"- You should not be able to walk backwards to avoid attacks. Creatures should keep up with you and you should have to turn and run (or sprint) to get away. (Walking backwards to avoid attacks is NOT an intended feature - it was a bug caused by code I changed a few days ago - that's why we need testing like this! Thanks ;-))."

So how are you intending for a player to actually fight a animal if they can't turn towards them and the only option is to turn away and run? This is not good combat if thats the intention.

In dark souls, if you walk around a unit to the side and odds are the unit will attack you if its within their range, the miss opens up a opportunity for you to hit them if they miss.

This is 100% doable without being a multi-million dollar budget gaming company, your halfway there already in current state (not test server) the animals come at you, attempt attack and if they have stamina they will hit you, if they dont have stamina you can dodge the attack and use the opening to counter attack them with your own attack.. this is GOOD combat gameplay, removing this "counter play" style gameplay turns this into a fight where you need more hps than the enemy to win cuz the enemy is auto hitting you and instant hitting you with no ability to counter it... its really bad for both new and old players, the animal changes in combat are a step in the wrong direction.

I could have legitimately killed a hunchback yote by just walking back with 65% carry weight, I hit him prob half dozen or more times while he was unable to hit me as long as I was going backwards, even if it was extremely slow. The animal is "waiting" to be in instant hit range before swing'n, this gives zero counter play ability and zero ability to react to the attack coming, it just "instant hits" than you see the animal have its "after attack" animation, as in, the animation seems to be cut in half, the starting half of the animation is missing now and the animals instantly hit you without any swing or wind up to let you know its coming ~ this is bad combat that is even worse for noobs cuz you have no idea why your taking damage and you cant see it coming to react to it, you just take dmg instantly.

"- Aggressive creatures should automatically aggro and attack if you get too close (instead of coming towards you and watching you)"

They DO do this! I like the new aggro system, it works well.


"- Situations where creatures appear walking in place should not happen now. If they do, please try to reproduce the circumstances."

It seemed to be that the bear was doing this while its agro level was rising, it was "standing" in spot with agro going up, than it ran at me, during this time he was "running" in spot. If you've changed something since I posted I can try it again I guess.

Comments:

"- Dodging was removed because it seemed that nobody liked or wanted it. I may add it back. First I want to make sure everything that is in place is working well and no long 'broken'."

If you change animals so they run full blast at you, than instant hit you with zero ability to counter play them, than you'll have made the combat MORE 'broken" than it was previously. The way you COULD make this change work is making it so animals have a much slower time turning around in combat and add some sort of side dodge step so you could side-step the animal your fighting and hit them in a spot that isn't the front of their face where they'll instantly hit you for dmg magically without swing'n at you.

"- I've never played Dark Souls. I'll be honest, it's very unlikely that I can code a system that resembles that of a multi-million dollar budget game series like that. My goal right now is to make sure combat is simple and satisfying, clear for new players and does not feel 'broken' or 'too hard'. Then I will do my best to add to it for PvP combat."

Nobody is asking you to be a multi-million dollar gaming studio and add that level of detail, shadows and graphics that comes with that.... however ... taking a page from their book of combat is 100% something that could be done. Currently (without this test patch) animals already react like in dark souls, they walk at you, swing attack, leaving opening for counter attack, animals are NOT the problem.

The problem is that the PLAYER doesn't have the correct tools in order to properly fight verse these animals in combat. This means you have no ability to dodge to the side, or dash to the side in order to avoid a attack.

The animals also have unlimited turning speed and will "always" be pointed at you, if this was changed so that rotation speed was lowered so you had a better chance to get to the side or behind them than you would have the ability to counter play, if the animal swings and misses the same time you side step you could hit them in the side while avoiding their attack, this would be great combat gameplay.

Right now there is no ability to actually fight the animals if they just charge at you and automatically hit you and you just take dmg till you die.. this sucks for both old and new players cuz nobody see's the attack coming and theres no way to avoid it, this isn't combat, this is bashing stats up verse each other and whoever has more will win... so all mutants become unkillable at this point than without abusing range, bears and yotes too, this isn't good.

I mean the whole point is you want real combat, someone to fight the animal in a field right? This won't do that. This will cause people to possibly fight it, than rest up at a rock with fire repeatedly inbetween cuz they won't have the hp to exchange hits with a animal, nobody has 1k hps or even over 400hps. Even sark with 333hps would get rekt by most mutants including squirrels and marmots, despite being one of the strongest people in the game and spending a ton of time investing to get to that point he still wouldnt be able to solo combat due to the skill level not being there, it just being stat bashing up verse each other, this isnt fun gameplay to have no ability to "out play" or "use skill" verse the enemy, if its purely just trading hits, you'll lose every time and that isn't fun gameplay knowing you can never win cuz theres no ability to out play the animal.

"- Once all that's listed on my main post is considered working well without bugs I will add parrying and we'll test that. I'm not going to add shields or fancy moves with this first upcoming patch but they can come in subsequent patches. One step at a time."

I'm not talking about "fancy moves" I'm talking about something thats pretty simple, the way parrying works atm depending on how close you are in the directional and location of blocking the hit, if you parry it properly you'll get rewarded with a damage reduction percentage that reduces the amount of damage the enemy does to you. I'm suggesting simple attach a hit recovery delay to the attacker if your able to properly hit this correct parry spot to reduce dmg by a decent amount. I'm not talking about a minor parry where its the wrong direction and just barely activates parry, I'm talking about for when you get it in the sweet spot and reduce dmg.

Shields could be the same thing, you reduce dmg near the edge of the shield, while blocking with the middle would give you a stun/hit recovery on the enemy.

Basically just code it so that if the defender properly parrys the enemy hit, that the enemy "reaction" is if they just got hit with a regular attack, this would give a "hit recovery" action and would open up a change to hit them back. Meaning in theory you could parry or block a attack and if you did it perfectly at the right spot you would cause the enemy to "hit recovery" as if they had been hit with a attack, giving you the chance to land a hit.

"- Regarding revenants on King's Beach: Revenants in easy zones on abandoned tribes near the lake should die permanently when killed. Is that not happening? Do they continue to re-spawn? Or is the tribe not completely abandoned? I will take a look at that situation."

On pve its a problem, the high object tahoe tribe, mixed with the mass objects/trees of kings beach can heavily hit a new players frames, mix this with a rev farm and its a bad combination, the area needs to be cleaned up to be better for lower power computers/laptops. My laptop that my wife plays on laggs so bad it almost seems like its freezing when you cross over from founders to kings beach... this doesn't happen anywhere else or near our tribe, or even going past large tribes like elite. So no idea what exactly the issue is but it must have something to do with the amount of objects loaded in that area, mix a rev farm with that and its a bad combo.