Just wanted to say thank you to the Chiv developers! I was playing less and less before the latest update and was just not having fun any more and had made the decision to uninstall and quit playing. Literally the next day there was an update that removed panic parry and brought back combo-feint-parry. It brought me back to the game and I’m actually having fun again!

Plus higher stamina cost for MAA dodge, lower stamina cost for blocking with a shield, and all those other little changes are much appreciated.

Anyways, great work!

@Dibbz:

Flails being able to combo through blocks/parries would be OP and unrealistic, but possibly making flails have a reduced deflect time (the 0.8 seconds in which you are not allowed to attack after someone has blocked/parried you) would have a similar effect without being silly.

Yeah, that works too.

Basically the idea was just that blocking wouldn’t slow down flails as much, because of their non-rigid nature.

Another potentially fun idea for flails:
One of the unique things about a flail is that it’s not rigid. When you hit a shield with a sword, the whole weapon and your arm absorbs the force. But when you hit a shield with a flail, only the ball bounces back, and you can continue your swing momentum.

So it would be interesting if you could continue to combo with the flail even if someone blocked or parried an attack. Obviously it would have to be a bit slower than a normal combo, but a bit faster than if you were parried and then attacked again immediately.

The downside would be that the flail would not take off much stamina from the person who blocked it, to make up for the fact that you could keep hitting their block over and over. This would make sense conceptually as well, since the only thing impacting the opponent’s block is a small ball that has less mass than a full sized sword or polearm.

Finally, it would be neat if all the swings in a combo came from the same direction, to sort of simulate the “constant swing” idea that a lot of people have come up with. Basically you’d swing right to left, whip the flail around behind your head, and combo back into another right to left. It would be a pretty satisfying windmill sort of attack that would be fun to do and intimidating to face, and maybe throw off people’s expectations a bit, since most combos go right to left, then left to right. It would make the flail a pretty unique, vicious whirlwind of attacks, to make up for the fact that on paper pretty much every other blunt weapon is better.

@Don_Kanaille:

The problem, in result, is, that using a shield actually forces you to be rather agressive with it or otherwise you will lose the stamina battle. And that is just a very strange spot for… well, shields to be in. It is fine as long as your enemy uses a small one-hander or a shield as well, but against any other foe, you either have to kill him quick or retreat - and that does not really feel like the role shields are supposed to fill.

It is especially frustrating when a fast two-hander (such as the Claymore) simply pounds at your shield as fast as possible. Even if you block a hit and counter-attack asap, due to the added shield-drop time chances are you will at least get hit traded. And you just don´t have the time to carefully wait for the right moment to strike or outmaneuver your enemey sicne the stamina-clock is ticking.

With kick being a very valid option, it may be reasonable to drastically reduce stamina drain on shield blocking overall. It is not that shields do not work, otherwise, they just do not seem to be good at what you think a shield would do (fo example, giving you the option to slow fights down and be more defensive).

I agree completely with this. Given the new stamina system, shields should have the advantage of having very little stamina drain for blocked attacks, given their myriad of weaknesses.

Yeah, shields at the moment do the exact opposite of what a shield should do. They make you more vulnerable.

The insane stamina drain from blocking and long counterattack attack times with shields mean you will run out of stamina. The super long stamina stun means you will either die or nearly die when you do run out of stamina.

Feint to kick means you will get stunned for a super long time and once again either die or nearly die.

Two things need to be done.

1. Counterattack speed with the shield need to be sped up. A shield user already can’t riposte, leaving them at a disadvantage no matter how early you can attack after lowering your shield. So, you should be able to attack the moment your shield lowers, just like a 2 handed weapon user can do a non-riposte attack the moment their parry is over. No more of this silly delay after blocking.

2. Shields should count as being heavier than almost any weapon for purposes of stamina drain. There’s no point in using a shield if you lose as much or more stamina for every parry as a 2 handed weapon user, especially since 2 handers can do parry-riposte. Taking a shield right now is just losing the ability to riposte while also losing a shitload of stamina every fight. No advantage, only disadvantages.

Stamina in the current patch is something you really have to pay close attention to. Basically, shield users should have the advantage of not having to worry about it nearly as much, if at all. Blocking with a shield should cost almost no stamina. They already have to worry about being kick stunned to death, they shouldn’t have to worry about being stamina stunned to death too.

Very good overall assessment of the patches.

@Evil:

@Slygoat:

Attacks cannot be feinted in the last 200 ms of windup (attack grunt will play at the start of this window).

A good change as it made feints more readable and feinting with a fast weapon slightly harder.
ng.

This is a very good change I find, but doesn’t actually work consistently. Some weapons, the claymore in particular, seem to make my opponent grunt, but then they STILL feint afterwards. It’s worse than not having any feint cue at all, because I hear the grunt and parry, thinking their attack is coming, only to be feinted anyways.

@Evil:

@Slygoat:

Special daze length from 1.5 to 2

A very good change that really makes stamina management count again. Finally you are able to punish enemies for poor stamina management even when using a slow weapon. The value feels odd for fast weapons though (2s stun because a dagger hit your tower shield?) so maybe make it specific to the weapon used? I also think this punishes using a shield too much. I suggest compensating for this by decresing the stamina cost on shield blocks.

I hated this change at first, but something clicked while I was playing the other night and I’ve changed my position on it. This patch features a lot of weird decisions and bad changes, but if you ignore the fact that the new stamina system seems to fuck over shield users, it actually adds a new dimension to fights.

Duels feel almost like a UFC fight now, where you have to not only be mindful of your own stamina and fight accordingly, but also watch your opponent for mistakes in their use of stamina. If someone is wasting stamina, you can then be aggressive and attack them, because even if they block they’re getting pushed closer and closer to running out of stamina and being punished badly. Before running out of stamina was almost academic, because you could usually just block whatever attack they came at you with and then you had more stamina all of a sudden.

Identifying when a recovery parry happens is also a big part of keeping track of someone’s stamina. Whereas before if you attacked someone while they were in recovery, you’d just do damage, now you essentially “damage” their stamina. It makes you play a bit of a long game because the damage you would have done to them when you hit them while they were in recovery has now essentially been pushed back to when they run out of stamina. It’s interesting.

Doesn’t justify getting rid of combo-feint-parry though. In fact, I think these new stamina changes would have been enough to make people temper their use of CFP; because of the high stamina cost it puts you at a big disadvantage should your opponent pressure you and make you lose even more stamina. I’m willing to bet that if combo-feint-parry was returned to the game with these new stamina changes, that the “aggressive+defensive comboer” that people complained about would be much less effective.

@Evil:

@Slygoat:

Increased weapon knockback on all primaries.

By itself a good thing but overdone. Should be toned down but not reverted completely.

Agree. Knockback is alright, but right now it just launches you completely out of the fight you’re having. Knockback should be high enough that it pushes your opponent out of their comfortable range, where they feel they can threaten you the most, but not so far that you can’t even hit each other.

@Evil:

In short:

• too many changes
• too severe mechanical changes
• not enough testing
• a lot of good changes that are now tainted/overshadowed by the poor ones :|

Agree.

@Dr:

I like the constant swing mechanic (see the link in my sig).
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Secondly, the game has it’s own logic. In reality you couldn’t swing a sword through 3 people but you can in CMW because it’s very hollywood. In real life you could hack straight through a shield with a two handed axe but you would probably have to spend time pulling it out of the person you’ve just killed. I think worrying about “rotational velocity” is a bit ridiculous. Especially when you have no evidence to back it up.
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Yeah, you’re constant swing mechanic is basically exactly like I was talking about.

I was going to say that about the “rotational velocity” argument as well, but wasn’t interested in getting into the old realism vs. fun videogame arguments.

But yes, this is a game in which you can take a throwing axe to the head and live, kill a knight in full plate armour with a hunting knife, take a crossbow bolt to the leg and keep sprinting around, get covered in flaming pitch and still fight, and block a maul with a thrusting dagger. Realism in regards to the strict physics of swinging a chain around your head hardly seems relevant, especially when you can kill someone behind you with the very first of your windup as easily as you can with a full swing with almost any weapon in the game.

@BB:

It’s faster and does more damage than the Star. So it’s only downside compared the the Morning star is range.

When you say faster, did you mean to say at best the same, if not slower? Because the warhammer has slower release and recovery for slash and overheads than the morning star, and the same windup for slashes. The only place the warhammer is faster is with overhead windups and combo times. Even the faster combo times of the warhammer put it at an equal speed as the morning star when you look at the total swing time.

@Ho_BoY:

I really am trying my very best to enjoy this game after patch. But I can’t, as soon as I join and see 500 archers spamming arrows at me with their buffed weapons it makes me so angry. I’m trying to get used to it and adapt, but how can I adapt when I’m so restricted? The fun of playing MAA is gone, Vans and Archers dominate, while MAA’s and Knights get kicked around. When I try to get in an attack with my short 1h the bubble screws me so hard and I just bug out.

Where is the good old chiv?

I unfortunately agree. A lot of the fun has been taken out of the game, for a lot of reasons, archers included.

In my experience it seems like this patch is pushing players away. My friend who got me into Chivalry in the first place, who harassed me for an entire month about it because he was enjoying it so much, just quit the game altogether. In his words there used to be options when you were fighting someone. Now it’s been reduced to making your opponent run out of stamina, or feinting to end the perpetual back and forth of attacks and parries. Either that or just use a vanguard with a pole or claymore, or go archer.

And while it’s good to see players banding together and working on pro-mod, those are all players who have been pushed away from the game, who are playing less frequently or not at all. Maybe the numbers say otherwise and just as many people are playing, but it can’t be healthy for Chivalry to have a community of players that’s been split, even if other new players are coming in to replace those who’ve left.

I can’t see TB wanting this fractioning of their player base. New players are nice, but they will just as quickly leave when another game grabs their attention. The players who have been around for hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay are the ones who will sustain the community in the long term. Chivalry used to be a game that encouraged that. By dumbing down the game, they’ve only ensured that the long-term fans are more likely to leave, and that new players will show up in the short term only to leave shortly after, either due to the fact that they were never very invested in the game in the first place or because they realize the game doesn’t have enough depth to warrant putting hundreds of hours of play time in.

@BB:

No it’s just that reliably two shotting Vans and MAAs with a blunt one hander sounds really nice. Only other one hander that can do that is the Star, and that’s with a .5 windup and requires two overheads.

Warhammer might not match up to the other two handed blunt weapons but it’s still much better than any other blunt one hander.

Of course MAA would like to have the warhammer, because they move way faster than a knight, and can get in range with short weapons way easier. But that has no relevance to whether or not the WH is a good weapon for knights.

And of course it’s better than the other 1 hand blunts, because they’re all secondary weapons. The whole point is that it’s worse than every other primary blunt weapon.