Instead of disallowing jumping, make it so that if you jump while the strike is already started on the ground, the latter portion of release is a glancing blow. You still retain the flinch, but don't damage the enemy. Movement isn't artificially restricted, and jumping to hit people above is still a thing.

It would still "look stupid" and confuse players as to when the shield can be stabbed through and when it's tangible, unless they make new riposte anims just for shield, and that's still only a cmaube it'll work" solution.

People's complaints about side hits and attack manip looking weird is from the defender's POV, not the attacker's. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you say that no one in BR Mordhau did any waterfalls and wessexes and such back when they were really powerful in alpha and thus you didn't know what they looked like from the defender's side?

tbh I think it'd be interesting to try a reduced horizontal parrybox (but not vertical, cause footdrags feel awful) for standing, so crouch + parry would be a much easier task. In return, greatly reduce crouch movement. Makes crouch + backpedal parrybots very easy to outspace and maneuver if they crutch too much on it.

Messer is still among the scariest weapons when you've isolated an enemy, especially against a corner.

Let's observe its good properties:

• Competitive HTK on strikes against plate, and amazing 2 HTK on mail torso for a 5 point weapon. Damage on strikes is not a big problem for messer.

• The speed. Messer strikes are pretty fast, so it has very potent accels and panic parrying conditioning. Speed also makes your feints more likely to trick enemies and to be able follow up before a double parry. And, the Messer isn't too bad at feint punishing/seizing initiative as well.

• Messer has top tier drags and swing manipilation. Combine this with its speed and damage and you have one hell of an offensive mixup game.

So, what's "wrong" with the Messer?:

• The stab has pitiful damage and it isn't so much faster than strikes unlike the axe stabs or estoc strikes to cement itself as "great flinch option". Yet mixing between stabs and swings is the general gameplan for most weapons in Mordhau. The drags alone are almost enough to compensate for this, but you do set yourself to be predictable (and predictability means death in a FT10 against top tier players) if you shy away from stabs too much. To maintain a reasonable 3HTK, you will have to land headshots. Things like strike chamber morph stab become incredibly inefficient ways to deal damage. Constantly morphing stab to strike will have people gambling you because they won't fear stab damage in the instances you don't morph.

• The RANGE. Messer is short and having a less than stellar stab means you lack a good poke game. In sterile environments, duels will always start with the spear/zwei/halberd/greatsword guy throwing out the first move against you. Messer ripostes are very whiff-kiteable if they max range tipper and space you well too. More importantly, short range makes getting in on teamfights difficult. Messer players typically don heavy armor and have good 1vX parrying skills to remain competitive in teamfights. You don't have the poke and far range switching abilities of others, but you still remain a nasty facehug duelist and your swift strikes make for nasty target switches against those who would facehug you. On the other hand, Messers are easy to bait whiffs from aforementioned target switches too...

Maybe a dramatic "uppercut"/tennis slicing motion during parry duration, then a swift and exaggerated "setting down" afterwards.

I like the neutral idea because it means the person who has true initiative is more dependent on factors like spacing and whatnot. Even though one handers are faster, a guy who sees the other guy just hold blocking can go for a max range tipper with his longer 2her, stagger the shield, and start another attack knowing his opponent cannot reach him even though they start attacks at the same time. However, staggering a shield but being too close (which would happen if you are facehug dragging, have no choice but to remain close in a teamfight, etc.) means the neutral reset probably favors him due to 1hers tending to be faster. This isn't static in cases like Estoc swing/Axe stab versus Mace, for instance.

[5] Fisherman: Your melee pull effect is stronger and also dramatically slows the enemy's movement to a halt, the snare effect gradually fading away over a second (think of the slowdown when getting shot in Counter-Strike). As of now, the only weapon this would affect is the Billhook, effectively turning it into an 8 point weapon that roots enemies so hard that a followup kick is undodgeable (must be eaten or kick-clashed). Of course, kicking isn't as safe and practical in a teamfight sometimes, but the root effect is more than disorienting and powerful enough to compensate for an 8-point billhook's low damage (especially if you were to have, say, a maul user for a teammate...). This perk still lets the Billhook be a cheap anti-cavalry/utility option and an archer/MAA 3-point melee weapon of choice while also letting it serve as a truer primary "Knight/Vanguard" weapon as well.

How about this:

First few milliseconds are identical to parry.

Held any longer than parry duration, blocking an attack makes you stagger, and you are unable to riposte. This means you do not gain initiative for hold blocking. Instead, either you and the attacker can start an attack at the same time (neutral) - OR - the attacker still maintains a slight initiative over you. You can start another parry/block any time after being staggered. Held blocks take slightly more stamina.

Just started playing GTA V. After years of WoW and competitive gaming, I forever thought "AI games" would forever be boring to me.

Nope, turns out fighting AI/coop/PVE can be incredibly fun even with simple shooting mechanics if the many parts of your game make one incredibly fun sum.

I think Mordhau has a fun base/core and thus huge potential for coop/PVE, but you still need great map and campaign design. In my experience, people tend to either make fun maps or great looking maps, but almost never one and the same. Not too far from the "I have great ideas but no means of execution" vs "skilled code monkey with zero imagination or market awareness" meme.

GTA online is pretty polarizing for me. It's a bit boring and real life 2.0 when solo, but holy shit this is the best game ever to play with real life friends, it's the closest any game has gotten to achieving that "hanging out with friends" feeling. It has amazing game optimization, maybe the best I've ever seen, but an immensely convoluted UI, relies on a lot of clientside (hasn't bothered me much, except this is related to my next point), and has a serious "modder"/cheater problem on PC.

The heists are amazing fun to play with real life friends, better than any WoW raid. With randoms, it becomes a shit show. Whatever, that's the nature of difficult coop.

However, the playerbase is cannibalized because there are simply too many options to fill. None of them but the few most popular end up being played. I know Mordhau is trying to avoid this by releasing a few solid maps instead of a gorillion game modes at once that won't be played beyond first week.

If GTA had better lobby navigation and matchmaking, man this game would be 11/10. I haven't reached the "endgame" yet so I can't speak for myself on the balance, but it seems like skillful drivebys and such have been taken over by flying homing missile Deloreans and Area 51 jetbikes and stuff.

For Mordhau, a smaller scale mod with focus on the "heist" part could probably be amazing. Difficulty levels should change encounters to require more teamwork, not merely give them x times more health.

@Runagate said:

@REKTKWONDO said:
How to counter Feint and Morph and every thing in the whole game

Don't parry or windup in the opponent windup phase, wait for the release to start.

Thanks please lock that shit post, I'm tired to see retarded noob all around this fuckin forum

What if he fakes a decel and accels into me at the last moment, making it impossible for me to parry without cybernetically augmenting my nervous system?

It's not really an accel anymore because turn cap (present even during windup) prevents him from doing what you described. You should be able to see him really exaggerate his head movement if he attempts this.

tbh I find that, in duel situations, the estoc and rapier still have good dragging threat even if they don't have the same literal, technical draggability. Why? Because they're so fast that people are conditioned to parry their accels super early, whereas most other weapons you can kind of tell if you're a bit patient. Stab to morphed strike drags in particular work pretty often with these two weapons, and headshots aren't too difficult in such a scenario. It's kind of like the really odd quarterstaff overhead drags in Chiv, one wouldn't expect that to be a thing but it is, thanks to how the instants condition one to early parry.

Raw draggability is always nice in teamfights though. For all the shortcomings a weapon like Zwei has in a duel, it feels amazing in large engagements.

The patch 17 nerf reversion made a colossal difference. Weren't patch 17 GS and Estoc stabs the same speed...? heh. The Estoc's strike being so fast is its true source of power imo. Sure, in some duels you feel like you have to hit them 7 times if you're not being precise, but having such a blistering fast attack is really powerful in conditioning enemies in a duel scenario (e.g. fearing the demonic speed of riposte and chamber accels), safely flinching for feint punishment and initative seizure, and as a feint option (kind of like axe stab feint -> punish with the more damaging strike).

You're feeding (and so am I) by mentioning that. You can literally be the guy who discovered matrixing in Chivalry and people will still shittalk you because they've never heard of you (different region) and auto-think you're some guy who can't parry drags and advocates for "hold RMB to hold the parry". There's also comprehension, you're asking if you can do anything more active against morphs than just parrying/chambering the morph, not "morphs are a bad mechanic".

If you like playing psyops/tilting enemies, gambling while being ready to FTP is a good way to disincentivize morph drags because you'll just flinch them "out of turn". I mention being ready to FTP because if they morph accel with initiative, they'll just beat you. This is really easy to demonstrate with, say, Rapier vs Maul (is it even gambling at that point? You'd have to start your attack WAY later than the Maul for you to really be gambling). It gets trickier with more normal weapons. For instance, if you're doing an ft10, throw out a single "gamble" to test your enemy's resolve: do they blindly morph drag? React and try to FTP instantly (now you've read that they're vulnerable to feints on FTP)? All accels?

Morphs should be thought of more as an 'EX' attack like in fighting games where you burn energy meter to amplify an attack with some bonus.

That being said, if you're in that "neither player has initiative" stage and you guys start attacks at near the same time, if one player plays automated and morphs, he's gonna lose if the other guy doesn't get scared and FTPs. And fast weapon vs slow weapon can indeed cut in if the slow weapon parries but doesn't ripostes and waits too long/tried to morph counterattack.

yes and, if you're west coast, your only option is a 112 ping New Jersey server

Morph chamber made you immune to EVERYTHING. In patch 18, I literally stamina checkmate people by just LMBing them and crutch-defending all their counterattacks if I have significant stam advantage. Doesn't matter if you're Tempest or Vq or whatever these new comp clans are named, you can't outplay your way against my impenetrable chamber -> morph chamber without me making a serious fuck up (e.g. not footworking so you land a drag against me or I miss or something equallt silly). When I use Zwei, my morph windows are so long that even then I can often morph chamber against drags or, hey, FTP them.

Guaranteed defenses are really bad outside of duels too, because I can basically be a castle wall in Xv1 or stall hilariously long if I have enough stamina while my teammate catches up.

Morph chamber is pretty brainless. Now I actually have to read morphs instead of braindead crutching on morph chamber.

It's not dumbed down, offense became more viable again, and the necessity to read for morphs and feints became more important again. Stop chamber -> FTPing, morph feints will fuck you up and while still really gradual, more and more players are starting to realize its potency now that chambers are being nerfed more and more.

Morph chambering has an initial skill barrier, but once you can do it, there isn't much depth to it. No mind gaming or reading you have to do (well, beyond reading only a fraction of the windup with no care for feinting).

I resent this. Not even three words in, and a hostile, self-congratulatory tone has already been set. The opposing side "is". My side "may look".

It's not a personal attack on you - I have no idea how good or bad you are and even if you are bad, what does that have to do with this topic? I know a lot of people here bring up the "ur bad lol so nothing u say matters", which is frankly just dismissive and doesn't explain to others on the why - and it's what I feel is the main problem concerning drags. Chivalry's drags had the same problem but even more extreme

As I've so clearly said, I do not expect people to drag any less. It will, however, make them less effective.

I feel as though you're dismissing everything I've said, simply because it's "no panacea". Since nothing is a panacea, this characterisation is always correct, regardless of the merits or demerits of the policy or its alternatives. [1] that's right I threw in a citation, just for you @Stouty <3

It's not that these aren't panaceas and fix-all solutions, it's that I don't think they are a net positive in alleviating the issue (more harm than good). Except maybe #3, that idea is interesting. #2 has been tried in Deadliest Warrior, and messing around with HTK gets even messier when factoring in 1vX where you can't always just feint -> mid-release perfect hit people. I've suggested a similar hitbox sweetspot idea years ago and they rejected it for the same reason: inconsistency in damage leads to frustration.

God forbid, should they share any of the misery that they are creating. Helicopter attacks, spiral motions, stab-the-floor-and-look-up, these are all fine. But modest stamina penalties? Unthinkable!

Again, all those weird attacks will continue to exist with #1 and #2, and helicopter (which I saw for what it is back when I was rank 19 or whatever, just someone parrying and running away and trying to punish if you backpedal riposted lol, all while they forfeit stamina regen) will still exist even with the most extreme variant of #3. The core issue of weird, bad looking attacks still existing isn't alleviated, only made annoying for both players.

It may not be possible to fix the animation ambiguity at our current level of technology. Triterion has been at it for years, and Torn Banner before them. I think they would've come up with the inverse-kinematic neural networks by now. Until that happens - let us consider more realistic solutions such as:

• Creating a disincentive for dragging, without outright removing it
• Creating an incentive for good form

I actually think drags carry a decent amount of disincentives right now, though admittedly some of the reasons can go back to broken patch 17 stuff. The most infamous example is stab chamber morph drag; this just gets beat by a blind stab counterchamber super hard at the moment. But kicks, axe stabs, 1h stabs, rapier swings are also good deterrents too especially if you have a good feel for timing and initiative. Even if you don't, gambling but being ready to FTP is a good way to decondition people from dragging through your own play itself rather than gameplay mechanics being more restricted. I cut off people's timings all the time with a Zwei of all weapons, both with reaction (e.g. we both start attack near same time, but I notice he's morphed or feinted/telegraphing a drag by looking to the side so I stay committing) or by aggressive gambling-but-ready-to-cancel.

Feel like the "good form" portion is just landing headshots. I don't know what it is I'm doing different, when Stauxie and Naul do their weirdest drags on me, they tend to miss a lot. Personally, I'm scared to do the really weird drags against especially fast weapons.

Q: Why do noobs hate drags?

A: Because it can look unintuitive and be confusing why they died.

Q: Do these proposed changes fix that core problem at all?

A: Nope, changes 1 and 2 won't make players drag any less, nor do they make it any less confusing looking. Instead, they just add more confusion and dissatiafaction but for the attacker instead as well.

These aren't fixing the core issue of what many people hate about drags, which in Mordhau I think just boils down to animation ambiguity.

morph chambers removed

old idea i posted elsewhere

Shields should act as they basically do right now for the initial duration: just like a parry, they are instant, have a forgiving hitbox (as parries do), have a harsher turncap than previous patches (just like parry), and can be riposted off. The first milliseconds are basically a parry.

Now, AFTER the parry length has elapsed, have the shield's hitbox collapse to that of patch 16, but the turncap very slightly more lenient (even if it meqna more lenient than parrying). This makes feint/morph/drag -> trick enemy into hold shield -> forcing them now to guess where you're going to pierce their limited blockbox a viable thing, but shield users who are still good at parrying the normal way aren't punished for going shields. Blocking out of the parry timing is similar/identical to how it is now, where you can't riposte off it and you are both reset to neutral (kind of like kick clash, you have the initiative if you have a faster weapon AND aren't out of range and conversely: they can have faster weapon OR be out of your reach to attack safely).

upon seeing this, I wrote 8 pages about initiative and gambling including the controversial zweihander vs bastardsword feint punishment - a myth, legend, old wive's tale, or reality?