Combat is boring, a note to Henrik.

[Teknique]

Observation: combat rewarding wild spinning to throw off prediction and to mask your directional draws and blocks puts a toll on the prediction code, and blocking/parrying.

What are you talking about?

I haven't watched this hour and a half long video, but hypothesis: You will see a grand total of NO ONE doing "wild spinning" in that hour long video.

If you encounter a true god or a dark lord in the server you shouldn't base things on supernatural beings. This is MORTAL online, keep your suggestions about mortals.

 

[Turbizzler]

My thoughts on combat are;

MO1 has more fluid combat, it feels more responsive in terms of input - Chaining directional attacks together and utilizing footwork feels better and smoother, compared to MO2.

MO2 has better animation work, but the pacing of fighting feels off. It's a little slow, it feels unresponsive at times, animation delays and when moving/turning it feels clunky. Another thing I noticed is when swinging some weapons, from 1P perspective the weapon length doesn't match the length at which you hit things.

When multiple people are fighting, it's clunky as hell when people are trying to focus on a single person to get him down - Bumping into each other, delayed swing timers etc It just feels weird. MO1 movement feels better.

I also don't like the TTK currently, its too long and too forgiving.

The combat is playable, the additional directional and block angles are much welcomed - But the combat still needs a lot of work done. I hope SV can nail it, it really needs more fluidity, responsiveness in both attacks and movement.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

That was a different game tho. This is Mortal Online 2. In fact, I'm willing to argue that that game wasn't ever really going to work the way they wanted it to. This is kind also the opposite of unbiased and objective one you inject what you want. You're only looking at it through the perspective of what you want, and what was sold to you. My argument has never been "I don't want faster combat", in fact I'm not really arguing anything besides the fact I understand why they would've made that change on the technical level.



This usually happens with games, especially sequels. The developers go back and look at what worked and what didn't.



Everyone that disagrees with you is a liar and has agenda; but you don't. Gotcha. I just call a spade a spade. I'm guessing you mean this last patch day with the stress test? Well no shit man, but I doubt that had more to do the 2000 or so players and not so much the changes. Like I said, combat isn't perfect, they still need to iterate on it more. On a personal level, the difference between march/april and now is night a day difference. I went from visible watching people hit me from a significant distance away, to actually being able to having a fight with someone with much fewer instances of desync or goofiness.



How do you tell the difference between the two? I doubt you truly know to be honest unless you're sitting on the other side watching the screen, and I'm not sure where you're getting these statistics from. If you want to talk about lying and agenda you're display a good example. Make up statistics, and then deny deny deny.

This video is a good example of what a player with severe desync issues. Yes, he makes mistakes, but that doesn't invalidate that there was/is a network problem with the game itself.

Seeing gameplay has explained so much in the way you present your arguments. I've also fought you before.

With all due respect and without offense, you're not very good. Which kind of effects how I take in your criticism directly relating to combat.

Also this video was uploaded before ping normalization and turn caps still being in place. A lot of people who want faster combat want it so they can TRY it as opposed to being immediately thrusted into something slow. The whole purpose people wailed and wanted turn caps gone on the swing release is because it made things feel more clunky, and slow. But now with the four part animations and reduced movement speed - we took one step forward, then two steps back.

I get you're arguing from the base of a game devs. stand point of "They're doing X for good reason, why would they do it for a bad reason?"

Just to clarify, we're not saying Star Vault is intentionally doing things 'bad' on purpose, but rather what they think is good probably isn't considering the track record of MO1. Half-baked patches coming out barely play tested resulting in a multitude of bugs and imbalances that stay WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to long in the game or just remain indefinitely.

Also-also, while the slow snail paced combat has more directly effected dueling (Which honestly means fuck all realistically outside of specific scenarios) it messes with group fights way more then people realize. I always chuckle when I see people say "oh the group fights are great they work really well." Which parts of it work well exactly? The terrible stamina regen? The terrible stamina pool? The bumping into people? The ghosting swings? The RNG equipment hits? The numbers (zerg) beating more skilled players? Oh, and on top of all that the stupendously over-defensive playstyle of every single player in the game where even a below average player can now live through three people attacking him by just standing and parrying unless the three attacking him perfectly coordinate each attack.

"well that sounds like the three players problem and not the one trying to live!"

Except when you dive into a group to try and finish and you have it happen to you, watching your stamina get eaten up because being aggressive is super pointless and it's all about holding ripostes, bait-and-switching, and target switching. This game has pseudo-adopted Mordhau tactics with 30x (times) the time to kill.

I REALLY HOPE THE MOVES THEY ADD JUST MIRACOUSLY FIX EVERYTHING, but do I believe that will be the case? No, I'm definitely a see it to believe it. What do I see right now? A combat system flawed at the core.

 

[Teknique]

Seeing gameplay has explained so much in the way you present your arguments. I've also fought you before.

With all due respect and without offense, you're not very good. Which kind of effects how I take in your criticism directly relating to combat.

Also this video was uploaded before ping normalization and turn caps still being in place. A lot of people who want faster combat want it so they can TRY it as opposed to being immediately thrusted into something slow. The whole purpose people wailed and wanted turn caps gone on the swing release is because it made things feel more clunky, and slow. But now with the four part animations and reduced movement speed - we took one step forward, then two steps back.

I get you're arguing from the base of a game devs. stand point of "They're doing X for good reason, why would they do it for a bad reason?"

Just to clarify, we're not saying Star Vault is intentionally doing things 'bad' on purpose, but rather what they think is good probably isn't considering the track record of MO1. Half-baked patches coming out barely play tested resulting in a multitude of bugs and imbalances that stay WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to long in the game or just remain indefinitely.

Also-also, while the slow snail paced combat has more directly effected dueling (Which honestly means fuck all realistically outside of specific scenarios) it messes with group fights way more then people realize. I always chuckle when I see people say "oh the group fights are great they work really well." Which parts of it work well exactly? The terrible stamina regen? The terrible stamina pool? The bumping into people? The ghosting swings? The RNG equipment hits? The numbers (zerg) beating more skilled players? Oh, and on top of all that the stupendously over-defensive playstyle of every single player in the game where even a below average player can now live through three people attacking him by just standing and parrying unless the three attacking him perfectly coordinate each attack.

"well that sounds like the three players problem and not the one trying to live!"

Except when you dive into a group to try and finish and you have it happen to you, watching your stamina get eaten up because being aggressive is super pointless and it's all about holding ripostes, bait-and-switching, and target switching. This game has pseudo-adopted Mordhau tactics with 30x (times) the time to kill.

I REALLY HOPE THE MOVES THEY ADD JUST MIRACOUSLY FIX EVERYTHING, but do I believe that will be the case? No, I'm definitely a see it to believe it. What do I see right now? A combat system flawed at the core.

While I can adapt to and play with the current group fight mechanics, I will say that group fighting has been effected due to

A) turn cap effecting my sticky backs

B) speed cap effecting my sticky backs

Did you see my video yesterday where ty and I almost got outplayed by an actual bot just stamming us out holding w

I definitely don’t play that messy all the time though

 

[Wesley Snipes]

Seeing gameplay has explained so much in the way you present your arguments. I've also fought you before.

With all due respect and without offense, you're not very good. Which kind of effects how I take in your criticism directly relating to combat.

Also this video was uploaded before ping normalization and turn caps still being in place. A lot of people who want faster combat want it so they can TRY it as opposed to being immediately thrusted into something slow. The whole purpose people wailed and wanted turn caps gone on the swing release is because it made things feel more clunky, and slow. But now with the four part animations and reduced movement speed - we took one step forward, then two steps back.

I get you're arguing from the base of a game devs. stand point of "They're doing X for good reason, why would they do it for a bad reason?"

Just to clarify, we're not saying Star Vault is intentionally doing things 'bad' on purpose, but rather what they think is good probably isn't considering the track record of MO1. Half-baked patches coming out barely play tested resulting in a multitude of bugs and imbalances that stay WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to long in the game or just remain indefinitely.

Also-also, while the slow snail paced combat has more directly effected dueling (Which honestly means fuck all realistically outside of specific scenarios) it messes with group fights way more then people realize. I always chuckle when I see people say "oh the group fights are great they work really well." Which parts of it work well exactly? The terrible stamina regen? The terrible stamina pool? The bumping into people? The ghosting swings? The RNG equipment hits? The numbers (zerg) beating more skilled players? Oh, and on top of all that the stupendously over-defensive playstyle of every single player in the game where even a below average player can now live through three people attacking him by just standing and parrying unless the three attacking him perfectly coordinate each attack.

"well that sounds like the three players problem and not the one trying to live!"

Except when you dive into a group to try and finish and you have it happen to you, watching your stamina get eaten up because being aggressive is super pointless and it's all about holding ripostes, bait-and-switching, and target switching. This game has pseudo-adopted Mordhau tactics with 30x (times) the time to kill.

I REALLY HOPE THE MOVES THEY ADD JUST MIRACOUSLY FIX EVERYTHING, but do I believe that will be the case? No, I'm definitely a see it to believe it. What do I see right now? A combat system flawed at the core.

just a declaimer, that's not me in the video. I also never made the claim that I was good or other wise. However I also don't believe they should build combat for / or around "the very best" players which is an extremely small subset of the player base.

 

[Toutsos]

I never played MO1 but I come from Darkfall so pretty familiar with the mechanics of the game. Just want to emphasize OP's opinion: Stamina is a bitch at the moment. There is no way to play agressively or even try to 1 vs 2 since you will just run out of stamina and get destroyed.

Combat also needs to become faster overall but I think stamina is the main/most important concern.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

just a declaimer, that's not me in the video. I also never made the claim that I was good or other wise. However I also don't believe they should build combat for / or around "the very best" players which is an extremely small subset of the player base.

Why?

If the combat is designed correctly, it can be easy to understand but difficult to master given time and practice. Right now the game doesn't feel that way at all.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

While I can adapt to and play with the current group fight mechanics, I will say that group fighting has been effected due to

A) turn cap effecting my sticky backs

B) speed cap effecting my sticky backs

Did you see my video yesterday where ty and I almost got outplayed by an actual bot just stamming us out holding w

I definitely don’t play that messy all the time though

Yeah that just looks shit. Idk why people praise this combat.

 

[bbihah]

Yeah that just looks shit. Idk why people praise this combat.

Hey at least its a step forward from ice skating online.

 

[Valoran]

There has been a lot of circling around a few specific topics in this thread, so I thought it would help to clear some things up.

1. The reduced movement speed has helped immensely with maintaining accurate player positions, as with each position update sent by the server to all the clients, the players have moved shorter distances than before. Of course we still see some desync, as it can never truly be eliminated so long as we have a one world server. The reduced move speed has also made several improvements to combat in duels and group fights, as weapon length matters more now, and you are less able to simply sprint through an entire enemy group with no consequences.


2. The slower swing release speed is part of the ping normalization, and cannot simply be increased without causing issues between people of vastly different ping such as 10 vs 200+. The current maximum speed will not change for this reason, however the weapon charge speeds could potentially be changed to improve the feeling and speed of normal attacks.

People are now able to parry attacks that they were not able to parry before, because netcode improvements were made that actually made it fair for everyone, instead of only allowing people with good ping to parry.


3. The player warping and desync introduced with the Vadda, Bakti, Moh ki patch was a completely new and separate issue, which has already been worked on. If the run speeds were higher, this issue would have been much worse than it already was.


4. The block arc cannot be decreased from where it is currently without reintroducing the age old prediction abuse back hit meta from MO1. This is already possible in the current build, but isn't as easy to do as it was before.



The game is built to be sold and accessible globally on one server, because of this the game cannot heavily favor only people with low ping, and this is why these improvements have been made.


To reiterate the main points,

1. Reduced move speed has vastly improved position desync and smoothness of player movement.
2. The ping normalization has levelled the playing field and made the game fair for all ping ranges in regards to attack speed and being able to parry counters.

 

[ThaBadMan]

Hey at least its a step forward from ice skating online.

Your both right and wrong.

The game looks leagues better but sadly at the cost of having the gameplay boring and totally unengaging.
The skill ceiling was also alot higher, and swings felt alot more responsive and fluid.

When combat feels like a sunday afternoon tai chi session, something is very wrong.

But DAMN it looks so much better. Having a hybrid between the two would/could be sweet.

 

[ElPerro]

2. The slower swing release speed is part of the ping normalization, and cannot simply be increased without causing issues between people of vastly different ping such as 10 vs 200+. The current maximum speed will not change for this reason, however the weapon charge speeds could potentially be changed to improve the feeling and speed of normal attacks.

You are just speculating here, both were patched at the same time so how do you really know swing release speed cannot be faster? Before all of this you could still parry a high ping player because of their swing delay, it was only EU that really hit through parries because they had no delay.

 

[Valoran]

You are just speculating here, both were patched at the same time so how do you really know swing release speed cannot be faster? Before all of this you could still parry a high ping player because of their swing delay, it was only EU that really hit through parries because they had no delay.

I am not speculating at all. I have talked to the devs involved with creating the netcode and I understand how it works.

We currently have a 300ms delay added to the beginning of every swing release, which gives everyone around you time to sync up your release animation when it plays.


Decreasing this delay will not allow enough time to sync up the attack for everyone, and lower ping players will be able to hit high ping players before the high ping player even sees the swing.

Of course if someone with 400 ping were to come and play the game, this is exactly what he would experience, but they have drawn the line at being accessible to people with 300 ping and below as that is realistically as high as should be possible provided you have a good connection.


As I said however, the charge speeds of normal attacks could potentially be increased, as raising that speed won't affect the normalization and could make normal attacks harder to parry than now, as well as improving the fluidity of combat. We already have double the charge speed than in MO1, but it can still be made faster.

 

[Wesley Snipes]

Your both right and wrong.

The game looks leagues better but sadly at the cost of having the gameplay boring and totally unengaging.
The skill ceiling was also alot higher, and swings felt alot more responsive and fluid.

When combat feels like a sunday afternoon tai chi session, something is very wrong.

But DAMN it looks so much better. Having a hybrid between the two would/could be sweet.

It doesn't just look better, it functions better too for a large demograph of players outside of just euro land. Sorry you lost your 30 ping advantage but that shit was never going to fly if MO2 had any chance of succeeding.

 

[ElPerro]

I am not speculating at all. I have talked to the devs involved with creating the netcode and I understand how it works.

We currently have a 300ms delay added to the beginning of every swing release, which gives everyone around you time to sync up your release animation when it plays.


Decreasing this delay will not allow enough time to sync up the attack for everyone, and lower ping players will be able to hit high ping players before the high ping player even sees the swing.

Of course if someone with 400 ping were to come and play the game, this is exactly what he would experience, but they have drawn the line at being accessible to people with 300 ping and below as that is realistically as high as should be possible provided you have a good connection.


As I said however, the charge speeds of normal attacks could potentially be increased, as raising that speed won't affect the normalization and could make normal attacks harder to parry than now, as well as improving the fluidity of combat. We already have double the charge speed than in MO1, but it can still be made faster.

Have they tested with lower delay? No? Then you are speculating. And this is ontop of the ping normalization. All they had to do was add the swing delay from previous patches to EU players and that would have probably done the trick.

 

[ThaBadMan]

It doesn't just look better, it functions better too for a large demograph of players outside of just euro land. Sorry you lost your 30 ping advantage but that shit was never going to fly if MO2 had any chance of succeeding.

It has all the same faults that MO was plagued with so yes it looks better, less fun gameplay, better in regards to ping and with the same faults and issues from MO like humanoid bug, warping, unresponsive swings, swing swinging through without dmg dealt, dmg from out of range, no animation swings and teleporting.

I dont complain about ping normalization, I like the change.
What I dont like is dumbing down combat to make it easier for little to no gain.

Those changes does nothing however to better than average players since they will still rule no question. We just cant fight as outnumbered and TTK is higher so a kill only takes longer and is more tedius now. Combat went from fun to boring.

But I will say that imo MO2 has alot less of a chance to succeed now than with faster combat, just like MO. Thats the main audience of these type of games.

 

[ThaBadMan]

I am not speculating at all. I have talked to the devs involved with creating the netcode and I understand how it works.

We currently have a 300ms delay added to the beginning of every swing release, which gives everyone around you time to sync up your release animation when it plays.


Decreasing this delay will not allow enough time to sync up the attack for everyone, and lower ping players will be able to hit high ping players before the high ping player even sees the swing.

Of course if someone with 400 ping were to come and play the game, this is exactly what he would experience, but they have drawn the line at being accessible to people with 300 ping and below as that is realistically as high as should be possible provided you have a good connection.


As I said however, the charge speeds of normal attacks could potentially be increased, as raising that speed won't affect the normalization and could make normal attacks harder to parry than now, as well as improving the fluidity of combat. We already have double the charge speed than in MO1, but it can still be made faster.

If this is true then we still have a lot of both move and swing speed increase to try since combat was slowed down several times before ping normalization hit with additional slow downs.

We can also limit swing and block arcs to decrease the damage done by slow downs done since the combat was better.
And the long overdue needed stamina increases both in pool and regen.

Still too much lost for such little gain imo...

 

[Solairerection]

FIrst time in my life I am excited to see Mounted Combat added to the game. The absolute slow-mosexuals preaching snail-wars will have an aneurysm when they realise horses move much faster than someone on foot ever will.

Or is that getting speed-capped aswell for the "Greater Good™"

 

[Grudge Bringer]

I'm not against them adjusting numbers, I'm just trying to make sense of the argument. The combat is slow, but slow compared to what? What is "slow" ? the way characters move? The swing speed? All of the above? If they sped up any of those things, and the results weren't what SV wanted, and they tuned them back down, will we have the same arguments? If the devs came out and said the changes were made because that was the only solution that worked and provided normalized performance across enough regions, would that be good enough of an answer for most people here? I doubt it.

The devs seem to think adding more attack options will make combat more "skillful", they haven't even entertained any of the suggestions of speeding it up.

Because the combat speed right now is perfectly fine and fighting is fun for the majority of players. RIP ice-skating.

 

[Valoran]

Have they tested with lower delay? No? Then you are speculating. And this is ontop of the ping normalization. All they had to do was add the swing delay from previous patches to EU players and that would have probably done the trick.

Yes, they have tested with a lower delay internally.

Anything below the current value causes issues that aren't acceptable for a game meant to be accessible to a global market.