Please stop trying to "fix" the combat

[Leshma]

Tactical aptitude is a 'skill' just like twitch reflexes. Up combat speed, and you over-emphasize the twitch reflex skill while under-emphasizing good tactics. I think the current combat speed strikes a good balance between the two. Up the combat speed, and whichever team lucks into getting the one guy with Jedi-like reflexes is nearly assured victory. The slow combat speed puts a cap on how much impact those Jedi can have on the overall battle, allowing a team with superior tactics but inferior reflexes to have a chance.

Increased combat speed could result in every battle being "autoresolved" just based on whichever team has the best ping values. Do you want that?

We need more of both, more twitch reflex tricks and more mind tricks. Because in the end everyone will become good at everything and game will become boring as hell.

But I agree that mind wins over muscle and that smart play is a lot more important than twitch reflex.

[Vodner]

Up the combat speed, and whichever team lucks into getting the one guy with Jedi-like reflexes is nearly assured victory.

A group of players can kill an individual player regardless of how fast the game speed is. A single player isn't going to kill forty other players.

Either way, if one team has a bunch good players, and the other team doesn't, then the latter team should lose most of their rounds. The autobalance ideally should prevent situations like this from being commonplace, however.

Increased combat speed could result in every battle being "autoresolved" just based on whichever team has the best ping values. Do you want that?

Native 'faster' speed is perfectly playable at 80 ping. There really isn't much point in balancing the game past that point.

[Phew]

Many of us quickly reach a cap where continued practice does not improve our 1v1 combat ability; our reflexes and hand-eye coordination simply do not allow further improvement. I understand that for an elite few, that cap is not imposed by their reflexes, but by the game mechanics.

When I hit my reflex cap, I just decided to focus on improving my tactical awareness. So I respecced to shield (to help overcome my reflex handicap), and now focus on being in the right place at the right time.

There are several 'Jedi' duelists that usually provide zero contribution to their team's objectives. Perhaps they should focus on honing their tactical awareness instead of mastering the latest abuse of melee mechanics (hiltslash, spinthrust, etc).

For those of you that have mastered both the twitch reflex and tactical awareness elements of this game: Congrats, you won the game. Now let the other 99% of us try to improve and have fun at the current combat speed.

[Teeth]

Been playing for a year, still improving.

[duurrr]

Many of us quickly reach a cap where continued practice does not improve our 1v1 combat ability; our reflexes and hand-eye coordination simply do not allow further improvement. I understand that for an elite few, that cap is not imposed by their reflexes, but by the game mechanics.

When I hit my reflex cap, I just decided to focus on improving my tactical awareness. So I respecced to shield (to help overcome my reflex handicap), and now focus on being in the right place at the right time.

There are several 'Jedi' duelists that usually provide zero contribution to their team's objectives. Perhaps they should focus on honing their tactical awareness instead of mastering the latest abuse of melee mechanics (hiltslash, spinthrust, etc).

For those of you that have mastered both the twitch reflex and tactical awareness elements of this game: Congrats, you won the game. Now let the other 99% of us try to improve and have fun at the current combat speed.

When i play on siege i rarely go for flag (unless really necessary)

i just have way more fun trying to fight other smaller scale fights then just zerging everyone at the flag down ;) going for objectives isnt always the most fun thing even thought getting pixel xp is fun for some people 

[Vodner]

Many of us quickly reach a cap where continued practice does not improve our 1v1 combat ability; our reflexes and hand-eye coordination simply do not allow further improvement

This is a cop-out. Even at 'faster' speed, the reaction time required is still nowhere close to human limits. The vast, vast majority of players are perfectly capable of becoming really good given enough practice.

[cmp]

This is a cop-out.

Exactly like claiming that you can duel anyone indefinitely.

[a_bear_irl]

that's saulcanner, he can

probably the top 10% of players can block standard attacks indefinitely at this point, maybe occasionally falling for a hold or weird feint, the top ~3% have to be gangbanged or they don't die

basically the problem with the direction combat is heading is that it's becoming easier and easier to not die, duels between good players last forever, and there's not really a point to doing anything other than basic attacks, footwork and hoping someone else can get a poke in while he's blocking you.

[cmp]

that's saulcanner, he can

I've seen him lose against EU players, on the NA duel server, so no, I don't think so.

[Miley]

I don't remember what was wrong with last patch.

[Vodner]

I've seen him lose against EU players, on the NA duel server, so no, I don't think so.

I've also beaten quite a few EU players on the EU server

Either way, when I die, it's usually because I've gotten bored and decided to take a risk which didn't pay off. I'll either go for a chamber, or go for a double-swing, or try to outrange the other guy. If I play defensively, I (and a great many other players; this isn't a difficult thing to do) can pretty much drag the duel out for a good minute and a half at least.

[Kafein]

that's saulcanner, he can

probably the top 10% of players can block standard attacks indefinitely at this point

Until you fall asleep, that is.

Personally, I have the delightment of still having things to learn and improve quite fast, and the nostalgia of the long gone days I could keep up with the best. Worse yet, I used to really like everything about warband melee combat, but hiltslashes, spam and over-footwork is polluting it more and more, at least in cRPG.

What we need isn't making the game faster, it's making blocking harder. The average player developped his blocking skill way over what was intended when Taleworlds released the game. It will be quite interesting to watch how this issue will be resolved in M&B 2. They'll have to both make it possible for newcomers to start playing multiplayer together with the experienced population, and fix the problems that emerged with the increase in skill on warband. If they do not, they'll risk either alienating their fanbase, or making the game prohibitively hard for new players. And it will probably be a very complicated issue that will require a lot of creativity from the developpers.

I don't think simply increasing the speed will fix anything. EU_1 already has trouble keeping up with 100 players. Furthermore, it won't shift the melee towards blocks/feints again, since movement will be faster too. The only positive effect I see is making it harder for ranged to track targets.

[Tydeus]

Tactical aptitude is a 'skill' just like twitch reflexes. Up combat speed, and you over-emphasize the twitch reflex skill while under-emphasizing good tactics.

When I hit my reflex cap, I just decided to focus on improving my tactical awareness. So I respecced to shield (to help overcome my reflex handicap), and now focus on being in the right place at the right time.

Twitch? I was unaware cRPG was a Quake mod. Reflex cap? That's your excuse for giving up on bettering your abilities? Pretty shitty reason, that's not to say that everyone has to take M&B/cRPG seriously and duel for at least an hour a day, but you might as well come up with an actual reason for your laziness. Median human reaction time to visual stimuli is about 215ms.

http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php

From Waltf4's post, you can estimate that a full swing with 100 wpf and a 93 speed weapon (Greatsword speed) that the full swing would take about 1.08 seconds on a thrust, which is your fastest swing. Counting the chamber animation and the time it takes to get far enough into the swing to actually do damage, you're looking at a good 400ms at least, to block the swing, more for side slashes and overheads. That's not even close to "twitch" speeds. http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,2531.0.html

[Xant]

Yeah, M&B doesn't really require good reflexes. At least on medium combat speed in native and c-RPG. More about having the correct reactions.

[a_bear_irl]

I've seen him lose against EU players, on the NA duel server, so no, I don't think so.

you kinda missed the point, the point wasn't to argue about how good saul is but that  two very good players can extend duels for a very long time, because of a combination of increasing player skill (which is basically unavoidable, play a game for a long time and you get better at it) and decreasing "ceiling" through combat slowdowns. to keep the game "challenging" you either have to make it more complex (lots of shit to master, takes longer) which i don't think is really possible since you're locked into 4 directions, or make it faster, since past a certain speed you can't physically  keep up, as you approach that speed more mistakes get made and the "ceiling" is raised.