I did and he got sarcy about it, I’m just throwing the backhand in a 180.
Her light attacks are fine, guard switch delay might cause issues for some classes though. It’s just the zone tbh. Idk if Conqueror has good or bad guard switch delay.
Shouldn’t you be busy shrugging off my ignorance?
Since I’m gonna be stuck in this class for the next two hours, lemme entertain this notion that Peacekeeper is making the game unplayable.
I’ll start with the largest piece of irony here, which started on the last page:
Is that so, buddy…
Let’s expand upon this. So basically, you want to sit here and pick and choose what elements of the game are “broken” to suit your agenda. People have provided reasoning for why pretty much every character in the game is “broken”, doesn’t make it so. You argued that in a game based on reaction time, 8 frames is gamebreaking. You’re objectively wrong, and for a couple reasons.
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The game is not solely based around reaction time. That’s an asinine thing to say. You have dozens of elements that come into play in a 1v1. Having good reaction speeds is only a part of the equation. You need to space correctly. You need to move correctly. You need to guard break, grab, pre-emptively block, and apply your unblockables correctly. Ect ect, so on and so forth. You do all these things in a regular fighting game, why choose to ignore the basics in this game?
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Your thesis is based upon the assumption that you’re letting the Peacekeeper get within her comfortable range, in the first place. Don’t do that. No matter what character you’re playing, you have the tools to make Peacekeeper sweat.
Peacekeeper is Assassin class. These characters are going to be faster than anyone else in the game. That advantage sits at the very core of their design and is completely intentional. Yeah, they swing faster too. That’s why they have less frames to start and end their attacks. This is basic fighting game knowledge.
***“Big character go slow, small character go fast”. ***
As literally any character other than the Peacekeeper, you have advantages that she doesn’t. Likewise, she has advantages you do not. I’ll use the Raider as a prime example, since this is by far the character I have the most experience with.
Peacekeeper is obviously faster than me, yes. She can swing faster, use misdirection to her advantage and apply bleed damage, all things I cannot do as the Raider. Do these things make her innately better or broken? Not at all. Because as the Raider, I have 3 hit combos with both Light and Heavy attacks, all of which can combo into an unblockable. The cherry on top is that all these attacks have the same (or possibly better, even) range as Lawbringer or Nobushi attacks. I also have a free wallbounce grapple into guaranteed damage assuming I use guard breaks correctly. I also have an overhead stun, I do more damage, and I take LESS damage than Peacekeeper. Based on your logic, I too could make the argument that Raider is “gamebreaking” on a basis completely different from yours.
Gamebreaking doesn’t seem to mean what you think it means. Is 8 frames advantageous? Annoying? Maybe even bullshit to some degree? Sure, that’s even arguable. But context is important. In the context of every other character specific “advantage” every other class in the game has, calling an 8 frame light attack gamebreaking is reaching my dude. She is in no way taking the game by storm, she does not make every other class obsolete, and she sure as hell doesn’t make a bad player suddenly into a good player.
All of which, are things that actually encompass the term “gamebreaking”.
I think the issue is more that the game rewards specific playstyles more than others. For example, I wouldn’t necessarily say unreactable zone attacks are gamebreaking on their own. However, there’s a reason there’s only one heavy even remotely close to top tier (not counting the Shugoki because that’s only when exploiting a bug and he’s firmly ass tier otherwise), while all assassins are upper mid at worst, and two of them are arguably top three. At high level play, the game essentially boils down to: 1) do you have unreactable offense, and 2) how much guaranteed damage can you get off a parry/guard break? You could add 3) how good is your dodge, but that’s more of a sprinkle on top than anything.
The issue is that defense is so rewarding that any offense that can consistently be defended against becomes a liability. For example, you mention the Raider. Yeah, sure, you can do wall bounce shit into unblockables. Except that unblockable has a huge parry window that is easy to hit even while stunned and is never a guaranteed hit unless your opponent falls down from loss of stamina or revenge, and if a decent character parries that you’re more than likely going to eat a ton of unavoidable damage, not to mention that most top tiers can initiate some sort of vortex. And you can’t even really bait out parries, because parry OS exists and even the Raider’s lights can be parried on reaction. So against someone with decent reactions, you’re basically relying on luck to get a hit in, with significant penalties if you fail, and all your big damage is locked behind these extremely punishable options. There’s a reason the Raider is pretty much considered the worst character in the game, after all.
Meanwhile, characters with unreactable offense don’t need to be as afraid because their offense is unreactable and therefore require guesses to even block, and extremely solid reads to parry. Not to mention that a lot of top tiers can cancel their recovery into dodges, stances or other attacks, making them hard to punish even if you get a correct guess. This is why Lawbringer is a huge piece of shit, for example. He gets all this nice shit on paper, but the fact all but his light follow-up from a parry are easily counter-parried combined with his lack of solid guaranteed damage off a regular guard break means he actually gets less off a parry than, say, an Orochi or Warden because they just get guaranteed damage and a vortex.
So you end up with a system where the slower characters theoretically deal more damage, but in actuality don’t, because a vast majority of the damage in the game comes off conversions which they don’t really get. The Lawbringer gets a single guaranteed light. The Conqueror gets a light that can’t even really chain into anything but another light. The Shugoki does get a guaranteed heavy, but it resets to neutral, so the damage is relatively minor compared to characters that get to keep their offense up. Meanwhile, faster characters get guaranteed heavies that can usually chain into other shit, sometimes it’s even guaranteed, like the Peacekeeper bleed after a heavy hit. Not to mention that the stamina drain on the lighter characters tends to be less severe, because they’re not forced to rely on heavy attacks to start useful chains, unblockables or command grabs, all of which massively drain stamina (and sometimes health).
tl;dr: The problem isn’t unreactable offense per se. It’s that defense is so strong that unreactable offense makes you top tier by default, combined with virtually all characters with unreactable offense having huge conversions off parries and/or some sort of vortex gimmick.
Just to play Devils Advocate, with all the different modes, what should be balanced around? 1v1, 2v2, 4v4, skirmish, a mix of all?
It’s not even playing devil’s advocate, the game clearly becomes more balanced in games that aren’t 1v1. Characters that are useless in duels suddenly become viable, and dominant strategies become less useful when you can get ganged up on or you need to quickly take zones.
The issue is that aside from 2v2, which still has some of the issues of 1v1, none of the modes are really competitively viable due to gear stats (which can be taken out in a custom game) and feats (which can’t). Ideally, Dominion would have a competitive mode where there’s no levelling, no feats, and no stats, much like how Duel and Brawl work right now.
Skirmish and Elimination are a shitshow, both because of the above and because they’re solely focused around kills, meaning that huge gank squads are the order of the day.
I think the core gameplay needs to be balanced around 1v1, as there just isn’t enough there to balance a 4v4 outside of messing with feats.
The game really gets fleshed out in Elimination and Dominion modes.
Regarding feats, they’re fine for Dominion–maybe adjust the speed of some of the projectile feats or maybe even add a projectile marker on the guard panel as a warning. They really kill the flow of Elimination, though. If you could equip even only passive feats in Elimination, that gametype would be a little better. I’d prefer none at all in Elimination.
P.S. - You can turn feats off in all 4v4 modes.
Really? I must’ve missed the option then, because all I saw was gear stats on and off. Now, if they’d only make that a selectable default mode rather than me having to try to find people over Discord we might actually have ourselves a game here.
As for feats, my main issue is that some characters clearly just get better ones. If they’re meant to be assists/kill streak type buffs that allow you to vary your playstyle, it’s not doing a very good job of it. For example, the Lawbringer gets two level 1 feats that are practically useless in any mode outside of Dominion. If everyone had acess to the same set of feats, or at the very least the same classes had access to the same sets, it would be better.
But hey, at least you can have a proper game using custom settings, which is fine by me. I guess I’m just blind.
Hahaha. I came because i thought the thread would be Valentine’s day related. Oh well. Hey at least its active!. Haha
Game doesn’t appeal 2 me at all…But after watching some of this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCLBQmOig-E
I kinda feel like giving it a shot.