Feedback: Parrying / Ultimate Charge / Character Roles
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Hello Players and Devs,
I'd like to give some feedback that I believe will make the game a bit better, as well as improve the combat aspects for team players and add some minor skill gaps. I do have experience in brawlers and team based games, but these are just my opinions. I hope this will be useful and (hopefully) others can give their insights as well.
Parrying - This mechanic as it stands is very good in concept, but it's currently terrible for the amount of skill needed (despite being tweaked). I have tested parrying repeatedly and it simply isn't rewarding to use or even acknowledge in a serious fight or 1 vs 1.
The player in question needs to block a melee at the perfect time (which is fantastic to show a player's skill), however the ''parry stun'' duration lasts just as long as the parry itself happened. To make matters a bit more complicated, even if a parry were to land your opponent can just use stamina and dodge. This is terrible because not only do you risk being hit for not timing your parry correctly, but the punish your opponent receives is basically the equivalent of nothing.
So with this considered: If you parry, it gives no value. If you miss, you can still get combo'd or need to burn stamina regardless to dodge.
What I suggest is that parry stuns (like it does now) and then locks the opponent's stamina for two seconds. This way you can get immediately rewarded for pulling it off.
Ultimate Charge - This is another major issue I see. There really shouldn't be passive ult charge. Or if there has to be then it should be extremely small (to the point of insignificance to a degree). The reason is the player is being rewarded for doing nothing, and most importantly not being with their team. If a player goes out on their own to 1 vs 4, there should be the consequence of them feeding ult charge to the enemy and not earning any themselves (or just ult charge for the damage they dealt before they died).
This would make team play a bit more necessary, in my opinion. While allowing players who engage in fights well to have their ultimate faster than others. This of course will need to be tweaked for healers. Perhaps something similar to damage dealt + healing given to charge their ultimate. Healing should give more of course, and damage less. This will make them want to heal rather than just do damage (as some healers do actually ignore their roles primary job).
Character Roles - I'd love to see something similar to a role lock or role que. I was thinking a lock similar to 1 tank, 2 dps, 1 support. Many games have started with no role lock, but ended up having to swap to a system similar to it due to players just picking damage characters and making the experience a nightmare for everyone involved (including themselves since they don't want to play the role).
I completely understand this ''might'' bring huge complications with que times, so I'm willing to accept that it's a bad idea.
If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know. I hope this feedback also helps the devs in some way.
Many Thanks!
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@TreasuredGems I agree with the parry, keep it hard to make happen but very rewarding for being able to pull it off. The ultimate charge should still go up slowly but get a little added percentage for killing enemy players (perhaps objective as well?). I disagree with role lock as it would lead to quitting or players that are bad with the character. Letting players choose who they wanna play is better overall tho it leads to bad teams.
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@Fumes-Cuh I personally don't mind if ult charge goes up by default, but yes there absolutely needs to be a reward for good play in terms of charging specifically. If you gain ult charge per kill as a dps/tank (or based on damage inflicted/healing given) that'll definitely help encourage team based gameplay (I hope). As if you try to 1 vs 4 you won't get anything done and will be a burden. But if you stay with your team you'll soon realize you get more value and opportunities to pop-off.
I'm personally fine with no role lock, but once competitive comes into play I might take a bit more strongly to it.
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i agree with everything but role lock. im just not sure about it. i will miss the possibilities of doing multi tank, multi heals, triple tank tripple heals, tripple dps ya know. idk maybe it has to happen but i will miss it. just like i miss it in overwatch.
other than that your parry idea sounds amazing, same as the ult idea
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Parry needs to be good, but not so good that it becomes a necessity. Stunning and locking the opponent's stamina is a bit much, I think. I actually like it as something that gives a seemingly mild benefit for skilled play. It's about how you use it to win your fights or escape, not how good the ability is itself.
If the game had a higher skill ceiling, I'd agree about ultimate charge. As is, I think the game needs it for less experienced/skilled players to have something to fall back on when needed. If anything, they should give extra ultimate charge for objective capturing and depositing cells.
Too early and probably even unnecessary for a role lock. Metas aren't even established yet and people will want to experiment for the first few months. I personally dislike the idea of role lock as you're forcing your views of how the game should be played on others and limiting creativity.
Just my opinions.
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Parry should be good enough that its required at high levels of play but novel at lower levels due to the punishing nature of missing it. right now the stun is just way too little as it doesn't even let you get anything from it and is still a lose/lose when a DPS or Healer parry a tank they just continue on with whaling on you cause they have gap closers.
There need to be ways to guarantee a combo and a parry is a good way imo. I can count on one hand the amount of times i've been able to hit his charged 3 hit combo into bodyslam because there is no hitstun and people just run out of it or dash.
I'd suggest a parry against a tank giving you a short amount of time where your attacks apply hitstun so you can actually damage them without them going crazy on you at the same time.
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So, I've talked about parries quite a bit as well, including for this recent closed beta. It can be bypassed by dodging out but also with abilities as I learned later. I personally never had an issue with the stun duration. My problem has always been with one being able to simply dodge after the fact. I would much rather have the stamina be inactive for a brief moment than anything else. Thus allowing the parried player to use their abilities or parry themselves. I just think there needs to be a bit more thought when going into fights and whatnot
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@D4m0R3d Perhaps it's more me thinking that once proper compositions are established and the best way to cheese your way to victory starts to become more wide-spread, that this might become a problem to not have role-lock. Same case for people not playing healers due to dps/tank being much more fun by comparison (though to be honest I haven't seen many cases of no one playing healer thus far). However, what I have seen is double healers. From my experience in both playing with it and against it, it has potential to become a huge problem, but hopefully won't.
I agree it's a bit too early for any kind of role lock, since the game is too new. Perhaps the idea might be a bit more valid a few months down the line. I do hope it won't though.
@Sol-Aethiops But as it stands Parry isn't even worth using, even a little. It doesn't even give a seemingly mild benefit, but rather the opposite. Currently there are no positive reasons to parry due to the existence of stamina. The best way to use parry to win fights or escape, it's to not use it at all due to the risk not being worth the reward (which is no reward). The two second stamina lock (in my opinion) is by no means overpowered. You'll be able to get one combo off before your opponent's stamina replenishes (they can even parry themselves), and that in itself is the reward for doing so. In fact, this also allows for you to escape as well if it comes down to the scenario. Let's not forget abilities for your opponent still remain active.
At the moment if a player (let's say a healer) uses a parry to stop incoming combos, the opponent simply uses stamina and continues their combo. There is no difference, as I've continued to combo many players who have parried me in succession despite me button mashing them. That seems a bit unhealthy for an advanced technique to be honest.
I'm not totally against passive ult charge as an idea. What I'm more trying to communicate is that kills or damage should net a player ultimate charge to some degree (not an outrageous degree just ''some'' degree). As you said the game needs it for less experienced / skilled players to fall back on, and this would benefit both parties.
The reason I say this is because no matter the player's skill level, they'll be hitting / killing people. Especially since the game uses an MMR system (which puts the players in question against other players of similar skill level regardless). So I really see no negatives to this implementation, other than the game becoming and ult fest if it's implemented poorly.
Even if we were to dial passive ult charge back a notch or two, it wouldn't make a difference because everyone would still have their ults to fall back on due to the MMR system in place. If all the players in a match are less experienced / skilled then it's safe to say they reap the same benefits. Of course this doesn't cancel the possibilities of a more skilled player being in a match of less experienced ones.
@oO-Circajp-Oo @PricillaAtticus Thanks very much for your ideas! I'm glad there are many more players than I expected who'd like to see additional improvements to parry.
If anyone else would like to pitch their experiences or ideas please feel free to do so
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Parrying is free and earns you stamina, isn't that the perfect setup already? It's something you can use if you have no other options already. You should evade most of the time, then parry if you need to recover stamina, win trades, or escape. This means you have more stamina than your opponent who got parried already. I don't see why we need to stamina lock them on top of that, that's way too punishing. I could see the parry window being tweaked, but already certain characters are fairly easy to parry with only a little practice. It's a skill mechanic and it just means we'll have to get better at using it. Dark Soul's players likely find it extremely easy already lol.
Ultimate charge being part cooldown and part skilled play is fairly ideal. Getting ~10% for getting a kill with a slower charge seems about right to me, or maybe a flat amount so that the strong supers with longer charge times aren't inadvertently buffed by that. Also being dead should mean no passive charge (that might already be the case I haven't checked). Either way, upping the skill involved would be for the better. There are already mods that do this to some degree, though. Maeve has a mod where she can get 15% charge or so when activating Schadenfreude, which has stricter requirements since assists don't count.
I'd really, really rather not have role locking. So far it hasn't seemed to be a problem. Even supports can feel pretty strong and do good damage, besides Zerocool I guess. He's still pretty fun to play though. Tanks aren't absolutely necessary, but people already seem to enjoy them since they also feel more offensive focused than in other games. Makutu is probably the biggest exception to that, but he's also a little underpowered at the moment so it's no surprise if people avoid him. I might be wrong, but it seems this game is in a good spot for people to not avoid Supports and Tanks, at least not everyone.
I've seen a lot of mention of support meta being OP, where you go 2 supports, and while role locking would fix that I don't think it's necessary. It's just another way of doing comp and it's not so overpowered that I haven't been able to beat it consistently.
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@Evade-This5965 It's only the perfect setup if we're agreeing that the "right way" to use a parry is simply to escape. Which... if that's the case, fine. Let's just leave parry alone then.
