Guide to Close Combat: Part 1

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If you don't want to do the reading and you'd rather this was simpler, then just scroll down to my Recap, and I highlight all of the important points there. If some things stand out to you, inquire within.

Introduction

My intentions have been to make melee less predictable, allow more diversity in fights so they aren't always the same, conjoin the Ki and Melee systems, and create the DBZ feel that we all know and love. What I'm about to present to you is an optional and voluntarily initiated close-quarters combat, much like Advanced Melee. It has a unique, circumstantial purpose that in no way interferes with other aspects of the game, but rather flows well with and enhances them, much unlike Advanced Melee. It requires almost no changes to be made; just your recognition that it exists and adds value to the game.

My goal is to show you the various aspects in which it currently exists and is used in 1.2, how it enhances game play, why it's overlooked, and its potential for 1.3. As you read on, I'll explain these elements and future uses for what I will call Close Combat, and then draw comparisons with how it relates to and can outdo the current Advanced Melee concept.


What is Close Combat and how do we do it?

Close Combat is essentially a short-ranged melee fight which relies more on flying and short teleporting to maneuver as opposed to swooping. It's when the player uses fast flying utilizing Up, Down, Left, Right, Forwards, + Backwards to attack, evade, and maneuver around their target. Short-ranged teleports make this fighting more intense and unpredictable. There is little swooping involved with this style, as that is generally used to close greater distances between players.



When is flying useful?

Current Uses in 1.2
Flying with turbo can be used to...

  • Easily evade a high speed swoop
    This is because the distance closes significantly faster, and the attacker has less time to react to target and angle his attack. The player dodging with flying is constantly moving and doesn't rely on split second reactions to dodge like teleporting, blocking, and gliding does, thus he remains unaffected and gains the advantage. Because this consumes very little Ki, you can dodge attacks during almost any point in the fight.

Try this: A player that transforms into Mystic Krillin or Evil Buu will have a horrible time trying to hit you if you evade with flying. You don't even need to be fast; the error in their accuracy will more than make up for it. They are also not used to people evading attacks with just flying, so this will also catch them off guard. Because of their faster speed, their attacks will circle around wider, making it easier to track them and prepare yourself again.


  • Pivot around an opponent's block to strike him from the side
    The closer players are to each other, the more effective flying is at maneuvering around the target.

Try this: Next time a player blocks you, use turbo to move around him and strike him again. Since he doesn't expect it or know which direction you'll be going, he'll have a very difficult time blocking you. I can almost guarantee that you'll land the hit.


  • Close distances between swoops and teleports
    If you teleport a hair away from hitting your target, you can close the distance by flying. Sometimes this is a good way at catching players off guard, since they usually react to swooping noises and immediately teleport away. If you teleport near them and they don't hear a swoop, they may hesitate, especially if they are low on Ki.

    If two players swoop and end up being very close to each other, flying is an easy way to score the hit and conserve Ki, although it is riskier if there's too much distance in between.


Why don't players use flying more often now?


  • Untrans lacks the speed, trans lacks the need.

    It's best used in transformation fights where speeds are increased, but pros don't transform to melee. The only reason you'd choose to fly as opposed to teleport then would be for Ki Conservation, and that's only important when untransformed.


  • A majority of players don't utilize all of their mobility. Players rarely use the CTRL key when swooping, which is a vital part of dodging with flying. This is the greatest reason why most players fail to use flying correctly.

    If a player is attacked from the front, Up + Down in combination with Left + Right are vital to dodging the attack. When a player is constantly moving Up + a direction, they aren't fully utilizing all of their mobility, and they will be easily figured out.


  • Players lose track of the attacker's position and fail to keep them in sight. The attacker's positioning is vital to what buttons you need to use.

    When attacked from the side, Left + Right are part of the swooping path and become obsolete. You need to use Up + Down with Forward + Backward instead.​

    When attacked from above or below, Up + Down are part of the swooping path and become obsolete. You need to use Left + Right with Forward + Backward instead.​

    When attacked from the front, Forward + Backward are part of the swooping path and become obsolete. You need to use Left + Right with Up + Down instead.​

    Keeping your opponent targeted makes it so they can't attack you from the side, thus simplifying your controls for you.

Try this:You can use flying effectively right now, so go give it a shot. Remember to use turbo, utilize the CTRL key with other directions, and try to always face your opponent. Doing so will simplify which buttons you need to press. You might get hit the first few times, but if you're not afraid of a couple of hits, you'll become increasingly good at doing it. Practicing this will also help you with your Gliding, Chain Swooping, and Ki Conservation.

Try this: If you are on the ground and the opponent is attacking you from above, use turbo and run to the side. They will miss you because this same concept applies, and because running is somewhat faster.


How does Close Combat apply to 1.3?
If you want this short and sweet, scroll down to my Recap​

ESF 1.3 & Close Combat
I'll now discuss various concepts of game mechanics and how they may affect future game play. I will relate flying to each of them as I go along. This is all theoretically based on 1.2 and may not hold true for 1.3.

This includes:
  1. Higher Swoop Speeds & Accuracy
  2. The Advanced Melee Concept
  3. Attacker & Defender - A Low Stamina Situation

High Speed Swooping & Accuracy
Normally when two untransformed players attack, they will try to hit where they believe the player is going to be. The longer they both "swarm" the area trying to pursue each other's predicted spots, the wider their circles/ovals become until they are a certain distance apart from each other. When two players transform and their speeds are increased, there are fewer points along the path that they can predict, which means less opportunities to hit. The swarming patterns spread out much more quickly, and the distances between the opponents are increased.

It's very annoying in fact when you're used to keeping the fight within a reasonable range, and you and the opponent are twice the distance from each other in the end after having also had a more difficult time guessing where they'd be. This is largely why pros don't use transformations, because of the extreme difficulty of landing a hit, nevermind angling it.

Try this: Draw an inch diameter circle in 1 second. Make the ticking sound of a clock, and say the word "Circle" throughout the entire second. Draw 5 circles. They will look pretty good.
Now draw an inch circle in half a second. Add a tick in between so it's twice as fast, and say the word "Circle" throughout half a second. Draw a lot of circles. They will look really sloppy. There is also noticeably less consistency between circles. The beginning and end will rarely connect the way they should. The shape will always be malformed. It will never match the quality of the circle that was drawn half a second slower. This is the inaccuracy that occurs in high-speed swoops.
If this didn't work, you didn't draw big enough circles.

In order to lessen the amount they need to turn, or the amount of circle they need to draw, (Red) will approach wider. (Blue) can notice the wider approach and instinctively flies towards (Red). Thus, high speed swooping results in a greater occurance of head-on collisions.


The following drawing assumes two players swooping at each other, one trying to get the angle hit.
Red vs Blue. Thin red lines are general field of vision. Green lines are perspective field of vision. Numbers are seconds, scale is distance, which is always the same.

  • This is a normal untransformed swoop attack.
    It takes 3 seconds to complete. The angle is created within 3/4 -1 second. Red has good vision of Blue during the turn, making the predicted spot reliable. The angle isn't very sharp, allowing Red enough time to make a consistent and smooth turn.

  • This is a transformed swoop attack.
    It takes 2 seconds to complete, as the speed has increased. The angle is created within 3/4 a second. Red has hardly any vision of the target, making it difficult to predict where Blue will be. This is due to the very sharp angle that's created by a faster speed.

  • This is a wide-approaching transformed swoop attack.
    It still takes 2 seconds to complete. The angle is eased into earlier, created over 1 second. The purpose to approaching wider is to make the turn not as sharp. This works with cars too! Red has more vision of his target, and it's easier predict where Blue will be. The problem is that Blue will recognize this wide approach and begin moving towards Red. As you can see by the way it connects, it becomes a Head-On attack.

Now that I've demonstrated the increased difficulty higher swooping speeds present, I predict that in 1.3, where players will learn to become more skilled with these higher swoop speeds, that this inaccuracy will still exist, and even faster swooping speeds may offset the catchup in skill. With the greater occurance of head-on attacks, I believe that the role of flying will become increasingly easier to evade with. Players who like an all-swoop combat will, like they do now, remain untransformed to fight, or learn to use flying to dodge and counter.

However, if swoop speeds were increased only slightly throughout transformations, and a majority of the added speed came from a charged turbo, then extremely fast swoop speeds would become optional. Pros could then fight in transformed states effectively.

This would also be more noob friendly. Noobs can't angle hits to begin with, so why not use an incredibly fast head-on attack to catch the opponent off guard? Noobs generally use transformations now for that reason. This would be an increase to that advantage for them without sacrificing the pro aspect of the game.

EDIT: As an afterthought, the reason this inaccuracy really occurs is because the mouse sensitivity stays the same, but the swoop speed increases.

EX: Swoop Speed / Mouse Sensitivity = 1

As one increases, the balance shifts. That creates the inaccuracy. Since it could shift in both directions, players would either need to continually master these different speeds and their increased difficulties, or match the sensitivity relative to the speed every time they transform. They shouldn't HAVE to do that. This isn't a very noob-friendly or current-pro oriented way of handling it either. The learning curve would be very high for such a basic maneuver.

So overall, my opinion is that swoop speeds should be kept within the same speed to minimize the change in balance. The current Trunks or Goku SSJ should be the fastest swoop speed possible without using a charged turbo.

The Advanced Melee Concept

Lets consider first the concepts behind Advanced Melee:
  1. Players can engage in a close-quarters fight
  2. Roles are established as a result of one player hitting the other
  3. Attacker initiates the fight and gains first strike
  4. Defender is allowed to fight back after the initial strike, but to a lesser degree
  5. Defender may end the engagement on his turn

In Advanced Melee, the controls the players have available are the directionals left, right, up, down, and combinations in between. It has a 2 Dimensional setup, like a 2D fighting game. Unfortunately, this is why Advanced Melee interrupts the gameplay, does not flow well with the 3D aspect of the game, and incurs severe limitations. It doesn't use any of the existant game mechanics and requires extensive programming to design new ones.

The existent game mechanics are flying, teleporting, blocking, and swooping. In order to make a fluent close-quarters fight, THESE are the tools you need to work with. Flying, like Advanced Melee, uses directionals to move. With the added Forward/Backward movements, the 3D environment exists.

  • With Advanced Melee, you can use left + up, left + down, right + up, right + down.
  • With flying, you can use left + up, left + down, left + forward, left + backward, right + up, right + down, right + forward, right + backward, forward + down, backward + down, forward + up, forward + down.

Now you're thinking... But flying is nothing like Advanced Melee! They're so different!

This is true in 1.2, where the only time the roles of Attacker/Defender may be established are in Advanced Melee. Otherwise, players can use swoop, teleport, and beam jumps to create distance for safety. But in 1.3, because a player with low stamina can't teleport or swoop as easily to safety, it forces the role of a Defender onto him and opens new doors for Close Combat that weren't available before.

Relating Close Combat to the Adv. Melee concepts above:
  1. Players can engage in a close-quarters fight, as one player has difficulty creating distance
  2. Roles are established as a result of one player hitting the other enough times to lower their stamina
  3. Attacker initiates the fight and gains first strike
  4. Defender is allowed to fight back after the initial strike, but he's limited to only blocking, pivoting, and slow swooping
  5. Defender may end the engagement by attempting to escape and/or recovering his stamina

I will explain the similarities further below and then link the throwing mechanic with the swooping one.

Attacker & Defender
The stage is set. A player is low on stamina, and he cannot use swoop or teleport to create distance from the Attacker. He becomes the Defender. The Attacker swoops in to initiate the fight, and the Defender is ready and blocks him. The Attacker has, like Advanced Melee, 4 directions he can pivot around the Defender's block to attack him from; Left, Right, Up, Down, or any combination in between. Simultaneously, the Defender has a brief window where he can drop his block and try to move forward to hit the Attacker. The Attacker may either choose to pivot and attack from any side, or counter-block to catch the Defender off guard. Both are on equal footing in this regard as they have the same options and maneuvers available to them; Blocking and Pivoting.

However, the Attacker can still teleport, whereas the Defender can only fly and block. Short-distance teleports allow the Attacker to confuse the Defender of his positioning, making it more difficult to block and evade. As I mentioned before about flying, the positioning matters greatly on what buttons you press and how effective they are at dodging an attack. If the Defender moves right + up, and the Attacker hits him from his right, he will land that hit. It's funny when you consider that in both 1.2 and 1.3 you need to hit the same directionals as the other player to dodge an attack, as their controls would be the opposite of yours. (Their left is your right).

If the Defender attempts to escape the fight by swooping away, this will only temporarily stall the Attacker, as his swooping speed will be faster. If the Defender is always trying to swoop away, he will be easy to follow and open to throw or knock down.

The Attacker's mobility is his greatest advantage and the defining attribute to his role. Because of his added options, the Attacker's pivots and blocks become more unpredictable, allowing him to all-around overpower the Defender.

Throwing
Now if you're looking for a way to incorporate throwing into the game without allowing it to be spammed, I would say that this is the ideal place to fit it in. If a player connects a swoop against a low stamina player, the option to throw only then becomes available. This would be an excellent method for testing the opponent's stamina or catching a Defender if they attempt to run. If he tries to throw someone who isn't low enough on stamina, he will immediately fail and forfeit his hit, but he will gain the knowledge that the enemy isn't low enough yet or that he has recovered.
  • The animation for deflecting a throw could be the Defender brushing the Attacker's arm away, and a kick pushing the Attacker a safe distance away. This could deal damage to the Attacker, so that chasing a Defender could be a double-edged sword. This would also give the Defender some time to recover even further.

  • The animation for making a throw could be the Attacker punching the Defender and having them keel over. The Attacker would then grab one of their arms hanging down and be allowed 1 second to perform a short-distance quick throw in any direction.

In a Team Battle mode, seeing an ally thrown would reveal that he needs help.


Recap

Flying can be used to dodge attacks and pivot blocks. High speed swoops not only are more difficult to connect, but they create a higher occurance of head-on attacks. As a result, flying becomes more effective at evading them.

Most players don't use flying now because it's mostly useful for Ki conservation in Untransformed states, yet it's most effectively used in Transformations where speeds are increased. Players also fail to utilize all of their mobility with the CTRL key, which plays an important role in evading properly. Players tend to lose track of their target as well, and this complicates the buttons you need to press in response.

Advanced Melee is a close-quarters fight resulting in one player hitting the other, and thus defining the roles of Attacker and Defender. In 1.3, these roles are naturally created through a low stamina situation, where one player becomes less mobile, making him approachable. The controls of flying mimic the same concepts behind directionals for Advanced Melee. The Attacker may use blocking, pivoting, teleporting, swooping, and throwing, where the Defender may only block, pivot, or swoop slowly.


Summary of Suggestions

  • Swoop speeds should be increased slightly throughout transformations, having a majority of the added speed coming from a charged turbo.
    Pros can fight transformed, and noobs gain a speed advantage to their head-on attacks. See an ally across the map who needs your help? Charge turbo and make your grand entrance.

    EDIT: Mouse sensitivity plays a huge role in this inaccuracy. The more the swoop speed changes, the more the mouse sensitivity is affected as the balance shifts. It's far more noob and current pro-friendly to keep everything relative to one mouse sensitivity instead of making players either have to adjust sensitivity as they transform, or else master the change in difficulty with one consistent sensitivity. Pros have refused to do that now, so this should be kept in mind for 1.3.


  • Throwing should only be an option against low stamina players.
    This tells the attacker what their current level of stamina is, but there's possibly a risk of taking damage from it. Defenders attempting to escape can be thrown back into Close Combat, literally. In a Team Battle mode, seeing an ally thrown would reveal that he needs help.

  • Charging turbo could allow shorter teleporting temporarily. I removed the section on this.
    This would put a time limit on how long the Attacker can use teleporting effectively against the Defender, giving him an incentive to duke it out instead of running away. It would also cue the Defender that he is about to be engaged. A charged turbo makes flying faster, not only giving the Attacker deadlier teleports, but allowing him to pivot more effectively as well.

    Because the role of the Defender is a very brief one, the Attacker would most likely not have time to charge turbo before engaging. If he was able to throw the Defender, it would keep his stamina lower while allowing him time to charge up. This would be a strategic use for throwing, and a consequence to the Defender for failing to escape or block an incoming swoop attack.

Part 2...
In Part 2, I will elaborate an extreme situation where if a Defender lost all of his stamina and was knocked down, he could be Finished off with the SAM bar.I call this a "Do or Die" scenario, where if the Defender can't defend well enough to recover, then he will DIE in a very bad ass way. However, if they DO defend long enough, then they can continue fighting normally again.



Questions, Comments, Corrections, and Opinions are always welcome, so please feel free to reply to this. I appreciate all of the feedback I've currently received, as its helped me improve this guide tremendously.
 
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Clips will be added this weekend. Use your imagination for now.
damn. i have no buds to really help me get the picture, but i dont like the idea of being noobed by the somone just using turbo and flying to the side of me. i do that to noobs :( are you saying that in 1.3 their will be less ability to angle hit in general? also is this just a seriese suggestions or is this really how mele works in 1.3, it sounds bad a$$ mang.

i do like the sound of turbo mele, but why only in a defensive state, why not in mid air duinrg the begining of a fight, both with full ki? especialy if you would like shorter teleports, it makes it easyer for that to make sense
and to have what ive always wanted, a "float" damage normal mele attack,

like regular mele but more like dragon ball z whereas you can hit somone and instead of flying away they bend over like they just got ribs crushed, then you can charge a attack to do somthing like normal mele, but they can recover instantly if they are skillful (chain swooping motions would be good for recovery button mashing),

but if not you can hit them multiple times with a much like JK3 style of attacks, doing less damage than normal mele and not sending them unless fully charged, also unlike normal mele, they can recover at any time with a slight invincibility frame for dodgeing, a way around this could be consecutive blows can lenghthen the time it takes to recover but, consecutive blows should actualy be preset in some way and at least some what dificult to preform,

much like JK3 where you have to actually hold shift+d then spin mouse to left and make sure it ends up facing opponent and then let go of attack and press and crouch. also if somone drifts towards you doing a move that involves these types of attacks, a rock paper scicors element is introduced liek if you hold shift+a and swing left and i hold shif+d and swing right it cancles the damage,

i dont know if that makes any sense i think you would have to have played JK3 to get what im saying, i cant wait to see your videos to see if whats in my head is close.
 
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Hey Nihao, thanks for the reply. I'll break down what you said and answer it as best I can.

damn. i have no buds to really help me get the picture, but i dont like the idea of being noobed by the somone just using turbo and flying to the side of me. i do that to noobs :(
If you were low enough on stamina that you couldn't teleport or swoop, regardless of how they decide to fight you, you're a sitting duck. You'll look bad either way. ;)

are you saying that in 1.3 their will be less ability to angle hit in general?
It depends. If they use a charged turbo to add a majority of the speeds from transformations, then there won't be that problem. If they go with tradition and just raise regular swooping speeds to ridiculous levels that most players can't control, then yes, it will be exactly like that. You could angle hit after practice, but I'm thinking you'd need like... 30 mouse sensitivity to do so, which would make other aspects of the game a little awkward and noobs would have a tougher time, the opposite of what they're trying to accomplish.

also is this just a seriese suggestions or is this really how mele works in 1.3, it sounds bad a$$ mang.
They're suggestions based off of how melee will supposedly work in 1.3. Some are currently implemented, others aren't. Low stamina with the inability to swoop and teleport is in, and in a chat thread, I read that there will be a button to replenish Ki for Stamina. Other things that are referred to are planned from my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong.

i do like the sound of turbo mele, but why only in a defensive state, why not in mid air duinrg the begining of a fight, both with full ki? especialy if you would like shorter teleports, it makes it easyer for that to make sense
It's possible that both players can try to be the Attacker, but like I said before, if both are trying to use teleport, then they won't know where their target is, so it will be too random and difficult to predict where to attack. How can you attack something when you don't know where it is and it's constantly changing positions instantly?

Two factors would lead to this being possible though:
Teleporting too much will reduce stamina, so it needs to be spaced out. That means players will need to be conservative with how they teleport, making this more possible.

If the SAM bar has a melee attack that disables swoop and teleporting temporarily, then it would allow the Attacker to initiate this fight temporarily. In Part 2 I'll describe the advantage to this type of combat. It's essentially directed at quickly reducing the opponent's stamina by creating a greater number of hits in a given time period.

and to have what ive always wanted, a "float" damage normal mele attack, like regular mele but more like dragon ball z whereas you can hit somone and instead of flying away they bend over like they just got ribs crushed, then you can charge a attack to do somthing like normal mele, but they can recover instantly if they are skillful (chain swooping motions would be good for recovery button mashing),
The SAM bar melee move could cause this animation of keeling over. There's also an instant recovery at the cost of stamina.

but if not you can hit them multiple times with a much like JK3 style of attacks, doing less damage than normal mele and not sending them unless fully charged, also unlike normal mele, they can recover at any time with a slight invincibility frame for dodgeing, a way around this could be consecutive blows can lenghthen the time it takes to recover but, consecutive blows should actualy be preset in some way and at least some what dificult to preform,
Yeah I was thinking that consecutive blows would be the result of this kind of fight, and they would be directed at damaging stamina. Indirectly, without stamina, the opponent couldn't use an instant recovery, so it sort of follows what you're saying.

much like JK3 where you have to actually hold shift+d then spin mouse to left and make sure it ends up facing opponent and then let go of attack and press and crouch. also if somone drifts towards you doing a move that involves these types of attacks, a rock paper scicors element is introduced liek if you hold shift+a and swing left and i hold shif+d and swing right it cancles the damage,
I never played JK3 so I don't know exactly how that looks. I think it's like a situational thing where 1 hits 2, and 2 hits 3, but 3 hits 1? I was thinking something sort of like that, where a charged turbo swoop could be easily evaded by simply maneuvering with turbo, but simply maneuvering against a regular swoop would be much less effective. However, a charged turbo swoop would most likely beat a regular swoop, since there would be less time to react, and the CT swoop could hit the other player before they could swoop long enough. Or maybe a new concept could be coded where in a head-on collision, a CT swoop would overpower a regular one.

In this way, Turbo Dodge beats Charged Turbo Swoop, Charged Turbo Swoop beats Regular Swoop, Regular Swoop beats Turbo Dodge. This is all relevant from the current attributes of each.

i dont know if that makes any sense i think you would have to have played JK3 to get what im saying, i cant wait to see your videos to see if whats in my head is close.
I'm not sure how great the videos will be since I'm recording and making them myself. If you wanna help me out, it'd be a lot easier with more people. In some cases I'd need 3 people total to demonstrate things from a third person camera. But yeah, either way the videos will help visualize what I mean.
 
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Good ideas man. I was with you on the server the other day and you had some great ideas. Though I doubt it'll get implemented, good luck .
 
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Good ideas man. I was with you on the server the other day and you had some great ideas. Though I doubt it'll get implemented, good luck .
Like I said in the beginning, all this idea really needs to fly is recognition. It's already in the game for the most part and needs minor tweaking to make it stand out.

The charged turbo idea making extreme swoop speeds possible seems like the best solution for pros and noobs alike, so I don't see why they'd deny that.

Charged Turbo already makes regular flying speeds faster, I think, so you'd want to initiate this against a person with low stamina if you planned on fighting them in this manner anyhow.

This is all stuff that will, even with no attention or recognition, become a part of this game. How effective it is is where the recognition part is important. Seeing it ahead of time and adjusting things accordingly will make the game feel complete and finish sooner.

The only real change needed is for turbo to be given to the Defender, or else the Attacker will be unstoppable.

Oh, and thanks for the reply btw. :)

EDIT: Turbo wouldn't need to be given to the Defender, as increased fly speeds won't be dependent on it.
 
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I tend to keep to a golden rule about all individual gameplay mechanics, If it cant be simplified into 2 sentences then it's over complicated. I'm not saying this idea is over complicated, but the way it's been presented certainly is.

I kinda like it kinda dont. I'd rather just normal flying speed was increased rather than making turbo available at low stamina, low stamina doesnt take that long to recover in the grand scheme of things, mid fight against somebody and you find you're low on stamina can seem like ages before you can teleport again, (btw swooping still works, just its much slower) low stamina is designed to be a punishment, plus low stamina means strenuous activities like turbo should not be an option. Essentially you're suggesting nothing really that different, you're just hoping to highlight an unexplored part of the game.
 
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I tend to keep to a golden rule about all individual gameplay mechanics, If it cant be simplified into 2 sentences then it's over complicated. I'm not saying this idea is over complicated, but the way it's been presented certainly is.

I kinda like it kinda dont. I'd rather just normal flying speed was increased rather than making turbo available at low stamina, low stamina doesnt take that long to recover in the grand scheme of things, mid fight against somebody and you find you're low on stamina can seem like ages before you can teleport again, (btw swooping still works, just its much slower) low stamina is designed to be a punishment, plus low stamina means strenuous activities like turbo should not be an option. Essentially you're suggesting nothing really that different, you're just hoping to highlight an unexplored part of the game.
I've thought a lot about what you've said and you've made a lot of great points that I need to consider. My short-coming has been thinking too heavily on 1.2 mechanics where turbo is a necessity for flying effectively. The truth is that you don't even need to include turbo into this whatsoever, as long as the fly speed is increased. So yeah, low stamina in fact doesn't need turbo for this to work.

You're right about what I'm trying to do here. I'm worried that since most players have never used this type of combat before, that it's unknown, unfamiliar, and as a result, will be overlooked. Thus I want to call attention to it and what it has to offer so that it will be included and flow well with other aspects of the game.

What I know about 1.3 is very limited. There's most likely other ideas in the works to make up for the Advanced Melee system that you haven't released yet, and this concept might not be as engaging or be contending with years of progress. I can see why it'd be more important to me.

However, I believe that the idea of the Attacker & Defender and its relevance to the Advanced Melee concept is accurate, and I think that this is an unexplored part of the game which can be built upon.

If stamina regenerates quickly and there is a very narrow margin for this to occur, then that's perfectly fine. I'd be content if this situation were to occur 1 out of every 10 fights. I mean if players are good at managing stamina, then it's unlikely this will ever happen. Just the fact that it can and it's a different type of melee combat that doesn't have to replace the current melee setup is what I like the most about it.

Comparing ideas, the current triple hit ki blast is the best combination and the most effective way at winning a fight, so every player that wants to win uses it. It completely overrides other aspects of melee and gameplay and becomes the single dominate style. But this Attacker/Defender system can be on an even playing field with the swoop melee setup, except it will add a different flavor and could have strategic differences.

But anyhow, I really appreciate the insight, DS. I'll be editing Part 1 to correct and simplify it as much as possible before I go any further.

Edit: And as far as a slower swooping speed goes, I suppose it doesn't ruin this concept. It could help the Defender create a temporary, easily filled distance and could potentially make the Attacker's role more difficult while not impossible.

And if throwing is enabled on low stamina players, then trying to out swoop someone will just get you tossed into the ground, making it not always the best method of survival.

Flying and blocking would have their place, especially if swooping consumed significantly more Ki. This would mean that not only would a player need to be low on stamina, but low on Ki as well, for the Attacker/Defender situation to inevitably occur.

So yeah, good stuff. There's always room for improvement, so we'll take it one idea at a time. :)
 
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