Build 7: District and complete rebalance edition! news - Blade Symphony

Hi!

So this week, we have a couple of major things going out.

As usual, launch Sidekick to update your Blade Symphony to the latest Build! If this is the first time you install Blade Symphony, you can grab the full installer here (direct download) or here (torrent). If you need to grab the server package to update your server, you can find it here. If you're not participating in the beta yet, enter this code: ccdb5957d77f7f5d on the Blade Symphony beta page and join the duels!

The first of these things is this: we’re finally releasing District (huzzah!). It’s still closer to WIP than it is to being absolutely 100% complete, but it’s now in a playable state - and you can finally get your hands on it!

The Street

The Rooftop

The Alley

District, our third map, takes place in the heart of Annex’s slums - where paupers, vagabonds and immigrants go to hide from the Greater Wing’s Imperial Army, who very rarely leave the wealthy parts of the city. Annex is a great metropolis located at the very heart of the Known World - it was already the seat of the Black Rose's power before the advent of Greater Wing - whose inhabitants live surrounded by technology of a level unheard of by those living in the Known World's hinterlands. The Seven Rivers Administrative District (colloquially referred to as just "the District" by those unfortunate enough to live there) comes dangerously close to being a shantytown

The second major thing is that we’ve gone and drastically rebalanced all of our attack and block timings. It’s a pretty thorough work-over with pretty sweeping changes. We’ve listed as many of them as relevant in the changelog (just for the sake of keeping a record), but trust us when we say you won’t be able to tell the changes just from reading - you’ll have to go out there and play! These changes should go a good way towards making the game much more predictable and much easier to understand.

This turned out to be a pretty short post despite the big announcements! To compensate, here’s a very long changelog:

"Build_7_changelog" wrote:

Combat Balance Changes
• Made knockback more consistent. Knockback should now knock players directly away from each other.
• Knockback is no longer linked to damage, but to stance. Reverse stance has the lowest knockback, and Heavy stance has the highest knockback.
• Hit recovery from all attacks is now 0.5s. Block recovery is now 0.4s. Weak block recovery (when block color doesn’t match attack color) is now 0.7s.
• Block recovery times are now linked to stance and block type. Reverse attacks that are blocked take a long time to recover (1.2s). Balanced attacks have average blocked recovery (0.8s). Heavy attacks recover the fastest (0.15s). This makes Heavy attacks ideal for gaining frame advantage on a blocking opponent.
• Weak Block recovery has changed and now is also based on what the attacker’s stance was. For Heavy and Reverse attacks, an opponent weak block will cause the attacker to suffer 0.9s recovery. For Balanced attacks the attacker will only have 0.2s recovery. This makes Balanced attacks ideal for forcing weak blocks on an opponent and gaining frame advantage.
• Charge tiers now allow you to cancel the rest of the cooldown animation. Tier 2 charges cancel 20% of the remaining animation, and Tier 3 charges cancel 40% of the remaining animation. This allows you to chain combos out of Tier 2 and Tier 3.
• Revamped combo system. Additional hits in a combo now reduce each damage in the combo by 20% recursively. So for example, a Balanced -> Balanced combo will do (20+16) damage. Balanced -> Balanced -> Reverse will do (20+16+6), etc. Combos also increase knockback per hit, and the hit stun on the victim is reduced for every hit.
• Getting hit mid-string will now reset your string counter. Blocking attacks will not affect your string counter.
• Wall jump! Press dash or roll while facing a wall, and hold the forward key. This will allow you to flip back off the wall and avoid being trapped. After wall jumping, the cooldown for combat moves will be temporarily increased.
• Removed hit-stop animation freezing.
• Slowed down Reverse left attack.
• Tightened timing window for damage on balanced left and right attack.
• Sped up dash/shuffle animations slightly.
• Added dash and shuffle cancellation. You can now cancel the dash and shuffle animation by blocking.



Sword Balance Changes

• Staccato Black damage changed to 10/20/28 from 8/20/25. Added 90% less tier 3 damage ability. Added no damage scaledown ability.
• Grave Requiem damage changed to 10/24/45 from 8/18/40. 30% more tier 3 damage ability removed. Added 50% more knockback ability. Added 40% damage scaledown (default is 20%)
• Legato Splice damage changed to 10/15/25 from 10/15/20. Now charges up 17% faster instead of 15%
• Andante Incendio damage changed to 11/18/27 from 10/15/20. Removed its unique tracer particle effect.



Bug Fixes and Additions

• duel_district released!
• Added Dyssonance. 14/22/0 damage. Cannot use Heavy stance. 110% more knockback. 30% damage on tier 3 attacks.
• Fixed "sliding feet" animation issue.
• Fixed a prediction error that happens at the end of an attack.
• Fixed attack input buffer erroneously attacking more than once.
• Fixed an issue where the sword selection code ignored your choice at spawn.
• Fixed a bug where the game would try to change your sword immediately when you purchased a new sword.
• Allowed for changing tickrate via -tickrate startup options
• Added bb_string_reset (on by default) to reset string after the victim has been struck (hit, weakblock, unblockable).
• Added bb_debug_recovery to see exactly how long each stun is taking.
• Added bb_debug_comborecovery to see how much combo recovery affects hit stun.
• Revised bb_tracerdebug to show “hitboxes.”
• Made tracers fade out when they are no longer in “damage dealing” state.
• Added some code to prevent map changes while a duel is running.
• Fixed a memory leak with swords and ragdolls sometimes not being removed.
• Set default duel type back to arena queue.
• Added a HUD element to show your ready status while spectating.
• Made stance/string indicator not display during round start screen.
• Moved round start screen timer to the centre.
• Changed chasecam to POV cam.
• Reverse stance idle animation tweaked slightly (made smoother/less janky - no gameplay effect).