Active blocking is actually really bad for hybrid combat, not fun for tanks and really annoying for healers. The system archeage has in place with % of block, parry, evasion that can be boosted with class-skills like "increase the block rate by 75% for 6 seconds but slows player by 25%" and still allows the player to use his other skills as his block buff is active is a lot more fun to play. Works for every class, like any archer that evades an attack could have a passive bonus evasion for 5 seconds ect..
Oh I see - the concern isn't about resolving a successful block, but abusing attack animations that are shorter than the latency between entities, with the animation cancel from flicker-blocking creating a shortcut into those animations.
Is that right?
I believe you're familiar ENOUGH with this for me to not need to explain 'why even a breakthrough to make a multi-entity game able to use the complex version would present a different problem', but I'm not sure, so let me know (~shakes fist at BDO Red Battlefield~).
No, I'm not fully following - but I'll take a guess: I assume "the complex version" is referring to rollback netcode? Which would cause huge rubberbanding with multiple entities?
There are different forms of rollback netcode, but the explicit part I'm referring to is not the 'rollback' portion.
Most netcode has a formula for 'which frames to drop and cut short' based on specific interactions within the game. In games where only 'position' and 'bullet tracing' is important, for example, it doesn't have to do as much, it just has to figure out if you actually got hit or not.
In BDO, which I think you may have experienced, it cuts certain frames but also doesn't allow drift or free movement of specific types, in order to make it easier to know which frames to drop. This is easy in 1v1 because it can look at the STATES of two players and under a specific set of states, it knows "this many frames can be dropped without anyone suffering an unfair disadvantage".
The more players and interactions between those players you add, the less possible this is, even for just observers because of how packets are sent, synchronizations are timed, etc. You're usually 'working out which side to err on'.
This doesn't quite reach the level of 'rollback netcode' unless you actually have a structure for implementing the rollback, which then becomes a 'synchronization' question across multiple interacting entities. So yes, you understand the concern.
Without a specific type of slowdown, flicker block COULD be used to hide things like the Fighter Dash animation that we saw in the Basic Melee weapon video. Note I'm NOT saying that this is guaranteed to happen or hard to fix, just asking if people would prefer "a game where blocking has a duration or cooldown" over 'A game where a player could sometimes cause your client to show them blocking when they actually dashed' or 'a game where a player dashes but will be counted as blocking during that dash animation'.
Active blocking is actually really bad for hybrid combat, not fun for tanks and really annoying for healers. The system archeage has in place with % of block, parry, evasion that can be boosted with class-skills like "increase the block rate by 75% for 6 seconds but slows player by 25%" and still allows the player to use his other skills as his block buff is active is a lot more fun to play. Works for every class, like any archer that evades an attack could have a passive bonus evasion for 5 seconds ect..
So make it a generic buff with no skill expression, yeah that’s sounds super fun(/s). How is that more engaging than needing to find the rhythm within a fight to intelligently drop block for casting your skills?
I hate tanking in games where all I do is hit my AoE taunt and then afk after activating my buffs. Active block means tanks are required to be engaged and aware over everything going on, to pay attention to animations and learn what needs to be blocked vs what damage they can eat safely by watching the boss instead of literally everything else in the fight.
Mitigation as a stat, fine. Block as a stat? Stupid and dull
Well, the Ranger stream has made me understand a LOT more things about the way certain things have been implemented so far.
Blocking relative to Tab Target ranged attacks does, in fact, make this much more interesting and important, since blocking arrows is the place where it matters the most.
Given the speed of what we saw, being able to move quickly after blocking might be very important for some classes.
Similarly but kind of unrelated, the speed of the Fighter's dash makes so much more sense now. It would be one of the main ways to close in and/or dodge on reaction vs a Tab Target shot. This, however, does bring up one more question about blocking. Directionality is expected, but can we rotate block direction quickly, and what happens when things like Air Strike hit 'perfectly' while you are blocking (where that means 'clips into a hurtbox from behind').
I'd prefer a simple "hold to block/parry" mechanic (like New World's) where you aim at the direction of the attack, though it should have a separate blocking bar, and work only against specific type of attacks (melee, mostly).
Some weapons should be better at blocking than others, shield obviously being the best. Blocking should be important for melee players that are at the frontlines taking the most damage. In the case of shield, it could partially work against some direct magical attacks like shooting fire.
Depleting the opponent's blocking bar would stagger them, and, this is important, the attack that depletes the blocking bar deals full damage: e.g. a way higher level mob using some heavy attack should be able to completely deplete a low level player's blocking bar in that one strike, therefore dealing full damage + stagger, so blocking is useless in that scenario.
Comments
There are different forms of rollback netcode, but the explicit part I'm referring to is not the 'rollback' portion.
Most netcode has a formula for 'which frames to drop and cut short' based on specific interactions within the game. In games where only 'position' and 'bullet tracing' is important, for example, it doesn't have to do as much, it just has to figure out if you actually got hit or not.
In BDO, which I think you may have experienced, it cuts certain frames but also doesn't allow drift or free movement of specific types, in order to make it easier to know which frames to drop. This is easy in 1v1 because it can look at the STATES of two players and under a specific set of states, it knows "this many frames can be dropped without anyone suffering an unfair disadvantage".
The more players and interactions between those players you add, the less possible this is, even for just observers because of how packets are sent, synchronizations are timed, etc. You're usually 'working out which side to err on'.
This doesn't quite reach the level of 'rollback netcode' unless you actually have a structure for implementing the rollback, which then becomes a 'synchronization' question across multiple interacting entities. So yes, you understand the concern.
Without a specific type of slowdown, flicker block COULD be used to hide things like the Fighter Dash animation that we saw in the Basic Melee weapon video. Note I'm NOT saying that this is guaranteed to happen or hard to fix, just asking if people would prefer "a game where blocking has a duration or cooldown" over 'A game where a player could sometimes cause your client to show them blocking when they actually dashed' or 'a game where a player dashes but will be counted as blocking during that dash animation'.
So make it a generic buff with no skill expression, yeah that’s sounds super fun(/s). How is that more engaging than needing to find the rhythm within a fight to intelligently drop block for casting your skills?
I hate tanking in games where all I do is hit my AoE taunt and then afk after activating my buffs. Active block means tanks are required to be engaged and aware over everything going on, to pay attention to animations and learn what needs to be blocked vs what damage they can eat safely by watching the boss instead of literally everything else in the fight.
Mitigation as a stat, fine. Block as a stat? Stupid and dull
Blocking relative to Tab Target ranged attacks does, in fact, make this much more interesting and important, since blocking arrows is the place where it matters the most.
Given the speed of what we saw, being able to move quickly after blocking might be very important for some classes.
Similarly but kind of unrelated, the speed of the Fighter's dash makes so much more sense now. It would be one of the main ways to close in and/or dodge on reaction vs a Tab Target shot. This, however, does bring up one more question about blocking. Directionality is expected, but can we rotate block direction quickly, and what happens when things like Air Strike hit 'perfectly' while you are blocking (where that means 'clips into a hurtbox from behind').
Some weapons should be better at blocking than others, shield obviously being the best. Blocking should be important for melee players that are at the frontlines taking the most damage. In the case of shield, it could partially work against some direct magical attacks like shooting fire.
Depleting the opponent's blocking bar would stagger them, and, this is important, the attack that depletes the blocking bar deals full damage: e.g. a way higher level mob using some heavy attack should be able to completely deplete a low level player's blocking bar in that one strike, therefore dealing full damage + stagger, so blocking is useless in that scenario.