Fundamental parry changes! More dependent on attack length. | Forums

[Camemberto]

The basic idea is this: Make the rewarded time by parries more dependent on the length of the parried attack. Don't just differentiate between lights and heavies.

How?

My suggestion is this: Rewarded time for parry = (for example) 1000ms - parry timing of the attack
So just like right now, parrying light attacks would generally be more rewarding than heavy attacks, but the system would be a lot more consistent, while being more inconsistent.

Let me elaborate: right now, parrying a warden zone attack or a shaman dash heavy will only grant you a light attack despite the attacks being extremely quick and quite damaging. Orochi's spin attack gives you a heavy on parry, but a shaman spin attack only gives you a light, despite being about the same speed, but dealing more damage? that's just wrong.
With the new system, every parry would be awarded solely on the speed of the incoming attack. So parrying a PK light will give you a heavy, but parrying a Shogu light might not, depending on the speed of your own heavies. -> more strategic IMO -> this is fair, because parrying a Shogu is WAY easier than PK, hence less reward.

This would benefit the gameplay in a number of ways:

1. Light spam should be more punishable, since parries can be more effective.
2. Heavy characters should be able to throw their ultra long heavy attacks more comfortably, because parrying them might be essentially USELESS.
-> pretty much just like blocking + stamina damage to the aggressor.
3. Parry reward inconsistencies (Shaman vs Orochi / zones in general) would be eliminated for good.

Also I think the game would be a little more interesting, because you would have to change up your playstyle against certain characters.

Oh and remove zerks HA, while you're at it, willya?

TL;DR: parry reward = 1000ms - parry timing

What do you guys think?

[Jedioutcast88]

I always thought the problem with the parry was people would go on the defensive just to get the parries on the heavy? I thought that’s why they changed the times for it. I’m not saying that your idea isn’t bad basing parry rewards of the attack timing. It sounds like it would be tricky to do and would be almost better to adjust attack speeds wouldn’t it??

I also want add in here too about adding in a counter to parrying that can also reward players and make people think twice about parrying someone’s heavy or light attack. Much like the guard breaking counter. I made a post about it want to get that out there. Really for that matter any in coming attack should have a counter button. Specially melee attack, dodging shouldn’t have to be the only thing people can do to avoid it.

[Veerdin-Wraith]

Speed is important, but it's not the only factor. It should definitely be calculated, but there's a few other factors:


Feinted/Soft-Feinted Attacks: These are much harder to predict, and subsequently much harder to parry.
Unblockable Attacks: By their nature, reduce your options for defense, so you're forced to either parry, dodge or interrupt.
Chained Attacks: These are often incredibly fast, and usually leave you staggered, so successfully parrying one is much harder.
Direction-Change Attacks: Attacks that suddenly change your opponents guard position (E.G, Warden's Zone Attack) are harder to predict and parry.
Delayed/Charged Attacks: While these are generally slower than normal attacks, the added time - especially with charged attacks - can often make them harder to react to.

All these factors can make parrying an attack more difficult. As I said in my own thread on this subject, the harder an attack is to parry - no matter what the reason for that difficulty - the more reward you should get for successfully parrying it.

An easy attack to parry, like Warden's Top Heavy, should only give a small reward, like a free Light Attack (or perhaps not even that), while an attack that's much harder to parry, like Warden's lightning-fast, direction changing Zone Attack, should grant much greater rewards if successfully parried (perhaps even granting a free gaurdbreak).

You could have as many as 5 categories for "Difficulty", each one giving a different reward for a successful parry.

"Very Easy" - Briefly staggers the opponent, window for a Light Attack, but not guaranteed.
"Easy" - Free Guaranteed Light Attack.
"Moderate" - Free Guaranteed Heavy Attack.
"Difficult" - Free Guaranteed Light Attack.
"Very Difficult" - Knocks opponent down.

You could condense this list down by any amount, even just to two if you wanted to keep close to the current system. But it would all need to be based on risk vs reward. The higher the risk you take in order to parry a hit, the more reward you should get for succeeding.