Planned Melee Combo Bindings are a Mistake - Please Tweak Them

DiabolusUrsus · May 25, 2019

5 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

And if you are concerned with combo execution you should have really thought of all the possible clunkyness tied to sprint/roll.

You are indeed adding input because you will now require 3 buttons if you wanna move forward while using your crowd clear, with the added risk of the unwanted rolls or bursts of sprinting.

I can see that you're not willing to consider things from my perspective, but I'll still address these criticisms because they are fairly concrete.

I did think of it. My proposed inputs are based off of my own experiences in-game.

I am not adding an input, because anyone who doesn't use toggle sprint uses the input anyway. It's also not any more complex than, say, slide attacks.
To put your own spin on it... If you can't control your own movement, that's on you. I have no idea what you mean by "unwanted rolls" or "bursts of sprinting." I never roll when or sprint when I don't want to roll or sprint.
You're still covered by rebinding.

3 hours ago, (PS4)DidacoJack said:

How would this solve the stationary combo problem?

Because it allows me to use the EEE combo without needing to release W.

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That said, we still don't know how combos will interact with each other. Maybe we'll be able to switch from a stationary combo to a gap closer (or a forward) one seamlessly.

Yes, that's actually what concerns me - a seamless transition from EEE to W+E when I want to continue using EEE but also move forward. Forced movement attached to the EEE is not a good replacement, IMO, because forced movement is clunky and obtrusive.

If I'm holding W, let me move forward. If I am not holding W, don't force to me to move forward.

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For now, imo what DE showed in the devstream seems fine.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between looking at the combo animations and how those animations actually interface with the player based on bindings. I'm sure the combos LOOK fine, but I'm not really concerned with that aspect of it.

EDIT: Just double-triple-checked the animations shown in the devstream... and nope, those don't look fine to me. Don't get me wrong- they look cool and functional, but the input conflict I am talking about should be absolutely plain to see. I can already move forward at the pace showcased for the "crowd clear" combo, and I practically never have a reason to move around more slowly than that.

And if I need to? I can let go of W or even press S to cancel out some of the forward momentum. I would like to continue having that option, whereas the "official" bindings will prevent that.

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2. I'd like to propose my take on this matter:

Bring back manual block and bind it to fire button (right trigger on console).

All current current combos that require aim would be change to block combos.

This way, to switch from melee to primary/secondary, you must aim.

I disagree with this. While it would work fine for me, I'd imagine many players would hate it because I routinely see posters who dislike using ADS and constantly fire from the hip.

Edited May 25, 2019 by DiabolusUrsus

DiabolusUrsus · May 25, 2019

7 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I think the "safe" default option should be for the enhanced zoom to be a toggle, much like the Lanka's current three levels of zoom (which would turn into four with this change). Honestly, though, I don't think there's a real need for more than one degree of enhanced zooming in the majority of cases, since standard ADS should be enough to cover mid-ranges, and anything beyond that would likely be served just fine by a single long-range zoom. As a side note, I also dislike tying zoom levels to stat bonuses, and I feel those should be scrapped altogether, along with sniper combo meters, so that snipers as a weapon class get condensed down to weapons with immensely powerful shots as a baseline, in exchange for their slow rates of fire.

Agreed.

I prefer hold-to-aim in most cases, but toggle is fine for scopes. I also agree that we shouldn't need more than 1 level of zoom and that scope bonuses should not be tied to zoom level. I hated that change from the moment they announced it.

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Something else I'd meant to post regarding Diabolus' suggestion for keybinding. Can we just be allowed to bind the same key to multiple actions like we can bind multiple keys to the same action? Maybe warn people of potential conflicts, but let me reuse the same keys anyway. The reason I say this is because that way, we could simply have four new keys for Combos 1 through 4. Leave the bind bare and the combo triggers by just pressing melee. Set a key and that key needs to be held for that combo to trigger. Set a key combo (like Ctrl + V) and all keys need to be held to trigger the combo. Set multiple combo keys to the same keyboard button and you're only able to execute the first combo in the list.

That way, a player can bind their combos to W + E or Right Click + Mouse 5, or Shift + Q or even Right Click + Shift + Mouse 5. The whole point of the melee system was to have independent buttons for melee and shooting, so give us independent keybinds for melee and shooting. By all means, default to them to Right Click and W or whatever, but let us edit them to whatever we please, even if that's used for something else.

For instance, I could do Use Key + Melee for the AoE combo quite easily. There are very few situations in which I foresee that being a problem. And if I do end up accidentally grabbing a battery or hacking a console when I meant to melee... Well, that's my fault for picking those binds, isn't it? In fact, that could solve the Aimglide issue by letting us bind Aim and Glide separately, but defaulting them both to Right Mouse. And if I wanted to, I could rebind glide to Jump, instead. Same for Sprint/Roll, actually.

Yes, agreed. Though this would need to be accompanied with a "remove binding" option to fully clear keybinds (for example, I unbound toggle crouch completely to free up V).

1 hour ago, (PS4)jaggerwanderer said:

If we're going that far with keybinding. I suggest we are allow to put in any combine of buttons binding we so choose. Our console controller don't have the english alphabet on them. So it's very limiting on which button we want to use just for certain combos that doesn't require two hand gymastics.

Absolutely, let's not leave controllers in the dust.

Steel_Rook · May 26, 2019

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

If the default combo has enough forward momentum that it can compensate for releasing W, wouldn't that also hamper your ability to focus on specific targets? IMO "forced" movement of any kind beyond the very minimal advance on existing combos is the antithesis of fun and responsive combat. That's why I really don't like the proposed inputs - I cannot move forward at the default rate without transitioning into a completely different combo.

What I'm trying to get at is the inputs aren't the issue. What DE showed in the Dev Stream (I was watching that on VOD while posting) was four combos for Wukong, all four of them entirely rooting with movement built into each. Most of them advanced slowly as you attack (about as slowly as Broken Bull) while the Gap Closing Combo seemed to include fixed-distance lunges (fairly short ones) and ranged attacks via staff throw. It didn't seem like player inputs had any sort of effect on how your character moved during the combo beyond triggering it in the first place. Obviously that's an example space of one and other weapons could have a different approach to rooting. I'm just saying that I don't think any of the combos would advance you faster whether you hold Forward, hold nothing or even hold Back.

But to answer your question - the only way an advancing combo could hamper my ability to focus is if I trigger them when I didn't mean to. All of the Shield stances I found seemed to have massive uncontrollable lunges on their default combos through which I ended up leaping off the map on multiple occasions. It's why I don't use Shield melee weapons. The same is true for the Broken Bull, actually. The Paracesis is an unusually fast Heavy Blade (unusual as compared to the Galatine and its ilk) and I have a Fury mod on it. The faster a weapon swings, the harder it is to nail the pauses so I end up missing the Hit-Hit-Pause-Hit. Point being: As long as I have direct control over which combo I trigger without danger of accidentally triggering the wrong one (a danger that holding Forward + Melee does pose), then I have no issues. I could simply elect to use the non-advancing combo, probably most of the time.

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I could have sworn it included moving/sprinting, but the wiki doesn't seem to specify (it doesn't even specify for Bullet Jumps as far as I can tell), so I'll concede that point. However, I reject your examples of weapons which cannot be effectively fired on the move - I have no issues firing Lanka, Paris, etc. without standing still. I also don't understand your Atlas/Inaros/Nidus/Frost examples, because I don't notice any difference in my habitual mobility when playing those Frames.

Bit off-topic, but I can address it in short. Weapons with slow-moving, arcing projectiles and an emphasis on headshots are exceptionally difficult to fire on the move. Maybe you have MLG aim that I don't understand, that's entirely possible, but I find it impossible to land pretty much any shots with these weapons unless I'm stationary, and what shots I do land are usually centre-mass. By contrast, firing automatic weapons from the air is substantially easier as those weapons' inherent inaccuracy and kick make them just as scattershot when fired with precise aim. In a lot of cases, I'll hip-fire my LMGs while sprinting or bullet-jumping towards my enemy as closing the distance typically more than offsets my loss of accuracy while doing so. I can't do the same with my sniper rifles.

As to the Warframes I cited... All of Atlas' abilities require him to be on the ground, specifically his status protection. Bullet-Jumping with him constantly voids a lot of his unique abilities. Nidus' and Frost's abilities are very heavily location-specific. You CAN keep moving around and recasting, but that's a not-insubstantial resource drain for not that much of a benefit considering both are perfectly capable of holding their ground without needing it. Inaros isn't specifically slow-paced, but his ability set makes high-level acrobatics largely unnecessary to survive, at least at the kind of enemy levels I've seen without either cranking the numbers in the Simulacrum or sticking around Survival for two hours. It's simply not necessary like it might be for Mag or Nyx or even something like Trinity.

My point is that extreme mobility has a cost and isn't always necessary which is - I'd argue vehemently - as it should be.

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

As I said earlier, either of these work for me. I'm not super-attached to having a specific "default" as long as I'm not locked into that default. I also think Teridax' suggestion to just have 1 light (EEE) and 1 heavy (hold E, I presume) combo string per stance both makes a lot of sense and would completely resolve my quibble with the official bindings: the inability to use a specific combo depending on how I am currently moving.

This is a bit off-topic, but I have to be honest with you - I'd be perfectly fine with holding my melee key and my character executing the entire combo on their own. At least for some weapons, particularly the faster ones. I hate button-mashing, and a lot of the faster weapons with fast combos affected by attack speed buffs get to the point where punching the key as fast as I can supersedes any kind of timing or tactical concern. It's the same reason I dislike fast-firing semi-auto weapons. Anything with a base rate of fire much over 7 ought to just be automatic, in my opinion. Hell, I remember a time when video games let you hold down the button and auto-cycle your pistols and your sniper rifles, but that's a separate discussion.

My point being that, yes, having a combo triggered by holding the melee key as opposed to pressing it repeatedly is a decent way to trigger an alternative combo without involving complex keybinds. The only with that issue is losing the ability to charge up a heavy attack, though I honestly don't see the point in most of those. About the only exceptions are thrown melee weapons and gunblades, since those actions are mechanically unique from standard melee. If we manage to move all the melee combos off of the Aim button, however, those attacks can be moved to Aim + Melee. I mean, you're throwing or shooting your melee weapon. Might as well aim while doing it.

I'm also a fan of Teridax' idea of standardising scope zoom between all weapons and deliberately requesting non-standard zoom levels via Aim + Alt Fire. It's how The Division and Wildlands handle it, with the latter toggling between over-the-shoulder aim, ADS, zoom where available. This would allow you to go into standard minor zoom mode and hit Melee to throw your weapon if it can be thrown, in addition to spamming Melee for a fast/chase/whatever combo and holding Melee for a heavy/AoE/room-clearing combo. And while we're at it, just let us throw all of our melee weapons. The ones designed to be thrown (i.e. Glaive) would come back on their own, while the ones not designed to be thrown (i.e. Arca Titron) would have to be manually retrieved. Think the same way that "Javelin Rifles" like the Scourge work.

Basically, restrict meleecombat to melee buttons only and don't involve either movement or ranged combat controls. That is, unless you're going to use your melee weapon at range, in which case do involve standard ranged weapon aiming.

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yes, agreed. Though this would need to be accompanied with a "remove binding" option to fully clear keybinds (for example, I unbound toggle crouch completely to free up V).

I'm skipping bits and pieces of your post as it seems like you're responding to me in chronological order and some of my arguments have been rendered irrelevant by intervening discussion. Overall, I feel the majority of the issues could be solved by a more robust key binding system. Yes, I agree that keybind clearing is an absolute necessity in a redundant keybind system. I also feel it would help to be able to choose whether the keybind is a press, a toggle or a timed toggle (i.e. "press to roll, hold to sprint"). This could even be made simpler, where a button set to toggle would toggle on press by default, but toggle on hold if it's also bound to something else on press. The issues here are technical, but they are not unsolvable. In fact, I have two examples of games which have solved them in the past.

One is - you guessed it - City of Heroes. That game allowed you to write your own keybinds and offered multiple ways to toggle actions. Movement, for instance, was always a toggle. Forward could be either 1 for "moving forward" or 0 for "not moving forward." A keybind could then do "forward 1" to toggle it on permanently, where another keybind would toggle it off. A keybind could also do "+forward" which would toggle Forward on on key press and toggle it off on key release. Basically, move forward as long as you hold the button, stop as soon as you release. A keybind could additionally do "++forward" which would toggle Forward on on one keypress, then toggle it off on a subsequent keypress. Basically, press for autorun, press again to stop. This could be done in Warframe by asking the player to either press or hold a button during keybinding in order to determine whether they want the button to work as a toggle or a press. I might want to bind my Forward movement to "Hold W" and also "Press Ctrl+W" where the former would be standard movement and the latter autorun. Which is exactly what I did in City of Heroes, incidentally.

Then there's MAME, the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. That system allowed you place as many keybinds on the same action as you wanted as long as you did them in sequence. You could, for instance, go to change the bind for Player 1 Up and set it to W, then go to change it again and set it to Q, then change it again and set it to E. Aterwards, W, Q and E would all trigger Player 1 Up. Of course, the only way to add more buttons was to clear the all the binds and start over, but it worked. And since that system had absolutely no restrictions on keybinds, you could do crazy stuff like... QWE for up, ZXC for down, QAZ for left, EDC for right, thus creating diagonal keybinds with only four movement directions. I had something like five keys for each action because I needed multi-key-press binds as separate keys for older versions where pressing multiple keys simultaneously didn't always register correctly.

Now granted, all of this is going substantially out-of-bounds of the melee system and is pretty much out-of-scope of what most video games do for custom keybinds. However, I feel that a more flexible and robust keybinding system will solve a LOT of problems above and beyond just triggering melee combos. I'm looking at aimglide, I'm looking at wall latch, I'm looking at bullet jumps and sprint/roll and wall runs, I'm looking at ways to trigger your Archwing by holding down your jump key or triggering your K-Drive by holding down your sprint key and more. I wrote a lot of my own keybinds in City of Heroes, including key binds which rebound other keys upon use and more. Advanced keybinds are EXTREMELY powerful.

And the best part of it is that people who don't care can just use the default layout and never care either way.

3 hours ago, (PS4)jaggerwanderer said:

If we're going that far with keybinding. I suggest we are allow to put in any combine of buttons binding we so choose. Our console controller don't have the english alphabet on them. So it's very limiting on which button we want to use just for certain combos that doesn't require two hand gymastics.

And of course, then there's this. I don't own a console so I don't know how gamepad button customisation works, but I support the ability to fully rebind all buttons for all actions, with a similar ability of binding the same button to multiple actions, either pressed or held or even using variable pressure progression. Yes, that includes binding multiple-key-combos of your choice to a single action. I haven't mentioned console controls because I run a serious risk of talking out of my ass with no real experience. I do believe, however, that the same kind of robust, flexible binds system I mentioned above could work just as well on Controllers despite the smaller number of available keys.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Steel_Rook

DiabolusUrsus · May 26, 2019

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

What I'm trying to get at is the inputs aren't the issue. What DE showed in the Dev Stream (I was watching that on VOD while posting) was four combos for Wukong, all four of them entirely rooting with movement built into each. Most of them advanced slowly as you attack (about as slowly as Broken Bull) while the Gap Closing Combo seemed to include fixed-distance lunges (fairly short ones) and ranged attacks via staff throw. It didn't seem like player inputs had any sort of effect on how your character moved during the combo beyond triggering it in the first place. Obviously that's an example space of one and other weapons could have a different approach to rooting. I'm just saying that I don't think any of the combos would advance you faster whether you hold Forward, hold nothing or even hold Back.

Having reviewed that footage several more times while responding to another poster, I can comment on this with better certainty:

Yes, there is a degree of advancing movement while executing the basic combo, which is to be expected. We have that now, and it can be countered by moving backward. We didn't see Reb's inputs and it was a narrow-scope demo, so I see no reason to believe that such capability would be removed.
The "crowd clear" combo is very obviously moving forward at a normal pace (practically identical to the combos I use in-game every time I play). Again, I'm not taking issue with the degree of movement permitted in the combos. My grievance with the official inputs is that I am moving forward 90+% of the time in melee combat... which means I essentially won't get to use the standard combo much because I am moving forward. I don't expect or need the sprint binding to make me move forward FASTER than is already possible; I just want a binding that allows me to switch between combos independently of moving forward. That way I can use both.

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

But to answer your question - the only way an advancing combo could hamper my ability to focus is if I trigger them when I didn't mean to. All of the Shield stances I found seemed to have massive uncontrollable lunges on their default combos through which I ended up leaping off the map on multiple occasions. It's why I don't use Shield melee weapons. The same is true for the Broken Bull, actually. The Paracesis is an unusually fast Heavy Blade (unusual as compared to the Galatine and its ilk) and I have a Fury mod on it. The faster a weapon swings, the harder it is to nail the pauses so I end up missing the Hit-Hit-Pause-Hit. Point being: As long as I have direct control over which combo I trigger without danger of accidentally triggering the wrong one (a danger that holding Forward + Melee does pose), then I have no issues. I could simply elect to use the non-advancing combo, probably most of the time.

Okay, so what I'm getting from this is that you prefer to use only minimal combo movement because you run into issues when moving around at higher speeds. As far as I can tell, being able to trigger both the standard and crowd-clear combos without needing to use any movement inputs at all could actually be beneficial to you provided you have the option of binding it to something you don't find obtrusive.

However, while using weapons with shorter range (daggers, dual daggers, swords, nikanas, etc.) players need the extra mobility from moving around to still hit enemies consistently. For that reason I can only see the proposed W+E combo input as annoying at best and pure poison to my playstyle at worst.

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Bit off-topic, but I can address it in short. Weapons with slow-moving, arcing projectiles and an emphasis on headshots are exceptionally difficult to fire on the move. Maybe you have MLG aim that I don't understand, that's entirely possible, but I find it impossible to land pretty much any shots with these weapons unless I'm stationary, and what shots I do land are usually centre-mass. By contrast, firing automatic weapons from the air is substantially easier as those weapons' inherent inaccuracy and kick make them just as scattershot when fired with precise aim. In a lot of cases, I'll hip-fire my LMGs while sprinting or bullet-jumping towards my enemy as closing the distance typically more than offsets my loss of accuracy while doing so. I can't do the same with my sniper rifles.

Okay, but what does this have to do with a melee discussion? Even if you prefer to stand still to shoot the Lanka or Paris, you can still damage enemies (mostly) regardless of their relative position. The same does not hold true of, say, my Prisma Skana. I need to move forward to bring enemies into range, and I really don't want to have to close distances of a few meters with bullet jumps before coming to a full stop in order to initiate the basic E combo.

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

As to the Warframes I cited... All of Atlas' abilities require him to be on the ground, specifically his status protection. Bullet-Jumping with him constantly voids a lot of his unique abilities. Nidus' and Frost's abilities are very heavily location-specific. You CAN keep moving around and recasting, but that's a not-insubstantial resource drain for not that much of a benefit considering both are perfectly capable of holding their ground without needing it. Inaros isn't specifically slow-paced, but his ability set makes high-level acrobatics largely unnecessary to survive, at least at the kind of enemy levels I've seen without either cranking the numbers in the Simulacrum or sticking around Survival for two hours. It's simply not necessary like it might be for Mag or Nyx or even something like Trinity.

My point is that extreme mobility has a cost and isn't always necessary which is - I'd argue vehemently - as it should be.

I think this is a bit off the mark.

Not needing mobility isn't exactly the same thing as not benefiting from it.
Atlas' on-ground requirement has no significant difference from executing a melee combo. In my experience he gets around very quickly simply by virtue of Landslide being a dash-to-target cast.
Frost does just fine with mobility except for Snow Globe, which is only 1/4 of his kit (with Freeze, Ice Wave, and Avalanche doing just fine with mobility).
Nidus' only prolonged rooting power is his 4, and even that is only insofar as players needing the carpet's health regen.
Inaros is even less restricted than any of those three.

I'll agree that it's not entirely necessary, and I certainly agree that high mobility should be forced, but I am not asking for any such thing. I am asking to be given continued access to a standard of mobility I already have while getting the option of using both of the new combos as-desired.

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

This is a bit off-topic, but I have to be honest with you - I'd be perfectly fine with holding my melee key and my character executing the entire combo on their own. At least for some weapons, particularly the faster ones. I hate button-mashing, and a lot of the faster weapons with fast combos affected by attack speed buffs get to the point where punching the key as fast as I can supersedes any kind of timing or tactical concern. It's the same reason I dislike fast-firing semi-auto weapons. Anything with a base rate of fire much over 7 ought to just be automatic, in my opinion. Hell, I remember a time when video games let you hold down the button and auto-cycle your pistols and your sniper rifles, but that's a separate discussion.

My point being that, yes, having a combo triggered by holding the melee key as opposed to pressing it repeatedly is a decent way to trigger an alternative combo without involving complex keybinds. The only with that issue is losing the ability to charge up a heavy attack, though I honestly don't see the point in most of those. About the only exceptions are thrown melee weapons and gunblades, since those actions are mechanically unique from standard melee. If we manage to move all the melee combos off of the Aim button, however, those attacks can be moved to Aim + Melee. I mean, you're throwing or shooting your melee weapon. Might as well aim while doing it.

Er... what I meant by a heavy attack combo is a sequence of different charged attacks constituting a full combo string instead of just the 2 we have now. You could still have that with your sustained hold input (each attack separated by the charge delay).

I agree that players should have access to features to reduce clicking/mashing, but I don't think they should be forced.

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm also a fan of Teridax' idea of standardising scope zoom between all weapons and deliberately requesting non-standard zoom levels via Aim + Alt Fire. It's how The Division and Wildlands handle it, with the latter toggling between over-the-shoulder aim, ADS, zoom where available. This would allow you to go into standard minor zoom mode and hit Melee to throw your weapon if it can be thrown, in addition to spamming Melee for a fast/chase/whatever combo and holding Melee for a heavy/AoE/room-clearing combo. And while we're at it, just let us throw all of our melee weapons. The ones designed to be thrown (i.e. Glaive) would come back on their own, while the ones not designed to be thrown (i.e. Arca Titron) would have to be manually retrieved. Think the same way that "Javelin Rifles" like the Scourge work.

Basically, restrict meleecombat to melee buttons only and don't involve either movement or ranged combat controls. That is, unless you're going to use your melee weapon at range, in which case do involve standard ranged weapon aiming.

You know where I stand on this with regards to manual block, though I hope we've reached a reasonable compromise with implementing it back in while preserving an unobtrusive auto-block (and with the understanding that manual-block related features should never be fully mandatory or the only viable option).

To put it simply, I want manual blocking as a means of expanding melee's presence alongside gunplay (especially with regards to bosses) but not as a means of taking over the space guns currently occupy. In fact, I am staunchly against the melee-only enemies they announced as planned in one of the recent streams... As a player who favors melee I know how frustrating and annoying it is to be barred from using it, and I wouldn't want players who prefer gunplay to experience the same.

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm skipping bits and pieces of your post as it seems like you're responding to me in chronological order and some of my arguments have been rendered irrelevant by intervening discussion.

I typically try to strictly follow post order because I've had past discussions derail as people lose track of their points, but if you can handle mixing things up based on relevance I'm game.

58 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Overall, I feel the majority of the issues could be solved by a more robust key binding system. Yes, I agree that keybind clearing is an absolute necessity in a redundant keybind system. I also feel it would help to be able to choose whether the keybind is a press, a toggle or a timed toggle (i.e. "press to roll, hold to sprint"). This could even be made simpler, where a button set to toggle would toggle on press by default, but toggle on hold if it's also bound to something else on press. The issues here are technical, but they are not unsolvable. In fact, I have two examples of games which solved them.

One is - you guessed it - City of Heroes. That game allowed you to write your own keybinds and offered multiple ways to toggle actions. Movement, for instance, was always a toggle. Forward could be either 1 for "moving forward" or 0 for "not moving forward." A keybind could then do "forward 1" to toggle it on permanently, where another keybind would toggle it off. A keybind could also do "+forward" which would toggle Forward on key press and toggle it off on key release. Basically, move forward as long as you hold the button, stop as soon as you release. A keybind could additionally do "++forward" which would toggle Forward on one keypress, then toggle it off on a subsequent keypress. Basically, press for autorun, press again to stop. This could be done in Warframe by asking the player to either press or hold a button depending on whether they want the button to work as a toggle or a press. I might want to bind my Forward movement to "Hold W" and also "Press Ctrl+W" where the former would be standard movement and the latter autorun. Which is exactly what I did in City of Heroes, incidentally.

Then there's MAME, the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. That system allowed you place as many keybinds on the same action as you wanted as long as you did them in sequence. You could, for instance, go to change the bind for Player 1 Up and set it to W, then go to change it again and set it to Q, then change it again and set it to E. Aterwards, W, Q and E would all trigger Player 1 Up. Of course, the only way to add more was to clear the bind and start over, but it worked. And since that system had absolutely no restrictions on keybinds, you could do crazy stuff like... QWE for up, ZXC for down, QAZ for left, EDC for right, thus creating diagonal keybinds. I had something like five keys for each action because I needed multi-key-press binds as separate keys for older versions which made pressing multiple keys at the same time hard to register, causing the above diagonals and some weird attack binds for Marvel Vs. Capcom.

Now granted, all of this is going substantially out-of-bounds of the melee system and is pretty much out-of-scope of what most video games do for custom keybinds. However, I feel that a more flexible and robust keybinding system will solve a LOT of problems above and beyond just triggering melee combos. I'm looking at aimglide, I'm looking at wall latch, I'm looking at bullet jumps and sprint/roll and wall runs, I'm looking at ways to trigger your Archwing by holding down your jump key or triggering your K-Drive by holding down your sprint key (the latter being stuff Teridax and myself have discussed in the past) and more. I wrote a lot of my own keybinds in City of Heroes, including real-time key rebinds to shift the function of certain keys for RTS-like Mastermind pet controls. Advanced keybinds are EXTREMELY powerful. And the best part of it is that people who don't care can just use the default layout and never care either way.

And of course, then there's this. I don't own a console so I don't know how gamepad button customisation works, but I support the ability to fully rebind all buttons for all actions, with a similar ability of binding the same button to multiple actions, either pressed or held or even using variable pressure progression. Yes, that includes binding multiple-key-combos of your choice to a single action. I haven't mentioned console controls because I run a serious risk of talking out of my ass with no real experience. I do believe, however, that the same kind of robust, flexible binds system I mentioned above could work just as well on Controllers despite the smaller number of available keys.

Fully agreed to all of this. Give me an out, and I'm happy. I just really don't want to see W+E invade ALL of my remaining stances, even if I see the immediate benefit to a universal control scheme and simplified combo inputs. I always find myself needlessly limited in terms of combo execution on any stance which includes such a combo.

supernils · May 26, 2019

I'm afraid the official combo mappings only work well for when you're using the official keyboard layout.

(PSN)Onder6099 · May 26, 2019

Didn’t Steve mentioned: Toggle Sprint will become history because we are all Sprinting?Imho, is more and more visible how Devs are limited by Controllers: I must sacrifice this to implement this.

TaylorsContraction · May 26, 2019

to the question of "what tough opponents", surely you've noticed that spin win is not going to be the way of melee anymore.

No longer is spin attacking and stacking melee multiplier going to generate red slash crits and beyond, wiping an entire title set with 0 effort.

when that nonsense is gone, we can have a more serious discussion about the coming melee changes.

SneakyErvin · May 26, 2019

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I can see that you're not willing to consider things from my perspective, but I'll still address these criticisms because they are fairly concrete.

I did think of it. My proposed inputs are based off of my own experiences in-game.

I am not adding an input, because anyone who doesn't use toggle sprint uses the input anyway. It's also not any more complex than, say, slide attacks.

To put your own spin on it... If you can't control your own movement, that's on you. I have no idea what you mean by "unwanted rolls" or "bursts of sprinting." I never roll when or sprint when I don't want to roll or sprint.

You're still covered by rebinding.

But you are litterally adding it. No one uses sprint 24/7, especially not when engaged in melee. So if I wanna move forward during crowd clear melee with your system I'm forced to sprint in addition to holding W and spamming E. That's 3 inputs no matter how you look at it. Just holding sprint and spamming E will not move me forward when I let go off E. It may however roll me in the direction I'm looking due to the 2 way variable of the key itself when E input isnt part of it.

That is what I refer to as unwanted rolls or bursts of sprint, the moment you let go of E while shift is still pressed down and or toggled, or the moments when you are about to open with a crowd clear combo. Either you start it of by wasting time pulling off the stationary combo, since E is pressed first, or you happen to pull off a roll or sprint if shift is pressed before E. W simply doesnt have that input issue or probabilitty tied to it, because W simply moves you one step further.

And the unwanted roll/sprint will be common due to how WF combat works, because we cant hold E for auto combos, we spam E. So whenever we let go off E there is the risk the shift input take over and sprints us or rolls us.

You should be the one covered by rebinding, that is what you should ask for. Not a fundamental change of the currently already perfectly working mechanics we have.

Steel_Rook · May 26, 2019

9 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yes, there is a degree of advancing movement while executing the basic combo, which is to be expected. We have that now, and it can be countered by moving backward. We didn't see Reb's inputs and it was a narrow-scope demo, so I see no reason to believe that such capability would be removed.

The "crowd clear" combo is very obviously moving forward at a normal pace (practically identical to the combos I use in-game every time I play). Again, I'm not taking issue with the degree of movement permitted in the combos. My grievance with the official inputs is that I am moving forward 90+% of the time in melee combat... which means I essentially won't get to use the standard combo much because I am moving forward. I don't expect or need the sprint binding to make me move forward FASTER than is already possible; I just want a binding that allows me to switch between combos independently of moving forward. That way I can use both.

OK, so something here doesn't add up for me. I can agree with you that the "crowd clear" combo moves forward at a normal pace, but I don't really see your argument about being able to counter that by moving backwards. To me, the combo appears entirely rooting past the first attack, with movement baked into the attacks rather than your control inputs. I say this because it doesn't look like the player's inputs have any real effect on the combo's pacing, beyond mouse look steering it around. In short, it seems to work like - again - the Broken Bull. I'm in the Simulacrum right now playing around with it. Once the combo starts spinning, my movement control inputs are disabled. My character advances at the same spin regardless of whether I press a direction or not, and regardless which direction I press. To me, it seems like all four combos they showed behave like the Broken Bull, leading me to suspect that all combos moving forward will work that way.

I think we're talking past each other a little bit here. Yes, I get that your beef is with combo control inputs and not combo movement, but my suspicion is that these things are going to be linked in Melee 3.0. The combo you trigger with Forward + Melee is an automatically-advancing combo which moves you forward without your input and the combo you trigger with just Melee is a combo which stays mostly stationary. The thinking, then, is that if you hit melee while moving forward, what you're communicating to the game is that you want to melee while moving forward and that's the combo you get. If you melee while standing still, you're telling the game that you want to melee while standing still and that's the combo you get. Under the conditions you've set up, there's no situation where you'd want to trigger the standard combo while holding forward because that would root you in place, halt your movement and do the opposite of what you wanted.

Again, the video offers a very limited example and I may be misreading it, fair enough. However, what I see is all rooting combos which lock your movement controls once they start and have movement baked into the combo itself. You hold forward to do the combo which moves forward on its own, you hold nothing to do the combo which doesn't move. I don't see a situation where you'd be so mobile as to never release the Forward key, yet also want to trigger a combo which roots you in place with very little forward movement.

9 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

However, while using weapons with shorter range (daggers, dual daggers, swords, nikanas, etc.) players need the extra mobility from moving around to still hit enemies consistently. For that reason I can only see the proposed W+E combo input as annoying at best and pure poison to my playstyle at worst.

This is something else that I don't quite follow. If you're already moving forward and you believe that rapid movement is important for your playstyle, then wouldn't Forward + Melee be the natural and intuitive way to trigger the highly-mobile, advancing combo? It feels like I'm missing a few steps here, because it sounds like you want an easy way to trigger a non-moving combo while you're moving and I'm not sure what that accomplishes. My reading of the developer video is that you have the "combos which don't move" triggered by not moving and "the combos which advance forward" triggered by holding the Forward key. What situation do you envision where that causes you to trigger a combo you didn't mean to? Or rather, what situation do you envision where you'd want to trigger anything BUT the Forward + Melee and Aim + Forward + Melee combos? From the way you're describing your playstyle, it sounds like you flatly have no use for anything else.

9 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

You know where I stand on this with regards to manual block, though I hope we've reached a reasonable compromise with implementing it back in while preserving an unobtrusive auto-block (and with the understanding that manual-block related features should never be fully mandatory or the only viable option).

To be perfectly honest, I don't think there really is a compromise I'm willing to accept. I just don't like manual blocking in any kind of shooter game. In general, my wish is for an even simpler melee system on par with the simplicity of gunplay, which seems to run directly counter to what you want. As such, I'm willing to just agree to disagree and drop the subject on my end. No sense antagonising you over a system that I don't think we'll see eye-to-eye on. Doesn't mean you can't discuss it, but I don't think further input from me would be valuable.

9 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I typically try to strictly follow post order because I've had past discussions derail as people lose track of their points, but if you can handle mixing things up based on relevance I'm game.

True, true. I'm just trying to cut down on the concurrent topics of conversation and keep posts to a reasonable length, so I try to skip stuff we've discussed or stuff that's off-topic that I don't have a lot to say about. These discussions have a tendency to turn into fractal conversation trees to the point of being unwieldy.

9 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Fully agreed to all of this. Give me an out, and I'm happy. I just really don't want to see W+E invade ALL of my remaining stances, even if I see the immediate benefit to a universal control scheme and simplified combo inputs. I always find myself needlessly limited in terms of combo execution on any stance which includes such a combo.

Ultimately, allowing people to freely customise their inputs is the best solution, yes. Advanced keybinds systems are obviously not simple to create, much less make accessible to people without a technical background, but they're a worthy goal and above all absolutely doable. Frankly, I kind of wish Warframe would let us do more with slash commands in the chat line. Allowing us to trigger actions via slash command and create keybinds in plain text could get around a lot of the issues. Again, it's what City of Heroes did and it let me do some pretty funny things. I remember having a "walk slowly around a team-mate" bind which consisted of something along the lines of "follow$$++forward$$++left". Of course, this could break very easily if your target moved, but it worked to an extent. Point being, if you let people mix-and-match their own binds in text, we can solve a lot of these issues ourselves, and even distribute those solutions to other people so they can copy/paste the binds directly into their own chat line.

That said, I believe a large portion of your control input issues stems from how... Just TERRIBLE the current stances are for nearly all weapons. It's a combination of Forward + Melee combos being generally weaker than Pause and Aim combos, as well as the inconsistency of rooting and non-rooting combos. My gut feeling is that DE are moving to an "all rooting combos" design, where movement is baked into the combo rather than manually input by the player independent of the combo itself. In other words, no running around while swinging - your movement is dictated by your attacks. What they've shown and the way they talk seem to heavily imply this direction to me, but I guess we won't really know until we get more info or a playable build.

4 hours ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

Didn’t Steve mentioned: Toggle Sprint will become history because we are all Sprinting?Imho, is more and more visible how Devs are limited by Controllers: I must sacrifice this to implement this.

That's what I heard, as well. As I recall, their metrics suggested most people just toggle Sprint on and leave it that way, thus invalidating the mechanic. Considering how minor the difference between Sprint and not-sprint is, I do believe that taking it out of the game entirely would be for the best. It does very little beyond cluttering controls. Bit off-topic, but I'd honestly rather get rid of Crouch as well, then merge sliding and dashing into a sort of anime-esque "standing up slide dodge" which we can also use for a MegaMan X style air dash while jumping. That would give us the full suite of proper platformer controls of high jump, double jump, air dash, glide, wall run. Right now, we're very mobile while we maintain forward momentum in the air, but have precious few ways to regain that when lost.

Point being, I expect to gradually lose some of the game's redundant control inputs both as a means of making room on gamepads with limited button space and as a means of dropping support for underused legacy systems.

AugustFestival · May 26, 2019

23 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Also no, sorry. I don't want manual blocking back under any circumstances.

not having manual blocking literally causing issues with various existing mods and weapons like the steel meridian melee... be more compromising, it could at least be a toggle option where everyone is happy because you can choose

we also need changes to the right click during melee in general because of how it messes up so many combos, especially valkyr's exalted.

Steel_Rook · May 26, 2019

1 hour ago, AugustFestival said:

we also need changes to the right click during melee in general because of how it messes up so many combos, especially valkyr's exalted.

No argument there. Gun Aim (i.e. "right click") has no business being part of melee combos. I've personally gotten used to it and don't have much personal gripe with it, but I still don't agree with it as a matter of principle. The point of Melee 3.0 is to separate Melee and Gun controls, in which case Gun controls ought to not be used for melee combos. The only aspect of melee combat which requires the precision targeting of Aim is thrown/gunblade weapons, and ranged combat with those is not part of their combos. If I'm going to draw and aim my gun, it should be because I intend to shoot it, not because it's a meaningless placeholder in the middle of swinging my sword.

I'll go one further and push for the ability to Glide and Latch without aiming my gun, as well. Drawing a weapon and aiming through a scope solely because I want to lengthen my jump a little falls under the same category as above - I don't want to draw my gun unless I intend to shoot it. Just like I want players to be able to do a full combo without momentarily drawing their guns, so I want players to be able to parkour freely without going into scope zoom.

These are issues which affect melee, but they aren't restricted to it. If we're going to use mixed control inputs, I'd rather the game let players set those themselves, rather than choosing for us.

Gurpgork · May 26, 2019

6 hours ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

Didn’t Steve mentioned: Toggle Sprint will become history because we are all Sprinting?Imho, is more and more visible how Devs are limited by Controllers: I must sacrifice this to implement this.

He was brainstorming on Twitter. It wasn't "hey this is definitely coming to Warframe" so much as it was "if we're simplifying melee, then what else could be simplified?" And it's worth pointing out that that idea in particular was almost universally reviled among the people in the comments.

And I think considering the limitations of controllers is not only worthwhile but also necessary, considering that a non-trivial portion of their playerbase uses them.

Steel_Rook · May 26, 2019

1 hour ago, Gurpgork said:

He was brainstorming on Twitter. It wasn't "hey this is definitely coming to Warframe" so much as it was "if we're simplifying melee, then what else could be simplified?" And it's worth pointing out that that idea in particular was almost universally reviled among the people in the comments. And I think considering the limitations of controllers is not only worthwhile but also necessary, considering that a non-trivial portion of their playerbase uses them.

I don't quite follow. Wouldn't removing Sprint entirely and reusing its button for something else be a consideration towards gamepad users and their limited number of buttons? Best case scenario, it frees up the Sprint button. Worst case scenario, it converts the Sprint/Roll button to just Roll thus removing the slight delay induced by the alternate Hold option. And like I said - I'd go one further and merge Roll and Slide into a single "dash" button thus freeing up another button still. If controllers are our consideration, then surely retiring obsolete mechanics which take up buttons few people use would be a positive change?

DiabolusUrsus · May 26, 2019

8 hours ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

Didn’t Steve mentioned: Toggle Sprint will become history because we are all Sprinting?Imho, is more and more visible how Devs are limited by Controllers: I must sacrifice this to implement this.

I had heard talk of this, but not any confirmation that it was happening for certain. Do we have any dates on this?

If nothing else it just means that the "Sprint" binding is now a free key usable for different purposes. Like melee.

3 hours ago, TaylorsContraction said:

to the question of "what tough opponents", surely you've noticed that spin win is not going to be the way of melee anymore.

No longer is spin attacking and stacking melee multiplier going to generate red slash crits and beyond, wiping an entire title set with 0 effort.

when that nonsense is gone, we can have a more serious discussion about the coming melee changes.

I don't use spin-2-win, and I absolutely agree that it needs to be scrapped, so I'm not really sure where you meant to go with this.

Spin-2-win is hardly the only build that OHKOs or near-OHKOs enemies.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

But you are litterally adding it. No one uses sprint 24/7, especially not when engaged in melee. So if I wanna move forward during crowd clear melee with your system I'm forced to sprint in addition to holding W and spamming E. That's 3 inputs no matter how you look at it.

Ah, so that's what you meant. In that case, you must hate slide attacks eating up 3-4 inputs (depending on toggle sprint), yeah?

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Just holding sprint and spamming E will not move me forward when I let go off E. It may however roll me in the direction I'm looking due to the 2 way variable of the key itself when E input isnt part of it.

That is what I refer to as unwanted rolls or bursts of sprint, the moment you let go of E while shift is still pressed down and or toggled, or the moments when you are about to open with a crowd clear combo.

Yeah, no. I mix sprinting into combos all the time and this just plain doesn't happen. I sprint when I press Shift. I roll when I tap shift.

Standard combo: just mash E.

Crowd combo: press Shift, mash E.

Done. When I am sprinting, whether I let go of shift or interrupt with E I don't randomly get a roll out of it.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Either you start it of by wasting time pulling off the stationary combo, since E is pressed first,

Why are you pressing E first if you want to use crowd clear and the combo modifier is Shift? Press Shift first, or that's just plain user error.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

or you happen to pull off a roll

Not unless you tap Shift, which is another example of user error.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

or sprint if shift is pressed before E.

Which is immediately interrupted as soon as you press E. It's not like sprinting occurs in short uncontrollable bursts when you trigger it.

You're nit-picking control differences in the order of milliseconds, and that's ridiculous.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

W simply doesnt have that input issue or probabilitty tied to it, because W simply moves you one step further.

And neither does Shift, realistically. Are you tapping W repeatedly to move every step while melee-attacking? No. You're holding it down.

Just do the same with Shift and it will work exactly the same.

To be clear, I'm not trying to force you to use my binding. I'm just calling out the BS specter of "unwanted movement" tied to using it. The situations you describe simply don't happen if you use the controls as they are currently implemented. Don't tap Shift if you don't want to roll.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

And the unwanted roll/sprint will be common due to how WF combat works, because we cant hold E for auto combos, we spam E. So whenever we let go off E there is the risk the shift input take over and sprints us or rolls us.

Nope. I constantly hold down W and Shift intermittently while mashing E, and this just plain doesn't happen.

That's complete BS.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

You should be the one covered by rebinding, that is what you should ask for. Not a fundamental change of the currently already perfectly working mechanics we have.

Changing a default binding is hardly a "fundamental change to a mechanic." The combo still works the same.

And I am perfectly happy to accept a different default as long as I can rebind... But all your criticisms thus far are total BS scaremongering. You're relying on hypothetical scenarios that simply don't happen; I can tell you with certainty from direct experience.

My bindings should work fine for anyone who uses the default Warframe keyboard controls. If you don't use those, you've had to rebind your keys anyway. Is rebinding one key really worth mucking up the existing defaults?

SneakyErvin · May 26, 2019

19 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I had heard talk of this, but not any confirmation that it was happening for certain. Do we have any dates on this?

If nothing else it just means that the "Sprint" binding is now a free key usable for different purposes. Like melee.

I don't use spin-2-win, and I absolutely agree that it needs to be scrapped, so I'm not really sure where you meant to go with this.

Spin-2-win is hardly the only build that OHKOs or near-OHKOs enemies.

Ah, so that's what you meant. In that case, you must hate slide attacks eating up 3-4 inputs (depending on toggle sprint), yeah?

Yeah, no. I mix sprinting into combos all the time and this just plain doesn't happen. I sprint when I press Shift. I roll when I tap shift.

Standard combo: just mash E.

Crowd combo: press Shift, mash E.

Done. When I am sprinting, whether I let go of shift or interrupt with E I don't randomly get a roll out of it.

Why are you pressing E first if you want to use crowd clear and the combo modifier is Shift? Press Shift first, or that's just plain user error.

Not unless you tap Shift, which is another example of user error.

Which is immediately interrupted as soon as you press E. It's not like sprinting occurs in short uncontrollable bursts when you trigger it.

You're nit-picking control differences in the order of milliseconds, and that's ridiculous.

And neither does Shift, realistically. Are you tapping W repeatedly to move every step while melee-attacking? No. You're holding it down.

Just do the same with Shift and it will work exactly the same.

To be clear, I'm not trying to force you to use my binding. I'm just calling out the BS specter of "unwanted movement" tied to using it. The situations you describe simply don't happen if you use the controls as they are currently implemented. Don't tap Shift if you don't want to roll.

Nope. I constantly hold down W and Shift intermittently while mashing E, and this just plain doesn't happen.

That's complete BS.

Changing a default binding is hardly a "fundamental change to a mechanic." The combo still works the same.

And I am perfectly happy to accept a different default as long as I can rebind... But all your criticisms thus far are total BS scaremongering. You're relying on hypothetical scenarios that simply don't happen; I can tell you with certainty from direct experience.

My bindings should work fine for anyone who uses the default Warframe keyboard controls. If you don't use those, you've had to rebind your keys anyway. Is rebinding one key really worth mucking up the existing defaults?

You base it all around your personal playstyle though. You are ignoring the issues at hand.

Just because you happen to sprint alot in combat it doesnt mean others do. Same as with the 2 function single button input use of roll/sprint, not everyone uses that either. All those that use a dedicated button for each will indeed either run into trouble due to always rolling on shift, or feel forced into having sprint toggled on for the combo.

With so many personal setups, W is the most neutral choice as an input modifier because every single player has a "move forward" button that does nothing else based on how it is pressed. The combo isnt so much connected to W as it is connected to the actual action of pressing W, which is "move forward". With adding shift you arent simply adding shift, you are either adding roll or sprint to the input modifier.

So the best they can do is allow a simple free keybind for "crowd clear" modifier, which exsist on the same button as something else. That way you can bind W "move forward" and "crowd clear combo input" just as you'd be able to bind shift to "roll/sprint", "roll" or "sprint" and "crowd clear combo input".

This way you could use W freely with the EEE and have your crowd clear tied to sprint and I could have my EEE stationary and W+E for crowd clear.

I definently do now want anything combat related tied to roll/sprint, because if I wanna freely dodge to break a combo I dont wanna have to release shift and then tap it. I wanna be able to simply tap it to get out of the animation lock asap.

DiabolusUrsus · May 26, 2019

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

You base it all around your personal playstyle though. You are ignoring the issues at hand.

There are no issues at hand. Your issues are quite literally made-up:

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Just because you happen to sprint alot in combat it doesnt mean others do.

Doesn't matter. I have already accounted for this:

Holding sprint doesn't actually force sprinting - it just triggers a different combo. Sprint is not such a significant difference that players would be harmed by a split second of sprinting between combos either.

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Same as with the 2 function single button input use of roll/sprint, not everyone uses that either. All those that use a dedicated button for each will indeed either run into trouble due to always rolling on shift,

If sprint isn't bound to Shift, the player wouldn't be pressing Shift to trigger the combo now, would they?

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

or feel forced into having sprint toggled on for the combo.

That's why I suggested the custom bindings.

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

With so many personal setups, W is the most neutral choice as an input modifier because every single player has a "move forward" button that does nothing else based on how it is pressed. The combo isnt so much connected to W as it is connected to the actual action of pressing W, which is "move forward".

The neutrality of that input is precisely the problem with it. It bleeds over into situations where players may not actually want to trigger that particular combo, but also don't want to stop moving in order to do a different combo.

This effectively removes an entire combo for players who simply forward a lot during melee.

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

With adding shift you arent simply adding shift, you are either adding roll or sprint to the input modifier.

And you are BSing here. Accidental rolls don't happen. Unwanted sprinting makes no significant difference.

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

So the best they can do is allow a simple free keybind for "crowd clear" modifier, which exsist on the same button as something else. That way you can bind W "move forward" and "crowd clear combo input" just as you'd be able to bind shift to "roll/sprint", "roll" or "sprint" and "crowd clear combo input".

This way you could use W freely with the EEE and have your crowd clear tied to sprint and I could have my EEE stationary and W+E for crowd clear.

Yes, as I originally suggested.

6 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

I definently do now want anything combat related tied to roll/sprint, because if I wanna freely dodge to break a combo I dont wanna have to release shift and then tap it. I wanna be able to simply tap it to get out of the animation lock asap.

You mean to tell me that you can't comfortably transition from a sprint to a roll, or vice versa? I don't mean that as throwing shade or anything, it's just that the dilemmas you have been describing are completely alien to me.

Releasing Shift to tap it and trigger a roll is absolutely standard practice for anyone who isn't using toggle sprint. And if you're using toggle sprint, you can just tap your roll key.

DiabolusUrsus · May 26, 2019

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

OK, so something here doesn't add up for me. I can agree with you that the "crowd clear" combo moves forward at a normal pace, but I don't really see your argument about being able to counter that by moving backwards. To me, the combo appears entirely rooting past the first attack, with movement baked into the attacks rather than your control inputs. I say this because it doesn't look like the player's inputs have any real effect on the combo's pacing, beyond mouse look steering it around. In short, it seems to work like - again - the Broken Bull. I'm in the Simulacrum right now playing around with it. Once the combo starts spinning, my movement control inputs are disabled. My character advances at the same spin regardless of whether I press a direction or not, and regardless which direction I press. To me, it seems like all four combos they showed behave like the Broken Bull, leading me to suspect that all combos moving forward will work that way.

I think we're talking past each other a little bit here. Yes, I get that your beef is with combo control inputs and not combo movement, but my suspicion is that these things are going to be linked in Melee 3.0. The combo you trigger with Forward + Melee is an automatically-advancing combo which moves you forward without your input and the combo you trigger with just Melee is a combo which stays mostly stationary. The thinking, then, is that if you hit melee while moving forward, what you're communicating to the game is that you want to melee while moving forward and that's the combo you get. If you melee while standing still, you're telling the game that you want to melee while standing still and that's the combo you get. Under the conditions you've set up, there's no situation where you'd want to trigger the standard combo while holding forward because that would root you in place, halt your movement and do the opposite of what you wanted.

This is something else that I don't quite follow. If you're already moving forward and you believe that rapid movement is important for your playstyle, then wouldn't Forward + Melee be the natural and intuitive way to trigger the highly-mobile, advancing combo? It feels like I'm missing a few steps here, because it sounds like you want an easy way to trigger a non-moving combo while you're moving and I'm not sure what that accomplishes. My reading of the developer video is that you have the "combos which don't move" triggered by not moving and "the combos which advance forward" triggered by holding the Forward key. What situation do you envision where that causes you to trigger a combo you didn't mean to? Or rather, what situation do you envision where you'd want to trigger anything BUT the Forward + Melee and Aim + Forward + Melee combos? From the way you're describing your playstyle, it sounds like you flatly have no use for anything else.

I see the disconnect now.

You are coming from the perspective of using primarily heavy blades, where rooting combos are indeed the norm and there is no reason to use W while executing a combo that doesn't actually let you move forward. Given the extra range heavy blades have, this doesn't bother you because you're still able to effectively connect with multiple targets. In that scenario, the official bindings make plenty of sense.
I am coming from the perspective of using primarily nikanas, longswords, dual swords, etc., where rooting combos are not the norm. If I hold W while executing most combos, I can freely move forward at normal speed and doing so is essential to closing smaller gaps between individual targets in all but the most tightly-packed crowds. This means that using the standard combo requires input that is actively detrimental to my weapons' efficacy, and if it truly is a "rooting" combo that prevents faster forward movement it is effectively a wasted combo on my stance.

You are correct that Broken Bull doesn't allow backward movement during the combo, and you've got enough range that it doesn't matter one way or the other. However, I need full mobility during attacks in order to be effective, and I certainly don't want to be reduced to slide attacks and fixed lunges for controlling my positioning. Rooting attacks are useless to me (which makes me sad because the last two swings of "Silent Acumen" on Decisive Judgment are some of my favorites... but they just suck to use because I can't freakin' move).

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Again, the video offers a very limited example and I may be misreading it, fair enough. However, what I see is all rooting combos which lock your movement controls once they start and have movement baked into the combo itself. You hold forward to do the combo which moves forward on its own, you hold nothing to do the combo which doesn't move. I don't see a situation where you'd be so mobile as to never release the Forward key, yet also want to trigger a combo which roots you in place with very little forward movement.

That said, I believe a large portion of your control input issues stems from how... Just TERRIBLE the current stances are for nearly all weapons. It's a combination of Forward + Melee combos being generally weaker than Pause and Aim combos, as well as the inconsistency of rooting and non-rooting combos. My gut feeling is that DE are moving to an "all rooting combos" design, where movement is baked into the combo rather than manually input by the player independent of the combo itself. In other words, no running around while swinging - your movement is dictated by your attacks. What they've shown and the way they talk seem to heavily imply this direction to me, but I guess we won't really know until we get more info or a playable build.

Yep, it now makes perfect sense that we would see different things when looking at the same footage. You see a rooting combo because that's what you've come to expect as the norm. I see a combo that isn't necessarily rooted and could be moving forward at a faster pace if not for the fact that W now overrides it and triggers an entirely different combo.

If you are correct and DE truly is moving towards universal "rooting" combos for standard E inputs, I have to wonder what they are smoking to think that is a good idea. A quick glance at the feedback for the current iteration of melee (2.5, 2.75, 2.999, whatever) shows an overwhelmingly negative response to the loss of quick melee and its associated mobility. Most players don't appreciate being forcibly rooted in place. I know that you prefer rooting combos because they generate a sense of heft for your weapons, and I agree that they are fine on things like heavy blades because the player can still fight effectively.

However, rooting combos are pure poison to shorter, faster weapons, and if DE is planning anything of the sort they are making an even bigger mistake than I originally suspected in the OP.

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's what I heard, as well. As I recall, their metrics suggested most people just toggle Sprint on and leave it that way, thus invalidating the mechanic. Considering how minor the difference between Sprint and not-sprint is, I do believe that taking it out of the game entirely would be for the best. It does very little beyond cluttering controls. Bit off-topic, but I'd honestly rather get rid of Crouch as well, then merge sliding and dashing into a sort of anime-esque "standing up slide dodge" which we can also use for a MegaMan X style air dash while jumping. That would give us the full suite of proper platformer controls of high jump, double jump, air dash, glide, wall run. Right now, we're very mobile while we maintain forward momentum in the air, but have precious few ways to regain that when lost.

I would personally rather we just get a faster sprint with additional practical benefits (e.g., if it truly doesn't penalize enemy accuracy, perhaps it should), but to each their own.

I actually agree 100% with simplifying crouch into a dash, with slide attacks being triggered during the dash, though. I'd also love to have an air-dash instead of midair roll (which just looks plain weird).

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Ultimately, allowing people to freely customise their inputs is the best solution, yes. Advanced keybinds systems are obviously not simple to create, much less make accessible to people without a technical background, but they're a worthy goal and above all absolutely doable. Frankly, I kind of wish Warframe would let us do more with slash commands in the chat line. Allowing us to trigger actions via slash command and create keybinds in plain text could get around a lot of the issues. Again, it's what City of Heroes did and it let me do some pretty funny things. I remember having a "walk slowly around a team-mate" bind which consisted of something along the lines of "follow$$++forward$$++left". Of course, this could break very easily if your target moved, but it worked to an extent. Point being, if you let people mix-and-match their own binds in text, we can solve a lot of these issues ourselves, and even distribute those solutions to other people so they can copy/paste the binds directly into their own chat line.

+1.

Steel_Rook · May 26, 2019

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yep, it now makes perfect sense that we would see different things when looking at the same footage. You see a rooting combo because that's what you've come to expect as the norm. I see a combo that isn't necessarily rooted and could be moving forward at a faster pace if not for the fact that W now overrides it and triggers an entirely different combo.

That's the long and short of it, yes. I saw all of the combos they showed as rooting, with the possible exception of the Forward + Melee one. The movement on jumps seemed inconsistent - the jump covered quite a bit more distance than the animation seemed to suggest and the character appeared to slide. With all other attacks, however, movement appeared sharp and controlled in a way that controller input can't really do, leading me to suspect most if not all of the animations they're showing are rooting. This belief - and yes, my background in using Heavy Blades and Hammers - is what leads me to suspect that you probably won't be able to speed up the basic combo by holding Forward like you can with some weapons right now.

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

If you are correct and DE truly is moving towards universal "rooting" combos for standard E inputs, I have to wonder what they are smoking to think that is a good idea. A quick glance at the feedback for the current iteration of melee (2.5, 2.75, 2.999, whatever) shows an overwhelmingly negative response to the loss of quick melee and its associated mobility. Most players don't appreciate being forcibly rooted in place. I know that you prefer rooting combos because they generate a sense of heft for your weapons, and I agree that they are fine on things like heavy blades because the player can still fight effectively.

The term "rooting" is a bit misleading as it implies immobility. Broken Bull is technically rooting, but it still offers forward mobility - just not much of it. My gut feeling is that most if not all of the Melee 3.0 attack animations will follow the same pattern of controlled movement with forward advancement dictated by the combo as opposed to player movement inputs. I'm very aware of the backlash against the Melee 2.9 (or whatever) changes due to how it forced Staffes into rooting combos, but again - I feel the issue here lies with the stances more so than the rooting. Staffs were changed from a weapon which allowed you to swing while moving towards the enemy or chasing a fleeing target into a weapon which held you in place and prevented both of those things.

My suspicion is that DE intend to address this by simply baking a substantial amount of default movement into combos triggered by holding Forward (the Forward + Melee and Aim + Forward + Melee) combos and simply animating your Warframe walking, running or leaping as it attacks. We've spoken about this in the past, and I seem to recall reaching a compromise of using dedicated "attack while moving" animations in order to have proper full-body melee without losing mobility. The Aim + Forward + Melee combo they showed seems to be an attempt at this, combining what looks like rooting animations with built-in movement with every strike.

Again, these are only my assertions and aren't based on incontrovertible fact. However, the control scheme they propose appears consistent with such assertions. You have combos triggered by holding Forward which appear to move you forward and combos triggered by deliberately NOT holding forward which appear to keep you in place. The choice of movement appears - to me at least - to have shifted away from the player directly controlling their Warframe while meleeing and towards the player choosing whether to trigger a moving or non-moving combo. This could potentially replicate the action of holding Forward and meleeing, but would preclude the action of backpedalling while meleeing or circle-strafing while meleeing.

I suspect we might end up needing more solid info, for the time being. I agree that if the combos shown are all non-rooting, then needing to stop moving in order to trigger a combo which would then allow you to move again is clunky as hell. Whether that's the case, I'm not entirely sure.

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I would personally rather we just get a faster sprint with additional practical benefits (e.g., if it truly doesn't penalize enemy accuracy, perhaps it should), but to each their own. I actually agree 100% with simplifying crouch into a dash, with slide attacks being triggered during the dash, though. I'd also love to have an air-dash instead of midair roll (which just looks plain weird).

Said faster sprint would need to be not just substantially faster but also in some way unique in its mechanics in order for it to be worth retaining, but I could see something like that. Perhaps sprinting can boost movement speed to K-Drive levels and turn every jump into a Bullet Jump. That might just be unwieldy enough to use in close quarters while still being useful at longer distances. It's just a Sprint mechanic would need to compete with Bullet Jumping, else we're right back to it being redundant. And to be perfectly honest, I'm just not convinced that we need a sprint, slide, dash AND a horizontal super jump in the same game. There's just far too much overlap in those systems for there to be this many keybinds.

The reason I make these proposals is that eliminating Sprint and merging Crouch and Roll frees up one entire keybind and half of another without really changing the core gameplay loop to a significant degree. A lot of these mechanics seem to exist more as a Grandfather Rule than because they have a unique function that nothing else could have.

SneakyErvin · May 26, 2019

3 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

There are no issues at hand. Your issues are quite literally made-up:

Doesn't matter. I have already accounted for this:

Holding sprint doesn't actually force sprinting - it just triggers a different combo. Sprint is not such a significant difference that players would be harmed by a split second of sprinting between combos either.

If sprint isn't bound to Shift, the player wouldn't be pressing Shift to trigger the combo now, would they?

That's why I suggested the custom bindings.

The neutrality of that input is precisely the problem with it. It bleeds over into situations where players may not actually want to trigger that particular combo, but also don't want to stop moving in order to do a different combo.

This effectively removes an entire combo for players who simply forward a lot during melee.

And you are BSing here. Accidental rolls don't happen. Unwanted sprinting makes no significant difference.

Yes, as I originally suggested.

You mean to tell me that you can't comfortably transition from a sprint to a roll, or vice versa? I don't mean that as throwing shade or anything, it's just that the dilemmas you have been describing are completely alien to me.

Releasing Shift to tap it and trigger a roll is absolutely standard practice for anyone who isn't using toggle sprint. And if you're using toggle sprint, you can just tap your roll key.

Those two contradict eachother severely.

There are no problems you claim, then you go and say that we need an extra keybind ontop of what we usually have because you arent really intending to bind the input modifier to shift, but to sprint specifically. This also proves that you do indeed add a further input button beyond what people are using. So if someone doesnt use sprint and instead have a dedicated roll button, then they suddenly need to map one extra key ontop of the others just so they have sprint mapped to use a combo. I mean that is as far from userfriendly as it can get. It also moves away from the idea of making melee simpler to use and just turns it into a cumbersome mess.

As for transitioning between sprint and roll, yes that isnt much of an issue when you are simply sprinting, but when you are suddenly also fighting you want as little interfearance as possible between transitions. There are also far better ways than sprinting to get around already, so it will be nothing but an annoyance to have sprint forced on you. As I said previously, if it wasnt for archwings I wouldnt have sprint bound at all. Gliding and bullet jumping are simply quicker gap closers or traveling options compared to sprinting. And unwanted sprinting makes a significant difference if you dont wanna move those extra meters or have that extra speed behind your bullet jump or slide.

DiabolusUrsus · May 26, 2019

7 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's the long and short of it, yes. I saw all of the combos they showed as rooting, with the possible exception of the Forward + Melee one. The movement on jumps seemed inconsistent - the jump covered quite a bit more distance than the animation seemed to suggest and the character appeared to slide. With all other attacks, however, movement appeared sharp and controlled in a way that controller input can't really do, leading me to suspect most if not all of the animations they're showing are rooting. This belief - and yes, my background in using Heavy Blades and Hammers - is what leads me to suspect that you probably won't be able to speed up the basic combo by holding Forward like you can with some weapons right now.

The term "rooting" is a bit misleading as it implies immobility. Broken Bull is technically rooting, but it still offers forward mobility - just not much of it. My gut feeling is that most if not all of the Melee 3.0 attack animations will follow the same pattern of controlled movement with forward advancement dictated by the combo as opposed to player movement inputs. I'm very aware of the backlash against the Melee 2.9 (or whatever) changes due to how it forced Staffes into rooting combos, but again - I feel the issue here lies with the stances more so than the rooting. Staffs were changed from a weapon which allowed you to swing while moving towards the enemy or chasing a fleeing target into a weapon which held you in place and prevented both of those things.

My suspicion is that DE intend to address this by simply baking a substantial amount of default movement into combos triggered by holding Forward (the Forward + Melee and Aim + Forward + Melee) combos and simply animating your Warframe walking, running or leaping as it attacks.

And this is all a terrible idea if true.

Rooting is not misleading, because it does have immobility. Broken Bull is rooting, and while it does technically have forward mobility, that degree of mobility is not adequate for melee weapons with shorter reaches than heavy blades. It works okay on things like Galatine and Paracesis. It will not work well on something like Heat Sword.
Forced movement is not fun. It is clunky and obtrusive, and absolutely should not become more widespread. You've already had a dose of this given your experience with lunges, and the use other posters have mentioned (using the "stationary" combo to attack meatier targets) will be directly sabotaged by innate forward movement.

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We've spoken about this in the past, and I seem to recall reaching a compromise of using dedicated "attack while moving" animations in order to have proper full-body melee without losing mobility. The Aim + Forward + Melee combo they showed seems to be an attempt at this, combining what looks like rooting animations with built-in movement with every strike.

It's not enough to have only one combo with that degree of mobility. If only one combo has it, the stance may as well only have one combo. Mobility is needed for most weapons to be effective.

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Again, these are only my assertions and aren't based on incontrovertible fact. However, the control scheme they propose appears consistent with such assertions. You have combos triggered by holding Forward which appear to move you forward and combos triggered by deliberately NOT holding forward which appear to keep you in place. The choice of movement appears - to me at least - to have shifted away from the player directly controlling their Warframe while meleeing and towards the player choosing whether to trigger a moving or non-moving combo. This could potentially replicate the action of holding Forward and meleeing, but would preclude the action of backpedalling while meleeing or circle-strafing while meleeing.

I suspect we might end up needing more solid info, for the time being. I agree that if the combos shown are all non-rooting, then needing to stop moving in order to trigger a combo which would then allow you to move again is clunky as hell. Whether that's the case, I'm not entirely sure.

I see what you're saying, and that has me legitimately worried now. If true, then Melee 3.0 will be a direct downgrade from 2.0 in terms of combo flexibility for the weapons I use. These would be absolutely terrible ideas and fly in the face of everything the community at large has been saying with regards to melee and what we want to see out of it.

Quote

Said faster sprint would need to be not just substantially faster but also in some way unique in its mechanics in order for it to be worth retaining, but I could see something like that. Perhaps sprinting can boost movement speed to K-Drive levels and turn every jump into a Bullet Jump. That might just be unwieldy enough to use in close quarters while still being useful at longer distances. It's just a Sprint mechanic would need to compete with Bullet Jumping, else we're right back to it being redundant. And to be perfectly honest, I'm just not convinced that we need a sprint, slide, dash AND a horizontal super jump in the same game. There's just far too much overlap in those systems for there to be this many keybinds.

The reason I make these proposals is that eliminating Sprint and merging Crouch and Roll frees up one entire keybind and half of another without really changing the core gameplay loop to a significant degree. A lot of these mechanics seem to exist more as a Grandfather Rule than because they have a unique function that nothing else could have.

I'm sure we could hammer out the details of something that would work better than what we have now, but I'm too exhausted at the thought of previous developments to continue this train of thought.

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Those two contradict eachother severely. There are no problems you claim,

I said that the problems you raised (unwanted sprinting and unwanted rolls) were made up. They simply don't happen.

Quote

then you go and say that we need an extra keybind ontop of what we usually have because you arent really intending to bind the input modifier to shift, but to sprint specifically. This also proves that you do indeed add a further input button beyond what people are using. So if someone doesnt use sprint and instead have a dedicated roll button, then they suddenly need to map one extra key ontop of the others just so they have sprint mapped to use a combo. I mean that is as far from userfriendly as it can get. It also moves away from the idea of making melee simpler to use and just turns it into a cumbersome mess.

Are you freakin' serious right now? Is it that hard to keep track of the distinction between "Shift" as a key and "Sprint" as a binding? If the user has sprint/roll bound to separate keys and roll is bound to shift, they would not accidentally trigger a roll by pressing shift... because they would be pressing whichever key they have bound to sprint instead. If the player uses toggle sprint, they can toggle sprint on/off to switch combos. If the player doesn't want to do that, they have the option of adding a custom binding based on their preferences.

The default binding, where sprint/roll are both tied to Shift, should be fine for any players not using toggle sprint. Players using the default bindings will already be used to using those keys in combination. Players who aren't happy with the default configuration (like you, based on our discussion) will have rather strong opinions regarding what suitable bindings are so it would be best to let them pick their own bindings.

I am not proposing anything more complex than things WF players are already accustomed to (e.g., slide attacks requiring 4 combined inputs). If you can't wrap your head around that, that's your problem. You've got no basis for calling it a "cumbersome mess."

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As for transitioning between sprint and roll, yes that isnt much of an issue when you are simply sprinting, but when you are suddenly also fighting you want as little interfearance as possible between transitions. There are also far better ways than sprinting to get around already, so it will be nothing but an annoyance to have sprint forced on you. As I said previously, if it wasnt for archwings I wouldnt have sprint bound at all.

Sounds like a pretty niche set of preferences, and certainly not appropriate as default bindings. If you're prone to rolling while distracted during combat, I'm afraid that's on you.

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Gliding and bullet jumping are simply quicker gap closers or traveling options compared to sprinting.

You wouldn't use a glide or bullet jump to move < 3m between individual enemies, would you? That is the degree of mobility I'm talking about. Movement between individual swings in the combo, not movement between complete combos used to move between discrete groups of enemies.

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And unwanted sprinting makes a significant difference if you dont wanna move those extra meters or have that extra speed behind your bullet jump or slide.

If you don't want those extra meters... let go of W. Like I said previously, that's just plain user error.

Edited May 27, 2019 by DiabolusUrsus

Teridax68 · May 27, 2019

Not entirely related to the original point, but some thoughts on the bits of conversation that have emerged thus far:

The Wise Razor stance for the Tatsu, made for Melee 3.0, has this particularly elaborate move that has the warframe spin around in a series of slashes... all while being able to move unhindered. In this respect, I believe it can be absolutely possible for melee stances to have elaborate animations and still allow the player to move and cancel their inputs fluidly. Moreover, I believe that maximizing this fine degree of freedom is what would work better for Warframe, as forced, uninterruptible animations and attached janky movement are the very reason why so many players hate current stances. It can be okay for the player to "commit" to a move if said move carries some degree of momentum, and thereby throws the player in a direction, but I don't think that should require the player to stay trapped in that move without the option to use the rest of their movement in tandem, as that is simply not the kind of game Warframe tries to be (unlike Dark Souls). In general, platformer games tend to feel better when they give players more recovery options to correct mistakes in movement (many will even "cheat" to give the player better recovery, e.g. Coyote Time), and I think Warframe's movement system is among the most popular out there precisely because it lets the player course-correct fairly easily. Thus, I think the standard for any melee attack should be to work with, rather than against the player's movement.
With regards to blocking, I really do believe manual blocking, especially if it were tied to ADS, would make for much better gameplay: as it stands, autoblock not only carries essentially no gameplay, as there is little the player does that truly has an impact on how blocking helps them survive, its implementation makes any attempt to attach gameplay to blocking fail. Block-related mods have fallen drastically out of favor, because blocking passively simply does not work with their intent, which I feel is evidence enough that autoblock as a design feature is inferior to manual blocking in its gameplay and potential for development.
- On a related note, if blocking were made manual, and tied to ADS, I feel that could make for a cleaner differentiation of comboes than Shift or its equivalent: as mentioned above, I don't think it makes sense to define comboes around whether or not the player is moving, or moving at high speeds (or simply pressing some entirely unrelated button), and instead I think the best would be to just give us a quick attack combo and a heavy attack combo, each of which should only require the melee attack button and holding down block for heavy melee attacks.
On the subject of sprinting and condensing movement inputs:
- I agree that Crouch and Roll should just be condensed into a single, dodge roll-like dash move that provides untargetability or i-frames while in use, which could probably be attached to the Crouch button. This would satisfy players looking for rapid movement in the middle of combat much better than current slides and rolls, and do away with crouching, which is currently unnecessary and undesirable even in missions requiring stealth or more precise movement (e.g. Spy).
- Following this, and this may be more controversial, but I feel bullet jumping and double jumping should be combined, so that jumping the second time should perform essentially an upwards bullet jump (whose orientation the player should be able to control in a manner similar to current ground slams). With this, running speed should likely also be increased, so that the player would be using actual movement inputs to do regular movement, and parkour to negotiate terrain, instead of just salmon-flopping from one end of the map to the other.
- On a less related note, while I think sprinting is fairly weaksauce relative to what our warframes are capable of, I'd be interested in having the Sprint button automatically summon our K-Drives for a significant movement speed boost, while having us dismount instantly whenever we use an attack or ability. With sufficient improvements to their movement schemes, K-Drives I think could be the perfect replacement to sprinting, as they're a vehicle made for rapid traversal that are a fair bit more impressive than a warframe just running a little faster. If the transition in and out were made instant (which it should be), this could allow players who sprint in the middle of combat to perform flashier maneuvers while doing essentially the same thing as before, e.g. by instantly going into K-Drive mode for a massive speed boost, then dismounting to instantly resume attacking.

DiabolusUrsus · May 27, 2019

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Not entirely related to the original point, but some thoughts on the bits of conversation that have emerged thus far:

The Wise Razor stance for the Tatsu, made for Melee 3.0, has this particularly elaborate move that has the warframe spin around in a series of slashes... all while being able to move unhindered. In this respect, I believe it can be absolutely possible for melee stances to have elaborate animations and still allow the player to move and cancel their inputs fluidly. Moreover, I believe that maximizing this fine degree of freedom is what would work better for Warframe, as forced, uninterruptible animations and attached janky movement are the very reason why so many players hate current stances. It can be okay for the player to "commit" to a move if said move carries some degree of momentum, and thereby throws the player in a direction, but I don't think that should require the player to stay trapped in that move without the option to use the rest of their movement in tandem, as that is simply not the kind of game Warframe tries to be (unlike Dark Souls). In general, platformer games tend to feel better when they give players more recovery options to correct mistakes in movement (many will even "cheat" to give the player better recovery, e.g. Coyote Time), and I think Warframe's movement system is among the most popular out there precisely because it lets the player course-correct fairly easily. Thus, I think the standard for any melee attack should be to work with, rather than against the player's movement.

With regards to blocking, I really do believe manual blocking, especially if it were tied to ADS, would make for much better gameplay: as it stands, autoblock not only carries essentially no gameplay, as there is little the player does that truly has an impact on how blocking helps them survive, its implementation makes any attempt to attach gameplay to blocking fail. Block-related mods have fallen drastically out of favor, because blocking passively simply does not work with their intent, which I feel is evidence enough that autoblock as a design feature is inferior to manual blocking in its gameplay and potential for development.
On a related note, if blocking were made manual, and tied to ADS, I feel that could make for a cleaner differentiation of comboes than Shift or its equivalent: as mentioned above, I don't think it makes sense to define comboes around whether or not the player is moving, or moving at high speeds (or simply pressing some entirely unrelated button), and instead I think the best would be to just give us a quick attack combo and a heavy attack combo, each of which should only require the melee attack button and holding down block for heavy melee attacks.

Very nicely said; I agree completely with all of this.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

On the subject of sprinting and condensing movement inputs:
I agree that Crouch and Roll should just be condensed into a single, dodge roll-like dash move that provides untargetability or i-frames while in use, which could probably be attached to the Crouch button. This would satisfy players looking for rapid movement in the middle of combat much better than current slides and rolls, and do away with crouching, which is currently unnecessary and undesirable even in missions requiring stealth or more precise movement (e.g. Spy).

Following this, and this may be more controversial, but I feel bullet jumping and double jumping should be combined, so that jumping the second time should perform essentially an upwards bullet jump (whose orientation the player should be able to control in a manner similar to current ground slams). With this, running speed should likely also be increased, so that the player would be using actual movement inputs to do regular movement, and parkour to negotiate terrain, instead of just salmon-flopping from one end of the map to the other.

Not sure I understand what you mean by the "second bullet jump." Do you mean simply swapping out the midair hop with a second bullet jump spin? I'm not really seeing where the controversy would be coming out of that.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

On a less related note, while I think sprinting is fairly weaksauce relative to what our warframes are capable of, I'd be interested in having the Sprint button automatically summon our K-Drives for a significant movement speed boost, while having us dismount instantly whenever we use an attack or ability. With sufficient improvements to their movement schemes, K-Drives I think could be the perfect replacement to sprinting, as they're a vehicle made for rapid traversal that are a fair bit more impressive than a warframe just running a little faster. If the transition in and out were made instant (which it should be), this could allow players who sprint in the middle of combat to perform flashier maneuvers while doing essentially the same thing as before, e.g. by instantly going into K-Drive mode for a massive speed boost, then dismounting to instantly resume attacking.

One thing I have to appreciate about the new Jupiter tiles is how many little "snags" DE has edited out to make moving around smoother. No more getting stuck on little lips above doorframes, huzzah! It would definitely be pretty neat to be able to build Ventkids standing by boarding through standard missions, and with newer more spacious tiles it would certainly be a viable method of getting from point A to point B.

However, I still can't get behind fully replacing sprint with something like this. Something just feels wrong about humanoid supersuits not having the potential to run fast. DE can't accelerate default movespeed too much, or else players will lose out on fine control (we see complaints about this already with Volt and Speed in team environments). How would the new Mach speed Warframe fit into this new sprint-less environment? Wouldn't K-Drives be a bit overkill for something like a Galleon or Cruiser? I think it would also drive me a little crazy to constantly leave my K-drive sitting around random tiles after dismounting.

Not that any of this would be entirely unsolvable; I just can't quite get comfortable with the concept.

Steel_Rook · May 27, 2019

10 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I see what you're saying, and that has me legitimately worried now. If true, then Melee 3.0 will be a direct downgrade from 2.0 in terms of combo flexibility for the weapons I use. These would be absolutely terrible ideas and fly in the face of everything the community at large has been saying with regards to melee and what we want to see out of it.

Keep in mind that I'm speculating based on limited information and could be entirely wrong about it. That's just what the animations shown looked like to me, and the team wasn't really commenting on the matters we're discussing here. It's entirely possible that the new combos would simply allow us to slide around while using them, as the Forward + Malee combo appeared to. I mostly inferred this based on the commentary about how you have one combo for room-clearing and one combo for mobile combat. Since you seem to have come out of it with an alternate interpretation and neither of us has solid evidence, I fear we may need to sit on our suspicions until more information comes out.

10 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

It's not enough to have only one combo with that degree of mobility. If only one combo has it, the stance may as well only have one combo. Mobility is needed for most weapons to be effective.

To be perfectly honest, I feel that "only one combo" is already plenty. I'm biased in this regard as I've always hated the complex combo systems in games like Devil May Cry, some of the Prince of Persia and even some of the Darksiders games. While a few combos offered unique utility like broader AoE or launchers, the majority struck me as redundant flashy animations which served only to complicate button inputs. I'd be perfectly happy with one combo per designated use per stance. Say, "this is your AoE combo," "this is your single-target combo," "this is your mobile combo," "this is your combo with lunges in it." Just like we have two weapon slots, I'd be fine with having two "combo slots" allowing us to bring just two of the above, in which case I'd pick am AoE and a Mobile one.

To an extent, that seems like what DE are going for, albeit without the "two combo" limitation. The combos they listed strike me as designed with a specific use in mind, and I'd much rather have that over five cosmetically different combos which all do the same thing and just end up making it hard to trigger the right one.

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

With regards to blocking, I really do believe manual blocking, especially if it were tied to ADS, would make for much better gameplay: as it stands, autoblock not only carries essentially no gameplay, as there is little the player does that truly has an impact on how blocking helps them survive, its implementation makes any attempt to attach gameplay to blocking fail. Block-related mods have fallen drastically out of favor, because blocking passively simply does not work with their intent, which I feel is evidence enough that autoblock as a design feature is inferior to manual blocking in its gameplay and potential for development.

The problem with typing blocking to ADS is that it goes counter to the Melee 3.0 design goal of removing the separation between "melee mode" and "gun mode." We no longer have buttons which switch their function depending on whether you have a melee weapon equipped or not (not by default, anyway), and ADS is a "gun key." If I take a swing at a barrel, turn around and want to aim my gun at an enemy, I can currently just hold Right Click and my gun snaps to my hands. Were Right Click bound to block with a melee weapon equipped, I'd need to manually swap to my gun before being able to aim, requiring either the weapon swap key which takes me through the weapon swap animation or else firing my gun which wastes a shot and takes time. This conflict is one of the central reasons I dislike manual blocking - either it blocks my aim key, or it requires yet another keybind.

I also have to disagree with blocking carrying no gameplay. Melee is currently in a transitional state where "mode" isn't supposed to matter yet it still does. To block with my melee weapon, I have to have drawn my melee weapon. With no way to manually switch to my melee weapon any more, I'm forced to take a swing, which can be pretty slow with some weapons. Changing melee autoblock to also work with a gun equipped but only if the player isn't taking an offensive or acrobatic action would solve this issue. As blocking only works against enemies you're facing, that right there is a not-insubstantial amount of gameplay. And just because we keep calling it "autoblock" doesn't mean there's no player input. Most actions players can take will break the autoblock, meaning that players have to consciously NOT act in order to benefit from it, which does allow for some more specific gameplay mechanics attached to it.

You can, for instance, easily have damage reflect via mod, ability, specific melee weapon or just in general with autoblock. Players would need to consciously elect to not shoot in order to take advantage of it, reflected damage would follow the player's targeting reticle and - in case we're using Genji reflect - enemy projectile behaviour would also have to be considered. Reflecting Corpus blaster shots, for instance, would still require leading target as those have travel time. Additionally, you could still have parry mechanics of a sort by simply triggering them whenever the player blocks a telegraphed wind-up attack from a boss. No, it wouldn't require precisely timed button inputs, but it would still require the player to not swing or shoot and not be bullet-jumping at the time, which IS an active consideration.

Again, I have to direct people to Bungie's Oni. Despite having autoblock, that game still gets a LOT of mileage out of its blocking mechanic, simply because so many of the things you do will override your ability to block. And while I'm going down memory lane, I'd also direct people to Space Marine, which does the whole "separate melee and fire buttons" thing quite well.

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I agree that Crouch and Roll should just be condensed into a single, dodge roll-like dash move that provides untargetability or i-frames while in use, which could probably be attached to the Crouch button. This would satisfy players looking for rapid movement in the middle of combat much better than current slides and rolls, and do away with crouching, which is currently unnecessary and undesirable even in missions requiring stealth or more precise movement (e.g. Spy).

Following this, and this may be more controversial, but I feel bullet jumping and double jumping should be combined, so that jumping the second time should perform essentially an upwards bullet jump (whose orientation the player should be able to control in a manner similar to current ground slams). With this, running speed should likely also be increased, so that the player would be using actual movement inputs to do regular movement, and parkour to negotiate terrain, instead of just salmon-flopping from one end of the map to the other.

Generally speaking, I agree - players flopping around with bullet jumps across flat ground is one of the sillier aspects of Warframe and speaks to an underdeveloped ground movement system. Personally, I'm of the same opinion - long-distance movement across flat ground ought to be done by some kind of on-ground movement, some kind of very fast sprint. Parkour and bullet jumps are awesome, but I'd rather see them used predominantly to navigate verticality, rather than bunny-hopping because it's faster than running. DE seem to be introducing what is essentially "The Flash" Warframe, which made me wonder what would happen if everyone were given a flat-ground sprint like that. It seems faster than bullet-jumping and it seems to stick to terrain pretty well, so might people elect to run instead of bouncing off every railing, door frame and corner while bullet-jumping through the map?

I don't know if I want to mess with Bullet Jumps themselves, but I do believe we need an on-ground alternative to them. I've considered proposing a "Sprint Mode" similar to Archwing/K-Drive Boost, which is to say a SUBSTANTIAL increase in sprint speed and a change to jumping mechanics where every jump is a bullet jump without needing to slide/roll/dodge. Non-sprint movement would have a slower movement speed and default to shorter, more controlled jumps while sprint movement would have a high enough movement speed as to be unwieldy in close quarters and massive, long-distance superjumps by default. It's about the only way I can see Sprinting being made relevant enough to keep in the game at this point. And yes, that would make it unwieldy around tighter tilesets, but as long as we eliminate most if not all drift then it should be fine.

Warframe as it stands right now actually has a very solid moveset. You have move, jump, double jump, super jump, glide, wall-run, ground slam. What we're missing is some kind of super sprint and some kind of ground dash / air dash for the complete platformer package.

SneakyErvin · May 27, 2019

11 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I said that the problems you raised (unwanted sprinting and unwanted rolls) were made up. They simply don't happen.

Are you freakin' serious right now? Is it that hard to keep track of the distinction between "Shift" as a key and "Sprint" as a binding? If the user has sprint/roll bound to separate keys and roll is bound to shift, they would not accidentally trigger a roll by pressing shift... because they would be pressing whichever key they have bound to sprint instead. If the player uses toggle sprint, they can toggle sprint on/off to switch combos. If the player doesn't want to do that, they have the option of adding a custom binding based on their preferences.

The default binding, where sprint/roll are both tied to Shift, should be fine for any players not using toggle sprint. Players using the default bindings will already be used to using those keys in combination. Players who aren't happy with the default configuration (like you, based on our discussion) will have rather strong opinions regarding what suitable bindings are so it would be best to let them pick their own bindings.

I am not proposing anything more complex than things WF players are already accustomed to (e.g., slide attacks requiring 4 combined inputs). If you can't wrap your head around that, that's your problem. You've got no basis for calling it a "cumbersome mess."

Sounds like a pretty niche set of preferences, and certainly not appropriate as default bindings. If you're prone to rolling while distracted during combat, I'm afraid that's on you.

You wouldn't use a glide or bullet jump to move < 3m between individual enemies, would you? That is the degree of mobility I'm talking about. Movement between individual swings in the combo, not movement between complete combos used to move between discrete groups of enemies.

If you don't want those extra meters... let go of W. Like I said previously, that's just plain user error.

They arent made and they are possible issue depending how your idea would be implemented. You need to cover every possible solution and problem which you simply havent done and get mad for people pointing it out.

And of course they wouldnt, just as I said. However you are forcing an extra dedicated keybind on people that currently dont use sprint (since it is one of the slowest ways to move around). And the change is for no real good reason at all since the current system is far from broken or in need of a change. I mean you want to place a mandatory input modifier on a key that is used very situational at the moment, a key mostly used for the tap roll (since sprinting doesnt help you get less hit).

And how the #*!% did you get this to be about slide attacks? Who the hell has said anything about those? They work as they should. And how do they require 4 inputs? W+crouch+E, where is the 4th?

Also no one said they were prone to roll during combat. I was simply pointing out that if the new system is tied to roll, the there will be issues one way or another regarding rolling in combat. Currently the system works perfectly fine and you can simply tap roll as needed.

No I would likely slide between those enemies for a heavy hitting attack instead of running to them. Or I simply have a weapon that kills those enemies within 3m directly without having to move outside of how much the combo moves me.

I dont like the changes you have in mind, better just accept it and move on. I made my points since this is in the feedback section, so DE should have other opinions on it than just yours. No matter what you say or how much you try to downplay those that dont agree, I wont change my opinion about your sprint+E idea. By the looks of it, others feels the same.

I do however still agree with you regarding auto-block and all that. Mostly for the sake of aim-gliding and keeping Hysteria or Block up.

DiabolusUrsus · May 27, 2019

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

To be perfectly honest, I feel that "only one combo" is already plenty.

And I would agree with this as we mentioned previously. However, I don't want to be stuck with 1 combo when there are 2 available.

If DE wants to cut their workload down significantly and do one EEE combo per stance and scrap W+E entirely, I'm happy.

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

To an extent, that seems like what DE are going for, albeit without the "two combo" limitation. The combos they listed strike me as designed with a specific use in mind, and I'd much rather have that over five cosmetically different combos which all do the same thing and just end up making it hard to trigger the right one.

Agreed. To be clear I am not against simplifying stances at all.

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

The problem with typing blocking to ADS is that it goes counter to the Melee 3.0 design goal of removing the separation between "melee mode" and "gun mode." We no longer have buttons which switch their function depending on whether you have a melee weapon equipped or not (not by default, anyway), and ADS is a "gun key."

I disagree with this summation. The only reason ADS switches to guns is that players may need to aim before firing. However, by simply always applying the zoom it can function as a fully transitional state (with a use for both sides of the equation).

In fact, having the switching can actually cause problems. For example, if you unequip a secondary (e.g., to level a primary faster) then attempting to aim-glide will force you to drop any datamass or powercell you are carrying. Players also can't glide + block, which is why the auto-block currently triggers glide and causes control issues.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

They arent made and they are possible issue depending how your idea would be implemented.

Ah, so now you're admitting they're made up. If you have to add such uncertain qualifiers to these "possible" issues depending on the "implementation," you have to recognize on some level that unwanted rolling and sprinting are completely bogus.

My implementation would be entirely identical to the existing default controls. Players aren't sprinting and rolling by accident now (or else you'd see a lot more complaint threads about crappy unpredictable controls), so they aren't going to magically start when holding shift changes from combo A to combo B while pressing E.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

You need to cover every possible solution and problem which you simply havent done and get mad for people pointing it out.

That's called a nirvana fallacy. DE doesn't even do what you are demanding with their official releases; hence this thread.

Accounting for every possible issue is an impossible standard, which is why I proposed the binding customization as a safety net. However, I reject your grounds for claiming that my bindings would be bad or inappropriate defaults - the issues you raise aren't realistic, and my proposed bindings match the default scheme exactly.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

And of course they wouldnt, just as I said. However you are forcing an extra dedicated keybind on people that currently dont use sprint (since it is one of the slowest ways to move around). And the change is for no real good reason at all since the current system is far from broken or in need of a change. I mean you want to place a mandatory input modifier on a key that is used very situational at the moment, a key mostly used for the tap roll (since sprinting doesnt help you get less hit).

And how the #*!% did you get this to be about slide attacks? Who the hell has said anything about those? They work as they should. And how do they require 4 inputs? W+crouch+E, where is the 4th?

Slide attacks came up because you were complaining about extra inputs - my "extra input." I was pointing out that it's not anymore complex than slide attacks, which players manage fine.

The 4th input is, depending on circumstance, sprint. While W+Crouch+E is fine for things like Galatine, Guandao, or Atterax, the shorter weapons I use need the extra speed and slide distance to get where I need to go. Thus, 3-4 inputs where players using toggle sprint are going to only need 3 in most cases.

Even if you're not willing to count that, though, if you can manage 3 inputs for slide attacks I think you can manage 3 inputs for a combo. Especially when you really only need to hold 2 and mash 1.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Also no one said they were prone to roll during combat. I was simply pointing out that if the new system is tied to roll, the there will be issues one way or another regarding rolling in combat.

Nonsense. You were the one who brought up unwanted rolling and said that while you could manage it while just sprinting, it could be a problem while fighting.

If the player has a roll key, it will not be involved in the combo. If the player is using a combined sprint/roll key, they will not roll accidentally because they would need to HOLD the key, not tap it. Any players who use hold-to-sprint will already be used to releasing sprint before executing a roll. Those who aren't will be using different bindings already (like a separate roll key, or toggle sprint).

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Currently the system works perfectly fine and you can simply tap roll as needed.

My system wouldn't change anything about that, though.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

No I would likely slide between those enemies for a heavy hitting attack instead of running to them. Or I simply have a weapon that kills those enemies within 3m directly without having to move outside of how much the combo moves me.

Ok, see, now it's clear that you're not really arguing in good faith. My suggestions are bad because they limit players in nonexistent ways, but it's fine for you to limit me to slide attacks or picking weapons with longer reach?

GTFO.

The current system of repositioning with WASD during combos works just fine for me. Why should I have to give that up under the new system?

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

I dont like the changes you have in mind, better just accept it and move on. I made my points since this is in the feedback section, so DE should have other opinions on it than just yours. No matter what you say or how much you try to downplay those that dont agree, I wont change my opinion about your sprint+E idea. By the looks of it, others feels the same.

I've got no problem with you disagreeing with my proposed bindings. I'm not trying to force you to like them, and I'm not trying to "downplay" anything.

I am questioning your criticisms of my ideas, because so far you have provided no rational basis for why they would actually be a problem.

It adds an extra input? Big deal; it's not any more complicated than the existing control scheme.

It can cause accidental rolls or sprinting? Simply untrue. If it were, the existing system would cause these issues. But it doesn't, or else players would be complaining about it. When was the last time you saw a player complain about rolling accidentally because they started a melee combo while holding sprint?

... That's what I thought. It just doesn't happen.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

I do however still agree with you regarding auto-block and all that. Mostly for the sake of aim-gliding and keeping Hysteria or Block up.

+1.

Planned Melee Combo Bindings are a Mistake - Please Tweak Them

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