Feedback about the AI

[Hakon Thorstensson]

Intro (feel free to skip the intro if you want to get straight to the point)
I may be getting a bit harsh in this threat, so I wanna start with this:
Blade & Sorcery has literally been the reason for me to finally buy my first VR Headset and I have never regretted it since. I was here since U7 and enjoyed the Journey, both in gameplay and in watching the game grow until full release.
It is still my absolute favourite VR-Game across all Genres and even if some other game may become my new favourite some day, I doubt that in terms of melee fights any game in the near future will be able to shove B&S off it's throne in my gamer heart.

That being said, I did have some expectations that ended up in disappointment.
One of them and probably the biggest one is the AI.
But even though disappointment is a strong emotion, I'll try to keep it as constructive as I can.

The AI doesn't seem to have improved in the release patch. I know you did some significant improvements in one of the late early access updates, which I do appreciate, but I was hoping for something big regarding the AI in the release version. In my opinion, the AI is NOT release worthy.

The feedback
Overall behavior:
The AI does seem to have it's moments where the NPCs to flank you instead of just being completely braindead. That's great!
Their situational awareness seems to be pretty non existent otherwise. Though it is fun to trick them into hitting each other, it would be more rewarding if it wasn't so easy. Ranged NPCs, no matter if Archers or Mages, simply ignore the fact that an ally is in their way and just shoot. And the attacks of the melee NPC make it easy to make them hit each other too.
Which brings me to my next point, which is the most important one in my opinion.

Melee behavior, parrying/blocking and animations:
The melee fighting of B&S for me is the core mechanic and it's biggest selling point (for me), because the melee physics are the best in VR. Period. There's no other game that does it this good and yes I AM aware of Swordsman VR, I own it, I play it sometimes, it's just not IT compared to B&S.

The melee NPCs in B&S seem to be somewhat aware of the length of their weapon, yet they seem to underestimate their reach and get in closer than they should. If their damage output wasn't set in stone, but determined by physics instead, they'd usually end up not causing too much damage due to hitting you with the lower third of their blade or even the guard.
With very short weapons, like the really short axes or daggers, they basically come to hug you. If you threaten them with your sword, they try to avoid the point, but they'll just side-step and come hug you.
Don't get me wrong, in general this is exactly what you would do if you had a dagger. Try to get in close quickly, while avoiding the opponent's blade... But in combination with their animations and their hesitation to attack it's absolutely janky.

So, choice of fighting distance is the one thing. The other thing is self preservation.
Yes, you did improve their parrying well. Still I think it's way too easy to get around their parries, especially with thrusts. I think this is at least partially due to their poor distance management. And in addition to taking a step back IN GENERAL they should also do some side steps or a step back while parrying. Those side-steps especially in response to thrusts (for example a sidestep to their left while pushing your weapon to their right when you try to thrust them) could prevent thrusts from being the OP 100% sure way to end the fight now. This would be realistic and even give them the opportunity for an attack on a now opened up player. And it would be more fun.

I'm guessing the reason for this not to be a thing in B&S is the animations. Which brings me to a little rant about pretty much all VR Melee games.
OLD BIG TELEGRAPHING ANIMATIONS ARE OBSOLETE FOR VR!!!!
Sorry, I had to let that out, because I see this in every VR game...
The reason why in games the animations have always been these big swings with big windups is the fact that you as the player were not reacting with your own body, but with your controller/mouse/keyboard, starting your own animation with the press of a button.
This is not how we fight in VR though! We can react to any movement of our opponent in realtime! This is why the enemies are so easy to dominate in a duel. Basically you can just wait until they want to start an attack and just thrust...
So the animations are the reason why duelling in B&S is so easy but also why it sometimes is very hard to parry them. Because the animations B&S is using are low quality ones. When the enemies start an attack, their sword arm basically gets almost TELEPORTED to the starting position of the animation, so you can't read what they're gonna do by just watching them. For most animations this isn't a problem because they're slow enough to let you prepare for it while they are swinging. It is especially tedious for some quicker swings and thrusts though.
If not a new fighting system for NPCs, B&S at least needs new animations for them.
I think a system that would work well with B&S is the combat system of Kingdom Come Deliverance. Different stances (guards) will cause different attacks. Much like in real-life. Your attack starts from where you weapon is, when you started your attack.
In B&S this would mean that the player can read from where to expect the attack (if the npc doesn't switch the guard quickly before attacking or feints) and the attack animation doesn't need a windup animation or slow swing. So NPCs that are trying to parry could adjust their guard to what the player is doing and NPCs that are trying to atack could adjust their guard to a position where starting a strike would get around the player's guard if they don't react and even try to confuse the player by changing the guard and feinting.

I get that this is a lot of work and expensive to make, probably even requiring motion capturing and I don't know if it's possible for B&S, but at least something better than the cheap basic animations that basically ANY early access game seems to be using could be a big improvement!
Especially if it's done for different weapon types. Oh yeah... weapon animations...

It seems that due to the lack of animations, the NPCs are still only able to use onehanded slashing weapons. Any thrust only or twohanded weapon is not used by them (except for longswords which DOES look quite odd)

If I could choose between limiting the NPCs available weapon types, but overhauling their animations to make them decent duelists like I described or keeping the crappy animations and adding new ones for more weapon types... I'd choose the first option though. More diversity in fighting styles for the NPCs is great, but not if quantity means lack of quality. At the current state the B&S NPCs lack BOTH though. Which is something I accept in an early access game, but in a released game, it's bad. It feels W.I.P..
I always considered the NPCs fighting animations as placeholders until you delight us with good ones. Now that they're still there in release I am afraid that they're going to stay for good, which is a BIG disappointment.
Fighting NPCs feels more like exploiting poor animations than actually fighting and the only way they can become a challange at all is by being outnumbered and not using fancy magic.


Sorry for the ranting, but I hope you still find constructive feedback in this and will be able to use it in B&S or at least in a future project.
B&S has revolutionized VR Sword-fighting, but is far from using the full potential.
Which won't keep me from loving the hell out of it, of course.

[Solinarius☕]

While I share in your disappointment, I knew what I was getting into when I bought this game. Or I thought I did? I'm honestly amazed Warpfrog scrubbed every single mall ninja attack in favor of something a player can actually engage with. Those spinning and jumping attacks were hysterically bad compared to what we have now. Still, it's important to remember B&S is designed as a power fantasy first. In my opinion, parry recoil not being an in-game option to disable is ironclad proof of that.

Enhanced Difficulty has been my go-to mod since its release to make NPCs more lively (they attack relentlessly once in reach) to engage with in a serious manner; can't wait for 1.0 edition of that! When I say "engage with," I must stress that it is by choice and always will be with the game's current design. I'm on board for the enactment of martial treatises, and I must say it's challenging to maintain despite how wooden NPCs are. Now that global damage values are easily customized, I can raise them through the roof and be rightfully punished for mistakes.

I'm curious about how you play the game, OP. Have you tried ignoring the fact that you can thrust-to-win? I know it's silly to actively give NPCs due respect like an actual opponent, but it works for me.

[Hakon Thorstensson]

Originally posted by Solinarius:

While I share in your disappointment, I knew what I was getting into when I bought this game. Or I thought I did? I'm honestly amazed Warpfrog scrubbed every single mall ninja attack in favor of something a player can actually engage with. Those spinning and jumping attacks were hysterically bad compared to what we have now. Still, it's important to remember B&S is designed as a power fantasy first. In my opinion, parry recoil not being an in-game option to disable is ironclad proof of that.

Enhanced Difficulty has been my go-to mod since its release to make NPCs more lively (they attack relentlessly once in reach) to engage with in a serious manner; can't wait for 1.0 edition of that! When I say "engage with," I must stress that it is by choice and always will be with the game's current design. I'm on board for the enactment of martial treatises, and I must say it's challenging to maintain despite how wooden NPCs are. Now that global damage values are easily customized, I can raise them through the roof and be rightfully punished for mistakes.

I'm curious about how you play the game, OP. Have you tried ignoring the fact that you can thrust-to-win? I know it's silly to actively give NPCs due respect like an actual opponent, but it works for me.

I absolutely agree. It got much better and I know that the power fantasy is kind of a thing in the game, but being able to avoid getting hit by melee enemies just by casually walking backwards... ooof... This is not just power fantasy, I think it's lazy (or maybe lack of budget for better animations?). I don't feel powerful at all crushing little beatles who don't even get the chance to fight back...

I did like enhanced difficutly and It'll definitely be part of my load order once it's updated for 1.0, but it still doesn't fix the main issue for me here and that's the absolutely poor animations.
As I said that kind of animation is okay for non-vr games, but since VR let's us react in realtime with our real movements, that kind of animations is just not working anymore. Animations need to become much more realistic. Or (but that's probably too performance heavy and very complicated to code) attack animations need to be thrown out of the window and instead the NPCs use realtime physics for their attacks (like in the Half Sword Demo).

To answer your question:
Yes I did try to avoid thrust for win and patiently waited for NPCs to attack me so I can parry and riposte (and in U12 with Enhanced AI I sometimes just let them attack and tried to parry, which is fun, but since the animations are quite janky and sudden, sometimes it's just a gamble). It's enjoyable, but I don't really want to have to do that in order to have to parry at all. Especially not when I'm playing a progression mode.

You're right that B&S is not all about realism or making fighting a single NPC a challange. But I wish they would at least give you a more engaging fight as long as you don't use spells.
The power fantasy part can be fulfilled by all the spells anyway.
To me, the way the NPCs fight currently, looks still like early access to me and not like a released game. And that's what really disappoints me. It feels rushed to me.
I feel more like an executioner in the game than someone who's fighting, unless I intentionally fight slow and cinematic. There's fun in that for a while, I agree, but imagine playing a racing game and you're given a Le Mans Racer while the other racers only have a stock Fiat 500. "Heeey.... I won... again... while the other's still have 10 laps to go... wooo... achievement... *bored cheering nouses*"

Sarcasm aside. I see your point and as I said I still enjoy B&S as my favourite VR game, but this really has disappointed me (among other things).
If the feedback comes too late for B&S or is irrelevant for it because WarpFrog wanted it to be the way it is now, I hope my feedback is at least helpful for maybe a future project.
Hell if they released a Blade & Sorcery game without the Sorcery and focussing on the melee combat and making the enemies a challange (without just lazily making them tanky, like other games), I'd pay a full triple A price for it!

[Solinarius☕]

I feel more like an executioner in the game than someone who's fighting, unless I intentionally fight slow and cinematic.

Fighting for real is not often cinematic. When applying treatises in sparring, there is an initiative which often plays out as casual weapon binding or some kind of gestural deception. The intent is to probe for weaknesses. It could last less than a second or for as long as necessary to stay safe. If you are treating NPCs with this kind of "respect," it can give them the chance to slip an attack through if you make a mistake. In my opinion, it feels quite natural even though I know I can just rush in and stab. In a real fight, you wouldn't rush unless you are certain of your initiative because a suicidal opponent can get you and them killed.

I'm sure many would say the above is just pure mental gymnastics. All I would say in response is that it still feels good. As I'm not part of a HEMA community, all I have is Blade & Sorcery.

[Hakon Thorstensson]

Originally posted by Solinarius:

I feel more like an executioner in the game than someone who's fighting, unless I intentionally fight slow and cinematic.

Fighting for real is not often cinematic. When applying treatises in sparring, there is an initiative which often plays as casual weapon binding or some kind of gestural deception. The intent is to probe for weaknesses. It could last less than a second or for as long as necessary to stay safe. If you are treating NPCs with this kind of "respect," it can give them the chance to slip an attack through if you make a mistake. In my opinion, it feels quite natural even though I know I can just rush in and stab. In a real fight, you wouldn't rush unless you are certain of your initiative because a suicidal opponent can get you and them killed.

I'm sure many would say the above is just pure mental gymnastics. All I woulds say in response is that it still feels good. As, I'm not part of a HEMA community, all I have is Blade & Sorcery.

I know a real fight wouldn't be cinematic and I'm not saying they should go for HEMA level realism. But the level it is at right now it's just crushing beatles with your foot. I guess it's cinematic if you define it the classical hollywood way where the baddies just politely wait for the main character to destroy heir buddy before attacking them or being the next victim that gets destroyed without even attacking.

That's fun in sandbox, too, but still, there's no challange.

I probably just had the wrong expectations (even though I still think these animations look like early access placeholders) due to B&S having the most realistic physics in any comparable game. so it does have an immense potential for a realistic or at least semi-realistic combat.