I don’t think Vetex is so oblivious that he isn’t aware of the fact that showing off super cool fast-paced combat clips is going to attract people to AO that inherently hate the slow, suffocating playstyle of “parry everything with good timing and only counter at the perfect opportunity”.
Has he said anything about combat other than how it’s supposed to make you read and predict what your opponent’s going to do?
If 2 people both go into a battle with the plan of perfect blocking and only attacking at the perfect opportunity, but the perfect opportunity only comes if the opponent attacks, then nobody wins
npcs would be way too easy if they couldn’t block or parry and it would make the game more like a bandit beater, taking a large mechanic out of the combat