For Those Who Want Active Blocking...

Are you for, or against, 'blockstun'?

I realized that my opinions about active blocking in an MMO are based around the concept that there would be blockstun on it. But this would mean that a blocking player could either be stunlocked or forced to take damage.

However, active blocking in a PvP situation tends to get very weird when there is no blockstun, and it would probably look both confusing and terrible, because flicker-block is functionally a type of animation cancel even if you can't start blocking while doing something else. If you only need to be blocking on the frames where the game could register a hit, you can flicker it.

If you only need to be blocking on ONE of the frames where the game could register a hit, you could plink-block even if blocking itself has a recovery time.

But we saw the game being quite fast in the basic melee weapon attack thing. I don't know if Intrepid will let you block basic attacks, but that's just a random thing thrown in.

If you are in support of Active Block, do you want 'blockstun', 'long recovery from block animations', or 'flicker-block'? Please add any opinions on whether or not most characters should be able to move while in block stance.

Sorry about that, yes.

Flicker-block refers to manipulating netcode to hide your intentions from your opponent. You press block for a small number of frames (usually 2) and then release and move your character and then start an attack. The opponent sees you start blocking due to ping, and any visual reactions they have are 'tricked'. By the time they realize 'you were attacking, not blocking', the attack is already happening.

Plink-block refers to 'just tapping block for one frame before you attack'. In some games, this would cause a situation where you were actually blocking on that one frame (and therefore get the bonus for blocking even if your opponent's attack has multiple active frames) but the system never really 'cares' about it and doesn't limit you, making it an 'animation cancel', except that it probably doesn't even start the blocking animation, and therefore never puts you in block recovery.

You blocked, but never dealt with any of the recovery of blocking. This isn't guaranteed, but designing around it in an MMO tends to lead to some extremely frustrating/spotty situations. Usually a game is either 'very rigid', 'allows flicker-block' or 'allows plink-block'. So I'm asking which one people prefer.

Hope that clarifies it.

Considering that sprint is tied to mana right now, I'd probably go with the same tie for blocking too. And would probably add a passive ability to decrease the ratio of "dmg blocked" and "mana used". This ability would be in the weapon skill tree and could maybe even have 3 version for different groups of weapons.

And in that context I'd like to see a system that tracks which part of the attacker's ability "hit" you in the block.

For tab target stuff, if you had the block up before the attacker started casting and still you still had it up when the attack landed - you lose 80% of mana relative to the dmg you would've received (if you managed to flick the block on both frames, awesome, but you still lose the 80%). If you only reacted to the cast and blocked during it, you lose 30% mana. Obviously you receive 20 and 70 percent of the damage respectively.

For action/aoe abilities that hit your block, you lose 50%.

The passive for blocking could reduce mana usage, increase dmg mitigation per mana unit and, maybe, as the third lvl of the ability have a counter attack if you blocked an action or last part of a tab skill. This passive ability would probably have to be one of the most expensive passives in the skillset, so that people would have to make a conscious choice between being a blocker or being an attacker.

Imo this kind of system would increase mana play complexity, would make you rely on your partymates (I'm assuming we'll have mana restoration on one of the archetypes), while still allowing for the high skill "animation cancelling" gameplay in the form of plinks that not only predict enemy action (in case of the "full block" of tab attacks) but also perfectly catch the attacker's skill effect right on its frame.

As for the stun part, I'd personally be against it (considering that we'll have knockback while blocking), but could be persuaded otherwise during testing.

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I'm feeling like this is a 'joke' but most of the time that's really what you need, right?

I think that's part of the reason why so many games just make it a stance. You're just gonna be 'holding block' anyway. I don't think that's how it should work for a PvX game, but I'm good at both 'tapping block on the right frame and then attacking' and 'animation cancels'.

However they have said that there will not be a reliance on animation cancels, so we'd have to see if Active block has any exceptions to it.

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I personally am not annoyed by it, but you must always remember I'm a fighting game player and this is par for the course there so much that it's almost impossible for me to think of it as a problem.

Also I'm about as mechanically good as one needs to be to consistently flicker-block in most games that allow it, so I am obviously used to playing with people who also learn to deal with it mostly because they can practice against me.

The main thing I think is a concern here is that if all classes have active blocking, and all classes therefore can flicker, it's technically an animation cancel, right?

But because GENERALLY a flicker-block is a feint, not 'something that is used to exploit to get damage', and doesn't work in PvE, I don't think it matters.

That said, against some ability types, it IS a real feint if blocking has no recovery (blockstun being separate, where you have at least some recovery because you actually blocked something), particularly Ranger ones like 'Rain of Arrows' or abilities that can be charged by holding an attack button. I wouldn't say anything that I've seen so far made me think of it except maybe Cleric's Javelin, but I thought about this partially because of just how much Ranger classes are usually affected by it.

Also for clarity (sorry about it in advance), the term 'flicker-block' is not common, but the 'standard term' in Fighting Games doesn't necessarily make sense (doesn't convey any meaning to most English speakers).

I also wanted to use a different non-FGC term for plink-blocking but I couldn't think of one that wasn't slightly misleading (if anyone has experience with a term I'd appreciate it).

I don't expect to 'slip up' in references, but JUST in case I do or one of my group does, the related terms (for the flicker one) are 'Kara Cancel' and 'KC-block' or 'Kara Block'.

Plink is short for 'Piano-link' and I can't think of an equivalent word, as noted, but it's not the same as what people call 'Piano-ing' because it refers to a specific effect of using the technique, not the technique itself, which is why it's used that way.

Hope that clarifies anything.

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We might be able to Active Block with any weapon, though, and then shield skills would matter less, any opinion there?

Also, since some may be unfamiliar with exactly how different classes block in Tera, can you clarify? I never played Berserker but afaik their Block is just infinite, or was for a while.

Lancer, I'm familiar with, but I don't want to make any assumptions since the game changed, and either I (technically my friend) or you, might have played at different times. My familiarity is mostly with Brawler when it comes to blocking.

Is Berserker block similarly animation-cancelable consistently? I don't know if you can move right after releasing block or not.

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1. I'm sort of following, but just to make sure, did you mean that this would actually be by weapon instead?

If not, any other change points?

2. Tera's various block stuff was very animation-cancel heavy, so there's also that to consider relative to what we've been told so far about Ashes, the video does a good job of explaining that (for various reasons I can at least READ French, and as you said, it's simple, so anyone else who wants a primer should just watch that briefly).

3. MP Cost on Initiation would balance either flicker-block or plink-block, but obviously lots of people would use (whichever we got) anyway and it would still be a question of 'which one is preferred', if they didn't just use Blockstun.

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Age of Conan style then?

Considering the speed of Ashes' attacks, what if they were actually directional, at least conal?

Most games with this type of combat can, and do, manage conal shielding, and you could then control the cone. The issue being that most methods for controlling cones makes one of the two 'animation canceled' blocking options more popular.

But not 'necessary'. So you could get that and still have blockstun if you want that as part of the focused stances?

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The problem with this is 'the way netcode works' in general.

For flicker-blocking to not be POSSIBLE, then blocking itself must have a cooldown or a 'duration while you are in block stance' of at least 6 frames for most players in the same region to not experience it in a way that works like a flicker block, in the netcode models standardly available (Ashes may have something different, but netcode models don't have a 'perfect form', just different forms with competing priorities).

Without going too deeply into it, the general outcome of 'a block minimum duration of less than 6 frames' is:

"Player A enters block, data is sent to server, then to player B to show that Player A has entered block, with about 64ms (4 frames) between them." - Player B's client might instantly show the block, but if the data is even slightly delayed, on Player A's side, they have stopped blocking and are now moving (probably movement startup will matter here, but it depends on what movement skills are available, and the last thing we saw was a 5 Frame startup full movement dash from Fighter)

This would mean that it was POSSIBLE in a specific situation for you to be 'looking at your opponent blocking' and that opponent (on their client) already BE BEHIND YOU (this would be simple to balance out, I'm just making the point generally).

This is a massive oversimplification of course, but the reason I give this one, is because MMOs have not traditionally been able to use the non-simplified versions of this netcode due to the number of players involved. I believe you're familiar ENOUGH with this for me to not need to explain 'why even a breakthrough to make a multi-entity game able to use the complex version would present a different problem', but I'm not sure, so let me know (~shakes fist at BDO Red Battlefield~).

tl;dr - This type of Animation Cancel is MORESO about 'taking advantage of ping/stutter' than 'demonstrating meaningful skill' because the effect on the opponent varies by that more than by combat ability/awareness.