Melee 3.0 - Eureka Moment (Keybind + Gameplay Suggestions)

[DiabolusUrsus]

So the announcement that quick-melee would be replaced with an instant-swap to melee mode combined with an instant-swap back to guns by firing, this got me thinking about a variety of potential problems related to melee 3.0. After being stumped for a while, I've got some ideas!

Problem: Players will probably only use the W + E (forward) and RMB + E (block) combos, simply because using melee demands mobility. Rarely, if ever, do players simply tap E without combining it with forward movement.

Solution: Replace the forward input with Shift (sprint).

EDIT: Please make the combo inputs fully rebindable. The proposed official inputs will feel terrible to me, but my proposed inputs will work poorly for anyone using toggle sprint.

This allows players to alternate between normal E combos and "forward" combos with a keybind that is completely independent from movement by itself. DE could really take this the extra mile by implementing some meaningful differences between the inputs, making them better suited to different situations. For example:

• Focused combo (normal E) - No extra forward movement, mostly vertical/diagonal attacks, strong hit-stun (stagger-on-hit). These attacks are suited to hitting enemies below/slightly above the player, and offer a more focused assault against meatier foes to keep them locked down.
• Pressing combo (Shift + E) - Small amount of extra forward movement, mostly horizontal attacks, slightly boosted attack speed but no hit-stun, player resists stagger. These attacks are suited to covering more ground while attacking crowds of normal-sized enemies. The extra movement helps players move between groups of enemies, and the stagger resistance gives it conditional utility. For example, players might use it to push through melee attacks from Shadow Stalker, Tyl Regor, or Conculysts if they feel confident about tanking the damage.
• Closing combo (RMB + E) - The standard gap-closer attacks that have been shown thus far, but with added knockdown immunity and boosted evasion. Gap closers need a little extra to be worthwhile; in Warframe the actual physical distance to an enemy is less of an issue than the weapons fire is. The knockdown immunity alone will make this combo worth considering as an alternative to simply bullet-jumping at an enemy.

EDIT: For clarity, none of these combos have forced forward movement. If the player uses no movement inputs, they will stand in place.

Instead, the combos have movement modifiers.

Standard E + W moves forward at the normal pace.

Shift + E + W causes the player to bound forward, covering more ground between attacks.

RMB + E + W causes the player to leap forward.

These modifiers should be applicable to movement in any direction, too.

Problem: Players won't be able to aim-down-sights when switching back to guns from melee.

Solution: Make blocking work like aim-down-sights, and reflect all blocked weapons fire toward the player crosshair.

Finally, Warframe players can mimic Jedi. Jokes aside, this would allow players to "aim" before firing a weapon... and it would add some interesting utility to blocking besides the standard damage mitigation. For example: players could redirect enemy bullets into cameras or door traps, or perhaps help charge absorption effects like for Snow Globe, Absorb, Antimatter Drop, etc. This would also help make reflected damage marginally more useful, as it is focused on a single enemy instead of spread between all attacking foes.

Problem: Players will not be able to bind melee attack to LMB using the new swapping system.

Possible Solutions:

1. Add a toggle-option for mirrored melee/fire bindings. In other words: in gun mode, press E to melee and enter melee mode. In melee mode, press E to fire and enter gun mode.
2. Add a toggle-option for "ignore opposing secondary binding" and make swapping via F also instant. In other words, players can have LMB as a secondary melee binding that ONLY applies while in melee mode... and they would then simply use F to swap out of melee mode without the quick-fire.
3. Other ideas welcome; this is trickier.

Problem: Finishers do great damage, but they really suck to use (slow and clunky) and they can be glitchy on uneven ground.

Solution: Simply apply the finisher multiplier + damage type to all incoming melee damage while an enemy is vulnerable to finishers, and add a special death effect based on dominant physical damage type.

For example:

• If a finisher does not kill an enemy, it plays as a standard melee strike and simply deals boosted finisher-type damage.
• If a finisher strike kills an enemy...
  • From a slash weapon, the enemy is decapitated.
  • From a puncture weapon, the enemy's head explodes/ a gaping hole is punched through its torso.
  • From an impact weapon, the enemy gets crumpled up like paper.
• Stealth finishers can be treated as-is, but it'd be nice to only apply the animation on lethal finishers as well.

This makes finishers more fluid and less clunky to use, but keeps the special "cinematic" aspect of the finishers.

Special Wishlist:

• Timed blocks to open enemies to finishers.
• Reworks of boss battles to make all bosses melee compatible based on vulnerable stun-periods. For example, use a timed block to reflect Ruk's fireball attack into his face and make him vulnerable to melee. Use a heavy-attack with sufficient combo multiplier to cripple Lephantis' leg and open one of its heads to melee. So on and so forth.
• Unique blocking/idle animations based on stance (e.g., sheathed Nikana for Tranquil Cleave, drawn Nikana for Decisive Judgment, drawn reverse-grip Nikana for Blind Justice... some reverse-grip dagger/dual-dagger stances too!)
• Unique slide/slam attacks based on stance (e.g., small-AOE high-damage vertical cut slam vs. large-AOE lower-damage classic slam for longswords)

I'll probably be back to add/revise this later, but in the meantime what do you think?

Edited September 21, 2018 by DiabolusUrsus

[Acos]

I don't understand how adding another button into the mix is a solution? Its' a lot more intuitive to simply press w+attack than to press sprint+w+attack. It adds another button for no clear reason. 

I love the idea of aiming blocked bullets into a particular enemy or direction. I can think of a lot of "shoot the weak point" bosses where a melee only character might be able to actually participate, and it opens up plenty of gameplay elements besides. 

Finishers no longer glitch through walls, so far as I know. You simply play out the animation, and then the game puts you right back exactly where you initiated the finisher. I haven't gotten stuck in terrain since they changed it, and I play a lot of Excalibur (and blind a lot of people). The fix I think Finishers need is to only be activated with the 'use' key, rather than happening automatically, which would allow us more flexibility for when we want to hit several enemies at once vs killing off one powerful opponent. It wouldn't hurt to trim down their animation times either; Primed Fury and the like can help tremendously with this, but all of them feel like they take ages to preform which really kills the "cool" factor of them. 

[DiabolusUrsus]

1 hour ago, Acos said:

I don't understand how adding another button into the mix is a solution? Its' a lot more intuitive to simply press w+attack than to press sprint+w+attack. It adds another button for no clear reason. 

Because it's not Sprint + W + E, it's just sprint + E, where you can add W IF you want to.

The idea is to be independent from movement, because everyone is holding W like 90% of the time. That means the E + nothing combos will rarely be used.

To make it perfectly clear:

DE's System:

• E + nothing
• E + W
• E + RMB

My System:

• E + nothing
• E + Shift
• E + RMB

I just removed the movement input. The (sprint) just means the key is the sprint key, not that the player NEEDS to be sprinting. I wrote it that way in case anyone has sprint bound to a different key, like Alt.

Quote

I love the idea of aiming blocked bullets into a particular enemy or direction. I can think of a lot of "shoot the weak point" bosses where a melee only character might be able to actually participate, and it opens up plenty of gameplay elements besides. 

Finishers no longer glitch through walls, so far as I know. You simply play out the animation, and then the game puts you right back exactly where you initiated the finisher. I haven't gotten stuck in terrain since they changed it, and I play a lot of Excalibur (and blind a lot of people).

I got glitched through the floor as recently as last month, but maybe I missed a fix.

Quote

The fix I think Finishers need is to only be activated with the 'use' key, rather than happening automatically, which would allow us more flexibility for when we want to hit several enemies at once vs killing off one powerful opponent. It wouldn't hurt to trim down their animation times either; Primed Fury and the like can help tremendously with this, but all of them feel like they take ages to preform which really kills the "cool" factor of them. 

Agreed 1000%. A non-E trigger would be super-helpful; it would certainly be a lot nicer for blinding Excal.

Finishers should be 1 strike at most, and just as fast as a standard attack.

Edited September 19, 2018 by DiabolusUrsus

[Guest]

Doesn't really solve the true problem of melee 3.0, which is what happens to all those people who use the LMB binding for focused melee (not the current quick melee). It would mean you can't go back to a gun without pressing F or changing the keybind.

Of course, the other things mentioned are nice to have, like the directional reflection. 

[DiabolusUrsus]

Just now, Datam4ss said:

Doesn't really solve the true problem of melee 3.0, which is what happens to all those people who use the LMB binding for focused melee (not the current quick melee). It would mean you can't go back to a gun without pressing F or changing the keybind.

Of course, the other things mentioned are nice to have, like the directional reflection. 

Agreed... Still thinking about that, but it'd be nice to have an option for toggling quick-fire on/off with instant-swap bound to F like usual.

[Mach25]

13 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Agreed 1000%. A non-E trigger would be super-helpful; it would certainly be a lot nicer for blinding Excal.

Finishers should be 1 strike at most, and just as fast as a standard attack.

More refinement of the melee system. I never did like these extended finishers - we're fighting hordes, not playing Metal Gear.

[DiabolusUrsus]

30 minutes ago, Mach25 said:

More refinement of the melee system. I never did like these extended finishers - we're fighting hordes, not playing Metal Gear.

Absolutely. Simplicity and efficiency have a compelling aesthetic of their own, IMO.

I'd really like to see finishers evolve more along the lines of "done with you, moving on..."

[peterc3]

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Absolutely. Simplicity and efficiency have a compelling aesthetic of their own, IMO.

I'd really like to see finishers evolve more along the lines of "done with you, moving on..."

Then I would imagine the damage gets nerfed. That animation limits how many finishers can be done in a given amount of time.

[DiabolusUrsus]

39 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Then I would imagine the damage gets nerfed. That animation limits how many finishers can be done in a given amount of time.

I somehow doubt this. Dual dagger finishers are slower and clunkier than Nikana finishers, but don't deal noticeably more damage. I don't think there's any way to balance guaranteed death from Covert Lethality on single daggers, either.

THAT SAID, I agree with what you're saying.

This is feedback aimed at the "smoothness" of gameplay with actual balance numbers notwithstanding. If nerfs are needed to fix clunky gameplay, I'm all for them.

They should also revisit Naramon's executing dash. It really shouldn't permanently open enemys to finishers. 😕

[Mach25]

On 2018-09-19 at 12:43 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Absolutely. Simplicity and efficiency have a compelling aesthetic of their own, IMO.

I'd really like to see finishers evolve more along the lines of "done with you, moving on..."

And this is martial arts - simplicity of movement to conserve energy and speed up attacks, taking your enemy down as quickly as possible.

[Acos]

Thank you for the clarification. I agree with the idea of which each type of attack should focus on; Standing combos would be heavy hitters meant to strike down powerful foes that we can not simply mow down, moving combos would be for clearing the room of lesser enemies, and the block+attack is ideal for quickly closing the distance to enemies we can't reach. 

The reason I dislike involving the sprint key is that a lot of players (such as myself) use the toggle sprint option as there really isn't a reason to ever not be sprinting. Having the sprint key involved in the melee combos means that we will be constantly turning sprint off in order to use it. I could turn auto-sprint off which would be annoying for me as now I have to constantly be pressing down two buttons instead of one any time I want to move forward. 

I think the critical point in which we disagree is the need for the standing combo to still allow for movement; Usually if I'm fighting an enemy with a lot of health I will stop moving forward to focus on him with the natural forward momentum of my attacks being enough for me to stick to my target. There isn't a need to be pressing w as doing so will walk me beyond the enemy I am fighting and so therefore I don't see the need in divorcing the w key from the combo system, where as I can see an immediate problem in involving the sprint key. 

From there everything else makes intuitive sense the way DE has it set up currently: I press forward to close the distance to my enemies, and so the forward combo is executed with w+e. I stop moving forward when I want to focus on an enemy, and so standing combo is executed without any movement input. If I'm blocking attacks it usually means that the enemy is too far away for me to hit, and so the block button activates a gap closer. Very rarely am I ever not wanting to sprint, so auto-sprint is turned on so that I have the movement speed I want the majority of the time. 

 

[DiabolusUrsus]

5 hours ago, Acos said:

Thank you for the clarification. I agree with the idea of which each type of attack should focus on; Standing combos would be heavy hitters meant to strike down powerful foes that we can not simply mow down, moving combos would be for clearing the room of lesser enemies, and the block+attack is ideal for quickly closing the distance to enemies we can't reach. 

The reason I dislike involving the sprint key is that a lot of players (such as myself) use the toggle sprint option as there really isn't a reason to ever not be sprinting. Having the sprint key involved in the melee combos means that we will be constantly turning sprint off in order to use it. I could turn auto-sprint off which would be annoying for me as now I have to constantly be pressing down two buttons instead of one any time I want to move forward. 

That's a good point; I hadn't thought of that and I forgot toggle sprint was a thing. I suppose it would be better for DE to simply let us rebind the combos if possible.

If W works better for you, you should be able to use it. But it will be horrible for me.

5 hours ago, Acos said:

I think the critical point in which we disagree is the need for the standing combo to still allow for movement; Usually if I'm fighting an enemy with a lot of health I will stop moving forward to focus on him with the natural forward momentum of my attacks being enough for me to stick to my target.

And what enemy would that be? Even Bombards go down in a few hits, and it is safer to continue moving. The enemies with enough health for that to matter can just stagger you out of combos (bosses, assassins).

5 hours ago, Acos said:

There isn't a need to be pressing w as doing so will walk me beyond the enemy I am fighting and so therefore I don't see the need in divorcing the w key from the combo system, where as I can see an immediate problem in involving the sprint key. 

This simply isn't true. I hold W pretty much CONSTANTLY while meleeing, and the movement never carries me past where I want to be. Conversely, the forced forward movement on the combos is really annoying in the few cases where I let go of W. I would much rather have no forced movement at all; I feel like that would be more intuitive.

5 hours ago, Acos said:

From there everything else makes intuitive sense the way DE has it set up currently: I press forward to close the distance to my enemies, and so the forward combo is executed with w+e. I stop moving forward when I want to focus on an enemy, and so standing combo is executed without any movement input. If I'm blocking attacks it usually means that the enemy is too far away for me to hit, and so the block button activates a gap closer. Very rarely am I ever not wanting to sprint, so auto-sprint is turned on so that I have the movement speed I want the majority of the time. 

I disagree entirely.

Combos with forced movement feel terrible and clunky to me. Combos feel best when I can override any movement with my own inputs, for more precise control over spacing.

That said, I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. The best solution is probably allowing rebinding, so that everyone can find a control scheme that works for them. It sounds like our brains just process the controls differently.

Failing that, turning on the toggle sprint option could switch the combo binding to W automatically?

[DiabolusUrsus]

13 hours ago, Mach25 said:

And this is martial arts - simplicity of movement to conserve energy and speed up attacks, taking your enemy down as quickly as possible.

Yes. I would really like to see combos/finishers that would look appropriate on a battlefield rather than an action flick. (Not that they can't have any flourishing.)

Tranquil Cleave's "Breathless Lunge" is a good example of what I want to see taken out.

[5H4DE]

Hmm, I can't really say I dislike any of these suggestions, as long as everything is rebindable and I can chose between W+E, Sprint+E or <InsertKeyOfChoice>+E I don't see an issue with anything here. And for the love of Ordis yes please give us faster finishers and X for finishers instead of any melee. Multi-target finishers if we have multiple enemies in the same spot would be real nice too but I'd have to guess it'd be hard to code properly so that's really just a special wish of mine (in one of the old trailers of the game we do see Loki performing a double finisher with the Fangs, while I do realise that is not ingame footage that's the basic idea of what I was hoping we could have).

[DiabolusUrsus]

3 minutes ago, TheRealShade said:

Hmm, I can't really say I dislike any of these suggestions, as long as everything is rebindable and I can chose between W+E, Sprint+E or <InsertKeyOfChoice>+E I don't see an issue with anything here. And for the love of Ordis yes please give us faster finishers and X for finishers instead of any melee. Multi-target finishers if we have multiple enemies in the same spot would be real nice too but I'd have to guess it'd be hard to code properly so that's really just a special wish of mine (in one of the old trailers of the game we do see Loki performing a double finisher with the Fangs, while I do realise that is not ingame footage that's the basic idea of what I was hoping we could have).

Yes. Please.

Or even just more dynamic finishers. For example, daggers/dual-daggers might get a special slam attack modifier where landing directly on an enemy triggers a finisher... Kinda like the plunging attacks in Dark Souls 1.

Even if we can't have true group finishers, if the animations are fast enough we could potentially "chain" finishers in quick succession to sort of emulate the effect.

[5H4DE]

5 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yes. Please.

Or even just more dynamic finishers. For example, daggers/dual-daggers might get a special slam attack modifier where landing directly on an enemy triggers a finisher... Kinda like the plunging attacks in Dark Souls 1.

Even if we can't have true group finishers, if the animations are fast enough we could potentially "chain" finishers in quick succession to sort of emulate the effect.

Yea, the idea behind multi-target finishers was in the case of having 2 or more enemies right next to each other, the moment you finish one the others would get alerted but with a multi-target finisher you would take out all of them without alerting them. I know for the majority of players stealth gameplay is a non-existence but for solo players and in spy runs it would be nice.

[DiabolusUrsus]

5 minutes ago, TheRealShade said:

Yea, the idea behind multi-target finishers was in the case of having 2 or more enemies right next to each other, the moment you finish one the others would get alerted but with a multi-target finisher you would take out all of them without alerting them. I know for the majority of players stealth gameplay is a non-existence but for solo players and in spy runs it would be nice.

That could easily be a unique perk for dual weapons, and I'd support it.

[(XBOX)Arxcervus]

You have to keep in mind that whatever you come up with has to transport to controller since Warframe is on console as well.

[DiabolusUrsus]

20 minutes ago, (XB1)ll Ascendant ll said:

You have to keep in mind that whatever you come up with has to transport to controller since Warframe is on console as well.

Do you see anything here that couldn't transfer? You're the controller expert between us, so please share what problems you forsee.

I also don't understand why they couldn't offer different bindings by default... Unless the A button on your controller does the same thing as the A button on my keyboard?

[(XBOX)Arxcervus]

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Do you see anything here that couldn't transfer? You're the controller expert between us, so please share what problems you forsee.

I also don't understand why they couldn't offer different bindings by default... Unless the A button on your controller does the same thing as the A button on my keyboard?

Thing about controllers is that we don't have as many buttons (keys) as keyboards have. So we'd have to rely on several different buttons instead one or 2, meaning if they went your route, we'd have to use like 3 fingers to do a stance combo. Only thing I can think of instead of using 3 buttons is using the left trigger when in melee mode since channeling is supposedly going to be automatic now or at least that is what I got out of it. 

[DiabolusUrsus]

3 hours ago, (XB1)ll Ascendant ll said:

Thing about controllers is that we don't have as many buttons (keys) as keyboards have. So we'd have to rely on several different buttons instead one or 2, meaning if they went your route, we'd have to use like 3 fingers to do a stance combo.

Can you explain this a bit better?

What is the sprint binding? What is the block binding? Why would they be hard to combine with the melee binding?

3 hours ago, (XB1)ll Ascendant ll said:

Only thing I can think of instead of using 3 buttons is using the left trigger when in melee mode since channeling is supposedly going to be automatic now or at least that is what I got out of it. 

Channeling is getting converted into a super mode, though there haven't been any details on how it will be triggered. If the binding is open, then I'd definitely suggest using that. However, I don't know what the controller controls are so I was gonna leave that to DE to figure out. I don't understand how sprint + E as opposed to W + E would be impossible to translate. Is sprint some weird binding like B whereas melee is X? That's about the only really awkward button combination on an XB1 controller I can think of.

[(XBOX)Arxcervus]

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Can you explain this a bit better?

What is the sprint binding? What is the block binding? Why would they be hard to combine with the melee binding?

Channeling is getting converted into a super mode, though there haven't been any details on how it will be triggered. If the binding is open, then I'd definitely suggest using that. However, I don't know what the controller controls are so I was gonna leave that to DE to figure out. I don't understand how sprint + E as opposed to W + E would be impossible to translate. Is sprint some weird binding like B whereas melee is X? That's about the only really awkward button combination on an XB1 controller I can think of.

Sprint binding is the Left Thumbstick pressed, Block binding is the right trigger (RT) when in melee mode, Melee binding is the B button - This setup is for me anyway.

 

Our universal sprint key for any game is the Left Thumbstick pressed. Pressing a thumbstick plus RT (block) or any button in that combination makes no sense to me. So LT would make perfect sense due to channeling becoming something different. You said we are getting a 'super mode' which reminds me of Destiny, though Destiny uses the Left and Right Bumper which in Warframe, that is the Transference buttons. I could see both thumbsticks pressed for 'super mode' though.

[DiabolusUrsus]

6 hours ago, (XB1)ll Ascendant ll said:

Sprint binding is the Left Thumbstick pressed, Block binding is the right trigger (RT) when in melee mode, Melee binding is the B button - This setup is for me anyway.

Okay, I can certainly see HOLDING a stick getting awkward... 

I'm hazarding a guess that Y is cast and X is reload?

In that case how about X as a separate melee combo button considering melee weapons don't need reloading?

6 hours ago, (XB1)ll Ascendant ll said:

Our universal sprint key for any game is the Left Thumbstick pressed. Pressing a thumbstick plus RT (block) or any button in that combination makes no sense to me. So LT would make perfect sense due to channeling becoming something different. You said we are getting a 'super mode' which reminds me of Destiny, though Destiny uses the Left and Right Bumper which in Warframe, that is the Transference buttons. I could see both thumbsticks pressed for 'super mode' though.

Double-stick-click would make the most sense IMO, but considering DE hasn't said anything yet I'll leave the ball in their court.

[(XBOX)Arxcervus]

On ‎2018‎-‎09‎-‎22 at 9:41 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Okay, I can certainly see HOLDING a stick getting awkward... 

I'm hazarding a guess that Y is cast and X is reload?

In that case how about X as a separate melee combo button considering melee weapons don't need reloading?

Double-stick-click would make the most sense IMO, but considering DE hasn't said anything yet I'll leave the ball in their court.

Y is to swap weapons and X is to reload.

I can see X being used and double thumbstick click sounds perfect for 'super mode' unless they start switching things around.

But the thing is, channeling is supposedly turning into super mode which opens up the Left Trigger for use now. Maybe they could use that for melee as well.

[DiabolusUrsus]

14 minutes ago, (XB1)ll Ascendant ll said:

Y is to swap weapons and X is to reload.

I can see X being used and double thumbstick click sounds perfect for 'super mode' unless they start switching things around.

But the thing is, channeling is supposedly turning into super mode which opens up the Left Trigger for use now. Maybe they could use that for melee as well.

Ok, but wouldn't it be better to keep left trigger as a tight-aim binding for the fast-swap back to gunplay? Perhaps combine it into a block binding and use the prior block button as another dedicated combo button?