Please please please for the love of all that is holy just roll back the animation speed change for spear, it’s so sluggishly slow now that there’s no use in it for PvP whatsoever.
If people are complaining about the cripple the reach and the fast animation speed etc then just remove all side effects and even half the damage the first heavy attack does but just bring back the original speed of the attack please.
The only type of PvP you will see nowadays on any server (except ones that have mods that fix the spear) is people spamming running attacks and bugging the heavy attacks in the running attacks.
Now if anyone from funcom see’s this please don’t let your takeaway from this be “this guy thinks we need to look into the running attacks” because it’s f#ck1ng not.
PLEASE JUST REVERT THE SPEAR HEAVY ATTACK ANIMATION SPEED AND DO WHATEVER YOU NEED TO BALANCE IT (no matter how drastic it might seem)
Leave it dead, and buff other weapons instead. Everyone running around like NPC guards was the most boring thing ever. There’s three weapons PVPers use, thats 3x more than what they were using before those changes.
Dagger’ish weapon (claws, chakram, daggers), 2H Axes, and Bows from the latest complaint about weapon balance. I would warn that can change on a weekly basis. Sometimes someone gets clever and finds a counter to what is being used. And then that has a chance of being called OP.
But all joking aside, there is some weapons that need to be buffed. As they are very much under-represented in both PVP and PVE.
We don’t intend to bring back the speed of the spear heavy attack - making it faster than the light attack again, but I do want to talk about the core reason you want that attack back.
Player speed is insanely high in Exiles. I think it’s one of the biggest design mistakes we made in terms of PvP, and because we have a hardcore community of players on both the PvP and PvE side, we can’t easily change it.
So I don’t think you want the spear back because you just love spears, or because it’s necessary for PvP - I think what it provided was necessary: a way to slow down your target. So instead talking about bringing the spear heavy attack back, can we talk about alternative ways to slow people down? A bola with a skill shot, a item from Zath that lets you web the ground, grease orbs make people occasionally fall (This one’s kinda fun because it adds the extra depth of being able to ignite other people’s grease to clear the field of hazards at the risk of being set on fire yourself)
You can make other suggestions, support or downvote these, is everyone up for that instead of a spear buff?
Speaking from the pve side, especially since Age of war chapter one our toons are the “real deal”. Every decision has positive and negative consequences, but i can assure you that since i download this game on 2019 i never felt so free in this map, so invincible. But i believe that agility, even with intentional lower pool of weapon choice, is still best build than strength .
So what about consumables that gives me haste equally with agile builds and a better stamina regeneration but only in battle.
I believe that this way strength build will balance against agility… Maybe.
Think of it if you wish.
And let me expand here.
People choose agility to flee easy, or to catch up the ones who try to flee. This however made agility ultimate necessity on pvp. How about if every time a fight starts, our character gains an adrenaline rush which is getting stronger with these consumables i suggested above. Both agile or strength players can use these consumables, but none of them is faster anymore. Agile player of course will have better stamina regen, which is fair by choice, but strength players have harder hits, so this can somehow equalize situations and people will not have to wait for a black dragon pike to enjoy spear fighting.
Because spear fighting without agility is slow.
Spear fighting without grit build consumes the hell of stamina.
Maybe the answer to spear would be just to reduce the stamina consuming, but it wouldn’t stabilize the difference between agility and strength.
I know one of my biggest complaints with PVP in the past was the fact that if you tried to attack someone, and they didn’t wish to engage. They could easily run away. You can chase, but once there is a separation where weapons cannot reach or reliably hit (with ranged). The fight is more or less over unless a major mistake is made by the one fleeing.
Couple that issue into an actual fight and you see people dodge in and out with this weird bit of recuperation where you stay just outside of range of attacks to heal or restore stamina. This used to be far worse when we could eat/potion without animations.
But if I’ll be fair and honest, like you said, the spear allowed easier engagement in that situation. It allowed a simple and easy method to keep people engaged and reduced the time people could just dodge out for a moment and then start fighting again.
Its why these other weapons have filled the gap. No one is using combos in PVP because there’s no way to land the second, third, or fourth hit. So they either used the Spear Heavy attack (when it was faster) or the sprint attack of 2H Hammers or the Lunge of Daggers, Chakram, etc. In some niche uses (which I have done myself) you can kinda use the Lunge attack of the first Broadsword Heavy. But you have to sort of fake someone into that.
The other weapons don’t really have a way to hit a fleeing or disengaged opponent.
I don’t think bolas, or other ranged crippling or slowing items would work. Not unless the effects are much longer than they are now. For example, if I shoot an arrow or javelin into someone’s leg, and they slow down. The effect wears off by the time I can get close in and attack and by then they dodge away.
To put it shortly, its a very complex situation caused by the combo system and associated animations coupled with how fast characters can move as you said, and the ability to dodge so many times with little penalty.
There’s no one fix. The old spear was a bandaid barely hanging on to make the issue bearable for most players. Which is why they’d want to see it come back. Its partly because they want an easy and simple solution and partly because of the whole combat paradigm. Players don’t need the old spear, but there’s still an underlying issue with the basic combat itself.
This does affect PVE as well. Its not as easy to notice. But because of how easy it is to dodge, this exacerbates when dealing with AI foes. Which means they have to be tuned around it. Making mistakes overly punishing. And doesn’t allow for more complex encounters due to that.
Spears are good for catching runners and that is it. I played on many pvp servers at the height of spear meta and let me tell you, nothing was more unintuitive than constant rolling and poking. Before Age of Sorcery, spears were still the king but they required some skill and stam management, needless to say they were still busted.
I think spears are good where they are right now. As the other person stated, the source of your complaints come from not being able to land hits on people and this problem can be fixed without bringing back the spear meta.
My server’s staff and I have come to the same conclusion: players are too fast and it’s too hard to slow them down. I know there’s fear about backlash from changing that, but it’s hard to imagine that being any worse than the stamina changes especially if it’s implemented thoughtfully. Boost the speed of mounts and add a couple of new fast travel options so that players can still get around reasonably throughout the early and mid game. Make sure that NPCs also have their speed reduced so that they don’t become impossible to escape for players. Then, changing player speed becomes reasonable. The other way would be for player speed or sprint cost to be different while in combat, but how you define being in combat is a whole other can of worms.
If it were me I’d also remove move speed as a perk and give agility a new perk for 15 points. The bottom line of that perk is that if you don’t have it then you can’t catch or escape from anyone who does. It’s mandatory for all players who have any intention of doing either. There can’t be build variety while that perk exists.
I’ve observed that every weapon that’s ever been meta has had two things in common: the attacks come out fast and have forward movement on them. This is true for hammer, old spear, 1h sword, 1h axe, 2h axe, daggers, and claws. The only weapon that has those things going for it and hasn’t recently been meta is the short sword.
I actually made a mod for changing attack speed of individual weapons for the purpose of playing around with this. The conclusion I’ve reached is that it just needs to be easier to land the first attack and follow it up with a second. I would say third but nobody has enough stamina for that anymore. I’d speed up the animations of current off-meta weapons by 10-20% and add forward movement on their first attacks so that they have a reasonable chance of catching someone.
@den, can’t be more thrilled at your involvement here.
You have given an insiders perspective. There is absolutely a nostalgia factor of using the spear and I think you’ve adequately described why reverting it isn’t the solution.
Indeed more creativity in suggestions is needed and I like your thought processes here.
Can’t say I’m particularly sad that spear is no longer the meta but it has been replaced by facsimiles with that attempt to slow in the end.
I’ve had the pleasure of playing with a very eclectic variety of PVP players that think outside of the box. Had fun attempting to use grease orbs for a hot second, very funny initially but very easy to adapt.
While I don’t have any item or weapon suggestions at the moment, and there are much more intelligent and talented people out there, I think it would be worthwhile to consider the impacts that SAV builds have as a meta and how status effects have waned over time.
I do want spear back because I love spears, but more so I love skillful PvP.
Where is the skill required in the current meta? all you do is spam sprint attacks over and over again.
Compare that to old meta with spear where you had to have movement, timing, aim & stamina management (I know the last one wasn’t really a thing in the last few patches but still it was a factor for most of the spears lifetime)
Instead of looking for more fancy and cool to look at ways of doing what spear did why not just revert back and everyone will be happy? I don’t think any single person that actually PvP’s on a competitive level would complain if you did this.
Yes & No - let me explain.
Yes we need to slow down enemies due to the now infinite stamina that was introduced in the AoW
No we don’t need it on a spear because spear already has a reach that will allow you to catch those who are excessively running or dodging and successfully landing a hit on someone will stagger them and give you a chance to kill them if you are skillful enough to land your shot’s and not spam like how the current pvp is.
If the main problem with the spear heavy attack animation speed is that it’s faster than the spear light attack animation speed then could we not compromise and put the old heavy animation as the spear special attack animation since currently it is only a generic kick? Surely there is some compromise available to us where we get the spear speed animation back to normal while still keeping the heavy attack slower than the light?
Please don’t just turn your nose up at the thought and actually give PvP players like me the benefit of the doubt that we might actually know what we are talking about.
Three weapons that are all played the exact same way (spam sprint attacks, roll, repeat)
I’m not asking for these weapons to get a nerf I’m simply asking for the spear to get reverted to normal so there is another style of play offered than just spamming sprint attacks constantly
I address the reasoning behind having to need to use sprint attacks and how that made spear heavy so popular.
The underlying issue has been in the game since the combat changes made 6 years ago. Its too easy to run away and/or disengage. If that wasn’t the case, more weapons would be popular since their shorter ranges or limited attack cones wouldn’t be as detrimental.
What really needs to happen is they either need to reduce the ability of players to run away from each other as well as limit the ability to disengage, or to increase the range and/or attack area of other weapons. Or maybe some form of both.
If it were up to me, the moment someone is in range to land an attack, the only way both combatants can leave alive is if they mutually agree to. Otherwise someone has to die so long as someone continues to be the aggressor. With maybe some exceptional cases where someone capitalizes on a mistake and is able to flee or hide.
This will give the spear a niche use as a decent weapon to guard narrow areas or to engage with multiple people without hurting friends, due to its reach. I do agree that its heavy attack should not be the same speed or faster than the light attack, and its light attack is already pretty fast. Of course if players cannot easily disengage, then combos come into play.
None of this changes the fact that using spear effectively was actually something that required skill and practice.
The way I look at this whole weapon balancing debate is pretty simple tbh, it’s much harder to kill someone with a narrow poke from spear than it is with the wide arc’s of the other weapon types so why would it be removed in favour of the easier option
Let’s not pretend that before Age of War and Age of Sorcery that “Only skilled players used spears for the challenge.” And were otherwise being dominated by every other wide arcing weapons. People were using them because they were simple and effective.
I was ridiculed quite a bit in the past for claiming to have victories against spear users of any skill level by using Axe and Shield, which was my preferred weapon setup before Isle of Siptah.
I’m not gonna pretend that but you can hardly say with confidence you don’t see the clear difference in skill level between spamming a running attack with great axe, claws or katana and using your aim and timing to land spear hits.
Without a doubt I think the running attacks with wide arcs was a really good change made to the game and was well needed to keep the PvP from going back to nothing but spears and the rest of the weapons being ignored.
I think that the spear nerf wasn’t a change that was made with gameplay in mind rather I think the change was made with the aesthetic of the attack in mind, if gameplay was considered then they would’ve either removed the cripple effect (which was added just before spear speed was adjusted) or done some other backend data change that wasn’t a visual one.
EDIT:
I strongly strongly disagree here. It’s plain ignorant to suggest this I’m sorry.
Alot of people (myself included funnily enough) give up when they first try spear because of how hard it was to master. Yet nowadays there are people with less than 100 hours in the game that can contend with people with over 3k hours in the game based on how low the skill ceiling has been lowered with the removal of spear
I’m not surprised. Using one weapon and fighting against one weapon will cause a narrow but specialized focus. And then when someone gets somewhat competent but uses something outside the focus it can be devastating even to someone with 10x the amount of time played.
Time played doesn’t mean very much if its spent with tunnel vision. Which is something many PVPers fall into a trap of doing. Not just in Conan, but gaming in general.
The way forward is in the subject @den brought up. Its in how quickly players can move in and out of combat. Like I said, if make it so that when a fight starts, someone is going to die one way or another, then you’ll see a change from the poke and roll, attack and dodge on repeat gameplay. As well as making combos relevant. You’ll even be able to use your spear again, with heavy attacks. Albeit with a light attack starter most likely. Which should be the goto for any weapon that wants a fast opener.
You’re not seeing my point here… Spear was a weapon that required months and months of training to master successfully, now the only style of play is the current spamming sprint attacks. It takes maybe 20 seconds to master this style of play if not less. The gameplay is very boring and requires no thought at all and usually ends up being a lackluster spam fest between 7 to 8 people.
The fact that this is considered the way “forward” baffles me tbh. It wasn’t so long ago that stamina got adjusted that gave way to the entire mindset of running away endlessly. The way to solve the problem would be to (again) revert this change that was made in a similar way I’m suggest the spear speed be reverted.
This!