Now, just to be clear. This is a very controversial topic. Please keep the comments appropriate and do not harass anyone. Everything you say can be misinterpreted. So make sure you respect everyone and their opinion.
So about a year ago now, rare decided to change how the sword mechanics worked. Now I'm sure alot of people understand what I am talking about but to those who don't let me recap. There have been numerous PvP nerfs and changes. Let's start from doublegun. Doublegun was an issue from the start of sea of thieves. In a way where people had to press 3 buttons within a short period of time to kill someone that was something that needed to be fixed. Wasn't really a problem people were encouraged to use a sword even more. So that did. It was a known mechanic where if you were to lunge a floor or a wall or something, you could do a block jump in a direction followed by a normal jump to cancel the cool down. It was a pretty skillful technique but not in a way where people could macro it and make it completely unfair against eachother. However on pc, you could easily bind your scroll wheel to your jump key and go at the speed of a lunge. A simple fix to this could be something as simple as making it so you can't use scroll wheel to jump. That got patched. The thing that frustrated me the most is I was playing on xbox and that feature was giving me a chance against skilled pc players. When that got removed, people still diddnt want to double gun because of the god awful slow delay. Let me run down what animation canceling is, say you head over to dig a chest, you would tap the chest, put your shovel away, then pull it out and it would dig faster. Anyone who learnt that mechanic would be more efficient towards anyone who diddnt. And because the good pvpers understood that, they tried doing it with sword, and behold, the double stow exploit. A simple 3 button combination where you would gain an advantage over someone who wasn't doing it. In this case, natural selection made a few some of the best known sword players.
These players would go on islands and fight eachother. Using these mechanics to them it would be a whole lot of fun. And I agree. It was fun. It was incredibly fun. The best part about it was a skilled xbox player who knew the mechanic could win against a skilled pc player. Times were very balanced. Everyone was having fun. New players who wanted to learn did learn. Double gun exploit was also something. Double gun at the moment is another topic. The really irritating thing, is rare nerfed the x cancel with the sword, but the diddnt do the same thing with doublegun. For a pvper who was somewhat experienced with the sword it felt like rare was hindering on our play style and making our time less enjoyable. This is an amazing game but I was heart broken about this nerf. The real competition was in this mechanic. If you were to put a skilled sword user against 4 unskilled sword users, the skilled sword user would win 9 put of 10 times. Now with the sword being what it is now, you will always get outnumbered and outspammed.
These is 2 suggestions I would hope to see in this game before I quit, I would love to see the sword being balanced in a way where it is skillful to an extent. Where I believe rare went wrong, when you miss a slash you were punished with a walkspeed slowdown. But on a hit slash, the enemy was punished with a walkspeed slowdown. This was the main key that balanced doublegun to sword. Because a skilled sword user was incredibly hard to hit when he was doing a lockdown. Now, the sword feels too simple and clunky. Rare, please listen to this, sword needs to be both skillful, and unskillful. The skillful players understand the mechanics. And the unskilled won't. Over time people will improve. People have improved.
Sword needs to be 20% damage, a missed slash slows your walkspeed, where as a hit slash needs to slow down theirs, and we need to be able to do a block jump quicker after a slash. Good momevent will throw off a doublegunner.
As for the second suggestion, I don't even know if it's possible, just an idea, but this idea would change the way pvpers would play tremendously. Take Minecraft for an example, people were used to spam clicking for PvP. Then, when 1.9 rolled out and took that out of the game, so many people stayed back in 1.8 to PvP. We need this rare. We need to be able to go back to anniversary edition. We need to be able to have fun and host tournaments. We need to be able to see who the best player is when the sword was a skillful weapon. This game has changed. I understand not everyone will agree, but I'm 100% certain that majority of PvP oriented players would agree with me. We need to go back to anniversary edition. Even if it's not anniversary, and it's the same game. When custom servers release, we need to be able to tick a box that says "old combat" where these techniques were in the game. If you think about it, it will make everyone happy.
The way I saw old combat, if you had a good player against a bad player, the good player would always win. But if you had 2 good players, it would be a sweaty fight to the death .
Sword Montage 2
