Add chip damage | Forums

[nf_Straydog]

Add chip damage to blocked attacks. Please incentivize active defense over passive defense. Passive play is ridiculously strong and optimal, and makes the game a snorefest. The optimal way to play should not be boring to watch or execute. Virtually everyone at a mid to high level agrees with this. Go watch your game being played. Go watch tournament streams and vods. Listen to what the top players of your game are saying, and talk to your community about your intentions. Develop your game.

[AcceptYourDeath]

Chip damage is already there, the impact of it is just laughable. The sun goes down before you see anything which could be described as damage.

It should be like 25% or 35% of an attacks default damage to be a meaningful gameplay aspect.

[k1DBLITZ]

I find it a bit laughable that you're coming off with a "we know what's best for your game" attitude, yet you're asking for a mechanic that is already in game.

[SPYSEY_NOCHOS]

Chip damage is already there, the impact of it is just laughable. The sun goes down before you see anything which could be described as damage.

It should be like 25% or 35% of an attacks default damage to be a meaningful gameplay aspect.

I completely agree with this guy. It would fix the stupid passive defense meta.

[The-Portal]

I think that the chip damage that we already have is fine, In my opinion what needs to be done is to make stamina drains when blocking, because the attacker risque to consume all his stamina while the opponent that decide to keep blocking attacks want have any stamina loss and can start start throwing his combos with full stamina.

[Zeekoh]

If you want to do more damage through blocks then increase your Block Damage stat. That's why it's there in the first place.

[Mr_Gallows]

While chip damage may help a bit with the problem, it doesn't adress the issue, only one of the symptoms.

Parry is the root of the defensive meta, parry makes the defensive meta viable in the first place.

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Attacking is risky mainly because of what parry gives the defender and defending is safe because it is risk free and offers great reward.

If parry was reworked in the following way, parry would still be good, but not offer free damage and not make attacking so risky.

Parry
First there are some changes and effects for the person being parried (attacker)
1. No stagger after parry, so the person being parried can defend himself from attacks and GB
2. After being parried you cannot dodge backwards or you will fall down.
3. Stamina drain like now
4. attacking and GB disabled for a moment after being parried, so the only option is defence (including CGB)

Then there are some effects for the one doing the parry (defender)
1. The next heavy attack is faster (maybe even the next combo starting with a heavy attack coult be faster and perhaps this heavy attack could chain directly into any combo chain).
2. The next heavy attacks could have increased chip damage, but don't know if this one is needed.
3. The next heavy attack costs no stamina.
4. The next heavy attack may inflict stun if it connects,
5. No options for light attacks, I know, but heavy attacks could get a bit of love through parry.
6. Several options for rewarding parry without, disabling the other person.

With this parry system in place, we could see some quick exchanges of parry back and forth, that would keep the combat going with no pause after a parry, but instead a feeling of urgency as parries speed up the action and change timings instead of breaking up the action.


Blocking
That leaves us with the more basic part of defence - blocking.

We have two tiers of attacks - light and heavy.
To match that two tiers of block would work very well - half and full block.

Half block
Getting to half block happends instantly when you switch guard. Half block allows you to completely block light attacks. From half block you can only parry heavy attacks. Heavy attacks hitting half block may do full or reduced damage. that's balancing.

Full block
as soon as you enter half block, the direction meter begins to fill up and after a number of frames it is full and you are in full block. When in full block you can block heavy attacks. The number of frames it takes to reach full block can vary from character to character, to give more balance options. The quick characters who are good at dodging may need a few more frames to reach full block.

For this to work, heavy attacks must be balanced in terms of speed across the board. they don't have to be the same, but must land within an acceptable range for balance to feel right.


A different approach to half and full block
Each attack in the game could also be given an attack powe, balanced with the speed of the attack. When blocking characters would build up block power over the frames after entering full block. When an attack and a block collides, the block power and the attack power is compared to calculate damage. My suggestion is that there is a cut off point, so if you don't have at least half the block power relative to the attack power, the attack does full damage. After that damage is gradually reduced, until half damage. If you match the attack power, the attack will do no damage at all. Sounds complicated, but really is a simple principle. Just a second idea for how to approach blocking, that doesn't have to change the characters.

[nf_Straydog]

@Mr_Gallows

I disagree that parry is at the root of the defensive meta. Parry is a strong tool, but while parrying is inherently defensive, it is also a risk that can be exploited. As a result, at a high level of play, players will parry very selectively, often not parrying at all. The issue is that outside of a few classes, most classes in the game have no way to open up someone who is passively defending and committing to only extremely low risk offensive options with no punish or an extremely tight punish window, such as warlord headbutt, conq shield bash, warden shoulderbash etc. which cannot be parried.

Consider the Raider. Raider is actually extremely strong against opponents who try to parry for a couple reasons. One: his light attack startup looks similar to his heavy attack startup, which means that if you condition your opponents to want to parry light attacks (by stuffing them with light attacks or even just putting them out every so often) then you can start up a heavy attack which will land if your opponent mistakes it for another light and tries to parry. If your opponent starts looking for parries on side heavies, you can punish it by doing the pommel bash mixup. However, if your opponent NEVER tries to parry side attacks (or normal attacks at all) and ONLY parries pommel bashes and unblockables, suddenly the Raider's game is extremely poor. Suddenly his one and only mixup is "do an unblockable and either feint it into a guard break (beating parry and dodge) or let it fly (beating waiting.)" This is simply an inferior version of other unblockable mixups, and Raider's other tools are lackluster. However, with heavy attacks doing chip damage, suddenly, not only does Raider have an extremely strong mixup which forces both attentive distance control and parry/dodge attempts, but opponents are incentivized to attack into Raider to stop heavy attacks from flying (not to mention they are incentivized to attempt heavy attacks of their own.)

Chip damage speeds the game up by making the option of passive defense extremely unappealing and incentivizing avoidance and proactive play. There's no reason to remove the guaranteed damage off of parries, in fact the existence of parries and the ability to bait them is one of the more interesting dynamics in the game. Your solution is too complex and not required to make the game less defensively oriented.