Game Development: A Low Blow

[loftar]

you can still hit people out of their lowblow by simply using anything with longer range lol

Well, yes, but that implies fighting back, taking a cooldown, hitting, &c. I don't think the idea is that there shouldn't be counterplay.

That, and also, given that lowblow is immediately cancellable, it is quite easy to avoid such attacks only to try again immediately afterwards.

[boreial]

We spent some time working on animal AI for the new system.

Looking forward to this aspect much more than the PvP, but hey that may just be me.

[wonder-ass]

you can still hit people out of their lowblow by simply using anything with longer range lol

Well, yes, but that implies fighting back, taking a cooldown, hitting, &c. I don't think the idea is that there shouldn't be counterplay.

That, and also, given that lowblow is immediately cancellable, it is quite easy to avoid such attacks only to try again immediately afterwards.

its effective vs someone that waits everytime for you to strike first not so much vs someone thats just running away and not trying to fight but imo i dont see that as too big of a problem.

[Vigilance]

ill be here struggling to enjoy the concept of movement combat (already not fun) disjointed MOBA combat with 220 ping and awful netcode optimization

[Darkins]

https://youtu.be/8rnHpcIGvSE?t=75

[jorb]

awful netcode optimization

[jordancoles]

Upload more RAM into the server's mainframe and reroute the ping so that us NA players can hit more reliably

[vatas]

I can't find it now but I once saw humorous image with computers around the world and "magical no latency cloud" in between them.

Devs don't really have means to reducing player ping other than ensuring that the server has best possible internet connection, which I assume is already the case (to the point it's practical, I just recalled that stock exchanges pay millions to cut just couple of milliseconds of their latency to help ensure their trades don't get snatched while they process.)

Not sure if "spell batching" as in Vanilla/Classic WoW would help (it was mostly to make game run smoothly back when servers had less processing power than contemporary smartphone) but it might be worth considering just in case. Spellbatching basically meant that all spells are processed in "batches" every 200 or so milliseconds which had downsides. You could finish casting a healing spell but it would actually only increase target's health 199 ms later and target could be killed during that time. Two mages could both cast "Polymorph" on each other and if they were processed on same tick, they would both turn into sheep. Two warriors charging each other this way caused them to effectively switch places. Haven equivalent would probably be two people KOing (or theoretically, even killing) each other at the same time.

[MightySheep]

I'm curious on the motivations behind doing this. I'm not necessarily against it but it feels like you're sort of missing the point as to why all the PvPers are so whiny this world. My experience PvPing this world has been one of the most fun worlds to PvP in. I started this world with a whole group of new people and they all loved it, this is the first game in ages that everyone in our discord all actively stuck with a game for a long period. The reason we all got burnt out is pretty much the same reason a lot of other groups got burnt out. It wasn't the fights themselves, they were a ton of fun. They were skilful insofar as the people who died were usually people who made mistakes and were tactical as well with the way targets were being focused and made use of noobs as sort of tanks/decoys.

It has always been the case with PvP in a game like this that you're either a predator or a prey. You're either up to par with the standards of other PvP groups or you are just fodder for them. So with all the recent updates like credos, gilding, questing, food changes etc. You've made it so there is no longer any time-gate whatsoever to improving your characters. If you quit your job and devote your life to Haven and know all the little tricks (including many bugs this world) you can raise your characters to a ridiculous level at a ridiculous pace. Is it then any surprise that no casual groups or even 'decent' groups are interested in PvP? No. Is it a surprise that people who are forced to engage in this mega tryhard grind burn out super quickly? No. HH and AD are some of the most devout Haven acolytes but I'm not surprised even they got tired of this world.

That's just 1 factor in many that adds to the tedium. Another is road nerf, continents made the rare occurrence of randomly bumping into enemies even rarer. Continents were a cool concept but gameplay-wise they haven't really added anything to the game. Feeling like theres no purpose to PvP end game when kingdoms are already divided by continents and there's no realistic way to siege your enemies. A food system so convoluted that people found multiple different ways to abuse it.

So yeah I think theres a lot of factors that contribute to what makes Haven PvP so fun and the combat system is not the one that is currently ruining the experience.

[Archiplex]

awful netcode optimization

Admittedly though, the other part of his complaint still ring trues (the ping part, i don't really agree about the disjointed moba complaint).

Sooo... chances for a more centralized server?