Open discussion about 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
I'm agreeing with SlyRiot on this discussion is pointless, or at least how you want to go about Gold Linking.
You aren't informed enough or have delved deep enough into this game to have the discussion to have gold links removed from the looks of a few things you talk about and the reasoning behind them.
Gold Linking will stay, it should stay.
Mindlessly Gold Linking into your opponent isn't exclusively better than not gold linking into your opponent, it's all about timing differences. Gold Linking creates predictable timing but quicker movement, not gold linking is slower, but stilted timing if used in combination with Gold Linking.
Having more respect for a player if they choose to gold link or to not gold link is silly.
Gold Linking as a system is to shorten existing frames of animation to create flows of movement between animations, if you want to stagger the timing of your attack, you can do that, it's a way to identify it visually if they are deliberately slowing their attacks or 'going with the flow'.
The Skill vs Skill Illusion talk is projecting something that doesn't really matter on the discussion.
Gold Linking is a point of contention with players because those players are new and/or stubborn.
This has been addressed numerous times in balance by making fast chains with gold linking do very little stamina damage on block.
So instead of looking at gold linking, you should look at the moves. Getting rid of gold linking will dramatically slow the game down and there won't be any sort of timing differences to moves in the flow of attacking.
Stagger might as well get removed if Gold Link was removed. Stagger is useless without gold linking it's specials. But before the argument of "just make it's default speed the same as gold linking". That takes away choices the player makes.
And now I'm to the point of I don't care anymore in my post and will leave it as is.
Gold Link is staying and your argument and discussion does very little to sway that, if anything it enforces gold linking to stay. To force players to understand it and create depth with the tools given to us instead of looking at everything on the surface level.
Timing has a very big impact on the game and experienced players use it to block/avoid punches all the time. I think you can't really use gold-linking mindlessly against an experienced player since:
1. It makes you more predictable.
2. Most of the time you just waste your stamina.
3. You give them chance to parry or avoid your move.
So, in short, it becomes easy to punish you. AND if your dancing partner can avoid of all that... well... maybe you have to get more experience or maybe your oponent is just that skilled. Which is always appreciated.