Sword Combat Balancing - In Depth Review/Feedback

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Balancing - In Depth Review/Feedback:

@ji6ran ...but you keep moving at angles that are hard for anyone to follow or block effectively so the recovery of the slash is a moot point because its effectiveness is in scoring continuous successful hits, not its speed of attack. Your feint doesn't do diddly if the opponent holds their block because your feint is too quick for them to even adjust. With the running slash, you don't have to rely on locking them down either.

Also, the sword dodge has 2 properties that most pirates aren't aware of, even if they know how to do it:

1. You can use it to pass through an opponent's space.
2. There is no cooldown time on it, like with the sword charge - many simply think it does because they hold down their block for too long mid-move.

My apologies if I didn't understand this correctly. As far as the 2 properties go that you pointed out, that's been known for a while, since launch. People are just too lazy and incompetent to actually learn it xD. Also I still do not understand the point you are trying to make, again my apologies for not understanding correctly.

I agree on the new stun now having players double gun being a bad thing, but I completely disagree about Stow/Unstow mechanic having been removed as a bad thing.

That mechanic was woefully unintentional and shouldnt have been in the game. It created players that vortexed defending players and made swords one sided to the attacking person. It did introduce a certain depth, but its a very exploitative kind of depth. This was not "skill", because the skill in this game reaches beyond just sword play. So being able to figure out an exploit shouldn't make one more skilled.

You kept mentioning what the attacking person has gotten from this exploit when it was around, but you forget how its like to be on the receiving end of it.

Such as the function of blocking against this. And that is why I think taking away the Stow/Unstow was a good thing. The dynamic of the sword is no longer broken from the exploit, nor as exploit intensive as it was, its still dumb and button mashy, but at least it is clearer now.

I even predicted that if this was going to even be a discussion in my post here: https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/104676/how-sword-combat-got-abandoned-and-how-they-missed-the-mark-on-combat-changes

Without any Insider Testing, they released Switching from Sword Any time...

This has helped the frustrated players who did not get to switch away from the sword, and also gave others a Win button.

On the very first day, as soon as I spawned in the tavern, on simply reading the patch notes, I found out that you can now do the Shovel Trick with the sword. This granted exploiters a Vortex that combos into infinite strikes, as well as Macro or Practiced techniques where you Strike Twice, Block-Hop through your opponent and behind them to repeat the cycle.

This is also still present.

With the added fix from the section above, I bet you this will be the new "exploit"/"Feature" discussion that you guys will have.

Post was made oddly close to when they added updates to the sword :/

@Crafek yup I get what you mean about being on the receiving end of the vortex, and of course there have been times where I’ve been on the receiving end too, however due to much practice on my movement alone I was able to get out of it pretty easily (and no, I’m not using any “movement exploits”). But of course, and this goes for every game, everyone’s skill level is different when it comes to things such as movement and defensive plays.

This is why I edited the main thread with an alternative to X cancelling, which you’ll see at the bottom of my original post. Let me know what you think of that alternative, and let’s have a discussion on that! The Stow/Unstow animation cancelling being brought back has 0 chance, however an alternative explaining why we DID utilize it may propose a better solution and hopefully add a new depth to the sword combat and how it is right now. And I also concur, removing the stun cooldown to how it is now is absolutely not the way to go.

Agree 100%!
Cutlass at this state is so broken, and hopefully are wish list will be granted this soon! (:

Double gun rules. They will have to nerf guns into the ground to make swords viable. This game should have been about swords and clunky guns, instead its the other way around.

@droper666 said in Sword Combat Balancing - In Depth Review/Feedback:

Double gun rules. They will have to nerf guns into the ground to make swords viable. This game should have been about swords and clunky guns, instead its the other way around.

Aside from the clunky combat, if Rare is ever planning on having a competitive scene EVER, they need to fix the balancing of weapons firstly, because even now double gun is ruling. During the Cutthroats NAL Arena Tournament, one of the players that were streaming boarded a boat, got all the way to the anchor, lowered it, and killed off a couple of the players. Why? He’s double gunning, and the players using swords against him to try to stop him weren’t able to stun lock him at all. Sure, go ahead and remove the Stow/Unstow animation cancel; sure, go ahead and make combat even clunkier than it already was, but removing the stun just completely changed the game for everyone. Not to mention that the delay added to counteract X cancelling just caused more players AND streamers to switch over to double guns.

Adding delays to everything is not the answer Rare. Combat was perfect over a year ago when slashes slowed you down, because then it required skill to actually use the sword rather than making brain dead plays like spamming your attack key. It’s actually so laughable on how terrible combat is now.

Unintentional game mechanics and frame cancelling are fundamental aspects in nearly all games that are played at a high level of skill. This is true across many genres, including fighting games, FPS, and MOBAs. SoT is no exception to this, only the developers are actively trying to remove these "exploits" and driving away the most loyal, dedicated players this game has.

When the anniversary update came out, I only played arena and met some of the most skilled players that play this game. It was the first time I died to someone using animation cancelling to quick swap guns, the first time I saw someone bunny hop out of a sword dash, and it's when I first encountered ji6ran and died to his lockdown. These encounters didn't drive me away from the game, but made me want to learn what they were doing so I could learn how to defend against these tactics and use them myself. It takes a lot of practice and skill to implement these moves, but executing them and making plays you couldn't before added a whole new level of enjoyment and personal progression to the game.

With this update, not only are these mechanics that many of us have practiced gone, there are additional bugs with guns that make the game unbearable to play for many. The discords I'm in now show people that used to exclusively play SoT on other games. I've spoken to a lot of these players and the game at this point is almost a joke. A really sad, disappointing joke where something we all love is being ruined by the people who created it. I know there are still some players who love what Rare is doing, but to the vast majority of players who play this game competitively, the past few updates have been laughably bad. I honestly feel dread every time this game is updated because it consistently comes with several ridiculous bugs and undesirable content like the misguided sword reworks and putting fire in the arena. It seems the developers don't even play the game at all. I wish we could just roll back everything to the anniversary update, but keep the fort of the damned.