Parrying and deflecting make defense far too rewarding | Forums

[CaptainPwnet]

You only made this thread cause you don't have skill enough to feint attacks to punish someone playing defensive. People already solved this problem on how to deal with defensive players. There is no reason to change the game to suit lower level play.

Sorry but feints are only marginally more useful for mixup as opposed to attacking raw. The hard feint window on heavies is so strict and early in the startup of the attack that you don't need to react to that attack at all until much later since the feint window is so far apart from the block/parry window. It's not as if the attack after the feint is any faster than normal.

But some soft feints work ok, like PK GB cancel on heavy attack startup can catch people off guard although you should be able to react to the GB as normal. PK also has a light attack stab soft feint on heavy startup as well. Raider can soft feint into his butt end hit stun which is useful until your opponent realizes that attack only comes from top. But not all characters have these and they are of varying degrees of usefulness.

Some unblockables work well for pressure, like WL headbutt cheese, warden shoulder bash works well as you can feint it and catch dodges with GB(which they can't counter in this case). But again not all characters have access to unblockables, much less good ones.

But regardless of if it's an issue or not. Granting good damage for purely defensive play is bad game design. It will make the game more boring as time goes on as people don't so much as fight but poke at each other slowly or just have feint battles lol. In a competitive fighting game one should always be required to take appropriate risks on offense to win. Winning on defensive play alone is just really bad for a balanced fun gameplay.

[MonyBichesHonr]

Yes, defensive play is a real problem.

For non-assassins, there are 3 inputs they need to guard against - the guard break, and attacks from the two directions in which they are not currently blocking. For assassins, there are 4, because they need to make an input to guard against attacks from the current direction their stance is also.

I have played this game for 3 days only, and I can already pretty much block every attack from any class if they are not utilizing guard breaks, at the time the beta ended. But guard breaks only then add one more possible input I need to look out for, and it will become easy as I play this game over a far longer period of time as it was structured to allow. Unless something is done, players who are regulars on this game really will become so adept at defense that they can become fully invincible if they choose.

Here is a list of possible solutions I could come up with, some exclusive, some that can be implemented in combination with others, in no particular order:

1. In addition to feinting, allow all attacks to be held and slowed by a split second, executed by holding the button(s) when using the attack, rather than tapping it. When an attack is thusly slowed, it should bypass attempts to parry or deflect, but not attempts to block. Because parrying and deflecting are defensive maneuvers that guarantees damage, it should ONLY be useful to shut down people who are attacking predictably. It should never have been a one-size-fits-all response to anything but a guard break. It is already unsafe to block all attacks, as the game has unblockables and heavy attacks with chip damage, but this change would also make it unsafe to parry or deflect all attacks, which almost doubles the number of inputs a player adept at parrying will have to look out against (since this change would not affect guard breaks)

2. Players attacking you from the side should require you to block from their side OR block upward if they use top attacks. This makes it more difficult for one person to survive against many opponents until he can fill up his revenge mode.

3. Defensive actions like Parrying, blocking, guard break canceling and dodging should generally cost more stamina than offensive actions. This is how the Souls games shut down players who are too defensive. I would add on top of this, to cause characters to take chip damage from all attacks while out of stamina.

4. Make guard breaks uncancelable. The guard break should always have been a way to ensure that the player actually pressing buttons has an advantage, but since it is telegraphed and cancelable in the current game, all it means right now is another way for a player to take light attack damage - making there be 3 inputs for most classes to defend against (4 for assassins). There is already a way in this game where a player can punish a guard break, by attacking, so this does not make guard breaks overpowered, players merely have to guess when the opponent will cease poking and attempt to guard break. This counter system has already existed in many 2D fighting games where throws are instant, but overridden by strikes. With this change, some characters who gain a lot of value on guard breaks (Peacekeeper, for instance) will need to be rebalanced.

5. The current paradigm with light attack chains is to make the first attack in the chain fairly slow, and then the second attack comes out fairly fast (see kensei, raider, nobushi), sometimes being unblockably fast (Warden, Orochi). It should be reversed so that the first attack is fast and the second attack is slow. This allows poking light attacks to approach closer to a 50% chance of gaining advantage (or 66% against assassins). A player may leave his attack at the poke or go for a mixup on the second attack.

6. Attacks that come directly from behind you cannot be blocked at all. This will not cure the problem of defensive play in duels, but would incentivize creating local numbers advantages in other game modes when the current game is actually DISincentivizing it among high-skilled players.