I dont watch chess grandmasters play and think "holy fuck this shit looks sick". Nothing they do to combat will make it look "sick" to people who havnt tried the game, unless they start adding some special effects and shit to swings and all kinds of stuff. Also, it is argueably more impressive to look at somebody hide swings well etc. like someone thats very good at Mordhau or Chiv 2, instead of some dogshit runescape combat. Lets be completely real and honest here. The people who "hate" the spinning and shit in this combat, are the people who are trash at the game and dont bother learning it, and tend to lose to it.
I agree that a weapon speed increase overall probably adds somewhat to the combat being more skillbased, but as someone already mentioned, it doesnt work properly and completely defeats the point of the "ping normalization". At the end of the day, playstyles and techniques that are really easy to do, should not be rewarded big. Like giving somebody a parry and turning straight around and running away from the counter so they get a miss penalty. Easy to counter but works very well against shit players, and can catch a good player off guard if mixed in from time to time.
Miss penalty is a completely dogshit mechanic IMO that nobody really likes. Being locked out of input is a terrible feeling and punishing missing swings could have been solved differently, like giving a flat stamina loss on a miss. Especially if the weapon speed is to stay the same, i think removing miss penalty is fine, as the reason it was added in the first place was fights taking too long when blocking was extremely easy due to the fact there were no counter-feints, slower swing speeds etc.
I think you're misinterpreting what I mean. Everyone knows how a sword swings. It's easy, within a few moments of watching, to figure out that a parry is a block and swing. It might take you a second to realize the swings you get from parry are fully charged. It's kind of like if you understand how the pieces move in chess. The reason I stopped playing chess as a kid was because I hit the crossroad of 'read books about chess openings/theory' or just take L after L to people who did. So, in a way, it's not a BAD comparison, tight meta to tight meta. The difference is that one is a thinking game and the other is a first person sword fighting game. There do not need to be effects for it to look cool, haha. Team fights, ganking people, stabbing people, shooting people will arrows and seeing the arrows stick out of their head ALL are 'sick' even to the casual observer. Why? Because something is happening.
I'm not good or experienced at high level dueling, but I dunno if anyone has hit me with a spin swing once. Maybe a couple times by sheer luck. The spin swing only works in the tight meta environment of two people standing in front of each other. I would def separate the pure spin swing from the spin-and move forward swing which is definitely useful. It's just a level of attrition. The time it takes to swing and the time it takes to parry, if you match it up, you realize the parry is wayyy faster. Eventually, people feel pressure and make mistakes, and that's cool. Or people fall into a predictable pattern that you can exploit.
But you talk about shit players, the lowest level of 'openings' for even a bad player is extremely small. That's the seed this all comes from and why it is ultimately bad, derpy ballet combat. Most people are practicing spinning without even needing to; it's just what people believe they think they have to do in order to get a hit on someone.
I definitely can see you invested a lot of time into the game and are skilled, but I think you are missing out on the reason why the combat is boring to watch.
^ you might be caught up in looking at the eye candy, but really if you just watch what's hitting and what sort of pressure you have to deal with, that's exciting to watch, even to people who dunno the game, right?
^ I haven't played VF in years, but that is regarded as a SLOW game, and you can tell it's much more grounded. Still, exciting. Why? Because no matter what someone does there is an opening or a quick way to create an opening.
^^ then we got this guy haha. I mean, it's like... You're good; that's cool. Ascii shrug. But you think that's a good final form of combat? You think that's the highest skill base we are gonna get? You can say I'm mad cuz bad but I'm not really mad, and you're right, I don't wanna put effort into learning the play style because I am still hoping they change it cuz I find it disgusting (you can draw your own conclusions as to why, but I generally dislike what is seen as GAMEY mechanics.) I've played games where tight, boring, metas ruined them. It sucks. If you are really into chess, you think you'd be into math and long-term strategy. You should be able to run parry v swing speed, movement/swing v stam and see there's not really a way to bleed someone out of them by outplay, it's just about getting a swing thru. also look at this:
That parry into a stab at 4:44 or so... you think that's good gameplay that he was able to parry that? That's nonsense imo. Those are the kind of things they need to look at and 'open up.' That was an exciting block into a FACE STAB that was negated by parry. That's stupid, imo. I can see there is a scientific way to look at it, but still the way the balance is skewed means it's too hard to pressure someone into making a mistake. Taking a parry and dodging is a very, very basic pressure move, that's true. But it's still A pressure move. Your action forces them to take an action (altho to be fair often smart players figure it out and don't counter, but the fact that their brain is wired to counter, you can force their hand) and by knowing that action is coming, you can plan an action in advance.
There were some high skill plays you did (similar to the one I pointed out) that were simply negated by parry. To me, that's stupid. It's not like chess because there isn't a grand strategy. It's more like DDR, like I said, where you are just seeing something come up on the screen then pressing a button as fast as you can react then throwing out a rock paper scissors counter.
Conclusion of rant: I disagree with your assessment that MO combat, dueling especially, could not be made much more exciting with mechanical changes. It's a first person melee combat sim. How can that not be exciting?
Edit: ps imo the only way stam loss would matter enough is if it ever got low enough you couldn't parry or swing. In duels, I mean.
Edit2: I have a better way to say it, kind of. I mean you basically walked dude backwards and zoned him, but it never allowed you an offensive opening. It only allowed you to more easily defend yourself/limit his attacks. That's backwards TO ME. And yea there are def kids who watch chess masters and get tingly. All of our brains are wired differently!
