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Mordhau: lutes of fire

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JimboM12:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/629760/

i didn't see a thread for this when i did a quick search, so i decided to start one

i was strolling through streams when i saw someone playing this game. a player was jamming hard on their lute, playing something that sounded very closely like "The Last Stand" by Sabaton. every player in the area rocked out and no violence was happening. then some noob (im guessing, i dont know the communities stance on dedicated lute players) ran up, listened for like a minute, and then stabbed the awesome lute player in the face with a knife. a massive brawl ensued as someone killed the noob and then was promptly smashed in the spine by someone with a mace.

thats when i knew, i should probably buy this game.

for those that don't know, its a medieval combat game with huge 64 player matches and the combat is great except for the usual internet pratfalls of lag and disconnected strikes. it also boasts great character customization and a variety of weapon types and styles.

Folly:

--- Quote from: Personman ---Some absolute Chad named Sans Undertale was playing Megalovania on the lute and a good portion of the server gathered around him cheering, dancing, and being merry until a man that looked like Guts came up and decapitated him then a all out brawl started. that's when I realized that this is a very good game
--- End quote ---

The second review on Steam reads almost identical to your summary.

Anyway, I looked into this game about a week ago and seriously considered buying, but a lot of the feedback sounded like there are major issues with weapon imbalance, lack of map variety, and a lot of combat glitches. Sounds like it needs more time to bake.

JimboM12:
i was wrong in my assessment. this isn't a medieval combat simulator, its a medieval lute simulator with violence attached.


--- Quote from: Folly on June 08, 2019, 10:47:39 pm ---
--- Quote from: Personman ---Some absolute Chad named Sans Undertale was playing Megalovania on the lute and a good portion of the server gathered around him cheering, dancing, and being merry until a man that looked like Guts came up and decapitated him then a all out brawl started. that's when I realized that this is a very good game
--- End quote ---

The second review on Steam reads almost identical to your summary.

--- End quote ---

i get this feeling this happens every other match or something. someone will jam hard and someone will try to shut them up and trigger a slaughter.
perhaps this is the traditional ceremonial way to start a battle?

Nighthawk:

--- Quote from: Folly on June 08, 2019, 10:47:39 pm ---I looked into this game about a week ago and seriously considered buying, but a lot of the feedback sounded like there are major issues with weapon imbalance, lack of map variety, and a lot of combat glitches. Sounds like it needs more time to bake.

--- End quote ---
Not gonna try to convince you that it's perfect (it's not), but it's more fun that I expected it to be. The fun is heavily dependent on how willing you are to dig in your heels and really learn the combat mechanics, though. Until you get some experience under your belt, you're liable to be zweihander fodder within 20 seconds of leaving spawn.

I am happy to report that there's no one weapon that just decimates the meta, though. Rapiers are annoying, but beatable. Shields are annoying, but beatable. Shields PLUS rapiers are extremely annoying, but still beatable. There are little annoyances, but most things can be countered if you're willing to switch gears and change your tactics. Or if you're just really good. I've seen people with frying pans outplay three opponents wielding two-handers, so anything can happen.

The game also has enough weapons and customization that you're practically bound to find a little niche you enjoy if you experiment long enough. Here are a number of options I've discovered:
- An engineer who fixes fortifications and builds ballistae at key locations
- A frontline mad lad who rushes enemies with a two-handed weapon and hopes for a kill to instantly recover full HP (there's a perk for this; it's pretty cool)
- A cackling trap master who sets bear traps in key locations and waits for unsuspecting prey to walk into them
- A peasant possessed by the god of destruction who does nothing but chuck firebombs everywhere
- A ninja turtle who wears a large shield on their back to block arrows, throws a smoke-bomb at enemies to confuse them, then cuts them down
- A scavenger who pours all of their points into armor and perks, then uses whatever weapon they find on the battlefield (very entertaining)
- An axe-obsessor who hurls throwing axes into people's heads, then charges in with a regular one-handed axe to finish the job (personal favorite)

... And I'm sure there are a dozen more you can come up with given time and creativity.

I'll reiterate once more as a sort of tl;dr: it's definitely fun, but you absolutely must get the hang of it first. I was having a pretty bad time until the game clicked and I started actually getting a decent (decent in my case meaning a 1:1 ratio) K/D. Not that K/D is everything; the score system factors in damage, assists, team healing (there's a medic bag), repairing, deconstructing, and objectives, so there are plenty of ways to help out.

Flying Dice:
I've been having some fun with it. Here's my perspective, coming from years of Warband Siege multiplayer:

1. Horses are still abused, busted bullshit. The only good things are that there are a limited number on any given map, billhooks rip riders straight off, and builders can set up spikes to fuck over the horses.

2. The passive out-of-combat health regen is excellent. It takes something like ~5-7 seconds to start, and is stopped by doing basically anything except walking or crouching.

3. Animations are pretty smooth overall. Most of the core mechanics are present and flow smoother without being as arcade-y as Chivalry was. All attacks cap your turn rate by differing amounts, so you can't beyblade around; strike acceleration/deceleration is about manipulating timing only. Attacks are tracked in realtime, so if you know what you're doing you can curve attacks around blocks and parries. This also means that with the right camera angling and crouch timing you can duck under or turn away to dodge attacks. Despite most of the basic melee mechanics of M&B being turned into discrete mechanical elements rather than skillful ways of manipulating the relatively simple base system, it feels like there's more nuance to it.

4. It sucks that they didn't use M&B chambering (in the sense of "holding" attacks rather than how Mordhau uses it); that helped deal with some of the annoying footwork games people would play.

5. Archery is vastly improved in both senses. The animations are much, much better, but as you can parry and bat projectiles out of the air (even with your own projectiles) there are ways to deal with enemy archers beyond "carry two shields" or "die".

6. The alternate weapon functions are amazing. Full stop, this mechanic needs to be in Bannerlord.

7. They've put this idiotic lunge mechanic in, where every melee weapon will give you a massive range boost if you're walking forward while attacking. It's genuinely stupid, and if you're coming from M&B it will confuse the shit out of you when attacks that clearly shouldn't hit do, simply because the enemy player got to advance an extra meter or so for free near-instantly. That, and a couple other mechanics (vastly reduce backpedal speed, massive speed reduction if you turn around too fast, &c.), make basically anything except pure ranged builds and heavy armor 2H builds pointless. You'll get one or two-shot through light armor, and the speed bonus means nothing because full heavy armor players can still chase and catch you.

8. There's this other moronic decision that made strikes almost universally faster than stabs, even with a heavy weapon vs. a light weapon. That, combined with bad network design (even extremely close servers will put everyone on 80ms+ ping) means that there's next to no value in doing anything but spamming attacks with the best weapons, since most players in Frontline are scrubs who do the same thing. Try to reactive-parry? Sorry, you missed the timing window because of bad connections. Prediction-parry? Sorry, you missed the timing window because bad connections. Try to chamber? Sorry, you missed the timing window because of bad connections. Morph your attack to bait a parry or chamber attempt? Sorry, they just mashed R1. Feint to bait a parry or chamber attempt? Sorry, they just mashed R1. Use an accelerated attack to land a hit before their R1 spam? Sorry, bad connections meant their R1 hit you serverside before you even input your counter. &c. Literally the most effective tactic 95% of the time is to just go full aggro. It's like how Planetside 2 used to be, where you always wanted to go full aggro in CQB because the attacker always had corner-rounding advantage (where they'd get around the corner, see the enemy, and shoot before the defensive player even saw them on their screen).

It could be great, but the connection issues across every single server + the massive buff for aggressive play turn it into a spamfest. At least they did mouse-directional attacks instead of movement-directional attacks as the default.

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