Gamebreaking mechanics at high-level-play: Defensive Invulnerability | Forums

[Robbeeeen]

After playing the beta, both theory and practice support the thesis that the following mechanic will possibly (and at ultra-high-level very probably) lead to potentially breaking the 1v1 Duel bracket. ALL other brackets do not have this issue.


Defensive Invulnerability. Should a player chose to only Parry, Dodge and Block, he will become invulnerable to any damage, if playing perfectly. Since every possible scenario in which a player can receive damage is telegraphed (and well within margins of human reaction time), it is possible for a player to never receive damage, should he chose to never attack.

How:

1) Basic attacks are telegraphed and can be blocked or parried.

2) Guardbreaks are telegraphed and can be counter-guardbroken.

two points many people are missing:
3) Feints are telegraphed and can be told apart from regular heavy attacks. With enough practice a player can tell when another player performs an actual heavy attack or a feint. This is due to the fact that the red reticule starts to blink when an attack is parriable - it does not do this when a player is feinting. And yes, it is very possible to get this right every time - many players already get this right the majority of time and the game is barely a weekend old. Imagine pro-players after weeks or months of practice.

4) Falling for a feint is cancellable in time to block an attack. EVEN if a player falls for a feint, the startup of the heavy attack that was supposed to be a parry is cancellable in time to perform a block or parry on the followup attack of the enemy.
Scenario: Player A feints a heavy attack. Player B falls for the feint and presses heavy attack himself, wanting to parry. Player A cancels his heavy attack and follows up with light attack. Player B sees the very noticeable cancel-animation and reacts in time to block the light attack. Even is the light attack comes from a different direction.


3) and 4) are too easy to perform on a regular basis. The mechanic that was supposed to make "not attacking" not viable (feinting) is too weak. At the absolute least, it should be impossible to perform 4 - this might allow enough room for mistakes to accumulate and damage to be dealt.

However - if somebody doesnt even attempt to parry and only tries to block, aiming to achieve a tie, he will have a VERY easy time doing this. Should a player get a 1 point lead in a match, he can chose to only block and evade any unblockables and the remaining matches will end in a tie.


Possible solutions:

0) Heavies shouldn't be cancelled into feints so early in the animation. It shouldn't be possible to prevent feinting a parry into a block. The cancel should happen at least a couple of frames later.

1) Increase chip-damage from blocked heavy attacks significantly to punish repeated blocking without aggression. The player with more health at the end of the round wins to prevent ties. Simple fix for pure defense-only. Possibly introduce accumulating stamina-drain after repeated blocks to the same player to prevent still possible griefing and encourage active play even more.
Also makes feints more believable.

2) Remove guaranteed GB after parry - possibly the most frustrating way to reward parries and the only truly uncounterable mechanic in the game. At high-level play the biggest source of frustration. At low-level and mid-level play essentially the same as regular GB, which is just as hard to counter for a new player as getting a parry is. Biggest source of the strength of defence - most reliable and risk-free source of damage is tied to a defensive move (the parry).

3) To compensate for 2, because parrying should be rewarded highly (for gameplay-reasons), make next attack after parrying unblockable. This would actually result in the kinds of exchanges that are fun to have and fun to watch, parries going back and forth until someone messes up or runs out of stamina. It would also increase the importance of stamina, since you cant back out of these exchanges to regen it, without risking to get GB from your dodge. If the importance of stamina would be increased, such as regeneration lowered or counter guardbreaking while fatigued impossible, the stamina drain from parrying and the higher chipdamage from heavyattacks might already be enough reason to still encourage parrying, even without the unblockable attack suggested here.

4) Lower the stamina-cost of feints. A move that encourages high-level play and a varied offense, while not hurting the new-player experience in any way and is not frustrating in any way should not be punished this severely. A move that encourages activity in a game that currently favors defence should not be punished this severely.


These, to my eye, don't hurt the new-player experience in any way and only affect high-level gameplay in a positive way, encouraging an exchange of blows.

[YOGZULA]

Blocking costing stamina might work, but I think a simpler solution is to make parries techable. You get parried, you are given a window to tech is just like anything else so that you are not vulnerable to guaranteed damage afterward. The real problem with defensive play is that it is rewarded with unblockable damage. I would be fine with a game where defense play is rewarded with not taking damage. If parrying didn't exist, it wouldn't be a goof strategy to play super defensively. Sure, you might still be able to run down the block, but you'll never WIN doing it. You leave yourself the chance to make mistakes and take damage, whereas your opponent never will unless you attempt to attack.

Parrying is simply far too powerful of a mechanic and needs to stop rewarding free damage.

[DSD_Breaker]

With this kind of threads popping up already over the whole forum. I agree.

While it is no problem when people are still learning the game, it will for sure be a problem when people get better. Since many players are already parring a lot of attacks, I guess this point will be reached very soon after release, making duels very slow and boring. Of course feinting is an option, but at some point, like you say, it will also not be enough anymore.

A simple way to resolve this issue is to make blocking cost more and more stamina after each performed block without performing an attack in return.
The value at which this debuff accumulates should of course be different depending on the character and entirely disabled in modes where a 1vX scenario is possible.

I like this idea. Like you mention it has to be implemented in a way which does not penalize 1vX situations (which in my opinion is easy, just reset the buff when a different player is blocked.)

[TCTF_SWAT]

Heavy attacks cause chip damage and you gain a 3 block stance when you're hit. It's to prevent easily dominating someone when outnumbered. Otherwise If there was a 2+v1 situation the lone player would never win. Or at the very least have a .5 to 1% chance of winning.

[Ryumanjisen]

Sadly, this is completely true.

I don't think the solution is making the blocks to cost stamina. I think the best way is to make the guard break impossible to counter on reaction, kinda like a classic fighting game. Make the gb startup faster and the frame window for the counter sooner, that way if you want to counter a guard break, you're comitting to make one... and the opponent can punish you with a light attack.

It's just a matter of rock/papers/scissors. But, right now, at high level play, we're playing Street Fighter without throws and chip damage: you can virtually block everything and not losing a single slice of your lifebar.

[Robbeeeen]

I don't think the solution is making the blocks to cost stamina. I think the best way is to make the guard break impossible to counter on reaction, kinda like a classic fighting game. Make the gb startup faster and the frame window for the counter sooner, that way if you want to counter a guard break, you're comitting to make one... and the opponent can punish you with a light attack.
.

This will make the "Heavy" classes unplayable. Swing-times of light-attacks or too long for them.

[Kintoun]

TLDR; this game isn't actually rock, paper, scissors.

The odd thing is many fighting games have already solved this problem. Why not model this game after them?

[TCTF_SWAT]

Sadly, this is completely true.

I don't think the solution is making the blocks to cost stamina. I think the best way is to make the guard break impossible to counter on reaction, kinda like a classic fighting game. Make the gb startup faster and the frame window for the counter sooner, that way if you want to counter a guard break, you're comitting to make one... and the opponent can punish you with a light attack.

It's just a matter of rock/papers/scissors. But, right now, at high level play, we're playing Street Fighter without throws and chip damage: you can virtually block everything and not losing a single slice of your lifebar.

Heavy attacks cause chip damage. Also Bezerskers Gb throw causes a small amount of damage as well.

[Robbeeeen]

Heavy attacks cause chip damage. Also Bezerskers Gb throw causes a small amount of damage as well.

Currently, the amount of "chip damage" you receive if laughable. You would need to eat dozens of full heavy-attacks to remove a bar. Also, you cannot die from this damage because your last bar regenerates to full if you havent taken any damage in a while.

[YOGZULA]

Are you sure heavy attacks deal chip damage? Doesn't seem that way at all. I'm only aware of a perk that Conq unlocks that allows his heavies to do chip damage, but if you weren't claiming right now that all heavies do chip damage i'd be certain that they didn't.