Details About Some Patch Changes

[ChangKhan]

(This is a copy of my other post, but stuck and locked so that it contains just my original relevant info that I was providing).

 

Okay, the patch info doesn't go into the details about what was changed in saber combat for the patch. For those of you that are insterested, here's the deal:

 

In general, some work was put into making sabers more likely to hit - both the other players and their lightsaber. This was not so much a problem with strong attacks because they are so long and slow, but often medium and fast attacks would miss or pass through.

 

Idle saber damage (i.e.: damage not done while in an attack animation) was toned down to reduce the number of seemingly "random" kills.

 

Parries, deflections, reflections, broken parries and knockaways were put into MP (these were in SP but were not in MP).

 

Saber lock frequency was slightly increased so that it could happen in the heat of combat.

 

Hand dismemberment was put in to MP, also, the hand-dismemberment "win" result of saberlocks that is in SP was put in MP. It only happens if the loser of the saber lock was low on health anyway.

 

Light Stance:

The foward lunge attack (swing from the bottom up) was toned down in damage just a little bit because it was quite often a 1-shot kill and could be exploited fairly easily. It still does a lot of damage, just not enough to kill in one hit.

 

Medium Stance:

Medium was not meant to be the whirling dervish style, so it was made so that, if you do the same exact move over and over again, you cannot chain as many attacks as if you mix it up a little. "Spinning top" fighters should use fast style. This is the *only* change to medium style.

 

Strong Stance:

Strong attacks were slowed down some to match SP, as was player movement while doing a strong attack. Strong attacks also do more of their damage at the middle of the swing and less at the start and end. This was necessary to give the strong attacks a more realistic feel (because the anims are so long that sometimes you would get a somewhat accidental looking kill). But strong attacks were also given the ability to chain, like in SP. If you do an attack and then switch up the direction of the attack by 45 degrees, you will be able to chain into another attack. Also, the strong overhead jump attack was made to not do as much damage once the saber is in the ground and you can no longer turn during this attack (like the fast style's lunge attack). This was the single most exploited move in MP and required this much heavy tweaking.

 

The back-flip off a wall/opponent was changed into a double-tap. This was mostly done because it was frustrating to try to get over a small lip and end up back-flipping off of it. In combat, you can still kick someone and knock them down with this move, but you have to do a double-tap. Also, it was noticed that the strong style was completely vulnerable to this move because of the long wind-up time of it's attacks. A somewhat skilled jump-kicker could always knock down a strong style user (often you could not see the kick coming). So the jump-kick was made to not *knock down* a strong user who is in the middle of a swing. It still does damage and you still flip off them.

 

Regardless of what you feel is different or other posters say, these are really the *only* changes to saber combat...

 

We tested the new saber tweaks pretty heavily and only stopped when we felt that the three styles were well balanced with each other.

 

Someone else mentioned that they already found the g_jediVmerc cvar (I don't know how!)... to quell and speculation about it, this is a server cvar that makes it so that clients joining a game must choose to be a jedi (who uses the saber and force powers) or a non-jedi (a mercenary, who uses guns and pickups). It is *not* a supported feature and makes no claims at being bug-free or a balanced game feature. Use it at your own risk. Note that you have to set it on the command line (or, I think, use the console's "set" command) to get it to show up on your console.

 

The server browser was updated to include 5 possible new icons next to the server names. One is a lock and indicates a server that requires a password. The second icon will either be a force icon with a half-faded circle with a slash symbol (meaning some force powers are disabled, but not all) or a force icon with a large red "X" over it (meaning all force powers are disabled). The last slot will show a saber for saber-only games or a saber and a gun for Jedi vs. Merc mode.

 

That's all I can think of now.