don't want to talk more about this i don't really feel like indulging you about this nor i have the desire about your oblivious mind
But seriously, everytime SeV opens a thread the whole topic changes and comes out to an argument lmao.

 

[Xendel]

I'm not really into this saber system topic but it would be more than nice to see stagger back.
Atleast that's my personal point of view. I don't really get why you guys say that red is such an overpowered style.
Why does it differ from the other "fresh like a newborns butt" styles such as cyan and purple?
At the very beginning if someone used red well that meant skill and that is not only true to red but to yellow and blue alike.
In a nutshell if you guys are unable to adapt to an opponents fighting style for instance to red users then I would consider making some popcorn and watching
a good TV show instead of posting threads here. Though I must admit that some styles I mentioned before have recently become unbalanced but that is surely not red since a competent yellow or blue user can easily beat any red fan.

 

[agentoo8]

Nothing will happen to the saber system. There's noone left to work on the code. Just leave it as it is.