It would apply to all classes, but the chase mechanic in Chivalry is very gradual, and only really works if the opponent is running **away** from you, not if they're just standing still.
Per the Reddit thread I read that claimed to be drawing its facts from "the code," the speed-up actually happens really quickly (100ms) but the visual animations happen more slowly, creating an impression of a gradual acceleration. Maybe this was changed though? I don't know. But yes, I do get that it only happens if they're running away. And if you'd want the MB2 chase speed-up to be gradual, I could do that. (In theory. If any of this happens at all. Pending response from more authoritative devs.)
I do agree it should be gradual, actually, largely because if the speedup happened really quickly then it would have side-effects on certain footwork scenarios.
3) The speed bonus doesn't work sideways, only forward. I don't think you're getting how Chivalry's speed mechanic worked in practice.
I think I just was thinking of it a bit wrong since I was thinking about specifics of how to implement it, instead of just about gameplay elements. Certainly the boost could be made to only apply when running forwards. In Chivalry, running forwards is already faster than running to the side (can you even "run" to the side in Chiv?). So yeah, different games. But anyway, what you were replying to was invalidated by later parts of my pondering-out-loud. Which is kinda my fault. I was also openly just responding to the idea of "what if you sped up if you looked at someone who was running away," and taking it as-is. I was not responding to the Chiv Chase Mechanic specifically. Just to you, and what you'd said. And how, as-is, it had bad side effects.
And just to reiterate, supposing we keep siderun as fast as forwardrun, then you should be able to chase someone who's siderunning away from you (by forwardrunning at them). Obviously enough.
The speed of gunners should really be normalized with those stats I gave you. There is no reason why BH and Hero should be faster than a melee-only Jedi. That is utter nonsense.
I like the extra boost for how it helps a little in being able to dance around Jedi. And the chase mechanic would mean you wouldn't be able to just book it flat-out anyway. And besides, Push 3 exists, and punishes overuse of that high movespeed (unless you're already far away and just stalling by running further ofc).
On that note...
If you need to stare at someone in pull range to activate the chase mechanic, that defeats the purpose of the chase mechanic, because then you can just pull them. It has to be infinite range, really. So that you can catch up to people running away at far distances, otherwise they can just run forward as certain classes. The whole purpose of the chase mechanic is to catch up when they are outside of force range, or being very hard to focus.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm....................... true, but at the same time, that would
technically mean that you could rush at someone in front of and near you by looking at the back of some random person in the distant background who happens to be running away (to check flank, for example). That would be a really unpleasant side effect even if it only occasionally happened. It's just gross. Would take some more work to, say, make it only apply if the person-running-away is the FIRST person the scan-for-targets reaches, with the scan-for-targets being a pretty wide cone...... but with chase only actually activating if you're looking accurately at someone. (Hell, maybe that last addendum isn't necessary. If the nearest or only person in front of you in a wide huge long cone is running away from you then even if you aren't looking directly at them you may as well get a speed boost.)
Anyway point being you would be unable to chase someone if they have an ally closer to you in front of you. Which seems reasonable. And prevents situational exploits.
(edit: Although I just realized that in the case where you're chasing someone who's running back to behind a trap/ambush and trying to bait you in, the implementation I described above would cancel your chase after the target got past the trap, which would warn you about the trap. That would be a bad side effect. Not sure how exaaaaaactly to avoid that while also avoiding the earlier mentioned situation of getting speed boosts towards attacking unrelated targets. I mean, positions-wise, they're basically the same situation. Like, if you already knew the trappers were there, then you're basically getting a speed boost ALMOST directly at them (as you chase the person running past them.) That's a bit bad.)
(Maybe it would be easy to make the scan ignore targets who you don't have a direct line of sight on. I don't actually know much about that part of the engine/code. Probably not hard. I mean, that exact kind of check would be used for casting Push 3.)
Now to come back to...
The amount of increase that the chase mechanic would give you could always be tweaked per-class.
What you're replying to is me simply saying "if you're chasing someone, you'll always end up going only slightly faster than they are, whatever their class's running speed is." Is there a problem with that? Are you saying you would rather there be a different result, like... slower classes when chasing might still be slower than the target they're chasing? You're probably not saying that.
Random thing I'll admit about my spec is that it would behave differently than chiv when a chaser chases a chaser. The person chasing the chaser would be unable to catch up if the chaser is getting enough of a speed boost from an even faster class they're chasing. Or, if the chaser-chaser sped up even FURTHER to catch up, then theoretically you could get a chain of people together and the guy at the back would go VERY FAST (for a very short time). Which would be bad.
As I said above, modifying movement and adding an actual sprint would be ideal, because then the sprint grants you forward movement whilst negating your ability to attack, and then you could add the chase mechanic ontop of that which would balance it much better.
Just so I'm not ignoring this, lemme just say that I'm trying to make really... "minimal" changes. Such that changing the movement system is off the table. So I'm trying to figure out how a chase system would work with the existing movement system.
Also if there's any single point to take away from this it's that it's helpful to the programmers/implementers if you reaaaaaaaally think through the exact details of how a mechanic would work and what the side-effects would be, and try to iron them out yourself. Although if you lack any knowledge of the code/engine I could understand that being tough.