Dual Wielding Feedback
Introduced in a time before feedback threads...

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/new-game-features/-january-2019--bug-fixes-n-updates-327/

This was when dual wielding weapons was introduced and I was encouraged to start a thread because other people may have opinions on it.

Being as vague as I can about the mechanics of it, personally using it and having it used on me while somebody is in a certain posture is pretty unbalanced and some people with certain assets at their disposal have found a way to cheese this posture and essentially lock you into combat with them. This is very imbalanced and frustrating to deal with imo

What I mean by hearing about it in strange ways is that the conversations are always.. cheesy. Gamer mentality? Clearly influenced by mechanics rather than flavor or personal choice? People will always optimize, but this has been one of those cases that's so egregious it's hard to ignore.

Like waddle said, one of the weapons that "unlocks" this is worth pocket change and people are using -that- to fend off high end gear. There's just... a lot about it that's silly.

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/weapon-balance-1761/

But I concur with some of them. And I'll summarize here. Without delving too deep into mechanical thinking.

First...

There are some weapons that should not be single handed weapons, and should in fact be two handed. Or at least not permit dual wielding.

These are logical to think about, and I won't bother listing them here.

Second...

The bonus is too uniform between weapon types. A knife being duel wielded shouldn't provide the same uniform bonus as a sword, or a big fuckoff hammer.

If the bonus' are different, then inequality of bonus' can exist without problems. Because asymmetric design will take over.

Third...

Two handed weapons don't have a similar bonus to compensate for their weightyness and the sacrifice of a free hand when using them.

I'm also surprised a sledgehammer isn't two handed since, well, I've held one before. Though I guess there are the tiny 3lb and 4lb ones.

I'm sure this has come up a lot before, but personally I feel dual wielding should be it's own skill that compliments another skill. Just because you can hold a pen/sword/gun/etc. in each hand doesn't mean you're going to be able to use both at the same time in a way that's actually useful.

Unless there is a full refund on invested UE on affected skills, I don't see how something like spinning a whole facet of a skill off into a new skill could be viable. I am sure there are very high investment UE characters who are built around skills working the way they are, and may not even be able to re-invest in new skills if they were created. Possibly 'breaking' their characters.

If there is actually an endemic problem where certain types of characters with certain equipment routinely win out over comparably skilled and equipped character (which I feel like would be obvious on the staff side), then tweaking numbers is probably the much safer route rather than re-working things significantly.

It doesn't solve the problem of it being too cheap. Like I implied before, the parry bonus outweighs the disadvantage of having a weaker weapon. Would you rather do marginally more damage (using one more expensive weapon) or become pretty much untouchable to the type of character you're fighting? (using two cheap weapons)

I mentioned specifically people buying weapons for less than 1,000 chyen to get this bonus, but even at 5,000, 10,000, or 20,000 chyen, it's still too cheap. Nothing else in the game will give you that much of an advantage for that kind of investment. That's why I say the parrying bonus just needs to be lowered across the board.

Though I will say that I don't see this issue applying to katanas at all and don't believe they need to be wielded in both hands. They're expensive and there are historical examples of certain individuals using two at the same time that I won't weeb out and go into.

Yeah, I think if you were sacrificing something by having another weapon in that off-hand, it would help; making it more of a choice, like HolyChrome said. Or maybe some simple rock paper scissors stuff like making 2H weapons ignore the bonus. Keep in mind there aren't really a lot of 2H weapons in the game though and we'd probably want to make more of them 2H to go this route.

@deaddragon

Varying parry bonuses depending on weapon choices would help. I'd still argue that the best bonus you can get should be a bit lower than the bonus we have now.

This was.. not long after the change took place and it became immediately apparent to me personally, that dual wield parry is downright silly.

I also think that while we're discussing potential changes to the combat system/skills, that we should also bring up the following:

The attack benefit and defense benefit of both Kamikaze and Guarded should be toned down, in my experience. While we want people to be able to punch up to more UE invested characters, I've seen people land hits in Kamikaze that have left me stunned, and I've seen, on countless occasions, people in guarded fending off 6+ people successfully until other game mechanics kick in.

I think both situations are silly.

Forcing more money investment barely makes a difference, since that just makes it so money wins every fight, every time. Betting two expensive weapons versus one and a half expensive weapons on any given fight doesn't really change how exploitable this really is. The mechanic of dual-wielding at it's core is fundamentally busted, from people's observations in this thread.

I don't know how to balance it since the system is purposefully obfuscated for obvious reasons. This is good to avoid gaming the system all the time, but it has the double-edged sword of us really only being able to complain about it until it's tolerable.

I think wielding a weapon in your offhand giving a bonus to parrying makes sense, but how it is right now just seems to be impenetrable coupled with the guarded stance. To be honest, I don't really know what you'd need to do to fix this, for reasons mentioned above.

There are ways around it, 'attacking from a distance' sure, but that also comes down to what was mentioned earlier. That is extremely expensive, and requires you to invest in a completely different skill, just to counter this one low-effort strategy.

I've certainly known characters who believed themselves to be comparable to another for X, Y or Z reasons when in fact there was a massive gulf.

Player perception of problems can arise for a lot of reasons.

The fact that the tactic is so prolific is evidence enough that this simply isn't a matter of one or two very skilled players people are upset with, and agenda posting about. The tactic gets results across the board, so much so that people facing it and even using it are recognizing it as an issue.

Like dual-wieldable weapons may be balanced around dual-wielding, in which case you would expect that to always be better -- it might just be that the things that counter those weapons are less common. I don't know that to be true, but I am just saying something being really common and good doesn't necessarily mean it's overpowered, it may also be that players are not tapping into counter-play options or not appreciating skill discrepancies in their impressions.

If weaker dual-wielding characters are defeating stronger non-dual-wielding characters routinely because of that mechanic, then there is definitely a problem. I am just not sure that would be apparent to anyone but the staff.

Locked.