Melee Revisit: Phase 1 Feedback Megathread

[MBaldelli]

3 hours ago, vaarnaaarne said:

I can totally believe that the stance rework is going to take a lot of work. That's a lot of animations that are probably getting adjusted or even brand new ones put in, and I have no idea how melee combo inputs work under the hood.

And once again, DE is wanting the rabble rousing to fall into a holding pattern while they faff around for another mainline update which continues to demonstrate broken promises and vague innuendos of Soon™...  

All right, for how much longer?  How many more months of a crap change that was not only half-cocked but half-baked as well -- is the Melee user base going to have to endure of this inane and nonsensical system?  

I call bullS#&$ at this point. This thread is still not dying any time soon and no matter how much rousing the acolytes to brow-beat the rabble into submission, this continues to rise to the top in the forums.  

While this isn't clear evidence (instead merely speculative and personal opinion), we might not getting the S#&$storm we saw back during Vivergate, but it's becoming slowly evident that instead of going down in flames this will slowly becoming a withering corpse on life support.  

[SilviaS12]

On 2019-10-07 at 12:49 AM, Laudator said:

I said it once and I want to point it out again. I hope in Melee 3.0 we can hold E + arrow keys to perform all combos instead of keep pressing E. 

I'll give you an example: 

I'm using Wukong Prime a lot lately and for the forward combo, I only like the first 3 hits, the left, the right and the swirling attacks, for the last ground slam, not a fan, at all. The last hit somehow makes me feel I lost momentum, the first 3 is very smooth and you slow down a bit while performing the last one and I hate it. 

Secondly, the last hit will shake your camera and I have a pretty fast attack speed, I'm feeling nauseated. 

Currently, the only way to not perform the last hit is to press E exactly 3 times while holding forward and who counts that while in a fight? What I want is to press and hold E, and when the swirling animation occurs, I release E so that last hit won't be executed. 

And there are people complaining about auto blocking interrupts combat, if my suggestion is considered, the game can detect whether the player is still holding E, activate auto blocking only while E is release would solve the problem. 

OOOOOOR just put it back the way it was and speed up weapon switch animations. All problems solved.

[SilviaS12]

On 2019-09-26 at 2:47 PM, dbugz said:

Why not just bring back the option for a "Full Melee Mode" as a manual toggle like before?

This way the default mode is the new, quick firearm-to-melee and vice-versa (not the old "quick melee"), and then the old "full melee mode" which is purely melee that has manual blocking and doesn't switch out to primary/secondary weapons automatically. The latter lead to the loss of controlled aerial blocking with melee weapons unless you went in mission having only a melee weapon equipped.

It's been 6 months since this gameplay change was implemented and no further concrete plans seem to have been given in response to the feedback in this thread. Hopefully something before this year ends?

It really is this simple. Just bring "Full melee mode" back.

[DoomFruit]

On 2019-10-09 at 8:12 AM, (PS4)Hopper_Orouk said:

Guys how many stances do we have?

How many animations in these stances?

How many animations of these stances that needs trimming and adjusting to adapt primal fury's smooth combo strings?

Multiply all that and you get hundreds of time

The problem is not the time itself, the problem is that they ruined a perfectly good system and then left us with the broken remains for this enormous time. The problem is that they have taken out something which worked just fine, replaced it with something which they *know* full well to be incomplete and defective, littered with problems which were pointed out to them before it even released... and have not just left it to rot, but have actively gone out of their way to make it even worse (forcing you to go back to gun if you melee with scanner/drill/spear out; removing the ability to melee with an archgun in your hands).

If you're going to do an overhaul of one of the most important parts of any system, it should be obvious to anyone over the age of 5 that you do not rip out the core and put a couple of toothpicks in its place. If you want to upgrade the graphics card on your computer, you don't yank the old one out, replace it with some 1999 era ATI Rage 128 and say "oh, but the next one will be Real Good". You leave the current, functional, one in and swap it for the next one when you actually have the damn thing.

EDIT: to use an example of how to do it right, we'll look back in this game's own history. Rapid mobility used to come from coptering - slide attacks from certain classes of high speed weapons (mainly dual sword type weapons, the Dual Zoren were the first and gave its name of Zorencoptering; I personally got on very well with the Amphis, others liked the Scoliac). They stopped that from functioning in Update 17... which is when they removed stamina as a mechanic from the game, and introduced the current parkour system pretty much in its entirety. That's how you do it right. You take out the old system and drop in the new, complete system as its replacement.

Edited October 10, 2019 by DoomFruit

[Shinigami_Greed]

What happened to rumors from Steve's twitter that 3.0 was shipping in October?

[vaarnaaarne]

That's basically the rub of it. It really feels like they could have added in instant weapon swap speed and direction slam (or added everything but then reverted RMB switch and autoblock). Also they still haven't removed movement locks on melee combos they stealth-introduced with Chimera. All of those need to go, the only sort of combo that should have a movement lock is a +Backwards input one.

[(XBOX)Church367A]

I have pretty much stopped playing the game due to the incomplete and horrid changes thrown in with the melee changes.  There are a handful of times that I have even bothered going into the game to keep up with login rewards.  Safe to say this update has completely turned me away from playing Warframe.  I can appreciate your desire to improve upon certain aspects of the game, but when updates are this broken/incomplete/drawn out I believe there are better ways of obtaining feedback without alienating players.  People have already made the recommendation of allowing legacy controls as an option and I feel that is best to have especially when it belongs to something as drawn out as the melee changes that you are bringing about.  Another option that I would recommend is implement the changes for a set limited time (No more than 2 months) to allow for feedback and revert back while you continue your work to further refine and fix the update currently in work.  As mentioned before, I don't care for any update such as Railjack or any other future content due to how atrocious the melee changes have been implemented.  There needs to be a better method going forward in bringing major changes to Warframe.  I look forward to the update in fixing this mess and nothing more so that I can enjoy the game once more. 

[SnakeBadger]

1. horrible slam sounds and animations need to be replaced with magic and other passives today, such as empty and reload procs and tapping to gain range, and summon channeling energy for blast, elemental or passived block, healing regenerates ammo fir ma bow, and zooming in for 2bo,shooting gallery with the bow, and melee with bow.
2. aerial abilities such as frost's 2, could possibly harden ones body against physical and bullets on recasting another ability for AOE, glass for 2sec, recasts of animations and SFX is annoying and needs revisions, even with melee combos, dodging shoot, bowgen take the kids will keep using their 4th ONLY horribly things happen from here.
3. bows need royal guard and roll features, blocking bullets and dodging them would appear doable with energy pickups to be used by enemies as well to regain shields and shoot special loads, call up robotics and shields, the players should attain ciphers and other items from lockers quickly some spiders and monsters could be in the ice and armaments, where other traps layin low.
4. bows need energy shields and special slots,mods
5. melee stance mod on a bow = bow shooting SFX and combos, passives/quivergen style animations and chi-energy shoots,
6. say i have equipped a nikana mod on my bow, there's some AOE spread and fire attacks, with a flaming shield that reduces damage and increases HP/ARMOR the Paris would be more interesting if each weapon had a separate upgrade console or screen for new players, or at least a NPC, until then you can simply gift players these stanceshots as passive to vacc,
7. level up and gametime cards, and upgrades allow other unlockables and sidequest, i see the bounties being less,
8. predictable rewards. and scanning update for melee attacks to look cool.
9. if they don't know how to equip items or mods, give them early access to orbiter music and sound effects, or pets,
10. some things in the game that are nice come too late.

Edited October 15, 2019 by SnakeBadger

[SnakeBadger]

On 2019-10-11 at 11:02 AM, Shinigami_Greed said:

What happened to rumors from Steve's twitter that 3.0 was shipping in October?

can we have 3.0 tomorrow, use ON/OFF features on weapons  / options can have  2.0 overlays.

most important thing about 2.0 right now are that slam attacks sound annoying and blocking needs blackmagic, without robotics enhancements or tricky passive traits, the games levels feature alot of room for sneak attacks from enemies, so you somewhat lack cover, and in most espionage games theres larger robots and monsters, so you need to drop 3.0 until you resolve the missions alarms and enemies also need some upgrading, they feel somewhat dumb/vulnerable, they have no special guarding or chaining when standing on pickups, and / or counter attacks, specially on boss enemies, they just take no damage and just kills players randomly with AOE so its somewhat awful, a few things that would help is adding more kit parts and rivens to work on from boss fights which might augment warframes and weapons, or that if the foundry received a proper patch which allowed for players to craft enhanced weapons, or receive toggles and presets for weapons with status effects and randomized stats or features to turn 
ON/OFF which are not only cosmetic, but maybe allow for some passive shields and effects on different missions for weapons which are boring like the paris bow, and long reloads your gonna need to use pickups and melee acrobatics, otherwise have new pickups which can trigger blunt damage, or stop bleeding, and regenerate energy slowly, 

have it that the players find keys to open up those redlockers to find small pak of creds and energy, with the few points and scanning locations unlocking some nodes on the star and city npc gets new wares based on your data subscrit, that you no longer would need to craft a scanner but aquire some in the missions pre-loading and shipments, extraction and loot.

i dont see why not, but maybe three.0 can have some passive traits on daggers and bows when the players have energy, which can trigger a random crit or stat, and vac, or aoe, teleport, bullets also should be used otherwise nobody want to pickup a bunch of arrows and show off their new ammo boxes during missions they take a long time to use up, simply hitting them consoles with a knife is jaws, and the terminals up in smoke or frosted with iceballs, oberon mildew, and can be hacked to do a few more things, shoot at, and exploding machinery is often protected with overshields and cannot be hacked easily because of guns, knights, and glass/ballist.

especially in fortuna, and cetus, theres no sea or water structure, or fishing in some missions or say a forest catch, which makes minninig and catching somewhat under the radar difficult and open world is basically predictable if, so we need new bounty rewards to be masked and randomized.

a few basic treasure boxes and enhanced ammo.

for melee kids you give them stickers and procoins, and a syndicate set of points in which the players gain understanding and logic, i have not used zooming while hitting or blocked mids my rage a few abilities and pickups where stamina seems unlimited, so the energy packets are a reward from fighting and hitting close range for OTHER melee attacks and magical combos, or finishers, but the native warframe are different.

so each melee weapon lacks unique perspective and native stances, so they dobnt seem totally convincing to purchase, and the relays only have one or two merchants, the focus schools and kitswords require 1 installment or special marking

and the pets armor feels insanely basic, and stuck without powers or special attacks for kubrow grown to think they can hack consoles if i theach them to shoot bow, but nah, i thinkless the collars have other features added, to COM, also the kubrow dens are somewhat meak, and the pets gain no terrain or elemental bonuses without talking mods, there should be some school or focus learned from each mission and leveling further increases the range and effectiveness of dogs.

Edited October 15, 2019 by SnakeBadger

[xdeathhungerx]

Any news on this update? I'd like to use my block mods again. Parry was a super cool mod with guardian derision. I would like to be on the leaderboards because of skill not cheese. Saryn I choose you! Cast molt and spam 1 while I drink tea and watch TV!

[Aekhon]

On 2019-10-12 at 11:02 PM, (XB1)Church367A said:

...but when updates are this broken/incomplete/drawn out I believe there are better ways of obtaining feedback without alienating players.  People have already made the recommendation of allowing legacy controls as an option and I feel that is best to have especially when it belongs to something as drawn out as the melee changes that you are bringing about.  Another option that I would recommend is implement the changes for a set limited time (No more than 2 months) to allow for feedback and revert back while you continue your work to further refine and fix the update currently in work.

Or do a public test server, like most other MMOs do.  Either approach would've prevented this clusterf@&#.  What I find particularly ironic now is that they've done pretty much exactly what Rebecca said they didn't want to do right before this debacle of an update was released (link because I can't figure out how to directly quote a locked discussion post):

Quote

We don't want to repeat 2018's Melee discussion where we show, go dark, and the year passes.

Her post was Feb 22.  It's now Oct 16.

[vaarnaaarne]

You don't even need a public test server for the changes, just having internal spot most of the bugs is enough. The actual design issues melee had and current phase has are so simple that they can just be repeated over and over again because they should be obvious in the context of Warframe's gameplay model. Simply acknowledging this thread's feedback would have been enough, and simply acting on it fast would have been the correct thing. Destroy autoblock and never allow it to return, scrap RMB switch and never allow it to return, start changing combo inputs to eradicate Hold and Pause inputs, revert the Chimera nerf to melee and moving.

Also

rabble rabble rabble

Edited October 17, 2019 by vaarnaaarne

[(PSN)Kos-Mos3000]

Something we all miss very much.

 

 

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

11 hours ago, vaarnaaarne said:

rabble rabble rabble

Rabble rabble rabble

[Sintrias]

I posted my thoughts in a thread I have shared below. Simply put, there are two changes which could be made to get the necessary functions back that we lost with the current system. These changes take into consideration the desire of quickly switching combat from primary/secondary to melee and back again, all while keeping snipers in mind, giving the ability to manually block, aim gliding with melee, keeping things simple and easy to implement for the devs, and getting rid of the awkwardness that is this:

Your left mouse button is gun fire, always, instantly.
Your right mouse button is now aim, always, instantly.

I like what ya'll are going for with these two mechanics, but we don't really need instant if it means giving up other things like manual blocking or melee aim gliding. All we need is near instant. Melee can stay instant as it is now. That feels natural, but instant firing and aiming feel very unnatural. Please give my thread a good read. I've thought about it a lot.

My thread doesn't talk about this, but I noticed from reading this thread that a lot of people miss the quick melee attacks, especially the very fluid pole-arm quick attack. I believe there is a good solution to this that pauli133 describes (fifth reply in this thread). In the reply, pauli133 mentions that it isn't actually the quick attack itself that is missed, but the lack of animation lock that quick attack offered. There are a couple directions this can be taken to make this happen:

1) A stance mod can be created for each melee weapon class that only has the quick attack animation. From what I can imagine, implementing mods like this wouldn't be too difficult since quick attack was very simple anyway. Not everyone, myself included, liked the quick attack play style, but I can understand where these players are coming from. 

2) Get rid of animation lock in melee completely.

 

Edited October 17, 2019 by Qwertykeys

[(XBOX)Church367A]

On 2019-10-16 at 6:14 PM, Aekhon said:

Or do a public test server, like most other MMOs do.  Either approach would've prevented this clusterf@&#.  What I find particularly ironic now is that they've done pretty much exactly what Rebecca said they didn't want to do right before this debacle of an update was released (link because I can't figure out how to directly quote a locked discussion post):

Her post was Feb 22.  It's now Oct 16.

I'm not that optimistic with the potential of a public test server due to it typically being a PC exclusive.  That said, there are plenty of times that I've read forum posts from controller pc players that mirror my own view points.  Sadly from what I recall that feedback from PC controller players is also largely ignored until some time after the update hits console in which adjustments are finally made.  (Specifically thinking of the UI overhaul that happened which was horrendous)

 

Found a few things indicating there may be an update sometime during this month, which would indicate within two months time for console, hopefully we will see some melee changes relatively soon.  Without question, this has been drawn out past any excusable duration.  

[Loza03]

5 hours ago, Qwertykeys said:

2) Get rid of animation lock in melee completely.

Whilst not completely, the Wukong Iron Staff preview indicates that there will be a combo that works similar to quick attack on every stance in 3.0 proper.

Best of both worlds IMO.

[DoomFruit]

8 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Whilst not completely, the Wukong Iron Staff preview indicates that there will be a combo that works similar to quick attack on every stance in 3.0 proper.

Best of both worlds IMO.

I've just tried out Wukong... and the attacks on his ultimate are horrible. The only combo that doesn't restrict your movement is the forward one... which is utterly useless when you're trying to circle an enemy or back away. Do that and you get the abominable stationary combo, which glues you to the floor for ages while your character recovers from a fumble every 3rd swing and has to pick the damn stick back up again.

[vaarnaaarne]

The bigger irony there is that the so-called gap closer of forward+RMB is actually SLOWER than just using the forward combo if you have just Rush and Amalgam Serration.

The movement lock on melee introduced in Chimera is completely non-sensical and arbitrary, and should be completely removed (since any combo you also want to be used without movement should just be matter to neutral or neutral+RMB, or in dire circumstances backwards or backwards+RMB if you have so many combos to throw in). All it really does it enforce a bizarre situation where melee is SLOWER than using guns, when it already needs to be faster because it has to constantly close the gap.

Ideally the relationship between movement and combos would be one of steady modification to your speed, ie a forward+RMB combo makes you move faster than a forward combo. This again ties in with the problem of "gap-closer", because in Warframe you do not close a gap. You're ALWAYS closing the gap. The choice of combo is around how fast it will let you move and if it has additional qualities. Tempo Royale is/was something of a perfect showcase of this, with the smooth way in which its RMB combo would allow you to be faster (and still does, but nerfed and negatively affected by autoblock and RMB switch, and requires a frame like Nezha to "crouch" mid-combo to properly build up speed). More importantly, it's a big wide nice hitbox, it isn't a kick and a poke that are really bad at actually hitting things, when melee's primary need is to hit everything around you. This is another failure of the Wukong iron staff "gap-closer", it doesn't do all that well at actually hitting things in my experience. Melee doesn't need gap-closers, it needs rocket steamrollers.

 

PS: rabble rabble rabble

Edited October 18, 2019 by vaarnaaarne

[(XBOX)Only4givenOnce]

Honestly the only weapon that seemed to benefit from this crap melee switch system they gave us is the Zenistar since it is not used like a actual melee weapon so being able to right in the spot charge throw it allows you to throw the disc but.. they could put the old melee system back an just allow the zenistar to be thrown an melee allow to be used on the spot how it is now without having to switch to melee by having to hold a button an swap to it. 

 

It wouldn't be hard to have it setup to use old features with new. 

Allow to press an hold a button/key to switch to melee stance mode an use melee old style without having to auto swap back to a gun. 

Then if not holding a button/key have melee setup to allow charge attacks an old school quick attacks without being forced to do stance combos. 

 

I used to use orthos prime for end game runs and such into level 1k+ enemies and it was fluid to use an easy. Now I can't because I get stuck in a ugly stance combo that leaves me unable to move swiftly like I used to by just being able to quick attack. 

 

It was even fun using just orthos with nekros walking around at a steady pace chopping up dead bodies my allies killed if I didn't making it easier to help loot bodies with desecrate. 

I feel my idea would better suit the community than anything seeing how I am a more hardcore player than most an use more than just melee when I go into those 5hr+ solo fissure runs. Speaking my ideas from endurance run experience from giving the new melee system a fair chance an tried to adjust and use many types of melee weapons to figure out what could be done or changed to make it better. I strongly feel my ideas for the melee system would give both pure melee players and the rest of the community as well as the devs what they all seek. 

 

Edited October 23, 2019 by Haldos
Edited by Moderator.

[Loza03]

Spoiler

Ok, we now have things for phase two. And with that, my big complaint - auto-block - is gone! Hooray!

[vaarnaaarne]

Two attack buttons? - Maybe? Sort of? Yes? Well heavy attacks in alt-fire does sound great.

Autoblock gone? Manual blocking back? Full melee mode? - Yes, yes, yes. Fantastic news!

Air combos? - Yes. Sounds great, should be way more workable than the current air swing.

Juggle? - Well, it could work, if it keeps ragdolled enemies from being hit around like baseballs. That's a problem that some weapons currently have.

Combo rework? - Sounds like the right marks are being hit.

 

All in all the workshop looks extremely promising!

[xdeathhungerx]

Just saw melee manual block is BACK I am SO excited I can't wait to try it out!!!

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

So far, no hope for quick melee... as they went back to highlight Wukong's preview of the new combo system example. Need more details, obviously... and need to play with new combos. I don't hold out hope for a fluid, non-rooting, continuous combo that lets you move entirely under your own control, without combo interference.

Ground slams staggering, instead of ragdolling enemies a mile away: Great.

 

Edited October 18, 2019 by (PS4)AyinDygra
Workshop post clarified the heavy slam attack requiring Alt-fire during melee to use combo counter.

[vaarnaaarne]

And Meme Strike is dead? Are we all just dead and in teh heavan?