The purpuse of elite pushes should be to prevent players from constantly hugging elites. However, more often than not it seems like elites will just walk up to you and push you for no reason, even if you actively try to keep your distance. Given that pushes are near instant and interrupt ALL of your actions (even if playing with a class that has a “heavy attacks can’t be interrupted” passive), including healing and reviving, pushes are one of the most annoying mechanics in the game right now. I made a compilation video of the times I got pushed in the last few days. Elites are waaay to eager to push players. Here’s what I suggest:
Elites should only push players if players have moved too close to them. No more walking to us and pushing us for no reason
Players should need to hug the elite for more than a microsecond before the elite feels the need to push them. Right now it’s near instant.
(Maybe) reduce the radius of the push and the distance at which players are allowed to be without triggering the push. I don’t know if this change would make elite pushes too irrelevant and I actually like the idea of not being allowed to hug elites all the time, so take this last point with a grain of salt
That’s exactly what happens in most of the situations in that video. There are a couple where they walk into you due to pathfinding and local level geometry, but generally it is you who approaches them first. In any case, it’s hardly what I would call disruptive. There is maybe one unfortunate example in that list, with the Horn of Magnus event where due to being on the edge of the platform you end up flying away from the CW, but there’s also situations of the reverse, where you get pushed into a nearby wall and it’s practically irrelevant.
Look at the first clip. Would you honestly say that I hugged the mauler too much and deserved to get an instant push against which I can’t do literally anything? Yes obviously in that situation nothing happened (so what’s the point of that push anyways???), but my point is, if an elite action is near instant, almost unavoidable, interrupts all your actions and forces you to drop your block, it better be a reasonable way of punishing players for making a mistake. Right now it doesn’t feel like it.
I’ve only collected those clips for the last week but I assure you I have eaten overheads because of completely uncalled for pushes. I’d like that to change so I’m giving my feedback here.
You could dodge the push actually, if you go backwards. I’m pretty sure that if you time your side dodges a bit later you could dodge them sideways too.
Also from experience, they tend to either open with a push, or do a running attack followed by a push. I expect them and I don’t really notice them or the way I deal with them tbh. ; I’ll play a couple of games looking out for them and I’ll come back here.
I don’t know, it just seems like the player experience would be straight up better if elites limited their pushes to when the player is really hugging them rather than being just in melee range for 1 milisecond. This game has a satisfying back and forth between attacking, blocking and dodging and that gets completely interrupted everytime you get pushed. So if Fatshark limited pushes to situations where it really makes sense for an elite to want to gain some distance from you, it seems like that would make the gameplay at least slightly more fluid (a LOT more fluid if you ask me but maybe I just have an inherent hate of pushes).
Correct. So I’d expect the mauler to try to hit me. With an attack. That I can react to by dodging or blocking. That’s what makes the combat fun. It seems like pushes are there to allow elites to gain distance when needed and not as an attack they’re supposed to use like any other attack (since they’re almost instant, unblockable and interrupt all your actions and even the heavy attacks of slayer and zealot). Yet they spam it a lot more than what is needed for that purpose.
I remember unsuccesfully trying to dodge some pushes. They are incredibly fast, much faster than every other attack elites have. I’d be very surprised if it’s possible to reliably and reactively dodge pushes while remaining in range of attacking (like you do with, you know, literally every other attack). I’m even more skeptical of being able to dodge them sideways. Are you able to do it? I’m going to try for a few games and see if I have any luck.