Open Discussion on Gold Linking
To Slo_clp and the Absolver community.
This is a discussion for everyone, I find that in many of my letters, the moment a developer posts their opinion, the community doesn't respond much since it seems that they might feel their opinion has been trumped by the authority of the devs.
I believe Gold Linking as a mechanic should be removed from Absolver.
1) Skill VS Skill Illusion
1.A) Skill in Absolver is something a player should be allowed to build up based on perception, patience and timing their attack, and knowing what stance they can use best to counter their oponent's strategy.
1.B) Skill Illusion, is muscle memory and watching a bar tell you when your next button press is coming up.
2) Personal Experience
2.A) I don't use gold linking because the moves I like to use are impacted very little by it, I like to hit hard, I wear heavy protection, fast light moves and light gear just go against the grain for me.
2.B) I have more fun in a match, even if I have lost, when my opponent has not used gold linking. I have a lot more respect for them when they don't use gold linking, because they beat me with skill, not a mechanic. And I am more likely to play back to back matches against somebody who doesn't use Gold Linking.
Conclusion
I have looked through the Absolver community forums and Gold Linking is a point of contention for many people, a simple search and you'll see many thread titles complaining about it, so my opinion is not the only one that feels this way.
TLDR
Do you think Gold Linking as a mechanic should be removed from Absolver, or kept in the game?
If you think it should be removed, please reply: #RemoveGL
If you think we should keep Gold Linking, reply: #KeepGL
This is a discussion for everyone, I find that in many of my letters, the moment a developer posts their opinion, the community doesn't respond much since it seems that they might feel their opinion has been trumped by the authority of the devs.
I believe Gold Linking as a mechanic should be removed from Absolver.
1) Skill VS Skill Illusion
1.A) Skill in Absolver is something a player should be allowed to build up based on perception, patience and timing their attack, and knowing what stance they can use best to counter their oponent's strategy.
1.B) Skill Illusion, is muscle memory and watching a bar tell you when your next button press is coming up.
2) Personal Experience
2.A) I don't use gold linking because the moves I like to use are impacted very little by it, I like to hit hard, I wear heavy protection, fast light moves and light gear just go against the grain for me.
2.B) I have more fun in a match, even if I have lost, when my opponent has not used gold linking. I have a lot more respect for them when they don't use gold linking, because they beat me with skill, not a mechanic. And I am more likely to play back to back matches against somebody who doesn't use Gold Linking.
Conclusion
I have looked through the Absolver community forums and Gold Linking is a point of contention for many people, a simple search and you'll see many thread titles complaining about it, so my opinion is not the only one that feels this way.
TLDR
Do you think Gold Linking as a mechanic should be removed from Absolver, or kept in the game?
If you think it should be removed, please reply: #RemoveGL
If you think we should keep Gold Linking, reply: #KeepGL
Comments
Otherwise ill fill this side for good xD (man i have to hold back)
#KeepGL
Spamming will not disappear after removing gold link.
Spammers will just pressing buttons faster and thats it.
It will not increase skill of players.
Experienced players already knows about delayed moves and other helpful things and gold link is not the main thing of their strategy.
Newbies will play with this option to help explore moves timing and if it became useless for them, they just click "hide gold linking".
#KeepGL
To address your points. I think GL is key to actual skill and not skill illusion.
I use both fast and slow moves in my deck. It's designed to allow me to be aggressive when I want and to be smart when I want. I can go in and out of links with little to no effort and this allows me to be incredibly deadly and unpredictable. Which is the main staple for my personal skill.
I fight the player not the game. I actively counter the playstyle of the fighter. If they are slow then I'll start GL to make them panic then while they are adapting i hit them with the slow powerful horizontals.
GL saves stamina and allows for more efficient and effective mix ups.
It will not prevent fast hit spam and will lower skill. Moreover GL offers the posibility to the player to gold link or not, which IMO is great.
Gold Linking doesn't need to be replaced by anything, because other fighting games have no 'speed boost' mechanic for putting a combo together.
Without GL: game is more intuitive and easier for Dev to balance moves. I'm in for the visuals and wits during combat. All things being equal, a more intuitive and balanced game is better.
GL makes the game more gamelike with its artificial mechanics but not more fun, just different.
As others have said, I make use of Goldlink, but I do not use it all the time, it depends on the style of my opponent and the pace of the fight. I see it as just another skill in a fighters arsenal to add variability to their fighting style.
While I applaud SloClap for listening to the community and making adjustment to improve the gameplay experience, I think a line needs to be drawn in the sand so to speak. Regardless of whatever changes are made, there will be players that try to find the easiest way to win. If we keep making adjustments to address this the game will eventually lose its appeal to a wider audience, I think.
If it were not present, then we wouldn't even miss it because it's not used all the time.
Instead of rewarding hitting a button correctly, the devs should reward action and success. I won't go into too much detail on solutions here, what if breaking the opponents guard gave the next immediate move a boost in speed?
There are solutions that could be discussed and explored, but for now this discussion is mainly geared towards Gold Linking's current implementation.
A lot of the feedbacks were about the speed boost was too high. This is a parameter that can be tuned. Scrapping goldlink altogether doesn't seem like a good idea. By #RemoveGL I meant tuning not scrapping altogether.
A window for the speed boost after a dodge
Causing Guard Break
An evade move avoiding an attack
Stopping a hit with charged attack
Stopping a move with a Stopping attack
To keep the flow going, the speed boost could work like the heal shard skill, you keep it till you are hit/or you lose it if the attack misses.
1.B. - Absolutely not. Muscle memory, has been apart off every fighting games fundamentals. You literally have to practice your timings, well enough so that you don't even look at the stamina bar unless you're managing there's. Understanding when you can and Connot use that string with gold linking isn't an "illusion", it's a skill you develop with practice.
Personal experiences are just that. Personal. Having goldlink removed would call for this game to be reworked from the ground up, and rework every class.
Absolver unfortunately does not, it's combo system is akin to a dynasty warriors game, where you have the basic attack and the alternate attack that can be input at any time after X basic attacks.
There is no directional input other than what stance you start your button input in, and moving around, in fact directional movement is baked into the moves, so the player doesn't input them manually.
Gold Linking is not a core mechanic, it's a feature, and I've played the majority of the game without using it.
Right now it is not a skill based mechanic, it's a button press prompt.
I am aware that there are multiple arcade side scrolling or even 3D games that use two button attack strings, but those games have not got a single button prompt mechanic for going faster.
I've played UFC undisputed 3 (the last good one, anything after that game was absolute junk)
By Manual Input I mean that that is no hit; up, left, right + attack button.
Absolver runs off your orientation to the opponent, not directional input. And by movement backed into a move, I'm referring to the fact that there is no button pressed in addition to the attack that cause the character to jump or duck, it's all in the move with a single press.
A core mechanic is something essential to the core working mechanics of a system, Gold linking is a feature because the game play can be experienced without it ever being used.
Gold linking is not a skill based mechanic, it is purely based on watching a bar on the screen and hitting your next attack when that bar tells you, it's exactly like those button prompt cutscenes.
What I would like to see is Gold Linking implemented in a more strategic and player skill based manner that is the result of the player's choices and actions, not a button prompt.
Human can almost react in 0,2 seconds that means if you make the delay to long the defence abilities will crush every attempt on attacking.
I would tend to prefere even more ways to alter an attack. For example a delayed gold link timing after a feint, because now it most often useless to start a heavy attack after a feint.
You dont need the bar btw. There are like 3different gold link timings. One for fast one for heavy and one for double hits. I didnt notice the bar until my 300 hours.
Gold link isnt a reward for good timing but most of all a way to alter your attack speed without additional keys.
Im sure some people here played tekken or street fighter and know what on point timing is.
So imo gold linking already is a choice and not a button prombt.
you clearly dont like the Goldlink component of the fighting in Absolver.
You make several points throughout this post which are not completely compatible.
You criticize the game for being too simplistic, and yet you argue to take one of the mechanics out of the game that adds a user chosen random element to a fight.(that is strategy in my opinion)
you do know that you can manually change your stance at any point right?
you make it sound like all you do is place moves in a deck and hit the button to cycle through them.
While this can be done, it doesnt make for a very strategic fight.
I dont look at the bar at all when i choose to goldlink; i have practiced my deck so that i have become familiar to the timing of each move, and when to activate the next move to goldlink it ( i see this as a skill that can be used strategically)
Hate the player, dont hate the game, is all im saying.
I have no issue with a mechanic in Absolver that can increase the speed of a player's attack.
What I would like to see is better implementation that does not result in it being abused by spam decks.
Goldlinking would be better if it was tied into other areas, as a reward for executing strategy, I did reply with ideas of triggers that could activate a gold link. I will state my opinion one more time.
Gold linking is something I would like to see implemented differently, so that it cannot be abused by a single play style that requires no effort outside of merely selecting the fastest moves.
#KeepGL
On the subject of gold-linking, fast attacks and slow attacks can both be gold-linked, and I don't think you can not ever use gold-linking. If you are on the offensive, and your opponent isn't defending correctly or taking the offensive, then you should be gold-linking. If you're on the defensive, gold-linking won't save you. If a combo string is used over and over, and you're getting wrecked by it, then you need to look again at the tools in the toolbox that are there to deal with it, and work on it, or learn how to defend against a move in the attack chain, and use that to break it.
Like it seems preposterous to me? You're just suggesting that they remove a core mechanic of the game?
#KeepGL