Single saber
1- DFA needs to be able to turn like in Single player. It's blockable unless it lands dead on so there's no reason to have it be so useless when compared to the twin and staff specials.
2- Medium needs it's spin attack to be a little faster, as is it leaves you open for a little bit to long to be considered a medium hit.
3- Light stance is perfect.
Overall I love the single saber. Very effective and consistant.
Twin sabers
1- Special attack (floating sabers) is fantastic. It's easy to see coming so it isn't all powerful, leaves you open to certain attacks but when you do land it, it's very much worth the risk. You can take out a crowd in a hurry with it.
2- Basic attacks are absolute crap. Very short range, too many situation where sabers go thru people with no effect at all. It seems the sabers are only 'active' or able to land a hit at very brief moment in it's swings. It's really annoying how watching the whriling dervish of a style be mostly impotent.
Overall I like the look and the special, but the basic attacks are pathetic. Needs work.
Staff
1- Special looks very sweet. Effective and very cool. I love it.
2- Basic attacks could use less flair and more effect. They hit fairly consistantly but the range is shorter then what I would have expected.
3- I hate the stance when standing still, it looks like your trying to hand the thing to your enemy. But this isn't really important, overall the stance looks great.
Overall the stance looks great, the specials are cool and effective, the range needs a little help. The stance is a little to pretty and not mean looking enough for me. Kind of looks like more like a gymnist then a fighter.
As for the multiplayer over all I think it needs a little work on the basics.
1- Hit detection need to work a little better. Too often (many times during special attacks) sabers go thru people with no effect at all.
2- Defense is too effective, two players can rip at each other with nothing more then sparks. You should be able to beat defense more easily with timing,increase the window in which hits get thru a little bit. Not much or else you'd get the defense less 1.02 version of JKII. Defense needs to exist BUT it shouldn't be too effective.
This games kicks ass, I only point out what I would change in order to provide constructive opinions on how IMHO the game could improve feel free to share your opinions. No flames please these are just opinions.
I just have to say (and don't take this the wrong way) that this post is an excellent improvement over your past rants. You were constructive with your criticism and that makes me proud.
Some of the things you mention can be tweaked, such as saber damage, locational damage, and hit detection using console commands.
However, some of the stuff with such minute tweaking you'll have to either leave to Raven (in a future patch if they decide to make one) or to modders.
I am finding the Dual sabers to be a personal favorite. Instead of me spinning around (staff) it's my sabers. They may be weak, but I can use them to hit twice as often so for me it balances out okay. It's sort of like fast stance... some people called it useless because it was weak, but we all know you can use it to slip in attacks and you can deflect more blaster shots.
Kurgan, it's obvious that you're one of the few intelligent people here, and have a good understanding of how cvars work, may I suggest you put a "stuck" article to teach people how to set them? Like:
CVARS - How to set; what to expect
For FF, SO, ctf... blah blah blah...
For FF duels....
And explain what to expect (better hit detection, higher saber damage, higher/lower blocking...) from using your settings. As you said, education benefits the community.
Oh, and did it ever occur to you that FF duels unplayable is because lowered saber damage? So that comparatively force powers are too effective. Just my thoughts.
Originally posted by Homeboy
Kurgan, it's obvious that you're one of the few intelligent people here, and have a good understanding of how cvars work, may I suggest you put a "stuck" article to teach people how to set them? Like:
CVARS - How to set; what to expect
For FF, SO, ctf... blah blah blah...
For FF duels....
And explain what to expect (better hit detection, higher saber damage, higher/lower blocking...) from using your settings. As you said, education benefits the community.
Oh, and did it ever occur to you that FF duels unplayable is because lowered saber damage? So that comparatively force powers are too effective. Just my thoughts. I'd say this is worth doing...
I agree on the hit detection, but I'll extend it to the regular attacks as well.
The sabers glow more than in the SP game - they're thick as tree trunks, and I don't know why. Combine this with how everyone picks dual and doublesabers, and in a duel, it's virtually impossible to see anything because the 4(!) saber blades are obscuring the player models.
It's nice to see the spark animation so you're sure you made a hit, but I wish they'd tone it down a little, or even better - the more damage, the bigger sparks. Might not be feasible though, so I'm not holding my breath on this.
Dual and doublesabers seem very uncontrollable to me, but it might just be because I haven't practiced as much with them. This is especially true with the duals, as you have 2 blades constantly in motion, leaving you wondering when the attack animation will stop and where your opponent is below the flurry of slashes.
The staff is alright, it seems to hit more easily than the duals, but it incorporates too many spins for my liking -you shouldn't be doing dance lessons, but effective stabs and slashes.
The single saber is consistent as Destino put it - I agree with how the medium stance needs to have its spin attack's speed increased, but this isn't going to happen.
The saber damage in duel is way too low, yank it to the FFA setting and let rip. I assume Raven did it this way because if it was higher, the staff and duals would just go berserk and get lucky most of the time.
When tossed to the ground, it should take a bit longer to get up - by simply pressing any movement key, players are practically out of the way before they hit the dirt, rendering this move useful for getting some lebensraum, but useless for doing the ground attack move.
I wouldn't mind seeing the dual & double saber twirl get some kind of movement implemented. As it is now, it's only real use is for cornering foes or hoping they're unaware of this "blender move". Not a full run though, just let them walk around while swinging their sabers.
Having played the JK series since 1998, I can say with some experience to back it up: Play the game for more than a few weeks before you declare what "has" to be changed about it.
One more thing that's strange is how Raven themselves has said that the dual and doublesabers have an edge compared to the single, but you can get those new sabers with only dot in saber attack, while you must purchase all dots to be able to have all single saber stances. Doesn't seem very logical or fair to me.
SpiderAL: I agree, this is just my initial impressions, and my views on what would be changed were I in charge.
Initial impressions...
Maybe I'm just turning to the dark side because of all the incessant whining from the idiot faction about how crap the new game is, (if it's so crap, don't play it, and why are you here telling us about it etc.) and maybe there's nothing wrong with posting your initial impressions.
Maybe that's true.
For myself though, I'm keeping my "initial impressions" to myself, because they are in fact, inital impressions and nothing constructive can come of publicising them. In fact, some bad things can come of publicising them. People could get the impression that I'm AGREEING with the idiot faction's negative schpiel. That certainly wouldn't be good, I wouldn't want to lend them fuel now, would I.
This is not about small settings changes, the hit detection and current defense set up are flawed. This game will have to rely on it's fast pace run and gun to grow in competition if these things are not fixed.
Random anything is not good for competitive play.