A discussion on gameplay and the flow of combat

[Lime_x]

I have recently tried out the latest version of the Overgrowth beta, both the lugaru campain and the overgrowth campain. While I think that a lot of the technical aspect seems to have been improved a lot, I had some thoughts about the combat and thought that I could introduce a discussion on it and the balance of the combat.

When I have read on the forums, I have mostly seen positive views on the combat, so I thought that I might share my thoughts on it.
The first thing I notice about the combat is that it is very fast and not very easy to read. While I understand that it might be the charm of the game that the combat is difficult, it might also scare away a lot of new players. Because the combat is so fast, it makes it a lot harder to react to the enemies' attacks.
I can see that it might be to make it more realistic, and it's definitely cool when you're able to string together a combo, but most of the time when I play, it goes into a cycle of fight, die repeat.
Since the AI is quite difficult to predict (in comparison to other games), it also makes it harder to make a strategy on how to beat them.

Secondly, I noticed that since the jump and speed is so high, it's easy to jump really far when in combat. Since the combat is mainly stationary, the jumping and wallrunning feels a bit separated from the combat. With that being said, I'm not sure if the combat and wallruning/jumping completely blend together very well.
This also correlates to my third point, which is about the flow of the game. When trying out the campains, I have noticed that the game puts a lot more emphasis on the combat rather than the parkour aspects. While I like combat, I think that it might be good to perhaps balance out the sections of combat, parkour and NPC interaction, to get a better flow in the game.

My fourth point is mostly regarding the combat against a specific enemy: The wolf. When playing the lugaru campain, I noticed that my weapons did almost no damage and that the most viable strategy would be to only do leg cannons against them. Which limits the options available and I'm wondering if that might be making those combat sections less fun.

Anyway, those were some of my thoughts. What are your thoughts on the combat?

[sol0]

Yeah, I agree about the Wolf, I think that it negates all the great mechanics that are available and using leg cannons all the time doesn't make it very challenging. I think that what should be implemented is something like this:
The wolf will have double the health and damage but lower speed, and more inclined to play aggressively than defensively

The rabbit will just be the opposite instead. That way the mechanics of the game are kept the way they are and there's a more level playing field, plus weapons will be able to work on each other as well. I can see how the devs play the wolves like they are since a rabbit vs a wolf is supposed to be a huge challenge but just spamming the leg cannons kind of defeats the purpose of the game. I would say that the last 2 missions were the easiest because of that.

[EPR89]

I have recently tried out the latest version of the Overgrowth beta, both the lugaru campain and the overgrowth campain.

Aha...
You know that only one of those is currently in the game, right?

My personal main problem with the combat is that the armed combat seems to be not really balanced yet. The only weapon I'd consider balanced is the Dog Broadsword. It's really powerful, but comparably slow. Just about fast enough that a new player can learn how to dodge and counter it unarmed. But one mistake and you're dead. That's perfect in my opinion.

Unarmed combat is almost perfect. Each attack of Turner's move set has it's place and at least one attack that can counter it.

All the other weapons are - sorry - terrible. They are all super fast. Way too fast to really engage with an enemy wielding one. There's no way to reliably avoid or block them. It's all guess work. The swords are faster than unarmed attacks and have a similar reach to unarmed fighters. No real balance here.
The knife can't be blocked, is super fast and chains faster than any other weapon too. Again, I don't see how that is balanced against unarmed fighters, especially considering that they deal permanent damage. What's most irritating to me is that with a knife you don't really move like you do in any other combat set-up. Every other weapon forces you to commit to an attack. With a knife you can just keep moving around while slashing. So often you can dodge one slash and get hit while the animation of the dodge is still playing. You can dodge the second one too, but there's not enough feedback to the player to sell that opening.
The pole arms are again, faster or similar in speed to unarmed fighters and have massive reach. At least the staff can be blocked now, since it deals blunt damage, but that's about all the balance here.

The problem with the Lugaru campaign is that there is practically no unarmed fighting after the first few levels. You always start with the one weapon that is most uncharacteristic for Overgrowth's combat, the knife. It quickly turns into all armed combat. I really hope that weapons get nerfed a little bit, primarily in the speed department. I have no problem with getting one-shotted by a weapon. But when it feels excessively unfair to take on an armed opponent or so risky that the theoretically awesome combat becomes the least desirable option, there's something amiss.

The way armed enemies work right now could work really well in a stealth game, where direct confrontation is discouraged. It's supposed to be unfair. But Overgrowth is not a stealth game. The levels are not specifically designed for it, the player's abilities don't play into it enough and sometimes it's outright impossible. I really hope weapons will get a do-over to fall more in line with the broadsword and the unarmed attacks.

[Crystalwarrior]

Personally I'd love for Lugaru wolves to come back, complete with animal running, pouncing and bleed damage.

[Lime_x]

EPRB9, I agree with you that most of the weapons are quite unbalanced. And yeah the dog broad sword is perhaps the one weapon that is fairly balanced.

I think that the unarmed combat is quite balanced aswell. However, I'm still not sure about the flow of the combat. When I play the combat feels like it's almost too fast and there's hardly any breathing room for the player when engaged in combat. I guess that could also be considered the strength of the game, since it requires the player to be on their toes at all times.
Since this game is kind of like a fighting game, I try to compare it with other fighting games and I've found that it's usually easier to get into the "flow" when playing other fighting games such as Street fighter or super smash brothers. I think it might have to do with the pacing of Overgrowth, but I'm not quite sure.

Hopefully the developers can get some good feedback from this thread to take into consideration if they decide to reworking the weapon/combat system.

Also:

Aha...
You know that only one of those is currently in the game, right?

Hmm, yeah I thought that there wouldn't be an overgrowth campain, but if that's the case, then what's the name of this campain that I just played?

[Colven]

My fourth point is mostly regarding the combat against a specific enemy: The wolf. When playing the lugaru campain, I noticed that my weapons did almost no damage and that the most viable strategy would be to only do leg cannons against them. Which limits the options available and I'm wondering if that might be making those combat sections less fun.

I'm a fan of the way Wolves work right now, but I agree they definitely need some tweaking. Leg cannon spam is by far the most effective way of fighting them and virtually necessary if fighting more than one Wolf at one time. This felt pretty uninteractive at times, as fights would turn into jousting matches that consisted of "Run at them, jump, leg cannon, rinse, repeat." Having a sword makes the 1v1 much more interesting, since it's actually possible to have a duel with a Wolf, but it's much riskier than leg cannon. Maybe adding just a smidge more start-up time on their attacks would allow players to react and dodge more effectively.

Also, I'm sure the devs have tested it already, but it'd be interesting to see how the making the Wolves vulnerable to heavier attacks like the roundhouse and sweep would change things. Having them be equivalent to jabs on regular enemies might make fighting Wolves unarmed a little less frustrating.

Final point, I just want to give kudos to how fucking cool the removing thrown weapons mechanic is. It adds another option for fighting wolves with knives and makes me feel like a badass whenever I kill someone with it. Only issue is how hard it is to actually do, the timing on the roll+weapon pick up is pretty tight, but that could be entirely due to the fact that I'm terrible at it lol.

Edit on weapon balance: I think a lot of the sword issues could be solved by making them more responsive to active blocking, while also disabling the judo throw while wielding a sword. Most of the time sword fights end with me baiting out an attack and then throwing them and slicing while they're on the ground, which is usually unavoidable. Removing the ability to throw takes away this trump card and forces the player to focus more on the flow of the duel.

[merlyn]

Hmm, yeah I thought that there wouldn't be an overgrowth campain, but if that's the case, then what's the name of this campain that I just played?

Judge the game from the Lugaru campaign way more than the Overgrowth campaign right now.

The Overgrowth campaign is entirely unbalanced, and a lot of the gameplay is way too easy, or far past unfair right now. A lot of the art isn't in place, the encounters aren't really filled out, we're doing work to rewrite the story, and a few of the levels aren't even there yet. It's still one big work in progress

Also judge the Lugaru campaign as "hard" mode, since we never got around to creating a "normal" or "easy" mode. We probably won't for a long time, either, if at all. We're focusing all of our attention on getting the main campaign ready for everyone, and getting modding to a place where it's easy to find and easy to do (which helps us build the campaign faster too!).

As for the rest of the thread, thanks for the feedback and keep it coming

[Kenjiiii]

I also think the Wolves are vastly unfair if all you have is a knife and you need to get up close and personal. Facing an armed opponent while you're unarmed is also insanely risky because they can basically one-shot you unless they have the knife, but even the knife makes them nearly impossible to kill. I would prefer perhaps a different, easier mode for beginners where combat is slower and easier to predict, so that it's easy to get used to? Don't get me wrong, I love how brutal the combat is. I just wish my enemies weren't reminding me of that all the time xD. My current strategy is spam left click, get knocked over, hope you don't snap your spine, roll, and kick while they're close enough for a kick but still running and hope they don't block. So a more forgiving combat system would be nice.

[sol0]

I also think the Wolves are vastly unfair if all you have is a knife and you need to get up close and personal. Facing an armed opponent while you're unarmed is also insanely risky because they can basically one-shot you unless they have the knife, but even the knife makes them nearly impossible to kill. I would prefer perhaps a different, easier mode for beginners where combat is slower and easier to predict, so that it's easy to get used to? Don't get me wrong, I love how brutal the combat is. I just wish my enemies weren't reminding me of that all the time xD. My current strategy is spam left click, get knocked over, hope you don't snap your spine, roll, and kick while they're close enough for a kick but still running and hope they don't block. So a more forgiving combat system would be nice.

The tutorial explains how to counter the knife wielding opponents nicely, you have to dodge them by standing still and waiting for them to attack then by using a directional button which allows you to dodge, then you can disable them by throwing them. At first I just played through the story but after the tutorial I learned how to counter most of the attacks. Although the bo staff is hard to deal with for me XD
But, it takes practice and you get better at it. I personally think that the combat should be hard and that you need to practice at it to get better. If you make an easy mode, there's no real incentive to learn the rest of the mechanics since you just stick to one mode imo.

[Peruraptor]

The changes made after the Lugaru campaign was added in the Last Alpha seemed to break a lot of the game's previous balance and subtlety. As well as the enemy hyperaggression and Terminator Wolves, I encountered some problems with the block and dodge implementation. Passive Blocking for Opponents seemed more broken than usual, and they seemed to disarm every time you tried to hit them with a larger weapon and they were A. At least slightly alerted (counting when you jump/run up behind them and immediately attack) B. Not in an attack animation. Some of these seem to have been glitches, as apparently they're supposed to block 1/10 times, but I haven't been able to access the betas to see if they've been fixed. There's also the seemingly decreased damage resistance, which greatly ups the fight speed and randomness in the absence of the knockout shield, which I'd argue is unnecessary in the older builds with sturdier characters. The Staff is new to Overgrowth, but seems poorly implemented compared Lugaru due to only being effective when used against the player. Its pretty useless against the opponent's passive block but devastating against the player, who lacks such advantages and is likely to quickly fall prey to the staff's lighting speed and flooring power attack.

[Silverfish]

The changes made after the Lugaru campaign was added in the Last Alpha seemed to break a lot of the game's previous balance and subtlety. As well as the enemy hyperaggression and Terminator Wolves, I encountered some problems with the block and dodge implementation. Passive Blocking for Opponents seemed more broken than usual, and they seemed to disarm every time you tried to hit them with a larger weapon and they were A. At least slightly alerted (counting when you jump/run up behind them and immediately attack) B. Not in an attack animation. Some of these seem to have been glitches, as apparently they're supposed to block 1/10 times, but I haven't been able to access the betas to see if they've been fixed. There's also the seemingly decreased damage resistance, which greatly ups the fight speed and randomness in the absence of the knockout shield, which I'd argue is unnecessary in the older builds with sturdier characters. The Staff is new to Overgrowth, but seems poorly implemented compared Lugaru due to only being effective when used against the player. Its pretty useless against the opponent's passive block but devastating against the player, who lacks such advantages and is likely to quickly fall prey to the staff's lighting speed and flooring power attack.

Some of what you write here is based on false information, I'll just quickly try to correct those instances to help out a bit:

Passive blocking is when a character gets hit without successfully blocking and they get staggered for a moment. Like when a character gets kicked with a front kick and they play the animation where they fall backwards and then instantly push themselves back up again, that's a passive block. The way it works is that if a character gets attacked with an attack they can passively block and they are not doing something like trying to attack, they will perform a passive block. The passive blocking ability deteriorates for each time a character does a passive block, and when they run out they'll start ragdolling instead of passively blocking, bringing greater risk of damage.

Passive Blocking for Opponents seemed more broken than usual, and they seemed to disarm every time you tried to hit them with a larger weapon and they were A. At least slightly alerted (counting when you jump/run up behind them and immediately attack) B. Not in an attack animation.

Other than this not being passive blocking like I described above, in order to catch them off guard you need to attack them without them knowing you're there. That way you can guarantee a first hit. If like you say they are even slightly aware of you they'll be able to defend themselves.

There's also the seemingly decreased damage resistance, which greatly ups the fight speed and randomness in the absence of the knockout shield, which I'd argue is unnecessary in the older builds with sturdier characters.

There are definitely KO shields in the Lugaru campaign, which I'm assuming is what you're playing on. I don't think the older builds had sturdier characters, they were made sturdier by the introduction of the KO shield though.

The Staff is new to Overgrowth, but seems poorly implemented compared Lugaru due to only being effective when used against the player. Its pretty useless against the opponent's passive block but devastating against the player, who lacks such advantages and is likely to quickly fall prey to the staff's lighting speed and flooring power attack.

There is no misinformation here since it's a matter of opinion, but personally I find stealing the staff and killing the opponent with it to be a pretty solid tactic. You also write here that the player does not have passive blocking, but they do.

[Peruraptor]

Passive blocking is when a character gets hit without successfully blocking and they get staggered for a moment. Like when a character gets kicked with a front kick and they play the animation where they fall backwards and then instantly push themselves back up again, that's a passive block. The way it works is that if a character gets attacked with an attack they can passively block and they are not doing something like trying to attack, they will perform a passive block. The passive blocking ability deteriorates for each time a character does a passive block, and when they run out they'll start ragdolling instead of passively blocking, bringing greater risk of damage.

Apologies, I didn't realize passive block referred specifically to this. I'm referring to the times when enemies no-sell blunt attacks for prolonged periods of time. This used to happen only when an attack had previously been used on an enemy before alpha 227, but it seemed to get a lot more pervasive after the Lugaru campaign was added. It even occasionally happens when the enemy is completely ragdolled, and similar to the dodge disarm the only full proof counter seems to be timing your attacks to land during their own attack animation.

Other than this not being passive blocking like I described above, in order to catch them off guard you need to attack them without them knowing you're there. That way you can guarantee a first hit. If like you say they are even slightly aware of you they'll be able to defend themselves.

The problem is the context: enemies never defend themselves from blunt attacks in immediate alert stages, but do so without fail from larger weapons. It breaks suspension of disbelief when literally the only response an enemy will take (this is prior to the second alert noise, for all intents and purposes they haven't quite realized you're there) in the few moments after you drop down behind them is to perfectly dodge your sword thrust, then judo flip you.

There are definitely KO shields in the Lugaru campaign, which I'm assuming is what you're playing on. I don't think the older builds had sturdier characters, they were made sturdier by the introduction of the KO shield though.

I mean that in levels without the KO shields, such as in the arena or the editor levels, the enemies/player seem significantly squishier than they were in the previous alphas. I tested this out with a226 and it held up: a surprise punch or successful leg cannon was a powerful attack in earlier alphas, but was not guaranteed to knock out the enemy in one hit(though it certainly could under some circumstances). In a227, either attack is likely to instantly kill an enemy with full health, particularly the leg cannon. My point about knockout shields was that they wouldn't be as necessary a mechanic in previous alphas, as characters used to be capable to taking a few falls without getting knocked out in their absence.

There is no misinformation here since it's a matter of opinion, but personally I find stealing the staff and killing the opponent with it to be a pretty solid tactic. You also write here that the player does not have passive blocking, but they do.

Again, I'm referring to the opponents ability to perfectly block blunt attacks for extended durations of time. As this applies to the Staff, it tends to be basically useless to the player as it is unlikely to hit and very likely to end up in the hands of the enemy, where it is much more dangerous. Due to this the optimal way to use staffs when they are obtained is to drop them on the far end of the map, where the enemy can't find them.

[merlyn]

Thanks for the feedback, Peruraptor! (and others, of course, but I replied earlier already)