Melee Revisit: Phase 1 Feedback Megathread

[am0rtized]

8 minutes ago, Tubsie said:

The new stuff is nice and all, but I rather take the old working combos. Since we are unable to do the combos which use right mouse button currently (unless you equip only melee weapon to a mission), I assume you are going to fix this in phase 2? Or are you going to rework all the combos that use a right mouse button? I hope this won't be one of those things you half-ass and leave behind and move on to other projects.

It turns out you can actually do block combos (I was wrong before), but you have to use E (in the default configuration) together with the aim button.  I don't think it's possible to do them using left mouse to attack unless you unequip your guns.

[sorcer3r]

Aim slam and the smooth transition to melee is nice.

 

But no manual block and missing melee aim glide are showstoppers.

And exodia hunt feels useless now.

 

suggestion:  double click and hold block = weapon zoom

                     single click and hold block = melee block

Edited March 12, 2019 by sorcer3r

[HellRisen]

Would it be possible - since now combo counter stops if I break combo by aiming apply this to warframe ability weapons as well? 

E. g. Would be good if Baruuk restrain stops filling back if I break the combo with aiming. 

And it would be good to rework bit of Naramon - since now that combo decay is more harmfull to that counter than prosperous. 

[.Inaros.]

 

automatic lock not. because in addition to making the game less exciting, ends up getting bad for some characters who need to take damage. Example Chroma, Inaros, Garuda and Wukong.

[Yasha-7HS]

As the title suggests, I don't believe doing phases was a good idea. These are for multiple reasons: We don't have enough transparency to give you "good enough" feedback. We have to deal with piles of bugs of all the same origin without knowing if these are known issues that are actually fixed with a "Phase 2." 

Firstly, the amount of bad and bugs in phase 1 speaks for itself. Flow was a good idea, but it feels less like the melee rework and instead a backpedal for melee in general, and a buff for frames like Excalibur. The only thing I feel gained from melee is instant swap speed. However, what I can count in loss is consistent damage blocking, QoL in multiple versions of movement and mission types (having a primary "queued" while holding a battery or data mass will instantly drop the item in question when you go to aim glide), and even more emphasis on the lackluster stance combos on a lot of weapons. 

Starting with the good, I like that Exalted Blade can now be a simple replacement of your melee instead of a locked mode that wastes energy if you use certain weapon combinations due to swap costs. Ferrox always felt like it would combo well with Exalted Blade, but all the wasted time uncasting, throwing, recasting, and swinging made it more effort than it was worth. Now, there's none of that. It also opens up a slightly supportive playstyle where you could just hold the exalted blade for the energy drain to proc Energize for your teammates, while not just playing like a spammer, pressing E without really playing the game. I enjoy guided slam attacks, but at this point I also feel the reticle could do more to show you when you're at the right angle to do a slam attack at all. It's rather annoying to think your angle is good enough, just to melee uselessly in the air. 

Now to the bad; the butchering of blocking was an absolutely terrible decision, and made an already subpar mechanic even worse. Autoparrying feels unreliable and worthless. At least when I could hold my melee weapon and look in a general area to block damage, I knew I would block whatever eligible damage could be blocked. With autoparry, I'll look at enemies and watch shots just hit me with no reaction. Or I'll "block" something that's not even in the right direction. I don't feel like I have any control at all. It means absolutely nothing that blocking exists if I'm at the whim of essentially circumstance on if it blocks ever. Now that we've looked at the intended usage, let's talk about the emergent ones. The use of blocking for zero zoom zooming (or as most normal people know it, bullet jumping while blocking) doesn't exist, and gives a rather big hit to mobility in general. Not that we can't do it with other weapons, it's that the lack of zoom made it look and feel far more smooth than having the screen constantly shrink and expand while you try to figure out where you're going. 

 

Again with more bad, stance combos suck, and the lack of ability to interrupt them with dodging makes them even worse now that they're our only mode for melee. People who used certain weapon types, like polearms, staves, and maybe sparring weapons, have been the first to let you know that your quick attacks were objectively better to actually play the game than stances that had imprecise -- or rather far too precise, making them practically unviable --  combos that were slow, locked you into animations, and slowed you down. 

 

Though I know no one cares, here's simple suggestions to fix these two issues: 

Blocking should be given it's own key, just like in melee 1.0, and usable at any time with the radius that it used to have. Since you now have to melee to even use a melee to block, you waste 90% of your time in absolutely useless animations for the situation you need blocking. Having a key dedicated to blocking, like we have a key dedicated to channeling even though it's literally useless outside of having a melee in-hand, would give players more control in both mobility and survivability. 

 

Simply add a default combo where all the quick attacks used to be, and put them there. 

 

Honorable mention: I don't know what you plan to do with channeling, but since blocking is automatic now when you're channeling and attacking something you'll randomly lose disproportionate amounts of energy. It was stupid when it existed only on Excalibur, and it's stupid now. Blocking being random and automated was by-far the worst decision possible in Phase 1. Anyone is welcome to change my mind on how they've found use for it. 

[BansheePrime]

Personally I only have 1 issue with 2.9. And that is that things like my dearest  getting shafted with no manual blocking.

[Mama_Sasha]

ShichiseitenYasha, your post is a rarity, but very appriciated and pleasant to read considering that you are giving a really good feedback and suggestions. Most people would flat out yell or throw fire and brimstone to show how angry they are with something without giving muhc feedback that is constructive. Not all ofcorse, but they are there.

What i loved about Melee 2.0 that we had for years, was controll, you really felt you where in controll. When Charge was re-added from Melee 1.0, that too also enhanced the controll you had over melee, and in turn, you could go full Melee only mode in many missions and it felt rewarding too. It made Sortie missions with Melee Only also fun and functional.

I really think that the melee rework as of now was thrown out far to early from the oven, and some of the changes they did wasnt either ready, or was the wrong things to change.

I think Phase 1 need to be reverted until it is actualy ready, when it is baked enough in the oven and ready to be served. I do love the concepts they have planned, but right now its in a really ugly state.

Overall, great post, you deserve a applause upvote.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Sasha_The_Lynx
Changed my post to reflect the merging

[SHenanegenz]

Hours Played: 6000+

Forum Posts: 6

My Primary weapon is my Melee.

 

Issues with current revisit:

-No aim glide with melee. (also not possible to do a ninja backflip)

-Melee Combos using aim button automatically equips primary after combo completion.

-Autoblocking disables control over the weapon whether i want to take damage or aim at a particular target

 

Current revision gives the perception that melee is an accessory or subsidiary when it should be of equal importance.

 

Edited March 13, 2019 by SHenanegenz

[dyewithasmile]

found a couple other things

     when using no other weapons in load out // melee only cant unequip scanner. when aim gliding it is really annoying

     melee only cant scan simaris target.

     melee only cant drop datamass

[Aekhon]

1 hour ago, SHenanegenz said:

Current revision gives the perception that melee is an accessory or subsidiary when it should be of equal importance.

This is absolutely spot on.  I appreciate the intent of having a smoother flow between melee and ranged on paper, but in practice it definitely feels like the game wants me to play mostly ranged with a melee backup.  Sorry, but melee is my primary, and ranged is my backup.  Another thing that has come up for me:  if I am leveling a gun, and have to use a quick melee attack to clear some space because I'm reloading or whatever, right now, that switches me over to melee mode when I don't want to be in melee mode.

Personally, I'm currently thinking that auto-weapon swapping and auto-blocking are creating more problems than they are worth.

[_CoRDS_.NP-Hard]

DE, you've done a really annoying thing here.

Ferchrissake, why fix what wasn't broken? Melee combat used to be one of the most enjoyable parts of your game. Now it's clunky and awkward.

Please, the fix is simple. Just let me press a button or scroll a wheel and switch into the familiar melee mode. It's annoying as all frackbot to use "quick melee" to switch to the melee and line up a kill strike only to have your primary auto-switch-timeout have happened and you wind up blasting whatever instead of slashing whatever. Finishers are darn near impossible.

Basically, I now either /won't/ melee at all, or I'll loadout /only/ my melee, if that's what I'm feeling like doing. Hardly flow. Much janky.

In closing, I do not like this, sam I am. I do not like it on my box0r, I do not think at all it rox0r.

[dpencil]

Aimed arial slams are awesome! I like auto-blocking too. I'm mostly an E masher or spin-to-win type of melee player, so the transition to the new system has been seamless for me. Personally, I like all of it.

[Slush_Magic]

So, each weapon has two charge attack animations, but it's hard to get the second one because you have to let go then hold the button during the very quick swing. Wouldn't it be better to just keep charge attacking while the button is held? For example, the Tatsu has two animations, holding down the attack key charges up an attack and releases like normal, but as soon as the attack finishes, it starts charging another attack, all without letting go of the attack key.

[Stormdragon]

As smooth as it feels swapping between melee and guns most of the time, the removal of manual blocking made us lose the ability to aim glide while blocking given that now it brings guns out again even if no shot is fired. 

On the other hand, going ads when a melee weapon is equipped is counter intuitive and the ability to shoot to bring our guns out makes it kind of redundant.

Would it be possible to add a toggle allowing us to choose the behavior of ads to a manual block when melee is equipped?

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

 

Synthesis Scanner with Melee

 

K, I'm on PS4 so I haven't had the chance to try any of Melee 2.999 yet

But question:

how well does it play with your Synthesis Scanner?

When I'm tracking a Synthesis Target, I'll often equip my Scanner and keep it out to chase the trail. And I'll rely on my Quick Melee to defend myself instead of swapping to a gun and back for every enemy that gets in my way.

Very convenient since the quick melee doesn't unequip the scanner.

 

So PC users, does that still work? If not, let DE know for me.

Edited March 13, 2019 by (PS4)haphazardlynamed

[SilviaS12]

tried playing with the new updates again, and as much as I am thankful melee was not completely removed from the game that is if and only if you equip melee only with no guns, the more I play it, I feel like this is it for me, end of the line, I can't enjoy doing quests or anything, the fang daggers keep cannonball catapulting you away from the enemies as if you're trying to escape the battle, the auto block still interferes with the fighting, using melee weapons with guns is just so painstakingly horrible and it feels like anytime I want to switch playing styles I have to abort mission or complete mission and change my equips to either melee alone or otherwise, 

as far as I see it, the only fix is to bring back melee exclusive selection whilst having guns equipped with all the other melee functions such as manual block and block gliding, even if melee exclusive selection was a toggle switch in the settings so the "not so melee people" who think this is such a perfect upgrade for "switching" weapons so "fast" and so "seamless" at the cost of sacrificing the immersion, the mechanics of melee and pretty much just kicking melee purpose and usage to the curb, they too can have their cake bake and have it and eat it all at the same time. As far as I see it, WARFRAME IS DEAD. 

 

Edited March 13, 2019 by SilviaS12

[Carnage2K4]

Yes I'm one of the 3 players who use channeling.
as of about Hotfix 24.4.4 or so, channeling turns off while swapping between ranged weapons and melee, I get that people were unhappy it stayed on and drained energy if they (auto)blocked with it on. For me, the 2.99... Melee release version was perfect, I turn channeling on, and no matter what ranged weapons I used, it remained on.
But now I have to turn it on every single time I switch to my melee weapon, which defeats the purpose of being able to fast switch weapons 3.0 style.

There is an easy fix for this, a toggle in settings: "Channeling On While Weapon Switching"
Have it off (by default) and swapping to your ranged weapons turns off channeling.
Have it on, and once you have turned channeling on, it remains on even if you use ranged fire between melee attacks.

[shadowstormr]

I'll start with the good :

Melee-focused gameplay feels way more viable than before, since you can interrupt your attack if they feel ineffective against a target (a bombard if you are not sporting radiation on melee) or if a out-of-reach target takes priority (ancient healer or arbitration drone for example). The instant swap alone makes me want to use melee weapons that I previously disregarded since they felt cumbersome in situations like this. Feels good to not feel bad about ranged weapons being the most reliable dps and me wanting to use melee but holding back on that in a team setting.

Now I am experimenting with all types of melee since I know I can fall back to my ranged in an instant if I get into a particularly problematic situation. I have 2.5k hours logged and I have been a melee guy since the beginning and I hated that I couldn't use high damage melee like scindo prime and the insane broken bull combo because it felt cumbersome to me. It felt like I was missing out on a melee experience because it cost me mobility, which to me, what warframe is all about. Now, it's just perfect. I feel confident in every situation since I know I will not be encumbered with swapping animations and lose my combo. This change just made melee more accessible, rewarding and reliable, without disrupting mobility. My repertoire now isn't solely polearms. The level of flexibility this has brought is very satisfying.

Ground slams are what kept a low MR me going with melee against high level mob since I could cc them but it always felt a bit out of my control, and with the aimed slams, a veteran me has reasons again to use them, for mobility and for cc.

Phase 1 changes feel like the foundations of something great to come. I'm really hoping this is DE testing the waters for a bigger work to fall in place

Now for the problematic :

Blocking and combos that require blocking is awkward. I'm okay with the auto-block since I never found a use for blocking except when I was low mr, but now it's a thing that happens mostly conveniently and emphasis on mostly. Sometimes animations get interrupted by auto-block which breaks the flow and I'm hoping you guys will do something about that, and also about the weirdness that is aiming with a ranged weapon to set up a melee combo.

Flow-breaking and mobility-stealing combos  are just bad. They were bad before and they are still bad, maybe worse since you will actually get into those catapulting combos without intending to do so. They are aesthetically pleasing, and bring a lot of character into the gameplay, but they still break the flow and takes away control in a way that isn't good. Combos for dual daggers and such can take you out of the fight completely, which has always been unwelcome. Hoping that's something you guys have on your to-do list for one of the phases. Removing them or reinventing them will go a long way towards establishing melee 3.0.

In conclusion : I feel you guys have done well to revitalize melee with the core changes - Instant swap/Combo interrupt-resume/Aimed Slams/FX upgrade (oh my !). Sure you broke some stuff along the way but nothing game-breaking. I'm confident you will address most of the issues the fine people in this thread are critical of : issues with blocking and flow-breaking combos. Looking forward to what you bring for phase 2 and what melee 3.0 ultimately shapes up to be. From what I've experienced so far, it's stellar. Phase 1, for me, feels very much like the foundations for something great to come. Godspeed o/


 

[-Oni-Bushido-]

My opinion: this melee system rework was unnecessary. autoblocking in an horde game is not correct, and going full melee without any weapons equipped is unpolished. Channelling is still needed and now it feels underwhelming.

If there is more phases to arrive, why not include them all in one update? Right now it's really hard to play as normal. 

Try picking a kuva catalyst when only having a primary and a melee weapon. every time you aim glide you leave the catalyst behind (less responsive, less fluency for me).

I'm currently forced to play with semi tanks /healers just to avoid having to channel melee.

Last point: mobilty has been decreased. I'm really missing aim glide while in melee (blocking too). We were fine before this instaswitching. If someone wanted quick switch, we had Speed holster and other similar mods. Now we can't play melee properly

Edited March 13, 2019 by -Oni-Bushido-

[holyicon]

Key binds NEED to be cleaned up.
We now have a bind for "Switch Weapon" and "Switch Gun".
Both of which have identical function.
I suggest you remove "Switch Weapon" and replace it with "Switch to Primary" and "Switch to Secondary" while keeping "Switch Gun" for players that wish to use one key to do both.

 

 

 

I used to use Mouse-Wheel Down to wield Melee and Mouse-Wheel Up to switch Guns.
What I would like to do now is use MWU for Primary Weapon, and MWD for Secondary Weapon.
Right now both my Mouse-Wheel directions just switch between primary and secondary and the actually switching mechanism in game is so flakey, sometimes it switches right past the gun I want to use now back to the one I was just using. WHAT HAPPENED?

 

 

 

Along with all that it totally blows my mind you can't manually guard anymore!
There was no reason to remove that and every reason to keep it!
If you want to switch back to your guns without shooting ... read above. There's literally still TWO binds that already do that!
Seriously, please let us set a dedicated Block key.
And allow us to map that to the same key as Aim, so that you can Aim when welding guns but Block if wielding melee with the same key.

 

 

 

As always, have fun out there, be kind to each other, but equally mean to those that oppose the Tenno!

-  holyicon / sangraal - 
Peace!

[TheMostFrench]

One difficult side effect of the new melee mode / gun auto switch is that when you are carrying a mission critical item (e.g an excavation power core, or mobile defense key) you will drop the item if you equip your primary weapon by aiming. Tenno could just strap it to their back or chest instead of needing to hold it in one hand, I can't think of any mission types which require you to hold onto an item while completing the objective, you just plug the thing in and forget about it.

I decided to post this here since it's a behaviour directly related to the new melee system.

[KieSeyHow]

So many issues now with melee since update 24.4; all because the game was not broken, but simply had bad default keybinds and unlabelled keybind groupings in the UI.  Gliaves are USELESS now, because you cannot tap alternate fire for the glaive throw.  Now there is only only normal mellee (melee key) and charged throw (holding melee key), because no melee channel manual selection.  So, ALL such thrown weapons ruined.  Before the throw was a finely timed tap of the alternate-fire key, and now you have to hold the melee key for a clumsey timed throw only ... which completely ruins the style.

Before the dumbing-down of the game (likely for console gamers) you could select melee and block at will, glide, aim, block and attack ALL at the same time.  Now, much of what made Warframe melee unique is gone!  I cannot even use melee channel, because the key I used before for melee-channel was the left-mouse key, and right-mouse was for both mellee and quick-melee, which worked perfectly.  AIM should not be right-mouse, because you cannot aim, glide, block and attack (glide attack) all at once that way (well not anymore since the useless update).  Before you could bullet-jump, aim and glide towards mobs, while channeling, then slash attack as you passed by, all while blocking.  You fixed something that was NOT BROKEN, simply because of the faulty default keybinds (likely setup by some consoler and not a true PC gamer).  Aim, block, and glide, worked PERFECTLY if it was mapped to the left-Alt key (for right-handed), and still did not conflict with jump (usually spacebar for righties), so you could do amazing things in Warframe that no other game could ... sadly no longer the case.  Now the game has been ruined and dumbed-down, all because there was no sensible default keybinds and also confusing unmarked keybind-groups in the UI... 

What incompetence to ruin something merely to preserve an original mistake.  What manager had charge of this?  I can explain EXACTLY how to map the original game, and why, and prove it works perfectly.  I showed this to MANY others, usually after they noticed the moves I was doing and could not mimic them.  Even some veteran players agreed the new mappings were better once they were given the idea.  ALL agreed it was better, many subsequently kept using those mappings from thence onwards.  This is not acceptable DE; you guys ended up breaking the game by trying to fix the wrong thing.  WHY!?  Now it feels like completely different game having several capabilities ripped out for no good reason.

Speaking of spacebar, why is the hacking key, not simply whatever key the player has mapped for jump instead of hard-coded to spacebar?  Spacebar is pretty useless for left-handed players, it seems alf-way across the desk.  Also the ESC key, being used for "back."  Map the "back" key to alternate-fire, or right-click as well as ESC key, that way it is mappable and works for everyone.

[Gene_Freak]

The more I play with the Phase 1 update, the less I like it. At first I was really charmed by the beautiful new effects and the QoL benefits of aimed slams, but the novelty of those has faded and now every melee scrap just feels laborious and unfun. I keep finding new things to dislike, and I'm souring more and more on 'quick switch' as a concept - I didn't realize how much I used quick melee to break containers until it was taken away, or how much I would bounce between quick melee and reload in tight situations.

Whatever happened to the melee changes outlined in Devstream 114? Those proposals were extremely promising and demonstrated an understanding of the importance of mobile, fluid and intuitive melee combat. Right now it feels like you've gone in the entire opposite direction, taking away all the fluidity that was already present and forcing players into hammering out morse code to execute rigid, immobile animations.

[Guest]

I just have a feeling that shipping the first part while channeling is still a thing and when we don't have a separate button for charge attacks seems to be a ... terrible idea. The block combos are now annoying to do (I use a Destreza nowadays so it doesn't hurt much) and blocking during an aim glide actually did help with staying alive before.

Basically, this melee 2.9 thing feels like a bicycle with everything except the pedals. You know, it is almost there but still fails to serve its purpose.

 

[Mic.ph]

Overall, I'm liking the Melee Phase 1 changes, though it would be nice to have a consistent weapon switching while scanning/mining/tranq or during excavation missions or elsewhere. Also, melee block combo and auto-block still feels weird (I prefer manual blocking).

Here's a suggestion:

Bring back "Hold Switch Weapon key to equip melee" function, and change it to "Hold Switch Weapon key to equip and lock melee" instead.
Also change Switch Weapon to "Press Switch Weapon key to switch between Primary and Secondary, and unlock melee."
So, while melee is locked... manual blocking! While melee is unlocked, auto-blocking!
No other changes required to blocking-related mods or elsewhere.
It's same as the old function that players are used to, but now, just add lock/unlock melee and keep the new melee changes. Win-win.

For players like me using "Melee with Fire Button Input", sometimes we just want to go full melee without gunfire interrupting our flow...
...like while immersed in melee, we want to do a slam attack (instinctively Left Mouse Button) after aim glide, but we shot a gun instead. F.

Also, the melee block combo is a constant hit or miss for us who prefers to start all melee combos with the LMB - we either execute it or we suddenly aim and shoot (given Berserker is equipped, and player prefers changing up combos in the heat of combat and not just spam block combo). The consistent way for us to execute block combos is to always start using the keyboard (E), then hold aim (RMB) and press E/LMB etc., but kills the "Melee with Fire Button Input" vibe. So, if we'll have an option to lock melee that enables manual blocking in addition to the new melee changes with auto-blocking, players can freely choose how they want to execute melee block combos anytime - old school or new school.

(Aside: I like DMC, but I'm a PC player who prefers a keyboard-mouse controls.
Been wanting a DMC-ish PC game ever since, so Warframe appealed to me after Rakion and Firefall. Haven't tried DMC5 on Steam yet.)

At the moment, uninterrupted melee play is only possible if no primary and secondary weapons are equipped.
But sometimes, full melee players want to have a gun/bow ready when they feel like using it too.
So I think allowing us to lock or unlock melee on the fly will cater to "full melee players", "DMC-ish players", and the "players in-between." (I'm on "In-between")

That's it. Cheers!

Edited March 14, 2019 by Mic.ph
+blocking +meleeblockcombo