Maul mildly annoys me in terms of realsm but it's not like crazy far out there. In terms of balance though I hate it's stab... does so much damage with so much speed and it's lethal in it's own right but it also makes Maul morphs very dangerous and feels somewhat cheesy.

Aaaah yes, we've reached the contentious part of the Mordhau forum thread cycle, buckle in bois.

@PadanFain said:
Just chamber the fist if they try and fist u...pretty simple

Chambers hardly ever work with normal weapons and you suggest we easily chamber one of the most unreadable animations in the game with hitboxes that are still a mystery after so many patches

@Bodkin said:
Auto ftp is pretty essential for noobs to understand the game and not get turned off because of "hackers" you can't kill when they miss.

I'm fine with autoparry cause I'm lazy now, but this part is wrong. It's essential because it's easier for new players and sets everyone at an even playing field. It actually makes new players understand the game less though. They have no idea that the attack is being feinted then instantly parried.

This won't matter to start with, but as they get to higher skill levels, they won't understand to manually feint so they can delay a parry to avoid an easy punish. They also won't understand why they have to combo to parry again.

Need a good tutorial and for it all to be optional.

I do not think the game is in a good spot currently.

• Attacks are way too fast. The release portion of attacks has always been too short, but as of this patch it is even shorter. This makes even attacks with little acceleration to them feel too quick to react to, let alone chamber. The instant attack problem plaguing the game has only been exacerbated. You can now lock players in a perpetual flinched state.

• Parrying feels unreliable. Other than it requiring more precision, I cannot put my finger on what about it has changed, but here is some feedback: It no longer feels instant - It feels like if an attack hits me during the first few frames of my parry I will take damage. A lot of the time it also seems like the parry animation plays right after I take a hit. The absurd speed of certain attacks also means it is not always possible to parry in time unless your reaction time is highly above average. For a basic mechanic this is overkill. It was fine in the previous patch.

• Weapon balance is all over the place. Heavy, costly weapons like the battleaxe and eveningstar have instant stabs, small arms like the rapier and mace can either kill you in two hits or two seconds. Note that the issue here is not how weak or powerful a certain weapon is, but how weapons are balanced relative to one another. For instance, the difference between slow and fast weapons is meagre, largely due to how much attacks can be accelerated, so there is less incentive to take a weapon because it is faster. Similarly, taking a weapon such as the eveningstar due to its damage is also pointless when the mace and warhammer are just as powerful at half the cost.
  I know there are nuances such as turn cap and morph cost that differentiate weapons further, but the balance seems no less questionable. I have a suggestion: Give each weapon a brief description. This will also help new players understand the idea behind certain weapons without requiring them to look at the highly technical list of values below the weapon (which would probably intimidate them if it was all they had to base their choice of weapon on).

• EDIT: Stab drags are horrendous. They genuinely look like an exploit and range from unrealistic to absolutely undecipherable. I assume the only reason they exist is so chambering stabs does not become trivial, but virtually any other solution would be better than tolerating stab drags in their current state.

• Feint woes. I will save it for the next patch in which feints will be altered, but there is still something on my mind: A while ago someone pointed out attacks require very little commitment as you can cancel out of them for the majority of their duration, which makes it very difficult to punish players who miss an attack or exercise poor judgement in when to perform an attack. Moreover it means players can attack at the same time as their opponent, and if they are about to be hit first, they can simply feint-to-parry. This does promote gambling and a playstyle in which the opponent's actions matter less, though I do not see how it can be fixed without the player's control over their character being severely limited. I am interested to hear if others have thought of any solutions so far.

• Shields are still a chore to fight. This issue might be the hardest to correct. There are quite a few discussions on this already.

• projectile spam is horrendous. Definitely limit the number of smoke bombs / fire bombs the player spawns with. In the future it would be nice to also make them cost a lot more unless the player has a "support / strategist" perk which makes such equipment much cheaper but in exchange you will lack perk points for other goodies. People seem to be of the opinion the projectile spam will die down once they are no longer new, but I highly doubt that. There will always be players who find it hilarious to run around and bombard the map with smoke and fire. Furthermore, there will always be new players for whom the idea is still fresh and novel.

Before you tell me none of these are issues once you have put six billion hours into the game, take a moment to consider how new players would feel about some of these mechanics in their current state and whether they would be motivated to put even ten hours into the game.

And keep in mind also that it is possible to correct a broken mechanic without it becoming so simple that even new players would master it in five minutes. A lot of you struggle with that concept.

Overall, I've been having a lot of fun with this patch and I think that most of what was changed/implemented benefits the game, but I do think there are issues that need to be addressed.

First, thank you so much for adding a queue to join full servers, not that it was an issue with the low player count, but it'll be nice to have when the game releases.

I'm enjoying the changes to blunt weapons, I applaud the developers for going against the majority and experimenting with new mechanics. This is one of those instances where something in idea may sound terrible, but once implemented is surprisingly good for the game. It helps to differentiate the weapons and make blunt weapons feel unique.

That said, I'm not entirely a fan of the changes to HTK with a lot of the weapons. It makes them all feel more alike and often I find it difficult to justify the more expensive weapons when I could go LS and deal nearly just as much damage. Sure, if we compare the GS to the LS, it does have better reach, but it's negligible.

I do not like how extreme some of the accels are right now. They were bad before and now I think they're worse. I feel like I'm playing a reaction simulator rather than a game about skill. I feel like I cheated my opponent when I accel my attacks, sometimes there's just no time for them to react.

Probably one of the most infuriating mechanics of the game right now though is the ability to disengage and run to avoid attacks. I know you all have a hard-on for dodging attacks, but if you make a mistake and throw out a mistimed parry, you absolutely should not be able to just run away to avoid the mistake. Yes, allow us to bend, twist, or duck our bodies to avoid attacks, but it looks ridiculous when you can just run away from your mistakes.

One more thing: when vision is obscured by smoke, remove the nametags from appearing at the bottom of the screen. Otherwise, you’ll have players that just spin around in the smoke until an enemy nametag appears, track it, and be able to attack out of the smoke. It’s more effective than you’d think.

My two cents, i think having to react to an audible grunt that signals an attack and then a nano second later you're either hit or you parried early is silly imo, at the moment (for me at least) trying to read the attack animation to decipher whether the attack is committed or not is next to impossible unless ofcourse you've got 3k hours in chiv and/or have no lifed the game since release, i don't think you should be required to be that staggeringly good just to be able to not fall for literally the most basic "mind game" the game has. Because honestly at the end of it, all someone is doing is pressing Q after they attack, they aren't doing anything inherently skillful or clever yet it's so powerful in anyones hands.

I think the perfect balance would simply be instead of having to be god tier to be able to read them, you just have to be a player who is concentrating on the game and pay attention to some kind of clear and somewhat obvious animation cue while also having at least a decent-average reaction time.

Kind of like (please don't hang me for using this game as an example) For Honor and it's guard breaking, just a little skill check if that makes sense, but of course in this game you can do a shitload more than just that obviously.

@Kingindian said:
The game feels like shit to play. Very sluggish and slow paced gameplay.
Not sure what is wrong iwth feint either, maybe nothing. But the little i have played since the game is just boring as fuck to play, feint seems wrong, you are supposed to only be able to feint when you charge an attack or a strong attack.

But feint aside, the overall gameplay feels bad.

Slow paced? Lol good luck fighting against the rest of 1h weps/short grips in this game

@PadanFain said:

@Naleaus said:

@PadanFain said:

@Naleaus said:

@PadanFain said:

@Naleaus said:
I've been chambered maybe 3 times when disarmed, so I'm not sure that's a good strategy. Kicks or matrix backpedal stab usually work for me.

Cause people haven't botherd to learn the fists animations. The matrix stab is a gamble and the kick will leave u wide open if u miss depending on your stam lvl.

I don't think learning the animations will help, cause I'll just morph or drag, and they're pretty fast to try and react to. To me it sounds like pick your gamble if you consider kicks/matrix stabs gambling, when chambering is going to be even more of a crapshoot.

Readable

If you say so. I've killed a bunch of people with those readable animations. Chambering them is a whole lot of effort for something that should be an easy punish on the other guy. Is there a reason you are against changing it? Being rewarded with initiative and stamina for bad play is a bit silly.

The game shouldn't give a free hit for stam outs it should put the stammed person at a disadvantage which it does otherwise the game becomes purely about outstaming ur opponent imo anyway

A disadvantage would be not having initiative and stamina. Your current reward for stamming someone is being put on the defensive. I don't care if they do the clash thing, but at least add a short lockout on attack after disarm so that you don't get initiative.

@PadanFain said:

@Naleaus said:

@PadanFain said:

@Naleaus said:
I've been chambered maybe 3 times when disarmed, so I'm not sure that's a good strategy. Kicks or matrix backpedal stab usually work for me.

Cause people haven't botherd to learn the fists animations. The matrix stab is a gamble and the kick will leave u wide open if u miss depending on your stam lvl.

I don't think learning the animations will help, cause I'll just morph or drag, and they're pretty fast to try and react to. To me it sounds like pick your gamble if you consider kicks/matrix stabs gambling, when chambering is going to be even more of a crapshoot.

Readable

If you say so. I've killed a bunch of people with those readable animations. Chambering them is a whole lot of effort for something that should be an easy punish on the other guy. Is there a reason you are against changing it? Being rewarded with initiative and stamina for bad play is a bit silly.

@PadanFain said:

@Naleaus said:
I've been chambered maybe 3 times when disarmed, so I'm not sure that's a good strategy. Kicks or matrix backpedal stab usually work for me.

Cause people haven't botherd to learn the fists animations. The matrix stab is a gamble and the kick will leave u wide open if u miss depending on your stam lvl.

I don't think learning the animations will help, cause I'll just morph or drag, and they're pretty fast to try and react to. To me it sounds like pick your gamble if you consider kicks/matrix stabs gambling, when chambering is going to be even more of a crapshoot.

The head hitbox was protruding a little bit too much, I've adjusted it which should help a bit with this problem. However, most of this comes from high fov and is not something that can be removed entirely.

Well, then I'll just adjust the values on the spreadsheet. I ain't a bitch.

tried it out, if you do it on a chamber correctly you can make your chamber feints unpunishable but telegraphed to look pretty convincing. You can always do it correctly if you just make a macro btw so it seems kinda gay but maybe thats just me being homophobic

I second that notion, doesn't seem powerful enough to completely revolutionize high level play, but stupid looking animations especially hurt inexperienced players and muh immersion. So removing it won't be a huge deal to depth if it looks too stupid.

June uploaded his video, and the way he interprets the mechanic is very harmless, as more or less a higher cost morph.

However as the mechanic works currently you cant have alternate side morphs without unpunisheable stab chamber bait stabs, which are much more likely to get a hit or advantage you. I don't think its good enough to take the chiv route with reverses and say, "we can learn to deal with this and it raises skillcap", while also introducing ridiculous wavey animations or hyper fast feint stabs. Just because we're used to not being able to punish arming sword feints doesn't mean it should apply to zweihander feints as well.

Ok, its intentional. Lets have a look at some intended gameplay.

vanguard basically summed it up; by "fixing" what makes the game stupid, the devs can instead focus on making the barebone and "sensible" stuff of the combat system more difficult: aiming parries and chamber timings.

What I haven't seen anyone yet address are the reasons why the devs or certain players may be reluctant to get rid of instant accels in the first place. So, I'll address them:

1. "Defense will be too easy, and the game will become stamina warfare at high levels."
2. "Faster fights are objectively more fun."
3. "More difficult parries will ruin 1vX."

As aforementioned, making things readable and seem sensible benefits not only low level players, but also gives the devs room to instead tweak core mechanics like parrying and chambering so that they still remain challenging for high level players. But let's presume that even that isn't enough to prevent a hypothetical meta where players are chambering and parrying everything in 10-minute duels that ultimately boil down to stamina warfare. A few more adjustments could be made to make such a scenario even less likely and, even in the case of "stamina warfare", keep things interesting:

Remove chamber morph direction restriction, probably remove normal morph direction restriction as well.

This would give players greater offensive capability as they're able to more greatly redirect their strikes while still maintaining a fast tempo. With stricter aiming requirements and such, these would be excellent in redirecting an enemy's parry to aim the wrong way. Kaboom, chambers are more rewarding and are still challenging for parries as well. If animating or balancing demands it, have cross-direction morphs take longer/more stamina.

Make swapping to small secondary weapons fast and allow parrying, but there's still a draw delay before you can attack/chamber.

Stamm'ing out won't be a death sentence anymore as you can swap to your secondary and parry, but being unable to attack/chamber means you're vulnerable to feints. You'll still be low on stamina as well and are susceptible to being completely disarmed. I think this would incentivize players to think about their loadout/picking secondaries and also make stamm'ing less scary in general. With less of a fear on stamina management, overly aggressive playstyles aren't completely discouraged either even if the meta takes a turn for the turtles.

With how unreadable everything is, 1vX is already silly, especially when people start missing on purpose for their teammates to hit you during your parry release - or for them to change their mind on a whim and hit you with a last-millisecond spear stab drag. I'd gladly take a tougher aiming requirement if the visuals were more consistent - at least that way, I'd know what's hitting me and when. That, and difficult aiming is simply more suiting for an FPS game.

@AFluffyKnight said:
Jesus animations are not as broken as you people are saying. They need work. They aren't perfect and neither is any human.

Well they are objectively unreadable. This game isn't immune to critiques and imho it is better for us to say it now, then wait for it to release and have to deal with a shitstorm of bad steam reviews and videos. This is what a alpha is for isn't it.

@Snowy said:
you realise that you're not meant to chamber every attack?

You already can't chamber 100% of attacks due to the current implementation of lockout. This is fine, because the player can learn when and where chambers are acceptable. (e.g. Mixups on certain weapons render chambering pretty much useless, as well as 1vX/Team fights if you were hit shortly before you attempt a chamber.) Being unable to chamber an attack outside of lockout due to animations being borderline impossible to read isn't good game design. Currently, to be able to consistently defend against the accell to drag attack, you need to 'gamble' a chamber attempt. If your opponent decides to now convert their accell into a drag, you're forced to feint to parry. Unless you are some sort of chamber or parry god, there is really no other way around this. As players improve, they'll keep finding more ways to exploit this.

It's a sticky situation for the developers to be in, but it's something that will need to be addressed to maintain consistency in top tier play.