360 Guard?

What I am about to say is all pie in the sky stuff, and im not sure I would necessarily like to see this implemented but what the heck, here it goes:

There was a game called Mark of Kri for the PS3, in that game, when you pressed guard, you guarded attacks from all angles automatically.
The 360 guard was accompanied by some nice block animations as well.

This allowed the AI for enemies to be really aggressive and very prone to encircle you. You had to look for openings and attack carefully because you character did not have that many hit points.

So in a Dark Souls 2 setting it would, in theory anyway, eliminate dead angles.

It may not change the PVE difficulty either because you could then have more multi enemy PVE fights and still have to watch the old stamina bar when blocking.

It may also allow for 2 vs 1 and 3 vs 1 fight where the outnumbered person did not have to rely entirely on foot/roll speed.

Yea or Nay?
Does the block mechanic even need to be changed?
If so, then what would make it better?

I'd rather have a 180 degree block, to show that realistically you could block anything within that range, or maybe slightly less depending on which hand you're blocking with (hinting at choosing dominant hand here)

But I always thought dead angling concept was kind of an exploit. It's using lag to go around someone's shield, as with lock on should technically be impossible, and on the guys screen who's getting hammered looks like its just its going through your shield, remove it in my opinion.

Nay.

As of now, if you get surrounded by enemies you are really in for it, as it should be. Crowd management is a good skill, and the few times you are able to fight out of being surrounded is awesome. This character added skill would take away from the actual player skill needed.


If anything, I would like an even harder block mechanic as seen in Mount and Blade.

Nay Dead Angles must stay. They are the answer to various strategies, and perhaps un intended as they are or whatever, they werent game breaking.

ViralEnsign_ wrote:Nay Dead Angles must stay. They are the answer to various strategies, and perhaps un intended as they are or whatever, they werent game breaking.

I'd say attacks that look like are hitting your shield but still damaging you are pretty game breaking if I'm honest.

I see something like this...

When you lock on or put your shield up (which ever feels more natural) the right control stick changes to a shield control. As in, when you push the stick left the shield shifts to the left, right it goes right, etc. More control gives more depth I believe.

I think deadangles are intentional in the absence of throws, else spear or rapier turtleing would be neigh impossible to beat. They are in several fighters.

Ever noticed that it doesn't work on NPC's? (at least in my experience.

ViralEnsign_ wrote:Nay Dead Angles must stay. They are the answer to various strategies, and perhaps un intended as they are or whatever, they werent game breaking.

I can see what you are saying, but when I think of the "dead angle" applied to any other game it seems really strange.

Think of a game like street fighter, If there were some glitch where you could tern most regular attacks into a unblockables.
That would cause a patch and a lot of disgruntled players.

Slipping an attack past your opponents guard makes sence as an option but the "completely unblockable" part mixed in with how few hits it takes to kill someone in Dark Souls. That is where things get out of hand. Perhaps there needs to be some kind of unblockable "charge" attack that is done by holding the attack button.

Shields are strangely ineffective in PVP anyway due to all the backstab techniques, so they need some kind of boast in effectiveness.

Its the classic attack vs defense arms race!

You can dead angel in at least 1 of the streetfighter games, I'm 80% positive. Its jumping over and striking down and behind the opponent.

Forum Pirate wrote:I think deadangles are intentional in the absence of throws, else spear or rapier turtleing would be neigh impossible to beat. They are in several fighters.

Ever noticed that it doesn't work on NPC's? (at least in my experience.

It could be that if the spear/rapier would "bounce" like it does when you hit a NPC sheild... that would put an end to that.
But it is apparent something happened during the creation of the game that prevented that.

Perhaps if there were a "kick" like attack for your shield hand that would not cause parry, but instead a "wall bounce" animation if it hit the opponents attack.

I also really like Deathsitexxi shield control idea, that would definitely add an interesting dynamic to blocking.

But deadangles are so much simpler to allow.

It also wouldn't stop the turtling with spears. At range they're still to far away to punish most of the time.

Its also a good way to balance some of the larger weapons, as guardbreaking is almost a complete non issue it give them the ability to strike at the turtles.

Forum Pirate wrote:...It also wouldn't stop the turtling with spears. At range they're still to far away to punish most of the time...

I agree all the way on the annoyance of spear turtling, but for the sake of discussion what if after a opponents attack bounced off your shield, or a parry/shield type attack was performed...you could instantly transition into a full run.

Sort of like an additional bonus option for getting the parry/block/bounce. So if the opponent is right in front of you then it's not needed, but at range you can cover the distance.

That would work, but its overcomplicated and specific to punishing spears, where deadangles cover all forms of turtling already without the need for a machanic specifically for spears. If it was applied to any other weapon it would be bs heaven.

I'd be fine if they removed dead angles, only if they added a way to get around shields to deal with turtles aside from dead angling.

I would rather blocking blocked exactly where your shield was, and weapons hit where they were seen hitting.