| Mechanics of Saber Types and the Academy | |
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SaberWeildinKow - Student  |
First off I'm putting this on this forum because I felt the more who see it the better, and you'll see a bit later, it kinda sorta maybe half-way has to do with the Academy  ...Ok, I'm asking a useful, objective question here, but I'm going to present it with the following assertion and then details, please bear with me  :Staff and Duals are basically uber yellow. In the end however, their lack of red stance makes the three saber types of equal greatness... But why does everyone think staff and/or duals are too powerful (leading to the usage of holding attack+forward (uneducated/unskilled) styles)...? Because they are! Or on our servers at least...right? As far as I have been told, FFA gametype damages are boosted, and although we can edit the settings, damage is awarded more eratically (or randomly, if that better describes it) in FFA games than say Duel type servers. Can anyone verify or clarify this? For instance, I was hit with a standard saber yellow horizontal the other day (on a JA server) for 73 damage. A friend was hit with one for 90 damage. Obviously both head shots, but still, does that high damage even make sense? Many red swings will rack the same damage, but are more difficult to land. No, I don't think this works out 'fairly' in the grand scheme of things. Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, but do duals and staff follow the same damage rules as standard yellow, or are they lowered (eg. a standard saber yellow shot would do 50, but hitting with both sides of a staff or both sabers of a dual would do 100 total, or 50 total (25 with each side/saber). I am led to believe that each saber of a dual, or each side of a staff is equally powerful as a standard yellow, for I have seen dual saber users (motrec lol) do 1 'buzzsaw' (a forward+right, backward+left combo) and kill with it. That's two attacks dealing the same lethal damage as one red hack+jump (pulling the saber back through the head, easily the most difficult shot to successfully pull off), which still takes longer to pull off than the two dual swings. Basically my questions boil down to this. What's the difference between a standard yellow attack and a dual/staff attack? And is the high standard yellow damage set in place by Raven, or is it our servers (due to settings and gametype)? These questions, in my mind at least, are both legitimate, and important questions. The first because it helps me and others to better understand game mechanics. The second serves the same purpose, And allows us to more knowledgably (and therefore more ably) compete on public servers. Didn't C1 at some point say that the goal of the JA was to learn, and then kick trash on the pubs? Disclaimer: My object in obtaining this information is NOT TO BEGIN OR ADD TO THE ONGOING DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE LEGITIMACY OF THE THREE SABER TYPES. However, I am going to state my interpretation of damage distribution between those types... It would seem to me that IF the high yellow damage is due to the Server, THEN it Does make sense that Duals+Staff follow the Same damage level and distribution of Standard Yellow (each side of staff or saber of dual counts as one standard yellow when dealing damage). However, if most servers (dual types, right?) use the same high damaging yellow, then it would NOT make sense to allow duals+staff the same damage level and distribution of standard yellow (explained in the most previous paranthetical statement). Knowing the answers to these questions will greatly improve the quality of my (and likely many others') understanding of the relationships between the different saber types. -- If you're still with me I appreciate it. I tried to choose my words carefully and state my logic clearly, if it is confusing still, please show me where so I might restate. I spent more than a few minutes pondering, writing, and proofing this; I'd be Very greatful if you spent a few seconds replying This post was edited by SaberWeildinKow on Aug 09 2004 03:48am. |
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SaberWeildinKow - Student 
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Quote: For example: Using the spin-swings to effectively generate a one-hit kill each time is hard. But it's still a lot easier than actually dueling. That's how I see it. /agree |
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Carve - Student 
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Quick post as work is almost over: I think to try and figure out what the developers had in mind for the game is impossible. I'm sure they expected some things to become popular that didn't and I'm also sure they expected to see people find new features and take advantage of them - that happens in every game. What I, personally, believe an exploit to be is when you take something that's in the game that either: requires little to no skill OR that is effective in a way grossly disproportionate to the amount of skill needed to use it. For example: Using the spin-swings to effectively generate a one-hit kill each time is hard. But it's still a lot easier than actually dueling. That's how I see it. _______________ © |
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Jake Kainite - Student 
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Exploiting is a broad term, but to me that doesn't seem to be an example of it. Exploiting is really the use of features within the game which weren't really planned for (throw pulling for example) _______________ Apprenctice of Jedi Master Ascari (deceased) Descended from a line of great Jedi Will argue any point of view from any side 
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3th - Retired 
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Quote: Also, I haven't really spent much time experimenting with it, but it also makes sense to me to try and keep the saber in the opponent for the greatest amount of time. So if I'm doing a right swing (in red) I would try and rotate to the left. Now that I think about it, this is getting on the edge of 'exploiting' (that word is misplaced here). What do you think? good idea, but that doesn't work. i was thinking the same thing a while back and tried it out with WW and didn't see any improvement to it at all. i think you'll find more performance increase with spining right to add this momentum that people keep mentioning. thought i'd add my experience with that _______________ this is the internet, be serious damn it! |
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SaberWeildinKow - Student
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LoL, I'm reading my post and realizing how little sense I made |
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Flux - Student 
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The only thing that bugs me is when people yawspin and bind moves to keys. Everything else I don't view as an exploit. Mouse control is completely legit in my eyes, and it actually does take some degree of skill to learn how to control the swing of a saber with the mouse. _______________ When great gentlemens come together in a place. It could happen. All these gentlemen are Howard's family. Everybody knows them, but nobody knows. Why they come together.......... Just play cards. |
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Tido - Student 
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That's not exploiting to me KoW, that's just mouse control . |
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Setementor - Jedi Master 
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Thats why I can kill a reborn easier with Yellow stance. I simple scissor it to death! |
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SaberWeildinKow - Student
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Btw, recent posts have been great, I'm still learning more about this all, I appreciate it deeply |
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SaberWeildinKow - Student 
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We need to define exploit. Clearly, concisely, completely. I feel quite targeted in all this because of all my use of sensitivity...However I don't do mad spins, I don't intentional increase momentum. Yet I do three things, two of which I have outlined. First, the yellow scissors, two the turning around to face my opponent. The third I use in red often on the golf swings or on horizontals. If I am performing one of these moves and I see Leif coming in with scissors I'm not going to stand there and get kicked. I'm going to try and rotate to bring the saber around in time. Gosh maybe this wasn't intended, but is it not valid? I think the worse way to lose a duel is to see the move coming, and watch your head fly off. It has always made sense to me to manipulate the position of the saber in such a way to hit your opponent before it hits you. In my mind this is valid because I am maintaining complete control of my avatar (/m00 Tido). I'm not spinning mindlessly, I'm not whipping the saber through the guy (unless I need to in order to get the thing around in time). Honestly, I had no idea momentum played a factor in damage before it was mentioned here. Also, I haven't really spent much time experimenting with it, but it also makes sense to me to try and keep the saber in the opponent for the greatest amount of time. So if I'm doing a right swing (in red) I would try and rotate to the left. Now that I think about it, this is getting on the edge of 'exploiting' (that word is misplaced here). What do you think? Anyway, I think we need to define 'exploit' generally, and specifically (anyone else interested?). I won't give it a go at the moment, but I don't think that the general definition should be anything like "Anything not intended..." But that's just me, and it's 3:30am, so forgive me if I sound a little grumpy, I'm not This comment was edited by SaberWeildinKow on Aug 13 2004 08:36am. |
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Tido - Student
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Well Jaina, I think everything you listed there isn't considered an exploit by the majority. But for me personally, I really don't care how you play. If you wanna sway like there is no tomorrow or spin like a top I could really care less. It's just another challenge that I must work to overcome. No matter what it is in this game, if I get hit by it I really consider it my fault. I can see where folks like Virtue come from in saying some moves are truely exploits and are not what Raven intended, and for the sake of respect towards others I am not doing these moves. It's more fun to not use them anyways. But if someone wants to I'm not going to complain. Heck if they get me good I'll compliment them - even if it was an exploit, I still fell for the trap. Who am I to tell people how to fight? Fighting exploiters makes me a better fighter too. It's really exciting to fight Sauce knowing that if I allow him to land one overhead on me its over. Makes you focus. The only place where I draw the line is teaching: I don't teach exploits . |
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Jaina D'Kana - Jedi Instructor 
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Not that I dont agree with that, but where does a good tactic become a 'cheap' tactic? Some red users hate yellow users and they call the yellow counters 'cheap' and 'lame'. Some yellow users hate defensive staff and duals because yellow cannot break through the defense of these stances as eaily as it can other yellow or red Now you may say 1 hit kills, or big hits are an exploit. I wont say whether I agree with that or not but playing devils advocate, what is the difference between that and any other move? Isn't it just that these people have figured out how to do big dmg with a move, just as yellow users have figured out how to get inside reds defenses and do dmg. Anyway like i said i'm not saying either view is right or wrong, i'm just throwing this out there _______________ INTP This comment was edited by Jaina D'Kana on Aug 13 2004 04:00am. |
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Tido - Student
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I'm with big T on this one: even though we don't teach exploits, we should teach how to defeat them, and not ignore them completely. The only class I've seen this happen in is Jaiko's Workshop. And that, of course, was by student request. |
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Carve - Student
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Personally, I think it's not so important to teach how to do it as it is how to defend from it. It's not too tough to defend from something even if you don't know how to do it yourself. And I'm assuming (believing...hoping...) that the techniques that are done and questionable in their moral applicability (oy) can be replicated by the trainers. Thus, they should have the skills necessary to defend against it. A lot of "cheap tactics" are available in JKA - moreso than JKO; certainly moreso than the most recent patched version of JKO. I think that's a large reason for the die-hard JKO players. But I've digressed like I always do. It's important that these "cheap tactics" - or rather, extremely efficient tactics - are, if not taught, taught ABOUT, lest we, as an Academy geared towards teaching students how to play on public servers or against pub players, are failing. Just my two cents. _______________ © |
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n00b - Student 
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There isn't an observation so far in this thread that I would disagree with. Its frustrating that the damage system in JK3 doesn't reflect exactly what you see on the screen. A lot of animation frames are skipped in multiplayer, which makes it appear as random damage. If you play the single player game, notice how many more frames of animation you see and feel. Its smoother with less skipping. It is my guess from my own observation that multiplayer is accounting for the lost frames, but we don't get to see the missing pieces like we probably should. It is commonly accepted that the longer you have your saber in a player, the more damage you score. Its true and many have learned to take advantage of it. The notion of momentum is also correct. The tactics being used on the home server reflect the damage scale from these factors. Yellow scissors, staff scissors, red overhead, backflip red swing, buzzsaw, et. al. share the same effect. We see a lot of aerial attacking as well, to be able to dodge the instakills that people know quite well how to execute. Just about everyone is using one method or another. The question really is, should the trainers teach these methods? It really doesn't matter if they do or don't. One way or another people figure it out. I think you have Kow. The best thing to do is just accept it, IMHO. All your assumptions are correct, so build a style that refelcts what you have learned. _______________ Gone but hopefully not forgotten... This comment was edited by n00b on Aug 12 2004 05:26am. |
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Carve - Student
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The diagonal slashes of double and staff are more powerful because there is a saber in the opponent's body, and swinging, for a greater duration than any other swing. The double-staff fwd+right,back+left swing is, as far as I've seen, the most powerful consistent swing - with the possible exception of a red downhack. As far as damage being different in different game modes, I'm pretty sure that's not the case. I've seen just as many flukey hits in duelmode as FFAmode. Yeah. Kbye. Oh yes, something else I thought I might add... I can't help but feel a bit of satisfaction that everybody is saying the three styles are balanced and the damages aren't random... because I've been saying it all along. Yeah, that's right suckers! Oh, something else. Unless they've been changed since I stopped playing, the server's damage is NOT higher. In fact, while I was playing, it was LESS than the default. In the default JK settings, without mods etc, the staff can be pretty insane. I mean, I mowed through about 10 people standing in a circle before any of them could put up a stable defense. Took maybe 8 seconds? You can't do that on the JA server (and not just because people are talented here - talent doesn't play into things when all it takes is .75 seconds to score a surprise kill). Granted, as I mentioned before, the damage scaling may have been adjusted since. Oh yes. One MORE thing. Either I'm never hitting with both blades on the staff/doubles, or their total damage comes out to match that of a single yellow hit. The reason I say this is, when dueling against people who use redstance, I tend to use yellow-stance tactics without actually changing my stance - and it takes the same number of hits to whittle them down. _______________ © This comment was edited by Carve on Aug 12 2004 12:01am. |
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Sauce - =^.^= 
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haha i think that's the first jaina post i've seen |
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Jaina D'Kana - Jedi Instructor
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yeah sensi/yaw spinning isnt a fun thing to duel...but I agree with what Tido said. Anything is beatable. Sensi spinners become easy to predict, so learning to stay out of their way and just being more careful is what I do. Anyway on your point about people saying that Staff is overpowered...although i have seen it do 200dmg with 1 hit I dont think it is overpowered...true really defensive staff users are hard to beat, and it can get frustrating when all they do is run away but just normal yellow can work quite well against defensive staff if used right. Everything has its weakness, and its just a matter of figuring out what it is and adapting _______________ INTP This comment was edited by Jaina D'Kana on Aug 10 2004 01:32am. |
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R2D2 - Staff 
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I never heard about this mouse sensitivity exploit, never encountered a big abuser yet. I believe like Janus, it is how much your attack hits within the character model of your opponent. The buzzsaw is VERY effective if used right on the opponent, logically makes sense. Each attack with duals or staff is actually a 2 hit combo. Also, momentum is a big factor, the primary reason why a single red hit hurts so much. To me, the 3 saber styles are evenly balanced. _______________ "Do or do not, there is no try" Jedi Master Yoda Dual Saberist |
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Virtue - Jedi Council 
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I mean cranking the mouse sens up really high and using it to manically spin with swings. There have even been reported cases of people binding their mouse sensitivity to a key - You hit one key, your mouse sense goes into light-speed, you hit another button, it lowers again to normal gameplay sens. And yeah, I don't disagree with ordinary spins, especially when they are dependant on where your opponent is around you, if I am in a Duel and my opponent runs around me, if I am in mid swing, I will quickly turn to face him as I swing. I just disagree with using momentum and kicking it into overdrive and calling it ''Duelling''. It's not what the game is for. - Virtue.  _______________ Academy Architect |
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JavaGuy - Student 
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Ninja, No, he didn't just mean when you spin around 8 times. He explicitly said spinning around "just once." He has stated this view before, but now I'm not sure if he means only spinning around with mouse sensitivity set high or if he means any spin. _______________ My signature is only one line. You're welcome. |
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Aron - Retired 
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Just a little sidenote: Sensitivity seems to be different from different mouses. On my own computer, which uses a MX700 mouse, I've got sens 14, which is quite normal for me. On my computer at my parents, I use a way higher number (somewhere near 30, not sure), and it feels the same, except that the mouse is utter crap. |
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SaberWeildinKow - Student
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w00t thanks a lot guys I really appreciate it Honestly. About sensitivity...I won't lie, I have it set at 30. I don't do those crazy spins, in fact I don't often wiggle...I had two main aims in using sensitivity: To be able to whip around and face my opponent. The last thing I want is to have someone smiling at my back In my mind, with higher sensitivity (if I can handle it), I have to move the mouse less, making actions quicker with no possibility of a mouse fallin off the desk Secondly was yellow scissors. I remember asking Sauce about his rotation during scissors. He explained that turning your character with the direction of the swing is good for exchanging shots, while turning against the direction of the swing helps range. I then asked the question, 'can sensitivity be considered kinda cheap?' His answer 'Nah' 'Sensitivity is a double-edged sword.' And IMO, it's so true, see how much control you have rotating with your saber swing --- Once again thanks a LOT guys, your time is really appreciated, however if anyone still has something to add, feel free -Teh KoW This comment was edited by SaberWeildinKow on Aug 09 2004 04:48pm. |
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Tido - Student 
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I think Virtue is not talking about just regular correction 'spins' and mouse control, but people who use extreme levels of sensitivity or mouseaccel to achieve completely unrealistic speeds in their sabers. Like if someone is able to rotate 8 times in the time of one red swing - it's getting a little rediculous . Or people who sway so fast that the saber is hardly visable. Personaly I like it when people spin because the flaws of spinning are very well known to me. Swaying presents a much larger challenge to me, but that has its flaws to. Everything can be defeated in this game, but I have to agree with Virtue in that exploited fighting styles aren't nearly as fun. You take someone down 100/50 in less than a second....so what? You get the win, good for you. But it isn't nearly as fun as the heart-pounding duels that squeeze every ounce of concentration out of you and seem to deadlock into eternity . I wouldn't go so far as to say people who use exploited styles are bad people, not at all. They just want to win. But I think I speak for most in that just pure winning really doesn't matter to us that much anymore. It's about a good time and getting that dramatic fight that leaves you smiling and laughing no matter what the outcome. Attempting to get back on subject here: yeah I would agree the damages are not random at all. And I am almost sure that our servers are set to basejka settings...gonna need some confirmation though. This comment was edited by Tido on Aug 09 2004 03:21pm. |
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JavaGuy - Student
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Okay, I thought your objection to spinning with the mouse was nutty before, but your point about using high mouse sensitivity makes a lot of sense to me. It's really just a variation on setting your yawspeed to 3000, which is a cheat and explicitly prohibited in the Rules. But I do not agree that spinning with the mouse during a swing is an exploit, nor do I think it unrealistic. You argue that it deals more damage because it's faster, and perhaps it does, but that's realistic. In the real world someone fighting with a sword can spin around like that--spinning doesn't allow you to do anything unrealistic--and such a spin does in fact make your swing faster. Is that an exploit? No way. It's just using movement to do precisely what you'd be able to do in the real world. When I studied Tae Kwon Do, it was emphasized over and over that when you throw a punch you rotate your body at the same time to give it more momentum. Same thing. Plus, the 360-degree mouse spin that some people complain so bitterly about puts my back to my opponent for an instant. It delivers a powerful stroke, but it's hardly a free lunch. It has its risks. And again, it's realistic. It's just a movement that a real person in the real world can do, and it has more momentum just as it would in the real world. It doesn't give one an unfair advantage; au contraire it gives one a fair advantage, albeit a risky one. The mouse sensitivity thing, though...Yeah. I totally agree with you there. That's an exploit to be sure. I've never tinkered with my mouse sensitivity and never will. That's an exploit all the way. _______________ My signature is only one line. You're welcome. |
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