Deflect/reflect improvement suggestions

[TheShaman]

Yo, as I discussed yesterday with Max, we have both come to the same conclusion : the feeling of Jedi vs gunner is not great (yet), there is not really a feeling of danger when facing someone with a gun. We think this is due to the actual way of fighting a gunner for a Jedi : basically you run at him, swinging and deflecting until he dies.

 

To make it better, Max suggested to have a deflect button.

I agree with it, but to be more precise, I'd say a reflect button : not holding it focusses on keeping you alive, holding it focusses on killing the enemy gunner. Of course this would need a counter part, but since it's not my idea, he'll probably tell you more about it.

 

Although I had another idea, to prevent too much run-while-holding-attack kills (which are pretty easy), we could make it so that a saberist being shot while running suffers some kind of stumble (whether he is swinging or not), so he would have to be more careful. The "dangerous enemy" feeling would be far better.

[razorace]

We already have a reflection button in the attack button for manual reflections.

 

As for stumbling from getting shot while running, that would completely nerf jedi. How could they possibly ever beat gunners if they can get close enough to hit them?

[TheShaman]

As for the reflection button, discuss it with Max

 

Maybe stumble is too much, but what about making it sufer mishap according to the current MP level (excluding disarm and knockdown, of course)?

[JRHockney*]

yes walking and swinging increases your accuracy on reflect by many times itself. With the new quick parry button that will be added, I think we should save an our free buttons for things we need a bit more since we're starting to run out of buttons

 

Maybe stumble is too much, but what about making it sufer mishap according to the current MP level (excluding disarm and knockdown, of course)?

 

The most I can see even being remotely fair is causing a jedi to walk for a half second or something. but just remember, once gunners get absorb, deflecting and running in is the only way you can beat a gunner unless he runs up his mishap high enough (which is a bit more possible in my code) and he can use force. And also dont forget that gunners still have all their toys like seeker a sentry that can create a virtual wall of fire that is hard enough already for a jedi to try and run through without getting pulverized.

[Maxstate]

Shaman kind of got what I said wrong I think We have a deflecting button as razor said, it's not deflecting that's troubling me but it's the 'feel' of the whole thing.

Let me explain:

 

With 60DP, you're walking through shots and not caring, because there is no danger nor a danger 'feeling' nor any kind of feedback that you're actually getting shot. With 35 or less DP, the jedi's world changes from the 'feel' of unreal tournament to the feel of tomb raider. You are forced to walk, are panicking and are very close to death and even though you still have more than half of your DP you know you are a goner.

 

The 2 situations we find in OJP gunner vs jedi combat as stated above. Making guns drain FP is not going to work unless our FP is going to recharge far quicker, stumbles are in my opinion overpowered even if $ and $ are added in as precautions.

I really have no idea anymore on how to fix the feel of it all.

One idea would be to somehow find out why shots are being deflected behind or in the body of a jedi sometimes, the other would be to elongate the jedi's fighting life by either lowering the critical DP range or just giving jedi a 100% DP pool to start with.

 

Then, there's the whole getting shot thing. I still can't figure out why, but in MBII, getting shot has a far better 'feel'. You KNOW you got shot, you KNOW you deflected without ever needing to see the animation or effect. Battlefront 2's feel is pretty good because they have some whack animations for deflecting. I remember in the phantom menace game deflecting had a good feel because the shots were very slow travelling.

Dark Forces/mysteries had a nice feel because of the effect of the big orange/red shots hitting the huge orange saber and the animations kyle would pull off.

 

Aside from animations though, if they weren't there deflecting would still feel pretty good... I can't wrap my mind around it. One theory could be though, that the whole "shots passing through your body before being deflected" thing is the culprit.

Any way we could try and fix it?

 

VVV there is no danger in Dark Forces or BFIII either.

[TheShaman]

I didn't get it wrong, I said it was about the feeling because there is no "danger".

[Orj]

I don't know this for a fact, but I think I may know why the bolts pass through you when deflected. When you deflect a bolt, or when a bolt bounces off a wall, it turns around. What makes it appear to pass through you body (or the wall it's bouncing off) is that it flips direction around the front of the bolt.

I didn't phrase that very well. Does anybody know what I mean?

[razorace]

That would be the problem. But I haven't really seen this myself. It could be a side effect of max messing around with the positioning of the bolt effect, but I don't think was placed into the official release.