No one wants fair PvP

[lakrass]

lol didn't read after seeing "storm of swords" and "tactical depth" in one sentence

[Nightdawg]

Restore the cost of "Sword Storm" to 2 coins. This ability previously allowed for organized, formation-based combat, which added new tactical depth and a better PvP experience;

In World 14 one of my fellow villagers wanted to spar me to figure out a nice 1v1 deck. His stats were a bit higher. This was before we unlocked bronze, we had leather armors, a shield, and knives.

While talking about 1v1 decks, I told him about how stupid OP "Go for the jugular" would be in this low-armor stage (world 14 was the first world that timegated hard metal). Unarmed attacks already had a 30 or 40% armor penetration, compared to the lower percentage weapons do. On top of this, "Go for the jugular" was consuming 2 Initiative Points, while opening Red and Green. The move itself used to deal damage to Red and Green openings, so it was basically endlessly opening for itself. The only decent move to deal with the Red opening was Zig-Zag, which restored 2 IP (what luck, just as much as you need to use Jugular). Problem was, Jugular opened GREEN as well, so you're only pressing ONE BUTTON and you're just winning.

He did not win that spar, I did.

This worked in bigger fights too, and it did not require any formation-based tactics, it requires pressing ONE BUTTON (remember this, ONE. BUTTON.) The only thing you needed to communicate was who you're attacking, calling the target and pressing one button. ONE BUTTON!

Moving forward to World 15, the same group realised they don't need to use their brains when fighting a much larger group. Instead, they could just use swords, press "Storm of Swords" on a *RANDOM* target, and they would hit 3-5 people with it regardless. Storm of Swords required 2 IP, and it opened Yellow. The move was basically endlessly opening for itself. The only decent move to deal with the huge Yellow opening was Zig-Zag, which restored 2 IP (what luck, just as much as you need to use Storm of Swords). See a pattern here? All you had to do was press ONE BUTTON. Compared to Jugular, you didn't even need to communicate who you're targeting, cause you'd eventually hit a bunch of random people and open them for 30 yellow.


There's no "tactical depth and a better PvP experience" when you have 10+ people pressing one button on random targets lol

[Luno]

Restore the cost of "Sword Storm" to 2 coins. This ability previously allowed for organized, formation-based combat, which added new tactical depth and a better PvP experience; in its current state, it’s just another dead ability.

HAHAHAH YES

make cleave AoE for more organized formation-based tactical depth pls.

[Vert]

Restore the cost of "Sword Storm" to 2 coins. This ability previously allowed for organized, formation-based combat, which added new tactical depth and a better PvP experience;

In World 14 one of my fellow villagers wanted to spar me to figure out a nice 1v1 deck. His stats were a bit higher. This was before we unlocked bronze, we had leather armors, a shield, and knives.

While talking about 1v1 decks, I told him about how stupid OP "Go for the jugular" would be in this low-armor stage (world 14 was the first world that timegated hard metal). Unarmed attacks already had a 30 or 40% armor penetration, compared to the lower percentage weapons do. On top of this, "Go for the jugular" was consuming 2 Initiative Points, while opening Red and Green. The move itself used to deal damage to Red and Green openings, so it was basically endlessly opening for itself. The only decent move to deal with the Red opening was Zig-Zag, which restored 2 IP (what luck, just as much as you need to use Jugular). Problem was, Jugular opened GREEN as well, so you're only pressing ONE BUTTON and you're just winning.

He did not win that spar, I did.

This worked in bigger fights too, and it did not require any formation-based tactics, it requires pressing ONE BUTTON (remember this, ONE. BUTTON.) The only thing you needed to communicate was who you're attacking, calling the target and pressing one button. ONE BUTTON!

Moving forward to World 15, the same group realised they don't need to use their brains when fighting a much larger group. Instead, they could just use swords, press "Storm of Swords" on a *RANDOM* target, and they would hit 3-5 people with it regardless. Storm of Swords required 2 IP, and it opened Yellow. The move was basically endlessly opening for itself. The only decent move to deal with the huge Yellow opening was Zig-Zag, which restored 2 IP (what luck, just as much as you need to use Storm of Swords). See a pattern here? All you had to do was press ONE BUTTON. Compared to Jugular, you didn't even need to communicate who you're targeting, cause you'd eventually hit a bunch of random people and open them for 30 yellow.


There's no "tactical depth and a better PvP experience" when you have 10+ people pressing one button on random targets lol

*Storm of Swords* opens up the yellow slot, meaning *Zig Zag* isn’t strictly necessary for defense against it; you could swap in a different ability—one that doesn’t grant a "coin"—which would force the defenders to press two buttons instead of one.
A better topic for discussion is why you’re all standing so close together, leaving yourselves vulnerable to AoE damage. It’s because you want to focus all your attacks on a single target, and *Storm of Swords* serves as a punishment for that. Sure, it might have been overtuned, but not because it countered your focus-fire strategy—rather, it’s because no one bothered to find alternative abilities to counter it. The solution would be to introduce new abilities that address this, or to make bows effective against groups of enemies standing close together.
The same goes for *Jugular*: it performed well at a certain stage of the game, but its effectiveness drops off as you progress. Again, you bring up *Zig Zag*, but what about *Yield Ground*? It covers the red-green slot without granting any "coins."

Looking at these two abilities now, I honestly don’t see what purpose they serve—much like many others in the game.

Ko people at start of the game with red is ok i suppose?

[Potjeh]

Nightdawg's got a point, and I'd like to see devs take it further and make it so no attack opens for itself. Quick Barrage spam is lame.

[azrid]

Nightdawg's got a point, and I'd like to see devs take it further and make it so no attack opens for itself. Quick Barrage spam is lame.

No.
Keep the things we like using and nerf the things we don't like using.

[The_Lich_King]

Everyone wants to reform pvp to save the game but pvp is not the problem with the game in spite of everyone on both sides blaming it for the gamestate (i.e. one side complaining its too easy and the other complaining its too hard.)

Right now there is literally a private server with out pvp (W16) and the gane is still chugging along... pvp is not the issue and energy should not be dedicated towards it.

I think right now is it no longer feels rewarding to be a solo player or 2-3 person village which made up the bulk of the player base. Feels like progression is extremely tedious which benefits only large villages with bots... markets feel less lively and fun.

I don't have any fixes, I never got a bachelor's in game design, I have no idea how to fix the game but I do know that the problem is not pvp.

[Detharon]

Nightdawg's got a point, and I'd like to see devs take it further and make it so no attack opens for itself. Quick Barrage spam is lame.

Nobody fights with a quick barrage spam though, when you have KITO that opens much more and costs just 1 IP. The move itself is viable in PvP in certain situations and pretty useful in PvE though. If it gets nerfed then nobody will ever use it and there'll be even less viable variants of cleave decks.

The problem is that a lot of moves are totally useless, storm of swords is one of them. Once it was nerfed, I've never seen anyone using it in PvP, the 4 IP cost is just insane. It's even worse in PvE, you'll never get enough IPs while fighting animals. So, storm of swords, that was indeed OP once, was nerfed to the point of being completely unusable.

Balancing is an art, it needs time and many gradual changes, not a revolution. Haven isn't a good game in that regard, because every world, 90% of PvP players eventually just use a b12 with a cleave deck.

[The_Lich_King]

Nightdawg's got a point, and I'd like to see devs take it further and make it so no attack opens for itself. Quick Barrage spam is lame.

Nobody fights with a quick barrage spam though, when you have KITO that opens much more and costs just 1 IP. The move itself is viable in PvP in certain situations and pretty useful in PvE though. If it gets nerfed then nobody will ever use it and there'll be even less viable variants of cleave decks.

The problem is that a lot of moves are totally useless, storm of swords is one of them. Once it was nerfed, I've never seen anyone using it in PvP, the 4 IP cost is just insane. It's even worse in PvE, you'll never get enough IPs while fighting animals. So, storm of swords, that was indeed OP once, was nerfed to the point of being completely unusable.

Balancing is an art, it needs time and many gradual changes, not a revolution. Haven isn't a good game in that regard, because every world, 90% of PvP players eventually just use a b12 with a cleave deck.

Its hard to not make the game incentivize this though. When you can only kill someone by overkilling so much it reduces hhp to 0, people will exclusively use abilities that have the biggest 1 hits. I think they should allow finishing someone off on the ground if they are close enough to you in stats... at least pop would finally have more stakes.

[Nightdawg]

*Storm of Swords* opens up the yellow slot, meaning *Zig Zag* isn’t strictly necessary for defense against it; you could swap in a different ability—one that doesn’t grant a "coin"—which would force the defenders to press two buttons instead of one.
A better topic for discussion is why you’re all standing so close together, leaving yourselves vulnerable to AoE damage. It’s because you want to focus all your attacks on a single target, and *Storm of Swords* serves as a punishment for that. Sure, it might have been overtuned, but not because it countered your focus-fire strategy—rather, it’s because no one bothered to find alternative abilities to counter it. The solution would be to introduce new abilities that address this, or to make bows effective against groups of enemies standing close together.
The same goes for *Jugular*: it performed well at a certain stage of the game, but its effectiveness drops off as you progress. Again, you bring up *Zig Zag*, but what about *Yield Ground*? It covers the red-green slot without granting any "coins."

Looking at these two abilities now, I honestly don’t see what purpose they serve—much like many others in the game.

Ko people at start of the game with red is ok i suppose?

I see you're using em dashes, so I'm assuming you're asking chatGPT to argue for something you have no experience with. I won't try to argue with you any more. The AI is kind of arguing against itself at this point, by bringing up "formation-based tactics" in the first place, but now asking "why are you all standing so close together". This also happens in literally any fight that involves more than 3 people. But the AI doesn't have PvP experience, so it's just assuming things.

I will just answer your questions:

- Dropping Zig Zag for Jump means you need 5 points thrown into a defense move that only helps against that one attack.
- Yield Ground opens blue and yellow, you're hurting yourself here unless used against one very specific deck.
- For the old Jugular, given the stats changes and spiraling changes, you would eventually end up using it rather than cleave, because the armor penetration and Strength-Armor difference is too big. This can even be seen with Knock It's Teeth Out. At some point the world has q500 armor and 3000+ Str characters. Spamming KITO brainlessly is just better than trying to get a big cleave, just because of the armor penetration.

Nightdawg's got a point, and I'd like to see devs take it further and make it so no attack opens for itself. Quick Barrage spam is lame.

Quick barrage has its downsides:
- Low openings
- Doesn't give IP unless target already has 25+ red
- IT FUELS Bloodlust and Combat Meditation like crazy. I can't stress this enough, if you have one idiot on your side fueling a competent enemy fighter that has Combat Meditation, that fighter can 1v3 you.

Storm of Swords is slow, and you can easily remove a large yellow opening using Zig Zag.