Force Drain in duels and in general

[Elenkis]

"side button 1 = next force

side button 2 = use force"

 

Problem is you're still cycling through powers - by far the fastest way is to bind the keys around WSAD (your movement keys) as your most used powers

 

Example:

WSAD = Movement

Q = Absorb

E = Pull

R = Speed

C = Push

 

Any Quake vet will tell you what a difference this makes (most serious Quake 3 players bind weapons this way)

[Essobie]

It is entirely possible to get on the top catwalk on this map with Drain and Push and completely shut down a server. A guy did this a few moments ago, and frankly I think it's a pretty serious game design flaw.

 

It is POSSIBLE to get up there to kill him, but you will spend all your force power doing so, leaving you open to the same vunerabilities that Drain is used for in the first place... meaning you typically die when you finally make it up there.

 

I'll outline exactly what this guy did so you can all just leave immediately when it takes place (the guy that did this fed off of the havoc he was causing).

 

1) Join a duel server that has voting enabled.

2) Once there, get your turn to play in a duel.

3) If the map is currently duel_bay, skip to step 7, otherwise continue.

4) Call a vote for nextmap.

5) Run around saying "VOTE YES!" during your match when it begins. Remember, SPECTATORS CANNOT VOTE, so this means that the only two people that have to vote yes are you and the person you are playing. Continue until they give in.

6) If the nextmap isn't duel_bay, repeat from step 4 until it IS duel_bay.

7) Once you've got the map you are looking for, immediately Drain your opponent of all of their force power, and force jump your way ontop of the catwalk above the shuttle.

8) Stand there and wait for your opponent to follow you. When they do, Force Push them back.

9) Continue to flash them with Drain if they stand there waiting to recharge before they attempt to jump up.

 

If you want to be a complete cock about it, you can now taunt them. If they stand completely still, and you want to spice things up, throw your saber at them while they are *****ing at you.

 

10) Continue all of this behavior until you cause everyone to leave the server.

 

First off, there shouldn't be a map where it is possible to get to a single place with only Force Jump. Secondly, Drain simply works too well. Yes I know Absorb counters it. Unfortunately a low ping counters Absorb... even if YOU have a low ping as well.

 

Plus you burn your force power USING Absorb, which brings us back to the point at hand: going from 100% to 0 force power in 1.5 (or less!) seconds is a bad thing. I think that Dueling in general is broken, much like JK1 was broken because of Absorb's power over Force Pull (another rant that luckily I don't have to worry about anymore).

 

Normally I would not post exploits like this in a public forum, but I'm not really posting anything new in this thread.

 

Essobie

[Marauder Moe]

I just played on a duel server where there was an undefeated guy who did NOTHING but drain, grip you into the air above and slightly in front of him, and then drop you and one-hit kill you with a strong-swing. He had won 20 duels that game and said so far overall he's gone 60 with those tactics (he was an jerk about it too). I gave up after three matches with him. If I did absorb he'd just run away until it ran out then start drain/grip again.

 

Anyway, I thought of an interesting solution for modifying absorb so it could be useful: make it drain force only as fast as you regen it (just like speed and mind trick), but have a somewhat larger activation cost (leaving you with maybe just enough force to do one push). That way you've stopped the dark side from draining you, but if you use your own force powers you'll run out and be vulnerable.

 

I won't pretend that I have a vast amount of experience in multiplayer JK2 though, so I ask does anyone think this would make absorb too powerful?

[Elenkis]

I still like the idea of only being allowed to Drain if you have less than 100 health, and then only being able to use it until you hit 100.

 

Trouble is when you start changing powers you run the risk of making things much worse. Make Drain too weak and Absorb will be too powerful etc

[Essobie]

Drain should only work when you have missing health, and it shouldn't drain massive amounts of force power from the target. Drain should simply be Dark's ability to Heal, and nothing more.

 

3 Bubbles of Drain removes ALL force power from a target in about .8 second. If you look at an average reaction time in a human being, you'll get around .4 seconds... .2 if they are really quick.

 

You have .8 seconds (800ms) until all your force is gone. Subtract your ping (lets say 60 ms) which gives you 740ms.

 

Takes about 100ms to react to the drain coming, so that's 640ms.

 

Takes another 100ms for your brain to tell you to hit the Absorb Key (that's if you were HOVERING over it in anticipation). That's 540ms.

 

Oops... now that you've hit Absorb, you have to add your ping AGAIN for the command to hit the server. 480ms.

 

At BEST you have a little over HALF your force power left to deal with your opponent... and that half is slowly draining because you are using Absorb. If you do one giant force jump, it's all gone. If you throw your saber, it's mostly gone.

 

Enough to make Drain easily the most powerful Saber Dueling Only Force power in the game. You can basically rely on this and Grip to win every 1 on 1 saber duel.

 

At least there's still weapons servers. :\

 

Essobie

[Elenkis]

>>At BEST you have a little over HALF your force power left to deal with your opponent... and that half is slowly draining because you are using Absorb.<<

 

Not really, since if they're using level 3 Drain and you turn on Absorb it will instantly refill your force. Even if they've got you all the way down to like 1 bar left before you get Absorb on, it will still refill much of your force before they can stop the Drain.

[jedialphaknight]

if you have absorb on 3 and the opponent is on drain 3 ... you don't get any force from him if your using absorb, absorb will merely protect you from the drain that is it.

[Elenkis]

Thanks, didn't realise that. Hm, time for more experimenting

[DarthLonestar]

Iv'e used Heavy Stance plenty of times to overcome healers and I agree that a good light side player can do very well. However, the difference is its fun to swing the saber around, while the finnese it takes to absorb drain-whoring is most certainly not. I really am digging the idea of a higher activation cost but then an always on absorb as long as you don't use other powers. This solution would more than likely increase the allure of Rage to Darksiders which from what I have witnessed is almost never used.

[Jeffie]

I´ve seen rage used, mostly by fast stance users. They come spinning at you like a whirlwind and i start running the other way .

 

 

Drain i agree is to good for 2 reasons:

 

1 Its range is way to long.

2 It drains all your force WAY to quickly.

 

I think they should give it a range along the lines of grip and make it suck your energy slower.

 

Now you people who think that it should not heal the user, now that would make the darkside suck. Becasue they would have no healing whatsoever and therefore would loose almost every duel.

[Hubris]

Originally posted by Essobie

Drain should only work when you have missing health, and it shouldn't drain massive amounts of force power from the target. Drain should simply be Dark's ability to Heal, and nothing more.

 

3 Bubbles of Drain removes ALL force power from a target in about .8 second. If you look at an average reaction time in a human being, you'll get around .4 seconds... .2 if they are really quick.

 

You have .8 seconds (800ms) until all your force is gone. Subtract your ping (lets say 60 ms) which gives you 740ms.

 

Takes about 100ms to react to the drain coming, so that's 640ms.

 

Takes another 100ms for your brain to tell you to hit the Absorb Key (that's if you were HOVERING over it in anticipation). That's 540ms.

 

Oops... now that you've hit Absorb, you have to add your ping AGAIN for the command to hit the server. 480ms.

 

At BEST you have a little over HALF your force power left to deal with your opponent... and that half is slowly draining because you are using Absorb. If you do one giant force jump, it's all gone. If you throw your saber, it's mostly gone.

 

Enough to make Drain easily the most powerful Saber Dueling Only Force power in the game. You can basically rely on this and Grip to win every 1 on 1 saber duel.

 

At least there's still weapons servers. :\

 

Essobie

 

That's really a brilliant breakdown, add on top of that outside of a duel situation in CTF/CTY/TDM etc, generally you'll meet someone on the battlefield after getting there, so you'll be down a few bubbles from flipping, wall walking, a push here, whatever, so your absorb will have about five seconds worth of immunity, if that, at which point you're empty.

 

Please remove the force drain elements from drain Raven, it removes the only element of the game that defines it, the force. At least if someone absorbs I can still be flipping around them, use speed, seeing, heal myself, etc.

 

Eventually in competition play you're gonna see a horde of drainers and that's about it because it is that powerful.

[fune]

Hi all.

 

How about simply putting a starting delay for drain, during which the user would glow red for a brief moment, say, for 0.5-1 seconds. This would at the least give a chance to react by putting absorb on, provided you have enough force to use it of course...

[Lazarous]

How about simply putting a starting delay for drain, during which the user would glow red for a brief moment, say, for 0.5-1 seconds. This would at the least give a chance to react by putting absorb on, provided you have enough force to use it of course...

 

while this would help light side players, dark side would still be somewhat in trouble - unless it was made interruptable by push or something like that while it was charging up.

 

Personally, i still think that increasing the amount of time it takes to completely drain someone (while at the same time also increasing the amount of time it takes to heal) would tweak the balance just enough to turn drain from a must have skill to a support skill.

 

Laz

[Darf]

Muhahahah drain!!, it is making you angry isnt it? You HATE drain dont you? Well...you are supposed to hate it. It is evil and it is cheap, just like the Dark side is.

 

What kind of jedi knights are you that you cannot fight against it but instead whine and cry? And you so easily give in to your hate and in the end it consumes you and it defeats you.

 

Do! There is no try! inst that what that little ugly green guy said?

 

Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Side.

 

But seriously like I said in another post, using the dark forces is easier then using the light forces. Think of it this way, if the dark side is the quick and easy path then drain allows anyone to get easy kills right away, if the light side is the opposite then with time and practice you will become a more powerful jedi and you will be able to defeat the drainers.

 

Choose your side...Jedi

[Desslock]

"If the ways of the Jedi were easy there would be millions of us" -Luke.

 

Food for thought.

[Darth Abbadon]

After reading through all this, I would have to say I am with the crowd that says that drain can only be used when you have missing health. Too many times I have seen someone use drain right at the beginning of a lightsaber duel. For now, I am sticking to no force, lightsaber only servers.

[ReaperFett]

Yes, drain is overpowered IMO. You cant always be ready with absorb, and if they come from behind, they can have you forceless before you have a chance to react, setting you up for the choke kill.

[FWB]

I'd like to see absorb costing less force to maintain. At the moment you can have it on for about 5 seconds before your drained, assuming no one is trying to attack you with a force. May be the other solution is to get rid of the blue glow, so players won't realise yoru protected and you can actually get get some force power back from their pointless attacks.

[Khaydarin]

Ok , this is really simple , drain is succesfull only if you have mana. So just use all your mana before he drains you. he will waste his mana for nothing and u will use ur mana to do something ... arrgh u get the point????

[Hubris]

I like the idea of force absorb not showing an aura, that's a very cool idea, perhaps make it so neither protect nor absorb show auras, unless you have force seeing activated? And then you have the standard blue and green. While force seeing is nifty, I have yet to see folks opt for it over the more tried and true force powers, perhaps that might be an incentive. What's nice is that you can balance drain without ever touching it by doing this, and indirectly give force seeing, a power that isn't all that great as of current, a little boost.

[Essobie]

Originally posted by FWB

I'd like to see absorb costing less force to maintain. At the moment you can have it on for about 5 seconds before your drained, assuming no one is trying to attack you with a force. May be the other solution is to get rid of the blue glow, so players won't realise yoru protected and you can actually get get some force power back from their pointless attacks.

 

I don't like that because when you enter games where you can use weapons and force absorb will become all powerful (like it was in JK1) since you can block the pulling of your uber-weapons like the repeater and the flechette.

 

Essobie

[Essobie]

Originally posted by Hubris

I like the idea of force absorb not showing an aura, that's a very cool idea, perhaps make it so neither protect nor absorb show auras, unless you have force seeing activated? And then you have the standard blue and green. While force seeing is nifty, I have yet to see folks opt for it over the more tried and true force powers, perhaps that might be an incentive. What's nice is that you can balance drain without ever touching it by doing this, and indirectly give force seeing, a power that isn't all that great as of current, a little boost.

 

I don't think that raising the power of other powers to balance drain is a good call. All of the force powers are pretty powerful as it is... absorb and especially drain are the most powerful given the situations they are used in.

 

Unfortunately Absorb negates all negative force powers against YOU, and Drain negates all force powers... PERIOD. In saber only duels, it should be almost impossible to force your opponent to run completely out of force without him using it up himself.

 

Look at it this way: if there was one weapon in Q3A that when you hit your opponent with it it took ALL of his weapons away from him in less than a second, would THAT be fair?

 

In weapons and saber games, Drain is a non-issue since the Dark Side has no way to stop you from SHOOTING them with a gun. This entire discussion should be about Drain being too effective in non-weapon servers.

 

Essobie

[thrEEpaGe]

oh please!!! you arent going to change how drain works..so QUIT WHINING YOU *****!!!

 

since drain requires force power, just use drain yourself, idiot!

 

if you both cant use the force, it turns into an even match....therefore, the better saberist wins, you, by whining, are simply proving that you suck.

[Sartis]

First off, you can't seriously think powering Absorb up will fix anything, it will create alot more problems. Remember it just doesn't protect you against drain it does to other force powers too, your killing them off the moment they increase absorbs effiency.

 

The fact of the matter its all a button race once he sees you or you see him, you gotta play smart, I'm a dark sider and I've seen plenty of Light siders that know what htey are doing escape the drain or even a grip. Maybe you should be looking for a strategy vs a overhaul on Absorb.

 

The health vs Drain thing would be nice I admit, it is kinda cheese to run up full health and full drain people, but then again drain is our only counter to Absorb making our force powers useful, or taking away they're ability to push/pull us around. Same as Absorb is your defense against all our force powers plus push/pull.

 

I think its gonna be hard to get the Absorb/Drain balance down without making one either useless or way to over powered.

 

Maybe force cost for Drain should be upped abit making it more to cast but remain the same. It does need some tweaking but changing Absorb isn't going to fix taht, it will overpower it.

 

Force see is already useful for those gun levels, Dogging sniper shots is definately nice or being able to look around and see them before they see you is even better. Take away the aura of protect and absorb and your asking for more complaining. Try to think of it from both sides of the force, do this to one lightside power think of how it will effect ALL dark side powers rather than just worrying about its effect on drain.

[ReaperFett]

oh please!!! you arent going to change how drain works..so QUIT WHINING YOU *****!!!

 

Prove it. Many companies listen, and then try to balance

 

 

since drain requires force power, just use drain yourself, idiot!

And if youre using the light side? And if he comes from behind? And if you want to use other force powers?

 

And you call us idiots