How I feel about this mod Thread - Evolution of Combat IV mod for Star Wars: Jedi Academy

Single player is an absolute joke. I'm sorry guys, but the only improvement from EOC III here is the 1080p compatibility. Absolutely none of the ridiculously OP enemies have been balanced. It honestly feels like I'm playing an unbalanced alpha version of JA, nevermind a 2015/16 mod. My deep love for star wars dragged me through this mod, but for the most part, it wasn't an enjoyable experience. I hoped for so much more. Here are some of the things that pain me.

-EVERY ranged class can kick and knockdown a jedi. Guys..............When did stormtroopers become tae-kwon-do black belts ????????? I know it can be blocked fairly easily but IT LOOKS ******* STUPID !

-Snipers have 100% aim bot, and force dodge when you shoot back at them. EVERY SINGE ONE HAS THE GREEDO SKIN. This just leaves me consistently shaking my head at the screen in utter disbelief that you didn't adjust them whatsoever from EOC III.

-Grenade throwers have absolutely no problem throwing grenades at themselves in order to blow you up.

-Blaster deflection. One shot deflected = 20/100 force points used. Jedi simulator this is not. Even the ealriest of padawans should be able to block an almost infinite number of blaster shots from one enemy, provided he/she is not running/jumping. Also the reflected shots are not aimed, they are randomly in the direction of the target.

-Bosses die almost instantly in comparison to the standard saber wielding opponents, who will take savage amounts of punishment, before falling over dead while you are blocking (passive saber damage fail. This is also a huge problem in MP, but I'll get onto that in a minute.

Now for the multiplayer, which is actually rather fun for the most part. The saber combat is done rather well, but it was done almost the same in EOC III too, so it's not an upgrade, and there is STILL no 1080p support. Here is what I don't like about multiplayer.

-Almost every fight ends with the Crouch+forward+attack move. It is even possible to jump in one direction, execute said move and completely change direction killing your opponent instantly. The saber blocking system works fantastic for standard strikes, but shows a glaring weakness to the uppercut move. The devs have been told of the player bases unhappiness with this many times, but have not even yet acknowledged this, let alone fixed it.

-Servers are massively unstable. 3 bots in a server will now crash it. Map changes and most clients will crash, or the server will just crash all together.

-Ranged classes. Because of the rarity of anyone actually hosting this mod (I have been keeping the community going almost single handedly by running my server) people feel empowered by choosing boba fett, and literally trolling the fuck out of everyone until they are vote kicked. But guess what.........vote kick means nothing as they can instantly rejoin.

-AI. Any AI using a saber will switch to niman (green style) even though they only have one saber. They will then procede to crouch and look totally stupid while dueling. After the duel they will find the nearest wall and start to crouch walk into it as if they are expecting to be transported to Hogwarts.

-Saber forms. Soresu is badly misrepresented. As a defensive form, you would expect defense. Not in the slightest. Big.......Slow.....Cumbersome strikes that are useful for nothing. Jar'Kai (dual saber fencing) is named AKIMBO. FUCKING AKIMBO !?!?!?!?! One simple google search would rectify this, but ofc, the devs know more about COD than Star Wars lore. Another form problem, is the fact you can no longer select which form you wish to have your character equipped with. You have them all, which means switching between your prefered styles mid combat to surprise your opponent is no longer viable. In EOC III this was not a problem as you could select which styles you want/didn't want in the class menu. When I made a post about this, the dev did not understand my complaint, which leads me to believe the current devs are not the same people as in EOC I, II and III.

-Complete lack of content. I loved the mod for a few days, having only played multiplayer at that point, but soon became bored as there is literally nothing to do but duel, and that becomes very stale quickly.

-Passive saber damage. This really pissed me off. Three times I have joined MattFiller's or Serenities server, and three times have I brought up the problem passive saber damage. The answer I got was bewildering, and made me question if they had even played any of the VERY well made and presented mods for JA. Let me explain. Passive saber damage is when your saber comes in contact with the opponent without you attacking, this may sound immersive, but it creates huge problems. For example, if you were to come at me in a duel, all I have to do is block, and walk forwards. All your attacks will be blocked and you will be taking constant passive saber damage, until you ofc die. Not many people are aware of this, but it's a total game breaker once you realize. It requires no skill at all to perform. I raised this issue with Matt Filler and his response was "why would we want to remove that ?". I then explained for a second time and he just ignored me and went off to duel someone. This was the final nail in the coffin for me, as it became pretty clear that they aren't interested in a GAME BREAKING exploit. Also passive saber damage leaves scorchmark lines on your opponent, so you may lose a duel and notice your opponent has been cut in to 39 pieces, yet has full health. The remedy for this ? remove passive saber damage, as MB2 have done. But I'm honestly sick to death of raising this issue and being ignored.

My honest advise for anyone reading this, is to not waste your time with this mod, and try Movie Battles 2 instead. It is far far superior in every way, and the devs will listen to, and address problems quickly, as opposed to the "I'm the dev I know better attitude"

This mod has been (and still is) a lot of work and has taken many years to perfect and get to the current state.

We have put a lot of time into this mod and our own money, all we get in return is the feedback from the community. We're not a professional games studio, we're a team of two guys with only one of those working on the main game features. No external funding or massive development team.

To have people writing reviews that only touch on the bad points of the mod simply isn't helpful, if you want to send us a bug report you should do it in the bugs forum section, and to tell us that we have the "I'm the dev I know better" attitude is quite hurtful, I monitor the ModDB page and Discord chat every day and we always take note of people's helpful and informative feedback. We regularly talk to and play with the community and are always working on bug fixes and new features based on what the community suggest. We've tried to be as open as possible about the mod and allow the players to influence the future of the mod.

I won't touch on every point you make here but know that it is noted for future updates, some of them are actually being tested at the moment. I will however say that I responded "Why would we want to remove that?" to your request because you asked me "Would you ever look at removing the saber scorch marks?". The scorch marks are a key visual component to the game, if you had asked directly about passive saber damage, me and Serenity could of talked through the specifics with you and tried to resolve the issue in a future update.

Thanks for playing and giving us your feedback, but please do it in a more constructive way and appreciate the work we've put into this project.

LOL. its never going to be everyone's cup of tea.most of that sounds like sore looser to me.

serenity937 wrote:

LOL. its never going to be everyone's cup of tea.most of that sounds like sore looser to me.

It's exactly this attitude I'm talking about, and always has been with you Serenity.

MattFiler wrote:

This mod has been (and still is) a lot of work and has taken many years to perfect and get to the current state.

We have put a lot of time into this mod and our own money, all we get in return is the feedback from the community. We're not a professional games studio, we're a team of two guys with only one of those working on the main game features. No external funding or massive development team.

To have people writing reviews that only touch on the bad points of the mod simply isn't helpful, if you want to send us a bug report you should do it in the bugs forum section, and to tell us that we have the "I'm the dev I know better" attitude is quite hurtful, I monitor the ModDB page and Discord chat every day and we always take note of people's helpful and informative feedback. We regularly talk to and play with the community and are always working on bug fixes and new features based on what the community suggest. We've tried to be as open as possible about the mod and allow the players to influence the future of the mod.

I won't touch on every point you make here but know that it is noted for future updates, some of them are actually being tested at the moment. I will however say that I responded "Why would we want to remove that?" to your request because you asked me "Would you ever look at removing the saber scorch marks?". The scorch marks are a key visual component to the game, if you had asked directly about passive saber damage, me and Serenity could of talked through the specifics with you and tried to resolve the issue in a future update.

Thanks for playing and giving us your feedback, but please do it in a more constructive way and appreciate the work we've put into this project.

Thanks for the reply Matt. My frustration comes from being ignored, or dismissed as I try to express these problems first hand, while the both of you are in game. I see that as the the perfect oppertunity to express any points we need to get across, yet it seems you both just want to play at those times, which I guess I can understand. I guess I feel let down by the fact I was literally keeping your community alive by running my server 24/7, restarting it every 10 mins for crashes even when I'm at work, so that other people can actually play the mod, as opposed to download it and say "oh, looks like this mod is dead already" and uninstall, only to have chances to show you things first hand and be brushed off. You're right, I should have just used the bug report section.

Look mate.

When a message starts like this.

"Single player is an absolute joke. I'm sorry guys, but the only improvement from EOC III here is the 1080p compatibility. Absolutely none of the ridiculously OP enemies have been balanced. It honestly feels like I'm playing an unbalanced alpha version of JA, nevermind a 2015/16 mod. My deep love for star wars dragged me through this mod, but for the most part, it wasn't an enjoyable experience. I hoped for so much more. Here are some of the things that pain me."

This looks to me like you have tried to play the mod and decided because it is hard now.that it is Unbalanced.

Ill make 1 point for you.

I dont know if you have seen any of my profile pictures or read any of the stuff.But im a 6ft 2inch 18 stone ex army sergeant.I served in the British Army for 18 years. I served in war 6 times doing a total of 5 years 7 months active war in a 18 year service.

A stormtrooper is a soldier trained from a very young age they live for 1 purpose only,to serve.

Like a stormtrooper i trained for years in different forms of combat from weapons to unarmed melee combat.

NOW i make my point. "In battle, if you are my enemy and you come within arms reach of me.........Im going to kill you" .If you come at me with a sword or knife or even lightsaber........Im going to kill you.......

The only way to stop me killing you...is for you to kill me.

If you expect this mod to be easy or even fair at times,then you have missed to whole point of the mod.

you missed the whole point of the research,the learning the coding,the working with other modders and the years of work.

Im sorry you dont like the mod.I truly am but this is my vision ,my interpritation,my creation..and its not going to be everybodys cup of tea.

You didnt ask my why things are the way they are.you didnt ask if i could explain some ideas we have put in to practice.you havent asked me why i made it this way and maybe explain my way of thinking.

NO you started with an insult and expected an intelligent response........the best response to an insult is to ignore it.

EXAMPLE:

"-EVERY ranged class can kick and knockdown a jedi. Guys..............When did stormtroopers become tae-kwon-do black belts ????????? I know it can be blocked fairly easily but IT LOOKS ******* STUPID !"

I still just dont know an intelligent response to a comment that thinks "NOT EVERYBODY CAN KICK SOMEBODY ELSE" "IIT LOOKS ******* STUPID !"...Who cares what kicking someone in the head looks like? stormtroopers are some of the best trained soldiers in the Galaxy.

This mod is not meant to be easy im going to leave you with this quoted post..hopefully it will help.

Hopefully you had a chance to see what we are trying to achieve .

1. Uniformity .

It always annoyed me that single player and multi player combat systems were different from each other. I understand why there different but i never liked it anyway.

The first task with the mod is to get mp/sp exactly the same (or a near as dammit) taking into account that 1 is played with 0 latency and the other could be 80-120 ping for some people.

2. Inspirations

My first and most important inspiration is the films.If you truly want to understand EoC sabersystem then you have to really,really watch the sabercombat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN7dkSIgYgE

Look how quigon Blocks,Dodges and moves his legs.The pace of attack and defence.He slaps and kicks his enemys "NO SILLY JUMPING ABOUT"

This is where the message is often lost.People compare the sabersystem to base,ojp Moviebattles etc etc.

It should (but sadly never has been) be compared to the movies style.

It contain elements and ideas from all mods,as all mods contain elements from the movies.

My second inspiration is The mods themselves.

Like everybody else i played all the popular mods,but in many cases i found them unbalanced or unfair.
Im not going to name any mods here because i dont want to start any pointless debate about opinions.

However ,In the early days some mods came out and were fantastic but as time went on they got updated and changed and on the way they lost something and it became more about Points and bars on the screen.People look to see the block point bar on the screen and can measure from there BP when to go for a kill.This is predictable and repetitive. It leaves little to the imagination and make sabercombat a simple routing that is followed to the letter or you fail.

I understand its "All about balance" so i decided to go back to basics (stawars basics ,whatever that means!).
Lets stick to sabercombat for now ill talk about guns later.I was in the British army for 18 years so i count myself as a bit of an authority on combat in general .

The sabersystem is built to allow much more freedom of movement.Im not going to talk code here but i did it by chaining and splicing lots of animations code in the sabersystem code.

I have not "AND NEVER WILL" write a tutorial for the sabersystem. I have made a video to get people started

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPJH8SNHGG0

But after that it is up to people to develop there own style- "Feel the force flowing through you".........Who said that?????

The sabersystem in mp and sp is almost identical so practice in the training room with tavion.

Some basic tips.

walking in close saber contact will reduce the amount of force used to block some types of attack .
Accurate blocking will tire your opponent quickly
Use of slaps and kicks in close combat is advised to stun your enemy and create a opening for attack.
Crouch or meditate to regain your forcepowers at x2 speed
Dont let your force powers drop below 25 fp in saber combat, blocking lightning can be very difficult at close range as close lightning now inflicts more damage and costs more to block .Warning Bots and Npc,s can see if your tired or low on fp by your animations and will strike harder if they get a chance.

:) Serenity 8-)

Lol is this the part where we compare dicks ? Come on man, lets not get all egotistical now.

It would seem you take for granted that I'm just some kid with no knowledge in combat situations what so ever. I'm a 29 year old professional mixed martial artist with moderate to high level skills in multiple disciplines. I am more than well aware that attempting to kick a person is a high risk scenario, especially against an opponent of equal or greater skill. It requires a perfect setup and perfect range management. It leaves you open and off balance (which makes me think, perhaps having the enemy fall over if blocked would be a solution). But we are not talking an unarmed martial artist here. We are talking a Jedi Knight. The absolute ultimate martial artist. While your coma at me with whatever and I'll kill you method may work against an untrained individual, it would be very foolish indeed to attempt to kick a trained individual armed with a knife, sword or indeed a lightsaber. What about snipers force dodging headshots ? did they teach you that in the military too ? + all enemies taking 15 sniper rounds to the head and still not dying ?

My overall point in this, is that you have forsaken star wars lore for the sake of unreasonable difficulty, and you must not have read my op where I stated that I have finished your mod, both JK and JA. I am not opposed to difficulty whatsoever, but there is a fine line between a challenge and quick saving every time you kill an enemy. The Dark Souls series are among my favourites of all time, and as much as it frustrated me when I lost an hour of progress, it always had me wanting to try again. Your mod just has me quicksaving every enemy I defeat, and adopting cheap tactics like hiding around a corner waiting for said army of greedo clones to run round and get sabered (quicksave).

Your combat is great for the most part, and for that you deserve a huge pat on the back. As a whole though, the differences from EOC III and IV are so small. Forget SP. Work on stability for MP and some more of the game modes and you may actually raise a community. There absolutely NEEDS to be a server hosted 24/7 or the mod will die.

Edited by: shacalboltx

I just want stormtoopers to have semi automatic weapons like in the movies lol. Being another martial artist myself, I do understand that a soldier kicking a Jedi down seems farfetched, but it is a sci fi fantasy universe. We aren't exactly going by standard universal laws.

Check one of the trailers for SWTOR, where a republic soldier on Alderaan tackles 2 different dark Jedi in a mad rush to get to Darth Malgus. Soldiers are trained in melee too. One guy I used to train with was a former British soldier (living in Ireland) and he was a very good boxer.

I think it adds a good feel of realism knowing that a soldier close to you in this game can kick you and knock you down if you aren't careful.

Personally I love this mod so far, it's perfect for duelling which is what I enjoy. I would like to be able to choose a specific style or two to specialize in, have more saber hilt options, have names attached to each style and so on, but so far I'm having fun.

There are bugs such as when I start the Rift mission (grave of a Jedi knight) and force push won't remove the debris blocking the entrance, and whenever I spawn a character (Darth Vader, Starkiller) they appear as Tavion or Desaan. The only other bug I found was when Rosh started shooting at me during the intro mission when I tried to chop down the second tree.

Hopefully the bugs can be addressed but keep up the great work guys.

Ok so... Serenity, you know me for thanking you and praising you, as much as for giving suggestion or pointing bugs. I try to be fair and I have to say that some complains are true, others not... Or maybe most of the problems are true, but he is not using a good way to tell it.

First... Yes, story mode is completely unbalanced. But guess what everybody... There are TWO DEVS. TWO FUCKING DEVS and they are not gods. Serenity does not live from this. We haven't even pay him a penny, and we are so much demanding with him... I think he had an easier time when he was in the army. For sure he was less stressed. He had his fucking house flooded, he was able to get a permission in order to not going to work for the time he rebuilds the house, but still has to go working when he has this permission ended. While he has this permission, he will be more focused in building back his house rather than working in EoC for us. And guess why, shacalboltx... BECAUSE IS MORE IMPORTANT HAVING A HOUSE TO LIVE THAN MAKING OR PLAYING A MOD. FUCKING TARD.

Now, about the things wrong with SP and MP.

Yes, is true, Serenity. Didn't want to press you up, but there are some flawss that completely destroy the game. Grenades do not hurt the one is launching it (fix it plz), bots launch grenades by his side... The aim bot is impressive, meaning they can hit you even if you are running or moving... And is not easy to point at a moving target, even less when he is a fucking jedi running. And yes, the hits take too much FP frome each shot. You should make a system so that each shot takes 5 or 10 FP but get's multiplied x1.5 when being hit by the side, and x2 when being hit by the back. Or at least when you are a Jedi Master with Defense at level 3 and a defensive style.

Also, imo, I told you that you should be making Forms with treats or perks that change the different styles of each form in order to reflect the nature of each Form. But separate it from the styles, because styles are kit of attacks, and maybe 2 distinct forms could be using the same attack kit but in a different way. For example, the yellow style could be used in ataru as much as in Djem So or Makashi or even Soresu, since it is a generic move kit. But each one of the forms would provoke different consecuences when hitting, because one would hit harder, the other one a little bit faster, and another one would try to turn an attack from the enemy into a defense opening.

Jedi, as Stormtrooper, are soldiers. Philosophical soldiers, they have a lot of thinking training and they have the Force as a tool. They are STRONGER than stormtroopers, and this should be able to be seen in the game. Even though, at the same time, Stormtroopers should be a challenge to any Jedi which is not completely aware. Yes, yes, Jedi have the Force, but the force does not always tell you you are being pointed in the head, or Jedi wouldn't have died with order 66. Is the job of the player not to underestimate the bots. But anyway, currently they are too strong, specially in long distances.

Personally, I think that the base JA is a very simple game. We should aim more towards a RP experience to get more realistic with the SW lore. Perks would be ideal to represent how a character grows.

The problem Serenity, is that you are taking TOO MUCH JOB for only one person. There are a lot of bugs, flaws and other things, and you can't handle it alone. If possible, I'd like you to stop the development for some days, and instead of taking all this work alone, talk a little bit more with the community in the chat and ASK FOR HELP. Ask FOR ANOTHER DEVELOPER.

And for all the people around here pointing the bugs... Is ok to point the bugs, but if you know any dev with experience with JA, TALK THEM ABOUT THIS MOD. Try to put them in contact with Serenity. Cause this community madly needs another developer if we want the mod to keep growing. One person alone can't make a game. It's simply impossible.