Game Update. Melee Combat! Competitive Play - 30% Off

Holdfast: Nations At War has been updated. Sound the drums of competitive fervour as the much-anticipated melee combat update is here! Test your might in the all-new Melee Arena game mode with the improved combat mechanics.

Expect to see an end of match score breakdown screen to boast about your standing, a whole lot of server-side and bandwidth optimisations for smoother gameplay, configurable crosshair styles, new maps, reflective damage to encourage team play and more!

Check out our latest blog post for how we’re going to change the way we deliver updates and what’s next in line for Holdfast: Nations At War. We’ll also be going into detail about our future plans for melee combat mechanics. We’re not done just yet.

Before you have a read of our rather lengthy blog post, take a quick look at our release trailer for this update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kY_xlsmrSs

Holdfast: Nations At War is now 30% Off for the duration of the Halloween Sale to celebrate the update’s release. It would be great if you can help us spread the word around about the sale to bring this genre of Musket Warfare games that we all love in the limelight. We want to continue strengthening the following behind the game as it grows and develops.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/589290/Holdfast_Nations_At_War/

Melee Combat! Game Mechanics

The 1st melee combat focused update is here! Direct improvements towards feinting mechanics, unrestrictive movement, new damage mechanics, fixes to a whole lot of glaring bugs which impacted high-level play and an unprecedented amount of underlying code-base iterations had to be undergone by the development team to make all of this a possibility.

Here’s an overview of what we’ve done for melee combat in this update.

- Fluidity & Responsiveness
As we were investigating various causes of what caused a severe lack of fluidity and responsiveness in the melee combat mechanics, we discovered several instances were an extra amount of delay was being added way over and above the player’s latency. Since the engagements are fast-paced, the delay will throw off the player breaking responsiveness. We made sure to tackle these issues during the development of this melee combat update.

Transitions between going from a block to a strike and a strike to a block were also improved upon. You can find more detail about this in the section detailing feinting mechanic changes.

There are a lot of factors that play into ensuring fluidity and responsiveness whilst engaged in melee combat. Everything from optimisations, sounds, animations and the mechanics that make this system work tie into one another. We’ve already gathered a few great ideas for what we can do to continue improving upon this in future updates.

- Movement
It wasn’t doing melee combat any good that as soon as you try to move backwards, you’re suddenly restricted to the walking speed. This was preventing players from being able to evade enemy strikes using this specific movement as well as ensured a very sudden death whilst engaged in melee with multiple opponents. There was no way for players to get out of a sticky situation and position themselves better before once again engaging their opponents.

Therefore, we’ve increased the rate at which you move backwards as well as while strafing. Movement still remains the same whilst moving and aiming or reloading.

- Glaring Bug Fixes. High-Level Play
It’s going to be a tad too long to list all the bugs that were previously present in the other game version’s melee combat mechanics. Players killing one another without an animation, strikes blending between one another whilst blocking becoming impossible to block, inconsistencies between strike speeds from the same direction, players speeding up when feinting between melee strikes and the list goes on.

Ensuring consistency is of the utmost importance for high-level play.

- Damage Mechanics
We’ve also changed the way damage works. Several modifiers that either increase or reduce your damage depending on how close the enemy is, the duration the strike stays in flight, the direction you are moving and if the other player is aiming or reloading will determine the number of strikes you have to land on your opponent before they meet their end.

It was specifically designed to provide players with an additional mechanic within the melee that players can learn and employ to kill their opponents more effectively. If done right, for instance, a musket can kill an opponent within two strikes.

Here’s an explanation of the various modifiers we’re using to calculate damage.

Base Damage - This defines the base damage a strike deals for each and every weapon depending on the direction the strike is coming from.

For instance, striking an opponent with an up strike from a sword to the player’s head will deal the most damage of all the strikes. Then we configure this value in a way were the right and left swings deal an equal amount of damage but less than that of the up strike and lastly, the lounge attack deals more damage than the left and right swings but less than the up strike. Up strikes with a sword are difficult to land, but if you do, you’ll deal enough damage to kill your opponent below two strikes.

Duration Multiplier - Then, the duration multiplier either increases or decrease the damage that you deal depending on how long the strike stays in flight. Slashing weapons aren’t affected as much by this multiplier.

Distance Multiplier - This multiplier either increases or decreases the damage that you deal depending on the distance between you and the other player. Don’t stay up close and ‘face hug’ other players if you want to end your opponent quickly. Stay a good distance away from your enemy as you slash or stab towards them.

Momentum Multiplier - Momentum. Striking while going forward will deal more damage than doing so while strafing or going backwards.

Fiddling Multiplier - If you spot an enemy aiming or reloading his firearm, be sure to hit him with your melee weapon. You can very easily end them with a single blow.

Damage by flag bearers has been significantly reduced. It is now used as a support weapon to keep enemies at a distance rather than it being the greatest offensive tool in the game. The flag bearer still retains his usefulness as a support class by buffing friendly players.

There will be several changes to balance out this new addition to melee combat as we progress forward with the development of Holdfast: Nations At War.

- Feinting Mechanics
Feinting mechanics offer an alternative way of landing a strike on an enemy by quickly changing your strike to another direction. Besides fixing a whole lot of bugs that were present in the previous version, we’ve also engaged with the community to figure out ways on how to make the mechanic feel more responsive.

One of the most significant changes is that you can now cancel a strike and change to another at any point during its ‘flight time’. There are two styles on how you can employ feinting as well.

Tap Feinting - If you tap between an attack and a block or a block to an attack to feint, you’ll get the most out of the mechanic. It is harder to get the right timing than the feinting style described below but you’ll be rewarded for it.

Hold Feinting - Players can also feint from one strike to another by holding left click then using the block button to switch from one direction to another. This is easier to employ than the style mentioned above but is less effective.

- Melee Related Game Options
We highly suggest that you customize the below settings to your liking to get the most out of melee combat. As the skill gap increases, even the slightest of differences will impact gameplay. All these adjustable settings can be found by going to the game’s settings then selecting the ‘Game’ tab.

Melee Combat Mouse Sensitivity - This mouse sensitivity slider has a direct impact on how fast your turn whilst meleeing.

Same Attack Sensitivity - This slider directly impacts the movement you need to make to switch between one block and another. We highly recommend you set this value to 1.

Melee Cam Distance - The camera distance when in melee combat. Some players prefer having this a bit further away or closer to the player whilst in melee. Adjust this to your liking from the Game options menu.

Auto Bayonet Switch - If this setting is turned on, you can go into melee mode from firing mode by pressing left click when equipped with a musket. Some players prefer having to always press the ‘X’ key to go into melee and this option allows you to do so.

- Hit Reactions & Stuns. Favouring The Blocker
We’ve spent a good deal of development time in this update ensuring that blocking is mechanically responsive. There were several instances in the previous updated which restricted the player from blocking which have since been removed. It is always best to favour the blocker.

With this update’s release, you’ll notice a hit reaction animation being played when your character receives damage. This serves as an indication that the next move you should be making is to block the opponents strike. Strikes will also no longer go through the terrain, other friendly players or objects in the world map.

Latency always plays a role in responsiveness. You’re better off hopping on a server that reflects the region you’re from.

- Hitboxes
We’ve also made sure to start looking into the hitboxes issues that sometimes occurred whilst engaged in melee combat. Development on solving the entirety of the hitbox issues is still ongoing but a great majority of your strikes should land pretty much on point.

It is highly recommended that you join a server that correctly reflects the region you are from. Hitboxes and even melee combat itself will feel less responsive as your latency (ping) increases.

- Optimisations
This is also yet another factor that impacts responsiveness on melee combat. Due to the unprecedented amount of changes done in this area, we decided to dedicate an entire section further down in our blog post specifically for this.

We’ve spent the last few weeks of this update’s development optimising the game server to reduce latency when a lot of players are in close proximity. Servers are now running at a solid framerate even when those glorious massive charges are happening.

We’d like to put our promises up front and once again state that our dedication towards continuing to improve upon the melee combat mechanics still stands. We’re on the lookout for community feedback. More on this up next.

Melee Combat! Future Plans

We’re not done just yet. We’ll be giving the community some time to get accustomed to the improved melee combat mechanics before once again engaging in another discussion to plan and design yet another melee-combat focused update. As always, the community will be involved in this process.

The introduction of secondary attacks to break an opponent’s block, increase the fluidity between certain animation transitions, looking into ways on how to further improve upon hitboxes, and increased damage when striking at an opponent’s back are some of the early suggestions that we’ve gathered on how we can continue improving on the mechanic.

If you have an avid interest in this mechanic, we highly recommend that you join in on our Discord. DM one of the developers or use the feedback channel to let us know your thoughts. We’ll be there listening to your feedback.

https://discordapp.com/invite/holdfastgame

Melee Arena Game Mode! Test Your Might

Charge into battle in the all-new Melee Arena game mode! You will only come equipped with a bayoneted musket or a sword as you attempt to fend off your enemies. Come up with new strategies on how to best your opponents before the arena gates open throwing you in a single-life team-based battle to the last man standing.

As the all-new arena game mode kicks off in its popularity, you’ll be seeing more and more maps designed for this specific purpose get into the game. For now, we have nothing less than 6 maps for you to check out!

Sacred Arena

Palisade Arena

Castle Arena

Watchtower Arena

Fort Arena

Garrison Arena

This game mode will also set a great precedent for us to continue refining melee combat when multiple opponents are engaged in a group fight. We’re also open to hosting servers in other regions depending on the demand.

We’re sure that having this mode support multiple rounds will come forward as a suggestion from our community. We’ve already started developing a system that’ll do just that. It’ll be introduced in a smaller update. You can have a read on how we’re changing the way we deliver updates further down below.

Melee Arena Official Servers

• Anvil Game Studios Official EU4 - Melee Arena
• Anvil Game Studios Official EU5 - Melee Arena
• Anvil Game Studios Official NA4 - Melee Arena
• Anvil Game Studios Official NA5 - Melee Arena

End of Match! Boast About Your Standing

What greater way is there to reward those players who have been investing a lot of time and effort into refining their skills than to have their names displayed at the very top? We’ll be providing you with a damned great way to boast about your standing.

The top five players at the end of every match will find their names neatly presented in a dedicated screen when the match ends. If you didn’t do well enough to find yourself placed amongst those few, we reserve a dedicated section to inform you of your standing for that particular match.

Oh yes, indeed. You will be able to find this screen present at the end of the match of each and every game mode in the game. Army Assault, Army Deathmatch, the new Melee Arena, Naval Battlefield and all the other modes in the game. It’ll certainly become a very handy tool for competitive play.

Linebattle Maps. Various Sizes

Along with the addition of Grassy Plains 3 (L), we’ll be introducing two new other variations of plains maps in this update. The regimental community expressed that the existing plains maps weren’t suitable for regiment vs regiment line battle play due to their sheer size so we’ve designed two smaller variations to rectify this. Snowy Plains 1 (S) and Desert Plains 1 (S) are now playable in the game.

Grassy Plains 3 (L)

Desert Plains 1 (S)

Snowy Plains 1 (S)

Reflective Damage. Team Play

In an effort to encourage more team play on public servers, we’ve introduced a system that inflicts a certain amount of damage to the aggressor when hitting a friendly player with melee weapons or firearms.

We’ve also made sure that reflective damage is configurable through the server configuration file so players can host events with the settings that suit them best. You can either completely disable reflective damage or adjust the reflective damage received to a value of your liking.

We’re sure that players will find the chances of getting shot at reduced whilst engaged in a melee combat duel or a group fight as a welcoming addition.

Servers. Performance Optimisation

Optimisations are of the utmost importance to ensure smooth gameplay. The team here has spent an unprecedented amount of time and effort during this update’s development optimising bandwidth to improve responsiveness, solving performance issues with 3D VoIP and improved its quality while we were at it, plugging leaks which were causing server-side performance to degrade over time and re-writing various parts of the code-base for game servers to run more efficiently.

We’ve also done a lot of work to fix performance issues with servers when a lot of players are in close proximity. It’ll certainly come in handy for those maps designed with the intent of promoting closer engagements. Not to mention the glorious all melee charges during line battle events.

We’re fully aware of the importance of optimisations. Development on this will be ongoing throughout Holdfast: NaW’s full release.

Changing The Way We Do Updates. Feedback

We’ve heard time and time again that the community would like updates delivered in smaller but more frequent batches. Don’t you worry however, we’ve gone ahead and done something about this as well!

We’ve optimised our development pipeline to allow for more flexibility. For instance, while development on a time-consuming update is taking place we will fill those gaps up until its release with other updates containing new maps, quality of life and other smaller additions to keep a constant flow of content going into the game. We will also be hosting more public BETAs leading to those larger game update releases.

The content being produced by our development team will be delivered more efficiently. This was also a necessary step forward for us to make sure that we can grow the team even more so than our recent introduction of ‘Wrexial’ and ‘PingPong’ as the following behind the game grows larger.

What’s Next? Artillery Mechanics

We’re going to stick to our plans and focus on artillery mechanics for the upcoming major update. Moveable artillery pieces, a new class and additional shot types are but some of the things that you’ll be seeing introduced. It’s going to be a blast developing this update.

Here’s the entire list of additional features, bug fixes, improvements and content that you’ll find in this update.

Changelog 16 - Game Version 0.16.6874.36461

• Melee Combat! Direct improvements towards this core mechanics of the game. More work will follow on this mechanic in a future update based on community feedback. » Improvements towards feinting mechanics, unrestrictive movement, new damage mechanics, fixes to a whole lot of glaring bugs which impacted high level play and more. » Read the 'Melee Combat! Game Mechanics' section further above this blog post for an in-depth explanation.
• Melee Arena Game Mode! Come up with new strategies on how to best your opponents before the arena gates open throwing you in a single-life team-based battle to the last man standing. Melee weapons are your only arsenal. » 6 maps specifically designed for melee arena. » Input the following parameters to host these maps on your community server: map_name palisadearena, fortarena, castlearena, sacredarena, watchtowerarena or garrisonarena.
• End Of Match Screen! Strive for the very top before the match ends to boast about your standing.
• 3 New Line Battle Maps! Grassy Plains 3 (L), Snowy Plains 1 (S) and Desert Plains 1 (S). » Input the following parameters to host these maps on your community server: map_name grassyplainsiii, snowyplainssmall or desertplainssmall.
• Reflective Damage. In an effort to encourage more teamplay on public servers, we’ve introduced a system that inflicts a certain amount of damage to the aggressor when hitting a friendly player with melee weapons or firearms. » Input the following parameters to configure reflective damage. Setting the value to 0 will completely disable reflective damage: damage_split 0 to 100.
• Server Optimisations! Ensure servers remain stable when a lot of players are in close proximity. Plugged several leaks which were causing server performance to degrade over long periods of run time.
• 3D VoIP Quality & Optimisations! We’ve optimised various instances which were causing performance to degrade when players used 3D VoIP. We also updated the coded being used to transmit voice while we were at it to improve its quality.
• You can now switch back and forth running and walking while reloading and aiming.
• The bullet trajectory will now originate from a correct position when firing in third-person. This will solve various instances which caused players to un-intentionally kill friendly team mates when standing in a line formation and firing in third-person.
• You will now find a counter in the ‘Round Players’ panel that counts the number of players depending on what you input in the search bar. This will surely be of help to all of those event hosts when balancing teams before an event starts. » Input the regiment’s tags in the search bar and you’ll get the exact number of players attending an event from that particular regiment.
• Customisable Crosshairs! This updates also bring with it the much-requested crosshair customisation. Go to the ‘Game’ settings menu to adjust the colour of your crosshair, select a crosshair style to your liking or even adjust its transparency.