Your 5 changes to sabering

[noel]

If you could make 5 changes to sabering what would they be and why?

Here are mine:

​

1. Bring styles closer together in speed. Make red a bit faster. Purple is probably fine because of yaw. Yellow is fine. Cyan is probably borderline okay too. Blue a bit slower.

2. Make running less OP. Flat high BP drain on swings whilst running so that people don't play like a pussy/pbing is actually used instead of dodging. Atm you might as well dodge because the chance of you dodging = higher than you pbing, resulting in duels which don't fit up to the name 'Moviebattles'. One person runs in does a combo and runs out, then the other person does it, its like Runescape combat.

3. Bring back semi pb. Would make parry spamming less effective etc.

4. Make swingblock less difficult. This would nullify the power slap -> 4 hit -> repeat has. At the minute its very easy to get mblocked/slapped because your opponent can mblock/slap before your swingblock registers/you can input it quick enough. Make a safe zone just before/after a swing of maybe 0.5 seconds so that swingblocking is more manageable.

5. Make yellow the baseline style. This is a big one, but basically balance everything out to fit with yellow and they should fit with eachother decently too:
Blue halfswinging is broken because of the interrupts it causes, damage is too high and the perk is pretty strong too.
Cyan is very easily spammable, random perfect parries are irritating, hard to pb and mb because of its speed so damage should be lower.
Purple's perk is OP, especially with how valuable ACM, removing/nerfing its perk would make it balance well.
Staff animations are hard to see, very effective at meaningless spam because of its speed. Speed + power + unclear animations = too strong.
Yellow v yellow combat is and has been the most fun for a long time so yellow is fine.
Dualies are fine imo, at least against yellow they balance well.
Red balances nicely with yellow, a slight speed increase would make it perfect.

I know this is another thread talking about sabering but I kind of want to see if I share the same ideas as other people in the community/whether theres a majority who want something or whether we're split.​

 

[Almapa]

and TK enabled again in Duel Servers cause the laming ,maybe a good option too

 

[AaronAaron]

and TK enabled again in Duel Servers cause the laming ,maybe a good option too

This will never work lol

 

[Vizino]

go back to jka base xddddd

 

[Defiant]

To me a good system is easy to learn by watching and not obfuscated in layers upon layers of hidden mechanics. The current system is like joining a kids' playground game where the other kids consciously didn't tell you all the rules leaving you at a strong disadvantage. Even if they explained you the rules, they gave so many rules that you'll not be able to keep track of them all.

Exactly this. Any game system should be explainable at a high level in no more then about five lines. I'd be pretty sure the number of people that could describe the saber system as is 100% accurately could be counted on 10 fingers.

 

[Pepsi]

5 easy steps to make Movie Battles II saber experience much more enjoyable:​

1. Add occasions which causing sudden death like in RC3P2. For instance. when jedi pressed w+attack and sith S+A+attack. Very samurai-stylish.
2. Bring nudge back.
3. Make this pb system less impactful or at least make it work proper.
4. Bring cuts into. Like, when you have less than 33 bp, you can get damage for 5-20 hp with negligent block. Make dueling work in open.
5. Make lower bp regeneration, while increasing the total amount of it and associate it with movemenet speed.

Best regards.

 

[yoinkboink]

defensive meta should not be encouraged lest we have another 1.4.0

Yes, but at the same time, offense needs to not be so strong.

 

[noel]

Exactly this. Any game system should be explainable at a high level in no more then about five lines. I'd be pretty sure the number of people that could describe the saber system as is 100% accurately could be counted on 10 fingers.

you couldn't explain csgo, league, pubg in 5 sentences and they're some of the most popular games to date. js.

 

[Smee]

All these drastic changes are just going to result in another exodus imo
Just make small tweaks and get the saber system to a steady level
Do not simplify it further please

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

you couldn't explain csgo, league, pubg in 5 sentences and they're some of the most popular games to date. js.

We're not talking about the entire game. Just one system. Even if we were to explain the core loop of the entire game with let's say 10 phrases, League, PUBG and CSGO are very clearcut.

CSGO's gun play in a nutshell:
Guns are fired with the left mouse button and reloaded with the R key. Gun-specific behavior can be done with the right mouse button. Headshots deal increased damage. You are always more accurate the slower you are moving. Repeated gunfire begins to spray in pre-determined patterns.

Comparing League to our saber system is also a bad example since League offers a glossary above every spell and item. The core concepts of autoattack and spellcasting are easily accessible. Deeper metagame and macrogame concepts are obviously out of the question here as they are not as relevant for the player to begin playing and performing the basic core loop of the game that brings out the most fun, which is fighting.

I'll try to explain our current core saber system though:
Players can attack with the left mouse button and block with the right mouse button. Attack angles correspond with your movement direction at the time of pressing attack. Attacks can be chained. Block points are required to block hits. Attacks drain block points from the attacker and blocking regenerates block points for their user. If a player lands an attack on the opponent, that opponent will lose block points. If a player holds block while attacking, he will deal less damage, but lose less BP himself. When defending, attack BP damage can be avoided by aiming around the attacker at the corresponding attack angle. If the attack comes from top-left, aim your crosshair roughly around the top left corner of the attacker.

I think that gets you started to some degree. I left out stuff like manual block, semi-perfect block and what have you since you can somewhat enjoy the core game and not know about these. Are you ready to have fun yet?

I am not saying that the system should be CSGO's gun play. I am saying that it shouldn't be this difficult to explain the basic functionality. I'm not good at explaining shit, but I was able to summarize core concepts that even open up alleyways to the more "advanced" mechanics at play in CSGO as players can use this knowledge to understand that they can mitigate spray patterns with their mouse movement.

Meanwhile we hardly scratched the surface with the saber system. All the different reasons why a lightsaber can be knocked out of your hand? When does a slap knock someone down? Special properties of some attacks.

 

[Manyo]

I was curious about the argument of how complex the system really is. So i went ahead and checked something for fun.
I compared Sev's Duel Guide with a lot of beginner guides of CS,LoL and Dota2. Sev's guide is 9119 words overall and 5293 words if you deduct the style specific guide.
The beginner guides i found all ranged around 1000-6000 words.
You can argue that Sev's guide goes deep beyond beginner knowledge and more into strategy.
You can also argue that it's worthless comparing those guides without analysing the content and writing styles of those guides.

But i do think you need to know everything of the first section of Sev's guide to not feel lost in a duel. So if you play open mode you basically need to put the same effort into learning a minor part of it (duelling) as if you would be starting with a whole game (CS,LoL,Dota2).
And here is the disconnect: MB2 Duel mode could be a game by itself, it's that deep. But in open mode it's only a small portion of the overall experience.
The dev team seem to have decided to make the duel mode stand on it's own and then just go with it in open mode.
That isn't a bad design decision but now you're at the point where if you change the system drastically you alienate a good chunk of the userbase, so it can't happen.

I know that my posts in this thread are more rambling than anything, it's just that i tried to get back into the duelling system several times and always got frustrated by it. For me personally it's hard to implement all the informations of the system into my gameplay.
The only solution i can see right now is to keep the system, try to make it play as fast as possible without breaking it, and make tons of video explanations of the system.

 

[SeV]

I was curious about the argument of how complex the system really is. So i went ahead and checked something for fun.
I compared Sev's Duel Guide with a lot of beginner guides of CS,LoL and Dota2. Sev's guide is 9119 words overall and 5293 words if you deduct the style specific guide.
The beginner guides i found all ranged around 1000-6000 words.
You can argue that Sev's guide goes deep beyond beginner knowledge and more into strategy.
You can also argue that it's worthless comparing those guides without analysing the content and writing styles of those guides.

But i do think you need to know everything of the first section of Sev's guide to not feel lost in a duel. So if you play open mode you basically need to put the same effort into learning a minor part of it (duelling) as if you would be starting with a whole game (CS,LoL,Dota2).
And here is the disconnect: MB2 Duel mode could be a game by itself, it's that deep. But in open mode it's only a small portion of the overall experience.
The dev team seem to have decided to make the duel mode stand on it's own and then just go with it in open mode.
That isn't a bad design decision but now you're at the point where if you change the system drastically you alienate a good chunk of the userbase, so it can't happen.

I know that my posts in this thread are more rambling than anything, it's just that i tried to get back into the duelling system several times and always got frustrated by it. For me personally it's hard to implement all the informations of the system into my gameplay.
The only solution i can see right now is to keep the system, try to make it play as fast as possible without breaking it, and make tons of video explanations of the system.

It would make much more sense if you compared the beginner guides to what noel has done. My guide is outdated and also written for the improvement of duelists and to go in depth. It was never meant to be a short and easy guide for beginners, but a more comprehensive and 'explain in depth' kind of thing. Noels guide is fairly lean, clean and easy to understand isn't it?

I think the MAIN PROBLEM is invisible, intangible things, numbers and weird meta game things. Prime example would be ACM. It is not that straight forward, and it is a behind the scenes kind of mechanic that dominates the meta and sidelines primary visible mechanics such as BP. Another one would be obnoxious perks such as +1 ACM on PB, or drain x on PB or whatever. Some invisible thing. Giving red nudge as a perk is a tangible, solid thing that people can deal with. Beginners can look at that style and see what it does, but you can't really do that with ACM. And ACM is just one example but a primary one. I don't think this can be applied to te blocking system because the blocking system is visual, you can see what wrks and what doesn't. I really think a hybrid version would work quite well and again it is the kind of thing that is above the surface not below it, which means its the good kind of complexity/depth or whatever you wanna call it. Making PB aimbot friendly does not solve anything, it just destroys MBII sabering completely and is such a dumb idea I cant believve its being brought up again. Anything but that, revert to old PB but never bens suggestion.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I think the MAIN PROBLEM is invisible, intangible things, numbers and weird meta game things. Prime example would be ACM.

These are the biggest offenders for sure. There are some really odd mechanics behind them as well. ACM could probably be entirely removed and the system would be far better with some adjustments to compensate.

Remove ACM and Increase attack BP damage to compensate.

My list of "less drastic" changes would be along the lines of:

• Remove ACM
• Boost BP damage greatly
  
• Boost BP regen to some degree
• Slapping players take extra BP damage
  
• Ministaggers on body hit

 

[Manyo]

It would make much more sense if you compared the beginner guides to what noel has done. My guide is outdated and also written for the improvement of duelists and to go in depth. It was never meant to be a short and easy guide for beginners, but a more comprehensive and 'explain in depth' kind of thing. Noels guide is fairly lean, clean and easy to understand isn't it?

Noel's guide is 4821 words, which isn't a big difference to the 5293 words of your first section that i used to make my point^^.
Still thanks for mentioning it, i haven't noticed that one before. When i got time i surely will check it out.

 

[Defiant]

I
I think the MAIN PROBLEM is invisible, intangible things, numbers and weird meta game things. Prime example would be ACM. It is not that straight forward, and it is a behind the scenes kind of mechanic that dominates the meta and sidelines primary visible mechanics such as BP. Another one would be obnoxious perks such as +1 ACM on PB, or drain x on PB or whatever. Some invisible thing. Giving red nudge as a perk is a tangible, solid thing that people can deal with. Beginners can look at that style and see what it does, but you can't really do that with ACM. And ACM is just one example but a primary one. I don't think this can be applied to te blocking system because the blocking system is visual, you can see what wrks and what doesn't. I really think a hybrid version would work quite well and again it is the kind of thing that is above the surface not below it, which means its the good kind of complexity/depth or whatever you wanna call it. Making PB aimbot friendly does not solve anything, it just destroys MBII sabering completely and is such a dumb idea I cant believve its being brought up again. Anything but that, revert to old PB but never bens suggestion.

Whilst I agree with the number of hidden parameters I don't think you'll ever be able to totally eliminate it. If you consider gun play to be binary, the sabers are very much analogue. Gun play is easy. A shot is fired, it hits or misses, depending on what fired it and where it hit defines how much damage is done. That's fine for gun play because getting a headshot is relatively hard. In fact hitting anything at all is relatively hard. Saber play on the other hand is exactly opposite. It's easy to hit a target and if you simply swapped HP to BP and said when BP is gone the next strike kills you get everyone using the same downward slashes cause headshots is the easiest way to win. A saber system in someway has to approximate the movie scenarios - what style, distance between players, angle between attacker and defender what part of the saber makes the hit (Fast moving tip, slow moving hilt) - notice all this is without even considering what the other player is doing - is he swinging too? Is he slapping me in the face as I swing? ect. ect. Its a lot of stuff to consider so that's where these little systems come in - to make it feel like a real duel (even though its not really an implementation of the physics envolved).

The problem we've always had with sabers is that everyone has a different opinion of what the best approximation is. I was only half joking when I said b17 or bust - It was the best sabering system we've ever had. It was simple to explain but difficult to master. It rewarded skill and tactics more than reflexes. It predates my time as a team member so I don't know why it was changed so completely rather than tweaked to fix the problems it had.

 

[SeV]

Whilst I agree with the number of hidden parameters I don't think you'll ever be able to totally eliminate it. If you consider gun play to be binary, the sabers are very much analogue. Gun play is easy. A shot is fired, it hits or misses, depending on what fired it and where it hit defines how much damage is done. That's fine for gun play because getting a headshot is relatively hard. In fact hitting anything at all is relatively hard. Saber play on the other hand is exactly opposite. It's easy to hit a target and if you simply swapped HP to BP and said when BP is gone the next strike kills you get everyone using the same downward slashes cause headshots is the easiest way to win. A saber system in someway has to approximate the movie scenarios - what style, distance between players, angle between attacker and defender what part of the saber makes the hit (Fast moving tip, slow moving hilt) - notice all this is without even considering what the other player is doing - is he swinging too? Is he slapping me in the face as I swing? ect. ect. Its a lot of stuff to consider so that's where these little systems come in - to make it feel like a real duel (even though its not really an implementation of the physics envolved).

The problem we've always had with sabers is that everyone has a different opinion of what the best approximation is. I was only half joking when I said b17 or bust - It was the best sabering system we've ever had. It was simple to explain but difficult to master. It rewarded skill and tactics more than reflexes. It predates my time as a team member so I don't know why it was changed so completely rather than tweaked to fix the problems it had.

Yes, a bugfixed version of B17 would be pretty damn fun, I don't want to be blue HP bugged to death in every duel I happen to think RC1 was also a very nice build though I know some people dislike it. It produced very cool duels courtesy of the blocking animations. I remember my disappointment with b18 after b17, but little else really. B18 was fun for open mode in my memory though. Corpse nades ftw.

I know that you cannot eliminate 'behind the scenes' mechanics and numbers, but the point was to not have a dominating yet invisible and intangible mechanic dominate the meta over all else even BP. There was talk of replacing ACM with HP drain/gain based on offensive/defensive actions and adding in force powers to compensate like heal and lifedrain. I personally think this would be a very cool direction to take sabering although it is perhaps secondary to removing ACM and making BP more valuable and important. One huge step that absolutely needs to be addressed is cyan/purple and duals, staff to a lesser extent. These styles need to be fixed and made playable and non-cheese. So does blue I guess, but thinking back there are so many problems now that the system did not have way back. Some things are definitely better, some things worse.

But I think we can all agree that BP needs to play a more major role instead of grinding an invisible mechanic then parrying and dodging to retain it and autowin a duel, right?

 

[Hexodious]

• Remove ACM
• Boost BP damage greatly
  
• Boost BP regen to some degree
• Slapping players take extra BP damage

I'd be ok with these.

• Ministaggers on body hit

I remember when we had the staggers on 50% BP and body hit, it was fun at first but quickly became tedious. I wouldn't want this again, just like how I wouldn't want pblocks to interrupt combos again. The mblock vs swing-block mechanic fills that void fine. Which leads me to:

Just add the flinch animation to mblocks vs swing-block. Again this is just a visual change, but one that will help both sides see whats going on rather than it being invisible. The mechanic is already used as a counter-attack so the recoil in the animation would reinforce the idea of there being an opening which causes extra damage.

 

[AaronAaron]

If you want to go back to a decent, more recent, saber system, go back to 1.4.2!!! It was actually fun to duel then

(sev didnt have any other videos on 1.4.2 and yes I am the king)

Even SK5 used to play back then!!!! o<|>:|[]>

Semi pb, pb counters, no messy slap attack, perfect YvY (only important style anyway lul) you could even attack from the same direction making the gameplay less predictable!! Only bad part about it was nudge!!

 

[eezstreet]

ok I'm not really going to read everyone's points here, but I will say that Defiant and Ben have the right idea here.

There is no point in having a saber system that is so complicated, and has so much depth, but all of that depth goes to waste. What I mean is, if I can win a fight by just spamming cyan like a maniac and landing some PBs every now and again, why have all of these other interlocking systems? If there's only one pathway to win, eliminate all of the other pathways. Or, look at why that particular style is good, and nerf it.

There's two problems that I think are somewhat important with regards to the saber system:

• The systems are opaque and overly complicated, when they don't need to be. How do you know how much ACM you have, precisely? What is the difference between my cursor turning blue and turning green? These are not very intuitive to the point where a player is going to understand exactly what is going on without further explanation. This is definitely a theme with MB2 in general, and it's originally why the library was put in place to begin with. Even then, there's some things which aren't explained, some information in the library is straight-up wrong, and I think it's information better suited to a wiki anyway. It should be used for theorycrafting and meta discussion, not as a guide on how to play the game.
  • Counterargument: "It's because the game is deep! Complexity is good! Complex systems are naturally hard to explain." -- meaningful complexity is good. And there's a fair bit of it in MB2. Wrist Laser for mandalorians is an example of meaningless complexity. Nobody uses it. Complexity is the enemy of coherent gameplay, especially when such complexity requires a PhD in order to understand. You can have meaningless complexity in a game that adds to it in a positive way, but a multiplayer FPS is not the genre for that. You're better off finding such complexity in a strategy game, or a simulator/tycoon/survival game.
• It's random. Flinch is random, sometimes it doesn't work correctly, and the player has very little in the way of mitigating its effects as a Jedi, or increasing its effects as a gunner. I don't mind some minor elements being randomized, like stats, but winning or losing depending almost entirely on random chance is nonsense, especially when there's no way to turn the odds in your favor. Entropy shouldn't be a matter of whether you win or lose, rather it should be a means to keep the player on their toes.
  
  • Counterargument: "Random systems like flinch make for interesting gameplay! Wild stuff can happen at any time!" -- Games like Starcraft and Town of Salem have no random elements at all, and yet there are some pretty amazing upsets and clever interactions which occur because of the various tools that the game gives the players. For instance, have you heard of the Eraser strategy in Starcraft? By cleverly using the games tools, people are still coming up with new ideas to outmatch their opponents. There isn't really much room for such experimentation with MB2's systems. It's pretty much just raw skill. There easily could be, though.

Solve both of these issues, and I think you come up with a good saber system overall.

 

[Almapa]

This will never work lol

sorry, it's tk points enabled again, to punish.

 

[Bob-Billy]

enable repulse, thx