A few things to point out so I can help the thread get back on topic, from a point of view of someone who dislikes the combat.
Problem #1
Charging swings takes to long, as in the full damage charge; as well as the 'full charge' (i.e. circle fills entirely, but no blink). This makes swings slow.
Solution to Problem #1
I liked Valorant's idea (I think it was him who said it). The charge speed of all swings should be as fast as the riposte charge speed, I think this would be an excellent step in the right direction for a speed increase that is already in the game but now is no longer bound to just the riposte alone. I would even take on and say that the new riposte could then benefit from a slight speed increase in swing / charge speed.
Problem #2
Players can hit static objects to trigger the 'riposte' charge or the instant parry as some like to call it.
Solution to Problem #2
Just get rid of it entirely. It doesn't belong, and it honestly should instead incur a stam penalty and a swing speed penalty alike the one you have when you miss a swing. I don't think anyone could disagree that hitting a static object could be rationalized as your character jarring their hand and losing some stamina over it. This then further rewards players who don't swing wildly and actually time strikes.
Problem #3
The game heavily encourages the use of numbers / bait-tactics when it is group v group. To elaborate. In a group, two players can easily kill one player with the method of one player using a fast, personal (Average to short range) to feint attacks 50% of the time and the other 50% commit to attacks whilst another player uses a long ranged weapon (Average to long range) that has high damage output like a spear to only stab. What this does is it forces the single player to either..
A.) Hit trade.
B.) Stand and parry, only to be widdled down.
C.) Target switch (Hit one guy, then switch to the next; and vary the pattern so it's not predictable.)
Sure, you might get damage out. But the two players, so long as they aren't completely stupid, will kill you with this tactic. You're basically fighting two HP bars, and two stam bars with your one HP bar and one stam bar. You wont win because you'll lose stam on getting hit, and currently as it stands with no race stats effecting our movement speed, HP, stam, damage, etc. it's hard to grasp how zerg-friendly this problem is. I predict this will be heavily zerg-friendly and will encourage more streamlined metas that will not be fun to fight against, or to play as.
Solution to Problem #3
You first need Solution to Problem #1 coming into effect. From there, you need to allow players a way to have better stam management as currently the stamina play in MO2 is abysmal. The regeneration is bad, the stam take-away on hit is bad, and at a certain point of stam it's impossible to get away or fight back. It's almost as if your HP bar becomes pointless, as your stam is what kills you. I suggest slight buffs to stam regen, and how it works when getting hit; and perhaps create thresholds when it actually comes into play (Lets say currently when less than 20% stamina, you are losing stam when it; when it could be lowered to 5-10% below stam when you begin to lose stam on hit.)
Problem #4
Jumping is extremely powerful.
Solution to Problem #4
I think jumping honestly needs a nerf. It should be more heavily effected by armor weight, and should cost more stamina to perform. Right now it can create infinite loops of artificial kiting due to the game running in Unreal Engine (Notorious for numerous ground objects getting you stuck, or things that you must jump over due to collision being existence nearly everywhere even when it doesn't make sense.)
Problem #5
A lot of weapons are terrible, again (Like MO1). I'm not curious to hear the outliers of people who have picked up said weapons I'm about to list and go "but i can make it work!!" because 9/10 you don't actually make it work and it's just blind want for it to be good. The weapons in question are...
One handed maces, one handed axes, one handed swords, poleswords, poleaxes, and two handed clubs.
These weapons are absolutely garbage. Almost all one handed weapons excluding daggers have overly high stamina usage, terrible range, and terrible hitboxes.
Poleswords seem to have been completely butchered due to their overuse in MO1, but I wish to see a more MO1-like polesword in MO2 unlike what we have now.
Poleaxes are just a little less worse than poleswords, but still garbage.
Two handed clubs are just terrible.
Solution to Problem #5
One handed weapons need to use less stamina. They also need more forgiving hitboxes, just like the daggers. They don't need their handle hitboxes completely removed but they need to be lessened in size (As in, the handle hitbox) for them to actually be usable and justify the short range. They also need to swing faster. They're super slow.
Poleswords need to be faster, and they honestly need the animations of the spear. Their current animations look horrendous and playing with them are absolutely terrible.
Poleaxes could maybe follow the same logic, but they could use a slight speed boost and a slight handle hitbox re-work. Animations I'm indifferent on.
Two handed clubs need to do chipping damage like all other blunt weapons. The fact they don't do chip damage is weird.
Problem #6
Equipment hits are not predictable, and happen randomly. Even though you'd expect it to only happen against shield-users.
Solution to Problem #6
Re-work how equipment hits work, or just get rid of them. They are skilless RNG and I find them incredibly annoying to get at random, and should only reserve it for shields at the most.
Problem #7
This is a minor problem, but I think you should have to put your weapon away to bandage (As in, manually put it away.) Then manually pull it back out after the animation ends.
Solution to #7
Change it. I feel like this makes bandaging slightly more difficult for players rather than knowing it will automatically unsheathe your weapon.
Problem #8
Defensive play still seems super prevalent.
Solution to #8
Refer to all the solutions above, and they should add the supposed new 'combat mechanics' such as this kick and dodge so we can test it out already.
There, I pumped out 8 reasons I dislike the combat with my own ideal solutions to them.
Good post, but a couple of things I disagree with or have a question about. I'll order my replies using the same problem numbers you used.
#1)
Yes that was me who suggested that.
Although, there is no T in my name, and if that was intentional in an effort to annoy me you succeeded as that bothers me to no end that they released that game with that name. The people who made that game are the people who made League of legends (Riot) and the only other place in the world that the word Valoran is used other than my name that I am aware of was a mildly obscure island or something in the league of legends lore, and they just
had to go and pick that didn't they.
#2)
I completely agree, it is currently game breaking that you can simply bypass the miss penalty mechanic by redirecting and hitting the ground, or some other static object.
It actually does make some sense realistically, as you are using the rebound momentum to start a new swing opposed to having to stop your weapon from moving after committing to a full swing. It certainly hurts or causes strain or vibrations in the hand and arm to do this, although to what degree largely depends on the type of weapon you're using and what exactly you are hitting.
For gameplay purposes though, it is simply awful and I consider the fact that you can do this essentially a bug at this point. Hopefully it will be addressed soon, at least before release.
#3)
I have talked about stamina previously in other threads so I don't have anything new to add here, but essentially I believe that it has a lot to do with player stamina management and now sprinting around swinging non stop until you stam out and die which is quite common. It's also very heavily related to armor weight, and most people are wearing full steel 26kg armor at the moment which has an enormous stamina regeneration penalty.
I'll say it couldn't hurt to increase it slightly but if it were to be increased to the point where I feel most people complaining about it would be happy, we would then lose any meaning to the ability to manage stamina effectively as it wouldn't matter anymore.
Regarding the 1vX relevance, I don't see how this will change much as your opponents will also have this stamina increase. The main problem here seems to be that your opponents can deal guaranteed damage by using different attack directions simultaneously, which I don't see ever going away. The same issue existed in MO1.
#5)
I am potentially for refactoring stamina costs of one handed weapons, as the exact ratio is pretty arbitrary. So long as they do cost a little more than two handed equivalents as it's logical, and acts as a slight counterweight to the advantage of the ability to have a shield.
Although with the way shields are, they could use a buff. What I am not a fan of however, is changing the hitbox sizes. I believe they should be accurate to the weapon model and where the head actually is on that model. Anything else would just cause confusion and is not intuitive.
#6)
Equipment hits currently don't matter so long as your weapon trajectory continues on to hit the player. If you only hit their weapon, meaning if the "Equipment" wasn't there you would have missed, then you only get an equipment hit. I personally don't mind it working like this, I only wish instead of "Equipment" it actually told us what was hit specifically, so bow, weapon, shield, etc.
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