Combat is boring round 2.

[Javelin]

Let's begin again. I'll attempt to be more thorough and constructive, I hope you all will do the same.

First of all I'm saying combat is boring and advocating for it to be overhauled because it will benefit the game. Defending a broken system doesn't benefit the game. I get why you do it, because you like the game and maybe the broken combat doesn't bother you so much because you're not big into combat anyway and that's not the reason you play.

This game advertises itself as the most hardcore mmo. They've carved out that niche to exist in. There is nothing hardcore about the current combat. It's not skillfull, it's not fast and benefits numbers in such a large way that whoever has fewer people at a fight would waste less time if they just surrendered or sat down and waited to be executed.

The fun of mortal, the reason I and Myrmidon played the original game was that a small group of players could out play a large group if they were better combatants. If you had more experience and had fought more people it meant something. It's how we made a name for ourselves. It's why even though we haven't played in years a lot of you still recognize us.

That was an awesome thing to be able to do in a game. It made Mortal unique. It meant you could be successful without simply having the most members. You could concentrate on recruiting skilled players rather then just anyone who would play.

If the devs of MO2 don't mind losing this previously awesome aspect of their game then fine. It's not the end of the world there are other games people like me will play. But it will also mean MO2 will be less successful. Maybe it will only be 20% less successful but in such a small niche they need every dollar they can get and so I think it's important.

This is why polls don't matter regarding this issue. 90% of the community of MO1 didn't know how to fight and were more likely to run. I know this because 90% of my engagements were stabbing people in the back of the head as they ran from me. It's not a judgement it's just how it was. But within that other 10% there were some amazing fights, enough that it kept us playing.

I don't want to see MO2 die out of the gate and that's why I start these threads. In game development combat is king, everything else can suck if your combat is good but if your combat sucks in a game like this it doesn't matter how many other features you have it will fizzle out and the community will dwindle. You can defend it, you can scream that I'm wrong but I request that you consider this. How many successful games exist that have slower combat than MO2? Every single successful action mmo, every single first person melee action game, all of them have faster combat.

To succeed you must analyze your direct competitors because that is where the players at launch will come from. If you don't offer anything exciting and new then you won't draw them to play and you certainly won't keep them.

 

[Teknique]

I'm really disappointed in the state of group fights. There are people who wanted to compare and try to make it equal to a combat sim not understanding that 1v1 is the most irrelevant aspect of this game.

All these balance changes are in an attempt to balance the 1v1 duels that are occurring in alpha. They are also based on people who want to stand still and parry everything instead of using movement, essentially the last people that we should have been taking feedback from. Which is why you hear crying about spinning constantly even though it isn't a viable tactic if someone has distance on you or in a group fight. They actually say things like foot jousting is noob and people who want run away isn't skill based as a justification for shitting on movement as a tactic.

The result is what I feared the most a reduction in the quality of team fights. Duels are about neutral, while the ping advantage is less severe the simultaneous nerfs to anything skill based; movement, accelerations, the speed at which you can move your mouse, and camera manipulations makes it less entertaining than it was.

Group fights are horrendous with weapons that do 50+ damage, ultra slow footspeed that means anyone with half a brain can land a sticky, sluggish mouse movements making everyone aim and play the same, and the disappearance of diving into a group to have impact. This results in high DPS for zergs but terrible dps when you're outnumbered due to parry wall.

The old duels in the game played out much faster. Yes ping was a massive issue that bothered me but I don't think a happy medium was found at all, instead we have a dictatorship of parry whores, zerglings and noobs.

 

[Kaemik]

I think it's important we establish where people are actually coming from. And accurately represent the desires of both sides.

1v1 is the most irrelevant aspect of this game.

I 100% agree with this statement. The only people I've seen disagreeing with this statement are people who want combat SPED-UP.

The argument I've been making all along is that constant rebalances are a waste of time at this point in the game. We're all 100+ CON/STR builds with full heavy armor training. Tanks. We need to know how the game will play out when mages, mounted builds, and even the full archer skill tree + crafted bows make it in. Most people I talk to who say that they hate how melee currently plays aren't asking for it to be slown down at all from where it was last patch, just not sped up to appease the wishes of the minority. Most of them keep asking: "Can we get magic in already?". Like we don't KNOW how group fights realistically feel when we have more roles needing to be implemented than what is currently in-game.

So to be clear my stance on combat as a West Coast NA 160+ ping slow reflex guy is "Stop putting so much effort into rebalances of footfighter vs. footfighter, get all the roles in, then balance them against each other." I'm not sure who these people that lobbied for all these changes you hate are. Pretty sure it was SV making their own decisions based on their own data.

 

[Teknique]

I think it's important we establish where people are actually coming from. And accurately represent the desires of both sides.



I 100% agree with this statement. The only people I've seen disagreeing with this statement are people who want combat SPED-UP.

The argument I've been making all along is that constant rebalances are a waste of time at this point in the game. We're all 100+ CON/STR builds with full heavy armor training. Tanks. We need to know how the game will play out when mages, mounted builds, and even the full archer skill tree + crafted bows make it in. Most people I talk to who say that they hate how melee currently plays aren't asking for it to be slown down at all from where it was last patch. Most of them keep asking: "Can we get magic in already?". Like we don't KNOW how group fights realistically feel when we have more roles needing to be implemented than what is currently in-game.

So to be clear my stance on combat as a 160+ ping slow reflex guy is "Stop putting so much effort into rebalances of footfighter vs. footfighter, get all the roles in, then balance them against each other." I'm not sure who these people that lobbied for all these changes you hate are. Pretty sure it was SV making their own decisions based on their own data.

I wish we introduced magic already as well.

As for us being tanks that being true is the most concerning because people are donning the heaviest swords already and hitting extremely hard. Light armor builds with the stated max movement speed being around 430ish I think we're looking at a potential serious imbalance.

as for Alpha and the feedback in my experience anything that resulted in a hit people complained about, people complained about virtually anything they could.

while I can certainly go into specifics about each and every nerf, accel; turn caps 1-2-3, turn cap version F and turn cap final, movement speed, and camera manipulations.

I think it better to just show this video and the general attitude of the mortal "vet"

Ping was certainly an issue but Mr.Imorik, my friend, you really can't comment on what's balanced and what isn't.

Just look at Pat with similar ping to you and then look at yourself and its obvious

a man with 120-150 ping blocking all the camera manipulations and accels in the world so what was the problem? Answer: a couple things but nothing like what most of you think. Incredibly hard to do damage before all those nerfs so clearly whatever was being stated to be overpowered wasn't, simple logic.

and yes if you want to be as good as pat without being as good as pat, you are the problem.


Yes there were issues with ping and yes some of the changes have been actual improvements, but a lot has been in response to feedback from Imorik tier players.

and really its not to throw shade.

 

[Kaemik]

I have noticed what he's saying with blows landing when they shouldn't. In my spars in melee the two major issues I run into is:

1. Weapon swings that seem to land clearly short of me connect. This creates an issue where when I try to use tactics like footwork to avoid hits by say stepping backward when someone goes for a swing that seems too far away, I can't. Too many still land, enough that it can totally affect the outcome of a fight. I have to parry/block any blow that seems like it's coming from anywhere within the same dimension.

2. The combat style I was trying to go for in melee is wait until i see my enemy swing, parry, counterattack. The issue is with 160+ ping there are times that we're sitting there facing each other and I can clearly see their movements, and the weapon leaving their shoulder animation skips forward a bit due to lag leaving like zero time to react. When we aren't nicely facing each other and the fights devolve to mashing into each others faces parry gets WAY harder.

Not sure what the solutions to these issues are, and given that the main thing people say I do well is kiting it doesn't matter much to me because I'm clearly meant to be a mage unless mounts turn melee back into something I can enjoy. Perhaps Elon Musk will solve this all with his global high speed internet. But they definitely are issues right now.

 

[Teknique]

I have noticed what he's saying with blows landing when they shouldn't. In my spars in melee the two major issues I run into is:

1. Weapon swings that seem to land clearly short of me connect. This creates an issue where when I try to use tactics like footwork to avoid hits by say stepping backward when someone goes for a swing that seems too far away, I can't. I have to parry/block any blow that seems like it's coming from anywhere within the same dimension.

2. The combat style I was trying to go for in melee is wait until i see my enemy swing, parry, counterattack. The issue is with 160+ ping there are times that we're sitting there facing each other and I can clearly see their movements, and the weapon leaving their shoulder animation skips forward a bit due to lag leaving like zero time to react.

Not sure what the solutions to these issues are, and given that the main thing people say I do well is kiting it doesn't matter much to me because I'm clearly meant to be a mage unless mounts turn melee back into something I can enjoy. But they definitely are issues.

If you're having those issues currently then you're late to the party because ping is already as even as its ever going to get.

My question to you if you're complaining would be this. Are you blocking at the same rate that pat is? If no likely a l2p issue and you should be kind enough to work on your own skill level before making suggestions that effect other people.

 

[Kaemik]

As I said. I'm going to be a mage. I have zero interest in learning how to overcome high ping in melee given people already recognize I'm quite good at the kiting / run and gun style of fighting a mage should be using.

But I don't give a shit if Pat can learn to overcome those things. These two problems are a real thing for high ping players. You either acknowledge that reality or you are wrong, your opinion and what Pat are capable of doing have no bearing in that. I'm not saying you can't learn to overcome. I am saying they are real problems and do happen. Because that's an objective fact, like it or not.

 

[Teknique]

As I said. I'm going to be a mage. I have zero interest in learning how to overcome high ping in melee given people already recognize I'm quite good at the kiting / run and gun style of fighting a mage should be using.

But I don't give a shit if Pat can learn to overcome those things. These two problems are a real thing for high ping players. You either acknowledge that reality or you are wrong, your opinion and what Pat are capable of doing have no bearing in that. I'm not saying you can't learn to overcome. I am saying they are real problems and do happen.

I agree with you, I just don't agree that everyone has a right to state what is and isn't a problem. Or at least to have that opinion considered.

 

[Javelin]

As I said. I'm going to be a mage. I have zero interest in learning how to overcome high ping in melee given people already recognize I'm quite good at the kiting / run and gun style of fighting a mage should be using.

But I don't give a shit if Pat can learn to overcome those things. These two problems are a real thing for high ping players. You either acknowledge that reality or you are wrong, your opinion and what Pat are capable of doing have no bearing in that. I'm not saying you can't learn to overcome. I am saying they are real problems and do happen. Because that's an objective fact, like it or not.

If you’re going to be a mage and have no interest in melee combat why try and counter the arguments of those who want to go melee? I agree with balancing all the builds but it feels like theres no foundation this time. If they cant get basic foot combat right why add the extra complexity of archery and magic to the mix. There should be a solid foundation between mobility builds and tank builds first then introduce magic etc. Unless you want everyone running around as ranged because i can tell you thats what will happen if foot combat remains sluggish.

 

[Kaemik]

If you’re going to be a mage and have no interest in melee combat why try and counter the arguments of those who want to go melee?

Because melee trying to be their own counter. That's MY job, and making melees able to do it makes a lot of other roles redundant. When a melee faces off against another melee with heavy armor and a shield they should be saying "Well shit, this is going to take awhile."

When I'm facing off a melee in heavy armor with a shield I get to say "Lol. Eat this Tlash sucker! WHERE IS YOUR PARRY NOW?!" And my ability to say no to their defenses while their defenses are a huge hindrance to each other is the reason they get to absolutely melt me if they can get on me and stickyback me. All while not having to deal with issues like mana or standing there like a dum-dum exposed to archer fire while they charge an attack.

 

[Teknique]

Because melee trying to be their own counter. That's my job, and making melees able to do it makes a lot of other roles redundant. When a melee faces off against another melee with heavy armor and a shield they should be saying "Well shit, this is going to take awhile."

When I'm facing off a melee in heavy armor with a shield I get to say "Lol. Eat this Tlash sucker! WHERE IS YOUR PARRY NOW?!" And my ability to say no to their defenses while their defenses are a huge hindrance to each other is the reason they get to absolutely melt me if they can get on me and stickyback me.

No one wants to play pure rock paper scissors, they'll always be some element of rock paper scissors. MA beats fatmage beats MC if you recall, magic beats high end armor.

Foot fat mage paladin beast master with necromancy beats everything if it had just one more death hand.

 

[Kaemik]

No one wants to play pure rock paper scissors

Clearly not some people. I see a pervasive attitude against melees that they should be able to run around beating cav, mages, archers, beastmasters, and eachother into a pulp because they are super "skilled". But I think I'm far from alone in believing team composition and tactics should be far more important than an individual player's skills.

Rock-paper-scissors only plays out on a 1v1 level. It's like in Age of Empires II if I'm playing all steppe lancers oh yeah, if you go halberds I'm done. Game over. I mix in some cav archers into there and all of a sudden that's not true anymore. You'll need a well-rounded comp to fight my well-rounded comp and no-matter what you choose to run against me there will likely be a significant exchange of losses when we fight.

Same thing with teamplay in MO2. It shouldn't be rock-paper-scissors because a team should compensate for eachother's weaknesses and be built in such away there is no hard counter that can't be overcome with better skill and cohesion.

 

[Teknique]

Clearly not some people. I see a pervasive attitude against melees that they should be able to run around beating cav, mages, archers, beastmasters, and eachother into a pulp because they are super "skilled". But I think I'm far from alone in believing team composition and tactics should be far more important than an individual player's skills.

Rock-paper-scissors only plays out on a 1v1 level. It's like in Age of Empires II if I'm playing all steppe lancers oh yeah, if you go halberds I'm done. Game over. I mix in some cav archers into there and all of a sudden that's not true anymore. You'll need a well-rounded comp to fight my well-rounded comp.

Same thing with teamplay in MO2. It shouldn't be rock-paper-scissors because a team should compensate for eachother's weaknesses and be built in such away there is no hard counter that can't be overcome with better skill and cohesion.

A group fight will be made up by the sum of its parts, same as a building rests on its foundation.

Like everything in life the question is degree. Its convenient for you to make things binary. Use proper counters or don't, have a good team composition or don't, play with the current mechanics or your tactics are off. Problem is reality doesn't work that way and the sooner we can get into the actual specifics the better.

A lot of people use that binary tactic, if the claim is mouse blocking doesn't work well then you're either imprecise with the mouse or not.

Should foot fighters beat all the classes you say automatically? No, Is it possible to have mounts that move too fast, tank too many hits, and are dismountable by too few weapons and still create a situation where rock paper scissors still occurs? Absolutely.

 

[Kaemik]

We won't know actual specifics until every single primary role makes it into the game. That means, mages, hybrids, minion masters, mounted fighters, mounted archers, mounted mages, and mounted hybrids. Proper combat balance means bringing them all in, seeing how they all interact, and then adjusting from there.

But melees keep using "balance melee and then bring everything else in" as code for "make melee a do-everything role with no major weaknesses cause we rule, everyone else sucks, and the game deserves to be balanced around us." That's the attitude I consistently see by the melee elitists on these boards and that's what I'm arguing against.

 

[Teknique]

We won't know actual specifics until every single primary role makes it into the game. That means, mages, hybrids, minion masters, mounted fighters, mounted archers, mounted mages, and mounted hybrids. Proper combat balance means bringing them all in, seeing how they all interact, and then adjusting from there.

But melees keep using "balance melee and then bring everything else in" as code for "make melee a do-everything role with no major weaknesses cause we rule, everyone else sucks, and the game deserves to be balanced around us." That's the attitude I consistently see by the melee elitists on these boards and that's what I'm arguing against.

False equivalence. Requesting Melee vs Melee balance does not equate to requesting melee vs everything.

Please be more honest.

Too many dishonest people hurting the game right now.

 

[Kaemik]

Calling it as I see it. The "balance melee" crowd seem to be primarily lobbying to increase speed and decrease parry to make melee combat go faster. I don't see that ending anywhere other than diminishing the roles of classes actually meant to be tank-busters. Leaving me the distinct impression that they really just want to be able to do everything.

I'll put it this way. What are the weaknesses for melee that you feel deserve to be in-game? Because for me, long TTK against other heavy armor melees should be a given for anyone who wears heavy armor. If there are melees that can quickly kill other melees they should have to take a steaming dogshit all over their own defenses to do it.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

I'm really disappointed in the state of group fights. There are people who wanted to compare and try to make it equal to a combat sim not understanding that 1v1 is the most irrelevant aspect of this game.

All these balance changes are in an attempt to balance the 1v1 duels that are occurring in alpha. They are also based on people who want to stand still and parry everything instead of using movement, essentially the last people that we should have been taking feedback from. Which is why you hear crying about spinning constantly even though it isn't a viable tactic if someone has distance on you or in a group fight. They actually say things like foot jousting is noob and people who want run away isn't skill based as a justification for shitting on movement as a tactic.

The result is what I feared the most a reduction in the quality of team fights. Duels are about neutral, while the ping advantage is less severe the simultaneous nerfs to anything skill based; movement, accelerations, the speed at which you can move your mouse, and camera manipulations makes it less entertaining than it was.

Group fights are horrendous with weapons that do 50+ damage, ultra slow footspeed that means anyone with half a brain can land a sticky, sluggish mouse movements making everyone aim and play the same, and the disappearance of diving into a group to have impact. This results in high DPS for zergs but terrible dps when you're outnumbered due to parry wall.

The old duels in the game played out much faster. Yes ping was a massive issue that bothered me but I don't think a happy medium was found at all, instead we have a dictatorship of parry whores, zerglings and noobs.

This is a genuine question, this last line of 'we have a dictatorship of parry whores, zerglings, and noobs.' What would you use to describe yourself?

Because while you and I have the same view points, for the most part, I can tell you right now from dueling you and playing against you before your biggest advantage was playing on WiFi because it makes you lag out constantly.

Also, this isn't even a slate on you from MO1 but you were average at best. I genuinely do not recall a time where I thought "Man, Teknique did something really good there." or "Teknique's video was really enjoyable to watch."

Ever since MO2 has been available, it's like you suddenly sprung up into this position where you think you've figured everything out and know what is best and what isn't - when from my perspective I feel like this game has inflated a lot of peoples ego's and given people who used to not have little to no bravado to having an overflowing amount which then fuels directly into their opinions, biased or not.

I'm just wondering, from a purely curious standpoint, are you self aware of all of this or do you think MO2 is more skill based than MO1 and actually allows others to recognize that you are a skilled player? Cause from my point, spinning, hitting the ground, and spamming feints has almost little to no effect on most people unless you have ping absolutely on your side (Not to mention, the system inherently crutches everyone. It's like SV turned on the handicap mode for all players like seen in other games.)

But, with my questions out of the way I'll say this.

Games combat sucks fat cock and no one can convince me otherwise. The only people you'll ever see praising it are brown nosing SV for some special attention, it also goes to show when you have someone like Henrik openly say at times that 'Tyguy and HornyFurry are the best players' when that is such a blatantly mislead statement founded on ignorance of the playerbase. Especially for the bannable things they have done that everyone knows about.

What's even worse is that I fear what SV may do, now that they've given us an open statement of pushing persistent back, is they're going to wait last minute to actually change the combat. I hope I'm wrong but why is it we've gone what is it.. two patches now without combat changes? When there is clearly a problem with it. Still no magic either, still no race attributes being changed, still no fix on people hitting objects for instant parries / swings, etc.

My prediction is they'll wait last minute to do it, and then when it's in and is either worse or another problem altogether; we'll just have to deal with it.

I'd really like to be wrong.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

We won't know actual specifics until every single primary role makes it into the game. That means, mages, hybrids, minion masters, mounted fighters, mounted archers, mounted mages, and mounted hybrids. Proper combat balance means bringing them all in, seeing how they all interact, and then adjusting from there.

But melees keep using "balance melee and then bring everything else in" as code for "make melee a do-everything role with no major weaknesses cause we rule, everyone else sucks, and the game deserves to be balanced around us." That's the attitude I consistently see by the melee elitists on these boards and that's what I'm arguing against.

Because the melee system is fundamentally pee pee poo poo and isn't going to magically change with the addition of other 'roles'.

How does that make sense.

Magic is added in tomorrow, what about the people who still play melee? It's going to change the speed and how it works.... no...? Right.

I get your point is that we need to see everything before they balance but melee is going to be honestly about half the population if not more.

Foot fighters are fundamentally the most important role in any type of scenario. So they should play well instead of like clunky shit.

 

[Teknique]

Calling it as I see it. The "balance melee" crowd seem to be primarily lobbying to increase speed and decrease parry to make melee combat go faster. I don't see that ending anywhere other than diminishing the roles of classes actually meant to be tank-busters. Leaving me the distinct impression that they really just want to be able to do everything.

I'll put it this way. What are the weaknesses for melee that you feel deserve to be in-game? Because for me, long TTK against other heavy armor melees should be a given for anyone who wears heavy armor.

The exact same ones that have always been in game. Fleeing from ranged, magic going through armor, a pet/melee hybrid. All of these things by definition will hurt melee. Actually I think melee was the weakest in the game which is why I didn't play it too much.

I typically preferred to play mounted vs foot because I could have so much more impact that way. I didn't record a lot of mounted vs foot in general, but believe me when I tell you I was in disbelief of how much impact I could have in a fight.

Keep in mind the context for the bottom video is a day where I died on all my characters and was kind of a bad play outtakes unedited.


Next I would prefer to play mage due to the ability to AoE being strong as well as keeping your group healbotted allows you to have a lot of impact.

Next I would play hyrbid to stickyback mages

and last I would play pure melee as you can definitely still have impact but you have to be really good to output dps as a warrior, or at least you did

.

Melee was plenty weak already hence the complaints. I don't think that they want to be tank busters because they just aren't, they're subject to armor reduction, parry, and melee range. The only other thing that is subject to that is mounted combat but i'd argue in much less of a degree..

 

[Kaemik]

Well, I certainly won't discount the possibility that when all other roles make it in, melee might not be in a good spot.

But I think we'll also be in a better position to address HOW they should be made stronger at that point. I think heavy armor bois are most likely to suffer from a weakness in that they can't really prevent people from moving past them, and would really like to see the buff they get be ways to more effectively serve as a physical barrier between their enemy and their backline.

In terms of melees wanting to kill things faster, berserkers were known to consume a mushroom known as Amanita muscaria. You may recognize that name as it's already in-game. It would be super sweet IMO to see a potion made from this ingredient that beefed the hell out of a melee potentially even giving them powers like always having some of their damage bypass parries, but at the expense of heavy stam drain and increased stam penalties for wearing armor.

I'm not opposed to making melees stronger if they truly are too weak. Just concerned about the potential consequences of pre-buffing a role that's had zero chance to interact with anything else.