This is an evolution of my chamber meter idea but hear me out.

In chivalry we had reverses, these were actually appreciated in 1vX due to giving a single player the clutch potential. They were cancerous in duels because in a 1v1 environment players have the luxury to precisely threaten fake reverse/reverse 50/50s; this was much harder to achieve in team games. If there was a mechanic that meant reverses couldn't be used in 1v1 they probably would have been more popular, however they're still impossible to market.

Chambering has now replaced reversing as the new high level mechanic.

So the current issues that seem popular are:
-chambers aren't worthwhile in duels
-chambers make it too hard to 1vX as both the X can go for chamber attempts

My idea: a player can only chamber when there are two enemies within a 5m radius of him (with a 2-3 second grace period). Make the timing easier as well.

This gives outnumbered opponent a much needed advantage and would shift the focus of duels back to feint reading/punishing and footwork.

Quick responses to some arguments against this:

"But then we can't chamber in duels"
Arguably if you're playing against a good player you shouldn't be chambering unless you absolutely have to. In a duel environment it's much easier for a good player to constantly fake accel or jiggle their mouse around in order to land free hits. Most of the time I die is due to failing chambers and most of the time I land hits against good players is when they fail their chamber. High level duels would then naturally tend back to how they were in chiv, constant pressure with fast accels mixed up with feints, which to me looks and feels nicer to play then constantly shaking your mouse around.

"What about morphs?"
Not sure to be honest maybe just remove them? They seem very powerful as they're easier to follow up than a feint (if you raise a parry with a stab morph) and they give players a really large range of attack.

"Noobs will never learn to chamber if they can't use them in duels"
Make a good tutorial level. Also I doubt noobs will be chambering that much anyway and will probably getting chambered consistently by good players because noobs wont know that they need to constantly jiggle their mouse with every single attack.

"Limits player freedom"
Probably the best argument against this idea but there's always going to be some weird situation with 1vX e.g. hit trades with ripostes. Personally I feel this is much more elegant solution

Its VERY fast

Often I'll get hit at the start of the grunt but that's common for a lot of the weps. Haven't played that much this patch yet though

Cristian would absolutely trash any of you calling him a noob, straight up

They asked RebornChief first but he said no so they picked Jax instead

A really small change has broken the game for anyone that uses RMB to feint, that sounds dramatic but it's honestly the case.

The issue: now that you can't feint in riposte a lot of the skilled players will be pushing the limits of making a "fake riposte", a normal attack started as early as possible so that you can then feint it. However in the heat of a battle often your attempts at starting a normal attack will be off by literally a millisecond and you will riposte instead. In this build if you press parry (or feint if bound to rmb) at the start of a riposte you will instead automatically FTP (feint to parry).

In summary: If you use rmb to feint you're going to end up panic parrying accidentally all the time.

Other cons:

• Allows for noncommittal game play (just FTP out of everything)
• Looks janky af, most people will panic parry if you FTP your riposte at them
• Adds layer of complexity when skill gap is already insane
• Forces a playstyle down peoples throats, basically feint with Q and use a FTP bind or GTFO

Inconsistent stam bad

Points ez balance

On his first night at the Mordhau Team, Crush complained that the TV in the office was broken because it didn't have "the gorilla channel". Crush seemed to be under the impression that a TV channel existed that screened nothing but gorilla-based content, 24 hours a day.

To appease Crush, Triternion compiled a number of gorilla documentaries into a makeshift gorilla channel, broadcast into the Mordhau office from a hastily constructed livestream. However Crush was unhappy with the channel they had created moaning that it was "boring" because "the gorillas aren't fighting".

Staff edited out all the parts of the documentaries where the gorillas weren't hitting each other and at last Crush was satisfied. "On some days he'll watch the gorilla chanel for 17 hours straight," an insider told me. "He kneels in front of the TV, with his face about four inches from the screen, and says encouraging things to the gorillas, like 'the way you hit that other gorilla was good'. I think he thinks the gorillas can hear him."

Even if Mordhau released with no testers you would still see an insane skill gap with the players that practised Chivalry for thousands of hours

. Regards,

Jax I don't know who your source is but that's conflicting with the latest intel that I've received. I'm getting reports that hitstop is being replaced with a fully fledged magic system in order to attract the Mirage: Arcane Warfare playerbase

JUST REMEMBER ALL CAPS WHEN YOU SPELL THE NAME

. Furthermore,

transgender

Dear

@Jax said:
There's a term that's been gaining some traction in NA that I'm really fond of - "chamber bots". These are the players that attempt to chamber everything and they tend to do this without reading the attack, instead just relying on muscle memory.

These are the players you can punish so easily; microfeint and counterchamber, throw in a subtle drag, morph, morph to kick, morph feint, etc. If these players read the attack first, they'd be able to throw out a simple parry or resort to something other than FTP and stay alive for much longer.

There is no reading fake accels. It's not something a defending player can react or read. The fact that it's so easy to kill a player that is trying to chamber everything should demonstrate that they are way too hard to do consistently.

With all of that being said, the game needs some small tweaks to discourage these players from simply gambling chambers. It already isn't optimal but it can be unintuitive and confusing for both players, and some small tweaks to FTP and a few other timings would encourage players to read and be deliberate with their chamber attempts. Everyone would benefit.

Killing these players is already the easiest thing in the world, why are you suggesting making it harder for them? You just don't feint, and fake accel every attack.

@Huggles said:
Chambering being too easy encourages constant gamble spam

No it encourages chambers, right now chambering is a gamble vs good players

and actually slows the game down because chamber strikes are very predictable

Chamber fights are literally faster than attack, parry, attack, parry. This was shown a long time ago in dev blog 2

and if someone is chamber spamming it forces you to respond very quickly to maintain initiative.

??? You just said it was slower

It just makes combat very predictable and repetitive

Less predictable than attack/parry/feint

and throws initiative out the window.

No it doesn't

Chambering really isn't that hard, it just requires more footwork now.

Show me a video of you consistently chambering fake accels

@Runagate said:
How do you know when those stabs go into release?

Memorise the timing

I still think chambering is too hard despite the improvement in animations, shit like this will probably always be unchamberable