Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback

@jibrran
As a fellow "Sword lord," I feel you. Hitreg can make a lot of things go bad in scenarios. I'll post it if I can find the clip, but there was one time that an enemy was pointed straight towards me, and hit me with a slash while I was block hopping backward. I have no idea how hitreg could have affected that scenario... but if hitreg is improved enough, it will be a lot easier for the balance team at Rare to decide what needs to be changed.

If you watch the latest SoT podcast (#3) they talk about how the heavy development for A Pirate's Life prevented them from working on bug fixes at the rate they wanted to. Now that A Pirate's Life is out, they're going to spend more time on fixing things like this.

@jibrran Rare, make the sword great again; RNG PVP is no good.

Blocking right now is so difficult and broken that everyone just runs and spams. First to land a hit usually wins.

The range for sure needs fixing like OP said. But instead of increasing block radius, I would slow the slashing down quite a bit. Maybe the block would be easier to target when you don't need to pump mouse sensitivity through the roof (and also because speed and lag don't mix well). With slightly slower speed, with hopefully working blocks, you could also add parrying, riposte attacks etc to spice things up.

Also would be nice to have block work when hopping and make it so that block-hop doesn't magically remove hitbox and get you through enemies.

@grumpyw01f I hope they stay true to it and they check out this thread. Sword is in a very clunky state right now, and hopefully the changes i suggested will help with reducing the clunky-ness and frustration of being killed by a 10 ft sword.

@jibrran bump

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@Jibrran The mechanics regarding the sword are not broken - it actually works just fine. They are, however, affected by hit-registration and other networking issues like lag, as are the gun mechanics. In other words, the issue is not the weapons themselves, or even combat - just hit-reg and networking.

It's important to recognize where the real issue lies because adjusting weapons will not fix the hit-reg/networking issues, but fixing the latter will fix the former. It's also important to fix hit-reg BEFORE making any adjustments to combat, because otherwise it will only overcomplicate matters.

Your clips aren't proof either, as they are only shown from 1 perspective and don't disprove what I've stated above. Because of hit-reg and networking/lag issues, what you see, or even what others see, may not be what is actually interpreted by the server and clients. In other words, you can't trust your eyes, or the eyes of others.

You're not wrong when you say that the real issues lie in hit-reg and server stability. This has been known for a long time now. But re-read what I said in my post; due to them working on hit reg, it'll affect both sword and double gun together. Them improving hit reg may allow your bullets to register more, but also may cause an unrealistic reach as far as your sword slashes/lunges go. I'm making an assumption (could be accurate, could be not) when I say that the more hit-reg improves, the more range there will be on the sword. It'll be hard for them to find a balance between a realistic reach for sword and accurate hit markers when using a gun.

Because of hit-reg and networking/lag issues, what you see, or even what others see, may not be what is actually interpreted by the server and clients. In other words, you can't trust your eyes, or the eyes of others.

This is a given that client-side does not matter when compared to server-side, in any game, not just SoT. What the server registers is what matters, but the client should accurately represent what the server logs. It's like saying "oh, your cannonball may not be hitting the ship, or appear to be, but it's definitely hitting, you just don't know if it is so you have to believe what your gut tells you!" You get where I'm going with this? I have a very good understanding in terms of client-side versus server-side, and the goal is to have the client accurately represent what the server sees and registers. One of the clips shown above (the streamable clip which shows the unrealistic sword lunge hit) shows the other player's perspective, but I also have it from my perspective as well. In both of our eyes, the lunge should not have hit, there was no way for it to. However, server-side registered it. Since that's the case, he shouldn't have gotten stunned for landing his lunge attack on me.

I get the angle you're coming from and trying to make the argument of client-side versus server-side, but like I said before, and I'll reiterate it, the client-side should accurately represent what happens server-side. If that wasn't the goal, then no game would be successful. This goes for blocking sword attacks too - even though it looks like we're blocking the attacks, it's not actually blocking because server-side doesn't register the player blocking, even though client-side does. This would frustrate any player when it appears as if the functionality works, but really it's a placebo. My clips are more proof that client-side should accurately represent server-side. Adjusting the weapon currently (in terms of reducing its range) may be a wise choice if hit registration were to improve later on, because if hit registration were to improve, then there may be even more wild unrealistic hits that could be landed on players. I believe in terms of blocking, I may have given the wrong suggestion in terms of increasing its blocking radius. Though, I did mention that fixing hit reg (and server/network stability) would inevitably fix blocking too. This way, the player would at least know if they're blocking or not.

I understand that aligning client-side actions and server-side actions to equal out is a hard task, it's not easy at all. But this is what Rare should be working on. I still think adjusting the range and decreasing it is the best route to go for future updates as well, as the more hit reg improves, the higher the chance increases for even more unrealistic hits landing (and server-side not aligning with client-side actions).
EDIT: Edited original post with this suggestion for fixing blocks

Wait…people actually use the sword and I never seen them?

It’s always snipers and blunders against me. :o

@jibrran
What they should have done ages ago was switch hitmarkers and sword hit noises to server-side and we only see the hitmarker/hear the noise if the server agrees that we hit a target. Even if it's delayed a whole second, that's enough for me, as there have been plenty of battles where I've died to incorrect information... Once I knew the opponent had one sword slash of health left, and I knew I could get one slash in before they reloaded their blunderbuss, I went for a slash and they didn't die, then I got one-blundered.

Granted, I made some mistakes (I haven't played competitively in a while, still shaking off the rust). But I should have won the fight.

@galactic-geek Oh really? Ok I gotta find that

If you can direct me that would be helpful

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran I test the sword's range against the mast (not the bell), or some other static object, and every time I have seen it, both from my perspective and that of another crewmate, the range is reasonable - I do this because it's a lag-free scenario most of the time, so the results are consistent (as they should be).

Yes but that, like I mentioned before, is in a controlled environment. Test it on players instead, since you'll actually be able to tell if it hits them or not. Test it with players and then let me know again if it's the same as it was with static objects. This would be fine, if we weren't fighting players and fighting objects lol. Also, to reiterate, we will never be fighting in controlled environments. Network, latency (both server and client), server stability, FPS, etc. these all play a part in how fights end up. Just now I got done doing team deathmatches in arena with a few friends, and 5 of my shots had gotten hit markers, but none landed on him. This is what I mean, client-side inconsistency with server-side.
Even when we started sword dueling, same thing - I land a lunge that shouldn't have hit, but I didn't have my cooldown cancelled; I still got stunned, even though I landed the hit.

In a lag-free scenario where the environment is controlled, it may be fine, but that's not how live SOT is. Working on this would be an investment for current players and new players that join from a business standpoint.

Awesome review and hopefully Rare is listening to the complaints on sword combat. I've said for a while now that they either need to reduce the range on the sword, or get rid of the stun. As you said, the only reason people, myself included, complain about the stun is because of the insane range. If the insane range is a compensation for hit registration while that gets worked on, fine. Then temporarily reduce or remove the stun until hitreg is in a good place. I like the idea of the stun because of how it impacts double gunners (like I occasionally do). But, right now, you can't even sprint away from a sword spammer because they can hit you from across the deck of a sloop.

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran I test the sword's range against the mast (not the bell), or some other static object, and every time I have seen it, both from my perspective and that of another crewmate, the range is reasonable - I do this because it's a lag-free scenario most of the time, so the results are consistent (as they should be).

Dude… If you’re using a mast to test range, of course you’ll never see anything wrong with it. You need to test it on players because that’s where the issue is.

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran You have to test in a controlled environment or else your results won't be consistent. That's how experiments are run, and it's how I know the actual issue(s) don't have anything to do with the weapons/combat.

Also, it's well documented that Arena is far worse than Adventure in regards to hit-reg/Network lag due to the close proximity of so many ships duking it out simultaneously in such a small space. I would not use that as your measuring stick.

Combat isn’t consistent though. There’s literally no scenario where testing hit reg or if a sword swing hits should be done on a mast. You do experiments by putting the problem to the test, not like in this case testing weapons on a mast instead of players where the actual problem is.

Dude, I think the range on the sword is good, lol, I need all the help I can get against the sweaty double gun arena guys while I work towards 240 wins.

I truly believe that if Rare was able to take this game off Microsoft Azure servers and migrate to AWS hardware/network, they would see a near elimination of the hit reg problems on both guns and sword. They may even be able to raise the max crews/players per server.

That will sadly never happen as this is a Microsoft/Xbox published game and AWS is a direct competitor.

@d3adst1ck said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

I'm making an assumption (could be accurate, could be not) when I say that the more hit-reg improves, the more range there will be on the sword.

Either the saved states aren't timestamping correctly, the server is having trouble keeping up with player state / attack time calculations, some other bug or a combination of all of the above causes weird things to happen during combat.

It's a latency/bandwidth issue somewhere between the clients and the edge of their cloud network, the edge and the server location on the internal Microsoft cloud, and/or provisioning isn't high enough for each server to allow more computing power during times of intense action. My latency over the years has gone from in the 30s soon after launch to 60-80ms being the norm now. European servers when I join friends are over 120ms consistently and get worse during PvP.

My guess is the problem lies inside the Microsoft cloud network and a combination of provisioning being the issue. (this is coming from a cloud solution architect btw although I wouldn't know for sure without seeing the metrics during troubled times)

This game has a ton of location data and updates happening as so much is moving around at once. You can see the evidence any time more than 2 sloops occupy the same render distance in most servers. This is what I think is taking so long on fixing the hit reg issue. The majority of fixes needed are external to Rare and therefore take way longer as they need Microsoft to identify causes and implement the solutions.

@kommodoreyenser said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

I truly believe that if Rare was able to take this game off Microsoft Azure servers and migrate to AWS hardware/network, they would see a near elimination of the hit reg problems on both guns and sword. They may even be able to raise the max crews/players per server.

That will sadly never happen as this is a Microsoft/Xbox published game and AWS is a direct competitor.

They could easily raise the player cap if they were on AWS, they could probably triple the map size even. Like you said though, Amazon is a direct competitor unfortunately.

@galactic-geek said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran You have to test in a controlled environment or else your results won't be consistent. That's how experiments are run, and it's how I know the actual issue(s) don't have anything to do with the weapons/combat.

Also, it's well documented that Arena is far worse than Adventure in regards to hit-reg/Network lag due to the close proximity of so many ships duking it out simultaneously in such a small space. I would not use that as your measuring stick.

As far as the clips I posted go, they were mainly all in Adventure. The inconsistent blocking clip as well as the unrealistic lunge being landed on me, were all in Adventure mode. I brought up Arena because of the topic of double guns, but it’s really not much better in Adventure either.

You’re right when you say that weapons/combat are and should be tested in a controlled environment. However, that doesn’t mean you keep it in that state. Testing in a controlled environment and then readjusting based on live play is how the combat should be altered. Rare may have tested in a controlled environment and everything works perfectly fine there, but when you’re taking into account all the different factors that come into play, testing in a controlled environment doesn’t have much meaning when pushing it onto live play.
Actually, let me rephrase that - for this game specifically, testing in a controlled environment and its results doesn’t have the same accuracy as live play results. This is mainly due to the service that the servers are being hosted on and it not being able to handle the immense strain SoT mechanics have. Why do you think 6 ships is the most it can be? And that too just recently they readjusted ship count from 5 to 6 due to stability issues.

We can agree the core problem lies within their internal services such as host, network, server stability, and hit registration. However, while the combat may seem fine in a controlled environment, it’s definitely not in live play. Like I said before, it’s fine to test in a controlled environment and then push those changes to live play, and see the results of what you tested. From there, you readjust based on those results. That’s what Rare should do for the range right now - readjust based on the current stage of hit registration.

@d3adst1ck said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

@jibrran said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

I'm making an assumption (could be accurate, could be not) when I say that the more hit-reg improves, the more range there will be on the sword.

It won't work like that. Sword gets a larger range when there are network issues, server performance problems or bugs because it compares the sword attack time with player position at that time. Noodle arm exists for the same reason that backtracking on guns happens; the server thinks you were within range of the attack at the time it thinks the event happened.

Either the saved states aren't timestamping correctly, the server is having trouble keeping up with player state / attack time calculations, some other bug or a combination of all of the above causes weird things to happen during combat.

Reason why I made that assumption is due to past events that have occurred. When they first started working on hit reg seriously and pushed out the patch, that was the first time the 10 ft sword got introduced (back when Double gun canceling was around as well as stow/unstow animation exploit). They hadn’t touched anything regarding sword mechanics back then. It’s why I made that assumption.

I believe it could be a combination of all the things you mentioned, as well as the latency issue between the player and the server host as @kommodoreyenser mentioned. Honestly having a discussion about this really opened up the different possibilities of issues and I’m glad I made a thread about this. It could be that the problem is both internal (from Rare) and external (from MS services).

@boogyghost101 I think in terms of caring about the community itself, Rare does care about the community. But when it comes to the combat, it's like you said, they've slowly started to eliminate the skill-gap between hand-to-hand combat and focus more on the naval side of thing. It honestly sucks, but here's to hoping that Rare actually focuses more on hand-to-hand combat and making changes to the sword.

@galactic-geek said:

@jibrran You have to test in a controlled environment or else your results won't be consistent. That's how experiments are run, and it's how I know the actual issue(s) don't have anything to do with the weapons/combat.

There is a big difference between testing in a controlled environment, and testing only positive controls.

Absolute Pixel and Captain Falcore put hit registration to the test with all guns and the cutlass in private servers with just them two and they were finding severe problems that coupe replicated consistently. It doesn’t matter how lag free or good the ping is. The issue is something that appears to be very complex.

@illbushido305 said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

Absolute Pixel and Captain Falcore put hit registration to the test with all guns and the cutlass in private servers with just them two and they were finding severe problems that coupe replicated consistently. It doesn’t matter how lag free or good the ping is. The issue is something that appears to be very complex.

Depends how you see it - their client latency may be fine (as in their own home internet) but it goes back to the host as well as how Rare deals with fixing hit reg internally. The problem is very complex, there’s no doubt about that - there’s no magic fix hit reg button, but that doesn’t mean its priority should be at the lowest for Rare. Sword hit reg is too insane because of how the server registers those unrealistic hits, but doesn’t compensate it on the client. With guns, you can hit your target whether or not you get a hitmarker. It’s hard to tell if your shots actually hit because of the false hitmarkers you get, and how a missed shot (backtrack) can count. The client side and server side are very inconsistent.

Overall, I feel this is an overly complicated post about balancing, however, I am happy with where the weapons are. I have no problems, haven't had many since launch. Only combo I feel urked by is blunder and sniper just because it's frustrating that they can just shoot randomly with the blunder as long as the sniper hits.

You want my honest opinion? I think we need new weapons to balance because the four we have are stale and people have been debating them for 3 years. Maybe a new weapon or two would spice things up. It's like arguing over apples and oranges, I think we should throw bananas in the mix for new life in the mix.

@klutchxking518 said in Sword Combat Issues - (Somewhat) In Depth Review/Feedback:

Overall, I feel this is an overly complicated post about balancing, however, I am happy with where the weapons are. I have no problems, haven't had many since launch. Only combo I feel urked by is blunder and sniper just because it's frustrating that they can just shoot randomly with the blunder as long as the sniper hits.

You want my honest opinion? I think we need new weapons to balance because the four we have are stale and people have been debating them for 3 years. Maybe a new weapon or two would spice things up. It's like arguing over apples and oranges, I think we should throw bananas in the mix for new life in the mix.

It’s complicated because that’s the state Rare has put the combat in. You may not have a problem with it, but that could also be because you didn’t PvP every single time you got on this game. A lot of players play to steal loot and fight, while others may play for the story and PvE content. I, along with many others, played to fight, regardless of whether or not we received loot (preferred loot though). On top of that, the difference between the old combat compared to this clunky one is very depictable. Blunder sniper combo isn’t bad at all, and can be countered with the same load out as well as different load outs.

Adding new weapons in wouldn’t do any good. The current state of the game is barely able to register bullets properly, and has an insane range on the sword. I don’t like having to take 7 shots, and get hit markers on all of them, just to kill 1 person (who also doesn’t eat any food). It’s why I created this post, so that all these problems that exist with the current state of combat can be addressed, especially with the broken range of the sword. I believe once all these issues have been taken care of in the future, the talk of adding more weapons would be more realistic (even though I don’t think they will personally, there’s a weapon for every situation as well as 3rd party items like blunderbombs and fireballs)

@amybun I disagree with that, combat at launch up until late 2019 - early mid 2020 was decent. 2018 was prime time, that's when hit registration was at its best, sword was at its best (with the slashes that slowed you down), and overall it was a great experience. It's only from mid 2020 - present where the combat's been clunky, and it hasn't really gotten better at all. It can get changed/updated, it just depends on Rare themselves and if they see it's worth changing when so many people complain about it, including their own SoT partners/streamers/creators.