I feel shame and pitty for what I see in this game, a technical game, where martial arts lovers can really enjoy realistic and interesting combats, where skill is what matters, reflexes and know how to anticipate the opponent...
and what I find is people who learn a stupid combo with the sole intention of pushing you down a cliff, the same punch eight times in a row to then use a wave of force and push you off the edge (this is legit, if the oportunity arrives, if the situation requieres it, but use that in every combat... is dirty). People who use the same combo (non realistic and antinatural) to push you in a corner, where they knows the camera just screw you up and then kick you up repeatedly until defeat you. People that attack you even when you are respawning (lucky me this only happend in two cases).

I don't know, I think that the ethical, the honor is more important that just a victory to all cost. Even in Dark Souls, an AAA game where you can expect toxic people, there're a non-written rules and everyone respect that, rules where either of the contendients dosen't heal itself in the middle of a duel, where people know where to fight and wait their turn to fight if there is a duel in progress, don't be an asshole... and here, in an indie game in GoG I encounter more people without that honor making many 1v1 just boring and frustrating. I don't know, but I want a clean combat, with respect for the rival, not this thing, especially when you want or expect a realistic game, and someone will crush you using an "unstoppable" and really stupid combo that no one could do in reality.

I partially blame the PVE progression lock and the exclusive (if random) item rewards obtained from PVP for this behavior.
Basically, the semi-open world PVE is only useful for farming moves, which is best done solo, and the current "meta" is spamming fast attacks. of which you only need a handful in short loops. Or just use the canned stagger set you get from the NPC mentor, that one's pretty spammy straight out of the box.

Oh, while we're at that: leveling up that stagger set AGAIN forces you to participate in the combat trials in order to unlock things from the school. It's about as much fun as you expect, your moves are predictable and the deck isn't really that good at higher levels.

Long moves usually get interrupted that way, so they're borderline useless. Truth to be told, this also holds true against many NPCs.

Thanks to that design, you basically force people to play PVP to progress and unlock fashion items and additional weapons, and the rewards are totally and completely random. Want those fancy S-scaling wargloves? Win win win for a spin at the RNG. It's rather foreseeable that this causes a large part of the community to go for the cheesiest and fastest way to win. They don't fight for fighting's sake. They fight for loot unlocks, and that loot isn't cosmetic, but has stats attached as well.

If they really implement ranked 1vs1, you can expect what little decency is left in the community to disappear, and the whole thing to turn into a toxic sinkhole.

Shame, really. The basics are good, but the implementation as of now is questionable, and the sudden popularity of what they probably imagined to be a niche game killed what little good was left.

If DS forced people to PVP to get decent armor and weapons, the PVP community would look a lot different. And that's basically what's happening here.

I couldn't agree more with what both of you wrote here.
But after visiting a couple of times the steam community makes me sigh big enough.
People bash those who talk about honor during fights, trolls with shockwave/earthquake skills to throw you off a cliff, and when you try to explain your viewpoint regarding how PVE and loot should be handled they defend the game as much as possible, telling that I should have known what kind of game this should have been.

It's really a shame, as I really like the combat (I partly hate those kahlt NPC though, they wreck you easily, especially if 2 ore more are against you, but all this forced PVP nonsense is making me wish for a refound, which sadly I don't think GOG will allow.

If fast moves trouble you, equip armor and build for HP.
If shockwave troubles you, engage from good angles and circle dodge to be always in a good position.
Repeating infinite combos are easier to defend against, building for STAMINA can help you defend and choose the right moment to counter attack.
Use charging moves so you can soak up one fast hit and give them a harder one.
Make sure that you have moves who bring you into a crouching or a jumping position so you can counter your opponents high or low combos.
RANGE MATTERS!!!

Get at least one charge attack in your move set.
Get at least one guard break attack.
Get at least one charge break attack.

Fight at least a few battles against NPCs to get the hang of your new combos before you go for combat trials.
Don't give up on your combos until you've tested them at least 4~5 times against random players.

...are you suggesting that the game only rewards you for fighting in a strategically clever way depending on the situation, Screamshield? That it won't instantly reward you for maxing out a specific move, but actually understanding how to use the combat system as a whole?

That is so surprising. Because I was fully expecting the combat system to have been changed to "hit x repeatedly to make balls feel big", just like the majority of the beta feedback demanded, on the pain of frantic whining and screaming across the internets until the end of time and beyond.