Weapon weight material balancing was a mistake and hinders the game mechanically in ways I don't even fully understand yet.

[fartbox]

The reason Mortal combat looks so boring, feels so slow, is so predictable (in terms of predicting the winner) , and so reliant on ping, is because of weapon weight balancing.

The entire game has been affected by this choice; All weapons have a "spool up" period before they apply damage.

Mages can not cast with weapon out because weapons do not swing fast enough to punish them otherwise.
Footys must hold on eachother and engage in these awkward rituals trying to get a blink strike. When watching footys fight it seems like half of all time or more is spent holding. This is the primary problem in tempo.
Weapon abilities will interface poorly with weapon swing times. Making balancing a nightmare and limiting mechanical impact of abilities.
Facilitates the need for spinning because the swing is slow. And makes spinning unpunishable because you can not "spool up" damage fast enough to punish them while they spin.

All of these problems and more that i've failed to understand or list. The reward? A tiny bit of realism, in an already unrealistic world.

In a perfect world the weight would of just gave you a raw time period before you can swing again but always swing at the same speed(fast) and the only difference between speed is weapon class and even that might not be a good idea in a game that is focused on blocking being the primary form of active mitigation. Material balancing should of been damage only. All weapons should swing relatively fast if not all of them the same speed.

 

[MortalEnjoyer42069]

I've made this recommendation before and its fallen on deaf ears. All weapons should charge and swing at the same rate of speed. The difference in weapon mass should be its effect on stamina drain and mass should constitute directly to a weapons blunt damage when swung. The combo system and blink charge should be outright removed from the game. Fixed weapon speeds will make the game feel more fair and result in the better balance of weapon types and head and handle materials. This will also immediately expose cheaters as the expected swing execution times can be compared to the server. No more 3% speed hack to fly under the radar with.

 

[fartbox]

I've made this recommendation before and its fallen on deaf ears. All weapons should charge and swing at the same rate of speed. The difference in weapon mass should be its effect on stamina drain and mass should constitute directly to a weapons blunt damage when swung. The combo system and blink charge should be outright removed from the game. Fixed weapon speeds will make the game feel more fair and result in the better balance of weapon types and head and handle materials. This will also immediately expose cheaters as the expected swing execution times can be compared to the server. No more 3% speed hack to fly under the radar with.

I agree with you. And I feel like if there was ever a time to gamble on a massive game defining change. It is now. This went poorly for Runescape circa 2012. Where they tried to change their combat in favor of a more modern aesthetic. But where Runescape failed, Mortal will succeed. The combat in Runescape was popular and well balanced when they tried to change it resulting in a Net Negative for the game. Where as Mortals combat is not popular, and it is poorly balanced. Changing it fundamentally can only ever result in neutral or positive. Because it is already in a state of unpopular.

Essentially...we can't make it any worse by gambling right now.

It was almost an epiphany last night while dueling. I realized that weapon spool up times are essentially acting as a "tick rate" that we might see in other games. But that not all weapons are equal. The tick rate for even the fastest weapon is still around 1seconds or 1000MS.

Compare/contrast to tick rate in other relevant games:

OSRS: 400ms
Mordhau: 20/60/120 (setting variable)
Albion: Rumored to be 20ms


With combat abilities theres no reason to keep the current weapon weight system and balancing. Weapons can be given identity through ability and utility. All weapons should swing fast, weapon weight should only impact stamina management and how fast you can initiate a swing (IE: Skadite maul Can only swing once per 3 seconds but swings same speed as dagger when initiated) But a parry could perhaps refresh your GCD on your swing...IE: You successfully swing your maul and then immediately parry an attack. Your GCD is reset because of the parry and you may now swing immediately again.


Obviously doing this is a huge undertaking in man hours. All weapon damage would need rebalanced, the swing formula needs changed, a totally new system needs to be coded(GCD).


Doing this means we can also introduce gap closers with impunity and allow mages to cast with weapon out. Opening up a higher skill cap mage experience. Even if mages get disengage in some ability form they will still be forced to parry like everyone else during a window of time. That is the major difference between mage and footy gameplay right now. A mage can kill a footy without ever being forced to parry once, Where as a footy can never kill another footy without utilizing parrys.

Forcing mages to parry will quell alot of the crying about their current mechanics, which is often associated with low-skill cap kill potential, which angers people because they feel they die to it unfairly.

It may require rebalancing of cast times and damage as well on mage spells to get the mage combat flow correct in a insta-swing/gap closer environment. And it feels like if were forcing parrys to become the skill cap of the game then we should just give blocking to every build for free.


The more I talk about it the more it seems like a nightmarish task. We also have pet and mounted builds to consider. Though mounted builds could be repurposed to a logistic role, like in EVE. Where they get special incentives and mechanics to escape capture and travel large distances quickly.

I don't have an answer for pet balancing though besides giving pets to everyone and limiting their damage output. Turning them more into a utility/vanity item.

 

[MortalEnjoyer42069]

Forcing mages to parry will quell alot of the crying about their current mechanics, which is often associated with low-skill cap kill potential, which angers people because they feel they die to it unfairly.

They need to rework the parry mechanic then. I was blocking with my mage just yesterday. 100 blocking skill. I was taking 1 damage a parry from a sword. If it was a mace I would be taking like 30.

 

[Teknique]

They kind of already went in this direction in a sense. “Charge up times” were increased drastically from alpha and other iterations of the game. It’s actually one of the biggest things that I hate about mo2, you used to have to actually wield a light weapon. Now you can just swing whatever the hell you want. It sounds like you want to go even further in this direction. No it won’t save the game it’s just more of the same.

 

[fartbox]

They need to rework the parry mechanic then. I was blocking with my mage just yesterday. 100 blocking skill. I was taking 1 damage a parry from a sword. If it was a mace I would be taking like 30.

They kind of already went in this direction in a sense. “Charge up times” were increased drastically from alpha and other iterations of the game. It’s actually one of the biggest things that I hate about mo2, you used to have to actually wield a light weapon. Now you can just swing whatever the hell you want. It sounds like you want to go even further in this direction. No it won’t save the game it’s just more of the same.

My goal is to remove the awkward holding ritual that footys must endure while fighting other footys. This impacts the game negatively overall; makes the tempo unsavory, artificially inflates TTK, makes fighting outnumbered harder then any other game on the market, makes spectating the game boring and uninteresting.

It honestly feels like work to watch a mortal pvp video these days. You know with 100% certainty what youre going to see. Group or duel perspective. You know whos going to win the fight before the fight even starts just based on tags and numbers.


I don't care how we get there. But this combat has got to go and specifically this holding ritual and asinine combat tempo. It is so unpopular that we find few defenders of it even among the players that remain subed to the game and it is the primary complaint of why players with under 100 hours leave the game.

This combat is killing mortal and has been for some time.

We need outplay potentital
We need ways for all races to pressure mages and way for mages to express skill cap (Ideally through blocking)
We need a faster tempo
We need anti-zerg scaling and anti-zerg mechanics

It doesn't matter how we do it, but that is what we need if Mortal is to survive the coming years.

Try predicting whats going to happen in this video before it happens. That's the difference between 200 views and 70k views. "Uncertainty". Which mortal has none of right now. This guy beat the house while wearing a risky expensive gearset. Still opting to gamble...he was rewarded. He became the hero, for just one moment. Most of the time he will fail, but that small chance for a memorable moment keeps him playing. His feat would not be possible in Mortal.

Mortal is capable of so much more then Albion. We have a better engine, We have a Chadmaxed CEO, we have a more dedicated playerbase, we have better devs, despite having less devs.

So lets all come together and ask for more, cause the game deserves it.

 

[Teknique]

My goal is to remove the awkward holding ritual that footys must endure while fighting other footys. This impacts the game negatively overall; makes the tempo unsavory, artificially inflates TTK, makes fighting outnumbered harder then any other game on the market, makes spectating the game boring and uninteresting.

It honestly feels like work to watch a mortal pvp video these days. You know with 100% certainty what youre going to see. Group or duel perspective. You know whos going to win the fight before the fight even starts just based on tags and numbers.


I don't care how we get there. But this combat has got to go and specifically this holding ritual and asinine combat tempo. It is so unpopular that we find few defenders of it even among the players that remain subed to the game and it is the primary complaint of why players with under 100 hours leave the game.

This combat is killing mortal and has been for some time.

We need outplay potentital
We need ways for all races to pressure mages and way for mages to express skill cap (Ideally through blocking)
We need a faster tempo
We need anti-zerg scaling and anti-zerg mechanics

It doesn't matter how we do it, but that is what we need if Mortal is to survive the coming years.

Try predicting whats going to happen in this video before it happens. That's the difference between 200 views and 70k views. "Uncertainty". Which mortal has none of right now. This guy beat the house while wearing a risky expensive gearset. Still opting to gamble...he was rewarded. He became the hero, for just one moment. Most of the time he will fail, but that small chance for a memorable moment keeps him playing. His feat would not be possible in Mortal.

Mortal is capable of so much more then Albion. We have a better engine, We have a Chadmaxed CEO, we have a more dedicated playerbase, we have better devs, despite having less devs.

So let’s all come together and ask for more, cause the game deserves it.

The exact specifics of your suggestion don’t really matter yeah I agree. It also would make sense if a competent developer could actually flesh out a proper combat system start to finish. You just want mo2 to be an actual game designed by actual people with functioning brains I get that. You are not going to find that here unfortunately, this game was doa, dead on alpha.

No actual pro player or large streamer would ever play mo2, is the larger point that you have. I maintain it’s just the layers and layers of clunk that a handful of fools added, but yes we need an FPS pace, with mmo like abilities or likeeee just an actual game designer. Not underwear model meets 80 IQ player in alpha and that’s the design team.