Swordsman Archive

Message Edited by sofrash on 09-15-2004 07:10 PM

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Furyofangels wrote:

Probably far too late to be making comments at this stage... but, what the hell

Fingerofthrawn summed up most of my thinking of this. People have this idea that swordsmen are slow and clumsy and just hit really hard. Well, atleast one part of that is correct *grin*. I also hear alot of talk about a lack of 'finese'. Tell an 8th Dan Kendo practitioner he doesnt have finese. But stand well back when you do!

I see the role of a swordsman as almost entirely offensive. They arent given to intricate defenses like fencers, but that doesnt mean they lack sophistication. Watch any of the sword fights in Akira Kurasawa's movies. Basicaly, the usualy run like this. Two guys square of, try to psyche each other out for a while. At some point, someone commits to an attack. Either he succeeds and kills his opponent, or he doesnt, his opponent counters and kills him. Its quick, precise, and utterly lethal. Thats exactly how I envisage swordsmen. Other people have other ideas, but I think the idea of the big, brutal fighter with a big sword is largely a myth.

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veegen wrote:

I just love the soloing ability.We should also get proper stats appliances, cuz the mainereason we arent so good in PvP as the other melees is because we cant actually dizzy or stunproperly.

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A man who wants to have it all. I totaly disagree with states other than stun. I think it is a great write-up. Swords should be high damage,low defence, and i think the main post provides this vision pretty well. Please, please, please, devs if you do a Rage, don't make it worthless byeliminating specials while doing it. Berserk sucks because it makes you do less instead of more. Don't make rage the same way.

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Gorecki wrote:

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Furyofangels wrote:

Probably far too late to be making comments at this stage... but, what the hell

Fingerofthrawn summed up most of my thinking of this. People have this idea that swordsmen are slow and clumsy and just hit really hard. Well, atleast one part of that is correct *grin*. I also hear alot of talk about a lack of 'finese'. Tell an 8th Dan Kendo practitioner he doesnt have finese. But stand well back when you do!

I see the role of a swordsman as almost entirely offensive. They arent given to intricate defenses like fencers, but that doesnt mean they lack sophistication. Watch any of the sword fights in Akira Kurasawa's movies. Basicaly, the usualy run like this. Two guys square of, try to psyche each other out for a while. At some point, someone commits to an attack. Either he succeeds and kills his opponent, or he doesnt, his opponent counters and kills him. Its quick, precise, and utterly lethal. Thats exactly how I envisage swordsmen. Other people have other ideas, but I think the idea of the big, brutal fighter with a big sword is largely a myth.

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The problemis in the nature of our profession and our weapons in this game, where we basically see 2 different cultures / histories combined. We have a collection of weapons (hammer, axes and cleaver to a certain point) whichcome close to what we know aseuropean medieval weapons: you basically have to use both hands simply due to their weight, in order to hold them. You almost have no influence on direction but all you can do is a single swing into a chosen direction in order to generate speed to increase damage.

On the other side of things we have our 2h curved sword and probably the scythe, which we usually assign more to a far eastern culture, where due to their lighter weight the second hand becomes much more of an instrument not simply to generate speed but to also have an influence on direction.

Therefore it's not that easy to "pigeonhole" us.

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Yeah, I think you sort of hit the nail on the head there, Gorecki. Not hard to guess which culture/history I prefer What would be nice, is if both were viable options. If you want to do insane damage, yeah, hitting something with a brick on a stick... I mean... power hammer is probably the way to go. But I cant imagine it would be any fun being hit with a Scythe either. It seems like a weapon that would lend itself a little more to finese.

Basicaly... I just dont like the idea that swordsmen by default lack finese. Its just a different type of finese from a Fencers. I sort of see Swordsmen as the melee equivalent of what Riflemen should be. Riflemen take their time, line up their shot, and when they take it, thats it over. Same idea with swords. Im not so fond of the analogy with a commando or something, with a rocket laucher. Yeah, it probably wont hit, but if it does... Thats the "Big and Brutal" school of swordsmanship hehe. But... I think Im repeating myself

It would probably take a lot more than is possible with the skill system, but I think two different styles of swordsmanship would be great.. 4 skill lines could become 2 lines per style - one style with certain weapons (Hammers/Cleaver) would have somewhat inaccurate but immensely powerful attack techniques with less defence but a Rage-style ability, the other style (using 2hand curved & Scythe) would have more accurate, slightly less damaging attacks with status effects/bleeds, to denote the finesse associated with this style, and slightly higher defences - like a bonus to counterattack or CoB.. It would take a change to the skill system i think to do what I'd like - 3 different "Master" boxes - one that is an amalgamation of the two styles, one that is a "Finesse" specialist and one that is a "Damage" specialist, with some respective Master specials for each.. This would give Swordsmen a choice of style, and give greater depth to the Profession.. But like I say.. would take a major change to the way the skills system works for this to happen.. *sits back and smiles at pipedreams*

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TenlossDisruptor wrote:
It would probably take a lot more than is possible with the skill system, but I think two different styles of swordsmanship would be great.. 4 skill lines could become 2 lines per style - one style with certain weapons (Hammers/Cleaver) would have somewhat inaccurate but immensely powerful attack techniques with less defence but a Rage-style ability, the other style (using 2hand curved & Scythe) would have more accurate, slightly less damaging attacks with status effects/bleeds, to denote the finesse associated with this style, and slightly higher defences - like a bonus to counterattack or CoB.. It would take a change to the skill system i think to do what I'd like - 3 different "Master" boxes - one that is an amalgamation of the two styles, one that is a "Finesse" specialist and one that is a "Damage" specialist, with some respective Master specials for each.. This would give Swordsmen a choice of style, and give greater depth to the Profession.. But like I say.. would take a major change to the way the skills system works for this to happen.. *sits back and smiles at pipedreams*

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*Smiles at Tenloss' pipedreams also*

That would be the perfect solution, yes

The vision expressed here is one of many possible visions. Of course there is a ton of history for Swords and 2 handed weaponry in general. For developing this document I did a lot of polling and talking with Swordsmen. One interesting post was this one. Unfortunately I lost some of my data on how all the voting came out. However it was pretty clear from that and other posts that the community tended towards offense over defense and towards hard-hitting moves over finesse moves.

One of the issues of course is that in a game, especially a game with 35+ profession (how many are we at now?), is that each profession has to have a fairly specific role that they fill. If one profession exemplifies many different styles of play and fills many roles then there won't be a lot of room for differentiating between professions. In part I chose to make a very specific vision document like this because I thought it was best to provide a clear picture without muddying the waters too much-- the risk being that we wouldn't get the role we wanted or would get a very vague and not very useful role.

And I was encouraged by the feedback. Most people seem to like this vision. I stressed the "shock troop" imagery a lot to the devs as that seemed to be something that struck a chord in a lot of people.

And without saying anything about the CU, I can say that pushing that solid, stream-lined vision has been pretty successful. Whereas I think some other professions have had problems really getting across what they want to be I know that the devs are very clear on what Swordsmen have been asking for and see as their niche in the game.

That said, all the feedback I can get is great. Keep it coming. Even though this is a fairly old post and I've been using it's tone now for a while, it's always good to hear more views on how players envision the profession.

Gabe.