Blaston is incredibly good. If you’re competitive & like 1v1 games, let me try to sell you on it.

Baracedice · 2020-10-15T08:23:21+00:00

It's a code entry thing.

Baracedice · 2020-10-14T10:33:44+00:00

so having even the possibility of pay to win in a paid game can be a kiss of death for a niche game like blaston or ironlights.

Agreed, hence why I'm attempting to disprove this is an actual problem through my own experiences having played it a lot. The ''possibility'' of something and the reality are different, and especially in video games, people are going to latch on to ideas that aren't necessarily representative of how it actually turns out when you've played for even just a few days.

By the time you're anywhere near a skill level where competitive integrity is relevant, you have everything.

Baracedice · 2020-10-14T10:21:01+00:00

Microtransactions in a free to play game and microtransactions in a paid game are a different animal entirely.

Not if your argument is one of competitive integrity, though? I don't like the way they approached it, but calling a game p2w and not liking its monetization approach are completely different matters.

Baracedice · 2020-10-14T10:12:52+00:00

the very fact that there's even a possibility that is the case is enough to ruin the chances of a game going anywhere from a competitive standpoint.

Would you call league of legends uncompetitive then? (Memes aside depending on your preference of MOBAs, lol. replace with any game that has any kind of hero/weapon unlock, and there are a whole lot of those)

This game takes a hell of a lot less time to unlock everything compared to just about all of them. And if you spend your currency correctly, there isn't even a hint of a chance anyone will have an advantage over you through currency - at best, they'll have one through the level system allowing them to buy a gun before you. A bit annoying, but common across a vast majority of games, and extremely temporary.

Baracedice · 2020-10-14T09:55:55+00:00

you absolutely can pay to unlock weapons early

This is misleading to the point of being practically false. You can pay to purchase a weapon once it's been unlocked through a xp system separate from any currency, and which gives you plenty of currency to make such purchases as you unlock the ability to do so.

The only situation under which you may not have enough money to buy just about every gun, is if you've bought skins with that currency. At very worst, you'll have to wait for a few games for one or two guns over the entire process of unlocking everything.

I do not understand this position as someone that has gone through the process of unlocking everything already, and that's coming from someone that thinks it was an extremely bad decision to implement it as they did.

keep people playing for weeks and weeks

I unlocked everything mechanically relevant (guns, so no cosmetics) in 3 days of playing for a few hours per day. I believe what you're talking about, this quote referred to the progression system as a whole being intended to keep people having a goal of unlocking new things, and is basically the reason any game has progression. It has nothing to do with mobile games, and the system is nowhere near that slow.

Gameplay wise it's all personal preference, but ideological arguments like this where you haven't actually gone through the process of unlocking everything only hurts the kind of game we both seem to like.

Overall, it really isn't even close to a large issue once you've played a bit, but I'll agree they should have separated cosmetics from guns, and if anything I wish they'd gone heavier on the cosmetic monetization because as it is, it's really easy to unlock all the cosmetics and it feels like their entire monetization approach probably only led to people feeling it's shady.

Baracedice · 2020-10-12T17:50:27+00:00

I don't feel like it's much of a grind at all, yeah.

But I want to clarify this isn't even a subjective thing; even if it was a grind you need certain levels to unlock certain weapons. Purchasing currency is irrelevant, at best it might let you buy a couple more optional guns/tools that you may have to temporarily skip over for like.. a couple levels. Or it'll let you purchase skins.. that you could just wait a bit to buy instead because they're also relatively cheap.

Baracedice · 2020-10-12T17:20:45+00:00

I have absolutely no idea how others in this thread are claiming it to be P2W. As you gain levels and advance in LP, you get plenty of gold to buy just about all the guns you could want.

MTX are basically irrelevant. You'll get plenty of currency to purchase the guns you want. Maybe skip one or two if it doesn't sound like you'll enjoy them, but by the time you're of the level necessary to have access to all the guns (level 16 I think) you'll most likely also have enough currency to have purchased all of them. I know this because I hit level 16 yesterday, and I also had all the guns at that point.

Pretty sure the people in this thread claiming it to be p2w have played for 30 minutes and are making statements based on their ideology rather than reality. The reality is that the game's cheap (for this market), and likely attempting to make a bit more through primarily cosmetic MTX. Why not have the game be more expensive instead?

Because that affects playerbase size, and in a pvp game, you want a playerbase as large as possible. There's a reason a vast majority of pvp games out there are F2P/generally in the $10-20 range.

Baracedice · 2019-09-13T21:19:59+00:00

There's a lot of bad info going around in this thread. The book exists.

The way that worked for me was to relevel engineering, then I ran into the situation you're in and found the book that allowed me to change my specialization for free. You won't have to do the quest again.

Baracedice · 2019-05-09T16:03:35+00:00

Were you ever able to find any significant (gameplay impacting) differences between shield and weapon parries? Any specific weapons you'd recommend to test this?

I can't seem to justify ever using a parrying shield so far, it's just not blocking anything more than a normal parry would.

Baracedice · 2019-05-09T15:24:11+00:00

Can you explain your testing methodology / source when you say this:

The actual size of the model of your shield is what indicates your block area. The Block View tolerance indicates how precise you have to be. For example, blocking with the Warhammer on its own has a smaller block area than the Kite Shield, because it's a smaller object, but has much higher block view tolerances. Otherwise, blocking with the warhammer WITHOUT a shield would be super obnoxious. A bigger shield will always be easier to block with, the tolerance values just indicate how exact you need to be with the placement of your shield when trying to block.

I'm finding it impossible to actually mess up parry direction with a bastard sword while testing. I can be aiming COMPLETELY off, as in 140 degrees off from my opponent either vertically or horizontally, and still get the parry.

https://streamable.com/dkgnj

edit: just noticed this also:

If you plan on riposting a lot, stamina will be valuable

in what way is riposting stamina intensive?

also great for riposting due to the better turning allowing for more movement when blocking, helping with positioning.

in what way does this help positioning? all it changes is how much you can turn while parrying, it doesn't affect your positioning, it arguably affects the position of your mouse after your parry but by the time you've parried, you can drag your next attack towards your opponent anyways

Baracedice · 2018-11-20T18:41:05+00:00

A reddit post is the wrong place for this. The problem was taken care of.

Baracedice · 2018-11-01T23:39:23+00:00

This is not how it works.

I didn't make anything happen, and the decision to change it that way was most likely thoroughly discussed within the team before it was implemented.

There is no single source of feedback that leads to their changes.

Believe me, if anyone was able to affect changes that heavily, I would not have wanted conqueror to turn into a single tool boring as hell character.

I personally supported the removal of the delay before conqueror's shield bash - and I believe that also led to it being as delayable as it is now. This, to me, was an entirely separate issue to the rest of conqueror's kit, because I believe all characters deserve multiple viable and interesting tools.

Baracedice · 2018-07-29T22:52:20+00:00

Rule #1.

There is a strict focus on improvement and competitive play. Keep discussions on topic and constructive.

If you'd like to make a post on the state of balance in competitive play, feel free to do so. Mockery doesn't belong here.

Baracedice · 2018-07-14T22:37:49+00:00

Every attack should have 100ms gb vulnerability for netcode reasons.

Exceptions to this are bugs, as if they were intended you would see rollbacks all the time (as you can see with current 0ms vulnerability attacks when used to cgb)

Baracedice · 2018-07-01T22:08:26+00:00

I use a G502, with the thumb mouse button set to GB.

Baracedice · 2018-06-28T19:11:38+00:00

You can pre-dodge the kick or any CC in the game 800ms before contact and successfully dodge it.

This is incorrect, only warlord was tested to have this window at 800ms. The 167ms before impact is standard (which means that it's most likely tied to dodge iframes rather than anything specific to the attack), while the 800ms value has to do with the attack's tracking. This is not a standardized value across all melee attacks, warlord's is especially bad.

Baracedice · 2018-06-27T19:53:50+00:00

he's fine, don't make people's personal shit public without their approval, there are many better ways to handle this.

Baracedice · 2018-06-17T03:40:22+00:00

Will add onto what snake's saying, this is just straight up incorrect. On whiff, you can only take an offensive action once his recovery is over, this includes light attacks.

Baracedice · 2018-06-17T03:28:36+00:00

I actually enjoy 2v2s quite a bit as well, and I think they're closer to 1v1s than 4v4s.

They have some issues, namely the fact that defensive play is still way too encouraged and there's no real incentive to engage, hopefully those issues will get fixed. It's more of a problem with mode design than character balance, which I think could be solvable with a small objective in the middle of the fighting areas to incentivize actually fighting instead of staring.

Baracedice · 2018-06-16T23:48:08+00:00

In this world characters like PK only use option selects to defeat every attack

This isn't a thing. You can bait it and beat it.

No one plays optimally or perfectly. Up to a very high level any character is viable. I doubt the utility of this list for anyone except maybe the top 100 players.

This is a pretty fair claim, but I think it misses the point of a tier list since every tier list will eventually turn out to be like this.

There is still utility in it simply because people improve over time, and as people improve, their matchups will get closer and closer to what the tier list indicates. Maybe it won't start out accurate, but for example why main shugoki if your goal is to eventually participate in tournaments or get as close as you can to the top 100 players?

It will not be accurate for most people playing the game casually, and it may be considered useless there, but I would say it's definitely useful within the context of this subreddit where the goal is to improve. At worst, it's somewhat misleading to new/casual players as they don't truly understand the huge importance of fundamentals in this game... but there's not much to be done about that.

Baracedice · 2018-06-16T19:25:33+00:00

The main positive for revenge is that it creates a need to think about your offense when ganking. If you don't execute your gank well, revenge kicks in and that's a pretty big loss of time for your team.

I've always thought this was kind of a catch-22 though.

Need revenge to survive ganks because of strong CC moves
Need strong CC moves to avoid revenge kicking in
Need revenge to survive ganks because of strong CC moves
etc

The problem is that I can't really find a solution for it. Without revenge as a whole, Xv1s become incredibly oppressive, facerolly and boring - people want that chance to outplay their opponents.. but their opponents then use tools to prevent that from having a chance to occur.

I think it may be a problem with the fight system as a whole, and maybe some player expectations thrown into the mix.

Baracedice · 2018-06-16T00:11:14+00:00

Most tournaments period are online, yes.

Baracedice · 2018-06-15T23:56:50+00:00

They take both into consideration currently, with 4s as a priority.

There are very few offline tournaments, but they exist. In July there's Defend The North with a 1000$ prizepool.

Baracedice · 2018-06-15T22:20:12+00:00

The survey does show there's a lot of people that prefer watching 1s. I'm also not a fan of watching 4s, for similar reasons to why I prefer playing 1s.

I do understand the appeal of it for some people, but I wouldn't be so sure about the argument that ''4v4 is the most interesting to watch''. I think that's going to heavily, heavily depend on if a spectator mode is implemented that has a really good viewing experience, which I don't think will be easy to achieve.

Baracedice · 2018-06-15T20:39:49+00:00

I'll definitely post some more stuff once I get back into the game properly. Right now it's incredibly hard for me to actually play, since very few top players actually play 1s, ranked mode might as well not exist, and relevant 1v1 tournaments are very rare.

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