After the melee weapon switching change, keep the quick melee keybind's ability to do combo-less attacks

[Apav]

23 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

A friend of mine was very disappointed in a similar fashion. Now that we're all forced to use Stance combos, he's been triggering some kind of Staff lunge attack on accident, sailing past his target and falling off of platforms. I tried the stance he's using, and I think he's triggering the Hit/Hit/Pause/Hit combo. As combos get faster due to melee speed buffs (Fury and Valkyr, say), the "pauses" can get so short that even rapid button spamming can sometimes read as a gap.

I suspect DE might be changing how combos work, and frankly - that can't come soon enough. Spamming the inconvenient "quick melee" key and having to worry about inconsistent timing in a game with this much else going on is I think making the new melee system feel far worse than it is.

They did say they want to unify the combo system keypresses between all stances. They could make the E E E E E (with no pauses) combo sequence into the former quick melee attack for all stances. But I still think the simplest solution with the least amount of complications is adding the quick melee keybind back in, and letting us be able to use both combo-less quick attacks and combo attacks with two different buttons. And they could add that in right away, we wouldn't have to wait for combos to be reworked first. 

Edited March 9, 2019 by Apav

[Apav]

28 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

@Apav

Here's the result on my post-comparison.

Same setup used before. Primed Pressure Point a Riven with +%Damage +%Atk Speed and Drifting Contact.

Again there was one accidental ground finisher on the stance test.

• Spam attack (Previous Quick Attack) killed in 1 minute 48 seconds. Down from previous 2 minutes.
• Spam attack took exactly 569 hits to kill the target and ended at 3.5x combo. Up from Previous 502 hits.
• Spam attack performed exactly 164 attacks at 3.5x combo. Up from 97.
• Stance attack killed in 1 minutes 55 seconds. Previous 2 minutes 13 seconds.
• Stance attack took exactly 309 hits to kill the target and ended at 3x combo. Previous 301 attacks.
• Stance attack took 260 less hits to kill the target. Previous was 201.

It would appear the same still holds true that spamming attack produces similar kill speeds with faster attacks. Interestingly the previously Quick Attack combo seems to be slightly faster now than it previously was. This feels true through testing as well since the animation is smoother on the first few attacks. Though the kill time is within margin or error on Quick Attack Vs Spam the hit count varies by 67 hits. In all it would seem we mostly just lost the unhindered mobility of Quick attacks.

Again, can't thank you enough for detailing your findings and posting about it here. I have to ask, what is this "spam attack (previous quick attack)" you speak of? Some sort of animation cancel? I know you can still do the old quick melee when you have an arch gun equipped, but that is hardly a solution since you can't deplete its ammo entirely or switch to your primary/secondary if you want to keep quick meleeing. And while that's good to hear about the time to kill being nearly the same, without the unhindered mobility Iof combo-less attacks feel like it's not even worth using polearms at all anymore. The frequent breaks in the attack and stops in the movement are just too jarring for me to overcome. What do you think, do you forsee yourself adapting to polearms without those attacks? 

Edited March 9, 2019 by Apav

[Steel_Rook]

20 minutes ago, Apav said:

They did say they want to unify the combo system keypresses between all stances. They could make the E E E E E (with no pauses) combo sequence into the former quick melee attack for all stances. But I still think the simplest solution with the least amount of complications is adding the quick melee keybind back in, and letting us be able to use both combo-less quick attacks and combo attacks with two different buttons. And they could add that in right away, we wouldn't have to wait for combos to be reworked first.

Sometimes I wonder if letting us HOLD the melee key for a basic melee loop might be the easiest way to go. Give every stance a basic stationary combo (i.e. without big lunges or elaborate multi-hits), then come up with some more discrete system for triggering alternative combos that doesn't rely on sometimes split-second timing. That would solve the issue of timing becoming tighter to the point of impracticality with high levels of attack speed buffs and removes the need rapid-spam controls with faster weapons.

Because even if DE did give every weapon a basic "Attack/Attack/Attack" combo, issues of triggering the wrong combo with high attack speeds will persist. And while there's always the option to "git gud," I feel the pace of Warframe and the general chaos of higher level encounters don't lend themselves very well to exacting controls precision.

[Apav]

12 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Sometimes I wonder if letting us HOLD the melee key for a basic melee loop might be the easiest way to go. Give every stance a basic stationary combo (i.e. without big lunges or elaborate multi-hits), then come up with some more discrete system for triggering alternative combos that doesn't rely on sometimes split-second timing. That would solve the issue of timing becoming tighter to the point of impracticality with high levels of attack speed buffs and removes the need rapid-spam controls with faster weapons.

Because even if DE did give every weapon a basic "Attack/Attack/Attack" combo, issues of triggering the wrong combo with high attack speeds will persist. And while there's always the option to "git gud," I feel the pace of Warframe and the general chaos of higher level encounters don't lend themselves very well to exacting controls precision.

Yeah what I said was not a perfect solution for the reasons you stated. And that would be a good solution, since most people used to spam E to repeatedly quick melee anyway so there's really no difference. But then they would have to change the charge attack keybind to something else. 

Even if it isn't held, you can set up a macro to make that way anyway. 

Edited March 9, 2019 by Apav

[Otaiken]

You realize you're not saying anything new, right?

We all know that quick melee was more efficient on some weapon types. We all know about mobility and timing problems. DE knows about them too.

But this is just a phase 1 of melee 3.0, combo rework is not out yet. And I don't think that stitching the old quick melee onto the new system so people can stay in their comfort zone is a great solution.

In the meantime why not try some different melee weapons? System change might be a good time to branch out a little, don't you think?

[Steel_Rook]

7 minutes ago, Apav said:

Yeah what I said was not a perfect solution for the reasons you stated. And that would be a good solution, since most people used to spam E to repeatedly quick melee anyway so there's really no difference. But then they would have to change the charge attack keybind to something else. 

Ack, good point! Completely forgot about charge attacks... I should go to bed if I'm overlooking stuff this obvious. Honestly, I still feel that holding a button is better than spamming a button, but I need to consider charge attacks and alternate combo triggers.

[Apav]

51 minutes ago, LocoWithGun said:

You realize you're not saying anything new, right?

We all know that quick melee was more efficient on some weapon types. We all know about mobility and timing problems. DE knows about them too.

But this is just a phase 1 of melee 3.0, combo rework is not out yet. And I don't think that stitching the old quick melee onto the new system so people can stay in their comfort zone is a great solution.

In the meantime why not try some different melee weapons? System change might be a good time to branch out a little, don't you think?

Even if they do a complete overhaul to stances and combos, combos by their nature are inherently restrictive so the lack of freedom of mobility will not change. You can't do anything once you're locked into an animation. 

On the contrary, there is no reason to remove combo-less attacks. Even if combos become so much better, combos and combo-less attacks can peacefully coexist, and having more variety so you can use the right attack for the right situation is only a good thing. Having a separate keybind for combo-less attacks on a button that we didn't use before (a button that's customizable mind you) is not a negative for anyone. It doesn't require a massive amount of work to implement either, nor does it create any complications like these changes have. I cannot understand people who are against having more options when those options have no impact on anything. 

I also respectfully disagree with this whole phase mentality when it comes to total overhauls of a gameplay system. There's no reason to overly nerf, buff, and break things by releasing part of the changes, while making us wait months for the rest to fix those things. They could've waited to release these changes with the rest of melee 3.0 and that would've resulted in a lot less complications. They only released phase 1 now because of rule of cool, which I feel is less important than having things work right. Besides, we don't even know what the rest of those changes are fully. And even if we did, we really don't know if they will actually fix things like they hope they will. The very least they could do is add a stopgap as we wait for the rest of the changes.

As for the last paragraph, I do use different kinds of weapons. But I find myself going back to polearms frequently until these changes because their combo-less attack is what I preferred. In such a fast paced action game, full unhindered mobility while meleeing is a very big deal to a lot of people. I have seen so many posts in the patch notes and feedback threads saying the removal of combo-less attacks, manual blocking and other things sucked a lot of the enjoyment out of the game for these people. I have seen it frequently come up in region chat. Maybe if they had a good reason (like they did with raids) I can somewhat understand removing it, but I have yet to see a single person give me a fair reason why they shouldn't include an extra optional keybind for combo-less attacks. 

Edited March 9, 2019 by Apav

[Xzorn]

48 minutes ago, Apav said:

what is this "spam attack (previous quick attack)" you speak of? Some sort of animation cancel?

 

It's the same thing as spamming the first Combo of a stance which is also what Quick attack was in most cases but usually minus a hit or two.

In case of polearms it's that final spin swing that staggers your movement which was not previously part of Quick attacks.

Quick attack could also change based on the stance you were using. Twirling Spire's quick attack was awful compared to the older stances.

[Otaiken]

44 minutes ago, Apav said:

Even if they do a complete overhaul to stances and combos, combos by their nature are inherently restrictive so the lack of freedom of mobility will not change. You can't choose which way you want to move once you're locked into an animation. 

Likewise, there is no reason to remove combo-less attacks from the old quick melee system either. Even if combos become so much better, combos and combo-less attacks can both peacefully exist, and having more variety so you can use the right attack for the right situation is only a good thing. 

I also don't agree with this whole phases mentality when it comes to total overhauls of a gameplay system. There's no reason to nerf and break things by releasing part of the changes, while making us wait months for the rest. They only released phase 1 now because of the rule of cool. Besides, we don't even know what the rest of those changes are fully. And even if we did, we really don't know if they will actually fix things like they say they will. The very least they could do is add a stopgap as we wait for the rest of the changes. Having a separate keybind for combo-less attacks on a button that we didn't use before (a button that's customizable mind you) is not a negative for anyone. It doesn't require a massive amount of work to implement either, nor does it create any complications like these changes have. 

Everything you've written is baseless conjecture.

"combos by their nature are inherently restrictive so the lack of freedom of mobility will not change" Is that in the bible? "You can't choose which way you want to move once you're locked into an animation. " Excal used to be unable to strafe when swinging during exalted blade. That sure didn't change...

"It doesn't require a massive amount of work to implement either" I think it's actually impossible to do. I'm just as ignorant as you however so it might be either way really.

I'm not exactly optimistic but you really went all out on the cynicism there. You must really love the polearm blender.

[HyokaChan]

all of you are talking about polearms here I am realizing just how crap the forward combo of crossing snakes is 

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Damn can't wait to test this out on console. If we can move around like "Exaulted Blade" yeah lots of people wouldn't be complaining much. Then there's those stances that force forward lunges. I pray for those style of combos to go away forever. It's bad enough I can't move my warframe in the middle of a combo but it forces me forward when I dont want to. Warfan stance anyone? I can see why De decided to throw this out in phases. Feedback about the changes. Bugs.. lots of bugs if everything is thrown all at once.

[DoomFruit]

4 hours ago, Apav said:

On the contrary, there is no reason to remove combo-less attacks. Even if combos become so much better, combos and combo-less attacks can peacefully coexist, and having more variety so you can use the right attack for the right situation is only a good thing. Having a separate keybind for combo-less attacks on a button that we didn't use before (a button that's customizable mind you) is not a negative for anyone. It doesn't require a massive amount of work to implement either, nor does it create any complications like these changes have. I cannot understand people who are against having more options when those options have no impact on anything.

It still requires mapping another button, something which console users might have trouble with.

I'd use a different option - stanceless melee. Don't equip a stance, get the old quick attack animations.

[Apav]

46 minutes ago, DoomFruit said:

It still requires mapping another button, something which console users might have trouble with.

I'd use a different option - stanceless melee. Don't equip a stance, get the old quick attack animations.

This is true, forgot about console. Unfortunately your solution wouldn't work either. Most stances have their own unique combo-less attack, including stanceless. So I guess the only way you can implement this that works on all platforms with zero complications is make holding the F key (and whatever button it is on consoles you use that would previously use to bring out your melee weapon) a toggle between combo and combo-less attacks. Since it no longer brings your melee weapon out after these changes that's a newly freed up key/button to put it on, and changing your weapon and melee attack style are similar to each other thematically so they make sense to be on the same key.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Apav

[FlyingFrog51]

 

9 hours ago, FlyingFrog51 said:

9 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

There is an option to use "Shoot" for meleeing once your melee weapon is selected. It's under "Controls," I believe. Try that and see if it helps.

Thank you!! That needs to be advertised. Unless I just missed it somewhere.

Did some more thinking about this last night. I realized now I have to choose between using a key for constant melee, or manually switching back to my primary or secondary every time I break a loot box. I guess I can get used to using the key... we'll see. 

[el_chanis]

48 minutes ago, FlyingFrog51 said:

 

Did some more thinking about this last night. I realized now I have to choose between using a key for constant melee, or manually switching back to my primary or secondary every time I break a loot box. I guess I can get used to using the key... we'll see. 

the thing with this mechanic, is that it feels unnatural. Think about every single FPS game you have ever played. That forced switch was never there, except on the very first wolfestein and doom, where you had to manualy select a melee weapon. In other words, this system goes back 30 years in the gaming industry. It's like making trains powered by coal all over again. 

Quick Melee was the perfect solution for those who liked melee and hated flashy and senseless movements. Stuff like shields, hammers, heavy blades, polearms, even nikanas, all become stupid sticks on a sugar rush when going combo. As i said in another post, that looks great in Street Fighter, where the game forces you to stay in front of the enemy, and you don't fall off the map. But here, is outright cancerous. You are better off killing enemies with radiation procs than with your melee.

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, el_chanis said:

the thing with this mechanic, is that it feels unnatural. Think about every single FPS game you have ever played. That forced switch was never there, except on the very first wolfestein and doom, where you had to manualy select a melee weapon. In other words, this system goes back 30 years in the gaming industry. It's like making trains powered by coal all over again. 

The mechanic is rather a lot more recent than that. We had equippable melee weapons as recently as Half-Life 2 when it comes to FPS games, and WH40K Space Marine had it as recently as 2011. Hell, GTA5 has equippable melee weapons RIGHT NOW, and one of them is even worth using (the Stone Axe which triggers a near-invulnerability rage mode). Melee 2.0's vision of hand-to-hand combat in Warframe was clearly MGS Grey Fox / Revengence Raiden, i.e. the bullet-dodging, sword-blocking ninja zipping all over the place slicing slower, less mobile targets. It seems like the Melee 3.0 system is instead heading into a Devil May Cry direction, instead, with the separate melee and shoot buttons and non-animated weapon swaps. It's not Duke Nukem's Mighty Boot, is what I'm getting at.

While Warframe is definitely too fast for a full DMC / Platinum melee combat system simply due to the predominance of ranged enemies and the sheer volume of fire coming in at any one time, there's still room for SOME kind of more elaborate melee system than Call of Duty knives and rifle butts or Battlefield preanimated takedowns. The idea of where Melee 3.0 is headed, near as I can tell, is that hand-to-hand combat ITSELF becomes a form of "quick melee" by stripping the slowness of weapon swaps and the complexity of blocking/channelling. Currently, that's at odd with how fiddly the combo system in the game is, but that's why I've proposed streamlining combos into essentially auto-attacks triggered by holding the melee button. There are issues with it, as was pointed out earlier, but that's the general direction I'd personally go into.

Long story short, there a middle ground between Dark Souls and Doom.

 

2 hours ago, FlyingFrog51 said:

Did some more thinking about this last night. I realized now I have to choose between using a key for constant melee, or manually switching back to my primary or secondary every time I break a loot box. I guess I can get used to using the key... we'll see. 

Yeah, it's not a perfect system. I think DE threw that in as a compromise for people who used melee predominantly, as doing long and repeated combos via quick melee is not pleasant. I have mine bound to a thumb mouse button and that's already clunky. Can't imagine people binding that to Q or E or something else that's going to interfere with movement while you spam it. Try it out, see how you feel about it - best we can do at the moment.

 

10 hours ago, Apav said:

Even if they do a complete overhaul to stances and combos, combos by their nature are inherently restrictive so the lack of freedom of mobility will not change. You can't do anything once you're locked into an animation. 

To be clear: you're referring to animation rooting here, correct? My opinion on the matter is usually pretty unpopular, but I'm HEAVILY in favour of rooting melee animations. I understand how restrictive that can feel if you're trying to stay mobile, but the tradeoff is actually good-looking animations. When it comes to melee combat, one thing I find is absolutely paramount is the feeling of "apparent weight," because that's what causes impacts to "feel" powerful. Proper stance and use of kinetic linking can make even a weak attack appear to be a devastating blow. The problem is that the majority of force in pretty much all physical contact comes from the legs and the abdomen, even if shoulders and arms contribute some amount as well. What that ends up meaning is you need full-body animations for proper impactful melee combat, and that means rooting animations because the legs are needed.

You CAN get away with torso-only melee animations, and the game does that to a point. It might even look OK for some lighter weapons like whips. However, for long weapons, heavy weapons and blunt impact weapons, tors-only attacks end up looking weak and clumsy. Have any of you guys played an old Unreal Engine game by the name of Rune? Early 2000s? That took basically UT99 and modded in melee combat. The result was absolutely goofy, as you had these limp-wristed swings from an upright torso while the legs rotated to run in different directions. That's what I want to avoid doing.

Now, you CAN have movement built into the actual melee attacks themselves, and Warframe does that already. There are plenty of leap attacks - I'd argue FAR TOO MANY considering how far the leaps land. There are also plenty of slide attacks. I believe a few of them also include steps forward as the character swings. I'd say make those controllable in motion (i.e. let me steer the slide attack) and you have a decent middle ground.

[el_chanis]

4 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

 

 Long story short, there a middle ground between Dark Souls and Doom.

 

 

Yes, it was called Quick Melee. Farewell best melee mechanic ever.

[SilviaS12]

11 hours ago, el_chanis said:

Yes, it was called Quick Melee. Farewell best melee mechanic ever.

I miss unholstering my melee and exclusive selection of melee even more. SIGH! I haven't played since the new update, it's just unplayable for me at this point as I am a melee style gameplay player.

[el_chanis]

12 hours ago, SilviaS12 said:

I miss unholstering my melee and exclusive selection of melee even more. SIGH! I haven't played since the new update, it's just unplayable for me at this point as I am a melee style gameplay player.

indeed. I did the absolute majority of mty kills with melee, yet i have never used stances, and for a good reason. They suck. This patch completely ruined it for me. I don't want to dance like a retard with a seizure, i want to #*!%ing hit what is in front of me for #*!%s sake.

[Fiewel]

How about a blank stance working for all weapons, which disables all combos and goes back to quick melee like before the patch?

Edited March 10, 2019 by Fiewel

[el_chanis]

35 minutes ago, Fiewel said:

How about a blank stance working for all weapons, which disables all combos and goes back to quick melee like before the patch?

sadly, some stances changed the quick melee. I was a big fan of Final Harbringer, wich turned the quick melee into a "bash a swing" double hit with guaranteed proc. Was insanely useful with silva and aegis prime, and extremely easy to use.

[Fiewel]

I see, depending on equipped stance quickmelee is always different. And my suggestion is to broad.

So how about sacrificing a modslot which defaults, depending on equipped stance, to quickmelee before the patch, by using a dummy mod changing E?

Player pays with 1 slot for getting the old E-behaviour back, all the melee animations are already present. Wouldnt cost a lot of ressources to implement by DE.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Fiewel

[DoomFruit]

On 2019-03-09 at 2:01 PM, Steel_Rook said:

To be clear: you're referring to animation rooting here, correct? My opinion on the matter is usually pretty unpopular, but I'm HEAVILY in favour of rooting melee animations. I understand how restrictive that can feel if you're trying to stay mobile, but the tradeoff is actually good-looking animations. When it comes to melee combat, one thing I find is absolutely paramount is the feeling of "apparent weight," because that's what causes impacts to "feel" powerful. Proper stance and use of kinetic linking can make even a weak attack appear to be a devastating blow.

(emphasis mine)

Then it better had be a devastating blow. JRPGs are probably the worst offender for this, where your character does some kind of gigantic flashy leap-swing-fly all over the place attack, or shoots a beam half the size of the screen and the enemy's HP bar drops by something like 5%.

I, on the other hand, prefer to dart through a whole crowd of enemies while twirling my Lesion and approaching at just the right distance to hit the maximum amount in one swing, never once being rooted in one place. Because getting rooted in place gets you killed.

Here's the same video which I keep posting in every single melee thread. Making the same point I made right back when this forced stance idea was first floated. This is what happens to us right now.

 

[Xzorn]

I'm actually a fan of rooted melee attack in PvP games but a game's design needs to be based around positioning as a tactic.

In Warframe positioning has little to no tactical value, esp when most enemies ignore barriers and terrain objects. Let alone the sheer number.

Rooted melee attacks in Warframe serve no purpose other than a counter balance but there isn't currently a proper balance in melee itself. You simply do more damage but take more damage. Positioning plays little roll in that due to the angles of incoming attacks and you've made it easier for enemies to hit you esp the ones you're attacking.

It takes some of the tankiest frames in the game to cap out melee DPS output. That shows the extreme in output Vs intake. I personally always use Tempo Royal for instance because the mobility and CC is worth far more in the scaling process than the flat damage of Cleaving Whirlwind. Only an Invis frame is going to get further using Cleaving.

[Kuldor]

So I'll up this.

 

Maybe I'm crazy, but the more I play with the new system, the less I like it, and I'm starting to really get annoyed by it.

 

Getting locked into combos when I didn't want to do them, shooting with the wrong gun because you can't even know which one you have until you switch, aiming with my sniper instead of doing a combo, not having quick melee at all (thus making my polearms literally useless since I don't use memeing strike)...

 

Idk man, the change is starting to feel like a step backwards to me, my combat just feels clunky whenever I want to use melee for a fast kill, for example, I normally use snipers as main weapons, let's say I'm using rubico prime. 5 shots, mag is empty, two mobs in front of me, normally I'd quick melee them, probably triggering arcane momentum for a fast reload and killing them fast in the process. Now I do some retarded combo that takes WAY too long to do and half the time it doesn't kill the second mob because it's a bit further away and I'm stuck in place doing some random animation, I just feel like I have way less control over what my character is doing at any given moment.

 

I've tried different melee weapons but... DE, really, your stances suck, and they suck a lot, most combos feel terrible to use. This may change with 3.0? idk, at this rate I may not be here for 3.0, I don't like when companies release half assed stuff, and this is the prime example of a half assed melee rework.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Kuldor