So here I am, knocking myself out (almost literally, ugh I hate being sick) trying to make sure that the Taketori is "balanced", whatever the heck that means, and I’m still getting reports from users who say it’s too fast, too slow, too powerful, has too short of a range, has too long of a range, does too much damage, etc.
And there are people I trust implicitly and believe on every side, which just doesn’t help much. So maybe, just maybe, there’s simply no such thing as a ‘balanced weapon’. Or maybe there’s no such thing as a consensus on what a balanced weapon is. I’m just not sure.
So, I’m going to take a short break from the "iterate/test/update" cycle and see if I’m able to come up with a more objective way to determine such things. If I can do so, I’ll be sure to post more information, and any ideas on how to determine balance *objectively* are welcome.
P.S. : Yes, I’m feeling moody. I’m sick, and frustrated. You would be too 
Miyamoto Musashi wrote…
The Benefit of Weapons in Strategy
There is a time and a place for use of weapons.
The best use of the companion sword is in a confined space, or when you are engaged closely with an opponent. The long sword can be used effectively in all situations.
The halberd is inferior to the spear on the battlefield. With the spear you can take the initiative; the halberd is defensive. In the hands of one of two men of equal ability, the spear gives a little extra strength. Spear and halberd both have their uses, but neither is very beneficial in confined spaces. They cannot be used for taking a prisoner. They are essentially weapons for the field.
Anyway, if you learn "indoor" techniques, you will think narrowly and forget the true Way. Thus you will have difficulty in actual encounters.
The bow is tactically strong at the commencement of battle, especially battles on a moor, as it is possible to shoot quickly from among the spear men. However, it is unsatisfactory in sieges, or when the enemy is more than forty yards away. For this reason there are nowadays few traditional schools of archery. There is little use nowadays for this kind of skill.
From inside fortifications, the gun has no equal among weapons. It is the supreme weapon on the field before the ranks clash, but once swords are crossed the gun becomes useless.
One of the virtues of the bow is that you can see the arrows in flight and correct your aim accordingly, whereas gunshot cannot be seen. You must appreciate the importance of this.
Just as a horse must have endurance and no defects, so it is with weapons. Horses should walk strongly, and swords and companion swords should cut strongly. Spears and halberds must stand up to heavy use: bows and guns must be sturdy. Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative.
You should not have a favorite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well. You should not copy others, but use weapons which you can handle properly. It is bad for commanders and troops to have likes and dislikes. These are things you must learn thoroughly.
20 Comments
Given that the range of the kick, and the damage of the swing/kick is comparable to each other kat, the only remaining question of balance
Two simple test objects may create objective grids for judging balance.
*Time between ‘green and hit’. Have someone block, and then swing when they see green. This tests ‘tank speed’. Have this done by experienced players, over a range of swords.
*Average damage and speed of a combo. set up an object that measures damage over the course of three-4 hits, reporting time it takes, and how much damage is recieved. Test your sword against the speed/damage of each type of sword.
I’m, frankly, amazed that these objects don’t exist yet. Some of the training tools are really close.
EA
EA Poe’s latest blog post is : Block Animations and other Random Things
Whoah… I just woke up from a nap, looked at my screen, and in my fuzzy-brained unfocussed confusion I noticed something about that graph I’d never understood before….
Yeah, it took me that long
So, I’ve removed the graph. That’s not *quite* what I thought it meant
Are you sure? I thought it was amusing.
In other news, part of my post vanished as I was typing apparently…
Given that the range of the kick, and the damage of the swing/kick is comparable to each other kat, the only remaining question of balance
Should be speed. The only remaining question of balance should be the speed of the weapon. If you were making a ‘fast dual’ or a ‘slow heavy’, then the balance issue becomes speed vs damage per hit, and is much more complex, but for comparable weapons (kats) Then hey, there we go. Speed. The speed/damange index has to remain roughly the same.
EA Poe’s latest blog post is : Block Animations and other Random Things
If it had referenced people’s reaction to *my* opinion, I would have left it up, cause that is how I feel sometimes, lol.
But I never want to take the chance of offending you guys
I’m working on a script that will allow timing measurements, from block to strike and back, between strikes and kicks, and between slash and damage, etc. Of course, I have to make sure I get the script right or it will not be useful, so I’m taking my time on this one
I also want it to be able to work for every C:SI weapon, not just mine, which will allow me (and others, perhaps) to do comparative testing.
Rightly so. I look forward to seeing your results.
This, coupled with the keypress hud may make for Very interesting debugging/balancing tools.
EA
EA Poe’s latest blog post is : Block Animations and other Random Things
My thoughts exactly! I’m hoping to have something useful by this weekend, and I’ll be posting more about that as I get to that point.
The new updated sword seems to be working as best as any C:SI can right now. I haven’t got to fight too much because of lack of people to kill. >:I I mean spar. lol Thanks Robbmiester! XD You are doing a wonderful job btw.
PEACE!
I agree with Shindo. Holy crap…did I just say that?! Anyway, the Take v1.04b is working great. Crisp response and much reduced unwanted attacks. The only thing I still find a bit off is the speed of the slash during an immediate jumpslash where the slash occurs what appears to be rather far off the ground when the keystroke sequnce was intended to slash when the avatsr is relatively close the ground. Barring that, whatever you did Robby was a 2-thumbs up move in the right direction.
Well, I’m working on V1.0.4 BETA E right now, which I hope is even better. I’ll pass that one around for people to poke at, and perhaps make a grid-wide update if no new issues are discovered.
After that, there won’t be any updates for a while, as I’m on a quest to create some better testing tools
Testing tools to sort out the balance issue across all C:SI weapons would be a great contribution to the community. Right now so much is subjective. Objectively discrening if something is balanced right is very hard.
Congrats Robby. The Take v1.04betaD is an improvement, and I’m equivocal over whether the E adds anything. I have gotten fewer accidental strikes by far vs v1.03 and my jumpslash is quite responsive. The betas feel crisper…that’s about the only word I have…much like how the Wave feels to me. I have heard that many people are saying the Take is imbalanced. I haven’t heard anyone delineate the point-by-point objections. I wish I could understand them so I could help to test them. I did what I could however with Judo Jung’s help. We tried several kats against the Take and found that the Take was still counterable and that the Take did not give either user a pure advantage. The ONLY place that the Take had a clear advantage was in its incredible ability to string together an infinite chain of strikes ad hoc. If one goes combo-to-combo against the Take with any other weapon, they will get hit a few extra times as every other combo has a built-in pause after the bonus strike. So how to counter this feature of the Take…block seemed to work. So please keep up the good work. And thanks for innovating. If there’s anything in particular I can test for you on the balance issues, please drop an IM or notecard.
Thank you for that feedback, Solace, it is appreciated.
I too have heard people say the Taketori is unbalanced. Unfortunately, nobody is really able to really articulate *why* they think so in a way that seems anything other than purely subjective.
I’ve heard that it’s faster, but I simply no longer believe that to be the case. I could show the actual numbers, but that rarely convinces anybody. I’ve also heard that the kicks are more powerful. This is absolutely not true, since I didn’t change the damage at all. Similarly, reports of the range being different are quite simply incorrect, as I *NEVER* change the range on any weapon. In fact, I think most people would be very surprised at the number of things that I’ve heard, and how frequently contradictory they are
There *were* a few things that people pointed out that needed tweaking, and I have done said tweaking, but even so those things didn’t seem to cause a clear advantage under actual combat conditions.
So I think I’ll distribute more copies of the E version for testing, just so that I have have people “sanity check” it and make sure that I didn’t introduce any major problems, and if all goes well I’ll do a public update.
After that, there will be no more updates until I start gathering objective data that can clearly inform me of what changes need to be made and where, if any.
After that, I think I’ll be taking a break from making swords for a while, as I worked extremely hard on making the best weapon I could, and I’ve ended up feeling burned out and bummed out. There are plenty of other things I can do for C:SI that don’t require making weapons, such as working on the back end, website, sim design, etc.
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Well I can’t blame you Robby. Sounds like you put everything you could into your opus, if you will, and the reception it has gotten is just frustrating. Lots of people use the Taketori and lots of people love it. I think this is the case of the unsatisfied people being more vocal. But you should know that the Taketori has actually gotten a good reception over all of C:SI in my opinion. I was able to introduce the Take to some fighters in Edo Japan Kitamanchi recently and they were very excited…even liking the name very much, as I was told that the name also refers to a Princess in a Japanese legend.
I used to think the Taketori was a very tough sword, mostly because I would get pwned by Silver Csak. I thought too that the combos were too fast and in fact I am still surprised by the kick range sometimes (more on that in a minute). But I tried very hard to give it a chance. And I tried to think hard about what the problems were. Whenever I fail to use a new weapon successfully, i always come to 2 possible groups of reasons: whether there are what I perceive as performanace problems in the mechanics of the sword, and whether I just have plainly failed to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the weapon. I tried to share some of what I perceived as mechanical (scripting) issues and you, Robby, have responded to those. Thank you. And as for the other issues of not knowing how to use the Take, I’ve just sucked up losing to people until I felt more comfortable with the Taketori, and I think I can do fairly well with it now. So I hope that the opposition you are hearing are from people who just have not gone through the fire with the Take as I have, that they have lost enough to themselves feel frustrated by it but haven’t really given it a fair shake to truly learn about how to use it. And it is a very different weapon to use than the other kats. But once I got the hang of it, it’s like a RL truly marvelous 2000-fold handcrafted Japanese blade….it does the cutting for you, so do not force it (read as “do not spam your keys”).
So to a feature of the Take that still surprises me…the kick range. I think this is an illusion of the animation actually. The way you have scripted the blocking/combat mode/sweeping anims places the center of gravity of the avatar over the rear foot so that the strike involes shifting of weight (and in RL, of the power) forward onto the fore foot. With the sweep kick, the body is tilted back to “balance” the weight of the outstretched leg. Bu the true center of the avatar is still where it has always been, and might be a little in front of where we perceive the body of the avatar to be. Therefore we may look to be out of range based on a visual estimation of the body, but are within range based on the center of the avatar. An associated phenomenon is that you can aim your crosshairs in mouselook overhead of a very short avatar and still hit them. What we perceive at the height of the short avatar has nothing to do with the combat scripts, which measure some invisible true center of the opponent avatar. Please correct me if I am wrong about this, as even I feel I might be blowing it out of my arse.
In the end, you should take a well-deserved break. And I hope you can find some satisfaction that there are many people who religiously carry the Taketori. I do not fight the best that I can on this sword as I am still learning about it, but I carry it on me ATM as my main because I’m intrigued by it and want to continue to learn about it. And I’m willing to lose a ton to do it.
Nice note Solace, Kinda hits the ball out of the park. Sorry about beating you up with the taketori,but i think this sword was made for me personally, the way it feels to me, I took to it right away. there is a learning curve as with any sword but with this one I was in decisive action very quickly. The deciding factor I believe is the ability to be very smooth without having to spam the keys. Thankyou for the colorful article..See you on the mats,,,Silver
Hey Robby, this sword was purpose made for Silver and Solace. Please make the next one for me…;-) I particularly want you to make a sword that allows me to kick Solace’s ass.
Seriously though, you have made a fine sword that a lot of people are enjoying. Don’t take the criticism to heart, this is a passionate crowd. If there are balance issues, they are pretty marginal IMO compared with, say, the nagi. Personally, I am not at all sure that the percieved balance issues are real, or just reflect difficulties adjusting to a new animation sequence. In any event, if people think the Take is unblanced, they should use the Take against the Take!
Adding to the “We Love the Take” crowd…
I adore your work on the Taketori. I never was a big fan of the wave, but I always appreciated the work you did on it.
The Take is, hands down, the best sword I’ve seen in C:SI. Not because of the speed, or any balance isues, but because of some simple aesthetic values. The sword is constructed in a simple, but elegant fashion. The sheath is an appropriate length, the tsuba is elegant and simple, without looking plain. The wrapping is well done, as is the handle itself. In the sheath, it looks like an elegant piece of art. Out of the sheath, the blade is formed properly, with an elegant arc, and a wonderful blade geometry. I’m a bit of a sword snob, and I must say, the reason I don’t like the Archateks is not that they are unsound swords, but because I don’t like their size, curvature, tip geometry, etc.
The animations are clean and smooth. Being a martial artist myself, I have a slight predisposition to dislike ‘unrealistic’ animations. Being a student of swordplay, I am even more disposed against ‘unreasonable’ strikes. The counter slash from Musashi blades, for instance, is an inelegant and weak strike, that I would shudder to perform in RL. Aesthetically, your animations are well made, and elegant. I personally have a dislike of most spinning animations, that is, the flashy ones that turn you around in a spinning strike. These are movie moves. You hardly ever turn your back to an enemy in a battle if you can avoid it. However, even your spinning animation is at least based in an actual sword technique that is used in some sword forms, so for this sword, I can forgive it.
On these merits alone, I’d say the only sword which comes close to matching you is the Dynasty, whose construction is also high quality, and very elegant. However, the Dynasty, to me, has a few flaws. The ‘clink’ when it goes into block annoys me, and I just am not terribly good at its timing.
The Take stands above other swords in its discouragement of button mashing, a ideal weapon for a skill based game, for those who want to increase their control, and their skill.
And last but certainly not least, it is responsive. Because there is no auto combo to get stuck in, you can swiftly move from stroke to stroke, and block anywhere you please.
I applaud you Robby, for being so attentive to the C:SI community that you have taken all of our feedback, good and bad, and acted on it so swiftly. I don’t know any other person on earth, in or out of SL, who is so attentive to your customers.
You’ve fixed every mechanical problem we found in record time. More, you’re actively concerned with balancing your weapon, which cannot be said of your peers. Archatek seems unconcerned with balance issues with the Naginata that have been percieved for a great deal of time, or the BD’s. Musashi seems to have little plan to balance the Duals, in spite of a long record of commentary. Even Esprite did not fix the Ninjaken as quickly as you’ve responded to the Take comments. This is not to say that they are bad people, or bad designers, just that their priorities seem to lie elsewhere, and yours are fixed squarely on responding to us.
I applaud you, and your weapon, and I think that if anyone implies that you, or your weapon, are less than top quality, they can FSK themselves right back to RL.
You’re one of the best guys around.
EA
EA Poe’s latest blog post is : Ninja Reflex
You guys rock, you know that? I want to take time to reply to these comments, but I am still sick and just woke up from a nap, so I will do so in a little while. But what a wonderful thing to wake up to
excellent comment EA and i agree with you, this sword rocks, for all those reasons. cant wait for the update.
juli
OK … Just my two cents since I’m not a good fighter and make only 5 or 10 duels a day.
I baught my first sword (the Dragon) a year ago, Got stick with it for few monthes, learning and dying a lot with it, doing auto-combos without knowing it ! =:)=
By this time I use to say : “One heart, one clan, one sword !”. I still have only one heart and one clan but …
I started to by other weapons about three monthes ago (needed to reach the next rank in my clan), wearing my favorite and “regular” one (the Dragon again) on my left hip and the “on test” one on my back. Got the Taketori recently as a gift from a God in the sky as some of you may know reading this blog =;)=
I felt confortable with it immediatly (tho I still die a lot like before) getting used slowly to trigger efficient jump-hits and apreciating very much the absence of auto-combos. The Take forces me to think first, to do minded combos, and I try now not to smash the keys as I usually do ! It’s smooth and so aesthetic. I really like the size of it since I find the others kats (except the Ninjaken) really too big for my medium size avatar.
And guess what : I’m wearing the Taketori on my left hip now !! =:)=
The only really unbalanced weapon I know so far is the nagi, but, again, I’m not good enough to tell that for sure (just my two cents remember ?)
Anyway Robby, you did a great job ! Thank you very much !
=:)=
I’m really very pleased that you like it!!! It has been very fun to make it, and I love to try new things, so I’m very glad that some people are enjoying it
I will continue to do everything that I can to make sure it’s the best weapon I can make, and to try to balance out everything I can.
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