Build 137 Combat Discussion

This thread is basically for anyone to voice their issues with the newest changes to the combat system. Namely, Knight bouncing, knockback, and stuns. Pushing a knight against the wall and then stabbing him just put him in a stunlock in which he can't do anything, not even throwing out a bomb as a last ditch effort. It's quite frustrating when the least you can do (shielding) can't even be done.

Bouncing is really not fun when, for example, I slashed a knight today with a fully charged attack and he flew into the wall, but then bounces back and inadvertently falls on me, killing me. I had low health already at that point. I know I can't be the only one that's a bit disappointed with the new build's combat additions, so this thread is really just here to highlight these issues where they may have been overlooked in other threads.

 

Yeah, as I mentioned in the announcements thread, this stuff is beyond terrible. At least you and me think so. Interested to know whether anyone actually likes the ridiculous knockback and stun on just simple stabs even. Thanks for making a thread about this. It's something I would not like to see sticking around.

 

I really like the new builds combat.

Am I the only one?

 

I think that the player output end of things is very fun. I've always liked the stab/charge system and I think the hit/block stuns are in a good place and the netcode is in a good place now.

But all of the pinball is really bad and unfun.

 

The pinball thing is really my biggest qualm.

 

I'm not particularly partial to most of the combat changes this build- besides the pinball thing, the slightest shield bash can liquefy flesh and bone, especially if the poor, innocent victim is airborne. Landing on enemies feels like it's used literally whenever possible, because it leaves your opponent defenseless for a horridly long time along with hefty damage- not to mention, archers can do it about as effectively as knights.

Toning down impact damage and the wacky physics would be two steps in the right direction. Maybe nixing the former from archers, too.

 

Yes, archers especially. They can't break their arrows when jumping on them, but they can surely break my face... Sounds like Logic took a vacation.

 

Only thing I don't like is builders/archers curbstomping my ass when I am a knight. That's just embarrassing. Pinball could be toned down a bit but not removed. I also don't like how a lot of people are whining but that's poeple for ya.

 

I actually kinda like some of the things added in 137. That feel when you bash the crap out of someone and he is thrown straight to his bouncy doom? Awesome, but I agree that it could be toned down a notch.

 

no, i like it too :)

 

I like everything but the fucking pinball bouncing and bomb losing.

Why pinball should be gone: It's stupid and nothing feels more wrong when you're in an enemy tower, and their knight bumrushes you without even attacking with sword, and then you go POING POING POING all the walls and he has three easy stabs in you. I may have said this, but the fucking movement punishes should be minor and rarely used, because they're plain unfun.

Bomb losing (in full-charged arrow hit): Throwing bombs is the knight's only counter to archers that have nothing more than the littlest wall they stand on. Bomb throwing and controls were not unbalanced, they were fun, effective and challenging. If you ever liked playing as knight in the earlier builds, what did you enjoy more than blowing the shit out of the kinky archer atop of shitty bedrock piece floating in air with your bomb? Now Knights can't do anything about that single kinky archer atop of shitty bedrock piece floating in air. Because the bomb throwing was challenging, and it was pretty much your only shot, it was not fucking unbalanced. Losing the bomb is so frustrating and it makes stalemates, because archer can't get the knight because he shields, and the knight can't get the archer, because he lost his bomb in arrowhit. I say that buff the bomb and nerf the shield*. That's much more balance-wise and fun. Why the hell did you implement the feature in the first place?

*as in: Buff the bomb so that knights won't lose it when they get hit by arrow. Nerf the shield by adding stamina, so that if your shield gets 8 full charged arrow hits you must hold it down for a while (5 seconds?). Would put the end to forever-shielding knights in lil' campy hole.

 

Combats are fine IMO. Jumping on people's head to kill them is fun, bumping against walls is cool and make the fights "Dragon Ball"-like... MM said he wanted people to be able to be super-heroes in the game, and that's a move toward that I guess :p

But I think any new addition to the combat system/machanism will be seriously hampered by bugs like :
- hitting someone right in the face, but the server doesn't want to "record" it so it doesn't hit. It happens so often, it makes every fight random.
- teleporting randomly after being hit/shield bashed (I just played 20 minutes and it happened 3 times)
- getting through walls
- etc.

So I just hope that these bugs will be corrected soon :) Just that would make the game 1000 times better.

Monsteri, you should swear less. It's a game, calm down :/ It's not like the universe owe you the perfect game right now...
Also, you're complaining about a knight unable to kill an archer on a floating block. Well... yeah, that's why they've got a bow, they're good at long range, and to kill them from long range you need another archer, or catapult to destroy their towers. It's not unbalanced that you're not able to throw a bomb if an archer hit you...

 

I have a few things that could help the fairness of archers and builders attacking you by bouncing.

Can anyone say directional sword hit? We don't have mouse interface control for nothing. Too often i'm on top of an enemy and stabbing does nothing, just wish for a damn downwards stab. Or i'm under the enemy and he's shield bouncing me into the ground, how about an upwards stab to knock him off?

Stun locking needs to be toned down IMO. You can very easily get stunlocked into a wall. I thought stuns were going to go in favour of knockback? Now we get both, because while you're being knocked back you're stunned till you hit something, but you're still stunned if you're against the wall. Make the stun last a millisecond but allow us control in midair again, so we can counter pretty much immediately after we've been hit.

Also I agree entirely with monsteri, losing your bomb is unbalanced, no reason why an archer couldn't just run away from the bomb thrown at them before, therefore it was balanced to be able to throw it.

I like the sound of shield ramming as well, especially stationary shield ramming. At this point, because of lag and push kills, there are so many variables, that you may as well give knights as many different options as possible. Aside from that, I think people will agree that if you can't have the knockback without people thinking its unfun (it's clear a lot of people want it toned down) then why have the complex attack system in the first place.

However, you might be right Geti, serverside option, because it's also clear from this thread that people like the pinball too, and that's not taking into account the proportions in game.

 

Two swear words in the post..?

But it's usually not long range, only five blocks. Knights can't even throw bombs far, so how this would make the archer not to be good in long range combat? Were you there at all when we didn't lose bombs?

I didn't say it's unbalanced, I said it's unfun and encourages stalemates. And it really does.

So you're saying that knights should lose bombs in arrow hit? Why why why should they do that?

EDIT:

Remember when people were complaining about the uncomplexity in knight combat in early builds? Back then many found it too repetive (including myself), and boring after long play. Now it has much more variations, and generally I like the knight sword&shield combat. I neither like the knockback very much, though.

 

I apologise for having been like that in the past. But i'm trying not to be like that now. I can't speak for Monsteri, but can only presume he doesn't really mean to be hostile about it.

I don't understand how bouncing was made to prevent stun locking because if you're pressed up in against a wall, you don't bounce away from it. But I can see how it would stop someone from just stabbing you midair into a wall and you falling down it to be later stun-locked. That wouldn't be a problem though if you weren't stunlocked against a wall in the first place.

I also don't see why recovering doesn't make sense. I get you when you say you can't change your jump direction midair if knocked, but I mean what if we were allowed to stab and hold out our shield in midair while moving? At the current moment you're stunned the entire time you are thrown, which just gives this feeling of lack of control, to me, you end up watching your death rather than playing a part to stop it. Granted, freerunners and parkour experts don't have heavy armour on, but midair they do all sorts of tricks.

I'd love for there to be directional stabbing sprites, because at least you'd know when you are doing it. Half the time i'm "stabbing downwards" in that i'm stabbing and my cursor is below my sprite, but it doesn't seem to do any damage. The other half it does. Which is what lead me to believe that there wasn't any directional stab anyway and that your hits were just out of random luck.

Me and spitfire discussed stuff last night (or rather just agreed with each other) and we decided we wanted to set up this thread in discussion to see what other people thought. I wouldn't have done that if I was trying to be confrontational, I would have just made one of those "this is a problem threads" we both decided we wanted to know if people felt the same way as us.

We know you're not doing this to deliberately make the game unbalanced, but in our defense, MM gave no warning that wall bouncing would be in the final build. At least i'm not aware of it ever having been in the test build. Correct me if i'm wrong, but if it was in the test build it must have been tested for about 1 day before being put into the main build. I was following that test build fairly closely this time around.

EDIT: I don't officially remember people complaining about the uncomplexity. I think people were complaining about knight stalemates, which has nothing to do with knight combat being boring, it was just flawed. If people did complain though, I guess it makes sense why we are here now with a fairly complex system already.

 

Everything Neat said is what I think. I especially hate the stunning which is always a bad design decision, in any game. I want to be in control of my character, that's the reason I play a game.

Stunning, knockbacks and falldamage stun should be removed or toned down a LOT. But I doubt that'll happen. I believe MM's vision is not the vision many users have, which has been proven quite often.

As a sidenote, archers are overpowered. I'm a horrible archer usually and had a K/D of 100:1 today, just by standing in total safety and spamming arrows.

 

So many.. walls of.. text..