Whiff Punishing

@idiotgod said:
If this combat system works better by going against basic combat intuition, then the combat system is just poorly designed. It literally punishes you for expecting it to follow some logical set of rules.

@rob_owner said:
instead of saying the word intuitive, use its definition.

Okay Roberto.

let me take a few swings at you with a baseball bat.
Let me know when it's safer to attack at me, when I am standing there with it waiting for you to attack, or immediately after I take a swing and fucking miss you like an idiotgod.

If you follow your intuition, you might survive. But judging from your last few responses, maybe not?

i think i value training over intuition. Accept the rules of whatever fighting environment, so it doesnt matter what scenario you give. I only tell you how it is for this game, you can give bias scenarios all you want, i could fucking post this video:

and it would mean as much as the example you gave and the question you asked

if they make this specific change then so be it, if they dont then so be it, it would just be a rule change for the combat and then you'd have to Learn To Play with the new feature in mind, although i think its kinda an odd thing to fixate over, im sure you could find other things that do more harm to your firm intuition

I think they should remove distance play by adding target lock on, locking both combatants into a set distance where they have to rely solely on their skills of feints and morphs. Removing distance as a factor, thus purifying the Mordhau experience.

@rob_owner said:
i think i value training over intuition. Accept the rules of whatever fighting environment, so it doesnt matter what scenario you give.

That's completely beyond the point. This discussion's point is to make the game better by making the combat intuitive. It's not about complaining vs adapting, it's about providing feedback during the alpha to improve the game, because that's the fucking point of the alpha.

you say hay i dont like this
people say its not problem
people say it is
seems inconsequential to me for most part, might inconvenience me, might give me free hit when i push button after performing a slight waltz. its not like the change is going to be what holds the game together, heralding a new epoch, so it seems inconsequential to me. maybe im wrong. maybe it will improve the game so hard. would be fun to mod stuff in to test.
you seem a bit dramatic.
i await dev decree with apathy.

It doesn't have to be a huge change to make the game a bit better. Good games are good because they're good all-around.

• The main discrepancy in the justification of this proposed change revolves around what a punish ought to be/what you think a punish is. Essentially what you are asking for is a guaranteed window of damage where your opponent just has to watch themselves take a hit for what I would consider to be a very very minor (and sometimes it's intentional) mistake. You can argue all you want about how the burden is then on the player that missed to dodge or do some cool movement as a way to react to this guaranteed damage window, but that isn't a practical/viable response (especially for new players). You don't seem to view forcing a cftp as punishment because it is a "slight stam disadvantage". I don't know about you, but losing 20-25 of my total stamina with just one move is a pretty hefty price to pay even more so if you're CFTPing constantly in a fight. That's fine though; the game shouldn't have stamina as the only punish because then it devolves into stamina warfare obviously. Coincidentally, however, forcing a significant stamina advantage off of a CFTP is not the only punish available to you. RB/Giru have already mentioned the punishes available to you, but you seem to dismiss these as punishes because of potential that you will be gambled. Morphing/dragging ensures that you aren't able to be gambled in scenarios like the ones you have in your video -- your opponent is parrying so incredibly early that you really should just be dragging or morphing him every time. It's no different than punishing a player who parries super early. Likewise, the potential to be gambled/read when you go to feint someone's combo windup certainly exists but that doesn't mean it isn't a feasible punish. That's like suggesting feints are ineffective because there always exists a chance that your enemy will just gamble into it. Regardless, that sort of interaction of potential gamble or them even reading your feint is good interaction, I think. This is the sort of depth RB was hinting at in his posts. In any case, as a player you always have choices/decisions to make in combat. This is no different: if you're concerned about the potential to be gambled/read, just take the stamina punish. Misses like the ones shown in the video, in my opinion, are not significant enough mistakes to warrant a guaranteed damage window. This would be especially brutal for new players who have little sense of range and constantly swing around missing. To be fair though I don't think in noob vs noob combat the noob would be punishing misses like these so the guaranteed damage window actually wouldn't be too bad. No way to be sure without watching noob gameplay/talking to noobs which leads me to the next point.

• Similar to the feint thread that around a while ago, why are we speculating and putting out bold assumptions of what noobs are going to enjoy/feel/do? Based off of Shroud's gameplay, to me it appears that newer players don't really have any sense of punishment meaning that a guaranteed damage window or what we have now wouldn't affect a noobs intuition. Perhaps I'm wrong though, I don't really know -- I'm just going off of what I saw in Shroud's gameplay. Maybe we should ask some newer players about this supposed intuition to punish? This kind of change is derived from what you view as problematic with combat, not directly from what noobs view as problematic. You just talk about the intuition of noobs as a nice little supporting piece of 'evidence' for this change.

• There are far-reaching implications if a change like this were to happen. I'll list them out and if you're confused I'd be more than happy to elaborate:

1 . Feels clunky
2 . Destroys a lot of important elements in teamplay
3 . CF window is already small -- you're taking away the ability to micro feint or even do a moderate feint thus leaving the player with only deep combo feints which is just taking away options/depth from the player.
4 . Happy feet would become a dominant/oppressive strategy with a guaranteed damage window like the one proposed. (1vx also probably fucked as a result)
5 . The only positive implication that I could think of would be a more grounded/methodical look to combat. Basically, players would engage more carefully and range play would have more merit. However, this would probably slow down the game considerably and discourage aggressive plays.
6 . Guaranteed damage never feels good (insiders, kick stun, etc)

It's only guaranteed damage as much as being in parry recovery is guaranteed damage. Yes, you're basically a free hit, but that's after you've done a significant mistake. A small no-feint window at the start of combos would allow for blatant whiffs like the ones in my clips to be punished with a free hit. Notice that in this clips first my opponent whiffed, then they failed to react to my attack, as they should have backed away to avoid the free hit, and just kept running into me. Of course, they did this because they knew they could CFTP instantly, but if my change was in, you'd simply need to not run into an opponent after a blatant whiff. Traditional fighting games like Street Fighter usually leave a lingering hitbox after an attack so that whiffs can be punished.

Claiming that it would make people start to play around constantly baiting misses is very exaggerated; I'm proposing a slight punishment window for comboing out of whiffs, not a big one. If someone is trying to bait a whiff, they're going to have to stay at a good distance; What this means is that you have time to realise when they're trying to run away to force a whiff and simply backpedal too, enough to delay the punish and get through the no-feint window.

I'm not talking about 5 hour players when I mention new players, I'm talking 50-100, where they start to understand the mechanics of the game but are still learning how everything plays out. To this kind of player, the intuitive way to punish a blatant whiff is to stay away from the attack while throwing an attack of their own. It's essentially how it works in traditional fighting games.

As for feeling clunky, I don't think it would. It's a small window that visually takes place while the player seems vulnerable. Feint inputs during the window can be made to queue the feint for when the punish window ends, which to the player would be barely noticeable.

Getting to morph/feint/drag to punish a whiff is not a punish, it's just getting initiative back, since the whiffer can combo-feint and start reading. Conceptually, it also turns interesting plays into more of what the combat already revolves too much around. And as we learnt from Chivalry and shields in this game, balancing through stamina is a boring approach to combat design.

Sleep now

@Frise said:

@rob_owner said:
i think i value training over intuition. Accept the rules of whatever fighting environment, so it doesnt matter what scenario you give.

That's completely beyond the point. This discussion's point is to make the game better by making the combat intuitive. It's not about complaining vs adapting, it's about providing feedback during the alpha to improve the game, because that's the fucking point of the alpha.

There's two ways to look at intuitive in this situation. One is what they see visibly when attacking someone that misses. The other is what they know is possible through extension of the mechanics in the game.

Preferably you'd want both without diluting either. In this instance though, I'd lean more towards the mechanics taking precedent, as punishes do exist and very much work. The animation could maybe be changed without affecting timings to better denote the difference in vulnerability between entering recovery and comboing, but there's always going to be some that appear instant or whatever.

I personally don't think there needs to be more punishment for missing than there already is. I also don't have much issue with matrixing and other dodges not being rewarded more.

@Frise said:
Getting to morph/feint/drag to punish a whiff is not a punish, it's just getting initiative back, since the whiffer can combo-feint and start reading. Conceptually, it also turns interesting plays into more of what the combat already revolves too much around. And as we learnt from Chivalry and shields in this game, balancing through stamina is a boring approach to combat design.

The morph/feint/drag is the counter to the counter. The original punish is attacking their miss. They counter with CFTP, you counter with a morph/drag/feint. However they could instead just combo feint and read as you said, which is a counter to your counter. It's a lot of possibilities and the back and forth of initiative seems more interesting to me than just taking damage because of a timing nerf.

What's with all of the omniscient people on this forum? Like you are literally just making stuff up here.

@wizardish said:

5 . The only positive implication that I could think of would be a more grounded/methodical look to combat. Basically, players would engage more carefully and range play would have more merit. However, this would probably slow down the game considerably and discourage aggressive plays.

IMO It would only discourage sloppy plays. And since you don't have to fiddle fuck around with morphing when you outplay someone to maybe land a hit, it could actually speed up gameplay for more skilled players couldn't it? Makes as much sense as what you said.

6 . Guaranteed damage never feels good (insiders, kick stun, etc)

Falling for feints and just waiting and watching the guaranteed damage roll in. So fun.

@Naleaus said:
It's a lot of possibilities and the back and forth of initiative seems more interesting to me than just taking damage because of a timing nerf.

It's really not a lot of possibilities. It's the same fucking possibilities that exist at any other moment in combat that you didn't just out-play your opponent in a very blatant way through footwork and timing.

@idiotgod said:

@Naleaus said:
It's a lot of possibilities and the back and forth of initiative seems more interesting to me than just taking damage because of a timing nerf.

It's really not a lot of possibilities. It's the same fucking possibilities that exist at any other moment in combat that you didn't just out-play your opponent in a very blatant way through footwork and timing.

That's a different issue. It's not that the possibilities don't exist, it's that you don't like them, which is fine. You outplayed your opponent through footwork and timing, you're rewarded with initiative without using stam through parrying to do so. Once you have initiative, it's up to you to make the play.

@Naleaus said:

@idiotgod said:

@Naleaus said:
It's a lot of possibilities and the back and forth of initiative seems more interesting to me than just taking damage because of a timing nerf.

It's really not a lot of possibilities. It's the same fucking possibilities that exist at any other moment in combat that you didn't just out-play your opponent in a very blatant way through footwork and timing.

That's a different issue. It's not that the possibilities don't exist, it's that you don't like them, which is fine. You outplayed your opponent through footwork and timing, you're rewarded with initiative without using stam through parrying to do so. Once you have initiative, it's up to you to make the play.

But I already made the play. Why do I have to make a play to gain initiative to have a chance to make a play? That is just an extra step. The play I made should be good enough to land a hit, but I still have to make you fall for a feint instead? It's stupid...

@idiotgod said:

@Naleaus said:

@idiotgod said:

@Naleaus said:
It's a lot of possibilities and the back and forth of initiative seems more interesting to me than just taking damage because of a timing nerf.

It's really not a lot of possibilities. It's the same fucking possibilities that exist at any other moment in combat that you didn't just out-play your opponent in a very blatant way through footwork and timing.

That's a different issue. It's not that the possibilities don't exist, it's that you don't like them, which is fine. You outplayed your opponent through footwork and timing, you're rewarded with initiative without using stam through parrying to do so. Once you have initiative, it's up to you to make the play.

But I already made the play. Why do I have to make a play to gain initiative to have a chance to make a play? That is just an extra step. The play I made should be good enough to land a hit, but I still have to make you fall for a feint instead? It's stupid...

You made a play to get initiative. Footwork doesn't do damage. Except kicks I guess.
And against bad players, someone that fucked up and didn't combo, or someone with a weapon that can't combo, that play would probably be enough. Except they could still footwork you, matrix, etc.

All people are gonna do is miss and run away after, will look retarded. There are already many mechanics for punishing misses already, garunteed damage is just a very silly and not well thought out idea especially for a skill based game

This thread only got traction because we're all bored waiting for patch, I hope I don't have the displeasure of reading something so stupid again

What if we could feint out of parry recovery so that we don't have to take guaranteed damage

@GIRUGIRU said:
All people are gonna do is miss and run away after, will look retarded.

Good job with that omniscient dismissal of an idea.

Like i mean i know the debate seems 2-sided when you look at the facts, but we just don't have a leg to stand on when you go and make stuff up literally just guessing at an untested idea.

It's basically a completely exaggerated speculation of what the change would do, that assumes:

A) That the punish window would be big enough to allow obvious baits
B) That people are not doing it now only because they get nothing out of it (which would mean that whiffs aren't punishable)
C) That people would be dumb enough to keep falling for it

A small 100-150ms no-feint window at the start of combos would only allow a punish if both people are already close together, the punisher reacts quickly, and the whiffer fails to maintain a minimum distance to get through the small punish window. This is exactly what was happening in my videos; I wasn't baiting anything, simply reacted to a whiff like you would react in a traditional fighting game, the intuitive way.

Speculating to make up whatever benefits your view point is unnecessary when we're in a closed alpha where the point is to try changes to improve the game before it releases

@yourcrippledson said:

@GIRUGIRU said:
All people are gonna do is miss and run away after, will look retarded.

Good job with that omniscient dismissal of an idea.

Like i mean i know the debate seems 2-sided when you look at the facts, but we just don't have a leg to stand on when you go and make stuff up literally just guessing at an untested idea.

Maul, spear, long grip bard/halberd and exec can't cftp, if you miss you run away. Same would apply if there was a cftp dead zone

How is that untested? You think comp players are gonna stand still when they miss and there's a cftp deadzone? 😃

Those weapons can't combo. I'm proposing a very tiny punish window for combos out of missed attacks. It doesn't require a lot of thinking to see the difference.