We gotta nerf dagger + shortsword after this change tho imo. Those two weapons can sometimes land a second hit on you before you even riposte accel with some weps...

100% agree.

First hit flinch no matter what was a huge thing that made me back Mordhau. Everyone was very skeptical of hit trades coming back and they had every reason to be.

Allowing trades breaks one of the central tenants of combat and goes back on the original premises of the game.

@KineticWolf said:
While I commend such creativity, I'd hope it'd be possible to design a combat system with a high skill ceiling that doesn't involve trying to manipulate or break the provided animations. I had enough of that in Chiv to last many lifetimes.

There's no way to avoid people trying to stretch the limits of the game tho, and in a melee game where animations play a huge role, consciously or subconciously making your animation decieve your opponent is always going to be a big thing and will always be part of the game. The only way to avoid this is to have pre-canned moves which would greatly limit player freedom.

Best devs can do is make animations better and set turncaps accordingly.

Also "animation abuse" is sort of what a feint irl is actually like, lol.

tl;dr Deceiving to land a hit is like, the point of Mordhau. Things can't be too readable or game is stale, boring, and drawn out. Things can't be too unreadable or the game feels 50/50 and devoid of skill. Fiddling with animations in accordance with angle, positioning, etc is a big part of how you deceive in this game and is a skill.

lowering dodge cost, raising plate armor cost, and adding certain perk restrictions for plate armor would be the best way imho.

I see light armor/naked spear/halberd/etc in combination with lots of powerful perks being very useful in lots of pubs, and also as a utility role ofc.
However, in small man teams and duels, I highly doubt anything will ever be worth more than plate armor at the highest level of play. Survivability is just too huge of a factor.

Only thing that's neat about current chamber is using it as a buffer in case your footwork attempt wasn't going to work, but even then it kinda has downsides. Like when the attack was going to whiff u but you wind up chamber it from out of range and use up stam. But I just think it's kind of obnoxious how everyone basically gets like 10 automatic "reads" in the middle of combat. Maybe just buffing a micro feint action more would be another way to get around the chamber without changing the mechanic.

Right now a very popular thing to do in a 1vx situation is for the x to just blindly chamber and circle the 1 and there really is no response to this. This is prob the most infuriating thing about the chamber rn.

@Mittsies said:

@Frise said:
I think it'd be nice to test the old chambers again. With animations being a bit better than they used to be, maybe they won't be so weird? But right now they just make everything so spammy and braindead and are basically crutches for reading.

not saying the current chambers are fine, no they are terrible in fact, but old chambers were much worse. the tiny chamber window was an unrealistic expectation for low level play to manage, and not viable at higher level play due to how inconsistent they were in the face of even the most basic mixups. it has almost nothing to do with animations.

What? There were many very capable chamber bots in high-level play with hard chambers. I think most vets wanted chamber changed with the intention of nerfing them, not making them better.

At the time I shared these sentiments but I think the current alternative has made the game more boring and stale as opposed to how it was before.

@Maci said:

@afiNity said:
Isn't it ironic? Mordhau has like 4 times the combat mechanics that Chivalry has and it still lacks depth.

It may has on paper, but in practice it has like 2 or 3 working playstyles all based on obscuring your animation ad absurdum, which is even worse than Chivalry, because you had at least 2 viable playstyles per class there.

The reason for this is that "normal" combat just doesn't work anymore once people figured out how to parry somewhat reliably, because that's the only opening existing in combat as intended by the devs. There is no way to punish anything at all outside of a mistimed parry. Missed an attack? Just combo lamoe, and even if you don't, you'll be able to parry the punish no problem. Read a morph? Too bad because it literally has no weaknesses and you can't punish it at all. Read a feint? You may be able to get a hit in with the carving knife, otherwise bad luck kiddo.

And then we also have those weird, almost pointless mechanics like clashing and chambering. Clashing sounds super cool but it quite frankly never happens. Chambering puts the one who chambers at a disadvantage currently, so why bother using it instead of a parry, which is cheaper and lets you riposte from more angles. Morphs are just a better feint with often unreadable animations, Hyper Armor is just big fucking trash and makes no sense whatsoever, all the situational buffs and debuffs that piled up to fix deeper oversights which you can't read up on anywhere and so on and so on.

Obviously it doesn't help that there is plenty of generally outright broken stuff, like insiders, which are pretty much considered meta at this point. Also you still have the problem of general animation readability, and often no way to distinguish between an accel and a drag with weapons seemingly starting out in your face and then going back in time. A proper long and wide parry could fix, or at least help combating this problem, but I have yet to ever see the long parry work.

Chamber def has an upside to it in being a way to very unexpectedly take initiative and make scary animations, and it is pretty useful in teamfights and such, and it is definitely fairly spammable with the stam on hit perk. Imo tho this actually makes chamber more brainless than anything.

But ya, I actually think the combat had more depth and variety a bit further back in the game cycle. Patch 14, 16, and the experimental test patches were high points of the game imho. People actually used all sorts of weapons and lots of people have very different and unique styles. Now it is very much just morph feint spam and whoever reads best wins, and basically everyone uses longsword.

It's almost like the main combat devs made comp mod and mainly played as knights in chivalry.

No joke the funniest fucking thread in the history of the forum, lmao.

@Pred said:
This cheater lacks honor and today I had a chance to show this "Stouty" guy how a real distinguished knight handles his sword. He brazenly lied yesterday, claiming he's capable of 30-0 scores but in mere seconds after he joined a server I was able to verify his skills and hand him his first defeat and I wasn't even on the opposing team. Imagine what an actual enemy with bad intentions could do to this poser.

my fucking sidesss

@Soulcatcher said:
"I cannot cancel my riposte, side stab/overhead, go under, over or around my opponents parry. I can only fully commit to my riposte while doing something totally un-intuitive such as dragging or insta hitting."

I really don't play as much as I should, but maybe why I don't kinda stems from this. Just feels slow paced, sure some weapons are pretty darn quick, and you have to have a keen eye and good reaction times to parry some things, but in regards to footwork, I don't know... I just feel like a slow clunky bag of rocks trying to stay out of range/matrix/get around parrys etc. Basically just have to stand there and accel/decell/read feints and morphs, chamber something if you like chambers, maybe move backwards and forwards a bit.

As I say I haven't played in a while but that's how it kinda felt.

In regards to ripostes, well... what else do you do with it? you can just stand there looking dead at your opponent and ripose, he'll fuckin block it piece of piss. You can accel or decell and he'll have to watch your movements to decide when to parry. If you are given the ability to cancel your riposte, basically a riposte feint.... fuckin'... is that really better?

What else do you want to do with it? there is nothing really wrong with the concept, I feel you're just forced to rely on that to get most hits because some of the other mechanics aren't really well tuned, or maybe they are? maybe this is how the devs want it? Beats me, I find Chiv more enjoyable tbh. (Not implying Mordhau is "bad") Chambers? maybe I don't have good reaction times, or more likely it's just a case of spending hundreds/thousands of hours like in Chiv doing something before you actually feel they are a viable tool you can consistently use, but like I can't stand them, so I just naturally revert to how I played in Chiv, footwork, going around parries, accels/decells. But again, bag of rocks. I'm drunk.

Chiv is just plan more broken/glitchy tbh, but I do feel like it does quite a few things better.

The debate is lost tho cus chiv simply has some crucial things that make the game bad.

1. reverses
2. lack of first hit flinch
3. horrible netcode
4. huge parry lockout
5. shitty spammable unavoidable free initiative kick
6. garbage shield
7. butt parries
8. vanguard charge
9. prob a ton more I forgot

If it were not for these things tho I might actually prefer chiv. Granted mordhau does have some cool stuff that I would really miss. I think clashes are like the most brilliant and fun addition to the melee genre.

I have very a mixed opinion on morphing and chambers and I think the basic attack animations are actually less useful than in chiv.

Also, just general feedback. For all the talk from @crush saying how floaty melee games can be and how terrible that is, I actually think mordhau suffers a lot from this. Hits feel much less impactful than in chiv and mordhau has just always felt so artificial in terms of the physics/ragdolling/hitting stuff/etc. It's just the disconnect with how real everything looks but how fake everything sounds and feels is HUGE.

@GucciLoafers said:
If it's an inside hit you can run into them and it wont hit you...

Ya, this is very good for forcing misses to waste their stam. The issue with this tactic tho is the counter is for them to just fake the accel and then go for the super delay, which is very easy to do because the first few moments of any windup gives u 0 useful information and they have total control.

Chivalry had way better directional play honestly, with regards to side stabs and neck hits/waterfalls. Also jump stabs. Waterfalls exist in mordhau but they are significantly harder to perform and imho actually feel more broken than chiv when you get hit, lmao.

With mordhau the parry is too mobile and once you are in release with your wep it feels like you have no real control, which is prob good aesthetically but feels like shit. Meanwhile, you have a huge windup and the beginning of animation which is super vague and you can do whatever the fuck and it allows people to track everyone very easily.

The game seems extremely morph feint heavy for my taste atm, strongest move by far being the chamber morph feint with added body manipulation and it sucks cus chamber so easy to do now.

So basically, little is telegraphed until last moment and there is not a ton of control over your swings compared to chivalry.

Duels are just very stale and boring now imho with wayyy to much emphasis on stamina warfare. I preferred the game a lot more during the experimental patches around 17 honestly. Felt like there was more variety in the playstyles and tactics. Also patch 14 seemed to have a lot more emphasis on the role of footwork and timing which allowed more offensive and defensive variety which is also gone now.

imho game needs more variety overall. It seems like basically everyone plays the same way now and it kinda sucks. There's a few people who try to break the mold like gay fish and I really appreciate people like him but people tend to play sort of the same now. There def feels like the game really hard pushes a "right" way to play and it feels boring. At least in duels.

@GAYFISH said:

@Huggles said:

@GAYFISH said:
Honestly I thought whiff punishing was in a great spot before the introduction of stam recovery on hit.
If you were skilled enough to force misses and punish your opponent's poor stam management while remaining aggressive you were rewarded by winning the stam war.
But now that stam on hit exists punishing whiffs and poor stam usage is much more inconsistent since you can regain anywhere from 13-20 stamina by landing a single hit.
I feel like this greatly encourages more brainless combo/morph feint spam because poor stamina usage is much more difficult to punish.
I really don't know why this mechanic was added, did anyone think it was necessary?

The issue is stamina being a huge part of gameplay in general imho. Stamina should be less of a balancer and more just as a barebones mechanic that keeps fights from lasting a zillion years. Stamina was simply too limiting in chivalry and I think it's changed for the better in mordhau, but that being said there are simply too many powerful moves solely "balanced" by stamina. Chief among all these being the chamber. Chamber is a read anything mechanic for the cost of stamina and it's pretty gay that way imho. And everyone just morph spams everything and it overall leads to combat feeling extremely non-committal and less than lethal with a lot of prolonged artificial survivability.

The thing is that the stam on hit mechanic adds a ton of artificial survivability though, because as long as you're able to land every 1 out of 2-3 hits you can keep being mindlessly aggressive and not worry about blowing your load too early.
The reason you see so much chamber botting and morph/feint spam is because the chances of you being punished for bad stam usage aren't good, especially if you land an occasional hit.

Ya ik, that's my point. Stamina being so crucial to gameplay at all is the issue imho. You're kinda confirming that it's a huge deal because the excess of stamina has made everyone way too survivable due to brain ftp and chamber spam that is way too powerful because stamina is so abundant.

@GAYFISH said:
Honestly I thought whiff punishing was in a great spot before the introduction of stam recovery on hit.
If you were skilled enough to force misses and punish your opponent's poor stam management while remaining aggressive you were rewarded by winning the stam war.
But now that stam on hit exists punishing whiffs and poor stam usage is much more inconsistent since you can regain anywhere from 13-20 stamina by landing a single hit.
I feel like this greatly encourages more brainless combo/morph feint spam because poor stamina usage is much more difficult to punish.
I really don't know why this mechanic was added, did anyone think it was necessary?

The issue is stamina being a huge part of gameplay in general imho. Stamina should be less of a balancer and more just as a barebones mechanic that keeps fights from lasting a zillion years. Stamina was simply too limiting in chivalry and I think it's changed for the better in mordhau, but that being said there are simply too many powerful moves solely "balanced" by stamina. Chief among all these being the chamber. Chamber is a read anything mechanic for the cost of stamina and it's pretty gay that way imho. And everyone just morph spams everything and it overall leads to combat feeling extremely non-committal and less than lethal with a lot of prolonged artificial survivability.

@GIRUGIRU said:
"Gambling can ensue out of this, where someone whiffs and just comboes expecting you to feint the punish. Then you have to guess what they're going to do, because you can't wait for their input and then feint, the timing doesn't realistically allow for that. "

This is just wrong as well, morphs prevent this. It's not Chivalry

You still have to waste stamina for what should be a risk free/cost free punish for a mistake tbh. The consequence of making a mistake should always be getting hit. In mordhau there's a lot of ways to just avoid this at the cost of stamina, and it makes the game for the worse imho. Just adds a lot of annoying survivability and makes the game feel less lethal. It also makes veterans basically untouchable to anyone but other veterans which is bad for when noobs come into the game.

Morph by far the best option here, but I think the fact that they can just gamble you is sort of terrible in and of itself and if it works it kind of turns their mistake into a fucking victory which is bs imho.

We know there are ways to deal with whiffs and whiffs are generally a disadvantage, but I think what frise and a lot of people feel is that whiffing should just result in a free hit period, with no mind games involved.

The game should be: "You missed, get hit, eat shit."

Restricting feint window would be bad tbh. I think you should just nerf the time it takes to combo after a miss.

Proj spam is cancer any way you slice it. Only way to make proj spam less cancer is to limit it, thus removing the spam. The only way to counter proj spam is proj spam, that's not fun. Shield doesn't counter shit, preventing someone from being able to kill you as well isn't countering, it's just delaying the process. You're still vulnerable from behind and to the sides and you'll be able to be hit from exposed areas in the front if they didn't put that in yet.

There is simply no answer for a projectile in a melee game except for more projectiles. Everything that "counters" archers does not counter, just mitigates.

The ONLY hard counter to archery that isn't proj I can rly think of would be horseback. But archers can just...use walls. And once they do this 10000iq play, they become cavalry counters lmao. Also there is a very limited number of cav.

Archer limit worked in chiv, simple while allowing archery to be fun and powerful, allowing battles to feel like battles, and all without proj spam getting too cancer.

Projectiles belong in big medieval battles and they are fun to use, but when in excess they're just rage inducing and detract rather than add from the experience.

TL;DR

You either make projectiles worthless and less fun to use, or you limit them. Projectile spam with strong projectiles cannot be balanced in a melee game, period. Those are the two options.

@Bodkin said:

@NachoAU said:
They need to first fix the shield hitbox, currently all shields have a hitbox that goes right down to the feet making it impossible to foot drag, my personal rework for shields would be to butcher the turncap and remove shield ripostes so that the non shields user can actually get initiative on shield players.

how to make shield unusable in 1 simple step

Riposte is necessary for shield to be viable period, unless its role is switched to being purely defensive. However if you are going to nerf both its defense and offense shield is just fucking horrible.

This is 2 steps tho bodkin, not one.

@Mittsies said:
Held block simply has no place in this game outside of blocking projectiles. A big part of the gameplay is timing and (supposedly) reading your opponent: neither of which you need if you use a shield currently. I don't think large "defensive" shields are necessary for the game either, they will just inhibit the flow of combat and make the game less fun. It will also lead to really obnoxious playstyles where you just hold up your shield 24/7 and block attacks for your allies while they stab around it.

idk I think that would actually add a bit of centralized group cohesion to the combat that hasn't existed in this type of game. As long as there are explicit counters to these sorts of strategies I think it would add more depth to team lineups.

Diff shields should have different roles and playstyles imho.

Small to medium sized shields should be super parries (timed with some benefits)

Large shields should be extremely large and effective held blocks (better at catching parries to the side and front, defensive machine) but some significant offensive debuffs (can't riposte)

rn I think shields are just boring snooze fest that just add survivability for noobs.