Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback

@amybun Cheating and exploiting in game mechanics are separate. Cheating is considered utilizing 3rd party programs that are outside of the game's default settings (aimbot, ESP, etc). but then again, it could be very subjective. I just see it as the exploits being used in the game, were being used due to Rare's programming. A lot of games have animation canceling, and are used at a high level even in pro scenes. League of Legends, Call of Duty, etc. it's just instead of adding a macro detection, Rare decided to remove the entire thing as a whole (which I'm not complaining about, it's not really needed, but the sword was more fun when that was in the game).

The person who was exploiting the fast swinging using a macro in the SoC tournament (which was the initial reason why the Stow/Unstow animation-cancel exploit got removed in the first place) wasn't even a good player. Matter a fact, they were insanely horrible lol. The only reason they got those kills, was because they would sneak up behind the person. I myself used the exploit and was the best at using it, but even now as you can see from the clips I posted in my original post, they're not needed. What's needed is to address the problems I mentioned in my original post.

The combat system could've been made better, you're right, but it clearly is not a focus for Rare. They're more focused on PvE content, cosmetics, etc. granted, it’s more content. But also a clear example of this is how all support for Arena has been dropped. We were told roughly maybe 2% of the player base plays arena while everyone else is in adventure, so from a business standpoint, I get why the support would be dropped. However, combat is universal. Arena, Adventure, it doesn’t matter; the effects of hit reg, sword, etc. will pass onto adventure with 98% of the player base dealing with it.

@amybun Like I said, the definition of cheating is subjective. Animation canceling isn't cheating in every game, it's encouraged in a lot of them to increase the skill cap and make fights more interesting. But apart from the exploits that were in back in the day, combat was still at its best back then. Right now, it's in a very bad state. Naval combat is great, but hand-to-hand combat is terrible. Imagine being in an intense Galleon vs. Galleon fight and when you've piled enough cannons on them, you go over to board to stop them from repairing. Suddenly none of your shots are registering and they all manage to repair. Or if someone boards your boat, they're able to lower anchor even though you got all the hit markers in the world on them. It's a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

@jibrran I'm a frequent fighter, been a swordy boy since launch. Having all the commendations and all achievements in the game leaves you woth not much to do but fight.

But that's just me 🤷🏻‍♂️

@klutchxking518 Yeah that makes sense, but like I said, these are big problems with the sword. Another one that I forgot to mention was slashing through a slash. Basically, if I'm getting slashed, I shouldn't be able to break the other person's combo by M1 spamming. That's another doozie. But the main problem just lies in hit registration and optimization (as well as the range of the sword).

// EDIT
Just added to the original post the topic of breaking combos.

@comrade-molly said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

Jibran begged me to bump this, but you should listen to him because he's one of the only people who knows what he's talking about who still cares.

Ayo didn’t have to do me like that D’:
But no, for real, this is a huge issue and we need to get a response on this from Rare. Combat is getting worse and worse every update and it doesn’t seem like it’s getting any attention. Even streamers have said their requests have been ignored when they bring it up. Why is this such a delicate topic?

@illbushido305 even on mast I got inconsistent hits with 40 ping

@amybun said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran to me cheating and exploiting are one and the same, anything to gain advantage over other players constitutes to cheating in my book, doesn't need to be any aimbot/esp programs. Using macros, exploits and anything not intended as a game feature by Rare which gains you the upper hand against players not using them is cheating.

sword dash is cheating then

After reading this post, i can just see my own frustration, i used to main sword back when sword was good, and i miss it so badly. Its fun to use 2 gun meta as well, but with the hitreg going on and only getting worse and worse, thats not fun anymore eather. And i know Jibrran is/was one of the best sword players out there, seen clips, and videos, and if i dont remember wrong, youtube and his clips were actually how i learned to master the sword properly back in 2018/early 2019 ish. As said earlier, after the stow/unstow "feature" came into the game, the sword only got worse from there. After reading here, i was going through my old clips, like with the range, it was ALOT better back then, and you could actually block yourself out of a sword that hit one slash. Now even the block animation doesnt always works, and you cant block, everything is REALLY slow, Rare need to take a look at this problem. And to people saying the sword isnt a problem other then hitreg, well then you cant have been playing this game for a long time, becouse the sword used to feel totally different to todays sword. The sword is a BIG joke right now, its just pressing W and go forward and hope to get in the first slash. Mastering the sword today is just pure luck, and thats not how it should be. I play with people that are good in this game, and people that are not that good / new to the game, even the "noobs" say that the sword feel wonky and wierd and horrible.

@smellysnowballs said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

After reading this post, i can just see my own frustration, i used to main sword back when sword was good, and i miss it so badly. Its fun to use 2 gun meta as well, but with the hitreg going on and only getting worse and worse, thats not fun anymore eather. And i know Jibrran is/was one of the best sword players out there, seen clips, and videos, and if i dont remember wrong, youtube and his clips were actually how i learned to master the sword properly back in 2018/early 2019 ish. As said earlier, after the stow/unstow "feature" came into the game, the sword only got worse from there. After reading here, i was going through my old clips, like with the range, it was ALOT better back then, and you could actually block yourself out of a sword that hit one slash. Now even the block animation doesnt always works, and you cant block, everything is REALLY slow, Rare need to take a look at this problem. And to people saying the sword isnt a problem other then hitreg, well then you cant have been playing this game for a long time, becouse the sword used to feel totally different to todays sword. The sword is a BIG joke right now, its just pressing W and go forward and hope to get in the first slash. Mastering the sword today is just pure luck, and thats not how it should be. I play with people that are good in this game, and people that are not that good / new to the game, even the "noobs" say that the sword feel wonky and wierd and horrible.

I'm really happy to know my old videos helped you improve your sword skills. Sword back in the day was fun to use, regardless of whether or not people used the Stow/Unstow animation cancel. Range was perfect, no clunky-ness, blocking worked, client-side & server-side animation alignment was better. Nowadays, it's like you said, you won't even know if you're blocking or not because the clunky animation just doesn't keep up. I believe I said this before, but it's not just the "normal" player-base that notices these flaws, but even streamers have seen these problems and tried fighting for it. It seems like even they get ignored when the topic of combat comes up.

"In areas of intense action, players may find themselves firing shots or landing strikes that do not cause damage to their targets. While small improvements continue to be delivered during our regular updates, we are continuing to investigate and identify further improvements to improve the player combat experience."

This is what just came out in the recent patch notes. Landing melee strikes cause damage to our targets, in fact, we land melee strikes we shouldn't have landed at all. Clips in my original post are proof of that. This shouldn't be a minor issue to work on. The Mermaid's Kingdom Season 4 update just came out, honestly Rare should take a month to just fix bugs. Honestly we see this message every release note, but we don't see any results from it. In fact, we see it get worse. Rare, you have no idea how much the community would appreciate that. Just 1 month dedicated to working on hit registration, optimization, balancing the cutlass and implementing feedback from my original post as well as replies under this thread. I promise you that the community would appreciate that. Even new players will not want to play if they see their bullets aren't registering or if they're being killed by a sword from 10 feet away.

@jibrran

I agree with much that you state. Yet there is one aspect I don't get and that is your assumption that improvements to hit-registration would increase the range of the sword? The more accurate the system becomes it less overreach and extension of the range will be, it shouldn't be increasing.

Let me explain; as you point out the controlled environment works fine. The issue with the range has to do with movements and what either of us sees is different than that of the server, which is somewhere in between in most cases. This is what causes severe backtracking and many of our frustrations with hit-registration, which works in all directions btw so those side jumps that one does isn't as effective as they look. Now add in the whole remove the slow on missed hits, speed up everything and as a result we move even more.

This is why improvements with hit registration will actually decrease the 10ft. long attacks as you call them. Naturally this is linked to the improvements they make to pirates and the swords hitboxes mainly and not for instance the bullets, which is part of the equation as well.

The issue that I have with your proposed; reduce the range, is that in closer quarters or limited movement fights, where the range is quite accurately represented... it would create issues of feeling bad. In these more controlled environments you are more likely to then encounter that it looks like your blade is touching your opponent, but it doesn't do anything.

For me the better solution to this is to re-introduce the missed hit movement slow, it makes the spam in the hopes to hit a lingering hitbox less prevalent, it helps with the spam on spam battles see who hits first based on ping and all that. Much of the old system feeling better actually is a direct result of speeding up the combat. It is in my view the aspect that made the sword duels feel more like a dance than just a spam (though there were ways to 'negate' the downside and I personally didn't use the stow/unstow tech - not my style, while yes I admit the few times I used it... ooh the power!).

When it comes to blocking and even maybe the combo breaking (though that is a bit more difficult) is to increase the priority of the actions being 1) Block, 2) Combo hit, 3) Fresh hit. They might as well need to expand the arch a tiny bit. As it currently stands the servers seem to be a first come first server type of deal - the ping battle as you call it. If we had a priority system, blocking mid fight should seem more reliable. They would need to play with the time frames of it, how many ms and all that... because overdoing it would shift it into hits feeling robbed or people even being able to respond to a hit with a block to override it.

(For the record, I just read you last entry; I would play a lot more again if I could get sword duels of old and wish they would make more steps in improvements to achieving enjoyable fights where ones skill could shine more)

@cotu42 said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran

I agree with much that you state. Yet there is one aspect I don't get and that is your assumption that improvements to hit-registration would increase the range of the sword? The more accurate the system becomes it less overreach and extension of the range will be, it shouldn't be increasing.

Let me explain; as you point out the controlled environment works fine. The issue with the range has to do with movements and what either of us sees is different than that of the server, which is somewhere in between in most cases. This is what causes severe backtracking and many of our frustrations with hit-registration, which works in all directions btw so those side jumps that one does isn't as effective as they look. Now add in the whole remove the slow on missed hits, speed up everything and as a result we move even more.

This is why improvements with hit registration will actually decrease the 10ft. long attacks as you call them. Naturally this is linked to the improvements they make to pirates and the swords hitboxes mainly and not for instance the bullets, which is part of the equation as well.

The issue that I have with your proposed; reduce the range, is that in closer quarters or limited movement fights, where the range is quite accurately represented... it would create issues of feeling bad. In these more controlled environments you are more likely to then encounter that it looks like your blade is touching your opponent, but it doesn't do anything.

For me the better solution to this is to re-introduce the missed hit movement slow, it makes the spam in the hopes to hit a lingering hitbox less prevalent, it helps with the spam on spam battles see who hits first based on ping and all that. Much of the old system feeling better actually is a direct result of speeding up the combat. It is in my view the aspect that made the sword duels feel more like a dance than just a spam (though there were ways to 'negate' the downside and I personally didn't use the stow/unstow tech - not my style, while yes I admit the few times I used it... ooh the power!).

When it comes to blocking and even maybe the combo breaking (though that is a bit more difficult) is to increase the priority of the actions being 1) Block, 2) Combo hit, 3) Fresh hit. They might as well need to expand the arch a tiny bit. As it currently stands the servers seem to be a first come first server type of deal - the ping battle as you call it. If we had a priority system, blocking mid fight should seem more reliable. They would need to play with the time frames of it, how many ms and all that... because overdoing it would shift it into hits feeling robbed or people even being able to respond to a hit with a block to override it.

(For the record, I just read you last entry; I would play a lot more again if I could get sword duels of old and wish they would make more steps in improvements to achieving enjoyable fights where ones skill could shine more)

I replied earlier in the post to someone who asked the same question:

@jibrran said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@d3adst1ck said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

I'm making an assumption (could be accurate, could be not) when I say that the more hit-reg improves, the more range there will be on the sword.

It won't work like that. Sword gets a larger range when there are network issues, server performance problems or bugs because it compares the sword attack time with player position at that time. Noodle arm exists for the same reason that backtracking on guns happens; the server thinks you were within range of the attack at the time it thinks the event happened.

Either the saved states aren't timestamping correctly, the server is having trouble keeping up with player state / attack time calculations, some other bug or a combination of all of the above causes weird things to happen during combat.

Reason why I made that assumption is due to past events that have occurred. When they first started working on hit reg seriously and pushed out the patch, that was the first time the 10 ft sword got introduced (back when Double gun canceling was around as well as stow/unstow animation exploit). They hadn’t touched anything regarding sword mechanics back then. It’s why I made that assumption.

I believe it could be a combination of all the things you mentioned, as well as the latency issue between the player and the server host as @kommodoreyenser mentioned. Honestly having a discussion about this really opened up the different possibilities of issues and I’m glad I made a thread about this. It could be that the problem is both internal (from Rare) and external (from MS services).

From what you said above about how being in an intense close quarter situation may counteract reducing the range, I don’t think that would be the case. So far, all the close quarter fights I’ve seen (and recorded from when I did them) I’ll be landing hits that shouldn’t be landing. Say a person is hopping away, just from me holding W and hitting m1, I’m already hitting them from a mile away. This range causes other problems such as complaints about the stun due to the unrealistic hits you’ll get, complaints about blocking not working properly, complaints about being chased down and getting slashed out of nowhere, etc.

Here’s a clip of me doing a 1v2 (you could say I’m showing off) but you’ll notice at one point in the video I rewind and slow it down. When I block those attacks, notice how far away the 2nd person is in the back (time stamp is 0:12).
There’s also another unrealistic hit you’ll see at 0:21 when I block another attack. These are server-client inconsistencies, but it’s as we’ve said, the server registers on a first come first serve basis. These hits registering aren’t supposed to register on the client side. My suggestion for reducing the range is only to improve the consistency between what the client sees and what the server registers.
https://streamable.com/8g8dzy

Here is also the exact same clip, but from one of the other players' perspective. You can line up the two to see what I'm talking about with the range at the given timestamp.
https://streamable.com/gqep3c

// EDIT: Just added this clip and description under original post

//

@jibrran

The issue with your analysis on the range is based on your style of fighting. You are moving a lot and are not in a confined space at all limiting the motions or slowing down the combat. Literally you are sprinting, dodge jumping and moving at practically top speed covering as much ground as possible. This is the main culprit, your hitbox is dragging behind your character model and gives the illusion of a longer range. While according to the server, you just ain't that far. This is part of hit registration and also very prevalent in gun fights, aim behind the character and you hit. Tick rates, the amount of data being sent, latency and the adjustments made by us all influence this effect.

Place yourself inside a ship, especially the inside of the sloop and these long hits disappear... why? Because you are unable to move in the same manner.

You state, they didn't touch sword combat and yet the 10ft hit was introduced actually showcases the fact that the range is not the cause. Increasing server load, playing around with hit boxes, networking and even something as simple as moving sections in the code up or down... can have more effects on combat.

@cotu42 said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran

The issue with your analysis on the range is based on your style of fighting. You are moving a lot and are not in a confined space at all limiting the motions or slowing down the combat. Literally you are sprinting, dodge jumping and moving at practically top speed covering as much ground as possible. This is the main culprit, your hitbox is dragging behind your character model and gives the illusion of a longer range. While according to the server, you just ain't that far. This is part of hit registration and also very prevalent in gun fights, aim behind the character and you hit. Tick rates, the amount of data being sent, latency and the adjustments made by us all influence this effect.

Place yourself inside a ship, especially the inside of the sloop and these long hits disappear... why? Because you are unable to move in the same manner.

You state, they didn't touch sword combat and yet the 10ft hit was introduced actually showcases the fact that the range is not the cause. Increasing server load, playing around with hit boxes, networking and even something as simple as moving sections in the code up or down... can have more effects on combat.

Even inside a sloop (since most fights happen on ships anyways) the hits are the exact same. The range has been tested before by multiple streamers not just with the mast, but with actual players as well. I'm unable to relatively move in the same manner as I do on land, but yet the problem still persists. If our speeds are equal when sprinting, then a person shouldn't be able to hit me from behind if they're far enough away.

I stated that they didn't touch combat when the 10 ft sword first got introduced since they were working on hit registration, and that's true. The reason why the range has become a problem now, is DUE to them working on hit registration in order to improve the bullet registration for guns. At that point in time, the hit registration had improved a little for guns, but in turn it also gave us a 10 ft sword. This was eventually reversed and the 10 ft sword disappeared (lunge cancelling and stow/unstow were still around), but in turn the bullet registration had gone bad again. The range was not a problem before, but it is now. It's due to the hit registration being tinkered with so much and not being tested on live play. It's like you said, server payload, hit boxes, networking, server & client latency, FPS, server stability, host stability - they all play a part in how the combat is affected. The combat must be fine in a controlled environment, at least I hope that's the case if Rare has tested it thoroughly in their private servers, but on live-play, with so many different APMs going on, is where it needs to be tested.

I said in my original post that decreasing the range for now would be a temporary fix, because hit registration is not something that can be fixed right away. It's a very long process, and decreasing the range for now would be a temporary fix until Rare gets a good grasp of how to improve the hit registration more. Where it stands right now, the sword is a clunky weapon where you can land unrealistic hits due to the server-client inconsistencies. There's so many layers to this problem and the suggestion I gave is for the current state of sword, because we know that this big problem of hit registration won't be fixed for a long time.

@jibrran

I think we agree upon the issue, just not the solution. Simply reducing the range means that in more static controlled environments it will give you false positives. Additionally, I doubt changing it from a 10ft to a 8ft range is really going to make it all that better. Keep in mind they cannot nerf it into the ground, because then instead of having a sword... you are wielding a butter knife with an expanding feature if your opponents move?

It is why I believe slowing it down by re-introducing the slow on misses is the better angle to take. Will you sometimes still have a 10ft slash, sure... but if it doesn't register or you simply missed, you move less quickly and therefore cannot just spam while moving forward till you do. It slows down fights and gives the servers more time to catch up...

@cotu42

The problem with slowing down movement after a missed slash is the stun. Currently, the stun is only at 0.2s. The reason these used to work back in the day was because the stun was at 0.5s. I don't think Rare wants to increase the stun time again, otherwise if it was already 0.5s, I would be all for it. Reintroducing the missed-slash-slow-movement mechanic would increase the clunky-ness with breaking people's combos (which I mentioned in my original post). Breaking people's combos is a big problem too, because it seems as if landing the first hit doesn't matter if someone can spam m1 on you and nullify your skill.

Reducing the range wouldn't give false positives in live play, because live play is completely separate from a controlled environment - reason being is servers are never in a controlled state. There's always 5-6 ships, intense gameplay, thousands of entities, and then people's client-side latency coming into play, on top of the conditions being just right between host & server, and then server & client.

@jibrran

Well, I don't think they should do it in isolation, I believe that prioritization queues should be done on the server end to improve blocking and m1 spamming through combos as well - regardless as part of hit registration on the sword combat end (which I feel is being a bit neglected at times - but that is just a subjective biased opinion and not based on any solid foundation).

Maybe they also need to roll back the stun duration or tweak it again. A single adjustment isn't going to be enough to remove the current clunky feel of the sword combat. I think the first step should be to add the slow, then tweak the rest accordingly. It addresses m1 spam, as choosing your hits becomes important at all levels, it slows down the amount of info sent and combat which helps servers keep up. There have always been 6 ships in the olden days and even more people in the same areas... the good old fort days.

Additionally those 'controlled' environment hits still are in effect in the live game, you might not notice it because they actually work, but they are also part of combat and very much so for lower skilled players that are less mobile while dueling. You cannot just shift the issue that if you stand still and strike, you now need to be kissing the other player either as if you are one-blundering a person. The 10ft slash isn't always consistent either in its range and effectiveness due to it being a side effect of the dragging of hitboxes and a misrepresentation of the environment we see compared to what the server deems correct. The more you move the larger the effect, if you sprint or walk, side step, block jump/dodge, walk forwards or backwards... the variety of the movement of both players is huge on what the range becomes; the reality is hits are anywhere from the controlled minimum range to the maximum of the 10 ft slash as you call it.

@galactic-geek didn't clip it unfortunately, I only did it after Falcore tested in during a live stream and it was absolutely hilarious. May be more consistent for you, but overall, sword combat is massively broken and the only way to win is splintering your m1 mouse button.

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran You say that the range was perfect back in the day, but complain about the range now, which I find to be at odds, because the range back then was further than what it is now, since Rare has already nerfed the sword's range since back then. Again, the issue isn't the actual range of the sword - just the inconsistencies associated with the associated networking issues.

As for the results from that same message every update, you may not see improvement, but I most certainly do. I think you're tricking your own mind into believing it's getting worse when it's actually not. In any case that message is really just a reminder that they are still working on it more than anything.

Range back then was fine, because as we've mentioned before, hit registration was at a better state compared to now. When the 10 ft sword got introduced the very first time, they quickly patched it within a couple weeks. I'm baffled as to why we've had a 10 ft sword (the exact same as the one from when it first made an appearance) for over a year now. We also agreed the inconsistencies with networking, host-server-client connectivity, server/client latency, optimization, etc. are the reasons for why hit registration is really bad right now and sword has an insane range right now. Didn't disagree with you there.

As far as the improvements go, no I have not noticed anything. It's a hit or miss at this point with my shots. Backtracks will hit, or they won't. Hit markers will register, or they won't. It's a huge hit or miss at the moment. Then it goes back to server stability, if the server has a lot of entities spawned (entities being loot, skeletons, ships, etc.) then the hit registration will be bad. That's just how it is.

@cotu42 said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran

Well, I don't think they should do it in isolation, I believe that prioritization queues should be done on the server end to improve blocking and m1 spamming through combos as well - regardless as part of hit registration on the sword combat end (which I feel is being a bit neglected at times - but that is just a subjective biased opinion and not based on any solid foundation).

Maybe they also need to roll back the stun duration or tweak it again. A single adjustment isn't going to be enough to remove the current clunky feel of the sword combat. I think the first step should be to add the slow, then tweak the rest accordingly. It addresses m1 spam, as choosing your hits becomes important at all levels, it slows down the amount of info sent and combat which helps servers keep up. There have always been 6 ships in the olden days and even more people in the same areas... the good old fort days.

Additionally those 'controlled' environment hits still are in effect in the live game, you might not notice it because they actually work, but they are also part of combat and very much so for lower skilled players that are less mobile while dueling. You cannot just shift the issue that if you stand still and strike, you now need to be kissing the other player either as if you are one-blundering a person. The 10ft slash isn't always consistent either in its range and effectiveness due to it being a side effect of the dragging of hitboxes and a misrepresentation of the environment we see compared to what the server deems correct. The more you move the larger the effect, if you sprint or walk, side step, block jump/dodge, walk forwards or backwards... the variety of the movement of both players is huge on what the range becomes; the reality is hits are anywhere from the controlled minimum range to the maximum of the 10 ft slash as you call it.

I think even dedicating a couple weeks to a month on improving server optimization, stability, and hit registration after any major update comes out would be a huge plus. I had suggested they revert the stun back to 0.5s rather than the current 0.2s over a year ago, when the changes first got iterated to the sword. Single adjustments won't be enough, honestly if they reverted a lot of the things back to old sword (excluding stow/unstow animation cancelling since people get triggered over it) then almost all of these issues would have been addressed.

As far as what you say about slowing down slashes so that the speed of people get slowed down as well, I don't think that plays as big of a factor as you think it may. An example would be fights in the water, or people interacting on the cannon, or even just moving side to side on islands and/or boats. They may be moving slow, or not moving at all, and hit registration will still be an issue. With swords, it's the same ordeal - if someone is on a cannon, I can start slashing from a mile away, but it will eventually register because the server thinks I hit the player (even though client-side I shouldn't have), hence why I bring up decreasing the range temporarily. I think your solution of slowing down slashes is great, but only if they revert a lot of the old mechanics (excluding stow/unstow cancelling) to match the new style of sword. Even increasing the damage to 25% from 20% was a huge deal back then (but I think damage should be fine as long as the other issues get addressed).

You're right when you say the hits vary in their range, but it does not vary by any noticeable differences. It will consistently always go with the maximum range (I call it a 10 ft sword just for simplicity purposes, and that's what it's known as at this point).

We’ll said. 100% agree that the sword is definitely far from a finished product in this game.

Randomly met a friend on the sea so we decided just to test the range from the stairs on the sloop while standing STILL, and look here:
https://streamable.com/ge4xp3

Dont think hitreg is the only cause of the sword having the range of an eye of reach but yeah.

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@smellysnowballs Elevation makes a difference - he's missing because he's swinging over your head. You should try it again on level ground, show his perspective, and gage the distance via 3rd-person emotes - even then, it still doesn't really prove anything due to the online nature of things; you can't trust your eyes (or anyone's really). You need to look at the data, or test it offline, and neither can be done by us; only Rare.

Yeah I agree elevation matters, and this goes for every game not just SoT. Again, testing offline is good and all, but you tweak it for live play because of all the factors that I've mentioned before come into play.

@galactic-geek said:

@jibrran Of course they can tweak it for online play, but they still need a baseline 1st.

It's not a "can" thing, it's a "must" thing. And no one is arguing against the need of establishing any baselines, however you seem to be hung up on just some client side observations of slashing a ship mast.

If the only purpose of the sword was to slash at a mast, then great. I guess it'd be fine. However, it is used in combat, and so it must require testing and development around that.

I too feel that hitreg is the root cause of a lot of problems. But if hitreg is going to remain an issue, with no solutions in the foreseeable future, then maybe it's time to treat the symptoms.