what about footwork balance?

[Kajia]

I really like 2-handed weapons including polearms.
I really hate how they work in this game/mod though.
surely many will agree, some will disagree, some will say they're heard this all before. they're all right.

now after playing some few rounds on siege and battle, some thought came to mind, and I'd say it's time again to make another suggestion on how to improve those mechanics we all love.

the problem being today: ACCELERATION
2h and polearm users have a natural advantage because of their reach + turning speed => which makes for a bigger area where reasonable damage can be applied to a target (mostly with side-wings, although poking and turning is also not unheard of). ON TOP OF THAT they also have the usual acceleration from athletics that pretty much all characters want to invest at least some points in.

but what happens when you combine high athletics (7+) with a long 2-handed weapon like GS or miadao or glaive or even bardiche? you will be 1st: able to easily backpedal out of any 1-handers reach and 2nd: able to out-maneuver everybody else in the side-step fashion way too easily (which is fucking ridiculous to look at) without any loss of damage. now you might argue that you can still block the swings -- but, you have to admit that 1st: 1-handers have simply no chance to counter the backpedaling, especially with shields, as they make you slow and 1-handers are too short, and 2nd: there is _no good way_ to behave defensive against side-stepping from a 2-hander/polearm on steroids (that is 7+ athletics). note how I said "no good way", because it isn't impossible to beat them, but you just have to be either lucky, or team up (while trying to not make it easier for them (!) ) -- or use a long weapon like them, but that is kinda against the spirit of having so many other weapons to choose from, right?

no, I hold no grudge against PEOPLE who use such tactics.
my main has throwing lances and I know how to use them (minus the team hits), especially to counter such fairies, BUT I also rage a lot against the sheer stupidity of this mechanic, as it negates all the footwork I can do as a 1-hander with already 5 ath, not even accounting for the fact that shields always get bypassed too this way (which I find almost agreeable). and I don't want to talk about "realism" here, so just from a "fun" perspective, the question:
is this fun for the majority of players?

well, I would expect the answers to be around 35% "yes", as quite a lot of people play 2-handed and love to shift like flies around the pie, but MOST people (about 65%) will probably answer "no", even if they themselves have played 2h/polearm before, like I did. like I said, I like 2-handed, just not in this game. here is a picture to prove I actually played it:

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

and here is some other handsome chap I have drawn just because I like 2-handed: (did I mention that before?)

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

(just included this to actually illustrate my point, that is to make this less of a wall of text. and because I can.
yeah, it's not an action picture with footwork, but I wanna ask you to go ahead and imagine that yourself)


But like I said I got a simple solution to this problem, and it's not even discriminating to any class in particular: (yeah, listen to that!)
1.  cap (normal state) effective athletics at 5 globally; this becomes a reasonable close-combat moving speed and acceleration
2.  introduce a sprinting mechanic, which would be a short (5s ?) bonus of 3+additional athletics added to the basic ath, triggered at double tapping W, and only allocated when moving forward (W-key positive) (implementation should be possible as we also have the shield bonus thing, and nudge)
3.  dedicate all the additional athletics (converted from what current characters have above the 5-ath-margin) to the sprint effect length, possibly cooldown reduction, and sprint acceleration
4.  bonus: _maybe_ remove or reduce the risen-shield-debuff on moving speed for those shields lower than 4 in weight, or something

more ideas about sprint: make it a good investment for ranged who drop their bows and people who need to move around a lot, like 2-handers and polearms, who are needed in critical situations quite often; also good for steamrolling in packs, and/or shieldbash (?)
sprint would become some kind of jumpstart for faster mid-range engagement and helps to streamline some early game up-hill pilgrimages and stuff. the lower walking speed will help players re-evaluate their footwork and add some depth there. all in all I reckon seperating walking from running will make the game a lot more dynamic and believable.


NOW I expect to receive a lot of bullshit hate from e-peeners who don't quite get the idea of balancing for slightly more equal chances in footwork, but I also expect that people actually think about it, as it is quite doable. additionally I would find it rather amusing if this gets implemented and 2-handed +3 weps like GS and miadao and whatnot lose a lot of value on the market. bummer, but I then would actually buy one if I had the gold, because I would enjoy fighting with them a lot more, seriously. I would also feel like it's a chance for the heroes to be heroes again. don't you think?

I would also understand if the devs are not over the moon about it as it probably means rebalancing some weapons. I don't think we need it, but high agi/ath users may want to be buffed in other ways again. ah well, let them have it. less walking speed would be a nerf for high-ath-shielders too, so yeah.

[Huey Newton]

Kill yourself

[Bothersome_Aldryk]

All I can really say is my god, please don't make this game even slower. It's absolutely possible to play this game with less than 7 athletics, as a onehander, two hander, polearm, thrower, or even a goddamn archer. The only reason to prevent people from moving quickly is not because you move slowly, but because your footwork is terrible. Nowadays I've mostly been playing as a 1h shielder with 24/15 str/agi. Have I had massive issues with people outranging me all the time? Not really, because I'm aware of the fact that my range is lower and I actually wait till I'm close to swing, most of the time.

When backing up, you're quite a bit slower than a person holding W. The primary issue at that point is actually getting kicked, not the enemy getting out of range(Assuming you aren't just swinging away the entire time.). Now, will you often have to block twice before you get to swing? Yes, but I can generally live with that. If they're backpedalling with a bardiche or what have you, you can just switch to manual blocks so as not to get your shield destroyed.

[Jona]

After reading this, I am 99% sure that your 1hander must be a plate crutching str whore.

With only 5 athletics on my shielder I never had any problem catching up to backpedallers. W-keying is far faster than S-keying.

And since I do play as an 8 ath polearmer, I have to say, you can't simply walk left, right, or back and never block. I use the ath bonus so my W-keying allows for better flanking of opponenets. And I also hate walking around... so the faster I walk the faster I get to the fight.

(click to show/hide)

QQ str is underpowered buff str QQ

[Radament]

was watching some chivalry features and i liked some of them , the first part is pretty much useless for warband (combos , parry , feinting etc) but the intersting part starts from attack phases to stamina (i know you hate stamina but fu i loved chivalry only cause people coudn't spam like mad and they need to think before attack) , take a look at chase feature too , interesting thing.

sorry for the OT , OP
dunno about your polearms problem , i'm a shielder and the only thing i know about polearms is backpedalling , spam , kick , dead , that's why i would love a stamina feature in crpg (

[Radament]

After reading this, I am 99% sure that your 1hander must be a plate crutching str whore.

With only 5 athletics on my shielder I never had any problem catching up to backpedallers. W-keying is far faster than S-keying.

And since I do play as an 8 ath polearmer, I have to say, you can't simply walk left, right, or back and never block. I use the ath bonus so my W-keying allows for better flanking of opponenets. And I also hate walking around... so the faster I walk the faster I get to the fight.

(click to show/hide)

QQ str is underpowered buff str QQ

i have 5 ath on my shielder and i really can't facehug a polearm with 8 ath if he continues to backpedal and spam (straight line) :/
maybe your enemies don't spam when backpedalling dunno.

[Kelugarn]

Unless this polearm is 18/24 6ps 6 IF 8 ath you shouldn't have a problem taking down a 8 ath polearm user. If you find you can't catch him then don't play his game, back off and force him to break his rhythm to keep attacking. Trying to push on won't always work and if you're having problems then it's time to rethink your play style.
Or stop caring about how you do and then stop worrying.

[Tydeus]

I could see a sprint mechanic that benefits melee more than anyone else, then reducing ammo weight since it'd no longer be necessary. Other than that, bleh. Thanks for throwing your ideas out there though, especially knowing most people wouldn't be on board.

[San]

If you have a shield, it's essentially subtracting nearly 1 ath against anyone else you're fighting. 5ath is barely enough to scratch by. You really need to optimize your weight and look at your equipment. It seems to me that you just have too much weight of stuff. If you want to use a 1h cut weapon, however, you need a decent amount of powerstrike (7+ or 6 with a lot of wpf) to even deal good damage against loomed medium armor and good gloves. That's why lower level shielder builds tend to be mediocre since they don't have all the stats that they need if they don't want to sacrifice power or speed. By level 33, they can make very effective 18/21, 24/18, etc. builds that make them very strong. I don't think there needs to be a sprint feature and add more complications to the game, but take another look at shield weight. I can't understand the use for a sprint mechanic when the person you're chasing can also sprint.

At 30, I found it easier just to go 1h no shield, since 18/18 shielder sounds too disappointing to play, and 21/15 just experiences the problems you described in the OP. Oddly, the best performance for a lvl 30 1h for me was an agi build of 15/24 with both a cut weapon and blunt weapon, depending on the situation. 1h weapons are 1 slot, so carrying multiple weapons makes use of that versatility. Blunt weapons against armor doesn't need that much PS to perform well, so cut weapons up to medium armor and blunt weapons past that worked very well.

[Paul]

An old idea is to punish those who get blocked while doing an attack with a bad (negative) speed bonus. It could come from either turning the weapon too far in or from doing sway attacks. Maybe there should be no punishment if the blocker is moving backwards himself to prevent backpaddling blockers from abusing this mechanic. The punishment would be in form of a longer attacker stun (loss of initiative while still being able to block) or in extreme cases a briefly immobilizing stagger.

The downside would of course be that this would happen a lot with friendlies around and accidently hitting them on bad angles or behind in clusterfucks. So people would have to be aware of their surroundings, especially with long wapons. Doubt that they are able to do that and they would whine in the forums instead.

Another problem is the implementation. I simply can't do it because I don't have an on_block trigger at hand. Cmp could probably do it with WSE. That means it won't happen.

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

Paul weapon stun is bad and boring enough as is...

[EyeBeat]

Instead I would like them to take a look at the jump acceleration.

People in full black armor should not be able to jump around like a monkey to make distance between themselves and others.

It negates the downside of their build which is to be SLOW but take many hits.

Make it so the more weight you carry the less distance you can jump.  OR at least jump backwards.

[Canary]

The sprinting change might make a small part of gameplay more interesting, but the way you present it it seems to be a way that may not benefit the player when he's fighting, which isn't necessarily bad, but simultaneously exchanging how effective sprinting is for the current combat effectiveness of agility-heavy melee builds would be bad.

The changes you suggest for a cap on athletics for in-fight footwork would exacerbate the already notable differences between players who put extra points in strength and those who place them in agility. It would mean that for every point in agility beyond 15 a melee player invests in, he's gimping himself in any equal-footing combat scenario against a player who put that extra point into strength instead. It would remove any of the current benefits of getting higher athletics while you are fighting, and normalize further the strength-heavy-balanced-build as the optimal build for melee fighting.

The idea is to exchange more effectiveness choosing and escaping from fights and chasing people for all around combat effectiveness by way of footwork? Even if the goal is to eliminate smarmy backpedal tactics, let's not gimp another facet of the build's playstyle just to do so!

If backpedaling is to be dealt with, and it can be a problematic and cheesy way to play, make the change deal with backpedaling directly and not just reduce the effectiveness of one skill to accomplish it. Tie a change to damage somehow, that way it's simply not effective enough for people who already sacrificed damage from stats to be able to exploit their lengthy weapons, or find a way to make it harder to do, so it's not such an easy way to take advantage of the game engine. Sacrificing the utility of better footwork for some builds because of one cheap strategy, while also normalizing what builds are best as a result, would have a serious negative impact on melee combat.

From a personal standpoint, part of what makes fighting against thrust-only weapons so fun is trying to time dodging them, particularly while using a thrust-only weapon myself. Lowering their sidestepping effectiveness would nerf agility builds hard versus pikes, long spears and hoplites specifically, on top of every other way it would hurt, and the athletics change you propose wouldn't stop pikes and their ilk from being extremely easy to cheese (as in the jump-back-turn-around-thrust technique, which works fine with low athletics -edit: like that thing EyeBeat just said).

[Macropus]

Wow, what is it? A thread to nerf agility? Holy shit!
L2P obviously.

Also please, if you have problems fighting agi 2h or polearm users as a shielder, share your build and gear with us.

[Strudog]

Instead I would like them to take a look at the jump acceleration.

People in full black armor should not be able to jump around like a monkey to make distance between themselves and others.

It negates the downside of their build which is to be SLOW but take many hits.

Make it so the more weight you carry the less distance you can jump.  OR at least jump backwards.

Then make plate somewhat viable on the battlefield, the reason plate isn't used on the EU side is because taking a lighter armour is far more profitable than taking a heavy armour like Milanese plate, its not that its expensive and people cant upkeep it (because everyone has a lot of money theses days), its just plate is rubbish. Im currently running with plate armour atm the moment  because i like the look of it, but when a person comes along and takes 60% of your health with a cut weapon it completely negates the effectiveness of plate

(click to show/hide)

Sorry for off topic