Melee Revisit: Phase 1 Feedback Megathread

[Amazerath]

17 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

What we can say with certainty is that your concerns have been heard, and they are at the forefront of our minds when we consider alterations. The changes to quick-melee, how channeling and blocking are affected all the way to how Valkyr’s power set has felt the knock-on effects of blocking changes. As we are sure you can understand, this transition will be much more complicated than the transition from Melee 1.0 to 2.0, and we want it to be the best that it can be.

No amount of complexity justifies how silent and vague you guys have been (and continue to be) on this subject.

[DzJaulah]

Just give back the ability to switch between toggle and held channeling. So at least the old system works while the new is not yet here.

[Tubsie]

My only wish for melee 3.0 is, that you guys would get rid of stupid looking slide attack coptering that is currently going on. It looks so silly and is like the some of the large AoE abilities: takes out the fun. Thanks. 😃

[dwqrf]

That's because of the interaction between Bloodrush and Maiming Strike is completely broken (overpowered). While each of these mods are fine on their own, the combinaison of the two should be calculated differently, aka : adding the flat +90% crit chance on slide attack from Meming Strike AFTER the additionnal bonus granted from the combo meter with Bloodrush.

 

Else, a nerf of Maiming strike to be +90% of the base crit chance, instead of flat, would be great, too ; but would bury the mod.

Edited August 27, 2019 by dwqrf

[DoomFruit]

4 hours ago, vaarnaaarne said:

Let's take a small step back, and consider a little thing...

How hard would it really be to implement rollback to melee 2.0 (while at it, rollback the chimera momentum stealth nerf too and give all melee free movement back)... But keep the current weapon switch speed (and directional air slam)?

I understand that it does take a lot of time to rework the combos or make entirely new functions like whatever at least was supposed to become of channeling. But I am a little skeptical in regards to how much work it would take to address the single biggest issue facing melee right now, RMB and autoblock. At least to me it doesn't look like a big deal to correct, even if its negative impact to gameplay is massive. Or at the very least, I'd imagine that it wouldn't be hard to acknowledge this and say what to do about it and how long that'll take.

This. So, SOOO many things were broken with the current melee changes. They've stayed broken for months while melee has been "worked on". It is, in fact, even more broken than when the changes came out - you can no longer sword when you have an archgun out, and DE went and explicitly broke scanners/fishing spears/mining lasers by forcing them to unequip when you swing.

2 hours ago, (XB1)TheWayOfWisdom said:

This sounds like someone who exclusively uses polearms. Lets’s be real, quick swap was a huge improvement for most melee, aside from loss of manual block. A lot of stances are pretty fluid, definitely more so than quick melee was since basically all quick melee was just the basic spam E combo of a particular stance.

With quick swap you can still use the same spam E combo, but are free to use the more advanced combos and their benefits

Quick swapping is fine... providing that it doesn't force me to swap. I see no reason why instant swapping could not have been implemented under the old system.

Quick melee was never the spam combo - had you ever used a polearm, a gunblade or Iron Phoenix on longswords (for instance), you'd know that instantly.

Old polearm quick melee: the so-called "windmilling" strikes which hit a decent area around you and allowed you to move freely - at a full sprint - in any direction while attacking. This is why they were so good. Forget slide attacks (I never once put Maiming Strike on my Lesion), full mobility in combat is absolute king for me.

Polearm spam combo: two swings, then a third swing that stops you dead. Have fun trying to hit a fleeing capture target when you step on a patch of glue every few metres.

Forcibly swapping to my melee weapon is the problem here. It breaks syndicate procs, it breaks alt-fire, it breaks scanning/mining/fishing, and it breaks your gun automatically reloading from empty. It is incredibly, vanishingly rare that I ever want my melee weapon equipped. On the arcane chance that I did, I would explicitly select it.

The "more advanced" combos are themselves another problem. Sometimes, you don't want to swing constantly, you want to pause combat for a fraction of a second to get in position. Or sometimes you want to move backwards while attacking. Nope. Do that and you'll find yourself launching into a long interpretive dance routine. This alone made the Tipedo Prime one of the most painful weapons I've ever had to level up. I do not know how many times I went flying off the walkways when trying to hit an enemy simply because the game forced me to do a combo which I never wanted and kicked me 10 metres forwards. They have no benefits to me, all they do is take control away from me. Note that this is one way of creating enemy difficulty in games - some of the more advanced enemies take control away from the player by various means (slowing, stunning, knockback, even more exotic stuff like a complete control inversion). Also note that it's your own damned weapons doing that to you.

The crux of the issue is control. Previously, I had control - over my movements, over which strikes I did, and over which piece of equipment had priority (syndicate procs, alt-fire, scanners). I no longer have this control and my enjoyment of the game has suffered massively.

19 minutes ago, Tubsie said:

My only wish for melee 3.0 is, that you guys would get rid of stupid looking slide attack coptering that is currently going on. It looks so silly and is like the some of the large AoE abilities: takes out the fun. Thanks. 😃

The current melee changes have done more to promote slide attack spam than any other change in the past. There are precisely 3 attacks which do not take character movement control away from the player: rapier spam combo, nunchuck spam combo and slide attacks. Only one of these is universal to all weapon types.

[(XBOX)TheWayOfWisdom]

19 minutes ago, DoomFruit said:

Quick melee was never the spam combo - had you ever used a polearm, a gunblade or Iron Phoenix on longswords (for instance), you'd know that instantly.

 

Lets see, for polearms, it was just the first 2 hits of Shimmering Blight's spam combo
For gunblades, it was the first 2 hits of High Noon's spam combo
For longswords it was the first 2 hits of Iron Phoenix's spam combo

Blade whips were the only ones where quick melee was not the first 2-3 hits of the spam combo.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

It's been months now and still no fix for the fact hitting melee button unequips stuff like codex scanners and mining tools. Nothing quite as fun as not being able to defend ourselves when doing so, and a huge hassle to constantly have to go into inventory and reequip a tool everytime you gotta take out a lone moa that's shooting you while you fish/mine/scan.

Edited August 27, 2019 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra

[shut]

6 hours ago, Mertons said:

I was so happy to finally get my ZAW weapon (Mewan + Shtung + Vargeet ll Ruhang), but sadly this tiny animation bug annoys me; when I swing my Mewan, the blade swings sideways, thus I'm slapping the enemies rather than to cut them. It bugs me so much. Please fix this if possible, I'd be much appreciated it 

 

-snip-

This isn't really the right thread for that, but... as a fellow polearm user, yeah, this has been bugging me for years. Literally years. A lot of other polearms are rotated the wrong way for that swing (e.g. Zaws are 90 degrees off, as you've shown), and some of the stances even involve wonky rotations for weapons that are otherwise held properly.

You'd think that rotating a few models would be an easy fix, right? 😑

 

OT:

22 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Greetings Tenno!

In brief, we owe you an update on Melee changes. Last Devstream had one remark about something maybe making it into Gauss’s Mainline, but this is no longer the case. You can see the clip here: as stated by Steve on Devstream #130.

We wanted to give you some insight into our process and why this decision was made.

The melee “beast” is a large one to tackle, and while we could add in some minor changes, the knock-on effects to other aspects of melee (such as Stances, blocking, Mods, Augments) may cause more issues than improvements. Frankly, we need to look at the system more holistically and make decisions based on thorough testing, and re-works of the varying components involved.

Those reworks are not going to make it into the system before our up and coming mainline update, and while we would have loved for these changes to make it sooner rather than later, we simply need more time to implement these changes to the expansive collection of melee systems in place.

What we can say with certainty is that your concerns have been heard, and they are at the forefront of our minds when we consider alterations. The changes to quick-melee, how channeling and blocking are affected all the way to how Valkyr’s power set has felt the knock-on effects of blocking changes. As we are sure you can understand, this transition will be much more complicated than the transition from Melee 1.0 to 2.0, and we want it to be the best that it can be.

Thank you for your patience and understanding, and we hope you enjoy all that the Mainline Update has to offer when it reaches you at supersonic speeds!
 

I'm going to sound entitled and impatient as hell when I say this, but... haven't we been in this stage for around half a year now? I get that it's a complicated system that requires complicated changes, but... is a major overhaul being actively worked on but kept secret for hype purposes? Or is the core concept of Melee 3.0 still in the "drawing board" phase even after all this time has passed?

I'm sorry, but parts of melee (one of the core gameplay mechanics of this game) have been broken since winter, and nothing has been done to fix any of it. It's a little hard to believe that our feedback is being heard, when the most recent melee-mechanic-related additions we've seen were:
- Hysterical Assault giving brief invul on swap (which tells us "We're not changing anything about how aimgliding screws over Hysteria at base, as well as players who want to aimglide while blocking")
- Amalgam Javlok Magazine Warp having +6000% damage reflect and 90% channeling efficiency (which tells us "We're not changing anything about damage reflect mechanics/formulae, we're not changing anything about channeling")

I get that you (like, DE in general) seem to want to wait until Melee 3.0 is complete so that these issues are fixed. But seeing that this seems to still be a decade away, could we at least get some bandaid fixes to patch up some of the issues in the meantime? Not necessarily changes that reflect what you want Melee 3.0 to do, but changes that fix issues within the current system that we have right now?
You know, changes like:

• Reimplementing blocking into melee mode (RMB by default), and moving "quick-swap to gun" to Reload (R), so that everything related to blocking and/or aimgliding isn't completely broken
• Allowing Melee to be bound to LMB (same button as gunfire), and implementing a "quick switch" button (which swaps to gun if in melee mode, or does a regular melee swing if in gun mode) that they can use in place of the default Melee (E).
  This fixes LMB-for-melee being completely unusable, and is perfectly doable without adding any new buttons (since LMB-to-melee players will just use E for 'quick-switch' instead of 'melee').
  • Example implementation 1: Adding a "Use 'Fire Weapon' as Melee" toggle, which lets LMB swing melee while in melee mode AND changes the Melee button (E by default) to the "quick switch" functionality instead
  • Example implementation 2: Allowing Melee to be bound to the 'Fire Weapon' button without firing the weapon, and adding an optional "quick switch" functionality that players can bind to the freed-up button (which is a bit more customizable, but less intuitive for inexperienced players to tweak on their own)

That sort of thing.

 

 

~~ tl;dr ~~

Imagine that DE was in charge of traffic laws, and they wanted to eventually have all cars driving on the left side of the road, starting with buses and semis before moving on to smaller vehicles. Under this half-implemented new system, people would naturally complain that they're getting violently dismembered on their way to work every morning, no?

DE's current solution to that is "Please wait until Traffic 3.0 is fully implemented, then everything will be better!".
What DE should be doing is fixing Traffic 2.9999 so that it's not fundamentally broken. That way, the wait for Traffic 3.0 isn't quite as painful.

[(PSN)solartorch81]

When you say you hear our concern, I hope it is not like arbitration. Because you basically ingore all our feedback on arbitration and do the opposite.

[DoomFruit]

21 hours ago, (XB1)TheWayOfWisdom said:

Lets see, for polearms, it was just the first 2 hits of Shimmering Blight's spam combo
For gunblades, it was the first 2 hits of High Noon's spam combo
For longswords it was the first 2 hits of Iron Phoenix's spam combo

Blade whips were the only ones where quick melee was not the first 2-3 hits of the spam combo.

Exactly. Quick melee was not the spam combo. The key point is that quick melee never had the final step of those combos which either locked you in position or shot you off in some other direction. Because it never once tried to take control away from me, it was superior.

[xdeathhungerx]

Roll back until ready please.

[Fraank]

I want auto-block to get removed and my manual-block-button back.

[SilviaS12]

On 2019-08-27 at 10:46 AM, Amazerath said:

No amount of complexity justifies how silent and vague you guys have been (and continue to be) on this subject.

Well said and agreed. Melee 3.0 as it is, was a big mistake. prefer "slow" animations, never had an issue with them to begin with.

[vaarnaaarne]

Yea, we need at least temporary fixes to the core issue of autoblock and RMB switch being broken. If those are coming in the near future mainline, alright, but it would only be fair if we were TOLD about the fixes or what's being planned. This radio silence thing doesn't inspire confidence. We need to hear what the coming changes are going to be, and how soon they can be done.

The only other alternative is total rollback of Melee 3.0, and Chimera movement nerf. This was never a good idea even on paper, it's fundamentally contradictory to everything melee NEEDS to be able to do, unless you just want to make everyone use meme strike macros.

[Leodegrance]

Bear, thanks very much for the transparency and letting us know as soon as you realized that this wasn't going to make it in the update.  I'm very excited about this update, but I was also excited to see some of melee 3.0 coming in as well.  I have to tell you that i'm disappointed.  At some point can you (DE) make this a focus?  This is starting to get ridiculous.  

[Lefract]

On 2019-08-27 at 9:27 AM, Gabbynaru said:

You guys could have at least reverted the "minor changes" that negatively affected the Melee system once you realized you need a crapton more time. Melee was more functional before the "minor changes". Own up to your mistakes and revert them rather than leaving this mangled mess that is Melee 2.(9) in existence, I highly doubt anyone would mind losing auto-blocking and getting quick melee back until the full Melee 3.0 is completed.

As it stands though, those words mean nothing. Just a cute little excuse. You guys have a track record of releasing the first stage of something and then never fully completing it. So why should we trust that you'll ever complete Melee 3.0? Either stop promising that you'll do things when you have no idea if you're capable of it, or hold onto your promises and start releasing Melee 3.0 on a per weapon type basis, like you said you would. Cause it's getting embarrassing how many promises you make and hardly ever deliver on. I fear for Railjack, since it will also apparently release in "stages", so, if the first stage has mixed reception, will you ever complete it, or just throw it in the bin?

I agree. You can't break something for a transitional stage (auto-block, ragdolls-over-9000, quick-melee, stances), then then just leave it that way for over a year. There is nothing transitional about what we currently have; this is melee 3.0.

Everything that has been implemented so far could have been contained within:

• faster weapon swapping from ranged <-> melee
• directional slams

Why did all slams (jump, stance-combo) need gratuitous amounts of ragdoll? That shouldn't be hard to separate from the slam updates. (Why did anyone internally think this was a good idea?)

Why do we have no control over blocking (auto-block)? Why are there no options / toggles to give the players the choice?

Is there a design planned for melee 3.0? It appears like DE is 'winging it'. If melee 3.0 was properly planned / designed, it should not have had so many hanging issues. If you are confident with your plan, why not publicize it? Get your player feedback before they are locked into a poorly designed mess.

 

#Please prove me wrong#

(Am I doing it right?)

[Unimira]

Feels like they abandoned melee after breaking it, been suffering from the changes for many months and no sign of anything getting fixed.

Only the directional slam is somewhat useful, the rest are just annoyances.

At this point I would prefer to not have any melee at all (outside of the old quick melee). Automatic blocking still disrupts actions or sends you aim-gliding randomly, weapon switching still drops items or un-equips things like scanners and finally combos are still as unwieldy as before (only thing I felt needed fixing with melee). I'm not even going into all the small issues, most have been mentioned in this thread anyways.

(Seems my frustration overflowed and turned the post into a rant)

[vaarnaaarne]

Well the momentum nerf that made melee slower to get around (except if you meme slide or use one of the ever tinier handful of stances that don't have movement locks at all) is even older than that, and it hasn't even been acknowledged after it was introduced with Chimera without any patch note.

Edited August 29, 2019 by vaarnaaarne

[Maxim_M_Payne]

On 2019-08-27 at 2:47 PM, SortaRandom said:

I'm sorry, but parts of melee (one of the core gameplay mechanics of this game) have been broken since winter, and nothing has been done to fix any of it

Which is precisely why I am preparing to finish typing, and upload with screenshots, a massive essay-length thread update. Too much has compounded over time. My patience is at an all-time low; my frustration is at an all-time high; and my interest in the game has deeply, deeply dropped. 

And on top of all this, as of yesterday with the Saint of Altra update's metal rendering "improvements"; everything that was once genuinely metallic looking is now matte plastic. In the course of a year, DE has managed to remove not only the fun from what was once the core of my combat style for over five years and 3,000 hours; the development team has managed to turn my Primes into butter golems.

Duviri/New War/etc. hype is not really even a distant thought for me at this point. Fix what you have. Revert changes that were inherently bad. I am just plain, flat-out, utterly, not having fun.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Maxim_M_Payne

[Ofeban]

I remember back in spring, someone posted "I really hope DE doesn't just leave this unfinished for several months..."

I understand having priorities, and companies can't always conduct themselves ideally, but it's just so damn hilarious. They're off making new frames and quest content, probably have completely forgot about all the backlash from players *begging* for anything. A hotfix, a toggle, some actual acknowledgement from the Devs!

I reiterate. The people behind Melee 3.0 don't actually play Warframe. They didn't and still don't understand how good Melee Parkour was(and still is without any guns equipped, but that's obviously no good.) The literal cornerstone of Parkour, which in turn is the cornerstone of why I play WF, hinges on Right Mouse Button. To control/cancel/reset every single movement as I artistically blitz through a node. Having my gun come out regardless of the situation and zoom my FoV is mind-boggingly ridiculous. Like the Melee 3.0 Devs are literally just running everywhere or spamming Operator void dash, naked bullet-jumping without RMB, all the while praising the new Melee 3.0 particle effects and M'ANGLED SLAMZZ.

[Asphe]

... the winter of our melee discontent?

I pretty much gave up on melee since that update... but now with Companion Weapon Riven mods being made available... this means I have to confront that irritating melee swap... each and every time we use melee attacks, we'd have to re-equip the synth scanner.

Unequiping melee weapons so hunting for scan targets (and hunting, mining, fishing... pretty much everything, no?) becomes less frustrating.

How is that improving the melee combat flow? No melee = zero combat flow? Purrfect?

That's just ONE aspect of it. Nevermind the "expected" weapon changes causing FOV / inadvertant weapon firings.

If all these 50+ pages of complaints (there's around 11% who approve...) doesn't change DE's mind... think of all the extra RMB clicks the "improved" melee entails. In 4 hours worth of disruption, I had to do an extra couple of thousand extra RMB clicks. That's almost three thousand extra RMB clicks put on my poor, innocent mouse. That's just poor me... imagine the thousands, nay millions of electronic rodentsia having the right side of their bodies pummeled by increasingly annoyed tenno. That's all on you DE. Have a thought for those mice that have expired through excessive RMB. Their mostly plastic carcasses now littering the landscape of our doomed planet.

Keep our planet greener, rollback this melee update.

[Lone_Dude]

1. Fix ground finishers. They miss all the time.
2. Fix momentum issues. I'm sick and tired of using same melee types because stuff like Hammers, Fists, Sparr and Shield&Sword weapons have idiotic forward pull. And NO, I don't like to use camera tracking for melee, it kills the flow of the combat and actually adds an entierly new set of problems.
3. Fix slam attacks. Ragdoll is insanely strong on ALL melee weapons and something has to be changed. It reduces DPS greatly. You also broke slam attacks on Arca Titron COMPLETELY.
4. Bring back manual blocking and fix RMB combos. Auto-blocking makes using melee weapons such as Sarpa an insanely difficult task. I prefer to NOT be interrupted when I'm actually doing something.

[watanahe]

I want you to implement Quick Melee Stance that reproduces Melee 2.0 Quick Melee in Melee 3.0.

[SteveCutler]

Wasn't this thread stickied? Melee 3.0 isn't done yet, so why is it not stickied anymore?

We've been waiting a long time for updates or news related to this. Are we going to get any more changes soon? Waiting for the revamped melee weapon combos that you said you'd be giving to us one by one...

Could you at least tell us which weapon stance(s) you're working on currently now that you've done Wukong's Iron Staff?

Edited September 3, 2019 by SteveCutler

[Maxim_M_Payne]

On 2019-08-31 at 10:45 AM, Lone_Dude said:

• Fix ground finishers. They miss all the time.
• Fix momentum issues. I'm sick and tired of using same melee types because stuff like Hammers, Fists, Sparr and Shield&Sword weapons have idiotic forward pull. And NO, I don't like to use camera tracking for melee, it kills the flow of the combat and actually adds an entierly new set of problems.
• Fix slam attacks. Ragdoll is insanely strong on ALL melee weapons and something has to be changed. It reduces DPS greatly. You also broke slam attacks on Arca Titron COMPLETELY.
• Bring back manual blocking and fix RMB combos. Auto-blocking makes using melee weapons such as Sarpa an insanely difficult task. I prefer to NOT be interrupted when I'm actually doing something.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'd like to highlight and agree with all of these. Especially since, because so many problems have compounded over seven months; I am still typing the word document of Melee 2.9's problems which I'll share here. And again, it's even longer because of screenshots. I've gathered so many. I'm losing it. 

This isn't fun; and those basic three words that are my honest opinion are something I am growing steadily closer to writing in all caps along the walls of an alleyway in Ontario, Canada. 

Edited September 4, 2019 by Maxim_M_Payne