How to fix the turtling meta | Forums

[nyrue]

first off i vote remove all gear stats that's something that's been driving me crazy for a long time, but that's a different topic for a different time, anyways i propose they increase the chip damage on heavy attacks substantially, in addition you could also tighten up the timing on feints a bit, as it is now you can feint almost halfway through your swing, just on the button press though, because as it is now a convincing feint is a late feint, and they should still be convincing, and this would also make it harder to feint in response to another players feint, these two changes together would be a power combination in changing the current meta

[Maaci]

You are right that balance is the key. The problem is though that when defense is so strong that you can theoretically avoid all attacks, good players also will avoid 95% of the attacks, while simultaneously inflicting damage to the opponent as well. There is no incentive to be offensive, because defense is too strong. Hence, it needs to be nerfed.

You didnt understand what the person you quoted was saying. But anyway!

Defense doesnt need to be nerfed, offense could be buffed, or change both around. No defence should give free damage, thats cheap and none-interractive. That needs to change. Rock, paper and scissor is a really boring and bad design imo.

[Exaffect]

This isn't a hack n slash game.

[RahnuLe]

You didnt understand what the person you quoted was saying. But anyway!

Defense doesnt need to be nerfed, offense could be buffed, or change both around. No defence should give free damage, thats cheap and none-interractive. That needs to change. Rock, paper and scissor is a really boring and bad design imo.

Well, at least we can agree that defense shouldn't give free offense.

Rock-paper-scissors is pretty much how most fighting games work right now, though. Of course, unlike actual RPS you have some time to react to everything that is happening to you, but the time you have is usually much tighter than we see in For Honor right now (Peacekeeper lights aside). Perhaps light attacks across the board should be normalized to be fast enough that they're safe from parries?

The thing is, guessing what your opponent is going to do is at the heart of any decent fighting game. You shouldn't be able to react to everything as that just results in stale, boring gameplay where players are just unable to create any openings. We need to find a better middle ground than the current turtling meta versus the true rock-paper-scissors that you're concerned about.

I believe my suggestions would put us in a much better place across the board. Frankly, the game is in need of some really major mechanical changes - small changes would not be enough to truly fix things over the long haul.

[Maaci]

Well, at least we can agree that defense shouldn't give free offense.

Rock-paper-scissors is pretty much how most fighting games work right now, though. Of course, unlike actual RPS you have some time to react to everything that is happening to you, but the time you have is usually much tighter than we see in For Honor right now (Peacekeeper lights aside). Perhaps light attacks across the board should be normalized to be fast enough that they're safe from parries?

The thing is, guessing what your opponent is going to do is at the heart of any decent fighting game. You shouldn't be able to react to everything as that just results in stale, boring gameplay where players are just unable to create any openings. We need to find a better middle ground than the current turtling meta versus the true rock-paper-scissors that you're concerned about.

I believe my suggestions would put us in a much better place across the board. Frankly, the game is in need of some really major mechanical changes - small changes would not be enough to truly fix things over the long haul.

I dont like your suggestions.

I have played tekken before, and in that game you can defend against everything 100% but its still very hard.
If guardbreaks were almost not defendable it would just make this game abuseable, you would know before hand that guardbreak is what will win this game.

My suggestions are much better imo, but dont want to write them in every thread.

[Cassain]

Light attacks are easy enough to parry as it is. Good opponents also won't parry your feint, but moreover the problem is that they can avoid facing you completely. Just dodge/roll away.

1. If they don't fall for the feint bait just release the heavy as is, they can't parry if they don't parry, try to mix up your patterns.

2. If they are out of stamina they can't roll; if they do have stamina try to pressure them to roll out of stamina because rolling is punishable.

3. If they dodge try guard-breaking after a dodge since they can't counter after dodge then throw them to the ground for max damage.


Most of everything in this game is reactable and what isn't can be punished for missing ex)warden zone, valkarie jump attack (except for conq. and warden bash vortex, warden bash having 2 different cancels is a bit stupid, especially coming from me, a warden main.)

1 thing I'll give you for turtling is warlord, just block and dash-headbutt for free lights, only 3 things in this game that deserve nerfs are anything safe, free damage any attack should have a cost, anything that you avoid and can't get a free hit off of (unreactable warlord headbutt, warden shoulder bash vortex, conq bash) , any mess up should be punishable and anything should be able to be opened up given time.

[Mewsan]

You didnt understand what the person you quoted was saying. But anyway!

Defense doesnt need to be nerfed, offense could be buffed, or change both around. No defence should give free damage, thats cheap and none-interractive. That needs to change. Rock, paper and scissor is a really boring and bad design imo.

Every buff to offense is a nerf to defense and vice versa. I don't think you quite understand either how the game works at a deep level or the implications of my suggestions. I fully realize that the point of the post that I quoted was that defense has too much kill potential. My suggestions would reduce this kill potential and also buff offense by making it less risky. Nerfing the purely defensive aspects the way I described would also make offense more compelling and create more openings.

In conclusion, my primary goal is to buff offense by nerfing defense. Secondary goal is to fix the broken aspects of defense.

This isn't a hack n slash game.

Definitely not, nor does anyone want it to be. Currently, though, the gameplay at high level is very stale, because turtling is king. When you've played several duels like that, the game starts to become boring.

[Mewsan]

1. If they don't fall for the feint bait just release the heavy as is, they can't parry if they don't parry, try to mix up your patterns.

2. If they are out of stamina they can't roll; if they do have stamina try to pressure them to roll out of stamina because rolling is punishable.

3. If they dodge try guard-breaking after a dodge since they can't counter after dodge then throw them to the ground for max damage.


Most of everything in this game is reactable and what isn't can be punished for missing ex)warden zone, valkarie jump attack (except for conq. and warden bash vortex, warden bash having 2 different cancels is a bit stupid, especially coming from me, a warden main.)

1 thing I'll give you for turtling is warlord, just block and dash-headbutt for free lights, only 3 things in this game that deserve nerfs are anything safe, free damage any attack should have a cost, anything that you avoid and can't get a free hit off of (unreactable warlord headbutt, warden shoulder bash vortex, conq bash) , any mess up should be punishable and anything should be able to be opened up given time.

1. You won't be able to get any damage in, because they just block everything. Granted, increasing chip damage might solve this by itself.

3. I mean that people use roll/dodge to create distance. You won't be in range to GB.

[Cassain]

I think a good Nerf to defense might be to make guard-breaking easier or to punish people who don't attack with a harder guard-break counter. I don't know how you could implement this reasonably or have it make a lot of sense but its the only way I could see defense being Nerfed without reducing the core mechanics of being able to react to everything thrown at you as I can see a cheesy way to win and get free damage would be to just spam guard-break. Another way is to give every hero a reliable opener that is unparryable but reduces opponent guard for short while to attack with the quickest attack in the hero's arsenal sorta like a quick stagger but still can see things getting spammed it always seems that when you give free, safe damage people spam (warlord headbutt, warden vortex, conq bash)

But I digress, the main balance issue in top tier tournament play right now is the main "OP" heroes (shugoki, warden, warlord) and safe hero attacks like conq bash

[Mewsan]

I'll just quote myself from another thread:



I think changing just one or two mechanics at a time would be a huge mistake, as it'd just shift the balance of power to another aspect of defense. It's every aspect of defense that's overpowered, not just parries, and not just guard break interrupts. We need a comprehensive overhaul to shift things decidedly in the direction of encouraging aggression to keep fights moving and force people to be proactive. No one should be standing around staring at the opponent just waiting for them to make a move.

You have good suggestions, some of which are quite similar to mine. I'd argue, though, that my suggestions wouldn't change just one or two mechanics. They would change all the mechanics in defensive play that I personally find somewhat broken.

I don't necessarily agree that there's anything wrong with GB/tech, but won't disagree either. Also, I think that getting a GB from parrying a heavy is fine. Combined with my suggestions, it would keep the risk-reward ratio of heavy attacks pretty balanced.