Overhead swings: are they what they are all cracked up to be ?

[Jacob Jones]

Ah yes.. the almighty technique used in mortal combat: the overhead swing of doom which delivers them to the quiet dark, the eternal slumber, the silent void, to the place where the light just don't shine... Yes, this is how I die in expert arena.

Now I understand that a dramatic move like this in a real sword fight would be... detrimental to your whole "being alive" thing that you like to do... because it opens up your defenses before you even swing. But I believe sometimes the need arises to just raise your weapon with awesome might and relentless rage, and just smite your foe in the face.

Okay so I rarely use this move because it seems like there is a delay before the swing (delay after the double click) then the wind up takes too long for my guy, and sometimes there is no power in the swing even when stepping into it, and the mother of all is the fact that I cant even hit a knocked down opponent anywhere on his or her person with said overhead swing. My opponents on the other hand, are freaking surgeons when it comes to this move, and always (when I say always I mean most of the time) land a devastating blow on my cranium that typically gets me super super dead as f**k.

So my question is, when do you guys use an overhead swing in a fight? how do you maintain power and accuracy? how do you avoid overhead swings of death from your opponents?

Thanks guys and gals for positive feedback

 

[Murf]

I mainly use overhead when they fall to the ground (along with crouch to make sure they get the full brunt) or if they are just wide open for too long.

 

[Anthony Obilor]

I use a 1h sword so i usually bait them into it with a feint and then wait for them to step in with a wide swing, if not they just block it. Overheads feel kind of inaccurate because we are thinking it will land where the cursor is pointing,but this is not fully correct, it aims more on the edge of the cursor sphere, also do not forget to take distance into account.

Edit: Madoc actually clarified more that the character aims for a place roughly around waist high of where the cursor is pointing, we dont actually have vertical control of the cursor, thats why we cant lift objects up, the automatically adjust their vertical height when you move them objects. So always remember depending on your angle of camera it could seem right of cursor or left of cursor if you try aiming for the head with the cursor. (I think I confused myself as well)

 

[Jacob Jones]

Overheads feel kind of inaccurate because we are thinking it will land where the cursor is pointing,but this is not fully correct, it aims more on the edge of the cursor sphere

This is good info. I usually double click and swipe to try and get more of a downward slash thing to follow the enemy as they move. I guess I should try and start aiming on the edge for that to work. The distance is hard for me. I usually step in when I do it to get more power, but I always end up stepping on the guy on the floor and smacking my sword on the ground. then they usually get up and murder me while my guy is trying to get his sword back up and hes like stuck with his arm behind his back or something.

It sounds like I could be totally fine just never doing a downward swing.

My experience with feints is: feint an attack oops the enemy is attacking the same instant I feint and then I'm dead.

I mainly use overhead when they fall to the ground (along with crouch to make sure they get the full brunt) or if they are just wide open for too long.

Perhaps I just have really bad reflexes, cause reacting to some of this stuff is so hard. I mean I bet I react okay, but my dude's reactions always feel sluggish, like I don't have very good control over him. I guess I should practice more.

 

[Iscandar]

Overheads are a situational attack and you shouldn't feel bad if you're not using them often. Their effectiveness varies per weapon as well.
Overheads work well if you anticipate the enemy is going to step forward to attack, since they'll be open and locked in their forward motion until the end of their swing. Remember, this is more anticipatory than reactive. Reactive overeads are too risky and you often don't land good hits anyway. If you've got a long weapon like a sword, this is where you step back to get out of range, with a shorter weapon, you'd stand still or walk forward a bit. With a really brutal weapon like the two handed axe, this is where you want to do a crouch overhead. It can kill enemies in one hit if their head is unprotected.

Other than that, if you knock over an enemy, you can keep pounding on them with overheads and they can't do a thing about it. Stand over them as they try to get up, do your overhead, keep them on the ground by throwing your body weight on them, and repeat as long as you can. You've probably had enemies do this to you before like the mace and buckler guy. He's really aggressive and doesn't wait for you to get up, and neither should you. I've beaten the expert boss several times by getting lucky knockdowns and just slamming him while he's down with overheads.

In the dungeon mode, zombies cannot block (minus the proctor and skeletons). This means overhead them to your heart's content. Zombies are physically weak so a good overhead almost always throws them on the ground. Also, you can lure zombies into narrow places and get even easier overheads.

 

[Madoc]

It's important to understand how the cursor works in game. Unless in specific situations it does not really target but turns your character. It may help to think of the cursor as pointing on an imaginary horizontal plane that is about the height of your character's waist.

What this means in practice is that if if you want to hit someone with an overhead on the head you actually need to aim at their waist. You are turning your character in the exact direction you want to strike, not targeting a spot in 3D space. Similarly, when an opponent is on the ground you need to aim at where your character's waist would be if they were standing on the spot you want to hit. You also can't really augment overheads with vertical movement of the cursor in the way you describe. Crouching and stepping forward will augment overheads, other movements may too depending on various factors.

 

[-Tim-]

I would like to point out one (in my opinion somewhat overlooked) aspect of combat overheads can shine in: in combos!

 

[tiny lampe]

What this means in practice is that if if you want to hit someone with an overhead on the head you actually need to aim at their waist. You are turning your character in the exact direction you want to strike, not targeting a spot in 3D space.

A little concern: thrusts are supposed to be able to target body parts with pinpoint accuracy, which obvisouly wouldn't work very well under the current system. Will cursor behavior be overhauled when thrusts are implemented? If so, will such overhaul only affect thrusts or will it extend to overheads as well?

 

[Anthony Obilor]

A little concern: thrusts are supposed to be able to target body parts with pinpoint accuracy, which obvisouly wouldn't work very well under the current system. Will cursor behavior be overhauled when thrusts are implemented? If so, will such overhaul only affect thrusts or will it extend to overheads as well?

This has been on my mind for a while now, I noticed long before that the cursor was more a guide to your characters facing rather than a pinpoint target. I think thrusts would work similarly to what we already have, the character will have different procedural thrust animations that will depend on your footwork and rotation, but will aim towards the cursor and not allow you to aim thrusts at head/arm/leg/torso precisely. I believe we will see some chest level thrusts like when you straighten ur arm in front of you, some lunge thrusts, and also some lower torso thrusts. Obviously your character will thrust in the direction of the cursor, but I doubt we will ever have the ability to aim the cursor normally on a vertical level.

I think even ranged combat will have something like an invisible circle around the cursor that is your field of where the arrow may go. It will be somewhere around torso level and probably have a skill that improves your accuracy hence making the circle smaller. For characters that are on a different vertical plane I guess some sort of automatic vertical adjustment could be used as the a. I. Can have the logic of targeting vertically for ranged introduced, sort of like the autoblock. Or the cursor could take into account it's distance from the ground, so if the cursor is on a different elevation it would adjust to that. A button could also be used to indicate vertical level, but I think this the least likely and probably least viable option. All this is just speculation on my part but I would interested to know how you plan to handle it @Madoc

 

[tiny lampe]

I think thrusts would work similarly to what we already have, the character will have different procedural thrust animations that will depend on your footwork and rotation, but will aim towards the cursor and not allow you to aim thrusts at head/arm/leg/torso precisely.(...)All this is just speculation on my part but I would interested to know how you plan to handle it

If you navigate to the 'GAMES' section of the site (see menu at the top) and then scroll down to Sui Generis > Combat, there is this insightful tidbit of information:

Spears for example will have an alternate attack which will stab at your cursor with pin-point accuracy.

So the original plan was to allow for very precise thrusts that can be aimed at specific body parts. That's old information though, and it may very well be the case that BM changed their mind and now they intend to make thrusts work as you describe.

In any case, it was the discrepancy between how thrusts are supposed to work and how the cursor works now that made me raise my previous question. Hopefully, @Madoc can clarify what's in store for thrusts.

 

[tiny lampe]

Yesterday night Madoc was on his beam channel and I asked him about how thrusts will work.

He replied that they will work exactly as the 'GAMES > combat' section of the site describes, that is to say, thrusts will allow us to target specific body parts by using the cursor as a very precise aiming tool. He also mentioned that the same level of precision can be expected from ranged weapons (bows...) and thaumaturgy.

So essentially the cursor will behave differently depending on what we are doing. In the context of combat, if we are thrusting, using a bow or certain magics, the cursor acts as an aiming tool. If however we are swinging our weapon, the cursor then becomes a guide to help us turn our character exactly as much as we want.

 

[Anthony Obilor]

Yesterday night Madoc was on his beam channel and I asked him about how thrusts will work.

He replied that they will work exactly as the 'GAMES > combat' section of the site describes, that is to say, thrusts will allow us to target specific body parts by using the cursor as a very precise aiming tool. He also mentioned that the same level of precision can be expected from ranged weapons (bows...) and thaumaturgy.

So essentially the cursor will behave differently depending on what we are doing. In the context of combat, if we are thrusting, using a bow or certain magics, the cursor acts as an aiming tool. If however we are swinging our weapon, the cursor then becomes a guide to help us turn our character exactly as much as we want.

I hoped it would work like this to be honest, but with the post by Madoc on how the cursor works and also the problem of vertical aiming I wasn't sure. How will we be able to aim on a vertical and horizontal plane at the same time from an isometric angle? I think the cursor would have some logic that when over an npc, adjust height based on where is pointed at, so basically an npc becomes a sort of virtual ruler. I need to know the technical workings of thrusts. @Madoc when u streaming next I need to know

Also wat about distance, will we need to have the cursor on an npc to be able to shoot or cast towards them? This can become abit fiddley and reduce reaction times, it would be nice to be able to cast or fire in a certain direction without accurate aiming as well, sort of like how hip fire works for games with guns.

Let me explain why, imagine a situation where you have 2 npcs chasing you and you run into a room with no exit, you decide to do a quick light spell to blind them or force push 1 back so you can focus on 1.trying to aim at a running npc and having to accurately click on him could be quite difficult, we also need to consider how important lighting is to gameplay, our eyes can adapt better to darkness than what games emulate. Also will it be important if we cast the spell at his face or at his feet? For ranged I would guess we will have crossbows so hip shots are very viable, they are just more inaccurate and generally at a torso level.

 

[Nynuc]

I would like to point out one (in my opinion somewhat overlooked) aspect of combat overheads can shine in: in combos!

Man, That's sweet. The two handed sword I feel combos faster than the one handed sword. The one handed sword is extremely slow at pulling off overheads.

 

[cnileoleman]

Seeing gameplay just confirms for me that my computer is fail. Combat in the arena for me is at maybe 65% speed, and overheads take about 2 seconds to complete so I never use them except on downed enemies. Physics also get weird at that speed, swings have a tendency to turn my character around even though I barely moved the cursor. It happens a lot more often in the expert arena. Still, at least the game runs on older machines.

 

[Orlacktherof]

So, we just need better aiming by the game for us with this move.

 

[Anthony Obilor]

So, we just need better aiming by the game for us with this move.

It aims fine, we are just aiming wrong. Don't aim for the head aim at the waist.

 

[Orlacktherof]

It aims fine, we are just aiming wrong. Don't aim for the head aim at the waist.

I hit floor regardless, unless I'm playing top-down.

 

[Anthony Obilor]

I hit floor regardless, unless I'm playing top-down.

You have to take distance into account, your character just performs the swing you need to know how long his reach is.
I know the reach of my character as I stick to one build and height always so now I pretty much can aim decently, it can be blocked still but at least it is in range almost always except wen I am swinging wildly.

 

[Orlacktherof]

You have to take distance into account, your character just performs the swing you need to know how long his reach is.
I know the reach of my character as I stick to one build and height always so now I pretty much can aim decently, it can be blocked still but at least it is in range almost always except wen I am swinging wildly.

I feel like one handed weapons have better aim and range somehow but less power on these overheads than two handed. but I suppose that makes it alot easier

 

[Anthony Obilor]

I feel like one handed weapons have better aim and range somehow but less power on these overheads than two handed. but I suppose that makes it alot easier

Not at all, 2 handed have better range obviously, but it is possible that 1 handed sword could be more fluid on account of it weighing less. I think I have used the 2handed sword only a hand full of times, I am really a sword and shield user in almost every melee game. This game really requires your to take into account alot of things; Your type of weapon, your opponent's weapon, lighting is very important, distance between you and your opponent, your armor, and soon your enemies skills. There are more things but already we can see that alot of gameplay mechanics that may seem simple are actually important.