On the nature of knock-outs

[Malidictus]

Something I've found increasingly disruptive to my gameplay experience is being knocked out. I don't mean the notion of getting knocked out entirely - the basic concept is fun. What I take issue with are to sepcific aspects of that system. I'll try to be as constructive as I can offering solutions so as not to come across as just complaining. My issues are these:

1. Knockout lasts far too long. Yes, getting knocked out once means I wake up within a few seconds, but getting knocked out twice seems to leave me on the ground for 2 minutes. If there's a huge melee going on and people ignore me I MIGHT wake up, but for the most part I may as well walk away from the round the moment I get kicked twice. I'd really love to see some cap placed on knockout duration, something more aggressive along the lines of 5-10 seconds at most. Again, I get that the point of the game is to goof around having fun, but ideally I'd like to be part of said fun, rather than spectating from my unconscious body.

2. It seems like getting puched while I'm down increases knockout duration. I've already seen people exploit this in-game. They knock you out once, then sit down over you and proceed to punch you until you may as well be out for the rest of the round. That's where the game stops being fun. Essentially, the first player to get a knockout "wins" because he has unrestricted control over the other. I just don't find one-sided games where (or my enemy) is a limp ragdoll for the majority of the round.

I watched quite a bit of Gang Beasts on YouTube and I guess part of what made those matches so entertaining is people didn't know how to play. Consequently, there was very little cheapness and permanent knockout. Those often involved a lot of "hair-pulling" as one character attempts to drag another kicking and screaming and holding on to railings and other people. Frankly, I wouldn't mind a game mode where all knockouts lasted 1 second such that they were mostly good for knocking people away, rather than knocking them unconscious to throw them onto train tracks or off of platforms.

*edit*
Not to mention the potential for tea-bagging. I've lost count of how many times the game will go down to 1v1, one player would knock the other out and proceed to attempt to dry-hump him for what feels like a minute. That was funny maybe once.

[ColossalCereal]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

2. It seems like getting puched while I'm down increases knockout duration.

Yep

Originally posted by Malidictus:

*edit*
Not to mention the potential for tea-bagging. I've lost count of how many times the game will go down to 1v1, one player would knock the other out and proceed to attempt to dry-hump him for what feels like a minute. That was funny maybe once.

Lmfao true

[Bio Drando]

Agreed, at first people complained that K.O. times were too short as there was a bug that made them last 1-2 seconds max, however now people are complaining that K.O. times last way too long. Possibly that's because there isn't a maximum K.O.time, so the more you get K.O.'d and the longer you'll stay down (also the strenght of the last hit influences the K.O. time, if you get K.O.'d by a punch you'll stay down for a lot less compared to being hit by a train).

I think thay should make the K.O. time increase a lotmore slowly AND add a maximum duration of about 8 seconds where time won't get added to the K.O. time anymore,Ithinkit would be great if it was like this as fight would be a lot more intense while still allowing some "peace" for theplayers that managed to K.O. the opponent as they would stay some good 8 seconds down after a few knockouts...

[Malidictus]

I'd wager those were different people complaining about knockouts being too short. I personally believe that a game shouldn't take control away from players for long periods of time. A few seconds here and there to either kill your momentrun or give the opponent an opening? Sure, I can live with that. Being down for the majority of a match? Why am I even here at that point?

Basically, "fighting" is not this game's strong suit. It comes down to a lot of button-mashing and a lot of luck. Yes, there are advanced offensive moves which are difficult to pull off, but even then there's a lot of throwing hits at an opponent and hoping some of them stick. Where Gang Beasts really shines is in the grappling department. Some of the most fun I've had is trying to throw an opponent over the railing while he's hanging onto my hair and trying to pull me down with him. THAT is where even a short knockout would be key.

I would have liked to play this game where a bug made knockouts last only a second or two. In that "bugged" game, one would have to actually out-muscle the opposition, not just land a lucky hit and then throw out a limp ragdoll. I remember an opponent attemthing to throw me off a window washer's platform, but I managed to grab his arms. A few headbutts knocked him out for just long enough for me to climb back up, but not long enough for me to throw his own limp body off-stage.

Gang Beasts reminds me the most of something like Gish multiplayer from the olden days, specifically the "sumo" game mode. You have two physics-based balls of tar fighting on a teeter-totter over an insta-death water hazard, who can slip, stick and grow heavy. The grappling, shoving and out-manoeuvring the opponent was what made that game fun even without any actual direct attacks.

[Justfrost]

Totally agreed with everything, they need a cap and to lower the knockout times.

[Malidictus]

To be fair, this thread is from September and there HAVE been changes to the game that I haven't tried. But my point stands - I'd rather knock-outs be very brief on the order of 1-2 seconds. Victory should come down to throwing people out WHILE they're fighting back, knocking them out only in strategic moments to get them off you or push them off a ledge. This whole thing of sitting out the majority of a match is what eventually made me stop bothering.

[Bio Drando]

With the latest updates K.O.s now escalate a bit less fast and the first ones are pretty short, sadly after the 4th one they start being pretty long again, the devs do this because they want to keep the "partying" nature of the game and make it so that even bad players can have a little chance of winning, so if they manage to K.O. someone mamy times they'll have enough time to throw them off (skilled players would need less, but since most players barely know the basic controls and have no idea how to throw, climb or do the diving attacks then the devs decided to play it safe by having really long K.O.s...)
In any case the endless K.O.s due to attacks will be fixed as the devs said on one of their social platforms a long time ago that they would have made the HP regeneration start getting faster and faster the more time you are K.O., so that it'll eventually be so fast that your opponent won't be able to attack so fast to drain it and you'll wake up even when being costantly whaled at.

The fighting isn't definitive and there are still more moves yet to add (like attacking with objects) and the current ones will still gotrough changes and rebalancing, for example they basically redone all movements in the last update and things like running and sliding are totally different now. Heck! Sliding isn't even sliding anymore, they turned them into a faster but more risky drop attack because it hits harder but, due to the improved collision detection on walls, you also hit the floor harder if you miss and you could K.O. yourself pretty easily. And that's a good change, as sliding was basically useless...
They also improved crouching, now you can finally move with it and try to escape from punches, and that's great!

Personally the game is fine, while I would shorter K.O.times just like you, most of the people here play for fun and not for winning, so the devs wanna keep the sillyness and non-competitiveness of the game at least in some parts so that those kinda of players won't abandon it; however since they talked about adding custom games with game modifiers (like big/small head, high/low gravity etc.) then maybe a "Short/Long K.O.s" modifier might fix the issue.
However it'll be a long time until that is added...
Maybe the lack of a tutorial is one of the reason for why the community doesn't know those advanced manouvers I listed before, hopefully they'll shorten the K.O. times after they add the tutorial stages (or at least let us choose the K.O. times in custom matches...)
I would LOVE if they made the K.O. times short like you suggested as I'm a "serious" player too and I love how much this game, if played seriously and competitively, can actuelly be the closest thing we could possibly get to real action movie fights (fights with epic drops, people fighting hanging from ledges or doing stunts etc. Also the physics make everything so fluid it looks real, not in a simulative-real but in a "OMG, those characters seem alive!"-real...), but I still hope they won't or the community will go crazy because of it...

[Malidictus]

I sort of follow the logic of letting weaker players knock out stronger players for more leeway on thrwoing them out of the level, but the reality tends to work the other way around. Stronger players have an easier time knocking out weaker players very quickly, leaving them (me) unconscious on the ground for the majority of the team fight. I'm generally not a fan of mechanics which take control away from the player for long stretches of time, because they just make me take my hands off the keyboard.

I myself have read a few guides on playing the game (though I don't know how relevant they still are) and came up with a few strategies, but few of them worked any better than mashing punches and hoping you're the first one to connect. Especially with high-ping lobbies and the inability to bind actions to the mouse. I'll give the game another shot at some point, but multiplayer was a very miserable experience last time I tried it.

[Blackenblood]

I have this issue where I can even be punching an afk player in the face for a solid three seconds and they are completely unaffected, but then they will come back, hit me once while I have never been hit once, and knock me out almost if not immediately.

[Justfrost]

Originally posted by Blackenblood:

I have this issue where I can even be punching an afk player in the face for a solid three seconds and they are completely unaffected, but then they will come back, hit me once while I have never been hit once, and knock me out almost if not immediately.

Yeah i noticed that aswell, its been several times when i had been just one hit K.O'd, not sure whats up with that.

[vackillers]

I think they should take the headbutt out of the game... it's ruining the game... people just spam the headbutt and thats all you get now... it has taken away the all-out-brawl aspect that I loved about this game...

[Bio Drando]

Originally posted by =VAC=Killers:

I think they should take the headbutt out of the game... it's ruining the game... people just spam the headbutt and thats all you get now... it has taken away the all-out-brawl aspect that I loved about this game...

What headbutt? Diving headbutt? Or standing headbutt?
In any case I agree how headbutt simply adds to the amount of attacks you can spam, and while they did reduce its range (I'm referring to the stading one you do by tapping CROUCH) it's still spammable; they also gave kicking more range, now you can use it to attack people too instead of simply using it for pushing them off while K.O., which is a shame because it adds more attack buttons to mash...
Luckily it's not as spammable as punches or headbutts because of the longer time between hits that is has, maybe enlargeing headbutting's time to hit too would make it less spammable than now (however due to the lower range I think it's fine as it is right now, it's kicking that causes the most trouble right now)

[Malidictus]

While Headbutts are not as spammable as punches, they're much easier to land. If you manage to grab someone with both hands, you're almost guaranteed to land your headbutts. It's what I started doing towards the tail end of my Gang Beasts experience - rush forward, grab someone and headbutt them into unconsciousness, then thorw them into a meatgrinder.

It's entirely possible my expectations of what the game "should be" are unrealistic, of course. The closest thing in terms of experience I have is the old game Gish, specifically the Sumo game mode. With no direct attacks and fought on a spinning platform, you had to push, shove and pull your enemy off the platform without falling yourself. Many games did end with two players clinging to each other at the bottom of a vertical platform trying to climb over each other without dropping off themselves.

Perhaps we can have a separate game mode calld "Sumo" here in Gang Beasts where knock-outs only knock enemies to the ground but don't actually knock them out, where victory is earned by shoving opponents out and not being pulled down yourself. That might be fun to play. This may be an unpopular opionion, but I feel the "fighting" aspect of this game is by far its weakest aspect. Climbing, wrestling, grappling, hanging off a ledge by somebody's ear - that's all fun and well-implemented. The whole "mashing buttons and hoping for an easy win" thing not so much. Being unconscious is no fun, manhandling unconscious players is no fun.

[Blackenblood]

I just want the combat to go to the way that I know it once was, fun and comprehensible.

[Justfrost]

Originally posted by Blackenblood:

I just want the combat to go to the way that I know it once was, fun and comprehensible.

Honestly, you can't find a lobby that doesn't have atleast one headbutt spammer and one that hits you repeatedly when you get knocked out so you literally never wake up, they really need to revamp this combat its starting to get really dumb

[BIG WIRT ALERT]

Originally posted by Xandeta:

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Frankly, I wouldn't mind a game mode where all knockouts lasted 1 second such that they were mostly good for knocking people away, rather than knocking them unconscious to throw them onto train tracks or off of platforms.

I agree 100% with your post.
Getting knocked out for more than a minute is absolutely no fun, I can't even imagine a developer thinking this would be a good idea.

Gonna second this. The least fun thing is getting knocked out on the train platform level, watching as some incompetent turd takes 30 seconds dragging your body to the tracks, finally managing to toss you down there only for you to wait another 20 seconds for the train to come and finally end your suffering. Knockout time needs to be shortened in order to make good lifting and throwing skills essential. Unrelated but can we get text chat too?