Hello everyone,
After working so long on the game’s mechanics considering only one weapon, the Greatsword, I would have never thought that I could have other 4 new weapons in such a short time. But here we are! 4 new weapons to kick your opponent’s a** with :).

The hardest part was finding parameters to play with to give benefits and disadvantages to each weapon in order to have a ground on which to tweak values to obtain balancing.
This wouldn’t have been as hard if the Tug-of-War gamemode wasn’t one-hit-kill, but this is a crucial rule for the gamemode’s effectiveness, hence Damage was not a parameter I could rely on.
So, for example, what advantage can an unbalanced, slow, heavy blunt weapon like the Warhammer have against a Greatsword? … Well, it took me a while, and the idea I came up with was… A bad one :) I decided to make blunt weapons unblockable! Yay, that meant that each time you found yourself fighting an opponent with a blunt weapon, the whole blocking system became useless, and consequently the directional attack from the opponent’s standpoint. Luckily, the idea wasn’t 100% bad, it simply needed more thinking. Blunt weapons have a stronger impact, I needed to give relevance to this, and if it couldn’t translate in delivering more damage, nor in being unblockable, then what could it do? … The answer to this was that It can be blocked but it will still deliver its impact, this translates into the player not being able to counter-attack immediately. I stuck with this solution, and it seems to work fine and wepons like this can suit players that prefer focusing more on timing and footwork and relax a bit more in terms of reflexes. In the GIF below you can see how the hammer’s impact stuns the player who just blocked the incoming attack.

So in the end, the parameters on which I can tweak balancing of weapons are:

-Range
-Speed
-Impact on parry
-Animation telegraphing

The last point refers to how many visual cues the animation gives before a strike happens, which makes it easier for someone to understand the direction of attack. The spear is the most effective weapon in this aspect, since all attacks are thrusts, so they are pretty similar.

The Warhammer is slightly shorter than the Greatsword, it is slower, but can’t be counterattacked.

The Spear is substantially longer than the Greatsword, it is hard to use at close ranges, it is hard to predict.

The One-Handed Sword is short and very fast, also kind of hard to predict.

The Mace, finally, is slightly longer than the One-Handed Sword, not as fast, but still fast, and can’t be counterattacked.

Your feedback is crucial!
I could only test these a bit against AI. It is 100% sure that there are things to tweak, and that there will be an OP attack or something, so if you guys can share your experience and give me suggestions I would be very grateful!

I hope you enjoy the new release! :)

‘Till Next time,
Johnny Dale Lonack

You can follow the game here:
Website: https://johnnylonack.wixsite.com/griefhelm
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