

And nobody in Chivalry expects this, “Unlike in For Honor.” Jackblade tells me that it’s refreshing to not worry about being accused of lacking sportsmanship just for taking the initiative. “In massive group fights people won’t be forming a queue to fight you 1v1,” says Jackblade, from clan server Emerald Coalition.
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Skilled players can still kick, punishing over-defensiveness, but the held parry offers players a chance to “turtle up and learn to read what their opponent is doing.” Through this, says Hayter, players can grow “more fluent with the game’s combat language, and know how to speak it in return.” Hayter brings up a key mechanic - the held parry - as crucial to give initiates breathing room, allowing them to survey the battlefield and assess their options. Preserving the thrill of fighting multiple enemies should come first.” “Combat isn’t balanced to support duels in any way, and that’s more than okay. “When you pick up a giant keg and chuck it at someone’s noggin, even if you don’t kill them, it’ll still put a grin on your face.”įor Crown, who runs competitive ladders for Rocket League and Chivalry 2, the lack of true balance doesn’t spoil the fun. “Ultimately Chivalry 2 is trying to be a “stress ball” game,” says Hayter. It’s still got bite, but it’s much more lunchtime pub punch-up than Queensbury rules. In Chiv 2, you can learn to score more kills than deaths in the space of an afternoon. Two years on, and Mordhau has garnered a reputation for requiring new players to invest a casual thousand hours of play and a hearty goat sacrifice just to perform at a below average level. The dislike ratio on Chivalry 2’s 2019 announcement trailer survives as a graven image to disgruntlement, a salty statuette erected in protest by a community that had already crowned Mordhau as Chivalry’s heir. In many ways this feels intentional, to set Chivalry 2 apart from its contemporaries. While the core fighting allows for complex dances of feints, parries, and ripostes, they’re most often utilised as tools for chaotic crowd control, or 1vX. Still, they’re not what the game is built for, at least not primarily. “It’s more of a hangout space even when there’s still copious amounts of killing involved.”Īs an unofficial gamemode, I can’t help appreciate the ghost of symmetry between these developer-approved but community-run duel servers and Chivalry’s own origins as a Half Life 2 mod.

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“It becomes kind of like a playground game sure, you could play outside of the rules or do something non-collaborative, but to have fun, the best tactic is for you to use the same code of conduct.” Crown says it's also cool to see how the game's contextual voiceover lines and emotes are used in smaller servers like duel servers.

“There's no hard rule to use it it’s just something that organically happens, I suppose by way of a word-of-mouth tradition,” says Hayter. An initiation ritual, disseminated through the community like a Two Point Hospital virus that makes everyone think they’re a valorous knight. It’s not even a mechanic, per se, just a code of honour you pick up on. I love it most of all because the game doesn’t tell you about it. I love this because it's such a simple, performative roleplay tool that - like Deep Rock Galactic’s iconic Rock and Stone salute - draws you in further to the game’s world. “It’s more of a hangout space even when there’s still copious amounts of killing involved.” The idea is that you find an unoccupied player and flourish at them a response in kind is an agreement to duel. A quick key tap, and your metal-clad maestro will perform some elaborate weapon-specific twirl. I’ve been fairly obsessed with Chivalry 2 since the beta, and the first thing I learned about the duel servers was the importance of the Flourish emote. Ok, so, “martyrdom” may have been a bit of a grandiose term for a three hour ban. Good to know there was a developer willing to come help even if I got banned too,” says Crown. At last, succour arrived: a moderator, wielding the legendary banhammer, in response to a call someone in chat made when the griefers first arrived. On the fateful day Crown was martyred, he had been merrily dueling for an hour when a “half dozen dudes showed up and started griefing.” Following a few unsuccessful attempts to votekick, Crown gathered a knightly entourage to mete out justice on the mangy curs, “hunting them down as they spawned.” Exhausted, they persevered (“fueled by boredom”).
