About the parry mechanic:

[Vanguarda]

Hey guys! I'm new at the forums, but I played this game for at least 80h now. I guess this is not nearly enough time to really master the game mechanics, so this is the point of view of someone who still needs to git gud, but I wanna share it with you guys and know what you think.

I find this game's melee mechanics inconsistent. For example the parry mechanic. I play in practice mode with no armor, tall character and medium body type using the voulge. Seems like my opponents have a real hard time parrying the overhead attack, because you can aim it at their shoulders or legs/feet, and there is no way to adjust the parry animation properly.

Thing is, parrying is unreliable to the point you shouldn't really use it, only real defensive manuever is the small dodge and the big dodge it seems, because deppending on the swing arc, you will not be able to parry because you can't angle it.

It happens to me as well. Playing with the voulge is basically dodge spamming, because if I try to parry anything, the attack might come from a funny angle that I can't do fuck all about

I feel there are 2 major problems with parry: 1, the animation is not strong enough, sometimes you overhead with a voulge, your opponent parryies it but take hit to the face anyways. 2, you can't angle the parry, making attacks that comes from below like some horizontal swings, or overheads aimed at the leg/feet or shoulders really unreliable to deffend from.

This problem happens with shields as well, because of the precision and force you can put on a stab, the shield person can parry your attack, but the shield kinda deflect it and hit the person in the head/shoulders/arms/legs. Also happens with horizontal cuts sometimes.

So I ask, am I missing something? Really, I loved the idea of the game, its kinda revolutionary even if you think about it, and its also very fun tbh, but this inconsistent parry thing forcing me to dodge all the time is kinda frustrating

 

[Tyon]

You can try turning your character to face where the attack is coming from, that pretty much always works for me, unless it's a really weirdly angled attack.

Dodging attacks generally works better and is more consistent than blocking/parrying. I know for sure that the animation itself will be improving, which should make it more consistent. I think the AI of the opponents is also going to be improved so they can defend against attacks more effectively.

I do agree that stabbing makes shields a lot easier to deal with, they will eventually be getting a revamp though.

 

[Vold]

AFAIK, this is an intended feature. Most of the times you will be able to parry if you are in a correct position, and the blow isn't too hard (if the weapon has a lot of momentum it will be harder to parry).
The more you get acustomed to the controls the better you will parry, but as you said the most reliable way to avoid damage is to dodge. Also, another way to avoid getting damage is to dash forward, specially when fighting 2h weapon enemies; but be careful, sometimes it backfires.

In any case, what you mention are mostly valid points IMO, but keep in mind that there are several skills that are WIP and also the animation and AI are going to be greatly improved in the future; they usually improve them with every release.

 

[Vanguarda]

Thanks for the answer guys!

About positioning, yes if I combine little dodge in the right direction + aim where the attack is coming from, it usually works. The funny angles are the problem, especially when you hit someone, he fumbles but windup a weird attack that you sometimes barely see, and it hits you in a place the parry animation didn't cover even you being properly positioned.

Hand/arm hits when you parry also happen quite often imo, you can even exploit this by aiming overhead and stabs at the opponent's hand, it might even deflect and hit his face instead!

Maybe if the parry animation was sort of more active, like a attack you know, a movement with some force behind it instead of a passive instance where you absorb the impact, it would be possible to parry in a more reliable way. Its like, the sledgehammer guy comes up with a massive overhead, the parry animation would be sort of a horizontal swing that would take his weapon out of the way, instead of blocking all that power behind it.

We would still need to position ourselves properly to make the parry animation connect with the attack, and the riposte from it could be quite lethal, forcing your opponent to dodge it, as the force he put on his weapon + the deflection of the parry should throw his deffenses off big time.

Maybe this could help with the funny angled attacks, as this parry I say would cover a bigger area depending on the animation, and also the "weak animations" problem because instead of absorbing the attack, you would deflect it. idk really

 

[Tony]

Parrying/blocking is being improved in the upcoming patch but parrying isn't supposed to be an automatic guaranteed thing. Like others have mentioned, if you're not positioned properly to intercept the attack then you're not going to be able to do so. In the current build parrying is a bit broken though since your character doesn't react properly to certain incoming attacks which is what they're trying to improve upon.

Attempting to parry and having the blow strike your hands or being deflected only to hit another part of your body is quite intentional though since these are part of having accurate collisions. It would be nice to have your character parry in a more intelligent way in an attempt to avoid these situations but such occurrences will still happen occassionally due to physics and accurate collisions.

 

[Madoc]

We are working on improving a number of things about parrying, but indeed it isn't supposed to be some kind of binary thing where if you're parrying you can't be hit. In real combat you don't just stand still and absorb hits with parries, you always try to evade attacks, parrying is just one part of that, often used more to create openings than just stop the opponent's weapon from hitting you. Of course there are times when you're not poised to evade and parrying is your only option.

You should think of "parrying" in Exanima as acting defensively rather than offensively, not some kind of invincibility mode as you see in many games. However, whether you succesfully parry or not, when you are defending you will take less damage compared to when you are attacking or are not focused on your opponent.

An active parry wouldn't add anything beyond an extra button to press that doesn't make any sense. In practice attacking and defending mostly occur at the same time. In Exanima we couldn't see a way to properly use your weapon for both simultaneously without it occurring beyond the player's control, but the natural constant transition between the two is a step closer to the real thing. With the upcoming shield skills an dual wield we have found a way to do this without compromising the existing gameplay and controls.

Here's a sparring video that should illustrate my point:

 

[Vanguarda]

We are working on improving a number of things about parrying, but indeed it isn't supposed to be some kind of binary thing where if you're parrying you can't be hit. In real combat you don't just stand still and absorb hits with parries, you always try to evade attacks, parrying is just one part of that, often used more to create openings than just stop the opponent's weapon from hitting you. Of course there are times when you're not poised to evade and parrying is your only option.

You should think of "parrying" in Exanima as acting defensively rather than offensively, not some kind of invincibility mode as you see in many games. However, whether you succesfully parry or not, when you are defending you will take less damage compared to when you are attacking or are not focused on your opponent.

An active parry wouldn't add anything beyond an extra button to press that doesn't make any sense. In practice attacking and defending mostly occur at the same time. In Exanima we couldn't see a way to properly use your weapon for both simultaneously without it occurring beyond the player's control, but the natural constant transition between the two is a step closer to the real thing. With the upcoming shield skills an dual wield we have found a way to do this without compromising the existing gameplay and controls.

Here's a sparring video that should illustrate my point:

Hey Mr. Madoc! Thanks for taking your time to answer me!

I guess I expressed myself badly, english is not my main language as you might have noticed. When I said about active parry, I wasn't saying that it should be a player action. What I meant is, with the Voulge for example, the parry animation against overheads is the person lifting up the voulge above its head, then wait to absorb the attack. This parry animation is not really a parry as I see it, because it fully absorb the attack. One handed without shield also has this against overheads. Even if my opponent sidestep and parry, it can hit anyways because he doesn't use his weapon to take my weapon out of the way.

Now, if the parry animation was like a movement, idk, right-to-left with a bit of force behind the polearm/one handed weapon, but not much, you would be able to do a sidestep + the parry animation would help your dodge by deflecting the attack. This would keep the philosophy of parry by itself not saving your ass, because if you stand still and try to parry a high speed sledgehammer or voulge at your face, you wouldn't have enogh force to deflect it, but if you do a side step, your weapon would help you by deflecting the opponent's weapon trajectory to another direction. You could then riposte his ass now that his weapon is out of the way and you are good positioned.

I think this could help against A) the funny angled attacks and B) strong aimed overheads, because A) a swing like movement would cover a bigger area, thus helping against funny angles and B) redirecting the blow instead of absorbing it might give the deffender a more fair chance against aimed fast overheads, if he dodges in the right moment and direction while parrying. Also, might make ripostes something more important, since right now dodge is the go-to deffensive manuever, ripostes are kinda not so much used.

With two handed swords the parry animations works better. A lot better it seems but I haven't played much with 2h sword so I couldn't tell, but I saw this happening with them I think, they sometimes redirect the attack and make the opponent's deffense open

So with polearms and one handed weapons without shield (I dont play 1h, but its what I see on bots), I feel like you should dodge all the time because parry is kinda unreliable

 

[Vanguarda]

Also, a point about ripostes:

When I do parry someone that is using a shield and 1h weapon, or just 1h weapon and try to riposte him, the 1h guy manages to spam me to death anyways. I mean, shouldn't parrying get you initiative? If I parry someone, riposte, but he hits me faster anyways, why would I riposte at all?

Goes back to the dodge thing. If you see someone comboing, you just spam dodge until you are out of the range, because if you parry the first attack and try to riposte, you will get nothing but cold steel in the face.

Feels like I'm missing something. How do you properly riposte in this game?

 

[MegaFarinato]

I gotta admit I havent really asimilated the riposte thing yet, but im pretty sure how it is supposed to work. The definition of riposte, more or less, is to counter an incoming attack with one of your own, this means that you actually have to move your body as you were going to attack, transimting all the mass at the right time in the right place, but since EVERYTHING has mass the opponents attacks will also aply force on you, so you have to be extremely perceptive of how the transmision of forces will come out, and be able to react acordingly to perform a successful riposte. Also start the "ready up" phase of the attack right when it conects with your weapon. Think of it like youre "grabbing" his sword with yours, litteraly.

This is my thesis, i hope i didnt miss anything. This game is no joke!

 

[MegaFarinato]

also realease the mouse (basicaly its the "aply force to your weapon) when the attack has been released, this way you wont follow the weapon from behind =), and you will be able to spam like those shield fuckers!

Dood, this game is real, use a heavy club or anything and see how you have to use your body so you dont lose balance or take a step while you swing.

 

[Madoc]

I don't really see how else you'd reliably parry an overhead with a polearm, considering there is no guard. Perhaps in some situations you'd be able to hit the weapon out of the way, but this is quite simply too complex an animation problem considering how dynamic everything is.

Unless the weapon somehow got past your parry entirely this should be reliable as it is. Too much so in fact as there's some quite artificial things going on with parries that allow you to stop blows from very heavy weapons with a light one, this is something we might change. If you find that what looks like a successful parry isn't working then you're probably doing something wrong, likely pressing the attack button just before you parry or trying to turn away from your opponent which causes you to abandon the parry.

To riposte you simply need to attack immediately after a parry, you need to have intercepted the opponent's attack and have the riposte technique for it to work. Again, if you try to attack before actually intercepting the opponent's weapon it won't work.

As it is the issue with parries is that some attacks too often go past parries/blocks entirely, something that we've already improved a lot in the upcoming update. We could no doubt improve things a lot visually in terms of animation, but this is always very difficult and time consuming work.

 

[MegaFarinato]

you could aways use another hand.

wink, wink, nudge nudge

and there's even more!!

 

[Vanguarda]

Perhaps in some situations you'd be able to hit the weapon out of the way, but this is quite simply too complex an animation problem considering how dynamic everything is.

Actually, this already is in the game. You can "parry" a overhead using the right-to-left horizontal swing with polearms, especially the voulge/big ones. The very beginning of the animation, you character does a little left-to-right sweap in front of his body, then proceed full force right to left. If you manage to time well this left-to-right motion, you can parry some overheads with it, and then follow up with the attack.

The seccond opponent in the novice arena is easy to do this, wait for him to overhead, then time a right to left swing properly and you will parry his overhead, maybe even hiting him after!

It could be something like this, but you know, really made for parry things instead of this adapted parry made from part of a attack animation.

Unless the weapon somehow got past your parry entirely this should be reliable as it is. Too much so in fact as there's some quite artificial things going on with parries that allow you to stop blows from very heavy weapons with a light one, this is something we might change. If you find that what looks like a successful parry isn't working then you're probably doing something wrong, likely pressing the attack button just before you parry or trying to turn away from your opponent which causes you to abandon the parry.

Yes indeed, not only it happens to me, as it happens to my opponents more often then not. Take the spear for example, a 1h guy usually has a lot of trouble parrying it, in fact everyone kinda does if it is a relatively strong stab. The stab hits the parry, but the parry animation is not strong enough or it didn't even covered where the hit would land, thus making the only way to avoid being stabed to death by a spear is back dodge, thing that bots don't do all that often in my experience.

These spear stabs are also surprisingly effective agaisnt side dodges, as your opponent will parry and dodge, but the stab lands somewhere where the parry couldn't cover, or it hits the parry but the animation didn't really helped taking the stab out of the way.

Shield guys for example, they hold the shield still while parrying it seems, I think that if they did sort of a bash movement, it would be better agains't overheads and stabs

Idk if its too much work really, I don't have a clue about game development, but maybe if the parry animations with shields, polearms and 1h weapons had more movement in them, they would be more reliable

To riposte you simply need to attack immediately after a parry, you need to have intercepted the opponent's attack and have the riposte technique for it to work. Again, if you try to attack before actually intercepting the opponent's weapon it won't work.

As it is the issue with parries is that some attacks too often go past parries/blocks entirely, something that we've already improved a lot in the upcoming update. We could no doubt improve things a lot visually in terms of animation, but this is always very difficult and time consuming work.

About ripostes, I'm gonna try to use them more, to have a more educated opinion tbh, but what I noticed this far is that they don't mean anything. Its just like a normal attack after you parry, the speed, angle etc are all the same. What advantage should I look for?

I fully agree with the issue with the parry, and I'm really happy to know this will be adressed! In the end I was sugesting something to solve this exact problem you see, the parry animation with more movement to cover a bigger area and help deflect attacks. Can you share with us how are you guys working on it?

Btw man, I have to say, amazing game, amazing idea, I wish the best for you and the team behind this project!

 

[Tony]

About ripostes, I'm gonna try to use them more, to have a more educated opinion tbh, but what I noticed this far is that they don't mean anything. Its just like a normal attack after you parry, the speed, angle etc are all the same. What advantage should I look for?

If you have the riposte skill trained it causes your reaction time to be quicker after a successful parry, that is all; there will be less delay in the transition from parry to counterattack. Another benefit of having the riposte skill trained is it will be necessary to unlock the dual wield skill in the upcoming patch .

 

[Vanguarda]

If you have the riposte skill trained it causes your reaction time to be quicker after a successful parry, that is all; there will be less delay in the transition from parry to counterattack. Another benefit of having the riposte skill trained is it will be necessary to unlock the dual wield skill in the upcoming patch .

Thanks man! Tell me, when you play at practice arena, all skills are enabled right? There is where I like to test things related to mechanic, but now that I have a char with all skills unlocked on normal arena mode, I'm using there for tests as I have a wider variety of weapons/opponents.

I ask you Mr. Tony, is there a way to make the game slow motion? I fell this would be rather educative, as I could see better the parry mechanics and why it fails. Perhaps suggest more solid ideas even regarding this parry problem!

I thought about this, tell me what you think: parrying should be used to take your opponent's weapon out of the way, and also make your opponent lose a bit of balance. This way ripostes could be more then simply normal attacks but faster, they would be how you seize the opportunity created by the parry! Like I told you, that "parry" made from a right to left attack sort of unbalances your opponent, and kinda take his weapon out of the way you see, but since I guess its "not made for that", it doesn't really work that gud.

I feel like parryies are used mostly to deffend, absorb attacks, and not so much to create opportunities you see, thus ripostes not being much of a big deal.

 

[MegaFarinato]

you can do normal attacks as fast as riposte attacks, its only faster becouse youre using your block as a "ready-up" for your next attack. Youre skiping a "phase" in what would be a coordinated exchange of attacks, its all about tempo, not "faster" attacks. Doing more in the same timeframe, lets say.

 

[Tony]

Yes, all skills are enabled in the practice arena. The dev build has a command to make things slow motion but it's not available in the regular build.

 

[Madoc]

My whole point was that while in specific circumstances something like that might be possible, procedurally generating animations on the fly capable of performing such an action under any condition is simply not.

You're talking about going from current games that just glue together precanned and well known sequences as a front end to stupidly simple mechanics, to deliberately redirecting a physical weapon being swung with an unknown trajectory, velocity and mass under the control of hundreds of virtual muscles etc. etc. Games are very, very, very simple, what you're talking about is so incredibly complicated that it can't even be meaningfully described.

Exanima's physics and animation are undoubtedly sophisticated, but that doesn't magically make it real life, it's still a computer program, what happens in real life is the result of billions of quintillions of colliding bonded atoms and real people who evolved motor functions over millions of years and then trained very hard to do these things. This stuff is at the pinnacle of human skill, the speed and precision with which these actions occur and the obscene amount of variables that a human takes into consideration is not something that you can just replicate on a calculator, never mind running in real time. Consider it an AI problem, where the current state of the art is someone running on the spot against a piece of furniture for 5 minutes...

I guess there's a tendency to see the physical interactions and dynamic behaviours in Exanima and think that it must be easy to do anything. Quite the contrary, these things don't "just work" and implicitly solve problems, they make everything painfully difficult and create a truly endless supply of new complex problems. I've been struggling with even the most basic aspects of this animation for years now, it's like trying to build a 1000 story house of cards, a somewhat different endeavour from "play animation X".

Basically, it's complicated. Very complicated. Games don't magically do amazing things, it's all just smoke and mirrors, covering up the embarrassingly simplistic systems with flashy graphics and animations. Indeed we're striving to create a game where things actually happen dynamically instead of just being a patchwork of pre-scripted stuff. Who knows in time what we or someone else might do by trying to bridge the gap between a complexity of zero and a gazillion, but it's not going to happen in a day.

Umm, got a bit carried away there perhaps. In short, there's a somewhat big difference between imagining something and actually making happen. This is the long version of "too complex an animation problem".

 

[Vanguarda]

My whole point was that while in specific circumstances something like that might be possible, procedurally generating animations on the fly capable of performing such an action under any condition is simply not.

You're talking about going from current games that just glue together precanned and well known sequences as a front end to stupidly simple mechanics, to deliberately redirecting a physical weapon being swung with an unknown trajectory, velocity and mass under the control of hundreds of virtual muscles etc. etc. Games are very, very, very simple, what you're talking about is so incredibly complicated that it can't even be meaningfully described.

Exanima's physics and animation are undoubtedly sophisticated, but that doesn't magically make it real life, it's still a computer program, what happens in real life is the result of billions of quintillions of colliding bonded atoms and real people who evolved motor functions over millions of years and then trained very hard to do these things. This stuff is at the pinnacle of human skill, the speed and precision with which these actions occur and the obscene amount of variables that a human takes into consideration is not something that you can just replicate on a calculator, never mind running in real time. Consider it an AI problem, where the current state of the art is someone running on the spot against a piece of furniture for 5 minutes...

I guess there's a tendency to see the physical interactions and dynamic behaviours in Exanima and think that it must be easy to do anything. Quite the contrary, these things don't "just work" and implicitly solve problems, they make everything painfully difficult and create a truly endless supply of new complex problems. I've been struggling with even the most basic aspects of this animation for years now, it's like trying to build a 1000 story house of cards, a somewhat different endeavour from "play animation X".

Basically, it's complicated. Very complicated. Games don't magically do amazing things, it's all just smoke and mirrors, covering up the embarrassingly simplistic systems with flashy graphics and animations. Indeed we're striving to create a game where things actually happen dynamically instead of just being a patchwork of pre-scripted stuff. Who knows in time what we or someone else might do by trying to bridge the gap between a complexity of zero and a gazillion, but it's not going to happen in a day.

Umm, got a bit carried away there perhaps. In short, there's a somewhat big difference between imagining something and actually making happen. This is the long version of "too complex an animation problem".

Wow! Thanks for such well thought answer man! As I told you Mr. Modoc, my knowledge on this area is, well, zero and I honestly thought it was just a matter of changing how the animation plays within the already existent game rules, and that by itself would cause the parry/riposte thing I told ya, but I don't even know or understand said rules! Mate I don't know even how normal games work, imagine a game full of physics like this, its all wizardry imo

I can't even imagine the strugle and stress that is to make what you guys are doing, I mean, I haven't seen anything like this, so as far as I know you guys are expanding the gaming industry into unknown territory, and this is a very honorable quest. Also, this game completely oppened my mind about what games in the future could be!

I'll be playing this game for a long time I think, really wanna see how this develops as the future looks awesome and you are a nice dev man, who answer people and all! Thats really great you know

 

[Vanguarda]

As I played more, I believe my point still stands. Parrying is too unreliable and meaningless to be properly used and integrated in your fighting stile, and as consequence ripostes are borderline useless, making the only real effective fighting stile to jump in and out, attacking at the same time your opponents attack but out of his range, overusing dodge mechanic.

As my suggestions about parry animations and ripostes were not realistic, I thought about something to make parry and riposte more useful, and maybe it is more simple because it was already done before, again, I don't understand fuck all about games, especially this one, I'm just trying to help make the flow of the combat more interesting you see. I understand that this is very subjective and how I view interesting melee fight flow might not be how the devs or this community sees it. But since I loved this game I feel like sharing anyways.

In Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, parrying someone means they will enter a "recovery" state. A nice effect this has: spammy knife + shield against big halberd. 1h guy can attack faster then you, BUT, if you manage to parry one of his attacks, you get a opportunity to have initiative back, because the spammer fucker will go for 0.something secconds without being able to attack you.

There ripostes are more useful. Parrying is used to stop the opponent's initiative, ripostes give them to you. Initiative here means who should be on deffensive posture, and who should be in agressive posture.

Exanima's combat blurs initiative because A) parrying is unreliable and even if you parry someone, the only effect is you don't take damage, your opponent can still swing wildly at you forcing you to keep on deffensive and B) as a direct consequence of meaningless parry, ripostes are also meaningless because you need to have initiative in order to attack and not get hit.

This create limits in your playstile, as the only real tool to regain initiative in Exanima is dodging out of the way. Idk if this is intended or not tbh, but I think its something that severely limits the combat possibilities in this game and make the combat shallow by reducing the skill ceilling, since you have only one real option to fight effectively, that is long dodge/short dodge and attack spam.

Thus maybe a more realistic suggestion: add some sort of recovery mechanic, make parrying more reliable (redundant suggestion as Mr. Dev already said their are working on it) and maybe increase a bit the advantage of riposting timing wise, so it would be used as a complement to parry in order to give you back initiative in a fight, thus making possible to fight using a lot more parry and ripostes instead of resorting to jump arround