Another Forsaken re-work, and an idea for light attacks
1) Everyone wanted to increase the flow of forsaken so it wasn’t stopping combat and didn’t have high dmg punishes, but this current iteration in beta retains upwards of 110-115 dmg punishes plus parries are easier to land and there’s less consequence to whiffing.
Since I’m not sure that we can get forsaken to flow properly as a parry class here’s my idea to fit it in with the other 3 classes:
Remove parry as a stun, instead make it so forsaken rotates around to the back of the opponent (use a modified stagger animation) and jabs the opponent in the back of the head. It does a little damage, doesn’t interrupt much flow, but it adds a protection MALICE to the opponent that stacks. This way after several successful parries the forsaken player is able to stack a protection malice/debuff on his opponent and then eventually is able to do significantly increased damage on regular attacks. Shield spell can kind of counter this effect though, giving shield a use. In this way, flow is maintained but forsaken is rewarded for their skill with damage, but over time instead of on each instance of the parry.
I believe this brings Forsaken into harmony with what the other classes do: flow redirect with either a buff or debuff. Forsaken as is , is just a flow stopper with confirmed damage. Its premise is For Honor, not Absolver. Currently we have a protection buff (kahlt), a stamina buff (stagger), and a stamina debuff (windfall). Forsaken's current stamina buff also doesn’t fit. So if you change what parry does completely to a slight redirect, i.e. a stance change, and then change it to a protection debuff, it will then actually fit with the other classes. And yes the protection debuff would be proper reward for the slight skill needed to do 50/50 parries, because after the Forsaken player stacks a handful of parries they are then incentivized to stop turtling and go on the offense given that they now have a substantial damage buff due to their opponent's protection malice/debuff. But there's risk involved obviously, because conducting enough parries to stack to give you an advantage opens you up to whiff punishes.
2) Regarding light attacks - these are too powerful and have always been too powerful with interrupting combos. Its why everyone uses either Jump Light kick or Jab. Turtle up with blocking, or toggle blocking, wait a few seconds to understand your opponent's combos then start interrupting eveyrthing and countering. It seems to be too effective. My suggestion is to make it so attacks that are faster than a certain value can no longer "interrupt" a person, like a single hit on a charged attack cannot interrupt. This adds more risk to using fast attacks, but they retain value (and you can even slightly increase their speed). Because in reality if I'm leaning into an attack and someone does a light jab it's not going to stop me in my tracks. It'll hurt, and the light attacks will continue to do damage, but I can continue to do my own hit or combo.
Jumped light kick would still be effective because it dodges heavily used sweeps and low kicks while delivering damage, but you'd have to be wary of follow up attacks or your own follow up attack because you can no longer rely on JLK to interrupt as well.
Jab could still be useful by itself to bait out attacks or defensive ability, or it could be good to chain into either Haymaker or Furious Uppercut, and further Jab > Direct punch would/could be a quick way to deliver 90-100 dmg given that you aren't interrupting the opponent, so if the opponent began a Spinning Wide Hook windup and you delievered a tap tap from Jab > Direct punch, then moved to a low sweep, you've delievered upwards of 160 damage while avoiding the hook. Whereas before you would simply interrupt it.
Since I’m not sure that we can get forsaken to flow properly as a parry class here’s my idea to fit it in with the other 3 classes:
Remove parry as a stun, instead make it so forsaken rotates around to the back of the opponent (use a modified stagger animation) and jabs the opponent in the back of the head. It does a little damage, doesn’t interrupt much flow, but it adds a protection MALICE to the opponent that stacks. This way after several successful parries the forsaken player is able to stack a protection malice/debuff on his opponent and then eventually is able to do significantly increased damage on regular attacks. Shield spell can kind of counter this effect though, giving shield a use. In this way, flow is maintained but forsaken is rewarded for their skill with damage, but over time instead of on each instance of the parry.
I believe this brings Forsaken into harmony with what the other classes do: flow redirect with either a buff or debuff. Forsaken as is , is just a flow stopper with confirmed damage. Its premise is For Honor, not Absolver. Currently we have a protection buff (kahlt), a stamina buff (stagger), and a stamina debuff (windfall). Forsaken's current stamina buff also doesn’t fit. So if you change what parry does completely to a slight redirect, i.e. a stance change, and then change it to a protection debuff, it will then actually fit with the other classes. And yes the protection debuff would be proper reward for the slight skill needed to do 50/50 parries, because after the Forsaken player stacks a handful of parries they are then incentivized to stop turtling and go on the offense given that they now have a substantial damage buff due to their opponent's protection malice/debuff. But there's risk involved obviously, because conducting enough parries to stack to give you an advantage opens you up to whiff punishes.
2) Regarding light attacks - these are too powerful and have always been too powerful with interrupting combos. Its why everyone uses either Jump Light kick or Jab. Turtle up with blocking, or toggle blocking, wait a few seconds to understand your opponent's combos then start interrupting eveyrthing and countering. It seems to be too effective. My suggestion is to make it so attacks that are faster than a certain value can no longer "interrupt" a person, like a single hit on a charged attack cannot interrupt. This adds more risk to using fast attacks, but they retain value (and you can even slightly increase their speed). Because in reality if I'm leaning into an attack and someone does a light jab it's not going to stop me in my tracks. It'll hurt, and the light attacks will continue to do damage, but I can continue to do my own hit or combo.
Jumped light kick would still be effective because it dodges heavily used sweeps and low kicks while delivering damage, but you'd have to be wary of follow up attacks or your own follow up attack because you can no longer rely on JLK to interrupt as well.
Jab could still be useful by itself to bait out attacks or defensive ability, or it could be good to chain into either Haymaker or Furious Uppercut, and further Jab > Direct punch would/could be a quick way to deliver 90-100 dmg given that you aren't interrupting the opponent, so if the opponent began a Spinning Wide Hook windup and you delievered a tap tap from Jab > Direct punch, then moved to a low sweep, you've delievered upwards of 160 damage while avoiding the hook. Whereas before you would simply interrupt it.
Comments
On the fast attacks idea though, that would mean that a clear line has to be defined as to exactly just how fast a move is allowed to be before it can no longer interrupt. That being the case if players start using slower moves since they are no longer interrupted by the moves deemed "fast" that would mean that people would start using the fastest moves that can still interrupt to interrupt this slower moves that the players are now using, so we are back to square one, with the added negative that we nerfed a whole bunch of moves and got no real benefit out of it.
The only way to prevent this is to not have a hard defined treshold but instead something dynamic, like moves can only be interrupted by a move that deals more damage than itself (with the exception of stoppers I would imagine) but this would mean that charge attacks existence becomes irrelevant, since now every move would basically be a charged move.
Although I wouldn't mind exploring making moves only interruptable by moves that deal more damage than them I don't see this as something the community would ever want.
Really the best way to address move interrupting is to take a look at the frame advantage in some of the moves. We also don't want to remove interrupting, we just want to make it not be something that you can depend on as a main strategy, but it's ok to have as a tool.
Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll pass these along to the rest of the team. While we can't promise any of it will make it into the game, we do want to make sure we review all player feedback and suggestions to stay focused on adding things to the game that the community wants.
Thank you for your support!