The State of Combat

[Thedrah]

does ua vs mc on defence vs offense equal? does a sting on 100mc against 100ua not go through a quick dodge? or does the sword quality affect the weight of the attack greatly?

technically, you could defend against every color as ua (using ip) with artful evasion and yield ground. with blue you block all mc but chop. i think a 2 blue defenses and zig zag would defend against mc quite well aslong as you get enough ip for zig zag or have back up yellow (incase they got chop)

inb4 stuff: no pvp experience

[Glorthan]

does ua vs mc on defence vs offense equal? does a sting on 100mc against 100ua not go through a quick dodge? or does the sword quality affect the weight of the attack greatly?

technically, you could defend against every color as ua (using ip) with artful evasion and yield ground. with blue you block all mc but chop. i think a 2 blue defenses and zig zag would defend against mc quite well aslong as you get enough ip for zig zag or have back up yellow (incase they got chop)

inb4 stuff: no pvp experience

You'd burn through so much ip that it's not feasible.

[DDDsDD999]

does ua vs mc on defence vs offense equal? does a sting on 100mc against 100ua not go through a quick dodge? or does the sword quality affect the weight of the attack greatly?

technically, you could defend against every color as ua (using ip) with artful evasion and yield ground. with blue you block all mc but chop. i think a 2 blue defenses and zig zag would defend against mc quite well aslong as you get enough ip for zig zag or have back up yellow (incase they got chop)

inb4 stuff: no pvp experience

You could do some ghetto shit with UA and managing all of your moves and spending your IP in a really autistic way. Or you could just not. Shield + Parry is reliable, where if you're running around in group combat and the guy you were stacking coins on deaggros, if you were UA you're left without zig-zag and some dick-head could just chop your ass dead. Or you can't steal thunder your target or whatever. UA works but requires a lot of set-up and planning, where melee is just brain-dead straight forward and just as effective.

Don't plan on doing super complicated shit in combat that's beyond the scope of a 1v1, people always fuck up when groups are involved. The less margin of error you allow, the better.

[VDZ]

As for defense it is just broken up in to several different defense bars instead of a maneuver

Can we talk about how bullshit the color defenses are? Everybody's using Shield Up and Parry which somewhat hides the problem, but part of the reason everybody's using those two is because it's the only reasonable way to block every attack type. Suddenly receiving tons of damage because you didn't have one of the four block colors up is not fun in any way. (There's also the problem of STILL not seeing what attack the enemy is using, but it's bullshit even if that were fixed.) I like the idea of having different attack types, but receiving 100% damage when you don't have a block up means you should either block everything or you might as well not block at all, and it makes single-color blocks entirely useless (considering you're getting a cooldown during which the enemy can attack one of your non-block colors; this problem is made worse by the fact that blocks expire rather quickly meaning you can't really juggle single-color blocks enough to even make it work by just defending). Perhaps this would be improved greatly with even a minor change like having off-color blocks still work at reduced effectiveness.

You don't have to have any MC to do damage with a chop/cleave/whatever, you can break their defense with a punch or whatever and then hit them with something hard hitting, worked fine for me all last world. Penetration on UA moves would make MC stronger than it already is because MC defenses easily blocks all attack types while UA would need 4 defensive cards to do the same.

Hmm, so I can just equip a B12, use unarmed as usual to break guards, and then chop with that and it'll still do fine despite having no MC to speak of? Is that actually viable?
Would the damage I deal not be crippled due to having no MC? Because I really didn't wanna be just another "hybrid" that everybody else is running.

When the enemy has a block up, the damage of your strike is reduced; how much reduction depends on your skill (MC for weapon attacks) vs the enemy's. When the enemy has no fitting block up, though, you'll deal full damage at 1 MC, and that damage is no less than what is dealt by a character with 330 MC and the same Strength and weapon.

Oh yeah I forgot to say.
Jorb, do something to fix unarmed. I've just sparred with a friend who has steel armor on, and despite me having quite high stats + unarmed skill, I cannot do any damage what so ever, even with Low Blow which is the best attack currently in the unarmed arsenal.
If you're adamant about not adding any armor piercing claw-like weapons or what not, at least give us some new moves to play with. I dunno, fucking, Eye Gouge or some shit, something that ignores some armor anyway.

You know what, unarmed as a whole is just pure shit actually. Even if my friend throws on some shitty q25ish bronze armor, the only move that does reliable damage is Low Blow. I've just spent some time testing all of the other attacks against bronze armor (without my friend throwing up any guards either) and every move is garbage. Kick hits him for 4, KiTO hits for 27. I mean what the fuck is that shit?

If I throw some steel on and my friend with 20 melee hits me with a chop, it still does like 70 damage to me (he was using a q40ish steel sword though, mind you)

This mindset that unarmed is nothing more than a guard dropping skill needs to disappear. Forget adding one extra move like I suggested further up in this post, the current offensive based moves that unarmed has need to be looked at, because they're incredibly bad. Seriously, just go back and take a look at attacks like Kick and Haymaker and tell me with a straight face that they're worthwhile.
Maybe give unarmed some sort of scaling armor ignore depending on your skill, I don't fucking know, I'm just throwing out ideas and hoping one of them is gold, because all I know is currently, if somebody throws on a set of steel, I am incapable of damaging him, regardless of his stats.

Combat update cannot come soon enough. I hope it's being seriously looked into now because jesus christ this is ridiculous.

But UA defences are shit, having no meele isnt viable atm

Maybe you cant block sword with bare hands

Oh, we got the "the game has to be realistic" guy here!

While there is such a thing as trying too hard to be realistic, there also exists the opposite situation of trying to be too game-like. Why must UA and MC be separate, equally viable combat 'classes'? Why are they not just both necessary skills for a warrior, affecting different aspects of combat? UA makes sense for defending against attacks you were not properly prepared against, for opportunistic attacks against unarmed enemies, and as support for melee combat. However, it just makes absolutely zero sense for an unarmed warrior to be able to fight on equal ground against an armed and armored enemy. This is not a generic fantasy MMORPG with superpowered heroes that can kill fearsome monsters with a single punch. If you want to fight seriously, grab a weapon and armor. And if you're unarmed and get attacked by an armed enemy, you should be running away and dodging until you manage to get your hands on a weapon. (I still think it's bullshit that you can't switch combat schools during combat; you should be able to switch to weapon attacks once you've managed to grab a weapon, and shield blocks once you've managed to grab a shield.)

[NOOBY93]

Except, again, it IS a game, where if UA is objectively inferior to melee, nobody is going to seriously use UA, which is why they need to be balanced - so you can choose how you want to play the game instead of the game being too linear. Take your realism to Sims, there's a reason characters don't need to shit and piss in Haven - because it's a fucking game

[VDZ]

Except, again, it IS a game, where if UA is objectively inferior to melee, nobody is going to seriously use UA, which is why they need to be balanced - so you can choose how you want to play the game instead of the game being too linear. Take your realism to Sims, there's a reason characters don't need to shit and piss in Haven - because it's a fucking game

Again, why the distinction between two different classes? Why not make MC for the damage dealing and normal blocking while using UA for tricks and support moves? UA should be used in combination with MC.

[NOOBY93]

Except, again, it IS a game, where if UA is objectively inferior to melee, nobody is going to seriously use UA, which is why they need to be balanced - so you can choose how you want to play the game instead of the game being too linear. Take your realism to Sims, there's a reason characters don't need to shit and piss in Haven - because it's a fucking game

Again, why the distinction between two different classes? Why not make MC for the damage dealing and normal blocking while using UA for tricks and support moves? UA should be used in combination with MC.

Because then it would be simply better to level both melee and UA instead of choosing between them, making the game more linear. We don't want the situation to turn into the w6 "dhelm-ctc-merch-rboots-ss-gauntlets-tsack-pants-10-buckets-of-water or die". The goal is to play whatever style you want.

[VDZ]

Except, again, it IS a game, where if UA is objectively inferior to melee, nobody is going to seriously use UA, which is why they need to be balanced - so you can choose how you want to play the game instead of the game being too linear. Take your realism to Sims, there's a reason characters don't need to shit and piss in Haven - because it's a fucking game

Again, why the distinction between two different classes? Why not make MC for the damage dealing and normal blocking while using UA for tricks and support moves? UA should be used in combination with MC.

Because then it would be simply better to level both melee and UA instead of choosing between them, making the game more linear. We don't want the situation to turn into the w6 "dhelm-ctc-merch-rboots-ss-gauntlets-tsack-pants-10-buckets-of-water or die". The goal is to play whatever style you want.

But should that be achieved by forcing different builds, creating a very limited number of viable strategies (two it seems in this case; best melee strategy and best UA strategy)? I think the problem needs to be solved elsewhere with multiple movesets being viable, most combining MC and UA in different ratios.

[rye130]

But should that be achieved by forcing different builds, creating a very limited number of viable strategies (two it seems in this case; best melee strategy and best UA strategy)? I think the problem needs to be solved elsewhere with multiple movesets being viable, most combining MC and UA in different ratios.

I think there already is the possibility of using a wide range of moves and still being viable. The problem is there is no reason for doing anything different from the norm because it is just as effective and doesn't even feel different because when it comes down to it, fights always play out basically the same way. Spam defenses when they are attacking you, spam attacks to attack them. The cards themselves don't have enough variety to allow any interesting interactions. Feigned dodge special abilities is useless because they don't work when both targets are moving, same with Parry a lot of the time. Zig-zags attack speed bonus is nice, but it still just turns into the same attack button mashing game play that always happens.

As long as you have the right cards to block against the hard hitting attacks of your opponent and aren't heavily outstatted, you can defend basically forever.

does ua vs mc on defence vs offense equal? does a sting on 100mc against 100ua not go through a quick dodge? or does the sword quality affect the weight of the attack greatly?

Mc's attack weight is averaged with the vitality of their weapon. Their agility is averaged with the essence (might be switched). Therefore the sting doesn't go through the quick dodge unless their sword is higher than q100. Any damage caused by that sting going through is likely negligible do to armor blocking it.

You're probably not that familiar with mmorpg's so I'm here to tell you that every mmorpg is using skills that you can place on a hotbar instead of a card/deck system.
Seeing that this system is so widespread among mmorpgs I can guarantee you that the average beginner will find this far more familiar, and the average player will find it far less restricting.

Fair enough argument, but that doesn't necessarily mean that its right for Haven. Also, if you look at more current mmorpg's, you'll see that most are moving away from this type of combat. Blade and Soul, Black Desert, Guild Wars 2, all pretty recent successful games without hotbar combat.

Hotbars might be the right thing for Hafen, but I don't think we should switch to them right away when I highly doubt they'll change the way combat plays out anyways.

Also, I think that the limited nature of the deck system leads there to potentially be more room for strategy then you would get when all moves are available at all times.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

I like the card system rather than a hotbar system - It makes the selection of the combat moves necessarily simplistic and easier for new players to grasp in that they don't need to use every ability in the game simultaneously to have a viable build.
I also enjoy the interaction and variety of builds that comes with the tradeoff of move selection.

Where the combat system might be improved is with slightly greater variety - Attacks that have alternative effects (no damage) and interact with defenses differently (partial or absolute penetration of defenses, random color of attack) could be a welcome addition to break up the meta and allow for increased solo and group tactics.

Ranged should probably be introduced into the melee combat system in some meaningful way - A lot of imbalance is necessarily created by two separate systems that largely ignore one another.
I'd also like to see some distinct benefit for fighting on foot, or some distinct nerf for fighting from horseback, in order to make both states have inherent pros and cons. This could reasonably be a reduction in delta on horseback for defenses.