Do you think Red stance is too strong?

[Prime]

Originally posted by BloodRiot

Since we're on the ghoul2 subject... how does it affect the game exactly... enabled and disabled?

If it is anything like it was in JO, the ghoul2 stuff is what is used in SP to determine collision detection. It is much more accurate than MP collision detection, because it does not have to take into account things like lag and whatnot. The downside is that when used in MP it creates more lag. This is why it is off in MP by default, so all those little 56kers can still play the game. For big bandwidth players this shouldn't be too much of a problem. It certainly does improve collision detection (IIRC by using a more accurate collision box around the saber).

 

In short, ghoul2 cvar 1 is on and has more accurate detection and more lag. Ghoul2 cvar 0 is off and has less accruate detection and less lag.

 

If it is like JO, that is

[BloodRiot]

I see.. thx Prime.

 

But people complain that ghoul2 cause too much randomness... that's what i dont quite follow.

 

So you got location damage and ghoul2.

 

With both of them on you should get more precise combat. Yet more lag.

 

So it's either the location damage that makes people wonder why that blow only took 1 hp while the other exact same took 100hp.

Or the increased lag causes gameplay to become choppy on the client.

[SpDTheadkeFor]

The ghoul2 is more accurate. However, JO and JA multiplayer was designed in a way that more accurate hit detection hurts more than helps. The main reason for this is because JO and JA have sabers. In a first person shooter with only guns, the ghoul2 works great. You point the cross hairs of your gun at someone's head and you are going to blow it off.

 

Sabers are a much different story. In order to place a hit accurately (right where your cross hairs are pointing) You have to be a certain distance from your target. If your too close, you could be aiming at the guys head but your saber is going to pass through their chest. Seriously, though, go try it out. Get a friend to close down his saber and stand still, then take your saber (preferably a single blade) and aim at his head. Try to hit nail him in the face while you're stand still, and then try it while you strafe around him. Its not easy when your standing still, even harder when your moving! Its almost impossible to intentionally land a head shot when both you and your oppent are running around. Thats the first problem with the ghoul2's hit detection in JA. Very painful hits to the most sensitive area's of you're figures body tend to be more luck than actual skill, this is true for even experienced players. While they might have a better idea of where a swing is going to hit, there is no way to know for sure.

 

The second problem is JA has auto parrying when you attack(so did JO but Ghoul2 wasn't activated in MP). Basically, when you and your oppent are both swinging at eachother and your blades make contact, your saber will either automatically parry and hit your oppent or your swing will glance off and your oppent with get an auto parry on you. It isn't a garunteed hit, you do have to have your cross hairs close to your oppent, but it happens almost everytime, even if you can't see it. Parries are often so fast that you can't distinguish between them and the normal swings especially with the new staff and duel sabers, I mean blades are already going in every direction. Where this becomes a problem is if you and your oppent are attacking eachother and one of you gets an offensive auto parry where their saber passes through a sensitive region of your body, you are going to take massive amounts of damage if you are using Ghoul2 hit detection. The losers going to walk away wondering how they just got droped from 90 to 0 and the winners going to be wondering how the heck they managed to do it. And its basically the luck of the draw not nessisarly the best man wins.

 

I feel the randomness of the Ghoul2 lowers the skill level required to do well. In Jedi Outcast, you knew what amount of damage each stance and type of swing would deliver. It was consistant, which allowed people who were better to almost always beat those who weren't as good. In JA with the Ghoul2 activated, the better player will still probably win most of the time, but theres always a good chance some noob will get lucky and knock you off. For those of us who duel competitivley, that is not acceptable. When I beat someone, I want to know I beat them because I'm better than them, not because I lucked out because the game engine handed me the win with a lucky parry or swing. Thats why I don't like DFA's, because in my mind winning by predetermined moves taints the win. I like to be in control and the Ghoul2 hit detection give the game to much control. I like JA when the Ghoul2 is turned of but when its on, JA just pisses me off.

[BucMan55]

The only problem i have with red stance is in SP mode when playing around fighting 2 or more opponents, you will prolly have half of your deaths result from one or more "counters" due to having 2 blades to cause more contact.....

 

Very frustrating not even seeing the NPC swing and all of a sudden your glancing blow got you killed. All because he happened to be in red stance and countered you......

[Kurgan]

Kirgan, the reason your quote makes absolutly no sense is because you were compairing the "strong styles" of the duel and staff sabers to the weakest in blocking and power of all the stances(blue). For goodness sakes, think about that for a second. Blue spamming is almost usless agains duels and staffs and yellow's not much better.

 

On the contrary, it makes perfect sense.

 

Or am I only allowed to compare Strong to Dual and Saberstaff stances now? How silly. I have beaten both using Fast Stance alone, so that should qualify me to compare them all I want.

 

And if you're going to tell me "that doesn't count because those were obviously n00bs" well, I guess I have yet to play a "really good" player who makes everything but Strong spamming useless then... ; )

 

The fact is, if I don't NEED Strong to win with singles vs. Duals/Staff, that alone shows that the other two stances are NOT useless as claimed or that Strong is overpowered. And you can ask anybody how easy it is to beat Strong users with Fast. I do it all the time... and I'm not even that great of a JA saberist yet!

 

 

Ah, um, that was very illogical reasoning. I'll try to explain below.

 

(*snip stats*)

 

If people can't see the problems and inconsistancies with the information I've listed above then you deserver "1000 punches in the face" and need to look harder. If you've looked harder and still dont see it then read on.

 

While you've done an admirable job of trying to sum up the strengths of each saber type, this actually proves nothing. "Power" alone is irrelevant since a fast strike can get "past" a person's defenses and kill them. Thus the people who are arguing on topic are arguing that the Strong Stance is overpowered. The fact is a person can be killed while swinging because they are opening themselves up. Slow swings = longer time defenses are open. Sure if the Strong HITs you you're in big trouble, but if you can slip a slice in they're in big trouble.

 

And damage isn't a problem either if you use saberdamagescale 2.

 

Unlimited chainable moves may be helpful but repeating the same move over and over won't guarentee victory. Most of those moves will miss anyway and just make a predictable target to hit. The key is aiming and landing those moves, not, as some say "holding down the attack key and running forward like a crazy man." Some people actually insist that this is the "only way to win" and therefore JA "takes no skill at all" (Ignoring the fact that nothing prevented you from using this exact same strategy in JK2).

 

Strong stance is easy to beat if you know how. It has its benefits don't get me wrong.. it can "slap away" sabers sometimes, and it can do a lot of damage, but a lot of people miss again because they don't time well enough and so it doesn't help them.

 

For the single saber its pretty straight forward, you loose spamming ability and speed in exchange for more power and blocking ability. Pretty logical huh?

 

At first glance, but keep in mind all three stances have katas, rolling stabs and backslash/stabs that are virtually unaffected by those classes of speed/strength.

 

For the staff saber, well uhh....., you GAIN spamming ability (your speed loss is neglegable) in exchange for more power and blocking ability. Um, what the....

 

And you have consequently fewer moves and more opportunities to fall into a pattern, thus giving your opponent more opportunities to kill you. More moves = harder to find an opening. That's the strength of single saber. Now you're arguing that Single Saber = weak right? It's a myth, sorry.

 

For the duel sabers, you KEEP spamming ablility (again your speed loss is neglegable) in exchange for more power and blocking ability. Are you starting to catch on to my point yet?

 

And again, you lose the variety of moves you have with singles, and fall again into easy to predict patterns. See above.

 

Raven apparently threw out all logic when designing these new saber types.

 

Apparently they succeeded in fooling half the people into thinking that Duals or Staff (depends on whom you ask) were "uber" and the other half of thinking that single sabers were "uber."

 

Apparently the fact that they designed a well rounded combat system just escaped too many people who wanted to instantly pass judgement either in the form of "chastising newbies" (the anti duals/staff faction who think those types are unstoppable) and "forgetting to learn new things" (the people who insist that staff/duals are useless).

 

Compare the new moves with each saber type, I dare you. Dual Sabers has the pathetically easy to counter wide open, holding-a-sign-that-says-kill-me, Saber Barrier. It also has a slow, easy to miss with flying attack, and finally a "please-stab-me-in-the-back-while-I-can't-move" twirl. Likewise with the Staff you have some slow kicks, a twirl that leaves your back exposed for an extended period, a flipping attack with even more open spots (aka the "watch newbie fly off a cliff" move) and a Kata that starts off really slowly and is as predictable as Old Faithful.

 

Put that up against the Single Saber which has Katas that can be spun and leave almost zero openings (compared to their Dual/Staff counterparts anyway) and special moves that are QUICK and EASY to hit with (except perhaps the DFA, but that just takes skill... then again is the DFA any harder to hit with than the dashing forward saber spins of the other two saber types?).

 

Instead of sacrificing something in exchange for something else, you get more when you had less to begin with. If we carry the logic used in the design of the duel and staff over to single sabers, you should be able to swing almost as fast as the medium yellow stance only now with red, and you would have the ablility to spam it endlessly.

 

No. You're forgetting the sheer number of different moves you have with the single saber. Stop thinking of the Singles as three different sabers. Instead think of it as one weapon with a bunch of moves. Sure switching stances mid-combo isn't very realistic, but the fact is you have them at your disposal. The "nerfed" stances available to the Duals/Staff aren't that useful in MP I've found, except as a desperate attempt to fool an enemy who is on to all of your moves (though I suppose it could be useful for servers with Friendly Fire enabled, in order to not kill your teammates all the time).

 

If you're arguing that single sabers are weak, well this just helps my point, because all along I've been arguing that the saber types are well balanced.

 

If you are arguing that Duals/Staff > Single and the other half of the people are arguing the opposite, maybe you're both right after all. Nobody can agree that one saber style/type is supreme...

[babywax]

I think they should have made all 3 stances available for duals and staff, it would have made more sense...

[SpDTheadkeFor]

LOL, I'm not really saying any one saber is overpowered, I think they are all fairly balanced except for the fact that you can endlessly chain with staff and duel.

 

I'm a NF dueler, which might be why we never can see eye to eye. To me every stance whether it be in staff, duels, or single, with the exception of red single saber has the exact same basic moves, and even red has them, they're just really slow. For example, you move forward and strafe left at the same time, your saber swing will slash diagonally from top to bottom. If you move backwards and strafe left your swing will slash diagonally from bottom to top.

 

Anyway, thats what I think about as "moves." With each saber type and stance you can do the same moves, only the power, speed and blocking ablility differ. I don't consider "moves" to include katas or dfas, because where I fight, if you try a dfa or kata, you will regret it. To me those moves are useless and are never to be used. Butterflies, which I wouldn't have a problem with except for the fact that they are unblockable, blue lunge, and roll stab are the only "specials" I ever consider using, and even roll stab is pushing it.

 

Single saber may have more "specials" than the duel or staff, but my analysis about speed, power, blocking and spam ability is right on, at least from a NF duelers point of view.

 

Perhaps its because you use saberdamagescale 2 combined with the Ghoul2 hit detection that allowed you to beat a staff or duels weilder with blue. But any really, really good NF dueler who uses a single, would tell you blue stance is useless against staff or duels because of their defensive and parrying ablilities. If you go one on one, single vs. duel or staff, in a sweeping match the duels and staff will win every time, unless you get really friggin lucky, which I imagine is possible with saberdamagescale 2 and Ghoul2.

 

I really can't judge being I have never seen you play, but basing it on your comments alone (and I don't mean to be rude or cocky) I doubt you that good a 1 on 1 duels. I could be totally wrong too, but I would never know until I actually saw you play. I really don't play much now, more because of school but I would encourage you to go to a BWN server, preferably Masters or SDF, and fight some of the guys in those clans. Granted, the server settings are probably different then what you're used to, but I think that fighting guys who are as good them might help you see my side of the argument.

 

I still don't understand why you oppose limiting the number of chain/spam-moves to 5 or 6 with the duel or staff. It would really improve the gameplay not hurt it. I mean think about it, when you have a staff, and you use it with a single blade, the game limits your to 5 spam-swings max. But when you ignite the entire saber, you get unlimited swings with double the power and blocking with the same speed. That just doesn't make sense.

[Master William]

Originally posted by babywax

I think they should have made all 3 stances available for duals and staff, it would have made more sense...

 

Wouldn't the single saber be useless then?

[babywax]

No, not if they made duals have horrible defense, and staff have horrible offense. They would be specialized, and single would be all around good.

[Master William]

Well that would just screw everything up, each saber must be an all-around based weapon, not like ''If you want a good shield, pick Staff, if you want a good slayer, pick Dual Sabers'' etc.

[babywax]

?? Why?

[SpDTheadkeFor]

I'm going with William on this. Giving duels and staff 3 different stances would really jack up the balance. They are already as balanced as they can get, minus the tweaks I have mentioned above. Raven was wise in limiting the duels and staff to 2 stances each, I'm sure a lot of thought went into that decision.

[Prime]

Originally posted by BloodRiot

But people complain that ghoul2 cause too much randomness... that's what i dont quite follow.

That may be due to the fact that lag probably causes more problems for Ghoul2, since it was not designed with lag issues in mind. My theory is that since the collision box with Ghoul2 is more precise for the saber (and perhaps the player model, I'm not sure), with lag the game is more likely to miss a collision between sabers, since there is a smaller window where the sabers will be in contact. So with significant enough lag, ghoul2 may end up making things worse. But with little to no lag, this gives the game enough time to check the collisions more often. In this case Ghoul2 is better, since this detection is more precise. To find out for one's self which is better, playing against bots would be a good indication, I think. IIRC, when I did this in JO, it was a big improvement (along with all the saber trace stuff).

 

My other theory is that many people complain that the system is completely random as soon as they lose or have poor pings

 

Originally posted by BloodRiot

So it's either the location damage that makes people wonder why that blow only took 1 hp while the other exact same took 100hp.

Or the increased lag causes gameplay to become choppy on the client.

By JO 1.04, damage was partially determined by the amount of time the saber was in the collision box for the body. It also depended on at what point in the swing did the hit occur (hitting at the end of a swing does less damage, for example). So a nick doesn't do nearly the damage of a chop that goes from head to toe (which makes sense). Location damage takes this one step further, so that if it detects that you hit an arm, the damage is going to be less than if you hit the head. So it is not random, it depends on what you hit. If people really don't like this, the damage model can be set to the JO version with a cvar.

 

However, lag can make things look inconsistent. For example, if someone does a red top-down chop through an opponant's head and body, with no lag, the game detects that the saber is in the body's collision box for a long time, and thus does massive damage. With Ghoul2 on in this case, the damage is even more accurate, since the game can detect more accurately how long the saber was in the body. With lag, the game might not start detecting the hit until the saber passes through the waist and out, say for only %20 of the total swing. The game thinks that the saber was only touching the body for a short amount of time, and so calculates that the damage is only %20 of what it would be otherwise. So in the end the player might only receive 20 damage instead of 100. This makes the damage look random to some players. On servers I play on, I see a lot of players with 300 pings complaining that everything is too random, where as I find with my 40 ping that things are pretty good.

 

There really is no way around the lag issue, and players with poor connections are going to have problems. That is a fact of life. Now there is some randomness introduced on purpose by Raven, to try and cover up some of the issues introduced by lag. I believe that their philosophy is that the majority of players don't demand a completely unrandom system, and so try and make up for some of the lag issues that way.

 

It seems that a few around here don't like that philosophy

 

Originally posted by babywax

No, not if they made duals have horrible defense, and staff have horrible offense. They would be specialized, and single would be all around good.

But then wouldn't single be the obvious choice? Duals would get killed all the time because of weak defense, and doubles wouldn't be able to kill anyone consistently. Duals would likely lose against single because it couldn't defend against a red chop, and doubles would lose because because it wouldn't be able to break through singles defense very often.

 

Personally, I think they are pretty well balanced as they are.

[babywax]

Who says they couldn't break through the defense? Two slow red swings could

 

With staff, the defense would make up for the lack of offense, and the same for duals.

[Prime]

Originally posted by babywax

With staff, the defense would make up for the lack of offense, and the same for duals.

But how would the staffer defeat anyone? Duels would go on forever And how would dual defeat anyone, of their opponant has batter defense (by using single or staff), all the dualer can do is button mash and hope they get some hits in. There is no point playing a defensive game since, well, they have very little of that

[babywax]

Duals wait for an opening, someone always attacks first

If duals attack first against a staffer, then the staffer tries to get a hit in. If he does he does some damage, if he doesn't he gets hit. Same for single. And same for single vs staff. Staff would still be able to damage, it just wouldn't be as much as single/duals.

[Prime]

I just don't see how this is an improvement over what we have now

[babywax]

Well, I just think it would feel more rounded out... Maybe instead of making duals/staff offensively/defensively slanted, make them just overall well balanced, for blue/yellow/red stances. I just feel it would make the game seem more rounded... Maybe I'm wrong though.

[KaiaSowapit]

I'm sure someone will disagree with me, but in general terms, wouldn't dual sabers or a saber staff be superior to a single saber simply by their very nature (assuming everything else was equal)?

 

I mean seriously... wasn't there a reason Obi Wan & Qui-Gon had "oh sh*t" expressions on their faces when Maul whipped out his staff? Why did Obi toss Anakin a second saber to fight Dooku? Wasn't it so he'd have an advantage?

 

Why do people choose single sabers anyway? Isn't it because it's more of a challenge or more "honorable"? Or is it that people are just hung up on trying to relive what they're used to from JK2?

[SpDTheadkeFor]

Lag probably has some things to do with the randomness of the Ghoul2. However, I think the more acurate hit detection, at least for how JO and JA are designed, is a bad choice. The reason being there is no such thing as precision aiming in the game, unless your using guns. Its more keep your cross hairs on your target and swing, its proximity aiming if you will. Yes, you can aim at someones head, and every once in a while you might get a head shot, but thats usually not the case. Parries and blocking add to this random inacuracy of the swings as well. Ghoul2 hit detection would be great if my saber hit my target exactly where I am aiming and if I roughly new how my saber, or my oppents saber was going to parry, but thats not possible in JA or JO. Game play is too fast, parries are too unpredicable, and targeting is impresice.

 

So, maybe I should put it this way. The Ghoul2 hit detection is not random. If a saber passes through a certain part of your body, it accurately despenses the right amount of damage. The problem is that swings, parries, and blocking are random. Super accurate hit detection should be used for super accurate aiming. In the case of JA, you have super accurate hit detection, will rather less than super accurate aiming ability.

 

In JO, damage was much more predetermined. It really didn't matter as to where your blade passed through your oppents body because damage had more to do with your stance and at what point in time your swing connected. For example, if you hit someone with yellow, it would consistantly take around 30 hp, blue averaged 10 to 15, and red from 40 to 60. This provided at least a fairly reliable standard of swing damage. I guess you could say it gave more control to the player.

 

Its my feeling that the Ghoul2 removes some of the control a player used to have in JO. Because swings are fairly imprecise, it makes the player more dependent on the damage engine and less depended on their own skill to deliver damage. Basically, it provides too much "luck of the draw." In JO, I could enter a duel situation with pretty good idea of what was going to happen, but in JA, its too often a toss-up. JO's damage may have been unrealistic, but at least it was reliable.

 

I don't know, do you at least kinda see what I'm saying?

[eniaC]

Originally posted by KaiaSowapit

I'm sure someone will disagree with me, but in general terms, wouldn't dual sabers or a saber staff be superior to a single saber simply by their very nature (assuming everything else was equal)?

 

Seems pretty accurate to me.

Theoretically you'd think dual sabers would have better defense, imo, and a staff would easily throw an opponent off guard, imo,...theoretically.(I think single would be more precise...maybe...imo.)

 

eniaC (single saber user)

[Kurgan]

Suffice to say, my arguments were based on HITS, not blocks.

 

I can hit somebody all day long and have them block every hit, but the only hit that counts is the one that is NOT blocked that kills them (again, unless it's a nick).

 

If it's simply "luck" that lets me win against Staff/Dual users using nothing but Fast or Medium, then in the words of the immortal Pee Wee Herman:

 

"I'm the luckiest boy in the world!"

 

 

Notice I never said I was the greatest dueler. I'd probably lose. But that's not the point. The point is I have a system that works, and in fact it's the one that Raven recommends. Now granted, they offered saberdamagescale 1 for duels because people were demanding longer fights. But a Lightsaber Challenge in the middle of a FFA is no less "challenging" than a 1 vs 1 duel on a duel server, unless you are wanting to bring in all other force powers, in which case emphasis on saber combat is diminished in favor of force combat. I don't win every time, I'm just saying the issue of a certain type being "over powered" simply isn't there.

 

If you're basing your argument on a few Dual/Staff users that seem unbeatable, I don't think that's valid. Otherwise we just have to find one single saber user who can beat them and then all you can do is chalk it up to skill/experience.

 

My example just shows that using the staff/duals is not a guarenteed win. In fact I do poorly with staff most of the time, simply because I have not used it that much. I prefer Duals or Single and do much better with them on average. I rarely ever use Strong and do poorly with it most of the time. Again, I chalk this up to experience and not a game imbalance.

 

And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Ghoul2 the DEFAULT setting? So if I've learned to live with that kind of hit detection, why can't you?

 

I don't use increased blocking, I only use increased damage. This just gives me leverage in arguments where people say "well that move ONLY does 30 hp damage vs that other move that does 35 hp damage!"

[bodstevens]

Umm no red is the best stance....

[SpDTheadkeFor]

The saber types are balanced, I've been saying that for a while now, but you havent picked up on it.

 

Yes, Ghoul2 is default, and you can get used to it. But I still believe it lowers the control, skill and qualitly of play.

 

As far as beating people with blue, ya it can be done, but not with blue spam-sweep, at least not where I play.

 

Ah frick screw it, I'm done with this debate, its a waste of my time, I'm tired, I need to go to sleep. This is my last post, I wasting too much time on debates like this but I love to argue