@blackbeard-lufy Then you are a far better mental gymnast than I.
Sword dash exploit & its barrier to entry
The sword lunge exploit was a very handy tool before the introduction of the row boat. But I personally feel as though it hurts the game far more than it helps at this point. Using the sword lunge to board ships is extremely effective, with little in the way of consequence if you miss. The game is adding harpoon guns to the mix which should make boarding much easier without the lunge.
Heres hoping it is "fixed" soon so that new players joining the Sea of Thieves experience don't feel like they are hopping into a world with random rules.
@geobiwan I just think it's a great tool. If another effective mobility option was added I wouldn't care.
@blackbeard-lufy Well what this post is saying, is that yes it is a great tool. But far too great of a tool and too unintuitive for new players. Yes i use it constantly, but I want it removed and replaced. Singing its praises and arguing about whether or not its an exploit is just silly. Its in the game, it made the game better for a while. But the game is ready to evolve.
@geobiwan It isn't hard to learn. I agree there should be more info on it, and the in-game 'tutorial' desperately needs expanding, but it doesn't require a ton of practice or skill to get down. I don't think it's OP in anyway. If you were aware of and able to learn it from the beginning then you'll expect it and adapt your play style accordingly. So though I think there is an issue in that it isn't super obvious to those starting without any knowledge of its existence or how to use it, that's not the mechanics fault.
@blackbeard-lufy It doesn't matter if its hard to learn or if its OP. Its the fact that new players would rarely ever think to even try it. The game shouldn't need a tutorial to tell you how to play it. The whole greatness of Sea of Thieves is that you just play it. You don't need to think about how to fire a cannon you just do it logically. Same goes for most mechanics in Sea of thieves, they just work how you would expect them to. The sword lunge through the water doesn't adhere to the same mindset. Again, yes I use it. But the fact that I had to tell all my friends how to do it before we boarded our first ship together, doesn't seem right.
@geobiwan I don't want it removed without a better solution in place really, or just keep it idc. It seems like a non-issue to me.
@blackbeard-lufy Well I want it removed and I want a better mechanic in place. Wouldn't it be so much more fun trying to shimmy across a rope connected to an enemy ship, watching bullets and cannons whiz by your head while you try you best to get there safely so you can board and fight their crew? It would have the added skill of trying to place your harpoon shots in the right place and also keep your ship in the right spot in relation to the enemy ship.
Additonally, lets say they just straight up removed the feature without adding a new one. It would still change player behavior, encouraging players to use cannons to launch boarding parties onto other ships, it would also make approaching a smaller ship with a bigger ship full of a big crew far more rewarding. With the boarding options limited, being able to charge your ship into theirs and send your party on board that way would suddenly seem pretty efficient.
I'm in the crew of just leave it. Removing it would just take from the game. Add more features that make it obsolete or just not as good, but don't remove it from the game. If anything its fun to use from the top of islands to see how far I can launch myself.
And while I agree you could have called it an exploit at one point, I believe with developer recognition it would be considered a feature.
I consider the sword lunge a feature. While sailing I'll practice by lunging from one end of the ship to the other. Rare can simply spread it's awareness by throwing a rhyme in the loading screen.
If people are sword lunging onto a ship, I think they allowed them to get a little too close. Even the lunge jump to the water means they'll grab the ladder which will make the audio cue and you can react.
@jc-yukaze of course there’s a sweet-spot distance for boarding a ship using the lunge. Part of the appeal is timing it right.
And for some reason there’s a lot of bickering about “are they going to keep it” on the early pages of the discussion - there was one of those weekly update videos where Neate was asked and he said that it’s not an exploit and yes they like it and are keeping it. It was a month or so after launch. And no I’m not going to waste my time to find it or link it 😉 - but you’re welcome to do so. Or say I’m lying and wearing a tinfoil hat whatever floats your gunpowder barrel, but irl it was brought up early on in a dev video.
@haydnsym45 Nah, I saw the video when the game came out. I understood the reasoning why the sword does what it do with water collision physics and such. I know the mechanic isn't going anywhere and I'm not advocating on getting rid of it. It's one of my favorite movement tricks in the game.
@jc-yukaze - yeah sorry that part wasn’t directed at you... I was on your side of course! Sorry about the confusion there matey.
It IS....
Confirmed as a valid game mechanic and taught to new players similarly to other actual game mechanics
Very much of this game is NOT taught to new players in a structured way:
- How to row a rowboat
- The ability to fire yourself from a cannon
- What the skull in the sky means, and what a skeleton fort is
- The stupid sailing physics
- and much more
You learn these things by exploration or luck, by sailing with more experienced pirates, or by looking at other resources online, such as You Tube videos.
The sword dash "exploit" was not in the game by design, but once it was discovered, Rare decided to keep it. It is now confirmed as a serendipitous "feature". It won't be going away. Like the best features of Sea of Thieves, it has multiple uses; way beyond boarding. I hardly ever use to assist in boarding, but I sword lunge all the time, just getting to and from land. Try doing it from the tip of the bowsprit on the wrecked ship perched on the top of Galleon's Grave. It's a great way to get back to your ship, when you are gathering resources from up there.
@geobiwan If Rare fixed the water physics to work more like water it would be a good step. It's always bothered me how far you go when doing stuff like cannon launching or jumping off a high cliff.
Flash forward three years later. The world has fallen into chaos. Governments have fallen and gaming is a thing of the past. The people of Earth have divided themselves into two hostile factions, the Exploits and the Features, and their battles shake the very foundations of the planet. Nobody remembers how it happened, but there are whispers of a thread somewhere that ripped the world asunder and divided it's occupants forever more.
In all seriousness here is the actual information I've gleaned from this thread:
- Some people would like to see the sword surfing stay regardless
- Some people would like to see sword surfing replaced by mechanics that are more intuitive
- Some players would like to see the game teach you the games less intuitive features in an immersive way
- Some players don't want the game to teach you anything because the experience of figuring something out for yourself or word of mouth is pretty cool
- Some players would like to strike a balance between the above points
Sword surfing makes total sense in terms of the game logic; I don't know why anyone would argue otherwise. Distance traveled through the water is determined by your speed at entry, which decelerates to the default movement speed at a set rate. Landing in the water from a cannon shot or falling from a distance does the same thing as the sword lunge because you hit the water at a speed that is faster than you can run. Your speed is increased by the lunge, so if you hit the water the distance traveled will also be increased.
I don't really see a need to remove it. About the only thing I would change would be to have the movement penalty removed, or remove the ability to get around the penalty by holding block first. Rare needs to decide if the penalty is worthwhile and enforce it consistently or not at all.
@zormis said in Sword dash exploit & its barrier to entry:
@betsill Does the sword dash not feel like a feature?
If it did I wouldn't have a problem with it. Kinda. I don't like mixing this kinda of utility with weapons. You should use a sword because that's the playstyle you want. Not because it's an unmatched mobility tool.
If it wasn't for people calling it a bug it would have never crossed my mind.
That's weird. It's very obviously a bug to me. Maybe because i've seen this same bug multiple times other games? Idk how it isn't obvious though. The lunge was very obviously designed to be on the ground and only move you a short distance after a long wind-up. Blocking to removed the slow and allow you to jump is very obviously a bug because there is zero logic behind the interaction same as the super launch. Have you never seen a player or corpse go flying across the map in a game? I see that the same way I see people flying across the map with a sword lunge.
I feel it's very legit sword play and a huge reason why I carry a sword instead of 2 guns.
Like I said that one of the reasons I have a problem with it. I think there are more better ways to make the sword a highly mobility/chasing weapon such as adding a running sword lunge and/or adding a small lunge to light attach and bigger lunge to heavy. As long as it stays in reason with feats of strength that our characters should be able to do.
@parasrah Hey man I can see where you are coming from. However, to be fair, the game doesn't teach you anything at all you literally have to figure it all out for yourself. Alternatively, you could watch a stream and have figured the lunge mechanic out on your first day.
@betsill said in Sword dash exploit & its barrier to entry:
@entspeak Whatever you say bud.
They just redid the weapon designs to do balancing, that should clue you in their intentions to keep it.
@zormis Weapons are still far from finished/polished, but right now I doubt they will remove it. I don't think that they have enough integrity to upset players to polish their game. Rare's philosophy from the beginning seems to be "minimum viable product", so I don't think that they care that much about fixing things unless they have to. In the case of sword lunge they would be fixing something that a lot of people don't want them to fix.
@betsill said in Sword dash exploit & its barrier to entry:
@zormis Weapons are still far from finished/polished, but right now I doubt they will remove it. I don't think that they have enough integrity to upset players to polish their game. Rare's philosophy from the beginning seems to be "minimum viable product", so I don't think that they care that much about fixing things unless they have to. In the case of sword lunge they would be fixing something that a lot of people don't want them to fix.
Yet, they fixed double gun...
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