How to Fix Lightsaber Combat (BFIII Maybe?)
I don't know if someone has posted about this before but I haven't seen anyone else talk about this idea, so I'll throw my two cents in. To make lightsaber combat more skillful and less spammy, you o...
Forum Discussion
1) You can already parry (more a bug than a feature though) in this game which needs to be timed and destroys swing spammers as well
2) Only certain abilities like Kylo's frenzy can be parried, the rest needs to be blocked
3) Your suggestion about parries being independant from stats like swing speed or damage sounds good as heroes like Vader are clearly advantaged right now due to their swing speed.
4) The punishment for failing the parry right now is receiving the normal damage by the opponent, everything else like staggering as additional punishment would be really cheesy and rather belongs to an actual martial arts game.
Remember this game unfortunately already has random/bugged staggers in hero combat and sucessful ability usage on someone already opens a door to land multi-hits on them.
Don't forget that this is a jack-of-all Battlefield type game. It can be hard to play as hero in greater modes already and including additional features which weaken them (apart from the stamina system) or make playing them more risky would basically mean instant death if you make only one minor mistake or have bad luck/lag. This can already be the case now, but I fear your suggested dmg reduction must be quite some number or else it wouldn't make up for that the fight doesn't continue as normal as before. Even if your suggested animation window yould be rather short, getting forced to be stationary somewhere is never great for both sides.
Not mentioning that many pros prefer infiltrators/enforcers over heroes in greater modes anyways.
5) Imo the most important point here, the game can be really laggy overall, especially on greater modes, so either your suggestions often might not work out as intended or give a heavy one-sided advantage to people with the better internet connection, which they sort of already have with the current mechanics.
Your enhanced mechanics would be more fair in a classic 1 vs 1 fighter game.
It's also because of the servers not being the best and even in the small hero showdown mode I died quite some times because I had a lag or simply because I didn't receive the server info in time just in the wrong moment.
6) Support has ended, so no new features or content will be added to the game anyways.
Interesting, I didn't know there was a buggy parry kind of in the game. It would definitely need to be fleshed out, but I agree with concerns about lag. That is normally an issue in fighting games, but I feel like it would be much worse in a large scale game like this. I agree the parry sounds risky, but consider that this would only be used against other heroes, and you would still need to find a strategic time to use it. This mechanic wouldn't even affect current gameplay unless you run into a hero in GA or something, and it would be better getting hit while punishing a parry rather than wildly swinging on a block and still getting shot at. If you look at successful parries in fighting games, I am talking really fast, like an animation that would be at the absolute longest half a second. The damage reduction is just to allow them to get in a couple swings. Also the stagger would be super slight, way shorter than staggers that currently exist in the game. I am stressing that this mechanic would be speedy when done right to focus on the action rather than some flashy animation. For failing a parry, all that happens is you have a slightly laggy animation, as with most fighting games. If you miss, it's possible the opponent wont even react in time to punish you. None of these animations would be slow, and actionable time would need to be quick for this system to work and feel good. Like I said, this is not perfect, but it would be way better than what we have now. Maybe by the time a third game comes out, general internet service and servers will be better to the point that this is feasible.
I'd add more one saber attack like quick, strong, charged, aoe swing, excursion and opposite like back step attack. Charged attacks could break blocks and if blocking would require more than just holding, a quick flurry of attacks could penetrate someone's defence. It would also make heroes more unique, I imagine master Yoda and count Dooku would be the speed fencers with weaker Aoes and charged attacks, Grievous similar, Vader would be quite the opposite, kylo somewhere in the middle, etc
- @UrWeakAndAFool Oh I like that idea, like if you gave each character a unique charge move based on playstyle. Maybe give it effects to make it reactable, but if you don't it breaks block. Kind of like unblockables in fallen order. You can react and evade for a punish, but if you don't you get a broken block and punished.
I think the problem is they've totally overcomplicated the heroes in this game. They've tossed everything in:
- parry
- cooldowns on even basic abilities like force push/pull
- stamina meter for both blocking and attacking
None of it is done particularly well, and the combination has resulted in heroes that, for lack of a better term, don't feel all that heroic. Not when compared to any other Star Wars game I can think of over the past 15-20 years dating back to the original Battlefront 2 and the Jedi Knight games.
IMO just make good and fun action heroes...period. If they want competitive, then make a separate game that focuses on that like the old Jedi Knight games. Maybe give Jedi Fallen Order 2 a competitive online mode. For Battlefront 3, keep it casual, keep it fun...give us powerful heroes on the level of playing Starkiller, Cal Kestus by the end of Fallen Order, or even Disney Infinity 3.0 lol. They could put them on a timer like the original Battlefront 2 used to do if need be. Just make it fun again lol.
@MatteBlack13Ok, I think I just got an even clearer imagination of what you were thinking about, thanks for emphasizing.
Still, the main issues I see is lag and that this isn't really a fighting game, so I'd say it's fine imo that the lightsaber heroes have a rather simplistic fighting concept.
About the parry exploit, you can look it up on youtube, you'll find a lot of videos about it. I think it fits in quite well even if it's a bug because you are just using default attacks, no extra animations which couldn't be more perfect in the game's fast environment.
Maybe the animation window you suggest is really so short to not make a significant difference as it sounds like, however any sort of delay is a disadvantage for heroes regardless in an environment where shooters can roam and shoot freely.
I remember in BF2015 it was possible to do a saber lock between Luke and Vader and while it lasted, both were immune to any form of damage.
That lock-on window was very long, but if we'd include your version in this game, I think there'd still be some DR (maybe higher) like when doing evade moves is needed.
Well, the exact execution of that feature would show how it needs to be balanced, unfortunately the ended support kills any more good ideas about it.
