[Suggestion] Rabbit Kick OP

[ODINKONG]

Hey guys I bought the game a long time ago and I just played the campaign for a while. It looks like its coming together very nicely, and its a beautiful game. However For years now the Rabbit Kick has just been the best move in the game. I know Lugaru had a counter to the rabbit kick which is the perfect solution. Overgrowth has fantastic combat and stealth, but in multiplayer or in single player the rabbit kick is the best choice in every situation. If you want to win you just rabbit kick everyone. Its very clearly unbalanced I just wanted to make sure you knew. I'm guessing you plan on fixing it anyway if so my bad.

[Xagor-The-Ninja]

They know it's powerful - it's essentially the only unarmed attack you can use against a wolf. I'm not sure it's OP exactly, because it isn't without risks; fall wrong, do it at the wrong time, etc, and it'll mess you up, or get you kicked in the head. Sometimes in arena, I like to just stand still, jump up and down, and try to rabbit kick opponents; it's tough to do without moving. It also doesn't work well against groups (though it's really also the best option against groups, despite): auto-targetting often picking the wrong enemy to kick at - and then missing. I do think I'd be all for a reduction in raw damage from the kick, if we were more able to aim the recipient and try to ragdoll them into walls, or other enemies, etc. As it stands, you can't *really* effectively aim the direction your target will go as a result, because often they go some combination of down, or at some other weird angle because of the timing of the kick and the changing relational direction between you and the target. I think it would be a pretty fair balance to weaponize their velocity at the expense of raw damage output, but I don't know if that's something that's likely in the cards.

[AmorphousGamer]

It is definitely possible to mess up, but with some practice I've never really found a situation that isn't trivialized by the rabbit kick. The only time it really gets difficult is if the enemies have crazy movement speed. Rats especially seem decent at avoiding it.

But yeah, I feel like it should be counterable, maybe specifically by more nimble characters like rabbits, rats, and cats. As is I just avoid using it in the spirit of making the game challenging.

[Xagor-The-Ninja]

There was some discussion of a move to grab people out of the sky that the devs had commented on; there was some interest from players and it sounded like with the devs in ultimately developing that, but it wasn't very high up the priority list. Maybe one day. Weapons hucked at you while you're in the air tend to be pretty fatal, since you can't really do anything to dodge them once you're off the ground... that's kind of a counter, though ai usually doesn't wait for you to jump to do it. Plus... ai can rabbit kick you, too.

[merlyn]

There was some discussion of a move to grab people out of the sky that the devs had commented on; there was some interest from players and it sounded like with the devs in ultimately developing that, but it wasn't very high up the priority list. Maybe one day. Weapons hucked at you while you're in the air tend to be pretty fatal, since you can't really do anything to dodge them once you're off the ground... that's kind of a counter, though ai usually doesn't wait for you to jump to do it. Plus... ai can rabbit kick you, too.

We talked about jump kicks in our team meeting this morning.

We aren't against doing things that change balance to make the game more difficult. Right now we're focusing on making the game easier and more accessible while still fun (in non-expert difficulty levels). I don't know if we'll have time to experiment with this before we leave early access, but it's still something we're thinking about.

[Xiode]

I agree wholeheartedly, the risks associated with rabbit kicks seem entirely trivial. I pretty much have to force myself to not use them so I can have an interesting fight. Perhaps:

- have particularly skilled foes roll out of the way of falling rabbits
- have foes with weapons stand their ground, and throw/slash with their weapon (increasing the perceived threat level of armed foes?)
- lessen the amount of "snap to"/rotation correction when rabbit kicking a foe outside of your falling trajectory

Of course, like merlyn said, being so close to release it's only reasonable for this to be sidelined until later.