Solo PVP sucks and that's why (IMHO)

[Rhias]

Hey,
as many people know I did a lot of solo PVP in MO1 and in MO2. In MO1 I was frequently zerked but it was still fun. In MO2 it's just painfull.

Parrying:
Let's assume there is a melee 1 vs 2 situation.
In MO1 you could parry one player, and hand out the counter attack to the other player (and the counter attack was really fast). Your chances to get the counter attack trough vs the other (unprepared) player where 90%+. So in a 2 vs 1 situation the 2 players should make damn sure to not hand out free parrys, or you could turn the fight and get them.
In MO2 your counter attacks are much slower and for an experienced fighter it's also easy to parry an "unexpected" counter attack.

Parrying hits is just too easy. A 1 vs 1 is just parry - counter attack - parry - counter attack- parry - counter attack...

"Dodging" hits:
In MO1 you were able to dodge attacks by moving much easier and you were able to use a long weapon to your advantage by keeping the enemy at a certain distance.
In MO2 the overall speed is much slower, and once you engaged a melee fight it's really hard to disengage or you will get stickied easily. Even with a "fast" Alvarin. This makes it really hard to kite in a 1 vs X situation.

Player skill:
In MO2 currently the strongest player skill is to know how to look into the sky midfight to abuse the animations. Is that really supposed to be the top-level of player skill? Or should I write a macro that looks into the sky once I press the button, and then moves back to the same angle I looked before?
I would rather play not at all then to learn how to abuse animations.

TLDR:
IMHO Player movement & position should become more important, stickying is too easy and there should be ways introduced to get around parrys without the need to abuse animations.

 

[cerqo]

All true and already mentioned before, but very welcome to bring it up again so SV does something about it.

Honestly, just adding a way to deal with the super easy blocking would fix a lot of problems. If there was a kick to worry about where you for example get stunned if you get kicked while holding a block, people would be more hesitant to spam parry over and over and rather try and save it for the last second, but then we are back to square one with SV as if that's the case the blocking would favour EU players too much cause they can block last second much better compared to NA players, then whats the point of even having these slow motion swings etc etc.

In my opinion the MO1 system allowed for both low ping and high ping players to be competitive, cause there were advantages and disadvantages to low and high ping. In MO2 it seems there's only disadvantages, this is mainly because blocking is the most important thing in this combat system and as much as people like to think this "ping normalization" works, it still favours EU players.

As much as Id like SV to do something about this super slow combat and super easy blocking, its not such an easy fix if you think about the reasons the combat is this slow and what adding some changes would do to it.

 

[Vergil]

In MO2 the overall speed is much slower, and once you engaged a melee fight it's really hard to disengage or you will get stickied easily. Even with a "fast" Alvarin. This makes it really hard to kite in a 1 vs X situation.

^^^ This

While melee sucks overall, speed / stamina difference makes solo pvp impossible even for Alvarin (both bows and magic).
In the end you'll just get swarmed since you can't really run away, due to stamina being same or lower.

Tbh, there should be a clade gift active with low enough cooldown (not freaking 10 min!) to break away to balance speed changes.
Like the one that adds +100-200 speed on top. (dash?)

Or, like in MO1 dodge? But then again it sucked animation-wise infinitely.

 

[StreamerLord]

I really enjoyed your MO1 solo vids, in this game I just kind of feel bad for you.

 

[Rorry]

At this point, please SV, just give us back MO1 pvp, add the new swing direction if you want but put everything else back. Thanks.

 

[Komodor]

I believe combat was slowed down intentionally to encourage more players to stay for longer. Its braindead yes, and needs to be tweaked out

 

[Jackdstripper]

First of all balancing pvp for 1vs1 is brain dead.

secondly, the main reason blocking and parrying was so hard to do in MO1 was because of prediction (aka getting hit before you could even see which side the hit was coming from). Now you can actually see whats coming and block accordingly.

so yea, it wasnt that you were mad good, you were just helped by prediction and ping. Now that its on a more even footing you arent so good anymore.

 

[Teknique]

I don't think anyone would dispute that the amount of impact a single player can have on a fight is greatly diminished from MO 1.

 

[Bicorps]

Hey,
as many people know I did a lot of solo PVP in MO1 and in MO2. In MO1 I was frequently zerked but it was still fun. In MO2 it's just painfull.

Parrying:
Let's assume there is a melee 1 vs 2 situation.
In MO1 you could parry one player, and hand out the counter attack to the other player (and the counter attack was really fast). Your chances to get the counter attack trough vs the other (unprepared) player where 90%+. So in a 2 vs 1 situation the 2 players should make damn sure to not hand out free parrys, or you could turn the fight and get them.
In MO2 your counter attacks are much slower and for an experienced fighter it's also easy to parry an "unexpected" counter attack.

Parrying hits is just too easy. A 1 vs 1 is just parry - counter attack - parry - counter attack- parry - counter attack...

"Dodging" hits:
In MO1 you were able to dodge attacks by moving much easier and you were able to use a long weapon to your advantage by keeping the enemy at a certain distance.
In MO2 the overall speed is much slower, and once you engaged a melee fight it's really hard to disengage or you will get stickied easily. Even with a "fast" Alvarin. This makes it really hard to kite in a 1 vs X situation.

Player skill:
In MO2 currently the strongest player skill is to know how to look into the sky midfight to abuse the animations. Is that really supposed to be the top-level of player skill? Or should I write a macro that looks into the sky once I press the button, and then moves back to the same angle I looked before?
I would rather play not at all then to learn how to abuse animations.

TLDR:
IMHO Player movement & position should become more important, stickying is too easy and there should be ways introduced to get around parrys without the need to abuse animations.

Ping Pong

 

[Eldrath]

This is not the game that you are looking for.

 

[Olympeus]

Combat in MO1 was based on who had the better ping and could abuse prediction better.

In MO1, if two players had unequal ping, skill was irrelevant. Better ping wins.

It was a terrible system and is thankfully being thrown out for MO2. StarVault are tying to implement action combat on a single server using fancy coding to somehow normalize for player ping. If they can’t figure their new system out and combat devolves to what MO1 had, this game will be dead much faster than the first.

The foundation for MO2 combat is already stronger than MO1. It is also in its infancy. Which means StarVault need build on this foundation and move forwards, not backwards.

I’ll make a separate thread with some thoughts for improving MO2 combat that don’t involve comparisons to a broken combat system where ping=skill.

 

[Rorry]

Combat in MO1 was based on who had the better ping and could abuse prediction better.

In MO1, if two players had unequal ping, skill was irrelevant. Better ping wins.

It was a terrible system and is thankfully being thrown out for MO2. StarVault are tying to implement action combat on a single server using fancy coding to somehow normalize for player ping. If they can’t figure their new system out and combat devolves to what MO1 had, this game will be dead much faster than the first.

The foundation for MO2 combat is already stronger than MO1. It is also in its infancy. Which means StarVault need build on this foundation and move forwards, not backwards.

I’ll make a separate thread with some thoughts for improving MO2 combat that don’t involve comparisons to a broken combat system where ping=skill.

In MO2 better ping wins even more than in MO1. In MO1 there were things you could do to combat someone having better ping, call them prediction abuse if you will, here there are not. And if you think prediction abuse isn't the tool of choice in MO2 combat, I am not sure where you have been playing.

 

[Rhias]

This is not the game that you are looking for.

Seems like it.
Once up on a time a "real-time combat where outcomes are decided by skill rather than levels or gear" was promised.

 

[Turbizzler]

The way MO2 is going with it's combat and racial balance, it's catering towards super cookie cutter builds in zerg vs zerg combat, more so than it was in MO1.

PvP shouldn't be balanced around 1v1, but it shouldn't be completely balanced around huge team fights either. The more you balance PvP around larger fights, the more numbers become the deciding factor, as outlying systems and equipment start to be balanced around it. This ultimately directly affects smaller scale PvP. There needs to be a fine balance with systems and kit that doesn't completely favor one or the other.

We saw this problem start occurring post Awakening with MO1, and gradually got worse and worse, until it finally climaxed with TC expansion and necromancy, which pretty much balanced the game around mega zergs.

I get SV want to normalize things and make things more streamlined and fair, but it's ultimately shifted the game into a very linear meta, with very little variety and has made skill not so much a factor.

It's still early days with MO2, but my hope dwindles the more I see certain combat features remain for months and months.

 

[Rhias]

In my opinion it's not a "balance" thing but the core concept is flawed. Right now the only really efficient way to get around parrys is to bring two people, one with a spear, and one with a slashing/bashing weapon.

 

[Moebius]

Combat in MO1 was based on who had the better ping and could abuse prediction better.

In MO1, if two players had unequal ping, skill was irrelevant. Better ping wins.

It was a terrible system and is thankfully being thrown out for MO2. StarVault are tying to implement action combat on a single server using fancy coding to somehow normalize for player ping. If they can’t figure their new system out and combat devolves to what MO1 had, this game will be dead much faster than the first.

The foundation for MO2 combat is already stronger than MO1. It is also in its infancy. Which means StarVault need build on this foundation and move forwards, not backwards.

I’ll make a separate thread with some thoughts for improving MO2 combat that don’t involve comparisons to a broken combat system where ping=skill.

Hey buddy. Yeah you. You do realize mo2 is ping based right?

You know EU players still have better reaction times then any other region.

Like, are you just ignorant of how this all works? Do people just eat up this idea that players in Australia are on par with EU players in terms of ping and latency? Do you actually believe that? Mo1 was a prediction nightmare but at least you could beat players with better ping lol.

I remember months ago people saying mo1 combat looks bad because if prediction but people in mo2 literally spin, jump, etc. and do even -more- to break animations in combat then mo1.

The combat in mo2 is terrible. People always want to scream out "but it's made for group play!!!" Yet almost every combat change has been made to casualiaze the combat experience.

You swing slower, your ripostes are slower, every race can basically keep up with one another, weapon variety has been cut down, punch through on blunt weapons is nearly non-existent, you are guaranteed mercy mode on a last hit, you can MOVE in mercy mode, fat mages are stronger, archery is even more viable then in mo1 (wait till marksmanship comes along), still no water melee???, the hybrid playstyle was made absolute shit, no promised 'special attacks'.. and this is really just scratching the surface and its all layered on a system where you're forced to play on a single server where you either gain an advantage or disadvantage depending on where you're from.

Many of the larger streamers that took a look at the game, even if they aren't necessarily looking for games in the hardcore full loot niche, could easily see the combat was awful.

People always want to throw up that an MMO can never have combat like Mordhau but we're supposed to just settle with this dogshit?

Unpopular opinion but the games combat will never be good until star Vault decide to abandon this stupid single server idea. The game isn't a tab target mmo, your ping matters a lot more in this - no matter how much network & server solutions you provide.

The combat will only be able to be made skillful if its designed with the idea that the players playing it are below at least 100 ping. Not compensating it so the small crowd of aussies or Russians can play it.

My opinion? There needs to be 2 servers. 1 NA server, and 1 EU server. But you're able to have a character on each server. So that way you're not necessarily 'disconnected' from the community. But if you dislike having bad ping, you can just stay on your server.

People want to say they love the single server idea but they realize how much is sacrificed in the process, and it goes to show a lot of people don't care about the game being at its best - just as long as it caters to them.

 

[Eldrath]

Seems like it.
Once up on a time a "real-time combat where outcomes are decided by skill rather than levels or gear" was promised.

A long time ago. It is going to be interesting to see how Mo2 does after it has abandoned all core principles to increase player retention.

I would say it could be changed but looking at the development that is just wishful thinking.

 

[Evelyn]

First of all balancing pvp for 1vs1 is brain dead.

secondly, the main reason blocking and parrying was so hard to do in MO1 was because of prediction (aka getting hit before you could even see which side the hit was coming from). Now you can actually see whats coming and block accordingly.

so yea, it wasnt that you were mad good, you were just helped by prediction and ping. Now that its on a more even footing you arent so good anymore.

 

[Wesley Snipes]

I seem to remember mo1 being full of animation abuse; except it also had way more gimmicky broken things to exploit as well revolving around prediction.

They fixed what was wrong with the original to make blocking / parry actually feasible for the majority of players this time around. Whether that's because of better network code/infrastructure or a combination of both is the question. In fact every decision they've made thus far with combat has been because they want everyone to play on a single server. If you want change, you gotta tackle the whole "one world model", and why for a game with directional combat that's a foolish decision.

 

[Bicorps]

I seem to remember mo1 being full of animation abuse; except it also had way more gimmicky broken things to exploit as well revolving around prediction.

They fixed what was wrong with the original to make blocking / parry actually feasible for the majority of players this time around. Whether that's because of better network code/infrastructure or a combination of both is the question. In fact every decision they've made thus far with combat has been because they want everyone to play on a single server. If you want change, you gotta tackle the whole "one world model", and why for a game with directional combat that's a foolish decision.

no