Blocking, Parrying

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Valo
 
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Joined: 20 Feb 2015, 01:51

Blocking, Parrying

Post by Valo » 18 Jan 2017, 01:01

I'll preface this by saying that I'm probably not the best fighter. While I can typically go toe to toe with most players, I do not play on focused PvP servers, but generally RP/PvP servers in LiF:YO. The people I tend to fight aren't the sorts of people who optimize every facet of not only their character's build and kit but also their fighting style.

Still, I've noticed so far that in almost all cases, even when I go to more PvP focused servers, I see the same fighting "style" being used in almost all cases: Parry is used as a last resort. Shields are not favored and often even regarded as ineffective (at least, by most people, personally I do very well with shields).

Instead, people dart in, attack, and then scurry away EVEN WITH THEIR BACK TURNED. Insanely enough, this is what works. Because if you stand there after an attack and try to parry a counter-attack, you will not raise your weapon in time, at least in my experience.

While LiF is its own thing and going in its own direction is well and fine, I think the game would benefit by having a combat system that focused less on footwork and more on skillful swordplay. Think Chivalry or something along those lines. That's not to say that footwork shouldn't come into play, just that it shouldn't be the only determining factor as it seems to be at present from my potentially flawed or ignorant position. I want to see people dueling, not playing tag, but players will use what works. So right now, tag seems to work pretty damn well, so we're just pretending we're all lancers even when we're not on horseback, lol

Specifically, I would like the following changes to be considered:
-Implement a much quicker recovery from landed swings. I suspect something like this is already the case, as I am able to execute the combos far faster on training dummies or live targets than I can when practicing against the air. But still I find that raising my sword to parry after I swing is painfully (literally) slow. So if it isn't already in, add it, if it is in, increase the speed of recovery after landed swings, allowing for you to defend yourself from counter-attack quickly.

Of course, missed swings should remain a bad thing that invite counter-attacks by leaving you wide open. Also, I recommend a short stun-like effect after you are hit, preventing you from attacking for a very brief fraction of a second, to discourage people from simply exchanging blows as sometimes happens, and rather to either put distance between them or, ideally, raise their weapon to parry/shield to block the next attacks.

-Longer windows on parry, with less emphasis on accuracy of the parry. It seems difficult to actually parry as I suspect your opponent's blade has to literally connect with the sword, and I also suspect that lag causes blows that should have hit your sword (or whatever weapon you/they are using) just go through. However, keep in mind that there is only ONE way in which your character can actually parry (usually by bringing the blade diagonally up over your chest) while there is much greater freedom in how your opponent can swing. Just make it so that if you're hit in the front while parrying, it's a parry. I find it near impossible to actually parry even though on my screen my timing looks perfect.

The same goes for shields, you can only bring those up over your chest in the game, you have no freedom to actually crouch behind a tower shield or do anything special, giving a huge advantage to attackers, to the point that maneuverability in combat seems to reign supreme over being something more akin to a "tank." Long story short, your opponent can always swing at your legs, but you cannot bring your sword to block an attack there it seems.

Maybe these are the ramblings of a clueless noob who just needs to "git gud," and I probably do need to get more practice in PvP anyway. If my assessment of PvP in LiF is incorrect and there is something to be said for "fencers" who do more with parry and block, I'd appreciate some tips or a video guide especially.

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Worldsprayer
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Re: Blocking, Parrying

Post by Worldsprayer » 22 Jan 2017, 08:05

You're correct in a number of things:
It is literally impossible to protect the feet with a shield: The characters left foot is so far forward that it is at all times vulnerable. Looking down to "cover" it makes it worse as the leg clips through the shield. I think the character shold have collisions with itself so that looking down would cause the shield to slide down the body, not go through it.

Maneuverability is definitely everything, the best fighteres I have seen are 2 handedswingers with no armor or shields, which makes them almost 2x faster on foot than the lightest armor/shield setup.

Weapons in general need to get those animations off quicker: a sword, especially a 1-h sword, is wicked fast in real life, even the "knight" sword, and these huge backwards reaches for all the attacks are absurd.

The shields require considerable time to come up, in testing, we found that if a shield user triggers the shield activation at the exact same time as an attack starts, it will fails to protect 100% of the time, meaning that smart shield work is far less protective than simply hiding behind your shield, which further gimps you in respect to the speedy strikers.

The issue here is literally heavy infantry vs light infantry. The light infantry yes should be maneuverable, but the protections of things like shields should considerably help the armored fighter, not hinder as they do at the moment. It is literally smarter to simply wear the shield on the back than it is to carry it.
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Valo
 
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Re: Blocking, Parrying

Post by Valo » 22 Jan 2017, 23:59

-Quicker raising of defenses, especially shields. Shields that are NOT on the back should always block 100% of damage even if it's not raised.

-Timed blocking works as normal, but shields can do it too but with a much shorter window.

-One can keep a sword raised indefinitely to parry, same as with a shield. The usual duration one can raise a sword in defense counts as a timed block window. Past that, a degrading amount of defense is offered. For instance, if you just keep a sword raised to defend yourself, at first it will block 100% of damage, then lower as time goes by to only 50% protection. This allows for more survivability for less skilled players and for people to get a better feel for using the sword to parry by making it slightly more forgiving.

The above would make shields a much more reliable form of protection, ensuring a more tanky character's place in the "meta," as some people call it. Shields would also be tactically useful for highly skilled players who would be able to use them for timed block to set up for counter-attacks.

Combat as it currently stands is a fine foundation for Life is Feudal, but I do not believe that it is acceptable in the long term. Most people I speak to say that naked fighters with boots and war picks or 2h swords or mauls is the most effective fighting style, and my own (limited) experience fighting these people seems to confirm this.

However, I do not think that having 1h swords and the like be as slow as they currently are is a problem. Unlike in real life, some degree of telegraphing is necessary for gameplay purposes. Most people can be trained up to parry a few incoming blows coming at them in real life, but in a videogame there is inherently a larger delay due to how many steps it takes to actually make a character parry.

The speed of attack is fine, the speed of defense is not, and this is clearly represented in how the current "meta" is to hit first and then run away, likely to the tune of the Benny Hill chase music.


Baronandy
 
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Joined: 28 Jul 2014, 11:36

Re: Blocking, Parrying

Post by Baronandy » 25 Jan 2017, 21:14

i would like the tiger knights or mount blade parry mechanics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrSx8iOOgQ0


Valo
 
Posts: 10
Joined: 20 Feb 2015, 01:51

Re: Blocking, Parrying

Post by Valo » 27 Jan 2017, 19:54

Parrying mechanics like that would be ideal in my opinion as well. However, I am skeptical that it would be feasible to do in Life is Feudal. In larger claims most people only get 20-30 frames, if that, and even in wilderness a lot of people struggle to break 40. Input delay from lag and other sources limits how fast you can react to attacks. Presently turning to face a swing and blocking is about the limit of what I feel is possible for most people to do, thus why most good PvP'ers I see tend to focus on avoiding swings altogether rather than blocking them. Worse is that quite frequently, if not most all the time, a blocked attack will still damage you.

Perhaps with 64 bit clients the game will be stabler, more optimized and more responsive, allowing for a more complex and more rewarding system of blocking to be put in place. But for now I believe (in my biased opinion) that my above suggestions would serve best as an improvement to the current ineffective system and perhaps a stepping stone to some end-goal for parrying mechanics, pending further optimization of the game itself.

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