Combat Balancing Changes

  • Loving this game and the changes you all keep adding. Can't wait to see what the new year has in store for the seas of thieves.

    Have talks ever been brought up about nerfing guns power/range underwater or making them completely none functioning? I think it's silly for the eye of reach to have the same range/power when being fired underwater as it does above land. Would drastically change the underwater fighting and keg defense. Perhaps making the effective bullet distance underwater cut down to 1/4th the distance above land?

    Another idea my mates and I have been bouncing around was a default Sword & Gun option. Sword/meele weapon always equipped and your strategic choice between the different ranged guns.

    Keep up the amazing work!

  • @barnacle-blake said in Combat Balancing Changes:

    Id like to see a sword parry added

    Great update though

    There's already a sword parry in the game since launch. Block + Jump (in any direction) will keep your character blocking and do a quick parry front, back, or sideways.

  • @mikethemutinous I haven't played with the changes yet (it's still downloading) but they seem to be great ones.

  • @marius Ive got troubles inviting friends.. Website had some troubles and it says that I have to confirm an email that I didnt had (Also not in junk). How do I let it send again?

  • @marius said in Combat Balancing Changes:

    @barnacle-blake said in Combat Balancing Changes:

    Id like to see a sword parry added

    Great update though

    There's already a sword parry in the game since launch. Block + Jump (in any direction) will keep your character blocking and do a quick parry front, back, or sideways.

    Thats more of a dodge move id say

    Parry as in ward off a weapon or attack with a countermove.

    "sword blow parried forcefully and knocked his opponent off balance" Type parry

  • i hope that all these changes will result in a more fair gameplay. Double gunning became a real game-breaker and atmosphere spoiler...Now i hope that one day Spawncamping / teleporters / ghosters and other hacking game destroying abilities get forever banned and impossible to trigger...Yep , i live on high , maybe too ,high hopes...

  • @vorondil1 said in Combat Balancing Changes:

    @ogdirtyape yes, as a solo slooper as well I feel you that we want a "one size fits all" weapon. I think the point though is that no weapon should fit all situations, we're supposed to swap around a bit. I for one will be curious to see if the blunderbuss is a more worthwhile investment now.

    I would honestly only use Sword/Blunder if the blunder could pop Exploding Skeletons without killing you along with them. That's probably the only reason I sword/pistol it.

  • @kerufc That's more of a charge than a thrust to be honest. Probably means an attack that can be used with the other to combo

  • Going to miss the double gun but it's good that it'll be giving newer players an easier time in pvp situations.

  • Great update.:)

  • Looks great on 'paper', and seems like all of the logical, and game-fitting, changes I hoped to see!

    I'm surprised (but very pleased) about the removal of the slow-down when missing with the sword. I've been quite successful with my swordplay, and I'm curious to see how much more everyone may enjoy the cutlass now!

    And I'm very surprised to learn that there was some sort of damage drop-off!
    I'm really curious what the numbers were on that, because I'm thinking it must have been pretty minimal (and for pretty extreme distances).

    Sounds like great changes! And fantastic communication about it all.

    My only remaining issue is... why am I still not in the Pioneers? haha... (not really ASKING that as I know there's no answer to be given there)

    Yo-ho!

  • These SUCK!!!

  • @ssc-pron00b did you create your entire account just so you could deliver that scintillating and thought-provoking message to the community?

  • Preventing me from shooting after run. Will make me not play sot. Gun combat imo was already lacking in pve. now you just nerfed gun combat pvp with stupid delays. I would have had eor nerfed to 60% and have less ammo then it has and nerf the pistol to 30% and buff the amount of ammo. This update imo was an attack on the use of guns in general on sea of theives. There were better ways to remove double gunning without drastically effecting the qol around guns. Now guns feel clunky and swords are op.

  • I know I haven't been around on the forums much lately, but this is fantastic news!
    @MikeTheMutinous please give everyone at Rare a big thank you from me!! The combat system has always needed polishing up, and I'm very happy that it's finally getting some attention. 🍻

  • Apparently double gun is still possible, though much harder to execute now. Depending on how difficult it is to do, I'm hoping we aren't going to have to wait until March for the next update to address the issue if it gets out of control.

  • After weeks of playing , and enduring the many annoying issues. I really thought they'd be fixed after this. The whole while being venomed or hurt and not being able to get into supply barrel's the water being a ridiculous nuisance. my almost Year long established crew is about to move to a different game and put sot up for good. we've all been PL10 for a long while. i own everything in the game. and have over a Mil still. theres absolutely nothing for us to work towards. this whope mercenary mission. took us an hr to complete. and back to having nothing. i couldnt actually put into words just how disappointed i am really.

  • @baasboyd said in Combat Balancing Changes:

    @marius Ive got troubles inviting friends.. Website had some troubles and it says that I have to confirm an email that I didnt had (Also not in junk). How do I let it send again?

    Also having the same problem. You need to be in the insider program to get the invite codes. But the confirmation mail to join the insiders program is not coming to my email adres. Really want to lure my friends into this game...

  • @sgt-palooggoo isnt that a bit ironic? if you disliked it, its because you couldn't use it effectively yourself lol. the people using it were the players smart enough to use an advantage while you sat around waiting for the blunderbuss to be viable lol 🍻

  • @pissedfurby dijo en Combat Balancing Changes:

    @sgt-palooggoo isnt that a bit ironic? if you disliked it, its because you couldn't use it effectively yourself lol. the people using it were the players smart enough to use an advantage while you sat around waiting for the blunderbuss to be viable lol 🍻

    I dont liked that and I've used that effectively myself (I actually used the double gun during the hungering deep event and never went back because a double gunner never was a problem with my cutlass+EoR combo in cqb). Who find funny the double shot actually? because there's no skill in pushing 3 buttons fast. The old sword combat required more skill and knowledge of the game mechanics and not all people knew that you could do nearly all the things of this patch with the cutlass before...

  • The double gun removal is great, though the animation delay after running with a gun is a bit much.

    But worse is the fact that Eye of Reach and Pistol no longer interrupt actions, such as climbing a ladder, raising an anchor, steering a ship. Was the removal of that intentional? If this was a byproduct of removing the knockback, could it be implemented to just cancel actions while not having knockback?

    This is a huge and detrimental change to PvP. Eye of Reach and Pistol are the only long-range weapons in the game. This change renders them nigh useless as support for preventing enemies from raising anchors, climbing ladders, etc. In terms of the Crow's Nest, it means there is no way to knock down someone climbing it other than outright killing them. Under pressure during a big fight, you might not get that opportunity.

    Interrupting is such a pivotal part to overtaking another crew, and this update prevents the ability to do some from longrange. The support role is gone.

    Please reconsider this change. If the knockback has to remain gone, fine; but add back in interruptions for these weapons.

  • Been playing a few hours today to feel the changes. Sword changes feel great. Didnt change much other than the actual quality of life ”feel” of the sword ( which I think was the intention ) . But appreciated nonetheless.

    Although double gunning was obviously an issue I don’t know how I feel about this gun change. Adding delays as a nerf is extremely unrewarding and has made the gun-play feel ALOT worse. I been trying to get into as many pvp fights as possible today and I can’t even tell you how bad it feels sprinting into someone , unsprinting and pulling out your gun, to then have a delay stopping you from doing literally ANYTHING. This made me basically try to shoot, nothing happens, I awkwardly back away and slowly pull it out once I’ve gained some distance again to try once more.
    Shooting in a jump is now completely impossible as you hit the ground before you can use your weapon. This makes sprinting a bad option vs decent players as the slow walking/jogging player will now get what feels like an eternity to shoot you before you get the shot of.
    I understand that adding a delay was a natural approach, but please for the love of god tune it down a bit. Double gunning made you be able to shoot two shots basically seamlessly and instant, but all you needed to do was add about half the delay as what is in the game currently to make the double gunning less viable/not used. I agree with a bit of delay between weapon swaps, but the current delay is present after a sprint, a jump, or any other interaction in the game which makes no sense to me. Now all you do is get caught in an awkward moment of silence before neither player can do anything.

    The last thing I would like to take up is letting you know that double gunning is still kind of going to be a thing even though it’s not technically two guns being used, all one has to do now is literally shoot a blunderbus, and imidiately swap to sword to finish the person almost instantly. No delay is present during the swap from gun to sword. ( which is probably intended since it’s called double gunning but still ).
    I’ve pvp’d in SoT for a very large ammount of hours, and I honestly think the best solution would be to either tone down this delay, or remove it completely from movement effects as in after a sprint or jump, or simply just allowing one shooting weapon and one melee weapon. Adding more melee weapons could make that a nice turn for the game, which would improve both balance and a fair diversity of choice of weapons.

    This post got a lot longer than intended so my bad. But simply nerfing something with a clunky stun lock feeling of a cooldown/delay is just gonna make pvp feel slower, and less rewarding for all parties involved in the fight.
    Please take this into consideration, and don’t kill pvp before the pvp mode has even been released.

    Cheers

  • @amancebacabras yes, youre right. left clicking and not aiming takes more skill than aiming and taking 2 shots /s

  • This pretty awesome

  • Double gunning still exists. Not as fast, but was just killed several times by someone that could get 2 shots on me in less than a second. But I can no longer hip fire my EoR, so problem solved!

    /salt

  • I love this evolution and can't wait for the next ! The game take a good road and it's really cool :)

  • @knightx13
    It would be great about the haciendas and the grenadines.

  • @pissedfurby dijo en Combat Balancing Changes:

    @amancebacabras yes, youre right. left clicking and not aiming takes more skill than aiming and taking 2 shots /s

    Once you knew how to use the double shot, was aiming and 3 keys, that was more skilled than the noob slash spam, I know. The old sword combat involved timing and some techniques to attack slashing running at normal speed that was actually more difficult than the double gunning, so yeah, was a bit more difficult than the double shot. Now is easier for the same income because they now let with a normal slash to still move at the same speed, but I was not talking of the new cutlass...

    EDIT: and you've seen just like the double shot was a popular thing in the community and the cutlass speed whielding wasn't, making the true difference between swordmans and sailors with sharp things

  • @mikethemutinous I really appreciate you explaining the changes and the intentions behind them! :-)

    For the balance changes I recommend improvements for blocking with a cutlass. Since attacks by cutlass are no longer slowing down a pirates movement, a blocking pirate may be at a disadvantage as blocking is slowing down. There are several ways to handle this, one I would recommend is:
    If a attacking pirate hits a enemy pirate with the cutlass he shall be slowed down like in the old days. In all other scenarios I think the changes are great!

    Oh and one more thing for knockback. I feel removing knockback for flintlock and EoR is the right step, but they may remain their ability to shoot people of ladders. This is for the sole reason that a pirate may not be forced to use a blunderbuss or a cutlass to keep boarders away from ladders.

    But again sir, thank you so much for your post! :-)

  • I tried the double gun tonight. I noticed the change, its like 3 or 4 out of 6 shots hit which isn't a bad bit more even. Admittedly I am not good at it, to begin with.

  • @mikethemutinous sagte in Combat Balancing Changes:

    Hi everyone,

    Along with the ‘Friends Play Free’ update for Sea of Thieves released today, we’ve taken a first step in rebalancing weapons and addressing some of the issues that have caused frustration for players. While Drew gave an overview of our overall approach in this week’s update video, I’d like to spend some time going into more detail about the specific changes and why we’ve made them.

    When it comes to the vision for combat in Sea of Thieves, some of the most important aspects for us are maintaining a first person perspective, not having any excessive UI elements and most importantly, the need for combat to handle all the varieties of encounters that can occur while sailing around in the world – 1v1, 2v5, 3v3 etc. This is also alongside the types of locations combat can occur in, such as within cramped decks, on large islands, as well as the interplay between fighting skeletons, before then immediately switching to fighting other players. Even though the ideal scenario we want to cater for is about picking the right weapon for the job at hand, the game is unpredictable and players frequently have to adjust to different combat scenarios.

    Since we launched the game, we’ve been adding new experiences and features for players with the larger updates, but now with the Arena on the horizon, we’ve been taking a look at combat in detail again, with today’s update the first of what we expect to be several that aim to improve the overall combat experience in the game. It’s important that we don’t make these changes all at once, but rather release a smaller set of tweaks and then assess how it changes the experience, shown both in your feedback and the data we receive from the game, before we then rollout further changes.

    Here’s a breakdown of the changes that we be live following today’s update:

    Preventing the Double Gun Exploit

    The ‘double gun’ is a non-intended exploit that has recently gained traction in the community. It’s essentially the result of the wield animations for each of the weapons being too brief. Up until now, equipping a weapon has played a basic wield animation that finished extremely quickly, and what this means in the case of a gun is that it can go from unequipped to being ready to fire in a short space of time. This has led to scenarios where some players are exploiting the fact that two guns can be swapped between extremely quickly, allowing two shots to be fired in quick succession that can then easily overpower their target. Traditionally, most first person experiences have a more elaborate wield animation to allow for a short ready time before any shot can be fired, preventing any exploits around wielding weapons. Rather than add an arbitrary delay, from the gameplay perspective, it will always ‘feel’ better to have a wield animation where the gun animates to the screen, comes to a natural rest, and the moment the animation looks like its finished, the gun will be ready to fire.

    As part of this, all weapons have new wield animations as part of an inbuilt delay when equipping weapons. We’re confident this will reduce the effectiveness of this exploit.

    As a nice side effect, the new wield animations look much nicer than the ones we launched the game with!

    Reload Improvements

    This relates to a change recently made to the Eye of Reach, but now rolled out to all weapons. It ensures that a gun is reloaded the moment the hammer is pulled, rather than when the full reload animation is finished. This resolves issues where players reload a weapon and think that the reload has been finished, so go into a sprint or change their weapons, before then frustratingly seeing that the animation for their weapon is restarted when then wield it. It’s been so easy to be caught out by this in combat or high pressure situations, but should now function as players expect.

    More Fluid Swordplay

    As part of ensuring that swordplay between players remained super accessible, but also has a layer of depth, we originally launched with an enforced slowdown on the player when performing cutlass attacks. This was particularly frustrating in situations where a swing didn’t connect, leading to situations where control felt like it was being momentarily taken away. While it did lead to some tactics around timing swings, after revaluating this, we believe that removing the slowdown and prioritising more fluid attacks, feels like the better approach. Nothing captured the frustration quite like missing a swing against a skeleton, to then see it back up while chomping on a banana, but being temporarily slowed down and unable to close the distance. It’s gone!

    Increased Projectile Speeds

    As part of having a nod to period weaponry, as well as adding additional strategy, gunshots have a natural ‘time of flight’ and ‘drop off’ before they hit a target, presented as the visual tracers of each pellet. This is demonstrated most critically with the Eye of Reach, with players having to adjust their aim based on the expected distance of the target. With this change, we’ve increased the projectile speeds of both the Eye of Reach and the Blunderbuss. With the Eye of Reach, this means that it’ll be easier to land shots at distance and with the Blunderbuss, it just makes the weapon feel more powerful when fired. While the damage from the Blunderbuss felt right at close range, the feedback from the tracers now more appropriately matches this.

    Removed Scaling Damage Distance

    For many players, this has probably gone unnoticed, instead being perceived as lag or server issues. Up until this update, we’ve actually been scaling the damage on projectiles, with longer range shots inflicting less damage on a target. While physically more accurate, it leads to more frustration and we’ve decided to remove it in favour of a more solid feeling overall experience. If you’re lucky enough to land that awesome shot between two moving ships, we’ll short change you no longer!

    Eye of Reach Damage Reduction

    As part of the two above improvements, the Eye of Reach is now a more effective tool when used for what it was designed to do, which was hit targets at long range. With this in mind, we’ve slightly reduced the damage caused by an Eye of Reach from 80 to 70. This reduction still makes it effective in the right hands but prevents it from feeling too overpowered now shots move faster and hit with consistent damage.

    Increased Hip Firing inaccuracy with the Eye of Reach

    As part of each weapon having a defined role, we’ve made hip fired shots, or shots made without aiming down the sights, to be wildly inaccurate when using the Eye of Reach. This is largely based on some players exploiting it, but also due to the fact that it makes little sense to reward the hip firing of a long range weapon. While it would have been easier to just remove hip firing from the Eye of Reach, we always strive to make mechanics just work as you expect, therefore we always want the fire button to do something, rather than just taking that ability away. Under pressure, you can still get lucky with a hip fired Eye of Reach shot, but it now functions less like a mini shotgun at close range.

    Weapon Knockback

    Swords and guns have all been able to knockback players, leading to fun situations where players can be knocked off ships, but also pushing two players apart, potentially allowing time for other strategies. We believe however that having this across all the weapons strayed too far into making combat feel less solid and dare I say it, a bit goofy. With this change, a cutlass and a blunderbuss will each still cause knockback, but its been removed from the Flintlock Pistol and the Eye of Reach. The same change also applies to skeletons, but we’ve taken the additional step of also taking knockback off the Blunderbuss when it comes to skeletons to further reduce frustration.

    As mentioned previously, this is the first step in a re-evaluation of combat and we’re keen to assess the impact of these changes in this latest release. There are more changes planned… both for player AND ship combat, all with the goal of improving the combat experience across Adventure and Arena. Your feedback and thoughts as ever are greatly appreciated.

    -Mike

    Thank you for basically ruining combat as it was. Removing the double gun exploit - completely agreed, but rendering the eye of reach basically UNUSABLE in CC (close combat) is just not cool. I don't know who does any kind of thinking before implementing these changes, but I always have my cutlass and the EOR equipped. If I get jumped by someone with a blunderbuss, what do I do? Block the shot with my cutlass? Aim to fire with the EOR? NO! I would hipfire to use the knockback to get the attacker away from me. And that's just one of many situations that have been ruined with this "update". Why would you keep the knockback on the flintlock? It's a rather stupid decision. So you basically force players to either not use the eye of reach unless "safely" sailing in the middle of the ocean, or using the flintlock because of the knockback since shots can't be blocked but cutlass hits can. I just want you to rethink that decision and make changes based on logical thinking.

    Thank you.

  • Were the patch notes edited? I'm sure I read something about a particle slider?

  • @MikeTheMutinous

    As mentioned previously, this is the first step in a re-evaluation of combat and we’re keen to assess the impact of these changes in this latest release. There are more changes planned… both for player AND ship combat, all with the goal of improving the combat experience across Adventure and Arena. Your feedback and thoughts as ever are greatly appreciated.

    I hope players see this part, it isn't "okay it's all fixed, and we are done"


    One thing I hope they implement is a grasp component to damage.
    We rely on knockback to remove someone from the ladders, but now only 2 weapons have knockback.

    Someone climbing up to your crows nest can no longer be knocked off the ladder. Too far for sword and blunderbuss.

    If there was a grasp component that a player that takes "significant" damage (read not poison ticks) drops what they hold onto (ladder, capstan, treasure, etc) it could create more realism and combat decisions.

  • I miss the sniper but it sure is easy to board and drop anchor now, all you have to do is sprint away from sword bros swinging like crazy and pop a pistol shot...wait for them to get close and bang em with a blunder. I cant 1v4 as well anymore so we just have another person shoot over with me and we 2v4 them. The best part about these changes is really how very very easy it is to drop anchors now, its fantastic. Just a slight change in game play for me as far as gun play goes, but again I am OK with it simply because its nearly impossible to stop us from getting your anchor down and blowing your ship up with cannons. Thanks Rare!

  • @MikeTheMutinous Thank you for these changes. Swordplay is so much more satisfying now, and effective. It definitely feels more fluid, and I find I am better able to handle skellies with guns because I'm not slowed down - can swipe one and move to the next... keeping them on their heels. It also makes my lunge variations (standing leap, reverse, twisting side...) feel better as I don't feel like I'm losing speed coming out of them to do more slashing. It's just awesome!

    It's also so much easier to snipe while on a moving ship. Awesome!

    The gun delay after sprinting hasn't bothered me because I tend to stop sprinting and just run to raise my weapon anyway. So, it works for me.

    I haven't had the opportunity experience the weapon changes in PvP yet, but I look forward to it.

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