DiabolusUrsus

November 3, 2019

1 hour ago, Genitive said:

Eh, I prefer the current system, I think the requiem thing is really cool. An I don't want liches to become disposable mini-bosses like the rest. DE should focus on reducing the grind – increase relic drop rates, reduce amount of murmurs required to discover a phrase, stuff like that, but the core should stay as it is.

You clearly didn't bother trying to understand the original suggestion, because it doesn't make liches any more "disposable" than they already are. There is nothing "disposable" about a nemesis that repeatedly comes back from defeat, growing stronger every time, up until you finally figure out how to kill/convert them for good.

All it does is undercut the frustration factor of cheaply "losing" to a lich just because you don't have the right mods or sequence yet. Forced, arbitrary failures aren't going to be fun for most players, but struggling with a powerful rival on mostly even footing could be. An enemy that repeatedly resurrects from death would also fit the whole "lich" theme better, IMO.

July 10, 2019

46 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Implied or not, an ultimatum is still an ultimatum, and is still not a good thing to set in what should otherwise be a civil exchange of design ideas.

Which is why, as I just finished telling you, I did not actually set an ultimatum of any sort. That you interpreted what I said as such is your own mistake, not mine.

46 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

How? My "inferred meaning" was that you were massively exaggerating a conjectural problem of player backlash against my proposal simply because I did not see a need for your own proposed "fix" of special Forma.

No, your "inferred meaning" was that my response was an ultimatum, which dramatically and inaccurately colored your interpretation of all the subsequent points I made on the subject. Yes, the discussion got out of control, but you are 100% as culpable as I am in that regard.

46 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

attempted to play gotcha with me by claiming that you did not use the literal exact words I used in reference to your posts (e.g. malignant vs. evil)

This quip perfectly illustrates exactly how poorly you are understanding what I say. I was not arguing that your reading was incorrect because I used "malignant" and not "evil." I am well aware and will readily admit that the two are synonyms. However, what I actually pointed out was that the grammar structure of my sentence clearly sets the noun modified by evil/malignant as the perception of your idea, not the idea itself.

I understand that you don't believe my assessment of said perception is accurate, but I never issued you an ultimatum - expressed or implied - no matter how you try to spin it. If you see my """ultimatum""" as the origin point for where this discussion stopped being civil, you should perhaps consider that my intentions and arguments were never as nefarious as you're assuming they are... your disagreement with them notwithstanding.

July 10, 2019

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Your quote has no relevance to the sentence you are responding to. This:

And this:

Gets much closer to it, with you implying my proposal would be too controversial to be worth consideration, and outright calling it evil.

Ah, so now you're shifting course from "you gave me an ultimatum" to "you gave me an implied ultimatum," while the quotes I originally gave you are entirely relevant because their contents should have made it explicitly clear that your inferred meaning was incorrect.

If you actually process the content of what I originally wrote:

Arbitrarily removing polarities from entire - often expansive - arsenals, on the other hand, would be seen as entirely unprovoked and self-evidently malignant.

You'll see that I never said that your proposal would be too controversial to be viable, nor did I call it evil. My point was that the purpose of your proposed change was (at the time, due to the main misunderstanding between us) so arcane as to appear purposeless.

If you take things away from players without compensating them and they don't understand WHY you took them away, they are going to see that action as malignant regardless of whether or not it actually is.

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Relying upon a feigned lack of understanding

Yes, my confusion regarding your intent was merely a facade for clinging to a lost point despite my demonstrated willingness to concede points multiple times in this very discussion, and the post I dedicated to clearing that misunderstanding as soon as it clicked was an obfuscating lie.

Without doubt, I am merely ignoring your proposed solutions until my own position becomes untenable and not failing to understand them the first time around.

Clearly, I am deliberately misleading you by freely revising my positions on particular issues rather than seemingly contradictory changes originating from your own misunderstanding of my responses.

If your suspicion of my character and insertion of nonexistent subtext into my statements is going to continue tainting any efforts I make to communicate, that's simply not worth the time and effort I have to put into this. I'm done.

4 hours ago, Aldain said:

Its not about that, I mean this is supposed to be a feedback section and this thread (I think?) is supposed to be feedback on the coming standard for Melee.

Assuming somebody from DE were to come to this thread (which is a long shot I'm well aware) they will have an enormous amount of alphabet soup to sift through to see the details contained within.

All I'm saying is that it is often better to keep feedback, and even debates regarding feedback more on the concise and focused side for the sake of any readers.

Ah, that makes sense; thanks for clarifying. Bit of a moot point now, but I'll keep that in mind moving forward.

July 10, 2019

45 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Here we go again with the insanely long posts that don't actually say much.

Seriously folks, I applaud the effort and work, but tone it down a bit, nobody is going to trawl through all that.

I mean, I don't think either of us are writing those posts to entertain an extending audience, but okay.

July 10, 2019

12 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

That's fine, albeit still a far larger set of moves than what I'm suggesting, but the question still remains of why one would need to retain Melee 2.0 stances.

Because I want to retain them, as I covered previously regarding the player being allowed to pick up any fundamentally similar weapon and swing it around the same way. I don't agree with each individual weapon having a unique moveset, because going by my own standard for a satisfactory degree of differentiation that would be excessive and needlessly restrictive.

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Moreover, this simply feeds into the problem of homogeneity that was discussed: if every weapon of the same grip type has the same moveset, that is going to limit the mechanics you can give to any individual melee weapon, as with the given example of different whip attacks.

Why?

The Caustacyst is mechanically distinct from other scythes while retaining an identical underlying moveset. As I said at the beginning of this discussion, I would prefer to broadly differentiate weapon types by grip-based moveset and narrowly differentiate individual weapons within each type via unique mechanics.

For example, Scoliac might pull targets toward the player and Atterax might have a noticeably slower travel speed for the whip head while hitting targets repeatedly while in contact. Would that not make those weapons play differently, even given the same attack animations?

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If every assault rifle played like the Buzlok, every shotgun like the Corinth, and every pistol like the Pandero, even if there would still be a variety of effects you could add onto their shots, alt-fires, and stats, those weapon classes would end up feeling fairly samey, and I feel that same kind of over-generalization is being applied here to melee weapons.

Which stems entirely from your different standard for what qualifies as adequate diversity.

If you take out the Buzlok's tracking dart, it absolutely feels samey relative to every other projectile AR. If you take out Corinth's airburst grenade, it absolutely feels samey relative to the Strun/Wraith due to its semi-automatic shell-by-shell reload nature. If you take out Pandero's burst-unload alt-fire, it absolutely feels samey relative to other semi-automatic pistols. But then, that's the whole point of adding those individual mechanics in the first place - to differentiate them from otherwise similar weapons - and precisely why I agreed with weapon-specific gimmicks in the first place.

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Your changes would improve upon the current system, but in the end, the only difference between Melee 3.0 and your proposed set of changes is that you're removing a bunch of animations, adding back manual block (not mentioned, but implied), and tweaking combo multipliers, when I think there's more that could be done if we're talking about some definitive melee overhault.

True, but I don't think there's a whole lot more that would need to be done. Aside from disagreeing with specific combos/inputs as outlined in the OP and having my own preferences regarding the specifics of tweaking channeling, the combo meter, and related mods... I'm largely happy with the scope and intent of Melee 3.0 as it stands.

Side note: You're right, I forgot to include manual blocking in my re-framed list changes. However considering the multiple separate times it came up as an explicit focus of the discussion this seems like an unnecessary jab.

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By repeatedly claiming that the player backlash to my proposal would be so great as to be unacceptable.

Yeah, no. I've been rather explicit and consistent about that matter throughout this discussion.

On 2019-07-03 at 8:36 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Again, I'm not against making skins out of superfluous weapons (variants of base weapons being prime - pun not intended - candidates). However, I don't see the sense in making all but a few weapons into skins pre-emptively. Gradually polish individual weapons where possible, and permanently make skins out of duplicates where needed. Don't blindly turn all of them into skins and then switch some of them back a few at a time.

On 2019-07-05 at 5:01 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Again, I'm not insisting that you can't make all the weapons into skins. I'm just saying to let players reapply their refunded polarities for free. I never expected that to be so controversial, and I'm still confused as to why it is.

The entirety of my disagreement with your skin-conversion idea was originally and continues to be exceedingly simple:

I didn't understand why you needed to do it in the first place, because it wasn't clear to me you were still working in the context of each weapon having a completely unique moveset.
I believe players would respond negatively to the loss of multiple polarities across the majority of their owned melee weapons especially because the wipe seemed entirely pointless... and so I suggested a way to side-step that expected backlash.

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If that were the case, why bring up player backlash in relation to it?

Because a change that was both seemingly pointless and controversial made even less sense to me than a simply pointless one.

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That's a rather roundabout way of requesting clarification on my proposal, particularly as I had stated on several occasions that the intent was to allow individual weapons to be reimplemented under the new system without creating a massive initial overhead.

I'm sorry; I had asked you rather explicitly before and not gotten a satisfactory answer:

On 2019-07-05 at 5:01 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

In contrast, you are proposing to convert excess weapons into skins (wiping their polarities in the process) and then reverting them back into weapons once reworked/improved. That makes no sense; why wipe the polarities by making the weapon a skin when you could just rework it? I still don't understand the benefit to that approach.

I fully understood that you intended to convert weapons into skins and then re-implement them one-by-one, but because I was thinking in terms of my own envisioned rework at the start of that topic I didn't see any need to reduce initial overhead - any overhead related to my proposed changes would be fairly minimal and easy to manage. Thus, for lack of a clear answer I continued attempting to explore the subject up until I stumbled onto the root cause (tangling up the details of our individual reworks).

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Which, as has been pointed out extensively now, is unsupported by prior instances of players having to reapply Forma to frames and weapons affected by reworks. Thus, you have been proposing an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem, and magnifying said imaginary problem to such a hyperbolic extent that it had dominated discussion,

No, I have been debating you on whether or not that backlash would occur. I don't find your counter-examples plausible for reasons I have detailed extensively.

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and shifted it into an ultimatum where either I would concede to your suggestion, or my proposed changes would never happen (according to you).

Literally, where did I do that?

I remember saying this with regards to your suggestion of stripping vertical progression out of the game:

On 2019-07-03 at 8:36 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

I dunno. I think that if power didn't actually play a significant role in DE's successful monetization, we wouldn't see power creep anywhere near the degree we have currently. The ugly truth of the matter seems to be that vertical progression is what keeps players invested, and in turn boosts sales (either directly through pay2skip or indirectly through participation). I'm not defending the practice - I can't say it enough times that I would be totally on board with removing vertical progression - but I don't realistically see it changing anytime soon (if ever).

But nothing to that effect with regards to your skins proposal. My question has consistently been: given the choice between pissing players off and taking steps to placate them without inhibiting your goals, why would you choose the former?

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Because I specifically pointed out I not only want players to take time to learn new weapons, which means not expecting them to take them fresh off of their rework into a high-level mission and then complain when their muscle memory inevitably fails to transition instantaneously, but also do in fact want this to be an opportunity to provide more playtime. Not requiring players to so much as try the updated melee weapons risks having them ignore the vast majority, including updated weapons they might have liked, so in this case, "refunding players' time" doubly loses out on the playtime such a content update could provide.

But that doesn't even make any sense.

Players level new weapons in high-level missions anyway.
Many players level melee through stealth, which would not showcase the new movesets.
Players who don't level melee through stealth often go to places like Hydron, where they may not even use the weapon and instead rely on shared affinity.
Again, how does refunding time discourage players from actually playing with those weapons? It stands to reason that if the player is going to bother reapplying polarities - whether required to level the weapon each time or not - they intend to play with it.
If the player is at risk of simply ignoring reworked weapons, giving them an extended list of busywork to get back to where they were isn't going to get them to change their mind. Rather, it will make the decision to bin the weapon altogether that much easier.

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Not to be too combative, but I had in fact pointed out the problem with removing mod drain bonuses without compensation several posts ago, and the response I got until now was essentially that the playerbase should just deal with it.

Yes, because at the time I saw it as a necessary evil for lack of alternatives. I didn't see any ways around the related backlash, so I saw it as inevitable.

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Thus, there has been a notable discrepancy between your use of conjectural backlash against my own proposal, and your own nonchalance towards backlash against your own, despite instances of it actually happening in similar cases, to the point of seemingly not even attempting to consider as simple a workaround as reducing the drain on melee mods.

That "discrepancy" should neatly underscore your fundamental misunderstanding of my perspective on the issue. I am not against incurring backlash for the sake of improving the game. I'll readily say as much when it comes to the subject of things like nerfs, where perceived loss is needed to improve game balance. However, if there are ways to sweeten the deal without undermining the intent of the relevant changes I think they should at the very least be considered and in most cases implemented.

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Where did I ever claim that stat mods should be replaced altogether? I did say that certain weapons should likely not have the same access to certain stats as others, but even in my own examples I suggested stat mods.

First, it's important to note that you're excising some key words from my statement:

On 2019-07-08 at 5:54 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

but I don't think those are suitable replacements for generic mods applying to generic stats rather than unique traits

In other words, I appreciate having a core pre-existing set of universal mods available to apply to each new weapon and I wouldn't want to need to hunt down additional mods to support new weapons. For example, I delayed trying out Sarpa for a very long time due to not having its custom Bullet Dance stance. That delay would only have been made worse if I needed to also collect other custom mods for its simpler attributes.

With that in mind, this point initially became relevant here:

On 2019-06-27 at 1:57 AM, Teridax68 said:

In this respect, it might also be useful to establish even more mod separation between grip types, e.g. to make attack speed less accessible to heavy blades, but instead give those weapons better access to range than daggers.

You can't make shared stats less accessible to one class of weapons over another unless you remove or alter mods shared between classes if you ALSO reject that variations in base stats could be sufficient. You further expanded upon this by suggesting stat mods tailored specifically for daggers and separate mods tailored for heavy blades, and framed having more mods to collect as a benefit. As stated above, I disagree with that perspective.

You later went on to say this:

On 2019-07-03 at 3:58 PM, Teridax68 said:

I can agree with establishing weapons around unique mechanics, which would likely draw from the above pool, but if we're going to that extreme, that simply raises the question of what purpose mods are meant to serve: if they're meant to fine-tune our weapons, then we might as well give every individual weapon its own pool of tailor-made mods, but if they're meant to add chunks of gameplay to our weapons, then there needs to be room for unique mechanics in mods, even if those mechanics need to be adapted to the weapons they fit onto.

As I responded to this quote originally, I see mods as meant to fine-tune our weapons. Therefore, I interpreted your conditional suggestion as continuing to apply... and again, disagreed with it.

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Making an element interesting in and of itself does not mean it will make any weapon that applies it automatically unique and mechanically distinct, and if we're still reasoning along coarser-grained effects such as elements and elemental damage, that means that several different weapons will be able to natively apply the exact same effects, to say nothing of elemental mods. My point with the Dera is thus that slapping one element found on many different weapons onto a generic rifle isn't necessarily going to make that rifle stand out all that much more, whereas a unique mechanic would be more likely to by definition. It is also worth considering that, if the distinguishing factor of Corpus weapons is that they all deal elemental damage, considering how many Corpus weapons exist, that means those elements will be frequently repeated across weapons, meaning those individual weapons would be able to rely less on their element as a distinguishing factor.

But again, this is rooted in a differing standard for what is acceptable diversity:

Given that Corpus weapons would offer elemental combinations not normally achievable through mods (e.g., Rad + Heat) and those individual elements would be made mechanically diverse, I would be glad to have a generic rifle in the Corpus arsenal.
I'm not discounting the multitude of other Corpus weapons; I see no problem with them sharing the same elemental distinction because by my standards Arca Plasmor, Flux Rifle, Lanka, etc. are adequately diverse already. When it comes to roughly interchangeable weapons (e.g., Dera vs. Tetra) I'm not saying that both of them have to stay the same. Whether Dera or Tetra is kept as a generic rifle doesn't really matter to me, but I would like to keep a generic plasma rifle available.

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I mean, currently weapons differ between players and enemies anyway, but that argument basically just means that the Corpus cannot be allowed to have interesting weapons so long as they keep to current enemy distributions

True, so it should be plainly obvious that I am dissatisfied with the combat status quo and existing faction design and want to change them.

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(and this includes whichever elemental effect you were planning on giving the Dera).

Why? The AI would not be equipped to fully exploit the individual/combined elemental effects any moreso than they currently do, whereas Crewmen filling the air with clouds of expanding bullets or gaining stacking damage from successive hits would likely change things quite radically.

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This is a whole other topic of discussion in itself, but it simply makes no sense to treat the Corpus like a horde faction, much less to have us mainly fight human crew when the faction is notorious in the lore for acting almost exclusively through robotic proxies. I'd much rather we fought far fewer Corpus units, while making each unit tougher, more complex, almost puzzle-like in their combination of quirky weapons and gadgets, which could then avoid having to differentiate said weapons when we get our hands on them.

Yes, I know, which is why I said:

On 2019-07-08 at 5:54 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Let's say I'm on board under the assumption that we see the previously discussed faction reworks, where Crewmen themselves are less common (treated more as elites) in comparison to their proxies.

Even so, I would prefer to leave a generic rifle in the Corpus arsenal. I don't think every single weapon needs to be differentiated as significantly as you do. I agree that having X+ different generic Tenno rifles is unnecessary, but I don't see a problem with 1 generic Tenno rifle, 1 generic Grineer rifle, 1 generic Corpus rifle, etc. provided that they all have distinguishing traits not shared with the others (e.g., the Corpus version would be battery-powered with a unique elemental combination, whereas the Tenno version would use conventional ammo and benefit from more flexible elemental modding).

July 9, 2019

@Teridax68

Oof. I think I see where this discussion went off the rails - we have been tangling our own separate proposals, and the incompatibilities between them have been confusing the reasoning applied to individual steps. I'm going to try re-framing this whole conversation to resolve said confusion.

That said, I don't want you to think I'm simply trying to evade you so feel free to quote any specific points from your previous reply that you want addressed and I'll gladly comply.

1. Resolving the Skins Issue

Allow me to define the puzzle pieces I am working with in my concept:

Moveset Rework

Each grip-type has its own moveset, encompassing unique attack animations applied to universal input bindings:

Combo A (E)
Combo B (RMB + E)
Slide Attacks (Combo A/B while sliding)
Aerial Attacks (Combo A/B while airborne)
Slam Attacks (E while airborne and aiming at the ground)
Charged Attacks (Hold E; delays and amplifies any other attack in the moveset).

Stance mods would apply different stylized animations over the input bindings. They would be as close to cosmetic as possible, but not truly cosmetic because of possible minor variations in hit-boxes.

Channeling Rework

DE's proposed conversion of channeling from a toggled melee augment to a time-limited "limit-break," requiring a fundamental replacement of all the underlying mods.

Combo Meter Rework

Combo meter multipliers decoupled from normal attacks.
Multiplier tiers revised to require fewer accumulated hits.
Implementation of heavy attacks that consume the accumulated combo (in the case of my moveset rework, heavy attacks = charged attacks).
Applicable mods reworked to scale bonus effects with accumulated combo (e.g., Blood Rush).
Combo mods balanced to fit the new multiplier tiers/base combo duration (e.g., Body Count).

Within the scope of this system, there is no need to reduce the number of available weapons to simplify its implementation; finishing a grip-specific moveset and applicable stance mods brings every compatible weapon to the same standard with no compatibility issues. Returning to the previous examples:

Caustacyst
Twin Basolk (+Augment)
Zenistar
Sancti Magistar
Wolf Sledge

The charged attack input (Hold E) still exists in my system, so all of these weapons would continue to function perfectly fine. Caustacyst can spit its acid from any charged Combo A/B input. Twin Basolk's augment can replace the charged swing with its signature teleport. Wolf Sledge can replace the charged swing with its throw.

Cobra & Crane
Sigma & Octantis

Similarly, the shield throw ability can simply replace the standard aerial attacks. As I mentioned last time, the addition of a charged input for slam attacks could allow these weapons to gain a ground slam where they had lost them before: tap E to throw the shield, hold E while aiming at the ground to trigger a slam.

Tatsu
Telos Boltace

Both of these passives can simply trigger in conjunction with Combo A/B while sliding. No re-mapping or re-implementation needed.

Vaykor Sydon

Note that the channeling rework as I refer to it is entirely distinct from any of the other reworks. Until channeling is changed, players can still trigger the passive as-is by channeling regardless of replacement moveset. When channeling is removed DE will need to change it, but as I mentioned last time it could be as simple as changing the trigger to a charged attack.

Dark Split Sword - weapon defaults to Heavy Blade, as it currently does.
Desert Wind - wouldn't this be covered by its stance getting brought to my listed 3.0 standard?
Exalted Blade - same as with Desert Wind, and its blind could still be triggered while sliding.

In conclusion, none of these weapons require rework or reimplementation beyond changes that would already be covered by the applicable rework (e.g., reworked movesets). They all port directly to the reworked systems, and channeling dependent effects can be left well enough alone up until channeling itself is reworked. Therefore, there is no real benefit to temporarily converting all these weapons into skins for the sake of simplicity; my moveset changes are entirely weapon-generic, and when the specifics start to apply (e.g., Vaykor Sydon) there are few enough of them at a time to be perfectly manageable.

However, now that you've jogged my memory regarding your own proposal I would absolutely agree that reducing the number of available weapons has a significant, immediate benefit. When you're scrapping stances and each individual weapon has its own moveset, of course it's easier to work with fewer of them at once. I'll reiterate that I'm not actually opposed to changing weapons into skins - I just didn't see any point to it within the context of my own system - which brings me to the next core issue.

2. Resolving the Backlash Issue

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But why? Again, players are already okay with repolarizing stuff. You're proposing an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem: sure, give players some special Forma that doesn't reset rank if you want, but that really is secondary to the set of changes I am proposing here. If the solutions to the problems you've found in my proposals are so easy to come up with, why then continue framing my proposal as unworkable?

This passage makes it abundantly clear that you have lost track of the nature of my point in the back-and-forth bickering. Where did you get the idea that I was framing your proposal as unworkable?

What I was attempting to point out was that within the scope of the rework as I understood it (it wasn't clear to me that you were sticking to your guns regarding unique movesets) there was no real benefit to stripping weapons out of players' inventories. I also brought up the Forma refund not as a point meant to discredit your idea as bad, but as a way to sidestep what I see as impending backlash.

In other words, "If we're going forward with this whole convert-into-skins thing, then make sure to refund players' time so that there's no loss." I understand that you don't agree backlash would occur, but I fail to see how that would be an argument against a more generous refund. How would my proposed refund hurt your goals?

More importantly:

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Yes there is, just lower the drain on some current essential mods. If your intent really is to just make everyone put more Forma into melee weapons... why? How does that better serve the playerbase?

You're absolutely right! I hadn't thought of that, and didn't see any way to sidestep the issue. However, now that you've shown me a way to side-step the backlash incurred from blanket nerfs without hindering my goal of making stances interchangeable... why wouldn't I go for it? Thanks for the solution!

3. On the Issue of Diversity

I doubt we will reach an agreement regarding what constitutes adequate differentiation for avoiding the "well everything may as well be the same" threshold. I especially disagree when it comes to mods - I agree that there is space and benefit from weapon-unique mods like those acquired from Nightwave, but I don't think those are suitable replacements for generic mods applying to generic stats rather than unique traits (e.g., Bursting Mass).

If you are determined to continue this debate I'm game for now, but otherwise I don't see the point in drawing out this point of contention.

12 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Why would it "necessarily" make it more interesting? Has our current elemental system made all weapons "necessarily" more interesting and varied purely as a result of it? This sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking, especially since at the end the Dera would still be a bog-standard bullet hose, even if its projectiles dealt blue instead of gray damage or whatever.

Weren't we just discussing a fundamental rework of the elements to make them each mechanically diverse? I had also mentioned the possibility of Corpus weapons distinguishing themselves through possessing unique combinations of elements not obtainable through mods, so considering those two points together it should be clear that it would no longer be a simple matter of "blue instead of gray damage or whatever."

12 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Off the top of my head, examples of how the weapon could be made more interesting (each option being independent from the others):

Change the magazine to a non-recharging battery, and have the projectiles return back to the weapon with punch-through on impact, and charge it in that manner.

Have the projectiles increase in size and damage as they travel.

Have the projectiles explode on impact, with the explosion gaining in damage and size with each hit if the same target is hit repeatedly.

There's an infinity of ideas to be had here, but really, it doesn't have to take that much to make a gun interesting.

Those are cool, but I would rather like for enemy weapons to follow the same mechanical (if not statistical) rules regardless of who currently wields them. I'm a little leery of how those effects would manifest if every normal Crewman had access to any of them.

Let's say I'm on board under the assumption that we see the previously discussed faction reworks, where Crewmen themselves are less common (treated more as elites) in comparison to their proxies.

July 6, 2019

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

I fully agree; one must indeed exert moderation when it comes to selecting baseline mechanics, which is why I think there's room for mods exclusive to certain grips that needn't be made baseline.

There's certainly room for them, but I don't see the need to restrict mods by grip type when it should be possible to balance them across the existing extremes without too much difficulty.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Amalgam Argonak Metal Auger does have a dagger-exclusive armor reduction mechanic though:

I dislike the direction introduced by the new weapon-specific Amalgam mods. They are overly-specific to the point that if the player isn't interested in using a particular combination of weapons the mod is effectively worthless as a reward.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

I agree that armor corrosion is currently not a niche mechanic, but an armor removal effect is still likely going to need to be balanced differently on daggers than on heavy blades and the like, as you mentioned. Thus, it would likely be better for balance and diversity overall if we had a dagger-exclusive armor removal mod, even if we let other weapons and mods remove armor in their own way. This is also putting aside how some daggers in Damage 1.0 could ignore armor entirely, which would certainly be a lot more niche.

But my example effects would not need to be balanced separately for daggers or heavy blades:

A refreshing non-stacking corrosion DOT only needs enough attack speed to refresh before it expires, and doesn't benefit at all from increased attack speed past that point. Thus, it could be balanced against the slowest weapons only.
A percentage reduction that scales with combo meter also balances itself out; daggers would strip more armor at once from single targets through faster combo accumulation, and heavy blades would strip armor from more targets at once through higher range.

I don't see how 1.0 armor ignore is relevant to that point, but even then daggers were hardly the only weapons to have armor-ignoring variants.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But I'm not discussing parry times here, I'm talking about specifically modding for counter-strike damage after a parry.

How can you ignore parry times if your goal is to create a balanced mod increasing counterattack damage? The relative ease or difficulty of parrying directly affects how powerful the counterattack damage should be - any bonus would need to be balanced against the most generous parry times, and thus innately balanced for stricter times as well. If all your weapons have more or less similar parry times, why would a mod increasing counterattack damage be balanced for daggers but not other weapons?

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Putting aside how I'd rather not fiddle too much with timings on generally-applicable moves such as blocking,

Timed parries and simple blocking are not quite the same thing. Fiddling with how precise parry timing needs to be doesn't inhibit a weapon's ability to mount an effective defense.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

I'm not specifically suggesting here to make some weapons better at parrying than others, I'm just saying there are different fantasies to parrying depending on the weapon and grip that could be fleshed out through mods: for example, you could give hammers a mod that would let parries stagger enemies for longer, in keeping with the overall heft of the weapon type, or rapiers a mod that would let parries disarm enemies, and so on.

These appear to be thematic dilemmas moreso than balancing ones. For example, a mod lenghtening the counterattack window could easily be balanced for both daggers and hammers: limit the allowed parry frames to the shorter window given to hammers. Thus, simply parrying successfully with a hammer yields the bonus, whereas dagger users would need the same level of precision - a sort of "just-timed" parry layered on top of their more generous normal parry frames.

I also don't see how a mod allowing players to disarm enemies with parries could be imbalanced for any grip type unless you have noticeably varied parry windows.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Okay, but the net result is the same: daggers are innately deficient, and dependent upon a single overpowered mod to remain relevant. Thus, the solution here shouldn't be to simply infuse Covert Lethality into every dagger, but simply to make daggers good as a baseline, then nerf Covert Lethality appropriately so that it becomes as attractive as other alternatives.

Right, but step back and think about it for a moment: How do you nerf Covert Lethality?

Answer: get rid of the base damage increase and change its finisher bonus to extra damage instead of an instant-kill. At which point you have Finishing Touch, which applies universally just fine.

My point is that daggers should have simply been given a buff instead of Covert Lethality ever existing to begin with; the mod becomes redundant as soon as it stops being a band-aid.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Because you'd then have a much larger pool of mods to collect, particularly since not every new weapon mod need be especially niche or distinct: having a weapon-exclusive mod that simply adjusts the stats on its unique mechanic (e.g. changing the Caustacyst's projectile length) would already add one more mod to the pool, and even if your weapon had two mods to play with, that could already offer more customization than the game's current state.

No, thank you.

I would not enjoy needing to collect additional random drops before I can tinker with a new weapon to a satisfactory degree. Moreover, your Caustacyst example could easily be achieved with universally compatible mods:

A mod offering a range bonus to charged/heavy attacks that scales with combo meter should also affect the acid projectile. This would even add a dimension of strategy to an otherwise spammy attack - should the player spam the acid at base range, or should they build meter first to get a longer projectile and hit more targets?

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

It wouldn't be difficult to create those mods, but as the current state of modding shows, one-size-fits-all choices have a tendency to make weapons converge towards a small handful of identical builds. As mentioned above, if a stat like attack speed can be desirable even on weapons who benefit the least from it, it's going to take something radical to avoid running into the same problem of homogeneity.

Only if you consider proper balance to be particularly radical. Attack speed is always desirable because it translates into an objective DPS increase; simply adding a damage malus would make it less of an obvious choice on fast/slow weapons alike, and make it primarily useful for builds which rely on stacking effects rather than raw damage. If you also differentiate weapons adequately, a 30% speed boost from Fury would never make a slow weapon like Fragor comparable to a fast weapon like Ceramic Dagger. Faster than before doesn't necessarily mean homogeneously fast.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But that just limits both your design and the player's options, since you're not letting yourself implement a better-suited mod, and are instead expecting players to go for builds that basically turn heavy blades into daggers just to accommodate a single mod. If your player can successfully "build against type" and achieve that, then you lose distinction between grip types, and if not, then that potentially interesting build may not be viable. In neither case would such a playstyle work in the way I suggested, which yet again limits design when there's presumably nothing wrong with smashing tough targets with slow, yet powerful attacks.

No, because the underlying movesets are completely different and properly balanced mods would not actually let a dagger transform into a hammer or heavy blade. There may not be anything wrong with smashing tough targets with slow, powerful attacks, but that doesn't mean the player will enjoy it. If the player likes the hammer/heavy blade moveset but prefers for their weapons to handle more lightly, mods are what should let them accomplish that. If the player likes swinging around a slow, hard-hitting weapon they won't bother building against-type in the first place.

If you successfully make weapons viable in their own right, then all you have to do is ensure that building with-type doesn't outperform the alternatives to an extreme degree.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But in doing so your dagger no longer becomes a dagger, and at that point you may as well not even differentiate weapons by grip types. I feel it's wasteful to establish distinctions between weapons and not make use of them, and in this case there are quite possibly better ways of implementing multi-target hits on daggers through tailored dagger mods, instead of expecting the player to turn their dagger into a polearm.

You are overlooking a lot of nuance here: the movesets would be different. The aesthetics would be different. The floor/ceiling for various stats as defined through mods would be different.

You can easily have a dagger that performs more like a sword or heavy blade without becoming one of them, and when you factor in the planned unique weapon traits there may be a dagger that offers something not available in the other weapon pools. A multi-target dagger would necessarily play quite differently from a multi-target polearm; that's the basis of why such a build would be potentially interesting in the first place.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But that is my point: the Gram Prime and Prisma Obex have wildly different base speeds, but both blend into each other nonetheless simply because past a certain threshold, proportionality doesn't really matter. Even Fury, which has a +30% attack speed bonus, is desirable on both when no alternatives exist, and ultimately I also think it's a missed opportunity to restrict mods simply for the sake of one weapon type over the other, when one could easily give sparring weapons some insane attack speed mod for that Fist of the North Star feel, and not have that damage the identity of other grips.

Again, this is only because Fury is always a straight buff and not because it somehow lets Gram Prime approach Prisma Obex in terms of speed. A conditional, massive attack speed buff could also be a great candidate for a unique weapon trait not necessarily attached to a mod.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

I mean, I do in fact want to rework the modding system, which would include doing away with polarities entirely, but that wasn't directly relevant to the proposal of altering melee weapons, and I don't think it even is here. Again, I think the distinction here is arbitrary, because in the end players still lost content they grinded for, and were mostly fine with it.

No, the distinction is critically important. Players didn't complain about losing stamina mods because they literally no longer had a use for them. Stamina didn't exist, and it wasn't coming back. The lost polarities, on the other hand, would both still exist as a mechanic and still have a use.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But this misses my own point that if one were to "leave the weapons in place", that is in fact an active work process, rather than a passive decision, because that would mean reimplementing hundreds of weapons under the new system and making sure they all play nice. This would be a major and very real pipeline problem to avoid a hypothetical PR risk unsupported by past events.

Again... what? Why do all these hundreds of weapons require individual attention to port into melee 3.0? Once you have a 3.0 sword stances done, all your swords have been brought up to 3.0 par.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But why is this distinction relevant? What about the players who bought those Rivens for themselves and lost out? Clearly, what occurred can't be completely explained by players disliking Riven traders, and not all those who lost from those events were perpetrators.

Because, as I noted, the community largely has no sympathy for players who overspend on Rivens. It takes community support to make a wave of any sort, and that support simply doesn't exist for players who would be significantly injured by the devaluation of their Rivens. If you still aren't inclined to believe me, you can test this yourself: Make a thread and complain about one of your Rivens losing value after you spent X plat on it (you can make this up; it doesn't matter) and see what sort of responses you get.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Except Rivens make up a huge portion of the current player economy, so that's not really true,

This is flawed logic: while Rivens make up a huge portion of the economy, a small minority of Rivens are noticeably affected by Disposition changes. Only the big-ticket items ranging into the thousands/10k+ price range are really vulnerable to heavy losses, at which point any community solidarity that could have existed evaporates. A player isn't really going to notice if that Paris Riven they bought yesterday is worth 50 plat less today, but if that shiny Gram Prime riven they bought for 1.2k becomes worthless overnight after dropping from 5 to 1 Disposition the response immediately becomes "well why did you spend that much on it in the first place, dum-dum?"

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

and many players openly disdain melee, more so with the current Melee 3.0 changes. It's not really easy to care that much about any melee weapon in particular when melee weapons are as generic and cookie-cutter as they've been throughout most of Warframe's history.

I suspect this is more your personal opinion on the matter, but okay.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Is it, though? Again, Specters of the Rail also readjusted player progress relative to node Mastery,

At which time Mastery didn't mean as much as it does today.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

and once again, players who took the time to complete older events for the promise of exclusive weapons were deceived when those weapons were reintroduced, invalidating their commitment.

Did DE ever actually promise exclusivity, though? I was under the distinct impression that they have actively avoided committing to true exclusivity after learning their lesson from the Founder's packs. In terms of "invalidating commitment," I don't really see the problem. Event weapons are rarely if ever reintroduced soon after an event, which means participating players earn them months to years sooner than others.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Parkour 2.0 itself ruined a lot of frames and weapons that depended on Stamina or coptering, and more broadly players have their progress and commitment invalidated all the time with power creep. While power creep may generate complaints, none of those individual events make waves.

What? Which Frames were negatively affected by losing stamina? And any weapons damaged by the loss of coptering were only useful for coptering in the first place, which itself speaks to bigger problems with those weapons. Coptering was never even a legitimate mechanic in the first place.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

So, effectively, you're proposing to nerf every single melee weapon in one fell swoop, and force players to put additional Forma into their melee weapons in order to retain the same builds, on the cusp of a melee rework that may also nerf or change those builds, when players already expressed significant discontent at having to sink Forma into Exalted melee weapons with that same model. Do you really think this would go down well? How is this any better than my own suggestion in terms of player backlash?

Yes, because the changes are needed to produce specific benefits: smoother, less awkward movesets and complete interchangeability between stance mods.

In contrast, you are proposing to convert excess weapons into skins (wiping their polarities in the process) and then reverting them back into weapons once reworked/improved. That makes no sense; why wipe the polarities by making the weapon a skin when you could just rework it? I still don't understand the benefit to that approach.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But then that answers your own concern as well: if the general player concern is with nerfing and not with inconvenient grinding, then releveling a weapon would be unlikely to be a major source of backlash in itself.

Releveling wouldn't be, but losing all custom polarities for no apparent reason would be. Another thing I don't understand is why you are so opposed to my suggested workaround of the refunded Forma simply not resetting weapon rank. If the player is going through the trouble of reapplying the polarities, doesn't it stand to reason that they would then go on to use that weapon?

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But with the model proposed, only a small number of melee weapons would be "mixed up" at a time, as they'd be re-released progressively, so that concern is moot.

Fair point.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

If melee mods get rebalanced or reworked to no longer rely on stance drains (and I think that should be the case), then that would in fact be the better way to go relative to simply nerfing all melee weapons and otherwise leaving them as-is.

At which point I have to ask again: what is the problem with simply not requiring players to re-level weapons to get back to where they started? It's not like a weapon plays significantly differently as it levels up, and players go into higher-level missions for leveling anyway. Why not just let them freely reapply refunded polarities? Doing so would side-step the possible backlash entirely.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Okay, but that simply says that there are far bigger concerns out there, and that any player annoyance at grinding weapons over again is unlikely to be among them. Concerns about nerfs disappear quickly, but having to relevel a frame stays, yet even now no-one has really complained about that.

My point was that players who would actually need to relevel the Frame don't actually bother doing it. Now that it is "trash" following the nerf they just abandon it completely instead of reapplying Forma. Players who aren't attempting to maximize one specific aspect of a Frame's kit for exploitation (e.g., old Miasma, old Defy) don't tend to have so many Forma applied that their builds are inflexible in the first place.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

I'm not saying the Riven Mafia is itself conjectural, I'm just saying that pinning the lack of player backlash against Riven trading squarely upon it, when people who spend large amounts of plat on Rivens aren't just resellers, is. As mentioned above, people who bought those mods for themselves suffer, and even when we're not talking in the thousands, many Riven mods are commonly sold above 100 plat, enough to buy Forma for multiple melee weapons. This is also a straight-up monetary loss, and isn't something that can be made up as easily through in-game play as just ranking up a melee weapon, which can be done from 0 to 30 over the course of a single, brief mission (e.g. practically any Sortie mission).

I never pinned the lack of backlash squarely on the "Mafia" in exclusivity, though. From the very beginning I explained the comparative lack of sympathy for buyers as well as sellers - DE defined dispositions as fluid when Rivens were first introduced, so spending exorbitent amounts of plat on Rivens and incurring losses when they get nerfed is seen as a stupid decision on the part of the player.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But I'm not saying the weapons would be more obtuse, I'm saying players would need to transition from the current system to the new one, which is going to require some adaptation regardless of how simple or intuitive the new system is. If players who are interested will use the weapon regardless, then there would be even less opposition to making them re-level a weapon they'll be gaining plenty of Affinity with anyway.

If adjusting to the new system disadvantages players against high-level enemies even with a fully modded weapon, I don't see how you could call that anything but "more obtuse." And again, how would pitting them against high-level enemies with a freshly unranked weapon disadvantage the player less than an R30 one? It's not like players actually go back to Mercury to level new weapons.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But that is simply not true, because there is an element of deception in that players were promised that those weapons were to stay event-exclusive, and took time out of their lives specifically because of that promise.

When were players ever promised such a thing?

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

That is, for example, an argument even non-founders sympathize with when the subject of Excalibur Prime's exclusivity is discussed.

Excalibur/Lato/Skana Prime are true, contractual exclusives, and as such sympathy is entirely irrelevant to such discussions.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

However, that did not stop DE from opening up other event-exclusive weapons to the general public, and the general perception isn't that those who participated in those events are evil, but simply that nobody cares strongly enough, because people who have committed that much to the game know that it changes radically.

... And event-exclusive weapons are not actual exclusives. DE is consistently open about the possibility of event weapons, mods, etc. returning at a later date.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

... why? If the intent is clearly to improve melee as a system, why would that be seen as malignant? What precedent do you have to justify this?

Because removing polarities from weapons has nothing to do with improving the melee system, and is in no way needed to accomplish said goal. It would be senseless destruction of progress that doesn't even contribute directly to the intended changes.

I don't have any precedent for that, because DE wiping player progress for no apparent reason is - thankfully - unprecedented. I should think that community response to such an incident would be glaringly obvious, though.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Because out of those 10 weapons, some of them might need to be reimplemented or redesigned along the new design, because some weapons rely on particular moves to do particular things.

I will get to this where you provide specific examples below.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

... but that's my point, and the distinction you are setting here is arbitrary. With the system we have, our weapons are either identical enough that turning them into skins would produce no tangible difference, or different enough that they would need to be reexamined under the new system, and should be skinned first anyway. In the absolute worst case, you could run a script remembering which polarities a user had, but if mods are being changed as well, it is keeping those polarities that would be malicious, if doing so were to mess up people's builds with no easy option of recovery.

Again, I'm not insisting that you can't make all the weapons into skins. I'm just saying to let players reapply their refunded polarities for free. I never expected that to be so controversial, and I'm still confused as to why it is.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Okay, but Guardian Derision is itself an example of a mod messed up by the new system due to being ignored in the transition, and the fact that you're proposing to nerf literally every single melee weapon, while still intending to keep mods unchanged, will have far worse consequences.

But it would be fixed by restoring manual block, so what is the issue here? Obviously if DE neglects to fix incompatible mods that's a problem, but there are relatively few mods that would actually be incompatible and nothing about them would be resolved by shrinking the number of available weapons.

It's true that I am proposing nerfs that will get some significant backlash, but the difference here is that there's not really a different way to go about it and still accomplish my stated objectives.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Also, what about channelling mods?

Leave them alone until we actually get around to changing channeling, which wouldn't happen until later in the process. Channeling is entirely independent of weapon stances.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

What about charge attack mods?

Charged attacks would still exist in the new system as I have proposed it. Leave them alone until the combo meter changes are implemented.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Or finisher mods?

Which finisher mods, aside from Finishing Touch? As I already mentioned, they would need rebalancing but their base function would stay intact.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Downplay it all you like, there are nonetheless differences in moves between the two systems, so unless you do the extra work mentioned above, you're going to end up with mods that just won't work with your new system, which itself risks messing up appreciation of your new moveset if it doesn't jive well with current mods.

I'm not downplaying it at all; a phased implementation of the new systems (movesets > channeling > combo meter, etc.) would limit the complexity of reworking/rebalancing affected weapons and mods to easily manageable levels.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But there is a notable difference in shooting ability due to the stances, which let gunblades fire without charge attacks, so leaving those stances in simply generates an extra layer of complication relative to the new moveset you'd be introducing. In fact, gunblade stances allow for entirely different modes of fire that have gameplay consequences, so leaving those stances in messes with the intent of making stance mods cosmetic.

Except I'm not proposing to keep 2.0 stances, you are the only one making that suggestion,

... Which is a temporary imbalance at worst, not a mechanical incompatibility, nor is it something that would be resolved by changing Sarpa into a Redeemer skin or vice-versa. Also... since when has removing stance mods been on the table? I thought we were just removing weapons by making them skins.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

and reducing the pool avoids having to deal with weapons that rely on specific inputs to do certain things, like the Caustacyst, or that have particular considerations for mechanics that would no longer exist, like the Furax Wraith, Fragor Prime or Synoid Heliocor (all three have bonus channelling damage). It's all very easy to not see the problem from a very abstract, high-level perspective, but what you are proposing is to accommodate some monstrous hybrid of two systems, which may as well be a new system in and of itself.

And channeling would remain unchanged until after the movesets are finished. Channeling is independent; that's why a phased approach would simplify things.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Except when the differences in moves boil down to two or three attacks, one or two of which are likely to feel similar or identical to alternatives, claiming that it'd be too difficult to factor those in would be saying the same of guns with alt-fires.

I need you to clarify this, because if the attacks are simple enough to be comparable to alt-fires I don't see how they would be incompatible with shared movesets. After all, alt-fires all use the same shared binding.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

By contrast, making virtually all weapons do the same thing each time, with the difference lying exclusively in the on-hit effects, is going to restrict and homogenize your design excessively, and make more standout weapons like the Caustacyst more awkward to implement. If the only difference between weapons of the same type is that they apply different effects, then you might as well just forever stay with just one weapon per grip type, implement every trait as a mod, and only release skins.

What? How does scythes sharing stances (and thus movesets) get in the way of Caustacyst's acid throw?

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But then who gets to decide which weapon stays a skin and which gets turned back? You outright stated you wanted to turn a whole bunch of Tenno dual swords into skins forever, with no justification, yet here we are deciding how much is too much when there are far more weapons out there that are either superfluous, or would require more work to reimplement properly. A lot of this discussion seems to come back to arbitrary lines drawn in the sand.

Don't overcomplicate this. The goal here is to ensure every weapon is mechanically distinct. Warframe benefits in both a monetary and gameplay sense from increased weapon diversity. Therefore, we should aim to preserve as many weapons as possible.

For example, the Dual Heat Swords and Dark Split Swords are obvious choices to be kept because both concepts easily lend themselves to a distinguishing mechanic (self-ignition and transformation, respectively). However, Dex Dakra are just generic swords with a Lotus motif and should probably be changed to a skin with nothing else to set them apart.

The examples I have given are weapons I see as being differentiated entirely by appearance (e.g., Dual Raza are just axes that look related to Soma), and don't have any ideas for regarding unique mechanics. However, if you can think of something appropriate then by all means let's keep them as unique weapons. These decisions are of course somewhat arbitrary, but not any moreso than the imperative to eliminate "duplicate" weapons in the first place.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

As mentioned above, there's the Caustacyst, plus the Twin Basolk's augment, the Cobra & Crane, the Sigma & Octantis, the Tatsu, the Vaykor Sydon, the Dark Split-Sword, the Zenistar, the Sancti Magistar, the Wolf Sledge, the Telos Boltace, Baruuk's Desert Wind, and Excalibur's Exalted Blade.

These examples make it clear that whatever you have in mind as the "rework" is completely different from what I am imagining. The way I see it:

Caustacyst
Twin Basolk
Zenistar
Sancti Magistar
Wolf Sledge

The above weapons are all fine; charged attacks still exist so their unique mechanics can continue to function normally.

Cobra & Crane
Sigma & Octantis

Shield throw moves simply replace aerial attacks and ground slams, and so would continue to function normally. I'd even suggest using a charged (hold) input to allow these weapons to still execute ground slams.

Tatsu
Telos Boltace

Slide attacks would still technically exist in modified form (normal combos while sliding); just let these weapons trigger their passives while sliding and they're fine.

Vaykor Sydon

Again, channeling isn't going anywhere at first. Once it is removed, I think moving the Blind trigger to a charged attack would be a suitable transplant. Other candidates could include slide attacks or ground slams.

Dark Split Sword
Desert Wind
Exalted Blade

What is the problem with these?

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Some of these will need reworking (can't go about disabling exalted weapons), but the rest requires remapping or reimplementation,

Literally none of them need either rework or reimplementation until channeling is changed, after the movesets are finished.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

plus special consideration for some particular moves.

Which ones, and how so?

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

Meanwhile, virtually the entirety of the rest of the arsenal plays identically.

Which we will be working to resolve by adding distinguishing mechanics comparable to the above weapons, but doesn't directly affect moveset. "Playing identically" is not by itself a flaw equating to a "broken" system.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

I mentioned them above, but again, there's a double standard here where you're super preoccupied with the hypothetical problem of players re-grinding weapons,

Again, only because I don't see how it is at all necessary or even beneficial to achieving our stated goals. Re-grinding weapons is completely tangential to replacing their movesets and adding unique twists.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

but don't care at all about the real problem of players having to deal with a broken system, when even now we're seeing plenty of complaints surrounding Melee 3.0 for that very reason.

Where are you getting the notion that I don't care? I'm not saying that it's fine to make players deal with broken systems; I just don't see how the systems would necessarily be broken following a phased approach. Simply replacing stances with reworked versions doesn't really break much of anything by itself, and specific weapons/mods could be fixed as the related systems are changed during later phases (e.g., channeling mods/weapon passives when channeling is reworked, and combo mods/weapon passives when the combo meter is reworked).

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

If your system is an "objective upgrade", then there is no need to bend over backwards to implement some halfway stage, you might as well just transition immediately and build off of the new, solid foundation.

Except that "upgrade" is in itself extremely time-consuming to develop and implement. That's why the phased approach is beneficial: it allows the devs to fix broken things in smaller batches as they break while leaving their existing functions completely intact up until that point. That's exactly what I've been saying - there's no need to account for backwards compatibility or transitional stage; just avoid breaking everything all at once.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

They're not the literal same, but they incur similar consequences in that DE made player-friendly changes at risk to their own monetization (which apparently wasn't really a risk). Again, the distinctions drawn here are arbitrary and unjustified, when you don't really have a precedent to explain your rationale, other than the fact that DE haven't already removed all their power bonuses (and they did make revives free and per-mission, too).

I'm talking about untying power boosts from monetization, which is what we've been discussing thus far. Changing vertical progression entirely is a separate matter that would become achievable if DE eventually stops selling power increases.

In that case I don't understand what you're saying at all; I thought you were aiming to remove vertical progression from the game entirely.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

So?

So you can't safely assume that the players currently participating in the platinum economy would migrate to the TennoGen economy; TennoGen would need to grow a lot more than you are anticipating to make up for the loss of monetization tied to vertical progression.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

I disagree completely, I think DE has a history of obstinately following directions of balance, design or monetization even when they don't work, such as when they released the Plains of Eidolon in a hyper-grindy state (which they then relaxed), or slapped absurdly high foundry timers onto Gravimags (which are inconsequential in the long term). Sometimes, they also simply don't bother to address issues over a long time, as clearly was the case with mod packs. Given how radically the game has changed, I don't think one can really make the genuine argument that DE won't change in the future, simply because they haven't changed in the present.

How does any of this discredit what I said, though, which was that DE uses vertical progression as a key driving incentive for monetization? If it wasn't a key driving incentive then there would be no reason for us to see power creep at all.

You gave examples of DE reversing course on issues that clearly didn't work out as they expected; the fact that we have seen uninterrupted and escalating degrees of power creep since the game came out of closed beta should tell you everything you need to know about how power creep is working out for them and what they expect from it. Sure, maybe you're right and DE will change it in the future. As things stand, though, I'll believe that when I see it.

On 2019-07-04 at 3:29 AM, Teridax68 said:

But the Dera's an incredibly old weapon, a relic from a time when weapon design was much more basic, and more recent Corpus weapon releases don't follow that same design (the Dera's also largely considered a fairly boring weapon, precisely because it doesn't do much that stands out). "Simple yet stylish", by contrast, would be a perfect descriptor for Tenno weapons.

And it would be made more interesting through changing its damage type to a unique combination of elements with fundamental changes to the mechanical implementations of those elements. Dera is boring because it's mostly identical to every other IPS automatic; changing that paradigm would necessarily make it more interesting. How would you go about adding a layer of "cerebral" complexity to it otherwise?

July 4, 2019

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Because this is only a single example being cited, and if you were to insert every single potential idea of a more niche mod into the entire grip class, every weapon would obviously be overloaded with baseline mechanics, and there'd be little to no room for interesting mods.

I think it would be reasonable to expect some degree of moderation when it comes to selecting baseline mechanics; while many different possibilities might exist it wouldn't be necessary to include all of them.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Bonus stealth damage isn't the only thing that daggers can benefit from; you could also incorporate the mechanic of them removing bits of the target's armor that's appeared on some current mods,

Okay, but progressive armor reduction isn't something quite so niche as to warrant being made innate. It would easily be useful to practically any weapon; just don't balance it against attack speed. For example, a corroding armor DOT that refreshes but does not stack or a fixed percentage armor break that scales with heavy attack multiplier (in which case daggers could build a higher multiplier whereas heavy blades could apply it consistently to a larger number of targets).

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

or another that could let you deal additional damage against enemies staggered by a parry, and so on.

This would easily fall outside the scope of the relevant dilemma; it could easily be balanced on a per-grip or per-weapon basis by the generosity of applicable parry frames. Simply making it harder to time a parry with a Hammer would bias the mod's use toward lighter weapons without needing to prohibit it on others. If a player wants to go through the trouble of mastering parries with slow weapons, I say let them.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Covert Lethality is necessary on daggers simply because it's a mod so much more powerful than the rest that the grip has to be balanced around it, which makes daggers feel currently deficient without it (it doesn't help that Covert Lethality is still a must-pick even when not engaging in stealthy combat, due to its hefty base attack damage increase). In an environment with multiple attractive, yet well-adapted competitors, this would not have to be the case.

Covert Lethality was introduced because daggers were considered bad; daggers weren't nerfed because Covert Lethality is too good. It is a textbook example of a band-aid solution, when the better choice would have been to directly address why daggers were considered bad.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I can agree with establishing weapons around unique mechanics, which would likely draw from the above pool, but if we're going to that extreme, that simply raises the question of what purpose mods are meant to serve: if they're meant to fine-tune our weapons, then we might as well give every individual weapon its own pool of tailor-made mods, but if they're meant to add chunks of gameplay to our weapons, then there needs to be room for unique mechanics in mods, even if those mechanics need to be adapted to the weapons they fit onto.

I look at them as meant to fine-tune our weapons, but I don't think every weapon needs a custom set of mods to accomplish that. I don't even think that would really be practical, considering every new weapon release would require accompanying mods... and if a set of mods is meant to be used with a specific weapon that raises the question of why it's a randomly-acquired mod and not simply a progressive unlock. It really shouldn't be all that difficult to create a decent pool of (mostly) one-size-fits-all building blocks for players to stack on top of their choice weapons to tailor them for a preferred playstyle.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Okay, but that's the same as the whip example. If you turned the tables, and designed that mod for heavy blades so that players could get rewarded for whaling on single targets, you'd have a balance nightmare if it were to be equipped on daggers. With mods like these you're implicitly restricting them to certain weapon classes already, so you might as well spare the player the illusion of choice.

Simple: Don't add a mod with that specific bonus. If heavy blades want to be rewarded for attacking single targets repeatedly, they should equip the mod that stacks damage on repeated hits and build for increased attack speed - at the expense of some range and damage. There's no need to provide an alternate mod better tuned for heavy blades; let the player build against type if that's what they prefer.

For example, if I wanted to use the aforementioned "bonus from hitting multiple targets" mod on a dagger, I might include the following in a build:

+Range -Attack Speed
+Scaling Range on Heavy Attack (based on meter multiplier).

The rest of the build and exact numbers notwithstanding, this build could allow the dagger to start hitting multiple targets effectively while simultaneously balancing out its attack rate (through decreased base rate and paced heavy attacks). This might not be the numerically optimal build, but shrinking the gap between the meta/non-meta enough such that going one way or the other is no longer a false choice would be essential to any successful mod rework. Simply put, player preference/interest should be able to take priority without significantly inhibiting their performance.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Okay, but how can you know that'll be the stat spread that actually turns out to be balanced? The Gram Prime is at 0.8, and with just Berserker exceeds the base attack speed of any other weapon. Meanwhile, the Prisma Obex has the fastest base attack speed in the game at 1.33, and falls into similar button-mashing with similar mod setups, because past a certain point it doesn't matter what the minor difference in attack delay is, as you'll still be mashing buttons to attack super fast. The fact that attack speed mods are desirable on even the slowest melee weapons itself suggests that you'd have to go pretty extreme lengths for that to no longer be the case. If weapons blending together through mods is inevitable, all the more reason to make certain mods exclusive to certain weapon types in order to avoid that.

I should have been more clear; Berserker needs to be reworked or dumpstered IMO. 90% as a modded bonus is way too high for what I want mods to do. I also noted the attack speed as per second, because the existing numbers are modifiers applied to different "base speeds." Therefore, I'd expect something like Prisma Obex to have a much higher true speed when using a universal scale. 2 attacks per second should be noticeably fast while still manageable, and assuming we shrink mod bonuses to something more like 30% at the highest that wouldn't vary too radically.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Sure, which is why leaving players at their current MR level, regardless of how much they've lost, could avoid that problem in the shorter term. I just think that many of the player requests that got tied to MR were requests for general quality of life improvements, not necessarily to make the push towards higher MR any more of a goal than it already was before.

Fair, and that works for me.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But we did get outright removals of several mods, though, such as with the removal of Stamina, and in the case of Riven mods, there's an undeniable monetary loss from devaluation, so I don't think that difference in implementation really captures the fact that players have in fact lost stuff and been fairly okay with it.

I think you missed my point a bit.

It's one thing to remove content when the underlying systems themselves are removed, but you are not proposing we remove polarities. If you're removing weapons that might come back later if you can think up a unique way to set them apart, you may as well just leave the weapons in place until you decide whether or not to permanently make them a skin. It might be tougher to organize from the design side of things, but it'll be a lot less messy to clean up from the PR side of things.
Again, Rivens aren't exactly comparable:
- First, there is palpable antipathy towards players who earn lots of plat from selling Rivens and players who spend lots of plat to acquire them. This antipathy was exacerbated by the seller drama that occurred around the same time DE started adjusting dispositions more consistently, which discourages anyone with complaints from speaking out on the subject.
- Second, a smaller number of players actually got invested in Rivens to that degree, whereas practically every player has a variety of melee weapons with multiple Forma invested in them. Rivens are relatively hit-or-miss, and the realm of expenses where dispositions equate to significant monetary losses is arcane enough that even fewer players actually break into it.
- Third, players carry a noteworthy degree of responsibility when it comes to buying or selling Rivens. If the player loses out on 10k plat because they bought a Riven and it subsequently phased into a crap disposition, that's ultimately on them. (Yes, I know that DE should also be held accountable for allowing such transactions to continue unabated for so long - or at all - but my point applies to public perception and not ethics issues in this case.) Players can and will blame other players for making dumb transactions. However, when it comes to selectively - and I would say needlessly, in this case - resetting significant chunks of player progress... that's a very different story.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But we're talking melee weapons here, where current stance pool bonuses mean that even builds full of Primed mods have to try very hard to make us Forma our weapons more than once, or at all.

Remember that I'm proposing we scrap stance pool bonuses and polarities entirely; primarily to let players freely switch between stances but also to remove melee's ridiculous surplus of capacity.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I also don't think that's really the case, since reworks like Saryn's, Nezha's or even Wukong's shifted the stat focus sometimes significantly relative to previous builds (Saryn builds had to focus more on Power Range, Power Strength Nezha went into full force, and Wukong's Iron Staff is now a Slash status monster).

Sure, but most players would have a handful of applied polarities - probably V or D - on those Frames, none of which would really need to be changed to accommodate new Warframe builds. Players with fully maxed-out polarities requiring multiple changes would be fairly few (and complaints from those players most certainly do crop up), and most of the negative focus would be directed at any perceived nerfs rather than inconvenient grinding.

Also, note the difference in scale. It's one thing to mix up a Warframe or two at a time, and something else entirely to apply a blanket reset to every player's entire arsenal of melee weapons. I dunno about you, but I've personally got 20+ melee weapons kept on-hand and the prospect of re-grinding the Forma I have applied is by no means appealing. And I really like melee. AND I would probably need to apply more Forma overall due to losing the stance capacity bonus.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

If so, then why does the inevitable tide of complaints against impending reworks never seem to mention having to re-level the frame or weapon? It's not really a big deal to level a frame to 30, let alone a weapon, and while there is a (small) amount of criticism of how Primes tend to invalidate progress made on non-Primes, there doesn't seem to be any concern of having progress invalidated during reworks or even rebalances.

I touched on this a bit earlier, but mostly because the negative attention is redirected to other related issues. Feedback also tends toward the extreme, with most critics claiming their favorite item X has been thrown in the "trash" rather than bemoaning the work needed to retool it to their liking.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

One can conjecure about the Riven Mafia and the like, but the net result is that people affected even harder, sometimes losing hundreds of Forma's worth of plat overnight, are in a general state where even that much doesn't make waves, and more minor losses in progress to warframes and weapons also don't seem to make waves by themselves either.

It's not really conjecture, though. Look at any discussion pertaining to the Riven market, and you'll see very clear battle lines drawn in the sand between sellers perceived as racketeering con artists and non-seller plebs who don't have the mad capitalist skillz to break into the market successfully. There also don't seem to be enough players invested to actually make waves in the first place - pick a Tenno at random and chances are they didn't lose hundreds of Forma's worth of plat overnight. Contrastingly, pick a Tenno at random and chances are they did lose multiple Forma's worth of progress on multiple melee weapons all at once.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

If every melee weapon is being reworked into something that plays differently, why wouldn't I want to make them relevel that weapon at least once? It's the perfect opportunity to have that player familiarize themselves with the weapon's mechanics before they bring it into some high-level mission and complain when they start attacking differently.

Because the players who are interested will use the weapon regardless, and those who aren't take them to high-level missions for leveling anyway. I'd also argue that if the weapon's new mechanics prevent the player from intuitively succeeding with it at appropriately-leveled content (high-level content for a fully-built weapon, in this case) then the new mechanics have already failed on a fundamental level.

Weapons should be easier and more consistent to use come 3.0, not the opposite.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

There are a great many instances of players getting their time or commitment "wasted" by unforeseen changes (for example, event-exclusive weapons being made generally available), and the complains that arise from that are tiny.

Again, the perceptions for these changes would differ drastically.

DE making previously exclusive weapons generally available is guaranteed to be seen overall as a benevolent change (the very nature of exclusivity means that players whose time was "wasted" are in the minority) and it's not like the event weapon is taken away from players who already had it. The only thing that is truly "lost" is the exclusivity, and players who care enough about the associated prestige to complain aren't often looked upon sympathetically by their peers.

Arbitrarily removing polarities from entire - often expansive - arsenals, on the other hand, would be seen as entirely unprovoked and self-evidently malignant.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But then we're back at what we were discussing, because "default stances" are just grips, and unless you have a plan to accommodate every unique mechanic under this new system, or create new ones for those without, boiling down the changes to the minimum needed to be delivered would be the simplest, especially since if you had any of those weapons, you could still make your grip look like it. Messing with the player's inventory here shifts the question of how to implement individual weapons to a later, more manageable date, because your basic versions would not need such consideration (or at least much smaller consideration).

I really just can't seem to wrap my head around the issue here. If the moveset is what is new, and the moveset is shared across equivalent weapons, what difference does it make whether the player has 10 "different" weapons to choose from or 1?

Just leave the duplicate weapons alone, and rework them one (or several, depending on inspiration) at a time. It's not like they're doing any harm by sitting in inventories. If you come to a weapon and truly can't justify it existing as a separate weapon, then convert it into a skin, refund the forma/potato, and be done with it. There's no need to make them all skins first.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

And, in the process, mess up the resulting mod builds for every melee weapon in the game, as happened with Exalted melee weapons whose stances had no pool bonuses. Thus, if you do not make a clean break, you are going to have to straddle two systems at once, and that's going to generate a whole slew of problems of its own, in both the short and long term.

I'm really not seeing where the problems are coming from here. For reference, I'm assuming these immediate systemic changes when the first batch of 3.0 stances is added as defaults:

Stance combos simplified into the EEE, RMB+EEE, aerial, slam, and slide inputs as previously discussed.
Manual blocking restored and timed parries introduced.
Finisher animations removed and replaced with conditional damage multipliers.

The only mods that would not immediately transfer between 2.0 and 3.0 would be:

Finishing Touch (Needs rebalancing)
Maiming Strike (Slide attacks fundamentally changed to use default combo animations)
Parry (Counter chance no longer exists)

Maybe I missed a mod here or there, but that's still hardly a noteworthy amount of complication from the modding side. Some mods, like Guardian Derision, would even return to a higher degree of functionality under the 3.0 system. By saving the more complex systemic changes (e.g., to channeling and the combo meter) for after all the stance mods are updated, it then becomes a simple matter of grafting mods onto the 3.0 system all at once.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Stances don't exist in a vacuum, though, and you do have weapons that rely on stance moves in order to function (e.g. gunblades).

Not really...? Gunblades don't need stances to fire, nor do throwing weapons need stances to be thrown.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Making your changes compatible for two radically different systems to coexist with each other is a messy and potentially massive implementation problem of its own, one that doesn't exist in a simplified environment where you just boil everything down to a smaller pool of weapons that can then be expanded and refined, much like you're suggesting here.

I honestly don't get it. The potential incompatibility between systems stems from the available inputs (e.g., blocking, parrying, channeling), not specific weapons. So how would reducing the available pool of swords down to "Skana" or the pool of polearms down to "Orthos" alleviate any of those issues? The remaining 2.0 stances would still need to be reworked, and reducing the number of compatible weapons to 1 doesn't change the number of legacy stances.

The only situation where your proposal makes a difference is where each individual weapon has a unique moveset, which I really don't agree with. If a cornerstone of Melee 3.0 is simplifying the system so that players don't need to memorize specific movesets to switch between weapons, I think going for "every weapon has its own moveset" is completely counter-productive. By all means, let's have fewer weapons with unique supplementary traits to ensure they feel diverse... but you don't need an entirely separate movset for each weapon to successfully differentiate them in terms of gameplay.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

If you have all weapons in the same category working the same, then whether those weapons are individual weapons or skins is functionally irrelevant.

Well, yes. Again, I'm not against making skins out of superfluous weapons (variants of base weapons being prime - pun not intended - candidates). However, I don't see the sense in making all but a few weapons into skins pre-emptively. Gradually polish individual weapons where possible, and permanently make skins out of duplicates where needed. Don't blindly turn all of them into skins and then switch some of them back a few at a time.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Again, the fact that certain weapons do in fact depend on specific moves, and that some weapons would in fact interact differently with the new system, means that preserving them does create more overhead.

Which weapons specifically do you have in mind? Unless I'm overlooking something Gunblades and "glaives" are the relevant examples here... and I don't think their special moves would really change all that much between systems.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

... but what about 2.0 mods that would break under 3.0? Your options here are to a) redesign those mods to function under both systems, if that's even possible, b) release a new generation of redundant mods with the aim of removing the older versions, while somehow finding a way to tell players which mod works for which stance, c) compromise on your new stance designs to avoid this, or d) leave players with a melee system that'll be broken for whichever length of time because you have two completely different design philosophies occupying the same space. There's a question of backwards and forwards compatibility here with mods, is my point.

I think I addressed this previously, but if you've got other specific mods in mind I'll need some additional details. The way I see it, there's no real need to bother with any backwards compatibility. By the time mod changes become relevant, just rework the broken mods to function in the new system; players will universally have access to it, and it should be an objective upgrade over the old.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Except I also clearly pointed out to instances where DE did in fact change some of their monetization to be more player-friendly, e.g. by releasing Prime Accessory packs without forcing players to buy the frames and weapons, or reworking their mod packs completely.

Separating accessories from Prime Frames/Weapons is not the same thing as changing the Frames/Weapons into skins, nor is reworking mod lootboxes comparable to removing vertical progression (and with it, power creep). The ramifications are entirely different in both cases.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Thus, there is a precedent for what I'm suggesting, particularly as I also stressed that such a set of changes need not (and likely should not) happen all in one go.

What..? How would you go about removing vertical progression other than "all in one go?"

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Why? Tennogen is massively successful, cosmetics are celebrated in the community, and games like Team Fortress 2 show it's perfectly possible for a developer to make a huge profit by letting dedicated players become content creators. This is also in an environment where not that many developer resources are dedicated towards stimulating Tennogen, so there is significant room for growth there.

Sure, but Tennogen is entirely separate from the platinum market on PC. You could make the case that

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Furthermore, DE may sell power, but that power is also readily obtainable, as Forma and Exilus Adapters are craftable, and potatoes are frequently given out too. It does not take a player who knows what they're doing very many resources to put the right consumables on the items they want to use frequently, and I think that's something DE actually wants, as otherwise they'd likely get accused of being pay2win. Thus, there is only limited consumption to be had of power, but near-unlimited potential for diverse and interesting cosmetics.

I dunno. I think that if power didn't actually play a significant role in DE's successful monetization, we wouldn't see power creep anywhere near the degree we have currently. The ugly truth of the matter seems to be that vertical progression is what keeps players invested, and in turn boosts sales (either directly through pay2skip or indirectly through participation). I'm not defending the practice - I can't say it enough times that I would be totally on board with removing vertical progression - but I don't realistically see it changing anytime soon (if ever).

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, and perhaps even more simply, if fire is contagious upon contact or proximity, you're going to have a much easier time igniting a horde of melee-rushing enemies than a spread-out squad of more defensive units. Plus, if they're squishy, the DoT will kill them all in seconds while one runs away, whereas tougher units may be more able to fight back.

Exactly. And having a variety of traits related to status effects would provide plenty of opportunities to attach relevant modifications to fill the gap left by "chance" mods.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

That is definitely a good way to differentiate weapons by faction: personally, I think the key defining characteristic to Corpus weapons is that they should be more cerebral in some form or another: the Lenz is a good example, because it requires some amount of positioning and calculation, irrespective of whether its blasts are physical or elemental.

Sounds good to me, but I'd still want to see things like Dera as a good old-fashioned plasma rifle. Not particularly complicated, but stylish as hell and fun to use.

July 3, 2019

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

That example may work because range is not an innate strength of daggers, but that is precisely why the reverse example doesn't work: to go back to the example of exceptional bonus stealth damage on daggers, the mod may be balanced to work on daggers specifically because daggers can only hit a small number of enemies at a time at most. If the mod were made available on weapons capable of affecting crowds of enemies at a time, by contrast, such a limitation would no longer exist, and the result would be an abusive combination. Covert Lethality is currently not exceptionally problematic, for example, because its instant kill is restricted to finishers on daggers, but if it were a generally available mod that applied on any sort of stealth damage, it would likely be even more broken than current Maiming Strike + Blood Rush combos. Thus, I think some exceptionally specific mods are bound to be grip/weapon-specific not because of the grip's strengths, but because of their inherent limitations which allow such power to be equipped.

True, but any bonus that needs to be so specific should be a weapon property and not a mod. Covert Lethality is a great example of this; it makes any dagger useful but players widely accept that daggers are mostly useless without it. Why not just make highly damaging stealth finishers innate for daggers?

An alternative mod that would better fit my suggestion would be a stacking bonus applied to consecutive hits on the same target. Great for daggers, less immediately useful on heavy blades, but still compatible.

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Okay, but how much are we talking about? If we radicalize a weapon's base stats every time just to make up for a mod with a stat they're not supposed to benefit from, there's a significant risk of ending up with some very stilted weapons, and at worst you may end up pushing players to equip those "undesirable" mods just for those weapons to feel more functional (e.g. if heavy weapons like the Galatine were massively slowed down). You'd have a much simpler balancing environment, and possibly even more diversity and player choice overall, if mods were made more specific to grips and weapons.

Nothing too crazy, and the radical differences would be mostly between grip types. You're looking at an attack rate floor of ~0.8/s for heavy blades/hammers and ceiling of 2/s for daggers.

Everything in-between is going to start to blend together no matter WHAT you do, so that's where differing movesets and weapon-specific properties come in.

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I think reaching MR 30 with MR to spare should be the ultimate goal for sure, though in the meantime I also feel the benefits tacked onto MR are themselves just arbitrary limitations that we either don't need, or that paper over other systemic problems (e.g. Standing grinding, current modding, etc.). If the threat of losing MR is too severe to consider, then one could simply prevent players from falling down the ranks, even if they'd still have a MR "debt", so to speak.

It's not that the MR itself is the biggest issue; it's the benefits that the community has asked for repeatedly over a long period of time that DE has finally gotten around to adding.

If you want to take aim at those in favor of systemic fixes that make those benefits unneeded I'm totally on board... Just phase them out as they are addressed similarly to rolling out weapon traits.

Got a fix in mind to make standing caps unnecessary? Go for it, but leave the cap bonuses from MR intact until it's ready and THEN take 'em out.

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I mean, we've had a whole bunch of reworks recently where DE's compensation was simply to give us three regular Forma, and that much was received just fine.

True, but none of those have involved fully removing the reworked item in question and replacing it with a skin to MAYBE come back at a later point.

That approach would necessarily wipe existing custom polarities entirely, which is a bit different from applied polarities potentially being undesirable after a change... But perhaps not (in which case yay, free Forma). I'd bet money that the complaints were limited because little to no re-polarizing was needed after those reworks for most players.

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Similarly, we keep having upsets to the Riven market with every disposition rebalance, which completely screws over some traders who bought overpowered Rivens for thousands of plat, only for them to devalue massively, yet that too doesn't create too many waves.

It created noticeable waves when it first started happening, but they didn't really go anywhere precisely because Rivens were SUPPOSED to be that way from the beginning. Changing dispositions were common knowledge for anyone getting that invested in the market; players didn't really have a leg to stand on in that respect.

Considering the pseudo-scandal that popped up regarding the "Riven Mafia" around the same time, I'm also guessing that the players most affected by those changes are disinclined to talk about them and open themselves to public ridicule/persecution.

Something as fundamental as lost "legitimate" progress in terms of polarities, however, would be something players could universally rally behind.

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In general, I think outrage over wasted grind is at best an exaggeration, at least in current instances, and at worst an argument primarily used by the devs to avoid reducing grind in the game, e.g. with the Hema ("Think of all the players who spent hours farming Mutagen" and the like).

This is an apples and oranges example, I think, because rather than use it as an excuse to block changes altogether all I'm saying is to make it as painless as possible.

Sure, maybe you could get away with wiping tons of polarities and leaving players to re-grind them as their weapons reappear. But why would you want to? Just "refund" the time.

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Okay, but we're talking about grips here, not stances, and when the baseline weapon is that basic, it would be no problem to just give one to every player. If stances are to be cosmetic, then what matters is the moveset for each grip conveyed in those stances, so proof of concept is indeed needed to make sure those moves are considered good, otherwise you'd be adding tons of content over a fundamentally flawed system... again.

I think you are misunderstanding the changes I proposed, so I'll try to clarify some definitions here:

Stances ARE movesets, at least when it comes to differentiating between grips. Individual stance MODS are all aesthetic variations of the same basic moveset innate to the compatible grip.

Therefore, reworking the default (empty) stance for all grips IS the "proof of concept" for the new movesets and combo bindings. These changes can be weapon-generic; whether the player tests heavy blades with Galatine, Gram, or Paracesis ultimately doesn't matter in the least, so why are we messing with player inventories at this point?

At the same time, it simply wouldn't be practical to rework all the stances at once. Removing stance bonus capacity and polarities allows players to unequip their Melee 2.0 stance mods at no penalty (freeing them up to use the 3.0 movesets) while keeping them as backups if the new versions are bad.

Assuming the new movesets are good, the "old" stance mods can be progressively brought up to the 3.0 standard by grip type (i.e., phased out). Then, once the moveset foundation is solid we can start further differentiating grips through stat rebalancing and introducing weapon-specific quirks.

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Also, side note, but I also feel that we need to condense variants as skins, regardless of which weapons get filled out. If Prisma, Prime, Vandal, Wraith, etc. variants offered some genuine twist on the original, perhaps there'd be some merit in them existing as separate weapons, but as it stands their consistent line of direction is "like the original, but better", which itself directly contradicts any goal to make all weapons around equally viable.

Agreed, but again we should be approaching this in baby steps. Movesets first, which doesn't necessitate trimming duplicate weapons immediately. They should work across all weapons in the same category.

Once the movesets are solid, THEN you address the individual weapon balance and trim out duplicates. Straight-up variants like Prisma/Prime should DEFINITELY be skins.

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And at stage 3, you're going to have to take a look at your mods so that they not only accommodate the old moveset, but the new one as well simultaneously. Imagine if autoblock were only released on some weapons, but not others: what exactly would one have to do with block and parry mods? Does one just shift those mods to one side or the other, and accept that they'll break on a large amount of weapons, or does one fill the mod environment with both, even though that'll mean taking the old mods away from players in the future, and generate significant confusion in the meantime? This is the reason I'm suggesting to a) go for a clean break, and b) make mods more specific, because the fewer dependencies you have between your components, the easier it becomes to isolate smaller parts of your system when making changes, and thus avoid unnecessary side-effects or complications.

No, just immediately move it to the new system, because the default stances are already updated to the 3.0 standard. If the player wants to use mods that would break under the 2.0 model, they can just unequip their 2.0 stance.

That's the entire benefit of the phasing:

Using the default stances as the test flight makes them universally and immediately available to all players. At the same time, don't bother moving mods to the new system until that new system is solid.

Once the stance mods start transitioning, the assumption is that the new system is solid and it's time to start porting mods over as-needed.

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I agree with making more of the in-game world consistently desirable, but I don't think any game is ever "big enough" to be able to afford fragmenting its playerbase, and more broadly, "it's not so bad" is not the same as "it's good": if Digital Extremes can make all of their game consistently engaging to all players who've gone through the content, and establish a solid connection between newcomers and the rest of the community, including (and especially) veterans right from the start, then that I think is an opportunity they should take, even if it means sacrificing the raw stat increases that currently trivialize so much of Warframe's content.

Fair enough, but this still circles back into the below:

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Honestly? I do; I think Warframe's changed significantly and taken great risks for the sake of its gameplay already: many players kept insisting that if DE stopped releasing new content to take the time to improve the existing game, Warframe would die (a mantra DE themselves openly claimed to believe in for a time), but then DE released multiple large updates purely to update or rebalance content, or otherwise not directly contribute to the game's monetization, and those updates turned out to be among the most successful (e.g. Specters of the Rail, the Jovian Concord, that one update that rebalanced 100+ weapons). DE even changed some of their monetary deals, such as the mod pack rework or implementation of Prime Accessory-exclusive packs, in response to player feedback (or probably just Jim Sterling for the latter). For sure, DE is often stubborn when it comes to changing their old ways, especially when it comes to addressing the grind, and they're unlikely to change all of their monetization at once, but I do think there's plenty of precedent of them eventually caving in, or taking leaps of faith of their own accord, to the benefit of all.

What DE has done and what you are proposing are on entirely different scales; pausing content updates to polish older content and rebalancing stats are not even remotely comparable to fully removing their premium incentives.

DE sells power, and they have primarily gotten big through selling that power. If they can't sell that anymore, what do they sell instead? I sincerely doubt that cosmetic sales alone could make up the difference.

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Indeed, though for me, what matters more than the elements is what they actually do: I think the current elemental system is far too abstract and symbolic to truly contribute to gameplay, and in some ways limits gameplay when the only pool of effects you can truly choose from is that small, and carries significant side consequences. To some extent, I'd much rather go back to a Damage 1.0-like system where there's this huge list of distinct effects, and weapons can pick and choose which to apply in their gameplay for more nuance and differentiation.

Agreed that damage 1.0 was better in the sense that elements felt more distinct and interesting. To that end, I would like guaranteed minor status effects (e.g., burning fire) and accumulative major effects (e.g., burning panic).

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Weapons that set enemies on fire need not deal a special kind of Heat damage separate from regular damage,

Interesting, and it would fit what I had in mind for how to implement weaknesses/resistances without relying directly on multipliers.

For example, Infested might possess very fast health regeneration. Heat would therefore be effective not due to dealing 75% more damage, but by the constant DOT effectively mitigating the regeneration.

Obviously Heat wouldn't be NEEDED to beat the Infested, but it would be a noticeable benefit.

I think it would be nice for every weapon to have a set amount of raw "damage," with a max of 1 physical and 1 elemental modifier applied to it. This would also tie in nicely to my spitball idea for Corpus weapons: they would have get a second elemental modifier in place of a physical one.

Quote

and if we're going to have weapons that turn enemies against each other, that need not be attached to any particular element, particularly when the current implementation leads to some pretty silly thematic dissonance (e.g. Oberon the nature druid/paladin primarily acting through Radiation).

Agreed, though I think this largely translates to a need for redefining and/or expanding the pool. We've touched on this before, but stuff like a water status for Hydroid capable of interacting with other elements (electricity, cold, etc.) could be beneficial.

July 3, 2019

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

Stat-homogeneity and grip-specific mods.

I agree that conditional mods have a lot of potential, but I don't think we need to enforce them through strict incompatibilities. To use your multi-target bonus example, that already lends itself to use on polearms/heavy blades/whips; why shouldn't the player be allowed to slot it on a dagger if they're willing to dedicate more mods to expanding range? It would certainly be silly to have a Galatine be out-pacing, say, Ether Daggers, but simply widening the gap in base stats past what mods can overcome should be enough to maintain the distinction.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

If we're going along crit, status, etc. as lines of differentiation, then you could expand to also feature those, though even then that may not be necessary (we already have grip types that are all status, like daggers or nunchaku). Beyond that, though, the need for crit weapons, status weapons, etc. along current lines of design I think is questionable, as ultimately those stats don't really differentiate gameplay, so if we're overhauling melee weapons, might as well change how we customize them as well.

Honestly, I was just thinking in terms of Melee 3.0 without considering Damage 3.0. Given the choice, I would want to eliminate things like random crit/status altogether and avoid shoehorning individual weapons into either.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

Worst case scenario: would it really be that bad to subtract it? It'd be a huge MR drop, and people don't like losing stuff, but ultimately it'd affect everyone in the same manner, and would prevent giving people MR that nobody else would be able to access (unless you attached it to a skin, which would be weird). To some extent, it might even be beneficial to get people to rediscover the new melee weapons once they get reimplemented.

A few years ago I would have said no, it wouldn't be that bad. But today players would lose:

Innate mod capacity.
Daily standing caps.
Daily trade allowance.
Loadout slots.

That's bound to rub a lot of players rather raw, for very little concrete gain. If we're going to go that far, I think the better option would be rebalancing the mastery progression so that the existing Warframes/Weapons equate to a strong surplus of affinity for reaching MR30. This would give players the option of skipping some content they don't like, which would in and of itself alleviate a lot of the inconvenience of having so many "duplicate" weapons.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

I guess they could always be returned to the user, to be added back once the weapon gets reimplemented, or used elsewhere in the meantime.

Just make sure the refunded Forma are a non-tradeable special variant that resets rank; undoing that much grind would (rightly, especially if you factor in booster sales) provoke outrage. That said, also avoid announcing that plan ahead of time to prevent a repeat of the Steel Charge/Legendary Core debacle.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

I guess just pick the most basic version of each grip type, e.g. the Bo for staves or Skana for swords. If those can be made into a good enough proof of concept, then the rest can differentiate themselves with more interesting mechanics.

Is a proof of concept even needed though? Reworked stances are reworked stances, whether they apply to 1 weapon or 20. If you limit things to 1 weapon, you have to account for players not actually owning that weapon. For example, I have Bo Prime and Prisma Skana, but not the base variant of either.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

This is fair, and I guess one could always implement this by stages, a la Melee 3.0 (when it eventually happens... anytime now). I do think there's merit in a clean break, though, as otherwise having to maintain two different systems at once can get confusing, especially when overlapping systems like mods factor in.

I think phasing it in would be the best approach, and I question how much merit a clean break would actually have. Melee isn't especially prone to breaking from patch to patch, so it should require little to no maintenance as it is phased out. DE would just need to address content as it becomes affected. For example:

Do a quick low-effort balance pass to bring underperforming weapons up to viable par (e.g., Fang Prime).
Rework the "default" stance for each grip type, and remove the polarities and capacity bonuses from all stance mods (leaving players free to test out the default stances).
Rework and release stances by grip type.
Rework the combo meter and heavy attacks, and tweak affected mods (e.g., Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, Drifting Contact, etc.).
Do an in-depth balance pass of all weapons and melee mods to fit the new finished systems.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

Agreed, all of the game should be interesting to veteran players. With this in mind, though, I also want to avoid fragmenting the playerbase along power levels, which in this case would mean finding a way to let veteran players make beginner-level content more difficult for themselves even in the presence of other beginners.

I think Warframe is big enough that it shouldn't really need to worry about fragmenting the playerbase too much. The main issue is that only a few nodes are consistently rewarding and worth playing; this could be fixed by reworking regional progression and mission reward distribution to maintain a roughly even spread of activity across each planet/satellite. I think I may have mentioned this to you, but I had a system in mind where players run intelligence missions (e.g., Spy, Interception, Capture) to generate alert-style missions rewarding specific resources and building the F2P economy around a stable amount of grind needed to craft every new item.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

However, this in turn raises the question of why we even need power increases if the end result is that content scales to catch up with us anyway.

Fair question, and I personally find the idea of an "unleveled" game quite appealing. However, I don't see a practical way to uproot progression from Warframe's monetization. DE's big-ticket items are all closely related - Forma, potatoes, Rivens, boosters, etc. Sure, maybe they could make just as much money off of cosmetics and such... but do you see them taking a gamble on the viability of their product just to improve the gameplay?

I'd love to do it; I just don't see how.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

Side note, but what is even supposed to be the point of the Dark weapons anyway? The radiation damage and high status imply they exist to turn enemies to your side, but that works terribly with melee (confused enemies will still likely focus the player), so the end result is that these are just weapons that happen to be good against Grineer, and generally meh otherwise. Food for thought...

I think this would be best addressed through Damage 3.0, as you mentioned with regards to crit/status. "Innate radiation" is fine as a trait, but it needs polish in the sense that said trait needs to be legitimately useful. All in all I want all elements to be reasonably useful against all factions, but change how the player approaches specific enemies. Small flavor bonuses like heat being strong against Infested are fine, but they should be relatively small and not make or break the element.

On 2019-06-28 at 4:01 AM, Teridax68 said:

That sounds good, and with this I'd like to see more throwable melee weapons in Warframe, including actual spears: the gun spears we got are alright, but don't really capture the feel of throwable spears due to the base mode being ranged still. Combining block and ADS would be a good opportunity here to implement melee weapons that can be thrown with RMB+E or the console equivalent.

+1.

July 1, 2019

On 2019-06-27 at 3:51 PM, SortaRandom said:

This is pretty different from what y'all are discussing, but my biggest gripe with the new system is that it's fundamentally incompatible with players who disable "Align melee attacks to camera".

Wow, I wasn't even aware of what that setting really did. That said, this is closely aligned to the issue mentioned in the OP, which is that directional inputs are ultimately obtrusive and shouldn't be used.

On 2019-06-27 at 3:51 PM, SortaRandom said:

Some possible, hopefully-easy-to-implement solutions:

(will annoy many players) Completely replace "Hold W" with some other activator, e.g. "Hold E" or "Pause".

(most robust) Add a page in "Gameplay Settings" that lets players choose each combo's activator individually, from a dropdown list (between "Hold W", "Hold W/A/S/D", "Pause", "Aim + Hold E", etc.).
All stances after Melee 3.0 will have essentially the same combos, just with different animations, so this setting page should be pretty universal across weapons/stances.

These should ultimately be all that is needed.

Without the inclusion of a precision modifier like lock-on, directional inputs do not belong on combos. By all means let players rebind inputs however they want, but the defaults should not include movement keys.

I'd even take it a bit further and say let players rebind any key they want as a combo modifier (i.e., KEY + MELEE). Stuff like pause and hold inputs should not be needed for differentiating combos in the new system.

On 2019-06-28 at 3:44 AM, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

So I'm the only one angry about the "block" combos "marking" you to pull out the rifle as soon as you stop mashing the attack button?

I think it should not do that after recognizing you attack after that.

It's annoying as hell and makes me not want to use those combos..

Nope, you're not alone. Though what pisses me off more is being unable to melee-glide without unequipping guns.

June 27, 2019

5 hours ago, Nok-Rntha said:

Automatic weapons deal low base damage, require sustained fire. Sustained fire which you can only get when you're alive. Should have been more clear - Puncture doesn't directly increase DPS, but you can't shoot your guns when dead and enemies dealing 30% less damage means you can keep doing that just a bit longer. Not all that good on its own, but when combined with other procs, it adds up.

I'm sorry, but what?

A 30% damage debuff applied to ONE enemy per proc is nothing special or particularly helpful.

First, most enemies die too fast for a damage debuff to have any noticeable effect (especially when the player is actively shooting them to get procs). By the time enemies scale high enough for damage debuffs to matter, 30% is nowhere near enough to noticeably improve survival.

Second, most combat scenarios have so many enemies that debuffing a few at a time doesn't really help anything... and no weapon that reliably procs puncture can hit enough of them at once to matter.

Third, Slash is still better. Killing an enemy permanently debuffs its damage by 100% instead of a mere 30% lasting a few seconds. There's a reason people say "dead is the best status effect," and they are not at all mistaken.

Puncture might not be entirely useless, but that doesn't make it good.

5 hours ago, Nok-Rntha said:

You said base Electricity isn't a good base damage to have, then immediately said it can be immediately combined into corrosive. I see that as an absolute win. On its own, however, Electricity also stuns when it procs and does so in a radius. Amprex is the single best demonstration of those qualities, hence why I listed it.

OP's point is that Electricity itself is pretty meh.

5 hours ago, Nok-Rntha said:

Well, sometimes the best solutions are the easiest. Sure, not everyone would mod for it, but it would at least have a niche by allowing you to stuff one of Mag's pretty interesting abilities into a gun and give you more chances to use it, unlike current Magnetic, which is just disproportionately more effective against us than vice versa.

The whole point of the bullet attractor effect is making it easier to hit enemies, right? So wouldn't it be rather redundant for guns to proc that effect... By needing to hit enemies first?

This effect would also be totally useless on melee weapons.

5 hours ago, Nok-Rntha said:

It disabling enemy abilities would have diminishing returns - you'd make fun of screwed the enemies are in lower level content, without their 'abilities', but later on, you'll realize all they need is a gun pointed in your general direction. Unlike Warframes, they don't need no fancy schmancy abilities. They're designed that way. That's why the few that do have some abilities are so effective at being annoying (Scorpions, Ancients and more)

Ironically enough, shutting down enemy powers would be infinitely more useful than either Puncture or your proposed Bullet Attractor effect.

The ability to shut off Energy Leech/Parasitic auras alone would be a godsend (and fit nicely onto existing gas builds, at that), and the utilities mentioned by @birdobash would also be incredibly handy for slower-firing weapons.

June 27, 2019

@Teridax68

Welp, no idea what ate the rest of my post, but I'm kinda demotivated from attempting to retype it.

EDIT: Or doublepost, nvm.

June 27, 2019

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is fair, and I can agree with this. Even in an environment where our damage is balanced, most enemies in Warframe are still likely supposed to die extremely quickly, which I think is one of the reasons why current combos tend to feel so awkward (one has to constantly switch targets in a timed attack chain, when said attacks also don't always cooperate with the player's movement). Streamlining that down to cosmetic animations and repeatable attacks would likely work better in this respect.

One thing that I see come up repeatedly in reference to discussions like this is Warframe as a "horde" game, usually to the tune of justifying the exclusion of individually challenging enemies.

I personally feel that it would not only be possible but PREFERABLE to have the best of both worlds: trivial enemies meant to be swept up like dead leaves and rare stronger enemies requiring more serious commitment to bring down.

The Profit Taker is a great example of this environment missing the mark a bit; it's good that the Terra Mooks are there to counter weapon attrition (dropping energy and ammo), but it's a problem that they actually pose a noticeable threat to the player. In a boss fight, players should be free to focus their attention on the boss while mooks essentially serve as immersive ammo refills and health restores.

This dynamic could largely carry over to normal gameplay, albeit to a less exaggerated extent.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This I can very much agree with: more than anything else on the matter, our melee weapon archetypes need to feel different from each other. I shouldn't be able to swing around my greatsword with the same blistering speed as a dagger, nor should combat with both reduce itself to just slashing someone until they keel over, or spin-attacking ad nauseam.

Precisely!

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

In this respect, it might also be useful to establish even more mod separation between grip types, e.g. to make attack speed less accessible to heavy blades, but instead give those weapons better access to range than daggers.

I think this can easily be controlled by correctly balancing weapon base stats, shrinking stat benefits from mods, and adding trade-offs (e.g., +speed -damage/-stagger) so that modding serves to specialize builds moreso than make them viable in the first place.

It also wouldn't hurt to consider whether certain bonuses should be fixed or percentage values.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, though shifting all duplicate weapons to skins would itself be a retcon that could allow for work to be stretched out across a longer pipeline: with every weapon turned into a skin, you could just keep pulling existing skins, and attaching weapon stats and attacks to them, until every skin becomes a bona fide weapon of its own. Thus, the minimum viable product to deliver a melee rework along either of our models would be to just define one weapon per grip type, turn the rest into skins, and then expand from there.

That's a bit drastic, and I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. At least, it would be difficult to define just 1 viable weapon per grip without also overhauling our damage system (players would expect at least 1 crit, status, and hybrid-capable weapon at minimum).

It also raises some questions:

What do you do about the mastery XP provided by weapons which might now be skins?

What happens to polarities, potatoes, and lenses applied to weapons that become skins, and what happens when they get changed back?

How do we pick which weapons are the "originals" or vice-versa?

Again, while I agree that it would be smarter to release weapons with paltry differences as skins rather than new weapons I think the safer option moving forward would be to leave the existing content more or less alone until we get to it. The goal should definitely be to reshape existing weapons into legitimately unique tools rather than generic alternates, but having generic alternates in the meantime doesn't actually break anything or ruffle any feathers unnecessarily.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is fair. Personally, I take issue with vertical progression as well because it tends to create a downward-sloping difficulty curve, and thus make older/starter content more trivial, but ultimately allowing every weapon to reach a consistent level of power would already be far better than our current situation.

True, though I think that concern could also be addressed by reshaping earlier content as the player progresses. If an end-game player needs to return to Venus, there should be some mechanism for them to access scaled content in that region without locking them to a few specific missions (e.g., high-tier bounties).

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

In general, I think factions are painfully underused and underdeveloped even now in terms of gameplay, to the point where they often blend into each other: if using weapons of different factions conveyed to us the mentality of that faction, so to speak (e.g. Grineer weapons being crude and brutal, Corpus weapons being more complex, Tenno weapons being more old-fashioned, and so on), that would add extra layers not only to our weapons, but to those factions as well. Suddenly, mixing and matching factions and weapon archetypes wouldn't just be a matter of exploring aesthetic themes, but also doing the same for gameplay.

My thoughts exactly! I've said repeatedly and will continue to say that fighting the Grineer, Corpus, and Corrupted is effectively the same, with an arbitrary color-by-numbers approach used for equipment modding.

Blasting a Heavy Gunner with Corrosive or Viral bullets doesn't actually play any differently than hammering a Tech with Gas or Poison. It's a facade of variety I would very much like to see replaced with something genuine.

This actually relates to your abilities thread, where my biggest criticism of our damage system is that the different types of damage don't actually create noticeably different GAMEPLAY.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Agreed completely, individual weapons and weapon archetypes can both be differentiated simultaneously. If we're going with common themes across factions and weapon archetypes, this would essentially make every individual weapon the combinatorial product of their respective faction and archetype, plus whichever individual quirk at the individual level (which in many cases would be based off the weapon line it belongs to, e.g. the Soma or Dark weapons), which could make for much richer individual identities, as well as a much more robust system of weapon design.

Yep! This would ultimately translate into the player picking a weapon TYPE based on playstyle preference and specific weapon based on the perks and quirks they find interesting.

Something as simple as Dark weapons having innate radiation is fine, I think, but could still use some polish.

June 27, 2019

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is fair, and I can agree with this. Even in an environment where our damage is balanced, most enemies in Warframe are still likely supposed to die extremely quickly, which I think is one of the reasons why current combos tend to feel so awkward (one has to constantly switch targets in a timed attack chain, when said attacks also don't always cooperate with the player's movement). Streamlining that down to cosmetic animations and repeatable attacks would likely work better in this respect.

One thing that I see come up repeatedly in reference to discussions like this is Warframe as a "horde" game, usually to the tune of justifying the exclusion of individually challenging enemies.

I personally feel that it would not only be possible but PREFERABLE to have the best of both worlds: trivial enemies meant to be swept up like dead leaves and rare stronger enemies requiring more serious commitment to bring down.

The Profit Taker is a great example of this environment missing the mark a bit; it's good that the Terra Mooks are there to counter weapon attrition (dropping energy and ammo), but it's a problem that they actually pose a noticeable threat to the player. In a boss fight, players should be free to focus their attention on the boss while mooks essentially serve as immersive ammo refills and health restores.

This dynamic could largely carry over to normal gameplay, albeit to a less exaggerated extent.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This I can very much agree with: more than anything else on the matter, our melee weapon archetypes need to feel different from each other. I shouldn't be able to swing around my greatsword with the same blistering speed as a dagger, nor should combat with both reduce itself to just slashing someone until they keel over, or spin-attacking ad nauseam.

Precisely!

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

In this respect, it might also be useful to establish even more mod separation between grip types, e.g. to make attack speed less accessible to heavy blades, but instead give those weapons better access to range than daggers.

I think this can easily be controlled by correctly balancing weapon base stats, shrinking stat benefits from mods, and adding trade-offs (e.g., +speed -damage/-stagger) so that modding serves to specialize builds moreso than make them viable in the first place.

It also wouldn't hurt to consider whether certain bonuses should be fixed or percentage values.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, though shifting all duplicate weapons to skins would itself be a retcon that could allow for work to be stretched out across a longer pipeline: with every weapon turned into a skin, you could just keep pulling existing skins, and attaching weapon stats and attacks to them, until every skin becomes a bona fide weapon of its own. Thus, the minimum viable product to deliver a melee rework along either of our models would be to just define one weapon per grip type, turn the rest into skins, and then expand from there.

That's a bit drastic, and I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. At least, it would be difficult to define just 1 viable weapon per grip without also overhauling our damage system (players would expect at least 1 crit, status, and hybrid-capable weapon at minimum).

It also raises some questions:

What do you do about the mastery XP provided by weapons which might now be skins?

What happens to polarities, potatoes, and lenses applied to weapons that become skins, and what happens when they get changed back?

How do we pick which weapons are the "originals" or vice-versa?

Again, while I agree that it would be smarter to release weapons with paltry differences as skins rather than new weapons I think the safer option moving forward would be to leave the existing content more or less alone until we get to it. The goal should definitely be to reshape existing weapons into legitimately unique tools rather than generic alternates, but having generic alternates in the meantime doesn't actually break anything or ruffle any feathers unnecessarily.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is fair. Personally, I take issue with vertical progression as well because it tends to create a downward-sloping difficulty curve, and thus make older/starter content more trivial, but ultimately allowing every weapon to reach a consistent level of power would already be far better than our current situation.

True, though I think that concern could also be addressed by reshaping earlier content as the player progresses. If an end-game player needs to return to Venus, there should be some mechanism for them to access scaled content in that region without locking them to a few specific missions (e.g., high-tier bounties).

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

In general, I think factions are painfully underused and underdeveloped even now in terms of gameplay, to the point where they often blend into each other: if using weapons of different factions conveyed to us the mentality of that faction, so to speak (e.g. Grineer weapons being crude and brutal, Corpus weapons being more complex, Tenno weapons being more old-fashioned, and so on), that would add extra layers not only to our weapons, but to those factions as well. Suddenly, mixing and matching factions and weapon archetypes wouldn't just be a matter of exploring aesthetic themes, but also doing the same for gameplay.

My thoughts exactly! I've said repeatedly and will continue to say that fighting the Grineer, Corpus, and Corrupted is effectively the same, with an arbitrary color-by-numbers approach used for equipment modding.

Blasting a Heavy Gunner with Corrosive or Viral bullets doesn't actually play any differently than hammering a Tech with Gas or Poison. It's a facade of variety I would very much like to see replaced with something genuine.

This actually relates to your abilities thread, where my biggest criticism of our damage system is that the different types of damage don't actually create noticeably different GAMEPLAY.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Agreed completely, individual weapons and weapon archetypes can both be differentiated simultaneously. If we're going with common themes across factions and weapon archetypes, this would essentially make every individual weapon the combinatorial product of their respective faction and archetype, plus whichever individual quirk at the individual level (which in many cases would be based off the weapon line it belongs to, e.g. the Soma or Dark weapons), which could make for much richer individual identities, as well as a much more robust system of weapon design.

Yep! This would ultimately translate into the player picking a weapon TYPE based on playstyle preference and specific weapon based on the perks and quirks they find interesting.

Something as simple as Dark weapons having innate radiation is fine, I think, but could still use some polish.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

There'd still be the issue of the eleven or so Tenno dual swords we have, but at least there'd be more tools to break those down and find some unique theme out of each.

Dual Swords are one area where I expect to ultimately have a lot of weapons get retconned into skins and others get split into an entirely different weapon class.

Dex Dakra, Dual Keres, and Dual Raza would be prime skin candidates, I think, and the Ichors/Zorens/Kamas/Basolk should split off into a "hatchet/tomahawk" grip type.

Dual Swords would feature fast attacks with good blocking/parrying capabilities, while hatchets would have overall higher damage per strike with the ability to throw one of the paired weapons at a time.

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I actually really like this: if we can have different animation sets for our warframes, we could certainly have different animation sets for our melee weapons, if our melee weapons were to attack in the same way. Coupled with the above, this means the simplest possible transition could be to just start with as many melee weapons as we have grip types, change the rest into skins, and change our stances into animation sets. From there, one could generate new weapons from those skins, and if melee weapons are to use their own attack animations, that too could be fleshed out as well at the individual level.

🙂

Stances effectively already ARE animation sets; we just have to get rid of the silly "guaranteed proc," "triple damage," or "trigger finisher" effects tied to individual hits buried in random combos.

In my mind's eye there is the empty "default" stance representing the fundamental Tenno way of wielding each grip type, and then uniquely stylized stances the player can find and equip.

The default stance would be fairly simple and utilitarian (but still a complete stance with full-size animation sets) and the specialized stances would each fit a themed aesthetic. For example, if a stance is called Carving Mantis I want it to evoke the expected imagery on a lot more than a couple hits on one combo of several.

June 27, 2019

8 hours ago, birdobash said:

Ooo this sounds cool. Sounds like it would definitely feel better than what we have currently, although a lot of energy related mods like rage or quick thinking would have to change most likely.

Yes, such mods would definitely need to change. The simplest thing to do would be for Rage and H.A. to replenish the smaller pool, which in turn can help generate payoff energy (but not at the same rate as simply converting damage).

Quick Thinking, I think, should change its base effect. Instead of progressively draining energy to stall lethal damage, it consumes all accumulated payoff energy for a bulk healing effect.

Some mods (e.g., Flow) would probably stay the same with some tweaks to their balancing (smaller bonus to energy pool), but lots of powers (E. Vampire, Thurible, etc.) would also need changes to fit.

Quote

What I actually would be most excited for in a system like this would be the application of energy for quick reloading, freeing up mod slots for certain weapons being held back by horrible negatives (Angstrum series, twin grakatas, etc).

Er, not necessarily. I was envisioning those effects as weapon mods rather than Warframe mods, though I suppose it could go either way. Also to be perfectly clear such effects would have a scaled cost depending on their overall benefit (i.e., insta-reloading something with a 5 second reload would cost more than, say, Vasto).

Quote

You could even perhaps supercharge your weapons using this same energy principle to make them fire faster, giving much needed utility to weapons like the normal opticor.

Possible, though the trick here is figuring out the binding to differentiate the effect. The player doesn't necessarily want to always use a boost at the expense of energy.

One idea I was toying with was for all these mods to be reload-based and mutually exclusive, always triggered by holding R:

Hold R to reload instantly.

Hold R to supercharge the next magazine for faster RoF.

Hold R to stabilize the munitions in the next magazine, improving accuracy and recoil.

The main issue with this approach being: what about weapons that don't reload, or reload too quickly/frequently (e.g., Knell, Vectis)?

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

While the system I'm proposing differs in many respects, what you are suggesting is nonetheless a far more flexible and interesting system than the one Energy pool we currently have, and would solve issues I pointed out in a prior debate here regarding using different abilities at different paces (some abilities are inevitably meant to be used more frequently than others, and a single Energy pool doesn't really accommodate that). I also agree that it eases into a shift towards no Energy at all more easily than a direct transition, since it already clearly sets payoff-type abilities apart from the rest, and allows the rest to be adjusted without too many real limitations until the need for a resource cost could eventually be switched off.

To reiterate, the more I have considered your concept since our last discussion of it, the more I have grown to like it. When I say my system could be used to springboard into yours, I most certainly mean that it should only be a springboard for getting players used to the overall concept by framing it in terms they are more intimately familiar with (energy).

My previous hangups about going fully "zero energy" were mainly:

1. I wanted to use Channeling as a way to potentially fold melee into energy generation as a playstyle variation. This dilemma could be solved by tying in combo-meter heavy attacks.

2. I wanted to use mods as a way to potentially fold gunplay into energy generation for the same reasons. This dilemma could be solved (as you exemplified) through Warframe passives. For example, Ember might gain her payoff resource through applying Heat procs, Mesa from headshot kills, etc.

3. I felt it would be simpler to use a generic resource for design than trying to think up something unique like Nidus stacks whenever needed. I think this still applies somewhat, but a lot of my own reworks end up adding unique resources as passives ANYWAY, so it's a bit of a hypocritical point on my part.

Otherwise, having powers simply be self-limiting gives players one less (or two, in my case) meter to watch at all times and would get rid of the need for simple +efficiency mods.

June 27, 2019

A lot of the pushback I'm seeing seems to be stemming from people struggling to wrap their heads around what it would actually mean for abilities to not have energy costs. We discussed this at greater length a while back, but I'll once again put forth my "dual-energy" system as an intermediate step to help the community adjust to a changing paradigm:

A small, quickly-regenerating energy pool that fuels a Warframe's bread-and-butter powers.
A larger, non-regenerating energy pool that fuels a Warframes "payoff" powers.
Consuming the first pool pours energy into the second one.
Channeling and mod-based gun bonuses (e.g., hold R for instant reload) consume energy from the first pool, allowing players to generate payoffs through a variety of actions.

This would create a familiar Frame-generic foundation for springboarding into true "no-energy" power design. Any bread-and-butter power designed to fit the first pool is 90% of the way to needing no limiter at all, and the second pool is basically the same thing as any Frame-specific resource (e.g., Nidus stacks) anyway.

June 26, 2019

2 hours ago, NoSpax said:

Can we settle on the fact, the new melee system breaks a lot of things?

Yes, absolutely. And it's particularly alarming that we haven't really heard anything from DE with regards to fixing them, or even acknowledging the problems.

2 hours ago, NoSpax said:

- You can't scan and melee defend yourself anymore, as you switch back to melee out of the scanner.

Honestly, I would really rather see scanning get removed altogether. It takes away from the game more than adds to it, IMO.

2 hours ago, NoSpax said:

- If you switch between melee and gun (or scanner and melee) in some instances, you get stuck in animation, unable to do anything.

I haven't actually encountered this one.

2 hours ago, NoSpax said:

The only benefit for now is, you can weave between melee and your gun now, without interrupting the combo.

Reveal hidden contents

Example of a weaved combo:

Midwhile, I even found it better to remove the stance mod from weapons for the oldschool quick melee .

In this case (and especially in the context of the OP) I think the best approach would be to simply address WHY quick-melee is ever preferred over stances:

The smoothness of controls and freedom of movement.

June 26, 2019

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is fair, but then can be said for any combo, including Melee 2.0 combos, as their functional purpose is for the player to go through the motions to eventually achieve some result at the combo string's conclusion. In that sense, getting rid of combo strings altogether would solve the issue.

True, and I think this is where the "Melee 2.0 tried too hard to copy DMC" criticism applies.

In DMC, different combos exist for two major reasons:

1. A large factor in the player's expression of skill is their ability to mix and match combos to exploit special effects tied to specific hits in specific combos (e.g., hitstun, knockback, bonus damage, etc.) in a smooth and varied way.

2. Simple variety. The style meter actively discourages spamming the same "most powerful" combos as a simple means of killing enemies efficiently, so players need lots of options to keep things fresh and satisfy the game's simulated panel of judges.

This fits well in a game where enemies are all reasonably durable punching-bags and style is legitimately more important than simple lethality, but neither of those criteria really match Warframe.

Therefore, I prefer to think of Warframe "combos" as a catchall term for a repeating sequence of attack animations. "Strings" would only exist in the sense that a stance has EEEEE because there are 5 different attack animations, not because the inputs need to be executed in that order.

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I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, and I do think homogeneity among weapons of the same type is a problem as well, because these weapons come attached with stats. It is wasteful to have multiple weapons act the same way in this manner, because melee weapons need to be released with their own stats and mechanics, all of which end up amounting to nought if the most statistically efficient variant prevails. Thus, if homogeneity within grip types is the intent, one may as well simply have only as many melee weapons as there are grip types, turn all different weapons of the same type into skins, and all unique weapon mechanics into mods.

I didn't mean to suggest that they would be mutually exclusive, or even that distinguishing between weapons isn't important, only that distinguishing between grip types would be more immediately important and impactful.

In other words: grips would be archetypes, stances would be mostly aesthetic within each archetype, and individual weapons would have unique bonus effects that further modify their place in relation to similar weapons.

Obvious examples would be a conditional "ignited" state for weapons like heat sword, jet-boosted attacks for the Jat Kittag, or dynamic transitions between grip types for Dark Split Sword... But I would definitely like to carry that sort of differentiation over to all the other weapons wherever possible.

I certainly agree with your notion that duplicate weapons would be preferably released and sold as SKINS rather than entirely new weapons. However, without the ability to retcon specific weapons or staunch the influx of additional fluff, I think it would be wise to focus on making distinctions that benefit all existing and future content first.

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All of these sound excellent. Regardless of our split on individual weapons vs. grip types, the models you are proposing are all good to follow, and fit the weapons they'd apply to.

🙂

To be perfectly clear, I don't even think it's a split of perspectives. If I could start from scratch, I'd go with your approach from the beginning - each NEW weapon has a noticeably unique identity, and anything that would amount to a model swap with altered stats would be a skin instead.

Having multiple interchangeable weapons with minor stat differences doesn't really make sense in a game where players are supposedly allowed to MODIFY those stats.

However, we've already got a very bloated stockpile of weapons to deal with and I would prefer starting with broad strokes for an immediate impact rather than jumping straight into the details.

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Agreed completely, and this I think applies to guns as well. I do not see any value in arbitrarily defining some weapons as stronger or weaker than others based off some arbitrary progression threshold, and I'd rather make all weapons equally powerful, instead establishing MR weapon tiers based on quirkiness, complexity, and difficulty of use (i.e. start with simpler weapons, then introduce weapons with alt-fires, success conditions such as the Dual Toxocyst's headshot bonus, quirky modes of fire or attack, and so on). So far, MR power tiers have only served to further enforce a meta of optimal weapons versus MR fodder, to the detriment of diversity overall.

Agreed, though I'll append that I wouldn't mind vertical progression attached to MR PROVIDED that the player has options for moving specific weapons up the tiers through grind.

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This I can largely agree with, though I also feel the homogeneity of older guns is still an issue that causes specific weapons to dominate over others on pure stats. Thus, while there's not as much of a problem, there's still a problem nonetheless of weapons that are currently redundant or mutually exclusive to each other's viability.

Agreed again.

There's certainly a lot of room for more variety- we could draw along faction lines with Corpus/Grineer/Infested weapons following general design patterns, and weapon classes having specific traits that cross those borders.

For example, an assault rifle is always going to be an automatic weapon for medium-range, but:

A Corpus AR operates on a battery, has unique innate combinations of elemental damage (e.g., Rad+Heat), and low recoil but comparatively slower projectiles.

A Grineer AR uses conventional magazines and has exploding detonite munitions (small added impact AOE) but higher recoil and becomes prone to overheating.

An Infested AR leeches health to reload and launches rather generic projectiles, but its symbiotic relationship with its "host" confers a sort of manual aim-assist (think Nova's Antimatter Drop while in-flight).

Obviously, these are just examples, but I think you get the idea.

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This is fair. I don't think one necessarily has to define every single unique mechanic for every single melee weapon to make the point, but I think we can both agree that some degree of differentiation across melee weapons is needed, whether it be at the level of the grip type or the individual weapon.

Yes, agreed, and more specifically: why not both?

The way I see it, weapon archetype should define how a weapon CAN be wielded (sword vs. hammer vs. scythe) and what its stats will be like (damage/speed balance, slam AOE, etc.).

Weapon stance should define the STYLE in which the player wields a weapon (i.e., the player can pick up any similar weapon and swing it around the same way). For example, stance would control normal vs. reverse grips and overall animation aesthetic.

Weapons themselves should differentiate through unique traits (e.g., self-igniting swords, telescoping spears, transforming gauntlets, etc.)

I still have to sit down and think about how I'd go about the last step for various existing weapons, but that's the direction I'd like to see Warframe go.

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Agreed completely, though I think the more general point still stands that, unless stances only serve a purely aesthetic function, they are likely to favor certain mechanics over others, which introduces a meta-balancing concern and its own degree of complexity.

True, and I would very much like to have stances be almost purely cosmetic. Were it up to me: they would not apply bonus effects, would have no polarity, neither grant nor cost mod capacity, and the default "empty" stance would have just as many animations as an alternate one.

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Indeed. So long as finishers slow us down and make us less able to do what we'd want to do in combat (including stealth combat, which may include quickly killing a nearby enemy after assassinating the first), they will remain undesirable, so the best course of action should be to either streamline them (in which case they may as well be regular attacks), or remove them outright.

True. I fully agree with your proposal of converting finishers into simple conditional damage multipliers, and granting special death/dismemberment animations for enemies killed with finishers would be the icing on the cake.

June 26, 2019

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is a possible risk, though ideally one that wouldn't be too big an issue if cycling through with quick attacks was itself quick and useful enough to get to the move one wanted for a specific situation. If a specific move were so good as to be worth using all the time, that would be a different problem.

I believe this problem asserts itself no matter what. Either the player is sifting through several useless attacks to reach the useful one, or they are sifting through technically useful attacks which happen to not apply to the immediate circumstance (and are therefore effectively just as "useless").

I don't think that asking players to memorize strings of unique attacks is really in keeping with the spirit of simplifying the bindings, though. It could certainly be functional, but I don't think it would be appropriate.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I think the central problem with Melee 1.0, one that has persisted with current melee, is simply that melee weapons themselves are poorly differentiated, much like older guns: aside from the odd unique mechanic, most melee weapons are differentiated only by variations in stats and damage type distributions. If, by contrast, melee weapons received the same love as guns right now, so that each could use its moves for more varied gameplay (especially if the heavy/charged attacks exist to provide utility of some sort, rather than just more damage), one could avoid the problem of older melee models altogether.

To home in on this point a bit, I think that the critical flaw with the homogeneity between weapons mostly applies to homogeneity between weapon types rather than individual weapons.

For example, swords, dual swords, machetes, and nikanas are all effectively interchangeable save for the stats. We even have weapons that just straight-up borrow stances while arguably qualifying as entirely distinct weapon types (Dual Zoren, Dual Kamas, and every single Scythe if DE actually moves forward with band-aiding the movesets into heavy blades).

I don't think that a lack of functional difference between Skana and Cronus is necessarily a big deal, but the lack of significant difference between Skana and Heat Dagger certainly is.

Thus, I would very much like to prioritize diversifying grip types over diversifying individual weapons, with weapon-specific flavor applied further down the line.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This could also work, and I think that one could do either, so you could have melee weapons with crowd-oriented basic attacks and heavy attacks focused on single targets (e.g. whips), and others with the reverse model (e.g. nikanas).

Yes, that's definitely something that could work nicely. I'd fold it into grip type diversity. For example:

Daggers trade low damage and range for attack speed, higher heavy multipliers, and generous parrying options.

This creates a dynamic where a dagger "playstyle" tends to be a more in-your-face stream of fast attacks quickly accumulating multipliers for picking off heavier targets and deflecting incoming attacks without really breaking stride.

Heavy Blades/Hammers would obviously be the opposite end of that spectrum, but there are lots of fairly unique grips to address in-between.

Just spitballing here, but:

Scythes could be given increased range/damage at the expense of narrower "ideal" hitboxes (requiring more precise positioning) with their RMB combo giving players options for throwing/pulling enemies into the kill zone.

Blade+Whips could benefit from the 2-combo setup, with each combo emphasizing blade/whip strikes respectively.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I think at that point if the problem is with fishing for individual attacks, then one could simply make all attacks from one combo do the same thing, and all attacks from the other combo do another, with each attack being mostly cosmetic otherwise (which comes down to the ultra-simplified model mentioned above).

Yep, exactly. Separate combos do separate things, with the constituent animations simply serving to help maintain variety.

If the player is regularly switching between combos to attack different threats and both combos share the same "sequence" (e.g., E>E>RMB+E yields the first two attacks from the main combo and the third from the alternate combo), I think that would yield a seamlessly flexible input system with plenty of emergent variations.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I think the conceptually simple solution to that could simply be to have each newly-obtained melee weapon also add its appearance as a skin for all weapons of similar dimensions: that way, if you really like the look of one particular weapon, but the gameplay of another of the same type, you could still have the best of both worlds.

That would certainly address the aesthetic/practical dilemma, but such a system hinges on each individual weapon being treated as roughly equal. After all, the value of a uniquely interesting moveset is diminished if the player is expected to move on to stronger (higher MR) variations.

I would certainly prefer a Warframe where individual weapons are not limited to arbitrary progression tiers, but within the scope of the current paradigm I would find having fun movesets stuck to "weak" weapons extremely grating.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

The fact that we're discussing this for melee weapons, though, and not guns, I think itself underlines just how interchangeable melee weapons are with each other right now.

I think that this discussion applies to guns as well; after all there is some noticeable homogeneity between almost all automatic weapons. Braton plays pretty much the same as Karak, Stradavar, and even Akstiletto (crossing the primary/secondary distinction). The most "unique" automatics are even those with abilities that let them STOP being automatics!

However, I'll point out that the main reason it's less of an issue for guns is because they maintain proper distinction between "types." Automatics feel very different from DMRs, shotguns, bows, and launchers. I think melee needs that same type-based diversity as a starting point, with the nature of the game (MR-based vertical progression) excusing the number of "duplicate" weapons somewhat until proper weapon-specific twists (akin to alt-fires) can be added.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

My fear with both of these is that this would limit the range of possible unique mechanics one could give to melee weapons, while not fully addressing the issue of homogeneity tied to having many different weapons do essentially the same thing.

Certainly a valid concern, especially given the ridiculous surplus of duplicates we have saturating some grip-types (cough dual swords cough). I believe it would be possible to address, but addressing it properly would require drafting detailed concepts of variety between grips (swords vs. dual swords) and weapons (heat sword vs. skana), so I'd like to table it temporarily.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Alternate effects can be good, but I think could be done much more easily if they had a dedicated move to work with, as opposed to having to be balanced around a variety of different possible attack patterns (e.g. abusing the Sarpa stance's higher rate of gunfire with the Redeemer Prime's high status chance and shot damage).

Interesting example! However, in this case I think that the gunfire doesn't belong on either combo at all; it belongs on charged/heavy attacks consuming combo multiplier as "ammunition" so to speak.

Thus, Redeemer and Sarpa would have their own fixed fire-rates independent of any stance.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Agreed. An idea I had regarding dismemberment was that any exceptional amount of overkill damage should gib the victim, regardless of status effect, and especially work on body part hits. Thus, landing that really heavy strike should splatter an enemy, and landing that sniper headshot should consistently pop the victim's head for a high moment.

+100. Yes, please.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Agreed as well, exaggerating the impact of our last strike, including by giving enemies special death animations without the need for a cutscene, could neatly signal an end to a good fight in cinematic fashion, without forcing us into the role of a passive observer.

This really underscores my dislike of existing finishers. Stealth finishers are ok to have (they need simplification, though) because stealth is slower and depends more on the "guaranteed" kill, but counterattack/ground finishers really don't belong in their current form.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Those were my thoughts exactly: the moment I heard that finishers would drop extra loot, I a) immediately shuddered at the possible finisher-centric farm strats that would emerge, and b) felt like the new mechanic was basically just bribing players to use a move that is currently undesirable, without actually addressing why that move type doesn't get used (it's slow and takes agency away from the player for a bit). We don't need loot enhancers, nor do we need finishers, and I think trying to force an unnecessary mechanic that nobody wants, and incur significantly more animation work in the process in an already packed Melee 3.0 pipeline, is completely counterproductive.

+1000.

June 25, 2019

I'm taking the liberty of reordering these quotations to guide the relevance of my response.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, there is a key difference here in that my idea of a combo would mostly just be a string of moves with their own effects, and no persistent combo of counter besides just identifying which move is next in the sequence, whereas you're proposing retaining the combo counter to provide rewards. Either one I think could work fine.

While I agree your system would be viable, I can't agree with tying specific effects to individual attacks within a "string."

Unless I'm overlooking something, that inevitably creates a situation where players need to "fish" for specific attacks within a pool of potentially unwanted/irrelevant other attacks. This would likely be less obtrusive when we have 2 combos consisting of 3-4 attacks each, but I would prefer to avoid it entirely if at all possible.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

To some extent, I can also agree that the system could be streamlined even further: if one reduced melee down to its barest essentials, and stripped both combo-style moves to one quick attack and one heavy attack, with whichever animation work done to make those attacks smoothly transition and adjust based on aim (and with either blocking or holding to differentiate the two), one could likely still have a solid melee combat model.

This would resolve my "fishing" dilemma rather tidily, but I'm concerned that we'd end up roughly back where Melee 1.0 started. It was a perfectly serviceable melee "system," but suffered mainly from lacking variety (only charged attacks were consistently viable, and they all used 1 repeating animation).

The ability to aim would be an upgrade, but wouldn't do much to mitigate the monotony of overly-limited animation sets.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Depending on the sweeps, and where they take place, I also feel the issue of reduced importance on some attacks could be avoided: if our quick attacks were mainly made up of relatively short-ranged or otherwise small moves, e.g. quick thrusts or forward sweeps, and our heavy/charged attacks allowed us to hit enemies to our sides or even behind us as we attacked our main target, then every move could have a place, especially if vertical swings were better for headshots, or even simply had more damage than other attacks (and in a simplified combo system where each move were its own individual attack, it could likely be fine for each attack to deal its own amount of damage, in addition to having its own motion and other quirks).

Oddly enough, this sounds very similar to my proposal of a horizontal + vertical combo pairing, with the main difference being heavy attacks would be better for attacking crowds (wider radial hitboxes) and quick attacks would be better for dealing focused damage to specific targets (small and presumably faster hitboxes).

Personally, I think it makes more sense for the foundational combo (EEE light attacks in your example) to be attuned to the most common combat scenario (attacking disposable crowds) and the "heavy" (RMB+E) combo to be attuned to dealing extra damage/effects to rarer priority targets.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I think the question here isn't necessarily one of instant inputs (I agree that holding RMB wouldn't make the attacks less responsive), so much as one of having separate movesets based on the angle of one's attacks, and having to alternate between the two based on the target's elevation/head, especially if one could use a single moveset with manual aiming to cover both.

Fair enough, and with the inclusion of more flexible manual aiming the need to differentiate combos by attack plane would be significantly reduced.

My main remaining concern at this point is segregating combat functions by COMBO rather than individual attack, with all the individual strikes in a particular string being completely interchangeable.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

In fact, with that little work needed for any given moveset, this could justify giving each melee weapon its own innate "stance", instead of remaining in the current situation where melee weapons are just empty shells that mostly compare on raw stats and the occasional gimmick.

I would prefer to avoid this, because it is inevitably going to produce the nasty scenario of having a weapon that is aesthetically pleasing but has a dislikeable moveset (or vice-versa).

While I agree that melee weapons within a given grip type need better differentiation than they have currently, I would prefer to accomplish this through unique bonuses and alternate effects (similar to gun alt-fires, if you will).

I think the best way to go with movesets is to simply make the available stances side-grades with mostly aesthetic differences.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Agreed completely. There's likely some other post to be made about this, but movement, weapons, and abilities I think are three distinct systems that each accomplish a specific function, and no mechanic within any of those systems should seek to replace the other, or otherwise do something that is already covered well by another system: in this case, while ground slams are okay due to the unique precision repositioning they offer, our melee attacks in general shouldn't move us on their own, at least not in a way that interferes with our regular movement.

I think a good way to express this would be as a hierarchy of precedence, where movement > combat.

So while engaging in combat should be possible while moving, the player's movement inputs should override their combat inputs when applicable.

e.g., attacking is allowed coming out of a roll, but rolling interrupts any ongoing attack.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed. This keeps getting mentioned in discussions like these, but there's this whole dimension of boss-related melee combat that really isn't touched upon at all at the moment in Warframe. It would be awesome for large/flying bosses to react to players climbing them for melee damage in ways that would try to dislodge us, and even more broadly, parkour is used far too little in the design of most boss fights, which could be fixed by making melee consistently viable in every fight.

+1, and at risk of wandering off topic a bit this closely relates to ensuring mechanical consistency through balance.

Any tool the player is given should be at minimum functional in 100% of game scenarios, even if it's not the most "optimal" solution.

Things like status and melee immunity need to go, like yesterday.

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Agreed, and I think "show, don't tell" gets to apply here as well: scripted moves such as finishers can look cool the first few times, but tend to grate afterwards, especially because ultimately they tend to boil down to a generous QTE. By contrast, giving us flexible systems that can create emergent (and awesome situations), such as throwing an enemy into the air and following up with a lethal hit before they hit the ground, or precision-landing directly on top of an enemy from a great height for an instant kill, would be unlikely to get stale, as they'd be the direct product of using our tools to do cool stuff, and show how awesome we are, as opposed to following a prompt to be told the same thing in rigid, cinematic fashion.

+10.

This could honestly be as simple as expanding corpse gibs and ragdolls, especially when tied to charged "heavy" attacks.

Finishing off that last enemy with a hammer swing that craters them into the nearest wall or pinning them to the ground with a precision slam would be immensely satisfying in its own right, and feel much less "staged."

I strongly feel that Steve's teased "do this special thing to get extra loot" is really the wrong way to approach combat satisfaction... If you have to pay your players to put up with and show interest in your mini-cinematics, that should tell you everything you need to know about how appropriate they are. It will still get some praise, but it's important to stay cognizant of why the players will praise it: the conditioned response to the reward feels good, not the generic stabbing animation with a trendy zoom-in effect.

June 24, 2019

On 2019-06-23 at 9:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

I think the idea is more that, while heavy attacks would have more damage in proportion to how much slower they are, the purpose for them would be mainly to provide some sort of utility the basic quick attacks wouldn't, i.e. more area of effect, status, or crowd control. Thus, the choice in the player's mind wouldn't necessarily be which mode of DPS to apply (and I agree that that sort of "choice" tends to get solved by factors like enemy levels), but rather whether the player's up against a crowd, whether they want to apply a particular status effect, or disable a target, and so on.

Okay yeah, that's basically what I want out of "charged" heavy attacks. This may just be personal preference on my part, but I find hold inputs to be more intuitive and satisfying for said attacks. As long as they are primarily a source of conditional bonus effects, I'm on-board with that implementation.

On 2019-06-23 at 9:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

I very much agree that fishing for hitboxes is a terrible idea, and it's one of my biggest issues with melee as it currently exists. I do, however, think my proposal could address that more cleanly than switching combos for verticality: if attacks adjust depending on the player's aim or the presence of nearby enemies (e.g. stabbing slightly upward instead of always directly forward when fighting an Osprey), then there may not be a need to differentiate between vertical and horizontal attacks altogether, as any attack could fulfil both functions. Also agreed on being able to mix combos; with a basic EEE and RMB+EEE combo I think the player should be able to alternate between the two simply by holding or releasing the block button (and still keep along the combo chain).

Hunh.

I see what you're saying, and given a demonstration of it working smoothly I wouldn't mind a limited aim-assist for melee hitboxes at all.

However, as a rule I am leery of any sort of aim-assist that noticeably impacts the applicable hitboxes. For example, I might want to hold off hitting that swarm of Corrupted Shield Drones until after dealing with the Healers underneath them, but I could be stuck hitting whichever targets the assist decides are more important.

I'm sure it would be possible to implement something that works well in the majority of cases, but I typically prefer retaining manual control just for simplicity and reliability's sake.

Manual aiming could work, but I think that would create a game dynamic where horizontal sweeps are always preferable on account of potentially hitting more enemies. I think vertically-oriented attacks are important for variety and an "authentic" aesthetic, but if horizontal attacks can do all the same things through aiming I think they'd become animation "duds" within their respective combos.

On 2019-06-23 at 9:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

While there are increasingly more flying/vertical enemies in the game, I'm not sure if having to manually switch to a different mode of attack just for them would necessarily be the smoothest form of combat, especially if the core problem is simply that melee animations are currently stiff and can't be made to aim properly, unlike guns. If a single moveset could accomplish both functions simultaneously, i.e. attacking ground-based enemies and reaching vertical targets, I feel that may make for a more compact system overall.

Honestly, I'm don't think it would be all that much of an issue assuming we

a) get back manual blocking to prevent switching to guns while aiming, and

b) retain a reasonable degree of mobility during combos.

Transitioning would be smoothly instant (just press RMB) and the mobile animations themselves would remove any remaining rough edges.

If making the system compact is that important, I think you could crunch it down even further by scrapping the RMB combo entirely and relying on your proposed aim-assist/manual aiming while using hold inputs for delayed heavy attacks to cover the gaps.

On 2019-06-23 at 9:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

Wouldn't these basically be like the heavy attacks I proposed? I think our models are ultimately very similar, with the distinction being of having combos for vertical or horizontal attacks, plus charged attacks, as opposed to two combos for quick or heavy attacks.

Essentially yes, though I think a key distinguishing factor (as far as you've written, anyway) is that my proposed bonus effects would be combo-multiplier dependent. Rather than have a given heavy attack confer something like a guaranteed proc, it would (depending on mod loadout) provide a bonus to status scaling with combo multiplier.

If you were planning to use combo as a limiting factor as well, then the only real difference between our concepts is that yours has its own combo string whereas mine is just overlaid on top of any other normal attack.

On 2019-06-23 at 9:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, that was my thinking as well: we should be able to attack regardless of where we are, and with properly implemented melee attacks, we shouldn't need a dedicated aerial attack move to be able to melee while in mid-air.

Yep! Our movement system is already exceptionally robust - it just needs expanded compatibility with our everyday Tenno activities rather than niche alternatives.

The new Jupiter tileset does a great job of trimming out and adjusting a lot of the little snags that plague other locales (e.g., the lips above doors). I'd really like to see that same consideration carried over into things like melee and gunplay, eliminating awkward maneuvers that break pace/momentum.

On 2019-06-23 at 9:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

This sounds better actually, yeah. There's already a ton of potential for Shadow of the Colossus-style melee combat with the giant enemies we've been given, the only trouble is that a) it's currently impossible to latch onto them, and b) melee would suck against them even if we could. Letting us perform regular attacks while wall latching, without the leap off, would enable that gameplay better if ever implemented.

The closest I have gotten to something like this is with the Ropalolyst during stage 3 (when all its weakpoint hitboxes are gone). It's actually possible to jump on top of it and stay there while comboing for a bit, and it's already incredibly fun to do (albeit, not as effective as just shooting it).

Having the ability to latch on, deal focused damage, and having proper integration like the boss initiating a dive-slam to force you off would really enhance that experience IMO.

On 2019-06-23 at 9:18 AM, Teridax68 said:

This is fair, and I agree that ground slams are already useful as a mobility tool and as a method of ragdolling enemies, so I don't want to really change that (I actually think the ragdolling is currently a little excessive). My one issue with the attack is that, as an attack, ground slamming isn't actually that particularly damaging, and I think it's a missed opportunity in a game like Warframe to not reward the player for precision-landing on top of an enemy from a great height with a ground slam (especially since games like Dishonored or Assassin's Creed show just how fun it can be to assassinate an enemy from a great height). Thus, adding some distance-based scaling to make more prolonged ground slams proportionately more damaging, if only to match the speed at which we can output damage through regular attacks, I think could be a solution to this.

Totally agree with improving the precision efficacy of the slam, as well as adding height scaling. Steve mentioned wanting to add more "heroic" moments, and I honestly think the best way to go about that is expanding feats players can pull off on their own rather than giving us freebie bonus prompts like the zoomed-in last-enemy finishers they teased recently.

June 22, 2019

9 hours ago, (PS4)jaggerwanderer said:

Doesn't look like we can kill bosses with this new melee. Try to kill Sargas Rok, or Vay Hek, or even that Hemacyst from Plague Star with Wukong new melee combos.

Well yeah; that's how it was before and it's unlikely to change until the bosses themselves are tweaked.

For Lephantis/Hemocyst I'd like to see the combo-based heavy attacks be able to temporarily cripple a leg, bringing the head down to the ground in a stunned state to he attacked. If we get timed parrying, deflecting the scythe swing could also work.

Sargas Ruk could use similar rules (stun with high multiplier heavy attack or parry him).

The Hek fight could actually use the latching attack I mentioned in my reply to Teridax: parkour up to his floating form, latch on, and start attacking while he tries to buck you off.

June 22, 2019

40 minutes ago, Hyohakusha said:

Couldn't agree more. The reason they gave for rolling out the unified inputs is to streamline the system and open up access to more combos. Yet it accomplishes the exact opposite. Wukong's hold forward combo and slide are the only ones I ever use. Thankfully they're very good, but Wukong getting lucky with his particular moveset doesn't change the problem.

Holding forward IS the main way we close the distance between ourselves and the enemy. This is an extremely basic, common sense concept that you do in literally every game.
There's an enemy over there. I'm moving towards him. I start attacking him when he's in range.
It straight up does not matter what game it is you're playing, if there's melee involved "I need to move closer to hit this dude" is universal.

Dante's signature move Stinger from any DMC game is a perfect example of the issue. You have to lock on to an enemy first, then you move the analog towards them, and then you hit triangle to execute the move.
The key distinction there is having to lock on first. If simply moving the analog in one direction and hitting triangle without being locked on initiated a Stinger, you would end up doing it constantly. As you're constantly having to adjust your position and facing direction in relation to the enemies you're attacking. And you adjust your position and facing by MOVING TOWARDS THE ENEMY. With directional inputs.

Emphasis mine.

the office thank you GIF

40 minutes ago, Hyohakusha said:

The actual mechanics of the attack animation itself are irrelevant. A hold forward+triangle Stinger would have you shooting across the screen into walls and knocking enemies out of combos you're doing. A hold forward+E input that has you do a short range attack that holds you in place would be just as annoying, as would a medium range, narrow angle thrust. Not because of the properties, or the range, or whether or not you can move. The animation itself doesn't matter. It's annoying because when it's tied to a single basic movement input you're always doing, you can't avoid doing it. Its the inputs breaking the flow of combat that's the issue, and DE keeps talking about flow.

EXACTLY.

Strictly speaking you CAN stop doing it, but there are few to no situations where you would WANT to stop doing it. And by simply removing movement inputs from combo strings, players can have it either way. Want to move? Use your movement bindings. Want to stop moving? Stop moving.

40 minutes ago, Hyohakusha said:

I've posted a dozen times about this ever since they announced unifying hold forward into the combo inputs, and I know I've seen you and others talking about it too. Guess DE didn't pay attention.

Such is the lot of a feedback poster - throwing stuff that matters to you at an invisible brick wall and hoping it randomly sticks.

40 minutes ago, Hyohakusha said:

So here are some alternate key inputs, again.

No movement keys (no restrictions on any adjustments/ moving forward)
- E E E etc (how ever many E's long it is)
- Hold Block + E E E
- E Hold E, E E
- Roll E E E

Left/ Right (which allows you to still adjust with the camera/ mouse while moving forward)
- E E E
- Hold Block + E E E
- Hold Left to initiate + E E E
- Hold Right to initiate + E E E

I honestly prefer the first set. While left/right inputs aren't as obtrusive as forward inputs, I still find them kinda awkward to use and I really don't think we need that many different combos. I seriously think we could keep it to:

EEE
Block + EEE
Hold E
Aerial E
Aerial Slam E (looking down)
Slide + E

Roll + E would be a great extra input if we need it, though. Hadn't thought of that, but it would work smoothly.

40 minutes ago, Hyohakusha said:

You don't run up to enemy, stop, stand in front of them for a second and then start attacking. On a final note, I agree with Teri; for the love of God, bring back manual blocking. if you have your melee out and you aim glide, you should keep the melee out and aim-glide block. If you're on the ground, you should block. If you have a gun in the air, you aim-glide ADS, if you're on the ground, you ADS. Exactly the way it used to be. Actually, in melee only sorties, you can still manual block, so it's still in the game's code, it's just disabled for some stupid reason.

I believe that ADS switches back to guns so that players can use zoom before firing. However, this could be accomplished by simply adding default ADS zoom to block and holding the gun switch until the player actually fires. I'm sure you've seen me talk about this, but before anyone brings up the most common issues again:

Use normal zoom only for scoped weapons like snipers, Arca Sisco, etc. until the first shot is fired. If the player is at a distance where the scope is useful, they have time to switch manually.
Pressing switch with melee equipped should instantly switch back to whichever gun was previously equipped. This allows players to quickly pull out snipers for scoping if they want to without firing. Provided the first swap back to guns is still instant, players can simply double-tap switch to change to a different gun from melee.

The forced swap back to guns while aiming can actually cause a serious problem for gameplay:

If the player unequips their secondary weapon (e.g., to level a melee faster and keep a primary as backup) then the player will accidentally force-drop datamasses, powercells, etc. whenever they attempt to aim-glide. Picking up the object forces the player into melee mode, and gliding immediately swaps them back to their primary. It's really annoying.

June 22, 2019

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Agreed fully, and I think DE should've seen it coming: even in Melee 2.0, combos that require specific movement inputs are notoriously unpopular, because players expressly do not want to have to constrain their movement for the sake of combat. Similarly, "gap closer" melee moves are a mistake, as they tend to be inevitably clunkier, slower, and less accurate than our standard moveset (whose baseline speed and power makes those moves redundant in the first place). I really don't understand why DE is putting themselves through so much trouble in creating these redundant combos and moves, when there's already a huge amount of work on their plate for Melee 3.0, in addition to all the other massive goals they've set themselves for this year, i.e. Empyrean and The New War.

Thanks for the support and elaboration! You are exactly correct that it would be beneficial to reduce the amount of unique animations needed for Melee 3.0. I, for one, am concerned at how long it has taken while we don't even have ONE reworked normal weapon stance. Weren't DE planning to roll out stances in batches per weapon type? When is tat starting? Which will be first?

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Personally, I'd approach melee movesets in the following way:

Remove autoblock and replace it by having ADS manually enable blocking.

Yes, please, as always.

It should also include timed parries as an OPTION for stunning bosses and minibosses to make them vulnerable to melee. For example, reflecting Sargas Ruk's fireball attack into his face.

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Remove finishers and instead let our normal attacks deal finisher damage to appropriately affected enemies.

YES PLEASE.

I hate using Radial Blind and other Stun effects because of how protracted the finisher animations are.

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The player should be able to cancel any melee attack mid-animation.

+1.

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There would be only two melee combos per stance:
One standard, "quick" EEE combo. Each of these moves should adjust so that the business end of the weapon goes towards the enemy nearest the player's reticle.

One "heavy" EEE combo performed by holding block. Each of these moves should take more time to perform, but would be more powerful in some form, for example by damaging enemies in a larger area of effect or applying specific effects such as more damage or guaranteed status.

I'd like to iterate on this a bit, to explain why I think a horizontal/vertical combo pairing would work better.

1. Having a speed-based DPS distinction is inevitably going to boil down to players identifying the "optimal" combo to use and just spamming that one. This will likely take the form of players just spamming the fast combo while enemies are lower level, and switching to heavy combos once enemy scaling balloons their EHP to where heavy attacks are more efficient.

2. I, for one, hate trying to fish specific hitboxes out of combos exactly when I need them. For example, let's say I want to use the vertical swing from hit #4 of a 5-hit EEEEE combo to hit a Mutalist Osprey without jumping away from a defense objective. I have to swing an extra 3 times before I can use it, and if I happen to miss I have to start over. However, with a vertical combo chain I could simply switch combos to get what I need.

In essence, every hit of a combo should serve the same general use so that players can use them immediately on-demand with aesthetic differences between swings for variety. This would also let players string together their own mixed combos by alternating between the two (e.g., EE, RMB+E, E or any other sequence therein).

3. Vertical/Horizontal hitboxes both have broadly-applicable yet distinct uses.

Horizontal strikes are best for capitalizing on range and attacking multiple clustered enemies at once.

Vertical attacks are better for landing headshots and hitting things like Ospreys, cameras, and door traps with the trade-off being more precise aim required.

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Some combo moves could give the player momentum or move them, but should never override their movement completely.

Yes, exactly.

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Beyond that, the only other move needed should be the ground slam (E while airborne and looking downwards), with no differentiation based on blocking:

One thing I would like to keep (albeit in modified form) would be charged attacks. I rather like them for finishing off combo strings. However:

Rather than use unique animations, they would just be delayed normal strikes from the standard combos.
These attacks would function the multiplier-based "heavy" attacks from DE's original concept. Build combo > get a scaling bonus. For example, charge a ground slam and get extra damage + AOE. This could also be a good place to put conditional mod bonuses, like Life Strike and Maiming Strike.
As mentioned in my other reply, it could also add properties to some attacks, like a leap with target magnetism from a bullet-jump gap-closer.

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If combos only engage the upper body, and the quick attacks are made more precise, they could be a suitable replacement to dedicated aerial attacks.

Y'know... I forgot aerial attacks were a thing for a bit. I was talking about bullet-jump gap-closers, but how about just rolling that into aerial attacks and allowing attacks while bullet-jumping or gliding?

Let players use either EEE or RMB+E freely while airborne and not slamming, and gap-closing is completely taken care of at all ranges.

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By the same principle, those same moves could also be performed on a slide, and would thus eliminate the need for dedicated slide attacks.

Works for me; having a less repetitive slide attack would be nice.

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If the player's wall latching, they should leap off and perform the appropriate attack, instead of having a dedicated wall attack.

Alternatively, don't even force them to leap off. They can already do this via bullet-jump, and it could have useful applications down the road.

For example, parkouring up a colossal boss to latch onto and attack a weak-point before getting thrown off.

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Ground slams should deal more damage to reflect the extra time and setup needed to perform them, and could potentially deal even more damage based on how far the player's travelled through the air during the slam (so hopping five feet off the ground for a slam shouldn't be too brutal, but ground slamming from the top of one of those elevator shafts in the Corpus Sealab tileset would obliterate whoever the attack hits).

Honestly I think slams are pretty decent as they are. They are great positioning tools and I actually feel as though having too much more AOE at base could make the ragdolling a bit troublesome. Totally agreed on scaling with fall distance though.

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This should be a sufficiently simple system, requiring animations for at most 8 different moves per stance (six combo moves + block + ground slam), as opposed to the over a dozen moves present on Wukong's Melee 3.0 weapon, most of which are redundant. Ideally, eliminating the animation locks and interruptions/override of movement should make for a much more fluid system that'd harmonize, not clash with our parkour and standard movement options.

This is definitely in-line with my dislike of the previewed combos. They really clash with movement, when there is really no reason for that.

DiabolusUrsus

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DE, the Lich System is bad and it needs to change.

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

Certain damage types need some looking over, also enemy armor scaling needs to be looked at

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

Some thoughts on how to gate abilities (without energy or cooldowns)

Some thoughts on how to gate abilities (without energy or cooldowns)

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

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