Fixed In 5 Steps Or Less: Melee Combat

[Mortalitas Immortalis]

The Subject: Melee Combat​

This series of feedback posts are collectively meant to be easily digestible, 5 steps or less processes to fix the respective system of Mortal Online 2 being critiqued.

t;dr No complex powerpoint or video needed, ez <= 5 step plans to fix MO 2.

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The Steps​

1. Introduce a stronger turn cap.
2. Adjust Spears and Daggers to pierce with all swing directions. If necessary, use the animations from the relevant Combat Abilities to achieve this.

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The Index​

• Alvarin​

• Clade & Mastery​

• Combat Abilities​

• Crafting​

• Haven​

• Housing & Territory Control​

• Invasions & Reckoning​

• Melee Combat​

• Potions & Food​

• Random Spawns & Dynamic Events​

• Reputation & Murder​

• Siege Declarations & Siege Windows​

• Sieges & Manganons​

• Skills​

• Tasks​

• Travel​

• Trinkets​

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[Iloros]

Spears and daggers are balanced on the fact that htey don't pierce on all directions, that's why thier damage per weight, and range in case of spears is absurdly high for it's weight. Spears dont even have left or right animation for piercing. That would make them the only 2 viable weapons, they already are super strong.

 

[Smoldor]

1. The real fix is keeping the current turn cap on while you are blink-charged because if you hit the feint button or block it removes the turn cap entirely until you're actively swinging your weapon. The best morphs don't require giga-speed either. The even bigger fix would be to add a limit to how far looking up and down affects your swing arc because this is where a large part of the acceleration comes out. With 300 ping, I can visually parry a 15 ping if they aren't accelerating properly.

2. This would not be good for the game. They would have to reduce the pierce damage significantly if this is the direction they go in or make it deal reduced damage on sides/overheads but...there is a better fix. In the same way they did an armor rework, they need to do a spear/dagger rework where instead of each level of spear being largely incrementally better in pierce/slash/blunt (with both weapons having their epitome in risar variants), there are versions of daggers/spears that sacrifice pierce for more blunt/slash. If the heavy spear had risar level blunt/slash, it would probably be better than the second best spear with blunt/slash (triple)--the long spear being an outlier that drops slash damage entirely for pierce that still doesn't reach risar levels.

The biggest issue with daggers is weak spots, too. You shouldn't be able to get one unless you charge to blink in my opinion :/ Yet another mechanic that only alvrins get to play with because daggers are miserable to track with an overwhelming speed advantage and they have the best WS chance thanks to clades/high dex

 

[Mortalitas Immortalis]

1. The real fix is keeping the current turn cap on while you are blink-charged because if you hit the feint button or block it removes the turn cap entirely until you're actively swinging your weapon. The best morphs don't require giga-speed either. The even bigger fix would be to add a limit to how far looking up and down affects your swing arc because this is where a large part of the acceleration comes out. With 300 ping, I can visually parry a 15 ping if they aren't accelerating properly.

Solid idea.

2. This would not be good for the game. They would have to reduce the pierce damage significantly if this is the direction they go in or make it deal reduced damage on sides/overheads but...there is a better fix. In the same way they did an armor rework, they need to do a spear/dagger rework where instead of each level of spear being largely incrementally better in pierce/slash/blunt (with both weapons having their epitome in risar variants), there are versions of daggers/spears that sacrifice pierce for more blunt/slash. If the heavy spear had risar level blunt/slash, it would probably be better than the second best spear with blunt/slash (triple)--the long spear being an outlier that drops slash damage entirely for pierce that still doesn't reach risar levels.

The existence of the multi-directional weapon abilities which more or less act as instant blink charges for spears and daggers are a direct admission by the game's designers that weapons really shouldn't have "dead" swing directions.

Ideally weapons without viable thrust like axes and clubs should have an upwards swing replace their middle attack as well, but baby steps.

The biggest issue with daggers is weak spots, too. You shouldn't be able to get one unless you charge to blink in my opinion :/ Yet another mechanic that only alvrins get to play with because daggers are miserable to track with an overwhelming speed advantage and they have the best WS chance thanks to clades/high dex

I have always been against pure RNG mechanics in combat. It's much better to have the triggers for these things be skill-based (e.g. [but not necessarily] triggering on head hits) and then adjusting damage as necessary for the increased/decreased frequency.

 

[Smoldor]

The existence of the multi-directional weapon abilities which more or less act as instant blink charges for spears and daggers are a direct admission by the game's designers that weapons really shouldn't have "dead" swing directions.

I wouldn’t consider it an admittance and adding multi directionals completely broke the weapons for awhile but they were nerfed back into a reasonable spot (because adrenaline moves only do about 70% actual hit damage). If I duel someone with a spear about 70% of my attacks that hit will be rights and the left is good for mixing it up—they are hardly dead directions. The only dead direction with a spear is overhead because it is too long to accel and thus a free parry if you were to let one go. If I morph my thrust in a right while looking straight up and to the left then pull it back into a thrust which I am swinging down into their head it kinda even looks like a thrust that comes from above, lol

I think having a spear option or two with better blunt/slash while dropping pierce would be two birds with one stone, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the direction the new sarducaan spear goes.

 

[Mortalitas Immortalis]

I don’t see the correlation. If I duel someone with a spear about 70% of my attacks that hit will be rights and the left is good for mixing it up—they are hardly dead directions. The only dead direction with a spear is overhead because it is too long to accel and thus a free parry if you were to let one go. If I morph my thrust in a right while looking straight up and to the left then pull it back into a thrust which I am swinging down into their head it kinda even looks like a thrust that comes from above, lol

By dead directions here, I mean swing directions which do less damage without any particular good reason for doing so outside of lacking time to sort proper animations (the hard part) and minor programming differences. This is not an intentional design issue so much as a byproduct of early implementation prioritization.

I think having a spear option or two with better blunt/slash while dropping pierce would be two birds with one stone, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the direction the new sarducaan spear goes.

We'll have to see. It'll either be meta or mostly worthless, as things go around here.

 

[Smoldor]

By dead directions here, I mean swing directions which do less damage without any particular good reason for doing so outside of lacking time to sort proper animations (the hard part) and minor programming differences. This is not an intentional design issue so much as a byproduct of early implementation prioritization.

If they were super telegraphed (as to not be giga-accelable—all thrust moves are auto acceled cause the hit box starts so forward instead of having to be brought into the player) and the damage values brought down and they removed WS it might’ve been a better design initially but in the current design/damage values it would be pretty oppressive I think.

We'll have to see. It'll either be meta or mostly worthless, as things go around here.

Yeah this is 100% the case. It would be something different though instead of slightly faster/slightly weaker, the speed portion of weapon balance being cancelled out of you use a Cronite and a sponge wood shaft on spears (highest damage spear being faster than faster spear with worse material) and irrelevant in the first place for daggers.

 

[Emdash]

1. The real fix is keeping the current turn cap on while you are blink-charged because if you hit the feint button or block it removes the turn cap entirely until you're actively swinging your weapon. The best morphs don't require giga-speed either. The even bigger fix would be to add a limit to how far looking up and down affects your swing arc because this is where a large part of the acceleration comes out. With 300 ping, I can visually parry a 15 ping if they aren't accelerating properly.

Goin thru and reading these suggestion posts...

I think that blink charge and similar things actually helped make the game more repetitive like... 2 second hit into 2 second hit. I think what the game needs is a change up, and I would be cool IF you could get free feints on a blink charge as well as a differing turn cap, BUT that you could still do a full damage swing with much less charge.

I did not consider the turn cap thing when I first said this, but giving people free feints for holding long is cool, but there has to be some way to break the game out of the blink charge / creative hide gameplay because THAT SHIT IS WACK. That is why it looks wack in videos of great players. It's not even how people spin or whatever else they do, it's that the rhythm is so set. It's BORING. It doesn't have the punch of a good melee combat system except to all those people who spent hundreds of hours practicing their hides and are like sweet feint bro! And... don't get me wrong, I ain't mad, but that is not enough people to build a fighting playerbase.

It would be most ideal if the combat was more bang-bang and the change ups were blink charges, imo. But even if the game stayed heavily blink charge base, you should still be able to swipe at people and punish them. I think that's another reason why combat abilities blew people's minds... cuz they kinda were that. But with a good melee combat system, you don't need different attacks, or just need like 2 per wep, stuff that applies effects or gains stam on hit, etc... not weird anis that have different speeds and damage.