Ignoring game mechanics.

[Koarpse]

After not playing this game for four months I would expect some things to be different. I never expected this though. Everyone I mention this to does not seem to understand what I'm talking about either.

While warming up on dueling servers some people seem to be somehow attacking way faster than me. Do not get this confused with drags/accelerations. I'm talking about time between attacks. Although they do tend to sometimes just swing faster also.

A few examples:
• I start a swing/stab, I'm past my release phase. The other person starts their attack, then they hit me first. No accelerations.
• I block a attack with a shield or parry it. I go for the riposte, I start my swing. Then I'm hit mid-swing by the person that I just parry/blocked.
• Somebody is running at me from a distance. I start to stab, then they just do standard swing with no acceleration. They hit me first.
• The one I'm finding most though is that if I'm hit then my character will not respond to any block/chamber/parry actions I'm trying to perform before getting hit again. The only thing that I'm able to do is just look at the attack that I know I'm responding to.


I have a very good understanding of the games mechanics, and all this has done is frustrate me. If you have any information that would help me understand what's happening it would be much appreciated. At this point I just feel cheated because there's so many fights I have lost recently because of this, and it's going to drive me away from this game again.

[the one who fiddles]

- yes, accelerations or a vast windup difference on the weapons
- not an actual riposte. youre too late on inputting the attack and enter the parry recovery. after that you try to release a sloppy counter-attack, but your opponent gambled his hit.
- they started their attack first and/or have quicker windup
- chamber wont connect with a lot of the weapons, because you would need to start an attack. flinch mechanic prevents that. Parry doesn't connect because you just parried late, which is probably why you got hit. Your best bet when you do a late parry is to run away from the combo swing and hope for a recovery parry

[evil burger]

Gambler habits make you a worse player. You should be glad when you lose to them, because you therefore get better overall at recognizing people who don't respect during a turn based battle.

[Koarpse]

Originally posted by (´･ω･`):

Gambler habits make you a worse player. You should be glad when you lose to them, because you therefore get better overall at recognizing people who don't respect during a turn based battle.

I'm a bit confused at what you're saying.

[Starwight/ttv]

Originally posted by Koarpse:

Originally posted by (´･ω･`):

Gambler habits make you a worse player. You should be glad when you lose to them, because you therefore get better overall at recognizing people who don't respect during a turn based battle.

I'm a bit confused at what you're saying.

Guy thinks that, god forbid, you HAVE to have a turn based battle where one person swings, the other blocks, then attacks, then so on.

Game is Mordhau, not Final Fantasy 7, gtfo with that bs, that's MY philosophy.

[kappanata]

tl;dr: Just read the part that starts with "To summarise" in bold at the bottom.

Coming back to your original post: I started to feel the same way you described about the attacks. Coincidentally I came back to Mordhau after a pause too, but not that long. I started playing again when Feitora hit. I have read some posts about speedhackers running rampant, but I cannot say I ever really met one as of yet. I only had some doubts about a few players using blocking scripts, like blocking/chambering attacks too consistently in completely chaotic 1vX situations, but no speedhacks. My ping is around 50-60. I grew so paranoid that I have been checking the actual weapon speed stats as of late. However, to be fair, I always felt like that playing Mordhau, it was just more 'intense' feeling after returning back. My guess whatever skill I had just diminished. Also even if you have a low ping, you still need to keep in mind that whatever action the enemy does, you see it delayed because of the ping. Another possible cause, as I have come to know about during my studies, is the that the game is most likely interpolating everything that happens alongside witch mechanics such as client predictions, lag compensation and showing any actions that the client does in realtime as you press a button, even before getting processed by the server - which all together are techniques that help reduce network bandwith and in providing smoother online experience. The interpolation topic is quite a lot to go in depth in this discussion thread. The basic idea is to ntentionally make the clients show what has already happened on the server with a little delay, which helps to make the network experience much more smoother, eliminating issues like players visibly stuttering and teleporting due to changing the direction they were moving. But the client did not know that, and was predicting a movement based off of the old trajectory, making the real server side position and the client position different, and that then needs to be fixed - usually not by teleporting the player, but by smoothly moving him to correct position over time, for example by making him move a bit faster than is actually possible within the game rules, however doing it gently so it is not basically detectable during regular play. With a small delay put in, there is a time to prepare for this during that delay so this position correction does not need to happen at all, eliminating any issues like this if the client has a lower ping that is the forced interpolation delay. And even if you have higher ping, these corrections issues are drastically less visibly happening.

The theory of mine is simply that this forced delay and ping is the reason that enemy attacks tend to look faster then they are. They aren't, you only see them started some time after they actually did. Also keep in mind that any action you do is delayed in the eyes of the server. You pressed parry at the right time, but the server did not see it yet, making you get hit. You can actually notice this if you record a fight and then watch if frame by frame. I did that in Chivarly, I had a recording at 60FPS, and from the footage it was visible that it took about 4 frames of the parry animation before it actually started blocking. And most of the attack swings went in the target and then got out of their body and only then they would actually deal damage - upon leaving their hitbox, not entering it. This all taking about 4FPS as well. Yet enemy attacks and parries work exactly as expected, on the first frame, since the interpolation delay was enough for their client to send the message of the block/attack to the server and then for the server to relay that information to your client which then immediately drew the animation (and most likely sped it up a little to compensate for delay before you got the info that the action started, making it end at the same time for client and the server).

To summarise, in theory: from the server perspective, any action you do is delayed (ping) and any other people's action you see actually started way before when the game actually renders them (ping + interpolation). To help remedy this problem, the game might speed up the attack animation by a few percent to make the attack deal damage on the client (who got the information, that an enemy is performing an attack, late) at the time it deals damage on the server.

But of course I do not claim to be an expert on the topic. Most of what I said is based off of articles I read about the topic and my understanding of them. Also please bear in mind that it's pretty late at where I am, so sorry if I spilled some nonsense.

As an example, one of the articles I got my info from:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Lag_compensation
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Latency_Compensating_Methods_in_Client/Server_In-game_Protocol_Design_and_Optimization