The reason why parrying was made easier and easier (wider and wider angles) is because of the fundamental netcode problem MO has. When 2 people have a significant ping difference blocking (which is a reactive skill. Where you first have to see the animation) becomes super janky and unreliable. This always allowed, in the past, super aggressive playstyles (that abused latency) to be far more effective than defensive playstyles. Parrying, for many was simply shit.
The only way to allow the majority of players to have a reliable and consistent parrying experince was to make the angles ridiculously wide. this, of course, allowed good players parry almost everything.
And THEN, since all of a sudden everyone could parry everything and ttk got super long, they had to add abilities to reintroduce some easy damage again.
So again, the problem is very fundamental to how the single server/hit detection works, and not easy to fix. So far all they have found is workarounds.
yea I feel ya, but it made combat really gross. The parry window is only one part. They gave counter reduce + increased it. There is blink charge free feint now. The game is designed to be slow and rhythmic and that SUCKS to me. If you can't change the rhythm, a whole lot of skill ceiling is being lost because that is a whole layer of pressure.
It is just un-intuitive, and that's why I never really did it seriously after beta. They changed swing speed for a sec, and I think that was the last time I really dueled.
I'm hard to hit. People laugh about that mages taking less damage because of positioning, but it is true. You can fuck with people's swing arc. I was not good at MO1 combat, EITHER, but a lot of that was due to the fact I just had shit ping and a shit pc. Still, I felt I got good at being evasive and understanding the range / speed of my weapon vs theirs.
I don't really need to 'see' someone once I figure out how they move, either. So even seeing the rhythm of how I am being hit is good info to 'scout' with. It's like battleship. If you have seen me shoot a bow, I am very much a battle ship archer, too. Once I find where it is, tho, it's on. But I defeat myself in any duel situation because I always swing first even when I don't want to swing because I feel they would never swing if I don't. Even without practice, when a good player has tried to aggress me, I have done decent. But once they realize all they have to do is be methodical and that I will feed them parries, they just do that.
I wish they could combine the two types some how. In MO1, if you parried without moving, it was like you gave someone a chance to disappear from your screen entirely, so the main parries were just clutch during the action parries, and I prefer that. It might not be realistic, per se, but it definitely makes for better game play than whatever dog shit they are offering now.
It is REALLY bad, and I do respect the skill players show, and there are def some moments in those long duel vids where it's like wow fking nice move, but the rest is TEDIOUS AS FUCK. It's tedious to even watch. A game cannot survive with its bread and butter being that tedious.