I would like to suggest to add a riposte “system” currently parry feels a bit lackluster and i never feel like i can really benefit from parrying.
Yes i know there are a good chunk of added benefits like focus gain, health gain etc…
But half of the fun is landing a successful parry and being able to land a bloody and brutal looking front stab animation. I understand the concern of “but that animation gets boring” and yes that maybe the case but looking at the dark souls games players are not forced into a animation but can decide to now capitalize on the opening or just hit them normally with light or heavy attacks or even there “skills”. Not being able to front stab kinda undermines the whole posture system since there is little to gain from breaking posture on a enemy aside from a few seconds of breathing room. Riposte adds a lot of initial players satisfaction in learning the mechanic of parry and or filling that posture meeter
If you are scared that it would be to overpowered i suggest lowering back/front stab damage across the bord and have different weapons types deal more or less damage like have a dagger and spear be better at a riposte than lest say a club. It would add build variation for example a build completely focused around getting the most out of a broken posture baar while also focused around filling said baar
Ps: in 90% of the case you can just waddle around the enemy after a successful parry and just backstab them anyway basically removing the “but it could be to strong” argument however if your fighting a group of enemies parry because virtually useless since you cant capitalize on the a successful parry (im not taking into account the “random” parry bonus effect gear can give you)
Agreed. However, a riposte should be “weak” compared to a charged attack or a skill. I think there should be a riposte but its main benefit would be to give you i-frames so you can manage multiple enemies better while dealing decent damage off of your parry.
Thats why i said lower the damage across the bord it shouldn’t be the definitive solution again pointing to souls games where often executing a weapon art or (in newer from titles) a charged heavy can benefit you more than the actual riposte but then there are build/weapons that benefit from using the window you created why i suggest having certain weapons class be better at it than others to bring diversity into it (just because souls games do doesn’t mean you HAVE to change the formula if it works it works and therr is a reason most “souls like” games adapted the riposte mechanic)
One of the leads said they used to have a riposte, but got rid of it because it funneled players into the exact same attack pattern every time. Instead, they tuned it to that you get a lot of focus and thus get to choose how to punish the enemy.
I think a good middle ground could be either an enchantment or a default in which your first basic attack after parrying does a certain % higher damage. This allows you to keep the choice as the player, but also reward you in a similar way to a riposte.
Of course, you can always use the stun duration after a parry to move behind them and back stab, which does the same thing
I touched on that in my suggestion as well and also explained how that doesn’t solve the problem of parry feeling lackluster and you not being able to capitalize on the “high risk” a parry usually comes with or the fact that the posture breaking gives you no real benefit
Just because its “good enough” doesn’t mean it can’t be better if everything in a game is just good enough we all would still play cod or other mediocre AAA games
It absolutely wouldn’t
Just look at the souls games parry is a great option to dispatch a lot of enemies in there however its still sparingly used (not talking about those twitch fist only skill lvl of player here there is always the expectation) by most players because it offers the high risk high reward system but what we have now is just a “high risk no real reward” making it feel quite unsatisfying to pull of a parry there are enough way also mentioned above to balance it so players dont see it as the only solution to combat encounters
I mean to an extent I just think that the game’s design and priorities are vastly different to souls. Some things are designed to be easier (no respawning enemies on death, no experience loss on default) and some things are harder (durability loss, finite healing resources)
Parrying seems to be a similar differentiation in balance.
The actual parrying window is noticeably easier in my opinion than souls, and I don’t think souls games reward parrying with focus for magic abilities either.
Im really happy with the direction they went and I think if anything they could just tune some things here and there like the length of enemy stunned state, reduce their recovery to give you a bit more time to maneuver how you wish.
Another suggestion i can offer is either making the window slightly smaller OR what imo would work great and dont disrupt the flow
We need multiple parrys to let the enemy enter the “staggered” state that way it doesn’t become a auto win button for good players you can still use the very small window of the initial parry to execute skills charge attacks but patient gameplay is also rewarded
Im also leaning in the player satisfaction direction in the sense it currently (at least for me and few of my friends other dont have a issue with it as well) doesn’t feel satisfying to pull of a parry since i can ise skills or change attacks without having to parry something as well it may not be a issue holding the game back by any means but you cant deny it feels great pulling of a parry and getting and visceral animation stabbing or clubbing the enemy into the ground xD
the reason it’s like this is because the rune skill IS the riposte, instead of the same animation over and over again you get to choose what rune skill you wanna finish him off with and it’s specificly designed that if you kill him with the rune attacks that it will cause a fatality.