Recently we saw the addition of a turn speed limit placed on melee strikes when in the section of the animation where damage is applied. The reason for this change was to prevent an exploit that would allow a player to spin around X number of times applying damage in a 360 degree area of effect around the player. While this has always been a possibility it really only came to the center of attention with the release of Phantom and most importantly the sword he comes equipped with.
My major concerns with the change really focuses on the fact that this nerfs certain none exploitative play styles more than others and it negatively effects the kinesthetics of gameplay interaction. First off, when looking at who it effects worse we need to understand what kind of players we are talking about. The current change results in more slowdown the faster that you move the mouse (kind of like negative acceleration on steroids) This simply means the quicker you move the mouse the slower you turn. Players that play on a very low sensitivity and rely heavily on wrist flicks to do large turns are punished more than players who play with more slowly controlled swipes. You don’t need to make a huge leap of faith to also come to the conclusion this also means the change effects higher skill players who play very quick than lower skilled players that generally play very slow. Moving on to the kinesthetics the problem should be fairly obvious. Quite a high number of your more advanced and regular players have crossed that line where they no longer think about moving their mouse or pressing a certain button and instead see it like looking in a certain direction and doing a certain thing. With immersion and mastery you hopefully always lose the feeling of interface and should never have to think about what your hands are doing. You become one with the game and you think about what you want to do rather than pressing buttons. Once you throw any sort of randomness or inconsistency into the pipeline you totally knock a players confidence and feeling of immersion. This can lead to lower average play times, increased frustration and slower individual skill improvements.
Dirty Bomb is suffering more multiple blockages in this pipeline though poorly implemented features and mechanics and it seems Splash Damage feel its a good idea to balance mechanics via adjusting their feel. This is very rarely a good idea. Stuff like…
[ul]
[li]Uncontrollable Aim Punch
[/li][li]Sniper Scope Sway
[/li][li]Random ADS center position
[/li][li]Clumsy Movement System
[/li][li]Melee Turn Speed Limit
[/li][li]Crouch Delay On Forward Sprinting
[/li][/ul]
There where multiple different options that would have worked just as well to remove any exploits. Such as limiting to X number of turns during a single melee animation, Having the half the damage on a melee strike only apply for a single frame, Only applying to the sword and cricket bat and even only having it on the secondary attack for all melee weapons. Once again we are in a position where out of all the viable options the worst one was chosen.
I hope to see the slowdown completely removed from the primary strike on all current melee weapons. Just because Splash Damage slightly reduced the slowdown in a recent patch does not mean its all good again now… Something being better now than it was last week does not excuse it for not being as good as it was a month ago. We saw this with the Aim Punch and Sniper Sway already… Don’t let this Melee Turn Limit be yet another poorly designed compromise.
Thank you…
. I cba anymore.