Needed changes to the blocking and combat system

[cerqo]

So everyone i play with and pretty much any old player i ask that has actually played the previous game and knows what the combat was like agrees that the current system is a big degression from the first game.

This game does a lot of things good and better but the current combat system is not it. I know it is still in closed beta and im posting this to shine light on the issue and hopefully get it adressed.

The current combat system is nowhere near skillbased compared to the first game. Even towards the end of MO1 when the combat got fucked over multiple times with changes, it was still better than this. Not trying to make a thread just bashing the curent system so ill try to name the perceived flaws and suggest how to fix it.

First of all, the most obvious and biggest problem is blocking. No reason to ever go offensive as you are just wasting stam when you can just stand still and rightclick without losing stam, getting around blocks is not a thing in this game and if the person you are fighting stabs and you block middle, it will be a parry no matter where the person hits you. This whole block and negate all damage system is low skillceiling and bad in general.

Theres a few ways you could try to fix it.
1. Massively reduce the block radius.
2. Add some sort of kick mechanic that staggers someone thats blocking.
3. Change the blocking mechanic to be more like Mordhaus or chivalry where you actually need to aim your block and not sit and spam refresh.

Second part of the problem is the fact that swings are extremely delayed after release, the person playing defensive has TONS of time to block the correct direction before the hit actually lands. This slow swingspeed also makes the combat feel extremely clunky, you have near instant blocking but when you actually swing its in slow motion?

Lastly, you have the super slow movement speed. This point is very unlikely to get changed seeing as movement speed has just been getting slowed down ever since the release of the first game, this is the main "prediction fix" they implemented. Slow combat removes skill from the game, the slower it is. Movement is not a thing in the current game and we have slowly degressed to the runescape playstyle we have now mainly due to this. Increasing movement speed would also help with the blocking problem.

No point mentioning all the laggy and clunky UI stuff or weapon sheathing/unsheating as these are probably the result of beta stage.

Will fill out more if nescessary.

 

[Teknique]

So everyone i play with and pretty much any old player i ask that has actually played the previous game and knows what the combat was like agrees that the current system is a big degression from the first game.

This game does a lot of things good and better but the current combat system is not it. I know it is still in closed beta and im posting this to shine light on the issue and hopefully get it adressed.

The current combat system is nowhere near skillbased compared to the first game. Even towards the end of MO1 when the combat got fucked over multiple times with changes, it was still better than this. Not trying to make a thread just bashing the curent system so ill try to name the perceived flaws and suggest how to fix it.

First of all, the most obvious and biggest problem is blocking. No reason to ever go offensive as you are just wasting stam when you can just stand still and rightclick without losing stam, getting around blocks is not a thing in this game and if the person you are fighting stabs and you block middle, it will be a parry no matter where the person hits you. This whole block and negate all damage system is low skillceiling and bad in general.

Theres a few ways you could try to fix it.
1. Massively reduce the block radius.
2. Add some sort of kick mechanic that staggers someone thats blocking.
3. Change the blocking mechanic to be more like Mordhaus or chivalry where you actually need to aim your block and not sit and spam refresh.

Second part of the problem is the fact that swings are extremely delayed after release, the person playing defensive has TONS of time to block the correct direction before the hit actually lands. This slow swingspeed also makes the combat feel extremely clunky, you have near instant blocking but when you actually swing its in slow motion?

Lastly, you have the super slow movement speed. This point is very unlikely to get changed seeing as movement speed has just been getting slowed down ever since the release of the first game, this is the main "prediction fix" they implemented. Slow combat removes skill from the game, the slower it is. Movement is not a thing in the current game and we have slowly degressed to the runescape playstyle we have now mainly due to this. Increasing movement speed would also help with the blocking problem.

No point mentioning all the laggy and clunky UI stuff or weapon sheathing/unsheating as these are probably the result of beta stage.

Will fill out more if nescessary.

What I would like to see is something in between the earlier alpha duels and what we have now where ping is normalized

I think they simply just went too far in the normalization direction without evaluating where the true middle is.

The video above isn't to comment on my skill please, just the pace of the duels.

Even those were post turn cap, I would have preferred it even earlier.

 

[Lasciel]

Sadly, I just don't think there's any hope for getting a more skillful melee system. It's pretty evident that the mechanics are meant to create a relatively equal playing field and avoid the feeling of players being hopelessly outmatched. Even people who are much mechanically inferior are difficult to kill in a one on one scenario.

 

[cerqo]

Sadly, I just don't think there's any hope for getting a more skillful melee system. It's pretty evident that the mechanics are meant to create a relatively equal playing field and avoid the feeling of players being hopelessly outmatched. Even people who are much mechanically inferior are difficult to kill in a one on one scenario.

Sadly i think this might be a big part of it.

 

[Wesley Snipes]

Pretty sure the block radius is the way it is for technical reasons.

I'm all for some kind of guard crush.

 

[mydadnvm]

I agree, I think the combat is way too slow and boring. It doesn't make sense that you need to charge swing, release, then have a ping delay for "normalization" where as the defender just has to block instantly with 270 degree blocking. Even parry returns are slow in swing speed, its just parry parry parry. And it's even more of a joke to parry as an EU player

Swing speeds need to be sped up imo or blocking needs to get nerfed. A kick mechanic would be nice actually, something similar to Gloria Victus.

As of now, fights are so dull where the only people getting hit are getting blindsided, which makes every 1v1 situation super stale. In MO1 you could shine in a fight if you were a good melee player, but now it feels like just another warm body where everyone is parrying and blocking, and people are just getting fat maged down for 70s

 

[joebuto]

eeee

 

[marcellus]

I agree

 

[Anabolic Man]

So everyone i play with and pretty much any old player i ask that has actually played the previous game and knows what the combat was like agrees that the current system is a big degression from the first game.

This game does a lot of things good and better but the current combat system is not it. I know it is still in closed beta and im posting this to shine light on the issue and hopefully get it adressed.

The current combat system is nowhere near skillbased compared to the first game. Even towards the end of MO1 when the combat got fucked over multiple times with changes, it was still better than this. Not trying to make a thread just bashing the curent system so ill try to name the perceived flaws and suggest how to fix it.

First of all, the most obvious and biggest problem is blocking. No reason to ever go offensive as you are just wasting stam when you can just stand still and rightclick without losing stam, getting around blocks is not a thing in this game and if the person you are fighting stabs and you block middle, it will be a parry no matter where the person hits you. This whole block and negate all damage system is low skillceiling and bad in general.

Theres a few ways you could try to fix it.
1. Massively reduce the block radius.
2. Add some sort of kick mechanic that staggers someone thats blocking.
3. Change the blocking mechanic to be more like Mordhaus or chivalry where you actually need to aim your block and not sit and spam refresh.

Second part of the problem is the fact that swings are extremely delayed after release, the person playing defensive has TONS of time to block the correct direction before the hit actually lands. This slow swingspeed also makes the combat feel extremely clunky, you have near instant blocking but when you actually swing its in slow motion?

Lastly, you have the super slow movement speed. This point is very unlikely to get changed seeing as movement speed has just been getting slowed down ever since the release of the first game, this is the main "prediction fix" they implemented. Slow combat removes skill from the game, the slower it is. Movement is not a thing in the current game and we have slowly degressed to the runescape playstyle we have now mainly due to this. Increasing movement speed would also help with the blocking problem.

No point mentioning all the laggy and clunky UI stuff or weapon sheathing/unsheating as these are probably the result of beta stage.

Will fill out more if nescessary.

Don´t forget you have the fast Windupspeed attacks in this game (Combo Attacks) A fast windup swing can be done right after you hit the opponent, and only need to be charrged for 1 second. parry swings are instant.

There are several ways to trick the opponent.

 

[Anabolic Man]

There are more ways. FOr excample run past an enemy and charge the overhead while looking in the air and turning to the right (if the opponent stands left. This make your character move in a circle arroudn him if you turn while running and charge an overhead. Then cancel the Overhead into a left attack, hit resprint and hit the enemy.

You can also charge a thrust atatck pass the opponent and charge another swing.

I think that the overheadstrikes and the combos make the combat much better.

Make an opener (for excemple mid feint into a right, left, or overheadstrike. Very fast attack that deal nearly no damage, but you can combo after it and the combo swing do full dmaage after 1 second.

Normal Swing take 2,5 Seconds to charge
Combo attack 1 Second
Parry COunterstrike don´t need to be charged.

As a axe player you can combo after a parry. The window is very strict if your opponent parry. You need to make the swing right when the axe cooects. You can turn arround jump out of his counterattack range, while charging your combo attack, which only need to be charged for 1 second for full damage.


If the game would get so popular, that we need 2 Servers, because 200k + People want to play it, then the Combat can be improved much further.

 

[bbihah]

3. Change the blocking mechanic to be more like Mordhaus or chivalry where you actually need to aim your block and not sit and spam refresh.

That's not how parrying works in Mordhau, Mordhau has even bigger blocking arcs than Mortal, even with the difference there with much much lower ping tolerances, small regional servers and no matching swing direction for parrying required. Heck due to the small ping tolerances and the person being hits client having priority over the person swinging. You get things like, people "ducking" and swings just going through people on the attackers end, although thats more of a rarity these days compared to early Mordhau days where they have worked hard on making "ducking" work. I mean, the idea behind it is good, you duck under a swing, but the reality was that the person ducking was not even close to actually ducking and only "ducks" because on his end he is one step ahead and the server just agrees that even though the attacker just swung right through him, the perspective of the guy ducking is clearly more important...

You are thinking of chambering, which has always had very limited use compared to parrying through out Mordhaus life. They've over time made chambering more and more obsolete which is kind of sad. Chambering started out actually being a way to turn the table on an attacker. But with tweaks, chambering is now actually guaranteed to make you lose 1v1 against someone who parries instead of chambering at a similar skill level. If you chamber an attack, since it costs much more stamina than just simply parrying. Bundle that with counters from the parry it'll be Attacker swings > Defender Chambers and maybe even morphs it into a different direction(now the chamber will have costed even more stamina in total)>Attacker parries instead of chamber>Attacker counters > Defender is now in a much worse position stamina wise than the attacker, even if they had the exact same weapon. If he chambers he'll further put himself on losing the 1v1 due to stamina. If he parries he'll still be behind and any more intricate feints, morph, or feintmorphs will just further put him towards losing if the person he is fighting is of equal skill level and parries or dodges successfully.

 

[LivingshadeNL]

U can hold down parry/block for to long also. Lets say person 1 feints an attack, person 2 falls for it, so he blocks that attack. The problem here is the attacking and feinting is so slow, by the time i get the real attack in after the feint he has enough time to parry/block it : nullifying feinting completely. I would like it more as mordhau where when u fuck up and fall for a feint ur screwed. That would destroy parry spamming, and generally makes it so it doesnt take 6 hours to kill someone.

 

[agui]

There so many threads about that i hope sv sees it now ...

Long ago i gave some ideias in a Javelin post of how boring melee combat is ... even tought sv designated a group of players to be in the combat test .... which idk the name of those ... combat gets slower and terrible as patches comes throught... its evident that combat came to that point to "help" new players ... but i just think that "help" takes part of hardcore soul of mortal online....

Anyways that was my ideas long ago idk if still applies now.



"Yeah combat is boring and we are in alpha combat game to test everything before game is out.

Why not just try to do some minor changes in melee combat, as:

1 - increase foot and swing speed a bit.

1.1 - If the increase of speed is not good enough ...a lil bit more ... go temper it bit a bit

2 -reduce the arc of blocking a bit

2.1 - if not enough reduce more and test. If it goes wrong bring it back a bit.

3 - if you miss a hit , in the follow 3 sec, you cant parry just block (getting dmg as penalty)

4 - if u miss a hit u take one sec without defense

5 - if your hit got parried you get another faster hit, and if that last is parried you got another faster hit but if get parried again the defender get an extra 10% full hit on counter (why is that? u can link 3 fast attacks in a row ... but if u dont do your job right u can get a big dmg from the defense)."

 

[agui]

So everyone i play with and pretty much any old player i ask that has actually played the previous game and knows what the combat was like agrees that the current system is a big degression from the first game.

This game does a lot of things good and better but the current combat system is not it. I know it is still in closed beta and im posting this to shine light on the issue and hopefully get it adressed.

The current combat system is nowhere near skillbased compared to the first game. Even towards the end of MO1 when the combat got fucked over multiple times with changes, it was still better than this. Not trying to make a thread just bashing the curent system so ill try to name the perceived flaws and suggest how to fix it.

First of all, the most obvious and biggest problem is blocking. No reason to ever go offensive as you are just wasting stam when you can just stand still and rightclick without losing stam, getting around blocks is not a thing in this game and if the person you are fighting stabs and you block middle, it will be a parry no matter where the person hits you. This whole block and negate all damage system is low skillceiling and bad in general.

Theres a few ways you could try to fix it.
1. Massively reduce the block radius.
2. Add some sort of kick mechanic that staggers someone thats blocking.
3. Change the blocking mechanic to be more like Mordhaus or chivalry where you actually need to aim your block and not sit and spam refresh.

Second part of the problem is the fact that swings are extremely delayed after release, the person playing defensive has TONS of time to block the correct direction before the hit actually lands. This slow swingspeed also makes the combat feel extremely clunky, you have near instant blocking but when you actually swing its in slow motion?

Lastly, you have the super slow movement speed. This point is very unlikely to get changed seeing as movement speed has just been getting slowed down ever since the release of the first game, this is the main "prediction fix" they implemented. Slow combat removes skill from the game, the slower it is. Movement is not a thing in the current game and we have slowly degressed to the runescape playstyle we have now mainly due to this. Increasing movement speed would also help with the blocking problem.

No point mentioning all the laggy and clunky UI stuff or weapon sheathing/unsheating as these are probably the result of beta stage.

Will fill out more if nescessary.

And one more thing .... you totally right when game makes you ideally to stay still ... thats terrible ... a combat game which benefits being idle is wrong ... idk the best ways to change the system now ... but for sure and at least needs to reduce the arc of blocking ....

Its too big ... i think u spose not block in you back ... but if so ... the damage of the blocking should be doubled or something.

 

[bbihah]

There so many threads about that i hope sv sees it now ...

Long ago i gave some ideias in a Javelin post of how boring melee combat is ... even tought sv designated a group of players to be in the combat test .... which idk the name of those ... combat gets slower and terrible as patches comes throught... its evident that combat came to that point to "help" new players ... but i just think that "help" takes part of hardcore soul of mortal online....

Anyways that was my ideas long ago idk if still applies now.



"Yeah combat is boring and we are in alpha combat game to test everything before game is out.

Why not just try to do some minor changes in melee combat, as:

1 - increase foot and swing speed a bit.

1.1 - If the increase of speed is not good enough ...a lil bit more ... go temper it bit a bit

2 -reduce the arc of blocking a bit

2.1 - if not enough reduce more and test. If it goes wrong bring it back a bit.

3 - if you miss a hit , in the follow 3 sec, you cant parry just block (getting dmg as penalty)

4 - if u miss a hit u take one sec without defense

5 - if your hit got parried you get another faster hit, and if that last is parried you got another faster hit but if get parried again the defender get an extra 10% full hit on counter (why is that? u can link 3 fast attacks in a row ... but if u dont do your job right u can get a big dmg from the defense)."

if you implement higher speeds in general the sync will suffer a lot, we have the speeds we have because of this.

 

[LivingshadeNL]

Increasing speed would cause more prediction issues. Look at my option

 

[Teknique]

if you implement higher speeds in general the sync will suffer a lot, we have the speeds we have because of this.

Bugged veelas were running at 460 for a bit with no issues.

 

[bbihah]

Bugged veelas were running at 460 for a bit with no issues.

I'm sure there were no issues and you got plenty of imperial data and a couple months of testing to come to that conclusion.

Oh no, its just the need for speed bias talking again.

 

[Teknique]

I'm sure there were no issues and you got plenty of imperial data and a couple months of testing to come to that conclusion.

Oh no, its just the need for speed bias talking again.

In contrast to not be willing to collect the data at all?

I'm not the one who is being closed minded.

and before you say that they tested it extensively

know that I know, that you have no way of knowing that.