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War is joined anew with new allies finding their feet (and the toes of others), a wave of Viking howls surge from the North as the barbarians, fresh from licking their wounds, storm all fronts. The war is joined again in earnest.
We are Warriors, this is our Den.
I am putting this up early because again tomorrow I have dentist stuff and may not be back in time. Next week's will also most likely be late, I have a job interview (more money, more rewarding in general, might mean I struggle to keep these up, certainly on time, but will cross that bridge if and when I get there if that means waiting until days off to do it), things just keep happening on Thursday right now lol.
This in from the Pope
Going to be a shorter show, more of a celebration of Season launch, more Community Clips than usual. Damien's still out too! But we'll have some updates for you on things.
Past weekend was first ever free weekend. Eric was happy on the community side as the community came together to make it a welcoming place. There was a comment on reddit over just how much some people looked after some of the newbies in giving them tips and helping them out in general, this was the reason one commenter on reddit went from just going to try the game to buying it.
Yes they have seen the discussion over the Hero Series. They made the comment that unlocking is in the game and there were a lot of moves that can be unlocked in the game, the guys there were playing to win and it is difficult to police. So their official view was it is in the game, it is on them, the devs, to fix which they are committed to doing as fast as they find them and have a fix for them. They did make the point that the players were there because they were that good, they don't want any witchhunts against certain players.
They had a fe wthings to say about the last PTS. The goal of that was tot est a bunch if changes to the fight system, there was never the message that these were going right into the game, they wanted to collect data and improve using that. There will be another PTS, no update on when yet but in early September, they will be having a community workshop with new builds which some players will have access to.
After the last PTS, they gathered a lot of feedback form questionnaires and reddit and such, they also looked at the data to see what moves were being used and such. The feedback overall was good, there are some things that they do not believe worked quite as intended but they feel it is heading in the right direction. No guardbreak afterparry was well received but what was polarising over that was parrying over light attack, they want to make some better reward there but it will not be a guardbreak off parry level. Stamina changes were well received and they are looking at improving that, they do still need to work on how easy some characters still find it to make distance out of stamina. One thing they did not like was having removed parry out of stamina, they actually hindered the attacker in terms of taking away their parry bait, so party will go back but they might look at changing the properties when out of stamina. Guardbreakbeing able to interrupt attacks less was very well received, they want to work on the relationship between guardbreak and feints.
The flicker changes were well received and that will definitely be going into the game as soon as it can, it wasn't in at launch as removing the buffer made some issues with the fight logic of some characters so they have a little work to do there.Overall people liked the chip damage, there were debates over amount and lethality so they are looking at two things, on the amount of chip damage they are looking at the amount or on having it activate on all attacks as there are some it does not (I think he said light attacks), they do want to make chip damage more threatening. They want to test removing the regeneration in critical state while fighting, The changes on revenge were well received, the attacks being unparryable were not so liked and again as with stamina they will be thinking about that. One thing they will be looking at is the behaviour of stamina when defending and whether enough stamina is lost in that state.
One thing they found interesting was the perception of how the changes in PTS affected characters in dominion, looking at the win/loss data and K/D there was a big divergance between perception how how the characters were affected and how the data bore out. For example the centurion was more or less unaffected by the changes, people thought the conqueror was more powerful in the live build than PTS which was not borne ou in the actual numbers and people had a poor view on the kensei in the PTS but he actually had far stronger numbers than in the live build.
While they will keep testing the PTS stuff, there will still be balance changes coming throughout the time that all of this is in the works. New heroes will be available to people without season pass next tuesday for 15,000 steel each.
The smoke emote that is currently on the gladiator and highlander is not exclusive, it will eventually be released for all heroes.
The audio team did a big pass on audio stuff, one of these happened to be changing the conquerors beloved RAH spam...this is getting changed back in a future patch.
The team is looking into the Highlander guardbreak, there is a bug in that he can't really punish after a guardbreak, the team is on it.
They feel the launch has gone well so far, they feel positive over the state the characters are in, there are balance changes they want to look at but the general opinion from the community has very much been that they have done better than with the DLC characters last season, the team are learning and getting better at things as they go.
They were asked what makes the Highlander a hybrid and the Gladiator an assassin. They went with hybrid on Highlander because of the stances and the difference that he has, while he has elements of the heavy like uninterruptables, the fact that he has the alternate stances that make him more deadly and removes his defences is more an assassin trick, for them he is a hybrid. The Gladiator is a big guy, yes, but he moves fast, he has a very feline feel about him (and some felines are damn big), the view seems to be that assassins need to be small and skinny, this is bucking that somewhat, and obviously he has all the assassin traits.
Will there be a samurai faction war victor pack? Eric asked about that, there won't be, the viking one wasn't popular and people didn't really care about it all in all, they are looking into other things which they will talk about when they come.
They spoke of why some maps are only set for certain gamemodes. They have different design philosophies in mind when making some maps, like some maps are primarily dominion maps but are changed a little to fit other modes. Other maps are designed more for elimination or skirmish in mind without wide spaces or places that capture points really fit.
Someone asked if the Sentinel was removed from the rotation, it shouldn't have been but they will look into if the front changing has affected it in such a way there are nodes they need to change to get the maps set on all fronts.
Matchmaking was called out as being pretty bad, they said yes it has been, they are working on it. They have a team working hard on the networking stuff and some changes there have had unexpected affects on the matchmaking, they have a fix in the works.
Tournament is still being worked on, they announced monday that tournaments would not be in the start of season three, check back next week for more news on that.
They will be at Pax West september 4th, it will be streamed live.
Someone asked if there was a way they could fix it so that if the kensei or highlander did their golf swing after a decapitation that they could send the opponent's head flying. They did a test, they can do that, the thing there are side effects to turning physics on the body such as it also works with the body so they're not putting that in just yet.
They did community clips.
Banned
I'm not looking forward to this one at all......I see alot of excuses being told in this one..and alot more" we are working on it" replys. Or they just will ignore it and act like everything they did was awesome and the game is awesome or the tournament was awesome. But we all know otherwise.
When I can play for 1 hour and complete the same amount of pvp games as I can an AI no mm game I'll agree its awesome. But tryin to pvp and complete 1 out of 4 games. I will not use awesome as my word of choice. I'll most likely use the word Sh*t.
I'm going into pvp duels on xbox after this video. I bet Ill get disconnected or ragequit on or will get an error in the first 5 mins. Sh*t not awesome.
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That's a wrap. If anyone is interested, best Pascal sketch gets a hat. Next week's is quite a bit more likely to be late up than this one was, I have a job interview a train commute away. More rewarding job, more money to it so yeah hardly going to say could we do it friiday instead lol. I will get it up whenever it goes up.
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awesome candle. So if I get it right in the next ptr we can expect:
~parries no longer getting GB. but a reason to light parry will be tested.
~Possible nerf to dodge distance while OOS.
~parrying while OOS is coming back. but the properties of that will be different.
~Gb's will still not be able to interrupt attacks. but looking into the relationship of GB and feinting.
~flicker fix works and is staying.
~Potentially increasing chip damage and/or allowing chip on all attacks
~Considering letting chip kill and/or turning regen off in critical state.
~reconsidering the change of making unblockables unparryable while in revenge.
~considering losing stamina when defending.
So...I'm fine with light parries giving something more. But it has to not be on a power level of current light parry punishes or GB. I don't know what that could be other than more stamina damage. Personally I don't want light parries to give more over heavies just because people will look for that more than attempting to use parry as the way imo it should be. a way to halt pressure and start your own. not to get you good damage.
The nerf to dodge on OOS is only going to be meaningful on assassins. Which is what I suggested in the beginning with these OOS changes.
I'm really not happy about them bringing parry back on OOS. Yes you do lose your feint bait game. but it was a massive buff for someone like conq where you could secure some great chip damage and they were just forced to take it. now they can defend against it. I really don't care what properties will be different. the fact that they will be able to interrupt the pressure with a parry again means OOS is basically not a threat anymore. This is something that I would legit quit the game over if I wasn't so invested into the game.
I can only assume people threw a fit over the fact that you couldn't feint and GB anymore. so they might be finding a way to bring that back in without nerfing heavy attacks back to live state. If they can manage to do that well. fine. At the same time i've expressed why this is stupid and shouldn't be in the game. feinting had better applications that didn't support the defensive play. If they really want to make the feint&gb game better in a more productive matter they need to create a move on all heros that lets someone soft feint into a GB.
Increase in chip would be fine. so long as they don't go overboard with it. I've already given my stance on letting chip kill. And turning off regen in critical seems pointless since that's really the only time it's present. If chip has to kill i'd say only let it happen if you can manage to chip the person down 2-3 times. regen should still work during those times. But be turned off when chip has the ability to kill.
I'm indifferent on the revenge comment. I just double dodge out when someone pops revenge and run till it's gone. currently in their live version blocking/dodging paused stamina regen. I'm weary on this statement since defending can be used in a broad statement. parrying is a defensive action. so is blocking. and dodging. If the person loses more stamina for parrying that seems...fine. I think losing stamina on blocking is a very thin line to walk. could work. but it would be difficult to balance. If dodging is going to cost stamina I will actually quit.
overall i'm vary weary of their comments. most of it was fine or whatever. but 2 of them in particular have me worried. Like seriously worried.
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I disagree that reintroducing Parry into OoS removes the threat of being OoS. There's a real risk and a mindgame element for both attacker and defender. The lower a player's health gets while OoS, the riskier they may try to get, especially if Chip is increased or even allowed to be lethal. Games could be getting really intense, which is something I play for.
I imagine Parry in OoS would be much weaker, maybe different timing, less stagger, less Stamina damage, and pausing your own stamina regen like when dodging or blocking. You'd basically only want to try for a Parry if not doing so would kill you.
I'd love it! They could also go the other way and let you regen all your stamina on a successful, wonky OoS parry.
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It's far too easy to see when someone is going to let something fly or feint it when i'm OOS. I never fall for the feint game there. The only time that threat is even some what realistic is if they are attempting to bait me with an unblockable. Sadly off the top of my head the only character that has that ability is raider. highlander almost has it. but since you can't cancel his UB heavies as far into the animation as you can wilt raiders zone it's going to be easier to read.Originally Posted by high-horse Go to original post
Changing the timing will have 2 effects. either it becomes unrealistic to parry certain things. or it just means re learning the timing. if the former happens it's going to give some players stupidly more power compared to others during OOS. if the latter happens nothing really changes.
if we could "escape" OOS via a successful parry that would be even worse. I don't like that suggestion. In reality them changing it back isn't going to effect most skill levels. but it's certainly going to effect mine. which pisses me off. ON the other hand...if they do intend to keep that they could just not have to nerf stamina damage attacks anymore. and people can continue to dump salt on me for playing centurion.
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.Originally Posted by Knight_Raime Go to original post
Some fall for it, others don't but those others also know when to Parry. Those that fall for it may also learn when's a good time for the appropriate reaction, and they grow as players. Taking this element out feels like removing the choice to make a bad decision, removes the learning experience, and gives 100% advantage to the one with stamina. I mean, I'm all for getting punished if you mess up, especially with stamina management, but your stamina bar shouldn't be your health bar in the sense that once it's gray, you're as good as dead. I like a little bit of a skillful comeback without being as overt as Revenge.
Combine the OoS changes with characters more or less built around damaging stamina and how they can capitalize on two, sometimes only one mistake depending on the ability that was countered.
Edit* I'm also not fond of completely escaping OoS with a Parry, just throwing it out as the other end of the spectrum.
