The recent drastic reduction to hyper-armor has made combat significantly less enjoyable. Please revert it.
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Let’s just say they don’t revert those changes, which seems likely.
What do you think would need to be tweaked or added to combat to make it more enjoyable and balanced? What options currently in the game could help you turn things around?
My understanding from other threads is that the slower weapons now have a significant disadvantage because they are easily interrupted by daggers, pikes, ect. If you’re wielding anything slower or with less reach you’re at a disadvantage. What would level that playing field?
Could a shield (with tweaks or without them) give you a useful counter? Like, would the recoil buy you some time? What about throwing axes (or knives?). A quick stagger from an offhand weapon that would give the main hand weapon some time to build momentum. Not saying these help currently but I guess what I’m asking is what could we perhaps ADD to make things better? Calls for reversions and nerfs are usually the go-to, how else could we solve the problem? Can the players find or be given a tool to help them find their footing in this new paradigm?
What exactlyis your problem with the changes? It’s hard to see a solution when we’re not informed of the problems your are having.
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The problem is I don’t want to have to resort to light attacks with fast weapons. As you pointed out slow weapons, and heavy attacks (since they are slower) have become significantly less effective. As a player I can change my style, but the AI that thralls are beholden to is not very flexible or intelligent.
It’s just really stupid that NPCs wielding 1h swords now reign supreme. They have always been supremely annoying, the game’s interrupt system has always been unpleasant at best. With the removal of hyper armor it’s not about who strikes first, it’s about who hits first - which is light fast attacks.
I don’t find it enjoyable. Combat, and thrall effectiveness was much more enjoyable before Funcom decided to impose more poorly thought-out decisions on us.
Perhaps in two years they’ll just pretend they never released this terrible patch and they’ll revert it like nothing ever happened. That’s the best you can ever hope for in this game.
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I wrote up a long screed on the changes and why they’re problematic for both PvP and PvE.
There’s not really any new path forward that makes it better. You can’t really ADD anything that makes these changes work when combat is centered around trading. The trade-off to slower weapons like the two handed mace and greatsword was that you could swing through faster attacks and inflict more damage to greedy enemies.
Now you can’t. You’d need hyper to make it viable again. The previous system was very effective at balancing the strengths and weaknesses of weapons. This system just creates a dominant roll-poke meta where nothing outclasses the spear.
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That is a very good analysis of what is bad about the hyper armor changes. I guess it will be a cold day in hell before any game developer ever realizes that being chain-stunned to death is not fun, they all seem to prioritize it as The Best Feature Ever.
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The changes to hyper armor could (and in my view: should) be balanced by changing the staggering rules, too.
Maybe there could be cooldown or diminishing returns on being staggered, or if there already are (don’t think so, but not sure), these could be increased.
One could also introduce a damage threshold for being staggered, e. g. hits below x % of your total health don’t stagger.
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Funcom’s original idea with stripping hyper armor was to make the game feel less static and more skill-based. Specifically, they wanted the purge mechanic to carry a bit of difficulty. Previously, human NPCs were essentially not a threat as you could axe spin dozens of them to death with ease.
While decreasing hyper does make human NPCs slightly more of a threat, it hurts literally every other combat aspect of the game. A better path for Funcom to take on this would’ve been to focus on more reactive ENEMIES. Even letting human NPCs dodge roll would’ve been added more depth to purges without making it necessary to render combo attacks impotent.
The vibe I’ve gotten from these changes is that the devs want combat to be more reactive in the same vein as games like Elden Ring, but they don’t really understand what creates reactive gameplay. Being stunned over and over by an unstunnable boss isn’t any more fun than hyper-tanking through that unstunnable boss. In both cases the boss isn’t really reacting to you.
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The main issue with focusing on staggering instead of hyper is that doing so won’t address the moveset problem. Conan PvP and PvE has always been about trading. Hyper Armor lets two people go at it without being staggered to death, but it also provides a great window for skill expression in a fight. Players that understand movesets used to be able to exploit gaps in Hyper Armor to break them up and punish spamming.
Likewise, you also had weapons that had hyper armor from the beginning of their animation (like that axe) that you could use to retaliate against a slower or less hyper-intensive moveset (like a spear poke or the daggers).
While reducing stagger would definitely help, it wouldn’t result in more reactive gameplay. Staggering should be a reward for out-thinking your opponent and timing attacks to take advantage of gaps in their Hyper Armor. The limiting factor of staggering should be wholly organic. If a player is running away and not fighting, there shouldn’t be a limit to how much they can be staggered, but when that player wheels on you with an axe, it should be you that gets staggered.
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Well it’s really clear if you don’t run daggers or spear you’re gonna lose. It’s disappointing the game has all these weapons but two outstrips anything else by far. I have no clue if the devs like their dagger and pike killing machines or it’s just a fluke but it’s really clear the other weapons are useless especially in raids pvp a big star spear sticking you a mile away with rolling thrust and no stamina burn or daggers spam locking you so you gotta roll and they keep chasing you down cause they issue so little stamina up …. The combat mechanic has really gotten poor
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The spear has always been a dominant weapon in PvP, but prior to target locking being viable it required some skill to use. You also had hard counters to spear and dagger spam in the form of hyper-laden weapons like the one-handed axe and the one-handed sword. With recent changes there’s really no counter to poke/dagger spam except counter-poke/dagger spam.
The game in Age of Sorcery actually had a fantastic PvP meta. Hyper armor was nicely balanced, combo attacks were viable, baiting was viable, and there was meaningful armor build variety.
I think Funcom’s best move for chapter 3 would be to revert the PvP changes and focus instead on making NPCs more a threat with additions like dodge-rolling. I know there’s gonna be someone going, “rEvErTiNg WoN’t FiX iT”, but it really would. The purge mechanic is neat, but that doesn’t mean that PvP should play poorly to facilitate an artificial difficulty.
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At the end of the day they need to really reflect on how the changes affect gameplay, and if it’s fun or not fun.
For me it is very squarely “not fun” when I have a t4 fighter at max level with the best legendary armor and a legendary weapon and two or three very weak enemies can stagger my thrall for an extended period of time. My thrall just gets slapped around and stands there stupid unable to attack.
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Yeah. I don’t think the combat changes make any aspect of the game more fun, even the purges they were intended to bolster.
As I think about it I think what they could add is basically… re-add hyper-armor. 
Add a defense check to stagger - if a crappy low-level pissant attacks a high-level opponent with high defense (armor factor, armor quality, agility) then the stagger should not happen.
The simple thing to do is admit they were wrong and revert Ch2’s reduction of hyper-armor. But in the best of circumstances it takes them about 2 years to admit they were wrong, so why not keep on pretending they have any hint of intelligence and keep “refining” combat with some extra code that runs on every weapon swing to do a defense check to negate stagger.
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Ya the combat has become so frustrating it’s no longer fun. Especially when it’s hugely dominated by one or two weapons and the rest are virtually useless. Nothing like being riddled with pokeys to go what’s the point of playing …. Its best virtual stun lock unless they great increase the cost of stamina attacks in some wraps one that a) have massive reach, b) stun locking pokey pokes too bad I can’t mod or I would write my own combat changes in cauee I’m digging the purge and some of the cool pieces but the core game
Mechanic imo is broken
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