Does punch strength matter?

[Stars-N-Stripes]

Played a few hours of this and I'm feeling like the strength of my punch does not really play a huge role. My knockout came from a couple hooks that were thrown lightly yet when I really connect nothing really happens, sometime I hear the guy grunt but wonder if it really matter how hard you punch in game?

[Ian (Sealost)]

Hello! I replied in that other thread (and it was a much longer reply than I meant to leave - sorry about that), but I wanted to respond to a few different things here, too.

The short answer is yes, but there are some caveats. The most straight forward one is that there are points on the opponent that cause more pain or brain trauma, and so will inflict more damage. It's possible to get knockdowns without hitting these spots, but it's much easier if you do so. You can see these points marked on the boxing dummy, and there's a stat on the read-out that shows the bonus damage you get from hitting them.

The more complicated caveat is that there is a system in place that monitors the force you swing with and adjusts all of your punches (by the same amount) to bring them within a certain range that the game is balanced around. I could write pages about why this exists, but I've probably already bored you too much tonight. The bottom line is that this system makes it so people don't have to throw harder than they are comfortable with and so people that are capable of throwing extremely hard (like pro boxers) don't trivialize the game and blow through all the opponents in seconds. It accomplishes that goal while also ensuring that your light hits count as light and your hard hits count as hard, with the full range of force in between. The primary downsides are that a) some people want to feel stronger than the system lets them and b) if you try to overcome what you've been adjusted to by swinging harder, the game is going to think you've been sandbagging and will adjust by making you weaker, which exacerbates why you tried to swing harder in the first place, which leads you to try to swing even harder, and so on.

You can turn this off at the bottom of the settings menu and set your own multiplier with the slider that appears (the slider defaults to the last value the game had adjusted you to), but generally I design the game around that setting being turned on and recommend you leave it on unless you're really having a problem with it. Generally, you'll want to focus more on hitting smarter, not harder, and aiming for weak points instead of just trying to put all the force you can into your swings.

The grunt signifies that you landed a hit the opponent found especially painful. You can win by score without getting any grunts, but it's hard to get a knockdown without throwing punches that cause grunts (although I think it's possible to land dizzying hits without them being hard enough to cause a grunt, and so you could land a handful of those in a short amount of time and stumble your opponent, but I'll have to double check that to be sure).

It's also possible that the game is misreading your high effort swings for some reason, and is actually reading them as lower force. You'll be able to check that out on the boxing dummy or heavy bag.

[Stars-N-Stripes]

Great info but I have a followup question. When I started I was swinging really hard, alot. Is the measure that adjusts how hard you swing done before each fight or is it done at the heavy bag and dummy and such? I think your approach you have is good, but wondering if I need to reset mine now that I have a good feel for the game and the pace I want to go. Great game so far, good workout and pretty realistic, enjoying it.

[Ian (Sealost)]

If you swing harder than the system has adjusted you for, then your damage for that single hit is instantly adjusted as if the system has recalibrated, but the system doesn't actually change your multiplier right away in case it was a fluke hit or a tracking skip. At the end of each round, the system looks at whatever your hardest hit was during that round and uses that to adjust your multiplier back up if needed.

So the multiplier goes down instantly but only goes up at the end of each round. It's designed around people swapping headsets or the game being used in a VR arcade setting, so there's no nothing sticking around long term.

[FreakoFreako]

Hi, I don't have this game since I don't have a VR yet (will soon though!). But I really appreciate your in-depth replies. I went from probably getting it to definitely getting it. Would love to support an active and passionate dev.. and the game looks awesome in the first place! :D

[Lazarus {FATE}]

This is a must have for your VR gaming. Even if getting in shape isn't a priority this game is worth the VR experience.

IAN is an prime example of what a game dev should strive to be.0
This forum has the best dev feedback of any game I've played in about 10 years.

[Ian (Sealost)]

I appreciate the kind words! I hope you enjoy the game, Daniel, and don't be share to share feedback after you get your hands on it.

[Germanban]

I've been reading all the (awesome) dev in-depth explanations about the auto calibration, and it does seem like a well thought out system that does its best to adapt the experience to very different people, but I think that I might share my -personal- experience with the system and what I've found to be the most satisfactory settings for me.

I started feeling that the auto calibration was giving me inconsistent results: sometimes what I thought to be devastating combos ended up feeling like mere tickling, and sometimes a quick left jab resulted in a knockout. Maybe my particular playstile just doesn't go very well with the auto calibration, but it reminds me of what the OP of this thread said.

So what I started doing is get the multiplier to manual 1.0x and then try to do a "boss rush". I customized the rounds to be set at 12 and all the enemy stats as default, and went from the first to the last opponent, seeing if it felt too easy or too hard.

If I managed to get to the last one with knockouts at the third round or so, I'd lower the multiplier. If I felt that the challenge was starting to feel impossible, I'd set it higher.

At the moment I'm comfortable at a 0.6-0.7 multiplier. The lower levels I can finish in about 3-4 rounds, and the last half usually take almost all of the 12 rounds (if I don't bit the dust earlier!)

This is also satisfying in the sense that I can feel a true sense of progression, as I can keep lowering the multiplier if I get better at the game.

That said, I'd like to know if I've been actually doing something wrong, specially when the dev says everything is designed around having the auto mode on... maybe I'm locking myself out of a nicer experience. And maybe some of you can share what you've done to adjust the game experience to your particular tastes.

All in all this is one of my fav VR games and I am amazed at the level of discussion and feedback present on this forum. The game is great, but the dev is a 12/10

[Ian (Sealost)]

Originally posted by Germanban:

One thing to note is that the auto-adjustment will only take your multiplier as low as 1x. So in your case it sounds like you need it lower than it will automatically adjust to. It's like this because some players are jumping in and blindly trying to put everything they have into throwing as hard as they physically can, way harder than they would ever try to muster during a real fight, and by doing so were tanking their multipliers and finding they had nerfed themself to the point where they couldn't hurt opponents at all with their normal swings. The 1x limit at least puts a floor on how badly they are affected by doing this. It's also based on swing velocities that pro boxers punch with.

Another thing to note is that the multiplier will adjust downward instantly if you start throwing harder than it has currently adjusted you for, but it will only adjust you upward at the end of the round based on how hard you punched during that round. Your multiplier value at the end of a bout carries over between matches and game sessions, too, so the only way to have you multiplier go up is to go an entire round from start to finish without throwing harder than you have before. Your jabs should not suddenly gain power mid-round, and in fact you should have to go an entire full round before they would then gain power starting at the next round.

Jabs, if detected correctly, also get a mass penalty that applies after the effect of the auto-adjustment. The auto-adjustment adjusts in such a way that you can't get a one-hit knockdown without hitting a weak point or without softening up the opponent by a substantial amount.

All of that combined means it's unlikely that the auto-adjustment was allowing your jabs to be knockout punches. This was probably from a combination of your jab getting erroneously registered as a cross (and avoiding the penalty), the opponent moving into your punch (which increases the force of the hit), you happening to get a lot of extra mass credit imparted into your punch (which is a bit hard to control and is currently too much - I'm reducing it in the next update), and you possibly getting credit for hitting a weak point somehow and/or you hitting an already weakened opponent.


Despite all that, you're absolutely right that the auto-adjustment changes can be noticeable, especially if you start out slow the first couple of rounds and then push yourself to hit harder in later rounds. You'll get more credit than you should for the light hits in the early rounds and feel like your hard hits in the later rounds aren't hitting hard enough compared to your previous light hits (which would suddenly feel much lighter as well).

Your method for dialing in on a multiplier that works well for you sounds like a good one, although I doubt many players will be up for playing 10 consecutive 12 round bouts. A nice quick way to get a baseline value is just to play through a full match with the auto-adjustment on. When you turn it off, the slider is set to whatever the auto-adjustment had you set you to, which is a good place to start from. In your case, it probably would have been 1x anyway.

Originally posted by Germanban:

This is also satisfying in the sense that I can feel a true sense of progression, as I can keep lowering the multiplier if I get better at the game.

I've actually made a change related to this in my current dev build to be released in the next beta update. Your multiplier will be shown at the home screen, so you'll be able to quickly see what it is at a glance. Some players had mentioned feeling progress as they continued to lower their multiplier to keep fights challenging, and I'm hoping that seeing the auto-adjustment lower it might have a similar effect for players that keep it on. It may also flush out some problems people are having with the system if they see the number jumping around too much.

Originally posted by Germanban:

That said, I'd like to know if I've been actually doing something wrong, specially when the dev says everything is designed around having the auto mode on... maybe I'm locking myself out of a nicer experience.

The main reason I encourage players to leave the auto-adjustment on is just because I've set the opponents stats based on the level of strength the auto-adjustment tries to set you to. If you have the auto-adjustment on and you say the opponent drops too easily, then I can have a discussion with you and be reasonably sure how effective your hardest hits are. If you are using a manual multiplier, I don't know if the setting you've chosen is appropriate for how you're punching, so the best I can do in that example situation is suggest that you lower your multiplier.

There's also a problem where people hear about the auto-adjustment and think that it sounds bad or that they don't need it, so they shut it off right away and pick an inappropriate multiplier, and then leave negative feedback. The auto-adjuster at least makes sure players are in the right ballpark to how the game is meant to be played (although the problem now is that people are jumping straight to the hardest difficulty...).

In previous versions, the auto-adjustment also handled poor form punches better than using manual adjustments did. That's actually still somewhat true, but its much closer now than it had been previous versions. Using a manual multiplier should still let you sneak in more "outlier" high force punches than the auto-adjustment does, leading to the occasional random knockdown that shouldn't have happened.

Originally posted by Germanban:

All in all this is one of my fav VR games and I am amazed at the level of discussion and feedback present on this forum. The game is great, but the dev is a 12/10

I appreciate it! Discussion requires at least two people, though, and I couldn't do it without people like you coming here to leave feedback. Thank you!