I feel like the Combat is the worst it has ever been.

@pyroxium I agree with you that the sword play is an issues with this update. The PVP combat with swords is definitely an area the Devs need work on. Right now the double gun set up has an advantage. Maybe the Devs should be focusing on this aspect of the game instead of offering more "tucking" emotes. Take a step back and look at what the Devs are focusing in on....double gunning and tucking emotes. Hang in there and hopefully the sword play improves.

Whenever I get into a sword fight, it is literally just jumping around them and spamming until they die... how skillful.

Might I suggest the skillful art of Blocking? You also have the option to do a block-jump while blocking for a quick disengage, works great for creating distance from those big meanies.

@nabberwar There is no skillful blocking. The fact that there is a delay to take out your sword to even block is dumb. It slows combat down so much and doesn't reward quick reflexes. I used to be able to get into a fight and get my sword out quickly when needed to block an onslaught. Now I have to sit there for a second while getting hit in order to even start blocking. It is just bad combat design and didn't even fix any issues lol.

I prefer ship to ship combat and would rather have a player vs player combat that doesn’t favor who has the best reflexes.

Sword no longer has stun effects as per 3 updates ago. Double gunning is still a issue
And needs to be fixed. As for combat it’s evolving update by update give it time

@pyroxium agree I logged in after a while long break, and my god is the combat slow, everything is so slow, if you are a pvper this game is sinking

@pyroxium Nah you seem like you got it the system pretty well sized up. While I 100% understand the logic behind the changes that have been made, to me the fixes seem to have complicated the system.

It's a tricky problem now than it ever has been to get back to where the combat system should be, because the layers of fixes on top of it seemed to have gummed up the system from working as fluidly as it should.

Inherently that's the problem I'm seeing more commonly these days, when something is fixed is has a tendency to break something else unintentionally.

I begin to wonder if scrapping the fixes, and starting from scratch with the lessons learned about the possible exploits in mind would be a wiser approach at this point. Maybe then more creative ideas could be explored, that will not only mantain the fluidity of the combat system, while keeping it balanced.

I've read plenty of great ideas to achieve this, but as you've mentioned there does appear to need to be a higher differentiation between the pistol and the eye of reach. When so many players, myself included. look at the pistol as just a lesser version of a weapon, there's a problem.

I wish I could remember the person's name who I first hear the idea from but he was talking about damage distance for the weapons to encourage players to use them at their optimal range, and they'd become less effective outside of that range. I think that's a really clever way to deal with the double gun exploit, as from a greater distance after hitting with a long range sniper shot, at the same distance a pistol wouldn't do enough damage to secure a kill shot. Or vice versa.

Then when I start to think about the blunder, originally I didn't have an issue with it being a powerhouse up close the downside verses a pistol is obvious simply by players using distance to gain the advantage in a fight.

However when comparing the blunder to the sword. Ideally I'm thinking well the blunder should have the advantage with the downside of having a limited ammo supply. However with the addition of ammo crates, that ideal is now nullified in so many situations, then if you stack on top of that the added delays that came along with the fix to the stow unstow fix. Blunder now has become simply the best option for close quarter fighting. I only use the sword now for traveling from ship to ship, or ship to island.

Sorry if I'm being long winded. But there's a ton to talk about concerning the combat system, and how It can be balanced to encourage players to develop their own playstyles rather than just having a weapons that are clearly best in too many scenarios.

@archaell It's exactly it. The vast majority of these combat changes are all being made because they're trying to bring balance, but the problem is double gun is so OP compared to any sword/gun loadout there's just no great way to get there. So they tweak one thing and it fixes one problem but also creates a new one. So then they tweak something to fix that but that then creates another new one. In fact I would argue the fixes you suggest are an example of the exact kind of problem that trying to create this balance while leaving double gun in creates. If you up the reload time to 6 seconds or decrease the ammo to 3 bullets then guns are going to feel terrible and pointless. Same thing with decreasing the damage too much. I genuinely believe that that locking to sword/gun is the only real fix that would bring balance. Not to mention it's a lot easier to achieve balance when there's only 3 possible loadouts instead of 6. Especially when one of the weapons, sword, would be the same for everyone.

I think combat will never truly be fixed until the underlying problem, double gun, is fixed. Because at the end of the day if you're going against someone who is good at double gunning it doesn't matter how good you are with your sword/gun loadout. If they can hit their shots reliably you're dead. Which means if you want to be a top end pvper you better get good at double gun and that sucks.

I still believe sensitivity is the true issue here. When everyone is one giant headshot, it becomes a game of speed and reflexes with who can hit who first. While ship battles remain the true game of skill and tactics. Just to reiterate, max sensitivity has no impact in ship combat.

At this point, I would like to see the sword locked into slot 1, along with some damage changes.

Cutlass - 25 Dmg
Blunderbuss - 75 Dmg
EoR - 75 Dmg
Pistol - 50 Dmg

I really like it when I sword lunge and hit an enemy but it registers like I dont so I get sword stunned and die.

Its pretty bad when the game was smoother at release. Smh.

I absolutely agree with the combat being clunky and unresponsive cause it absolutely is. Dashing in combat really is nearly useless and double gunning is extremely common in The Arena.

I keep experiencing an issue with getting screwed out of my deserved 3 slashes from m1/right trigger. The cutlass is inside of an enemy pirate but I'm not allowed the 3 hits, and I believe this is because of the removal of the ability to swing 3 times when hitting any object. I honestly still want to see the day that cutlasses get reverted to their former glory because slowing cutlass combat to a crawl doesn't fix or balance it. It makes combat tedious, infuriating, and nearly unusable.

Hit registration (at least on pc) is a persistent issue too because I still remember both times during these last two monthly updates where I've shot 5 EOR bullets into people and it still doesn't kill them even though I hit them dead center in the torso.

When it comes to a way to nerf double gunning I believe adding an immense increase to pull times (+5 seconds for example) when 2 guns are equipped would fix or make double gunning uninviting in pvp and The Arena but it doesn't completely remove its use in pve for fighting something like golden skeletons or skeleton lords.

May I add that one-shoting with only one weapon is an issue?

People usually argue that the blunder has to because it has many bullets and that it's more realistic… like eye of reach shouldn't one-shot if you hit the head…

So instead of firing these arguments, we can just look at the metagame as it is actually… double gunning and blunder spawn kill.

Rare has to do something to rebalance the combat gameplay.

Also, as I suggested elsewhere, they can implement an "invincible" time span (3 or 5 seconds would do) after spawn to avoid spawn-kill-spam (actually, the black screen when spawning doesn't help). Many FPS games with competitive aspect do have that.