Melee 2.0 Made Melee Complicated, But The Enemy Design Does Not Reflect That.

[Lukap99]

A while back pre U13 people were complaining that melee combat is unviable and boring.
"Get a charge weapon! Hold E! You win!"

And so, DE did what any reasonable company would do; revamp the system into some versatile and fun.

So check it out, DE made melee complicated.
And that's not a bad thing.

No more hold E to win here, folks.

 

Equip your melee weapon (you have no idea how weird saying this was pre melee 2.0), do some sweet-&#! moves and focus on the fight.

This new, more complex melee system is great because it allows for more ways to design melee enemies.

The previous melee system had you tap and press E in a hit n run style of combat.

But with M2.0 you can create new types of engaging melee enemies! You can finally stand your ground instead of just hit n run? So what new enemies did DE create/revamp to accommodate this grand overhaul of a basic mechanic?

 

List:

 

Well, there's the guardsmen... Which remarkably aren't that fun to fight.

Well, butchers did receive an overhaul, right?... They didn't? Oh...
Uh... I think scorp- no.

... Oh! Vor has that cronus of his! I wonder if they- wait, no.

...

...Besides the guardsmen I've got nothing.

 

 

Do you see where I'm getting with this?

 

Like in the list, the only enemy that seems to be designed with melee 2.0 in mind are the guardsmen; who appear in a grand total of one tileset, not even in all the mission modes.

 

You can't have simple melee enemies that uncommonly spawn be up against a complex melee system.

You see a butcher run at you what are you going to do? Parry?

There's no need for that, just tap E. Most of the difficulty that comes from fighting these enemies are their health and shields, not their design.

 

Now you could argue that these are cannon fodder enemies, which all of the enemies are to an extent.
But the problem with having every enemy be cannon fodder is that the player won't ever feel challenged.

So what most games do is create heavy units that represent a threat even all by themselves; while the cannon fodder enemies need to band together to pose a threat to you.

 

L4D had the special infected and the tank.
Halo had the Elite and the Brutes.
MGR:R Had the sword cyborgs and the hammer cyborgs.

 

From these examples we can count three types of enemies: cannon fodder, light heavy and heavy.

Okay, warframe already has the lancers and heavy gunner, crewmen and tech crewmen.
Notice that the melee section only has cannon fodder (with the occasional guardsmen on a single planet).

And both categories have a lack of heavy units, which can pretty much just be dynamic mini.bosses (I think the new event has something like that.

 

 

So, what does DE have to do?

Design melee enemies with melee 2.0 in mind and add light heavy and heavy units to melee enemies (and heavy for gunner enemies).

After that, hopefully we will all find a use for the parry and dodging mechanics M2.0 brought.


As always, thread is open to feedback.
And when I say feedback I don't just mean saying "no" without explaining anything, argue why you think something should change.

 

CHANGELIST

-Vanilla thread posted on 19.09.2014

 

[X3Evanescence]

John prodman should really start teaching his fellow prod crewmen the art of the prod.

#inprodwetrust

[Lukap99]

John prodman should really start teaching his fellow prod crewmen the art of the prod.

#inprodwetrust

 

Johnman the Crewpod should actually start showing up in the lore.

And besides, is John going to let those pesky tenno doges get all the melee overhaul glory? No.