After 2 weeks i can say i have adjusted, defensively i do a few different things. I almost never use parry. I can also say that we have gained nothing interesting and only lost countless interesting interactions and moves due to the change. The 'unintended complexity' is what makes rumble beautiful. So i see this as an easy win for the devs to embrace the fact that the change of state was never intented with parry, but it has become a core feature of combat.

What if it was added back as a shift stone that also buffed parry/the parried structure with some additional effect that was relevant for the use cases someone might specifically want parry unground for?

the current parry implementation has barely any unique functions, which sets it apart from the rest of the moves, the closest one to that place is uppercut, but it's very frequently used because it can be used anywhere in any hit combo to give the structure more velocity.

the changes made to the parry do not add basically any tech/uses, but remove the vast majority of its previous uses. so far the only tech that the new parry has is the perfect dellayed parry stasis setup, which is a bug.

we've had several days to adjust to the new parry and the most common adaptation is to just not use it, as it is outclassed in 99% of cases by other moves, the only moves in which it isn't outclassed are either bugs(0g/parry stasis/dps) or low disk, which is a very situational move. and the only situation in which it isn't outclassed by other defensive moves is defending against a very fast grounded structure, but most grounded structures, even slingshots, can still be defended via hold.

the one thing that made parry stand out was its ability to unground structures and have them be stationarry after, which was very useful for flick setups, also it was a lot easier to use than other poses as it's simple to hit, very close to flick and flow nicely from basically any other pose.

the parry also had a good triangle of states with hold and ground, where you were able to have the incomming structure be in any state after a single move

Potential solution:

Allow us to use the gear market to buy move alternatives.

That way the community can choose which version they like by adding a move without adding extra poses to the game. You just choose which version you want to equip to the parry pose.

After a couple days re-learning parry-flick as kick-flick, I have to say it works as a combo BUT it completely messes up a lot of setups (even single-structure ones) because the structure's position when flicking is very important: before it would be closer to the lower hand, now it's closer to the upper hand.

And I guess that's something to get used to, and setups can be reworked, or you can wait for the structure to fall back down, but it does feel like there's some agency removed here.

Out of fear that this change might stay I have been in various discussions about it. I asked the defenders of the change to tell me the plus sides of parry not giving a state change. And the only real answer I got every time was that they liked that they had to take more effort to unground something. They all agreed we lost functionality and couldn't name any added functionality.

The reason they didn't think a loss of functionality was a problem was because they couldn't think of combos that were impossible with a kick replacement, they only thought it was harder to do. But once they got told of examples of combos that are actually impossible to do with a replacement, some of it's defenders turned around.

There is also a discussion about the defense against held grounded short range attacks and puppetmasters. Since parry doesn't break the hold anymore, it does nothing to defend against such an attack. Parry used to be the best defensive move in such a situation as the state change broke the hold.

The defenders of the change often say you can just replace parry with a kick or uppercut in those cases. While true that those moves will unground and help you defend, it undercuts the functionality of parry. Parry is supposed to be a defensive move, but a defensive move that cannot be used to defend against common short ranged attacks and needs to be replaced with an offensive move feels wrong.

So parry used to be a defensive move with extra utility build in outside of defense. But it got stripped of it's utility function and even it's intended function of defense got worse. And all the defenders of the change can say is that they like that the game got harder. If you remove parry as a move completely it also got harder to play, that doesn't mean the game gets better.

Oh yes, if you would please change parry back to how it was, I would probably be happy. I suppose the new rule about grounded objects is okay, but it is jarring and feels a bit weird to me in the heat of some battles. I guess by now I've accepted it and learned to enjoy the pleasing logic of only being able to unground an object with some powerful force, rather than the exception of a "stop" move like parry. Anyway, not trying to defend the current choice. I do like it kind of, just not as much as I liked parry before.

EDIT: got 1185bp in a day and i actually prefer parry NOT ungrounding now. It feels more natural and the opposite of stomp is already kick. The upright rotation is super minimal once I got used to it. I actually hope it stays this way now!

Not being able to just pick something up with hold feels super out of place.

It used to be a quick furl of my hands and I had picked up a fresh cube from the ground. Now I have to kick (Which feels much lower now so it is too far to be fast) or uppercut (which adds rotation that I didn't want on the structure making it have a larger surface area when thrown or crooked for flight)

Please readd ungrounding functionality to parry it really it the best way to stop a structure, with out it parry can't even stop a held grounded structure coming at you. meaning if you use a move like a puppet master its harder to stop it from hitting you.

The thing for me is that this change only really removed stuff without adding anything of substance to the game. It just lessens the utility of the move and indirectly buffs hold, which doesn't really need one. I don't know for sure, it just doesn't really seem like a positive change to remove complexity, especially when the whole point of the game is messing around with moves and making cool stuff happen with said complexity. If the devs really wish for parry to not unground, I wish to see something added to parry to bring back the utility it had.

<@386244098442526720> slightly more legible if you wanna ctrl +c, ctrl +v