Melee Revisit: Phase 1 Feedback Megathread

[JarodDempsey]

5 hours ago, Reifnir said:

New players are going to hate losing energy on automated, mandatory blocking

blocking doesnt drain energy, only channeled block does or at least did unless what youre saying is that all blocking now drains energy

Edited March 8, 2019 by JarodDempsey

[Trase-Kor]

19 minutes ago, Spiritrax said:

I am a melee player and I use polearms extensively [...] I want my polearm to be able to fast swipe again 

I have similar issues. I've been using the Orthos polearm basically since it came out (and it's prime variant when I could get it). The smooth left-right attack that was present in the quick-attack was great and flowed smoothly from whatever I was doing into the strike which I could then continue while moving forwards. It felt good. When the stances were added I was disappointed to find that none of them had that smooth feeling while moving forwards. They're all significantly slower or they otherwise interrupt the movement; as a result I've only been using stances for the extra mod capacity. Is there any way we can continue using the quick-melee strikes without unequipping the mod? As it stands now the feeling of using polearms has degraded with this update. 😞

[Kwikwilyaqa]

The PAUSE and HOLD was not suppose to be a goner by now? Still there...

I keep missing the only good combo Cleaving Whirlwind has when i'm invisible with Octavia (if i don't see the two inicial swings, i lost the combo) and the block combos now have a twist... if you miss the moment you aim.

"My" stances are still the same, the combos (the keys) are still bad (almost impossible to keep up with pause and hold depending on your speed or invisibility and now there is a possibility that "block" - or aim combos - put you out of melee)...

The aerial slam is nice thou. So the stupid idea to shoot in between the parts of the combo... People gonna cause a lot of damage with this and CO (well, now without interruption)... You guys missed the the dual wield ability to detonate the glaive too.

[ModernGreg]

let me start off with the positives:

Visually  everything feels amazing. Melee has a much bigger OOMPH factor to it and the directional air slams are sublime. You guys have definitely nailed that.

 

But the combos feel broken. I can't use the Block combos anymore because it forces me to aim with my primary weapon. I used to have my melee bound to my left and right mouse button and it worked flawlessly. Having no more aimglide in melee is understandable but something that definitely needs getting used to and I'm not sure how much I like it.

 

I have also tried to use my PS4 controller to see if it suited me better but the game didn't allow me to make more than 1 swing and after that pressing the melee button did nothing.

 

Overall everything looks very promising but needs some major tweaks.

 

 

[JarodDempsey]

double post 😐

Edited March 8, 2019 by JarodDempsey

[JarodDempsey]

1 minute ago, ModernGreg said:

I can't use the Block combos anymore because it forces me to aim with my primary weapon.

did you actually try melee'ing while holding the (old) block (aim) button? I thought at first i couldnt do the combos as well but upon attempting to melee while blocking just as i had done preupdate it switched to melee from aiming and aside from that initial bit works exactly the same.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Can we get dedicated melee back ? Keep the changes you did for quick melee (auto blocking, slam targeting, faster swap and being able to make combos), but let people that want to block, channel and combo like old times do it on dedicated melee where they can use all their shoulder buttons or mouse like before.

I understand the goal is to make dedicated Melee unneeded in the long run, but until we're there, let us use the old system that works. Plus we still have block and channeling mods we can't really use and tons of stuff that are broken.

Then maybe in a couple of updates when quick melee is perfect and you can block, channel and melee without issues on keyboard and on all controller setups, then remove dedicated(or keep it honestly since more choice is a good thing and some people don't want auto blocking and channeling on odd buttons)... What else are you going to put on hold weapon swap anyway ? Archgun ?

Edited March 8, 2019 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[Lorelei]

The Lacera's positioning bugs have been around forever, and i'm not trying to go too far down that rabbit hole in this thread.  However, as of yesterday's update the elemental effects line up with the blades when backward, rather than when corrected. 

[tonyb010ny]

I am a melee-main PC keyboard player, and this melee update has been VERY FRUSTRATING. I would estimate that melee weapons take up about 60% of my inventory slots. On most missions (unless I'm leveling up a specific gun for affinity farming), I would guess that I spend about 80% of mission time in melee attack mode, charging up my combo counter, and only 20% using primary or secondary weapons. As such, let me just explain my keybindings and playstyle to clarify.

IN THE PAST: So, since I'm a melee main, I had my primary melee key mapped to the LMB, and channeling mapped to the RMB. I hit CAPSLOCK to block and TAB to slide. I had LSHIFT mapped to Roll (though I don't roll much). I had my LALT mapped to Switch Weapons so I could quickly go back and forth between blade and gun with the tap of a thumb. I had Quick Melee mapped to the G key, and I used it very rarely - usually on missions where I'm trying to rank up a gun, and I want to open a container without wasting precious ammo - just hit G, whack container with blade - move on. 

ADAPTING TO THE NOW: So yesterday, I get into a mission, and I'm trying to equip my blade and it's not working. I just keep switching between primary and secondary guns. Because I use melee so much, it is VERY DIFFICULT to hit a key on the keyboard while I'm also moving around, sliding, and jumping. The fingers that I'd use to hit G are otherwise engaged in movement. 

So, my best option as a melee main was to keep the Melee key mapped to LMB and now I've remapped primary fire to LSHIFT (as I said, I wasn't Rolling much anyway). Because I don't use guns as much, I can still fire with my pinkie finger on the LSHIFT while controlling movement with ring, middle, and index fingers, jumping with the thumb, and aiming with the RMB. If I want to aim/glide and fire from midair, I now have to hit SPACE to jump, then hold down W for forward, pinky on the SHIFT to fire, and the RMB to aim. It is a clunky, uncomfortable solution, but it's the best I've been able to figure out under the circumstances. 

And yes, like many others I'm a bit frustrated that the melee combos that rely on the block button are now broken. It's also frustrating that the game switches me back to gun mode every time my pinkie accidentally brushes the LSHIFT key, taking me out of auto-blocking with my melee drawn. 

All in all - I acknowledge that my play-style may be a corner case and I was not what the DE developers had in mind when they introduced this. However, from reading the forums, I'm seeing that I'm not alone. There are a LOT of melee main players that are very dissatisfied with the loss of control we now face, and the loss of enjoyment we feel from having our favorite class of weapons somewhat nerfed and de-stabilized. 

I applaud progress and development, but we don't want to be left out or left behind. If there was some sort of general TOGGLE that could go back and forth between the old method and the new, that would be GREATLY APPRECIATED -i.e. a toggle that still allowed one to have a dedicated keyboard key to switch between gun and blade, so that both Melee Attack and Primary/Secondary Fire could both be mapped to the LMB rather than forcing one of those options to the keyboard

Please very kindly consider this request!

tonyb010ny

 

 

 

[Alastair-Ulven]

So far it pretty good, my only issue is gunblades in particular bullet dance's draw attack(not really sure what to call it) is still a regular slice. I think it should be changed to the normal shot that starts each combo as is gunblades were the least effect by this change.

It has nothing to do with me wanting to combo together the Twin Rogga and Redeemer Prime so I can shoot one then the other for massive damage.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this also can cause issue with combos since it treats the draw attack as if it was the normal combo starter combos can look strange. Also while it doesn't seem too consistent sometimes the draw attack will play instead of the first shot even when the blade is out.

SECOND EDIT: Since I posted this comment this seems to have been stealth changed at some point I think patch 24.4.2 as that was when I first noticed it. With this change gunblades feel so much better to use so my rating for melee 2.99999... has gone from pretty good to amazing, I love being able to combo the shot with my Twin Roggas. Its practically a instant kill between the Twin Rogga's huge amount of pellets to strip armour and apply status then a Condition Overload Redeemer Prime shot to finish them and if that doesn't kill the charge attack right after will. Admittedly it does take a bit get use to and also set up plus it isn't the easiest to land, but it's so satisfying when it hits. Please let this be an intended change and if it isn't please let it stay DE.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Alastair-Ulven

[CaptainBAMF]

I just want to start by saying overall i love this mainline update and it has me grinding out the new content with my clannmates and friends!!!

 However there is something that i was not expecting, nor do i feel alot of melee loving players expected as well. I was all for this melee update. However i didn't realize that mobility in combat would be completely killed. In combat I tend to prefer to use melee only in my loadout while playing solo or with friends. Currently it feels like melee combat is broken movement wise. I can no longer dance around hordes and pull off combos, It now locks you into brickish movement while doing any combo, and instead rewards you for only striking once or twice then running off. It litearlly feels like i can kill more enemies faster with single strikes then engaging in combos. I hope this is looked at.  I never liked spin to win type melees, however i dont understand why every melee weapons mobility has to suffer as a consequence. 

Overall this update is amazing, the new gameplay is unique and certainly refreshing. However melee needs a second look. Thank you for your hard work DE

[Unknown924]

Two things:

First, since shooting doesn't interrupt melee combos, what about melee not interrupting reloading?  Adding a grace period where the reload would continue instead of losing all progress would be nice and fit the goal of rapid switching between guns and melee.

Second, Rhino Iron Skin prevents blocking from happening while it is up.  You will just stand there and take damage until the Iron Skin is gone and then your Rhino will start to block.  This may also be an issue with other abilities that absorb / block damage since it seems that the blocking is triggered by taking damage, not just getting hit.

[Urlan]

1 hour ago, Pyroninja13 said:

My only beef with the current melee rework is how melee channeling interferes with my gunplay while using a controller, which is my preferred method of combat.

As it stands, there is no way I can bind a button on my Xbox controller that doesn't interfere with either my aiming or my actual shooting. If I bind the channeling to my aim button, I can't aim, merely toggling the Channeling effects on and off rather than actually aim down the sights, which in turn limits my combat options. If I move it to the fire button, the gun will never fire, merely Channel.

The current button bind restriction doesn't help, as it does not allow me to bind the Channeling function to anything but to sharing the command with my melee (with Quick Melee gone, I can't even do this!), aiming (can't aim my dang gun or use my scanners) or shooting (can't freaking shoot!)

Perhaps remove the binding restriction so I can put the command to toggle my Channeling to any other button? But you might also need to make a controller able to remove a binding entirely due to the limited space compared to a keyboard.

This is my experience with the current channel system as well! This wasn't unforeseen though since Archwing controls had the same thing happen to them starting with Fortuna, forcing controllers to find button functions they could live without in archwing or k-drive mode; for me that was the activate button and reload which is a pain when trying to reload normal weapons or pickup allies respectively! I feel the best path right now, until the full melee 3.0 which will make controller play incredibly hard - not enough buttons - is to make it so that channel melee and other previously mode active functions don't work until they are in that mode. I figure if it was me, that the reason that Channel toggle has priority and is always overlapping is that part of the intent is to make it work with gunplay and melee ala Devil May Cry's devil trigger mode.

Another interesting situation is that Void Blast doesn't work on controller for me now, I assume for now its due to the game coding it previously to a hard quick melee when functionally that has been removed.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Urlan
Void Blast interaction with controller.

[Obliviatorv2]

i notice there seems to be an issue for Controller users (such as myself), the quick melee button will swing your melee weapon and switch it out (to be expected) but once the weapon is out i can't swing it with my quick strike button (B/O) at all, so now i can't use my melee weapon at all and i can only attack with my guns or switching to Keyboard and mouse... an i'm not going to do that after so long with a controller 

Edit: new development, once a melee weapon is equipped by controller you can't switch back to your main arms

 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Obliviatorv2
updated issues

[Amazerath]

Nice things about Phase 1:

- New visuals look great.

- Aimed ground slam is nice.

- Being able to access melee more quickly is good.

 

Not so nice things about Phase 1:

- Merging ranged and melee killed Sword Alone and sacrificed choices and nuance that Sword Alone used to offer. This is actually a big negative but since it's only Phase 1 I'm hoping this was intentional and that future changes will come to compensate this loss.

- The way weapons immediately pop in and out when you alternate between ranged and melee doesn't look good. I understand the intention is to let "gun & blade flow" but that's not gonna happen if it looks clunky. I think it would look better with some sort of animation for the transition.

- Mods that rely on a block button can't be used anymore. It sucks that we'll have to wait until Phase 3 or more to be able to use certain mods again. And even then I'm concerned with the possibility that they will need to be sacrificed for the sake of this seamless gameplay thing.

- Very little has actually changed from a melee perspective. This feels more like a ranged gameplay update then a melee one, which so far is very different from Sword Alone upgrade that was shown to us a year ago.

[Gene_Freak]

The tentative steps into the new melee system are overall positive! I'm loving the aimed ground slams, the new effects are gorgeous, and quick switching feels much more natural. There are some problems, though, which I hope get addressed soon!

Big issues:

-The biggest issue behind the melee quick switch is that it's brought to the foreground the weakness of many specific stances, and the combo system as a whole. So many stances limit your movement and attack options that a lot of weapons have become more restrictive - which goes pretty explicitly against your intentions. You guys have talked about wanting to move away from "morse code" melee combos, and last summer you showed off some stance changes where melee while moving forward executed quick mobile attacks while standing melee did heavier combos - is this still planned? It would kill two birds with one stone, improving combo usability while mitigating combat movement issues.

-We need the block key back. Auto-blocking feels awful, especially how it interacts with melee in general. Trying to aim glide while in melee combat also feels awful, with the zooming being outright intrusive. Moreover, going from equipped melee to aimed gun also also feels awful - I can't imagine a situation where I'd want to ever go from melee to aimed ranged combat, I'm far more likely to go from melee to hip-shooting to melee again. Being able to switch straight from a ground slam to a sniper scope makes for funny Simulacrum GIFs, but that's an edge case use at best. I'm far more interested in being able to use Electromagnetic Shielding again. Plus, during that summer melee stream, you showed off an attack+block being used for gap-closing lunges and roll+block being short, quick dodges - are these out of the plan? The lunging attacks were one of the things I was most excited about!

Little issues:

-Quick switching between melee and guns really highlights how clumsy the switch speed is between primary and secondary. I've had a problem with that since 2014 but, while stamina and daily revives have gone extinct, it lumbers on, glacial as ever.

-Aimed slams are awesome, but the slam AoE itself is counterproductive. It flings guys way too far and way too hard (great for silly GIFs on Twitter, again, but useless when actually trying to play) while doing pitiful damage. Slam AoEs should be doing damage based on modded weapon damage while keeping the targets at least within the same postal code. This might also add a purpose to Seismic Wave, a mod otherwise reserved for white elephant exchanges.

I hope the coming months see a lot more experimentation with the melee system - I'm hungry for change and eager to test your ideas! Can't wait to see what gets tweaked in the coming weeks and months!

[Horonelius]

Posted this in the bugs section, but using the scroll wheel to fire a weapon while I have my melee out "locks" the trigger for the weapon until I fire the weapon again, either with the scroll wheel or any other input, such as Mouse 1. This doesn't occur with any other sort of input that I have seen. Using Mouse 1 doesn't lock it up, only the scroll wheel.

This has ruined my stealth run already, as trying to fire a quick shot to take down an enemy in the distance resulted in my spraying fire alerting everyone in the vicinity.

[(XBOX)Kavriel]

I could play devil's advocate and say that auto-blocking could be a cool lore element where the Warframes always defend themselves even if they aren't entirely sentient - but that would have to show through in other areas than lousy controls. I quite appreciated being able to block in a shooter, and having just taken a liking to the sword and shield weapons, this comes as a slowly waving middle finger from the developers. 😞

[Gentleman_Bird]

One overlooked aspect to the melee changes is how it affects Heavy Weapons. When I summon my arch-gun after the update, I found that it's impossible to switch to a different weapon using the weapon swap button. The  only way to get rid of the heavy weapon after you summon it is to exhaust all your ammo.

[Apav]

3 hours ago, Spiritrax said:

I am a melee player and I use polearms extensively its the most comfortable weapon to use and for years i have enjoyed it . I had literally no issue with holstering my weapon and being able to fast swipe tons of enemies. The stance itself are slow boring and very sluggish i cant focus on one enemy , yeah everyone on reddit are showing off their skills on killing grineer butchers but what about long ranged enemies or corpus ? I want my polearm to be able to fast swipe again as of now if nothing happens might just stop playing cause i generally avoided using main stance of any weapon type . I holstered a sidearm and was able to melee anything easily or in sorties with melee only i used a codex scanner to avoid using the stance simply cause it was too sluggish  to continue . 

 

3 hours ago, Trase-Kor said:

I have similar issues. I've been using the Orthos polearm basically since it came out (and it's prime variant when I could get it). The smooth left-right attack that was present in the quick-attack was great and flowed smoothly from whatever I was doing into the strike which I could then continue while moving forwards. It felt good. When the stances were added I was disappointed to find that none of them had that smooth feeling while moving forwards. They're all significantly slower or they otherwise interrupt the movement; as a result I've only been using stances for the extra mod capacity. Is there any way we can continue using the quick-melee strikes without unequipping the mod? As it stands now the feeling of using polearms has degraded with this update. 😞

The lack of combo-less attacks is a huge QoL nerf to so many weapons. Even if they fix the stances and combos, they will always be inherently restrictive by their nature. For such a fast paced game we need melee attacks with full freedom of movement as well as combo attacks. Having one does not invalidate the other, and there's nothing wrong with having both options to choose between. Having more variety and using the right kind of attack for the situation you're in is good, not bad. 

I already made a thread bringing this up when the changes were announced here, where I basically asked for a separate combo-less attack keybind where we could still do the same attacks as the old quick melee when we have our melee weapons out. I'd appreciate you contributing to the discussion in it. A dedicated thread with a lot of views and replies is probably the best way to get their attention. Thanks!

 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Apav

[Demiurge.exe]

TL;DR Allow us to bind Mouse 1 to Primary attack and Melee attack - bring back quick attack to keep the gameplay neat.

Block works fine - the feeling of most of the movement is fine.

What is not fine, is that we cannot bind Melee swing and primary fire as we could post 24.4.0

I used Mouse 1 to shoot, and Mouse 1 to swing because it's cohesive to kill with the same button, Q to quick attack when I'm using a primary.

What I will not do, is play with only a quick attack button, it's unintuitive to mash a strange button like that for any reason as a primary source to melee.

Just play with it for one defense and you'll see the fatigue or the lack of control.

 

For anyone that uses M+KB:

If you used Mouse 1 as your primary fire and Melee swing there is a check box within the root options menu.

" Melee with fire weapon input"  This will prevent you from needing to mash your old quick attack button and save your hands from fate.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Demiurge.exe
Found an option to width draw my post.

[Buttaface]

Totally unnecessary changes to melee, 8 month late knee jerking to the nonimmersive, lazy ESO survival reskin where melee is good, and endless, misplaced Maiming nerf crying by noobs generally. Stop listening to noobs and bads. Melee and stances were fine before, and lots of new bugs today without even doing the much advertised for months channeling and combo counter changes. Please quit and revert some of this while you are behind.

1. Dispatch Overdrive not working in simul. Haven't tested in live mission yet and don't intend to.

2. Exodias based on channeling appear to be working in simul at least.

3. Slam ragdoll continues to be overdone and obnoxious.

4. Haven't even tried crushing ruin or tempo block builds because don't want to get even more annoyed.

5. GG on 45 degree block nerf slid into this mess. LULZ. Who do you think you are fooling exactly?

Had some time free up for gaming but won't likely be spending much if any of it in WF. You realize you can test -before- patching too, right?

Edited March 8, 2019 by Buttaface

[OniDax]

13 hours ago, vFlitz said:

Please, please tone down the melee slams. I don't want to send enemies around me flying all around with every slam combo I do. It just pushes them out of my range which is horribly inefficient.

I get that some people might enjoy this, so it's fine with me if some weapons do it - but please, not all of them. There's plenty of people who'd rather have a simple knockdown on slams, too.

Don't you know? This melee rework was designed for gun players so that they could slam attack and then shoot the flying enemies. It's not designed for dedicated melee players. That's why the system is designed the way it is. I hope that helps explain things, and, imo, why it's a problem.

Edited March 8, 2019 by A-p-o-l-l-y-o-n

[nulloperations]

Swapping to melee prevents the use of the equipped gun's secondary fire. Moderate to majorly frustrating for any weapon that relies on this to perform the weapon's gimmick. While things like the Buzlok or other weapons that benefit from aiming won't have much a problem with this, things like the Pandero that don't rely on aiming to use their secondary now have an added delay to use.

It's a fringe case I'm sure, but as the Pandero is my primary weapon that I used a lot with the previous quick melee, swapping like this has added a weird delay to my combat. I'm now having to aim between swapping away from melee or wasting a round before I can fan the hammer.

Might be good to have the alt-fire button act the same as shooting or aiming, and have it swap immediately back to the weapon and activate it's alt-fire if it has one.

[8r8kSpider]

Reading people cite having to rebind channeling to alt-fire manually suddenly explains a lot about why controllers are busted right now.

To explain this for M+K players; The Controller binding menu in Warframe has arbitrary restrictions as to what keys are 'valid' to bind controls to- the Alt-Fire key is ineligible to have "Melee Stance Actions" bound to it, so there's literally nothing you can do. You MUST bind "Melee Channel" to a button that has "Quick Melee" (now-defunct), Aim, or Fire bound to it. Which means you have to sacrifice one of those options.

Yes, that's right, you must play without being able to fire your guns or fine aim/aim glide. For some reason binding "Melee Channel" to either one of these options disables the input completely.

DE, please, I beg of you, change the controller rebinding menu back to the old M+K menu. The fancy visuals and arbitrary restrictions actively prevent me, a very avid player, from manually working around day 1 bugs like this. I get that not every bug can be squashed quickly or easily, but if we had workarounds and tools available to us in game that might help, it just wouldn't be a big deal. As it stands right now, the game is literally lacking core functionality for me. I have to drop aim gliding/fine aim just to fire my weapons.

I can't channel, so I have no access to Life Strike, I can't fine aim, so all the mods which trigger a buff while fine aiming are meaningless to me. Aim Gliding is such a big part of the game's movement mechanics at this point that missing out on it is a huge handicap to my mobility.

On the positive side, I can 'turn off' my ability to shoot guns, forcing me to use melee. As a Valkyr main for a long time now, I actually honestly love all the changes with very few critical footnotes: The blocking is most definitely awkward, yanking people out of one animation into another is why a lot of people don't use Auto-Parry, but at the same time, Excaliber's Exalted Blade has had that functionality forever, and I've never minded it.

The one change I'd request- that I've seen many other people request already- is to make it so "aiming" while in the air does NOT force you back to your gun. I think, as you must 'melee' in order to bring out your melee weapon, you should have to 'shoot' in order to bring your gun back out- otherwise right click should simply remain an aim-glide (manual block) button, it'd require a lot less reworking of combos and mods in general.

Remember that just like a datamass, having your melee out and then hitting 'swap weapon' just snaps you back to your guns anyway, while swapping weapons with the gun already out will no longer put you back into melee mode. So I for one see no problem "soft locking" players into Melee to let them aim glide and manually block to their heart's content- this even allows for people to bind their left click to melee and still have a key (weapon swap) to instantly pull their gun back out if they're really committed to melee gameplay.

 

That's my two cents, as it is, I don't mind drawing a gun mid-flight and then instantly having my sword back out. I actually think it looks more Anime, not less. Feels really fluid.