The Myth Around the Patch

[Hekko]

Alright, there's a ton of myths flying about regarding the patch, and the implications thereof. So instead of just approaching it from the basis of "there was a patch, something happened that I disliked, must have been the patch!" lets approach it from the angle of; "These things changed, what impact have they had".

So to start it off here are the patchnotes:

Spoiler

- Reduced the length of the bayonet slightly.
- Made the readying animation for the upper stab slower.
- Upper stab chamber attacks are now not blockable anymore just like the lower stab.

- Fixed a bug that made upper stabs unblockable when in crouch-mode

So these are the changes that have an implication for melee.

What are the implications of these changes?

The upstab is no longer the end-all-be-all attack for melee. That's litteraly the main implication. The speed change is 0.15 seconds as far as I know, and that's 0.15 seconds of readying time, not time for the attack animation to to move forward from ready. So it's not big enough to break attack priority, if you see someone doing an up attack you still have to block instead of doing a downstab. If someone blocks your downstab you still have to block their upstab. So the speed change isn't really making that big a difference for attack priority.

There is of course some negative implications for some playstyles. Feintspamming mindlessly is less efficient. But on the other hand, that had a way to high risk-reward ratio previously. Less blockable up-chambers means that you cannot hide from being chambered by only doing up-attacks, which again is something good.

Some say swords have become murdering machines now because of the change... That's not entirely true is it. Better chambers is a plus against sword. The lower up-attack speed is certainly not something that is an improvement, but the downstab is still useful, and the upstab is not really useless either, most of the time I hold my upstabs longer than 0.15 seconds against sword users anyway, so the effect disappears into that.

So, I of all people would be a hypocrite if I say that complaining is bad since I have done so much of it myself, nevertheless, I feel that my complaints have been solidly grounded in mechanics and actual changes in the game, not errors of perception.

 

[Deofuta]

Thanks for writing this up Hekko. The more disinformation that is removed the more constructive criticism can be made for the continued improvement of NW.

 

[84e_Ward]

Seems strange to find Hekko not writing an essay that I always skip over :3

 

[JackieChan]

All of the points you have made are right. I still dislike the melee though for the simple reason, that it feels slow. The fights feel slow and the reaction of your character to your clicks feels slow. I just find it is not as capturing as it used to be, since there are no fast-paced epic duels. Chambering is now one of the tools most people use, which is good, since I like chambering, but it is now almost used too often for my taste. As for the blockability of those chambers, I am not sure if what it said in the patch description is true, but chambers are not unblockable and the range has nothing to do with it. I have so far not been able to block chambers, but strangely enough most people have been able to block mine. Is this a bug or was the sentence 'chambers are unblockable' incorrect?

 

[JackieChan]

Duel tournament is losing tons of people now. -.-
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,243617.225.html

 

[devon]

- Reduced the length of the bayonet slightly.
- Made the readying animation for the upper stab slower.
- Upper stab chamber attacks are now not blockable anymore just like the lower stab.

- Fixed a bug that made upper stabs unblockable when in crouch-mode

There has obviously been a stab-speed nerf, just look at it. It's granny fighting simulator: Napoleonic Era now. There's obviously something wrong when nearly everyone that is good at melee is complaining about it, whether you like it or not.

 

[Oposum]

- Reduced the length of the bayonet slightly.
- Made the readying animation for the upper stab slower.
- Upper stab chamber attacks are now not blockable anymore just like the lower stab.

- Fixed a bug that made upper stabs unblockable when in crouch-mode

There has obviously been a stab-speed nerf, just look at it. It's granny fighting simulator: Napoleonic Era now. There's obviously something wrong when nearly everyone that is good at melee is complaining about it, whether you like it or not.

Nothing but overheads stab speed has been affected. Down stab is still as fast as ever, only upper stab won't punish everyone whose ping is over 40 with unblockable hits. Also, feintspam is less viable option and it isn't "I win" button anymore.
As for everyone who's good at  melee complaining, most of those complainers stopped developing their skills after hitting the very low skill ceiling of bayo fighting pre-patch. Which was feintspam and wild spinning while spamming overhead. With this patch those tactics became almost useless, forcing the meta-game changes which people dislike.
NWs only bad thing finally got fixed.

 

[devon]

Clearly someone that spends the majority of their time on EU 1 playing as cavalry would know what the skill ceiling is for melee bayonet fighting, there's been a constant developement in the way different players fight, several people learned chambering/kicking to be better at fighting other people, also feintspamming was done by so few of the better players on Groupfighting servers and it's just a different way of fighting, if you're good at blocking it was not a problem.

 

[Oposum]

I'm sure someone that spends the majority of their time ingame killing pubbies on EU 1 as cavalry would know what the skill ceiling was.

Using personal insults as proof for your claims just make you look like an idiot
I'll take that as an obvious sign that you lack any real arguments.
I'd suggest you give native a go, try some duel servers to see how high tier duels are fought

Edit:Ohh, you edited your post to something not completely idiotic.

 

[DarkOmega]

Clearly someone that spends the majority of their time on EU 1 playing as cavalry would know what the skill ceiling is for melee bayonet fighting, there's been a constant developement in the way different players fight, several people learned chambering/kicking to be better at fighting other people, also feintspamming was done by so few of the better players on Groupfighting servers and it's just a different way of fighting, if you're good at blocking it was not a problem.

Feint spamming hurt my eyes now it doesn't

 

[BetaKnight]

I look at upper stab slower like this:
A challenge to those "Upper-Spammers"

 

[Evanovic]

All of the points you have made are right. I still dislike the melee though for the simple reason, that it feels slow. The fights feel slow and the reaction of your character to your clicks feels slow. I just find it is not as capturing as it used to be, since there are no fast-paced epic duels. Chambering is now one of the tools most people use, which is good, since I like chambering, but it is now almost used too often for my taste. As for the blockability of those chambers, I am not sure if what it said in the patch description is true, but chambers are not unblockable and the range has nothing to do with it. I have so far not been able to block chambers, but strangely enough most people have been able to block mine. Is this a bug or was the sentence 'chambers are unblockable' incorrect?

Yes it feels slower, but the attacks are now balanced. I would rather slower melee with the upstab and downstab killing an equal amount of people each than fast melee, with upstab of all things, completely unrealistic and the buggier one of the 2 attack directions, taking center-stage in all of melee. There are many alternative solutions, though, that I hope the team will consider. There's no need to go back to the last patch to get speed back because that would just bring back the other problems that it has successfully voided. What's needed is something along the lines of a turning speed increase, not too much, perhaps by a couple fractions of a second, then you'll get the speed back + keep the benefits of the new patch.

Basically upstab chambers are not 'unblockable', but rather, again, been brought into line with the downstab. There's essentially a short stun on the chambered person when the enemy chambers him which gives more time for the chamberer to stab him. If the chamberer isn't fast or accurate enough the stun will have gone and the guy can block.

 

[Aksei]

about feel slow, yes i feeling it to, but just a funny sidestory:

years ago when a source mod shooter was developed, everyone complained the AK74 is to weak. But the devs looked at stats and it was one of the strongest weapon. So they released a "hotfix" and changed only the soundfile and said to the community ak has now more damage.
What happend then? Everyone complained again, but this time ak was too strong 

 

[Thokan]

My name is Modig, and this is my favorite hotfix on the citadel!

Clearly someone that spends the majority of their time on EU 1 playing as cavalry would know what the skill ceiling is for melee bayonet fighting, there's been a constant developement in the way different players fight, several people learned chambering/kicking to be better at fighting other people, also feintspamming was done by so few of the better players on Groupfighting servers and it's just a different way of fighting, if you're good at blocking it was not a problem.

Hypocrit.

The result of the hotfix is a larger focus on downstabs and chambers with them, with a dash of precise upperstab striking. I.e a lot more like the MM combat than pre-hand.

 

[yedrellow]

From a philosophical point of view, it doesn't make sense that bayonets are so easy to block. People like to argue over an overhead attack being 'unrealistic', but I thought it was a good representation of the deadly efficiency of the bayonet. The change lowers the deadliness of bayonet combat, which seems to fly in the face of the original philosophy of adding the overhead stab in the first place. Bayonets now seem like a side show to the rest of the combat in the game, any old player can easily defend against it with ease. While I don't have any historical evidence, I doubt historical bayonet fights lasted for minutes on end.

 

[Hekko]

From a philosophical point of view, it doesn't make sense that bayonets are so easy to block. People like to argue over an overhead attack being 'unrealistic', but I thought it was a good representation of the deadly efficiency of the bayonet. The change lowers the deadliness of bayonet combat, which seems to fly in the face of the original philosophy of adding the overhead stab in the first place. Bayonets now seem like a side show to the rest of the combat in the game, any old player can easily defend against it with ease. While I don't have any historical evidence, I doubt historical bayonet fights lasted for minutes on end.

The overhead is easier to block, but the chamber is harder to block, it shifts away some focus to different offensive techniques, which is solidly a good thing. Furthermore, from a systemwide point of view having an overhead attack that isn't the obvious choise for every situation opens up gameplay alot more than just having one de facto valid attack-direction.

 

[Chibbi]

Having not played in quite some time (The regular game every month and so for 30 mins) I decided to test out the changes last night, and I must say. I actually quite enjoyed them for once, it sure felt a lot smoother than what we were getting previously. In regards to swords they do seem a tad bit overpowered, I was dismounted and managed to kill around 8 guys in one hit in about 12 seconds, this shouldn't be too much of a problem if a player knows how to block 4 directions mind you. I definitely feel like we're starting to head in the right direction now 

 

[yedrellow]

From a philosophical point of view, it doesn't make sense that bayonets are so easy to block. People like to argue over an overhead attack being 'unrealistic', but I thought it was a good representation of the deadly efficiency of the bayonet. The change lowers the deadliness of bayonet combat, which seems to fly in the face of the original philosophy of adding the overhead stab in the first place. Bayonets now seem like a side show to the rest of the combat in the game, any old player can easily defend against it with ease. While I don't have any historical evidence, I doubt historical bayonet fights lasted for minutes on end.

The overhead is easier to block, but the chamber is harder to block, it shifts away some focus to different offensive techniques, which is solidly a good thing. Furthermore, from a systemwide point of view having an overhead attack that isn't the obvious choise for every situation opens up gameplay alot more than just having one de facto valid attack-direction.

Preventing yourself from being chambered is one of the easiest things you can do. If you get chambered, you're doing something wrong.

 

[Hekko]

From a philosophical point of view, it doesn't make sense that bayonets are so easy to block. People like to argue over an overhead attack being 'unrealistic', but I thought it was a good representation of the deadly efficiency of the bayonet. The change lowers the deadliness of bayonet combat, which seems to fly in the face of the original philosophy of adding the overhead stab in the first place. Bayonets now seem like a side show to the rest of the combat in the game, any old player can easily defend against it with ease. While I don't have any historical evidence, I doubt historical bayonet fights lasted for minutes on end.

The overhead is easier to block, but the chamber is harder to block, it shifts away some focus to different offensive techniques, which is solidly a good thing. Furthermore, from a systemwide point of view having an overhead attack that isn't the obvious choise for every situation opens up gameplay alot more than just having one de facto valid attack-direction.

Preventing yourself from being chambered is one of the easiest things you can do. If you get chambered, you're doing something wrong.

Of course, but, the fact that there's payoff means that people will start trying to chamber in turn making way for you avoiding getting chambered, which in turn makes way for other stuff. So the mere presence of payoff on the chamber sets off a slippery slope-esque effect making all kinds of things viable.

 

[Oposum]

From a philosophical point of view, it doesn't make sense that bayonets are so easy to block. People like to argue over an overhead attack being 'unrealistic', but I thought it was a good representation of the deadly efficiency of the bayonet. The change lowers the deadliness of bayonet combat, which seems to fly in the face of the original philosophy of adding the overhead stab in the first place. Bayonets now seem like a side show to the rest of the combat in the game, any old player can easily defend against it with ease. While I don't have any historical evidence, I doubt historical bayonet fights lasted for minutes on end.

Erm, bayonet never was effective close combat weapon. In napoleonic times it offered some protection against cavalry, reasonable anti-infantry power in addition to being easily coupled with musket and being cheap and easy to produce. It is ideal weapon for low trained soldiers.
Bayonet was impractical and unbalanced weapon, which didn't matter when soldiers who used it weren't trained in melee combat.
Bayonet is still more than good weapon in the game, but swords are now better and they should be better than bayonets.