The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

DiabolusUrsus · July 9, 2019

Oof. I think I see where this discussion went off the rails - we have been tangling our own separate proposals, and the incompatibilities between them have been confusing the reasoning applied to individual steps. I'm going to try re-framing this whole conversation to resolve said confusion.

That said, I don't want you to think I'm simply trying to evade you so feel free to quote any specific points from your previous reply that you want addressed and I'll gladly comply.

1. Resolving the Skins Issue

Allow me to define the puzzle pieces I am working with in my concept:

Moveset Rework

Each grip-type has its own moveset, encompassing unique attack animations applied to universal input bindings:

Combo A (E)
Combo B (RMB + E)
Slide Attacks (Combo A/B while sliding)
Aerial Attacks (Combo A/B while airborne)
Slam Attacks (E while airborne and aiming at the ground)
Charged Attacks (Hold E; delays and amplifies any other attack in the moveset).

Stance mods would apply different stylized animations over the input bindings. They would be as close to cosmetic as possible, but not truly cosmetic because of possible minor variations in hit-boxes.

Channeling Rework

DE's proposed conversion of channeling from a toggled melee augment to a time-limited "limit-break," requiring a fundamental replacement of all the underlying mods.

Combo Meter Rework

Combo meter multipliers decoupled from normal attacks.
Multiplier tiers revised to require fewer accumulated hits.
Implementation of heavy attacks that consume the accumulated combo (in the case of my moveset rework, heavy attacks = charged attacks).
Applicable mods reworked to scale bonus effects with accumulated combo (e.g., Blood Rush).
Combo mods balanced to fit the new multiplier tiers/base combo duration (e.g., Body Count).

Within the scope of this system, there is no need to reduce the number of available weapons to simplify its implementation; finishing a grip-specific moveset and applicable stance mods brings every compatible weapon to the same standard with no compatibility issues. Returning to the previous examples:

Caustacyst
Twin Basolk (+Augment)
Zenistar
Sancti Magistar
Wolf Sledge

The charged attack input (Hold E) still exists in my system, so all of these weapons would continue to function perfectly fine. Caustacyst can spit its acid from any charged Combo A/B input. Twin Basolk's augment can replace the charged swing with its signature teleport. Wolf Sledge can replace the charged swing with its throw.

Cobra & Crane
Sigma & Octantis

Similarly, the shield throw ability can simply replace the standard aerial attacks. As I mentioned last time, the addition of a charged input for slam attacks could allow these weapons to gain a ground slam where they had lost them before: tap E to throw the shield, hold E while aiming at the ground to trigger a slam.

Tatsu
Telos Boltace

Both of these passives can simply trigger in conjunction with Combo A/B while sliding. No re-mapping or re-implementation needed.

Vaykor Sydon

Note that the channeling rework as I refer to it is entirely distinct from any of the other reworks. Until channeling is changed, players can still trigger the passive as-is by channeling regardless of replacement moveset. When channeling is removed DE will need to change it, but as I mentioned last time it could be as simple as changing the trigger to a charged attack.

Dark Split Sword - weapon defaults to Heavy Blade, as it currently does.
Desert Wind - wouldn't this be covered by its stance getting brought to my listed 3.0 standard?
Exalted Blade - same as with Desert Wind, and its blind could still be triggered while sliding.

In conclusion, none of these weapons require rework or reimplementation beyond changes that would already be covered by the applicable rework (e.g., reworked movesets). They all port directly to the reworked systems, and channeling dependent effects can be left well enough alone up until channeling itself is reworked. Therefore, there is no real benefit to temporarily converting all these weapons into skins for the sake of simplicity; my moveset changes are entirely weapon-generic, and when the specifics start to apply (e.g., Vaykor Sydon) there are few enough of them at a time to be perfectly manageable.

However, now that you've jogged my memory regarding your own proposal I would absolutely agree that reducing the number of available weapons has a significant, immediate benefit. When you're scrapping stances and each individual weapon has its own moveset, of course it's easier to work with fewer of them at once. I'll reiterate that I'm not actually opposed to changing weapons into skins - I just didn't see any point to it within the context of my own system - which brings me to the next core issue.

2. Resolving the Backlash Issue

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But why? Again, players are already okay with repolarizing stuff. You're proposing an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem: sure, give players some special Forma that doesn't reset rank if you want, but that really is secondary to the set of changes I am proposing here. If the solutions to the problems you've found in my proposals are so easy to come up with, why then continue framing my proposal as unworkable?

This passage makes it abundantly clear that you have lost track of the nature of my point in the back-and-forth bickering. Where did you get the idea that I was framing your proposal as unworkable?

What I was attempting to point out was that within the scope of the rework as I understood it (it wasn't clear to me that you were sticking to your guns regarding unique movesets) there was no real benefit to stripping weapons out of players' inventories. I also brought up the Forma refund not as a point meant to discredit your idea as bad, but as a way to sidestep what I see as impending backlash.

In other words, "If we're going forward with this whole convert-into-skins thing, then make sure to refund players' time so that there's no loss." I understand that you don't agree backlash would occur, but I fail to see how that would be an argument against a more generous refund. How would my proposed refund hurt your goals?

More importantly:

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Yes there is, just lower the drain on some current essential mods. If your intent really is to just make everyone put more Forma into melee weapons... why? How does that better serve the playerbase?

You're absolutely right! I hadn't thought of that, and didn't see any way to sidestep the issue. However, now that you've shown me a way to side-step the backlash incurred from blanket nerfs without hindering my goal of making stances interchangeable... why wouldn't I go for it? Thanks for the solution!

3. On the Issue of Diversity

I doubt we will reach an agreement regarding what constitutes adequate differentiation for avoiding the "well everything may as well be the same" threshold. I especially disagree when it comes to mods - I agree that there is space and benefit from weapon-unique mods like those acquired from Nightwave, but I don't think those are suitable replacements for generic mods applying to generic stats rather than unique traits (e.g., Bursting Mass).

If you are determined to continue this debate I'm game for now, but otherwise I don't see the point in drawing out this point of contention.

12 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Why would it "necessarily" make it more interesting? Has our current elemental system made all weapons "necessarily" more interesting and varied purely as a result of it? This sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking, especially since at the end the Dera would still be a bog-standard bullet hose, even if its projectiles dealt blue instead of gray damage or whatever.

Weren't we just discussing a fundamental rework of the elements to make them each mechanically diverse? I had also mentioned the possibility of Corpus weapons distinguishing themselves through possessing unique combinations of elements not obtainable through mods, so considering those two points together it should be clear that it would no longer be a simple matter of "blue instead of gray damage or whatever."

12 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Off the top of my head, examples of how the weapon could be made more interesting (each option being independent from the others):

Change the magazine to a non-recharging battery, and have the projectiles return back to the weapon with punch-through on impact, and charge it in that manner.

Have the projectiles increase in size and damage as they travel.

Have the projectiles explode on impact, with the explosion gaining in damage and size with each hit if the same target is hit repeatedly.

There's an infinity of ideas to be had here, but really, it doesn't have to take that much to make a gun interesting.

Those are cool, but I would rather like for enemy weapons to follow the same mechanical (if not statistical) rules regardless of who currently wields them. I'm a little leery of how those effects would manifest if every normal Crewman had access to any of them.

Let's say I'm on board under the assumption that we see the previously discussed faction reworks, where Crewmen themselves are less common (treated more as elites) in comparison to their proxies.

Teridax68 · July 9, 2019

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

In conclusion, none of these weapons require rework or reimplementation beyond changes that would already be covered by the applicable rework (e.g., reworked movesets). They all port directly to the reworked systems, and channeling dependent effects can be left well enough alone up until channeling itself is reworked. Therefore, there is no real benefit to temporarily converting all these weapons into skins for the sake of simplicity; my moveset changes are entirely weapon-generic, and when the specifics start to apply (e.g., Vaykor Sydon) there are few enough of them at a time to be perfectly manageable.

That's fine, albeit still a far larger set of moves than what I'm suggesting, but the question still remains of why one would need to retain Melee 2.0 stances. Moreover, this simply feeds into the problem of homogeneity that was discussed: if every weapon of the same grip type has the same moveset, that is going to limit the mechanics you can give to any individual melee weapon, as with the given example of different whip attacks. If every assault rifle played like the Buzlok, every shotgun like the Corinth, and every pistol like the Pandero, even if there would still be a variety of effects you could add onto their shots, alt-fires, and stats, those weapon classes would end up feeling fairly samey, and I feel that same kind of over-generalization is being applied here to melee weapons. Your changes would improve upon the current system, but in the end, the only difference between Melee 3.0 and your proposed set of changes is that you're removing a bunch of animations, adding back manual block (not mentioned, but implied), and tweaking combo multipliers, when I think there's more that could be done if we're talking about some definitive melee overhault.

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

This passage makes it abundantly clear that you have lost track of the nature of my point in the back-and-forth bickering. Where did you get the idea that I was framing your proposal as unworkable?

By repeatedly claiming that the player backlash to my proposal would be so great as to be unacceptable.

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

What I was attempting to point out was that within the scope of the rework as I understood it (it wasn't clear to me that you were sticking to your guns regarding unique movesets) there was no real benefit to stripping weapons out of players' inventories.

If that were the case, why bring up player backlash in relation to it? That's a rather roundabout way of requesting clarification on my proposal, particularly as I had stated on several occasions that the intent was to allow individual weapons to be reimplemented under the new system without creating a massive initial overhead.

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I also brought up the Forma refund not as a point meant to discredit your idea as bad, but as a way to sidestep what I see as impending backlash.

Which, as has been pointed out extensively now, is unsupported by prior instances of players having to reapply Forma to frames and weapons affected by reworks. Thus, you have been proposing an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem, and magnifying said imaginary problem to such a hyperbolic extent that it had dominated discussion, and shifted it into an ultimatum where either I would concede to your suggestion, or my proposed changes would never happen (according to you).

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

In other words, "If we're going forward with this whole convert-into-skins thing, then make sure to refund players' time so that there's no loss." I understand that you don't agree backlash would occur, but I fail to see how that would be an argument against a more generous refund. How would my proposed refund hurt your goals?

Because I specifically pointed out I not only want players to take time to learn new weapons, which means not expecting them to take them fresh off of their rework into a high-level mission and then complain when their muscle memory inevitably fails to transition instantaneously, but also do in fact want this to be an opportunity to provide more playtime. Not requiring players to so much as try the updated melee weapons risks having them ignore the vast majority, including updated weapons they might have liked, so in this case, "refunding players' time" doubly loses out on the playtime such a content update could provide.

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

More importantly:

You're absolutely right! I hadn't thought of that, and didn't see any way to sidestep the issue. However, now that you've shown me a way to side-step the backlash incurred from blanket nerfs without hindering my goal of making stances interchangeable... why wouldn't I go for it? Thanks for the solution!

Not to be too combative, but I had in fact pointed out the problem with removing mod drain bonuses without compensation several posts ago, and the response I got until now was essentially that the playerbase should just deal with it. Thus, there has been a notable discrepancy between your use of conjectural backlash against my own proposal, and your own nonchalance towards backlash against your own, despite instances of it actually happening in similar cases, to the point of seemingly not even attempting to consider as simple a workaround as reducing the drain on melee mods.

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

3. On the Issue of Diversity

I doubt we will reach an agreement regarding what constitutes adequate differentiation for avoiding the "well everything may as well be the same" threshold. I especially disagree when it comes to mods - I agree that there is space and benefit from weapon-unique mods like those acquired from Nightwave, but I don't think those are suitable replacements for generic mods applying to generic stats rather than unique traits (e.g., Bursting Mass).

Where did I ever claim that stat mods should be replaced altogether? I did say that certain weapons should likely not have the same access to certain stats as others, but even in my own examples I suggested stat mods.

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Weren't we just discussing a fundamental rework of the elements to make them each mechanically diverse? I had also mentioned the possibility of Corpus weapons distinguishing themselves through possessing unique combinations of elements not obtainable through mods, so considering those two points together it should be clear that it would no longer be a simple matter of "blue instead of gray damage or whatever."

Making an element interesting in and of itself does not mean it will make any weapon that applies it automatically unique and mechanically distinct, and if we're still reasoning along coarser-grained effects such as elements and elemental damage, that means that several different weapons will be able to natively apply the exact same effects, to say nothing of elemental mods. My point with the Dera is thus that slapping one element found on many different weapons onto a generic rifle isn't necessarily going to make that rifle stand out all that much more, whereas a unique mechanic would be more likely to by definition. It is also worth considering that, if the distinguishing factor of Corpus weapons is that they all deal elemental damage, considering how many Corpus weapons exist, that means those elements will be frequently repeated across weapons, meaning those individual weapons would be able to rely less on their element as a distinguishing factor.

12 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Those are cool, but I would rather like for enemy weapons to follow the same mechanical (if not statistical) rules regardless of who currently wields them. I'm a little leery of how those effects would manifest if every normal Crewman had access to any of them.

Let's say I'm on board under the assumption that we see the previously discussed faction reworks, where Crewmen themselves are less common (treated more as elites) in comparison to their proxies.

I mean, currently weapons differ between players and enemies anyway, but that argument basically just means that the Corpus cannot be allowed to have interesting weapons so long as they keep to current enemy distributions (and this includes whichever elemental effect you were planning on giving the Dera). This is a whole other topic of discussion in itself, but it simply makes no sense to treat the Corpus like a horde faction, much less to have us mainly fight human crew when the faction is notorious in the lore for acting almost exclusively through robotic proxies. I'd much rather we fought far fewer Corpus units, while making each unit tougher, more complex, almost puzzle-like in their combination of quirky weapons and gadgets, which could then avoid having to differentiate said weapons when we get our hands on them.

DiabolusUrsus · July 10, 2019

12 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

That's fine, albeit still a far larger set of moves than what I'm suggesting, but the question still remains of why one would need to retain Melee 2.0 stances.

Because I want to retain them, as I covered previously regarding the player being allowed to pick up any fundamentally similar weapon and swing it around the same way. I don't agree with each individual weapon having a unique moveset, because going by my own standard for a satisfactory degree of differentiation that would be excessive and needlessly restrictive.

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Moreover, this simply feeds into the problem of homogeneity that was discussed: if every weapon of the same grip type has the same moveset, that is going to limit the mechanics you can give to any individual melee weapon, as with the given example of different whip attacks.

Why?

The Caustacyst is mechanically distinct from other scythes while retaining an identical underlying moveset. As I said at the beginning of this discussion, I would prefer to broadly differentiate weapon types by grip-based moveset and narrowly differentiate individual weapons within each type via unique mechanics.

For example, Scoliac might pull targets toward the player and Atterax might have a noticeably slower travel speed for the whip head while hitting targets repeatedly while in contact. Would that not make those weapons play differently, even given the same attack animations?

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If every assault rifle played like the Buzlok, every shotgun like the Corinth, and every pistol like the Pandero, even if there would still be a variety of effects you could add onto their shots, alt-fires, and stats, those weapon classes would end up feeling fairly samey, and I feel that same kind of over-generalization is being applied here to melee weapons.

Which stems entirely from your different standard for what qualifies as adequate diversity.

If you take out the Buzlok's tracking dart, it absolutely feels samey relative to every other projectile AR. If you take out Corinth's airburst grenade, it absolutely feels samey relative to the Strun/Wraith due to its semi-automatic shell-by-shell reload nature. If you take out Pandero's burst-unload alt-fire, it absolutely feels samey relative to other semi-automatic pistols. But then, that's the whole point of adding those individual mechanics in the first place - to differentiate them from otherwise similar weapons - and precisely why I agreed with weapon-specific gimmicks in the first place.

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Your changes would improve upon the current system, but in the end, the only difference between Melee 3.0 and your proposed set of changes is that you're removing a bunch of animations, adding back manual block (not mentioned, but implied), and tweaking combo multipliers, when I think there's more that could be done if we're talking about some definitive melee overhault.

True, but I don't think there's a whole lot more that would need to be done. Aside from disagreeing with specific combos/inputs as outlined in the OP and having my own preferences regarding the specifics of tweaking channeling, the combo meter, and related mods... I'm largely happy with the scope and intent of Melee 3.0 as it stands.

Side note: You're right, I forgot to include manual blocking in my re-framed list changes. However considering the multiple separate times it came up as an explicit focus of the discussion this seems like an unnecessary jab.

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By repeatedly claiming that the player backlash to my proposal would be so great as to be unacceptable.

Yeah, no. I've been rather explicit and consistent about that matter throughout this discussion.

On 2019-07-03 at 8:36 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Again, I'm not against making skins out of superfluous weapons (variants of base weapons being prime - pun not intended - candidates). However, I don't see the sense in making all but a few weapons into skins pre-emptively. Gradually polish individual weapons where possible, and permanently make skins out of duplicates where needed. Don't blindly turn all of them into skins and then switch some of them back a few at a time.

On 2019-07-05 at 5:01 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Again, I'm not insisting that you can't make all the weapons into skins. I'm just saying to let players reapply their refunded polarities for free. I never expected that to be so controversial, and I'm still confused as to why it is.

The entirety of my disagreement with your skin-conversion idea was originally and continues to be exceedingly simple:

I didn't understand why you needed to do it in the first place, because it wasn't clear to me you were still working in the context of each weapon having a completely unique moveset.
I believe players would respond negatively to the loss of multiple polarities across the majority of their owned melee weapons especially because the wipe seemed entirely pointless... and so I suggested a way to side-step that expected backlash.

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If that were the case, why bring up player backlash in relation to it?

Because a change that was both seemingly pointless and controversial made even less sense to me than a simply pointless one.

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That's a rather roundabout way of requesting clarification on my proposal, particularly as I had stated on several occasions that the intent was to allow individual weapons to be reimplemented under the new system without creating a massive initial overhead.

I'm sorry; I had asked you rather explicitly before and not gotten a satisfactory answer:

On 2019-07-05 at 5:01 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

In contrast, you are proposing to convert excess weapons into skins (wiping their polarities in the process) and then reverting them back into weapons once reworked/improved. That makes no sense; why wipe the polarities by making the weapon a skin when you could just rework it? I still don't understand the benefit to that approach.

I fully understood that you intended to convert weapons into skins and then re-implement them one-by-one, but because I was thinking in terms of my own envisioned rework at the start of that topic I didn't see any need to reduce initial overhead - any overhead related to my proposed changes would be fairly minimal and easy to manage. Thus, for lack of a clear answer I continued attempting to explore the subject up until I stumbled onto the root cause (tangling up the details of our individual reworks).

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Which, as has been pointed out extensively now, is unsupported by prior instances of players having to reapply Forma to frames and weapons affected by reworks. Thus, you have been proposing an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem, and magnifying said imaginary problem to such a hyperbolic extent that it had dominated discussion,

No, I have been debating you on whether or not that backlash would occur. I don't find your counter-examples plausible for reasons I have detailed extensively.

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and shifted it into an ultimatum where either I would concede to your suggestion, or my proposed changes would never happen (according to you).

Literally, where did I do that?

I remember saying this with regards to your suggestion of stripping vertical progression out of the game:

On 2019-07-03 at 8:36 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

I dunno. I think that if power didn't actually play a significant role in DE's successful monetization, we wouldn't see power creep anywhere near the degree we have currently. The ugly truth of the matter seems to be that vertical progression is what keeps players invested, and in turn boosts sales (either directly through pay2skip or indirectly through participation). I'm not defending the practice - I can't say it enough times that I would be totally on board with removing vertical progression - but I don't realistically see it changing anytime soon (if ever).

But nothing to that effect with regards to your skins proposal. My question has consistently been: given the choice between pissing players off and taking steps to placate them without inhibiting your goals, why would you choose the former?

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Because I specifically pointed out I not only want players to take time to learn new weapons, which means not expecting them to take them fresh off of their rework into a high-level mission and then complain when their muscle memory inevitably fails to transition instantaneously, but also do in fact want this to be an opportunity to provide more playtime. Not requiring players to so much as try the updated melee weapons risks having them ignore the vast majority, including updated weapons they might have liked, so in this case, "refunding players' time" doubly loses out on the playtime such a content update could provide.

But that doesn't even make any sense.

Players level new weapons in high-level missions anyway.
Many players level melee through stealth, which would not showcase the new movesets.
Players who don't level melee through stealth often go to places like Hydron, where they may not even use the weapon and instead rely on shared affinity.
Again, how does refunding time discourage players from actually playing with those weapons? It stands to reason that if the player is going to bother reapplying polarities - whether required to level the weapon each time or not - they intend to play with it.
If the player is at risk of simply ignoring reworked weapons, giving them an extended list of busywork to get back to where they were isn't going to get them to change their mind. Rather, it will make the decision to bin the weapon altogether that much easier.

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Not to be too combative, but I had in fact pointed out the problem with removing mod drain bonuses without compensation several posts ago, and the response I got until now was essentially that the playerbase should just deal with it.

Yes, because at the time I saw it as a necessary evil for lack of alternatives. I didn't see any ways around the related backlash, so I saw it as inevitable.

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Thus, there has been a notable discrepancy between your use of conjectural backlash against my own proposal, and your own nonchalance towards backlash against your own, despite instances of it actually happening in similar cases, to the point of seemingly not even attempting to consider as simple a workaround as reducing the drain on melee mods.

That "discrepancy" should neatly underscore your fundamental misunderstanding of my perspective on the issue. I am not against incurring backlash for the sake of improving the game. I'll readily say as much when it comes to the subject of things like nerfs, where perceived loss is needed to improve game balance. However, if there are ways to sweeten the deal without undermining the intent of the relevant changes I think they should at the very least be considered and in most cases implemented.

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Where did I ever claim that stat mods should be replaced altogether? I did say that certain weapons should likely not have the same access to certain stats as others, but even in my own examples I suggested stat mods.

First, it's important to note that you're excising some key words from my statement:

On 2019-07-08 at 5:54 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

but I don't think those are suitable replacements for generic mods applying to generic stats rather than unique traits

In other words, I appreciate having a core pre-existing set of universal mods available to apply to each new weapon and I wouldn't want to need to hunt down additional mods to support new weapons. For example, I delayed trying out Sarpa for a very long time due to not having its custom Bullet Dance stance. That delay would only have been made worse if I needed to also collect other custom mods for its simpler attributes.

With that in mind, this point initially became relevant here:

On 2019-06-27 at 1:57 AM, Teridax68 said:

In this respect, it might also be useful to establish even more mod separation between grip types, e.g. to make attack speed less accessible to heavy blades, but instead give those weapons better access to range than daggers.

You can't make shared stats less accessible to one class of weapons over another unless you remove or alter mods shared between classes if you ALSO reject that variations in base stats could be sufficient. You further expanded upon this by suggesting stat mods tailored specifically for daggers and separate mods tailored for heavy blades, and framed having more mods to collect as a benefit. As stated above, I disagree with that perspective.

You later went on to say this:

On 2019-07-03 at 3:58 PM, Teridax68 said:

I can agree with establishing weapons around unique mechanics, which would likely draw from the above pool, but if we're going to that extreme, that simply raises the question of what purpose mods are meant to serve: if they're meant to fine-tune our weapons, then we might as well give every individual weapon its own pool of tailor-made mods, but if they're meant to add chunks of gameplay to our weapons, then there needs to be room for unique mechanics in mods, even if those mechanics need to be adapted to the weapons they fit onto.

As I responded to this quote originally, I see mods as meant to fine-tune our weapons. Therefore, I interpreted your conditional suggestion as continuing to apply... and again, disagreed with it.

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Making an element interesting in and of itself does not mean it will make any weapon that applies it automatically unique and mechanically distinct, and if we're still reasoning along coarser-grained effects such as elements and elemental damage, that means that several different weapons will be able to natively apply the exact same effects, to say nothing of elemental mods. My point with the Dera is thus that slapping one element found on many different weapons onto a generic rifle isn't necessarily going to make that rifle stand out all that much more, whereas a unique mechanic would be more likely to by definition. It is also worth considering that, if the distinguishing factor of Corpus weapons is that they all deal elemental damage, considering how many Corpus weapons exist, that means those elements will be frequently repeated across weapons, meaning those individual weapons would be able to rely less on their element as a distinguishing factor.

But again, this is rooted in a differing standard for what is acceptable diversity:

Given that Corpus weapons would offer elemental combinations not normally achievable through mods (e.g., Rad + Heat) and those individual elements would be made mechanically diverse, I would be glad to have a generic rifle in the Corpus arsenal.
I'm not discounting the multitude of other Corpus weapons; I see no problem with them sharing the same elemental distinction because by my standards Arca Plasmor, Flux Rifle, Lanka, etc. are adequately diverse already. When it comes to roughly interchangeable weapons (e.g., Dera vs. Tetra) I'm not saying that both of them have to stay the same. Whether Dera or Tetra is kept as a generic rifle doesn't really matter to me, but I would like to keep a generic plasma rifle available.

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I mean, currently weapons differ between players and enemies anyway, but that argument basically just means that the Corpus cannot be allowed to have interesting weapons so long as they keep to current enemy distributions

True, so it should be plainly obvious that I am dissatisfied with the combat status quo and existing faction design and want to change them.

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(and this includes whichever elemental effect you were planning on giving the Dera).

Why? The AI would not be equipped to fully exploit the individual/combined elemental effects any moreso than they currently do, whereas Crewmen filling the air with clouds of expanding bullets or gaining stacking damage from successive hits would likely change things quite radically.

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This is a whole other topic of discussion in itself, but it simply makes no sense to treat the Corpus like a horde faction, much less to have us mainly fight human crew when the faction is notorious in the lore for acting almost exclusively through robotic proxies. I'd much rather we fought far fewer Corpus units, while making each unit tougher, more complex, almost puzzle-like in their combination of quirky weapons and gadgets, which could then avoid having to differentiate said weapons when we get our hands on them.

Yes, I know, which is why I said:

On 2019-07-08 at 5:54 PM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Let's say I'm on board under the assumption that we see the previously discussed faction reworks, where Crewmen themselves are less common (treated more as elites) in comparison to their proxies.

Even so, I would prefer to leave a generic rifle in the Corpus arsenal. I don't think every single weapon needs to be differentiated as significantly as you do. I agree that having X+ different generic Tenno rifles is unnecessary, but I don't see a problem with 1 generic Tenno rifle, 1 generic Grineer rifle, 1 generic Corpus rifle, etc. provided that they all have distinguishing traits not shared with the others (e.g., the Corpus version would be battery-powered with a unique elemental combination, whereas the Tenno version would use conventional ammo and benefit from more flexible elemental modding).

Edited July 10, 2019 by DiabolusUrsus

Aldain · July 10, 2019

Here we go again with the insanely long posts that don't actually say much.

Seriously folks, I applaud the effort and work, but tone it down a bit, nobody is going to trawl through all that.

DiabolusUrsus · July 10, 2019

45 minutes ago, Aldain said:

Here we go again with the insanely long posts that don't actually say much.

Seriously folks, I applaud the effort and work, but tone it down a bit, nobody is going to trawl through all that.

I mean, I don't think either of us are writing those posts to entertain an extending audience, but okay.

Teridax68 · July 10, 2019

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Because I want to retain them, as I covered previously regarding the player being allowed to pick up any fundamentally similar weapon and swing it around the same way. I don't agree with each individual weapon having a unique moveset, because going by my own standard for a satisfactory degree of differentiation that would be excessive and needlessly restrictive.

None of this is relevant to why would need a larger repertoire of moves, or why one would want to bend over backwards to retain Melee 2.0, if only temporarily. I get that you want melee weapons of the same grip to move in the same way, but here the question is why you also want to implement more moves and on top of that still retain old stances when trying to eliminate them.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Why?

The Caustacyst is mechanically distinct from other scythes while retaining an identical underlying moveset. As I said at the beginning of this discussion, I would prefer to broadly differentiate weapon types by grip-based moveset and narrowly differentiate individual weapons within each type via unique mechanics.

The Caustacyst's mechanic is ultimately tacked on and would be better-served with a dedicated move. My point is that when your moves are all identical, your pool of "unique mechanics" will be severely reduced, because they'll all have to fit specific actions that may not accommodate all potential moves.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

For example, Scoliac might pull targets toward the player and Atterax might have a noticeably slower travel speed for the whip head while hitting targets repeatedly while in contact. Would that not make those weapons play differently, even given the same attack animations?

But that difference as you mentioned it is too slight. I'm not talking about slightly altering travel speeds or adding in an AoE pull, I brought up the example of pulling in a single enemy with a whip versus using that same attack on another whip to hit a crowd of enemies at once. Those two moves are fundamentally opposed in their motion, yet would both make sense on the same grip type, which under your system means you're either going to have to cut one out because it wouldn't be compatible with the moveset, or try to shoehorn that mechanic via some awkward on-hit effect that wouldn't reflect the move being executed. There are many more examples, by the way, and this is without even beginning to mention how exclusively defining weapons by grip type has currently led to grip types that are excessively specific (e.g. staves versus polearms, machetes versus swords, or fists versus sparring weapons), while also not easily accommodating future additions that may not fit the mold (e.g. katars, crescent blades, flails, throwable spears, any sort of improvised melee weapon, etc.)

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Which stems entirely from your different standard for what qualifies as adequate diversity.

If you take out the Buzlok's tracking dart, it absolutely feels samey relative to every other projectile AR. If you take out Corinth's airburst grenade, it absolutely feels samey relative to the Strun/Wraith due to its semi-automatic shell-by-shell reload nature. If you take out Pandero's burst-unload alt-fire, it absolutely feels samey relative to other semi-automatic pistols. But then, that's the whole point of adding those individual mechanics in the first place - to differentiate them from otherwise similar weapons - and precisely why I agreed with weapon-specific gimmicks in the first place.

... but that is precisely my point. Those alt-fires are what help differentiate those weapons, and if every weapon in the same category had the same alt-fire, with only tacked-on effects to differentiate them, then you'd go back to feeling samey, hence why giving all weapons of the same grip type the literal same moveset risks running into problems of homogeneity. Again, I don't think this is just my "different standard for what qualifies as adequate diversity", rather, you are setting a different standard for diversity of melee weapons relative to guns, which is understandable given that the game's implementation of melee has lowered our expectations in that respect.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

True, but I don't think there's a whole lot more that would need to be done. Aside from disagreeing with specific combos/inputs as outlined in the OP and having my own preferences regarding the specifics of tweaking channeling, the combo meter, and related mods... I'm largely happy with the scope and intent of Melee 3.0 as it stands.

Fair enough. I disagree, for reasons mentioned in the rest of the post, but if that's the intended scope of your changes, that's fine.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yeah, no. I've been rather explicit and consistent about that matter throughout this discussion.

Your quote has no relevance to the sentence you are responding to. This:

On 2019-07-04 at 4:36 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

DE making previously exclusive weapons generally available is guaranteed to be seen overall as a benevolent change (the very nature of exclusivity means that players whose time was "wasted" are in the minority) and it's not like the event weapon is taken away from players who already had it. The only thing that is truly "lost" is the exclusivity, and players who care enough about the associated prestige to complain aren't often looked upon sympathetically by their peers.

Arbitrarily removing polarities from entire - often expansive - arsenals, on the other hand, would be seen as entirely unprovoked and self-evidently malignant.

And this:

On 2019-07-06 at 1:01 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Because removing polarities from weapons has nothing to do with improving the melee system, and is in no way needed to accomplish said goal. It would be senseless destruction of progress that doesn't even contribute directly to the intended changes.

I don't have any precedent for that, because DE wiping player progress for no apparent reason is - thankfully - unprecedented. I should think that community response to such an incident would be glaringly obvious, though.

Gets much closer to it, with you implying my proposal would be too controversial to be worth consideration, and outright calling it evil. You don't get to challenge me on the letter of what I've said or accuse me of "unnecessary jabs" when my criticism is in fact supported by what you've said, and when your own wording on the matter has been unnecessarily snide for quite some time.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

The entirety of my disagreement with your skin-conversion idea was originally and continues to be exceedingly simple:

I didn't understand why you needed to do it in the first place, because it wasn't clear to me you were still working in the context of each weapon having a completely unique moveset.

This would be a valid excuse if I hadn't continually justified myself on the matter, as early as here:

On 2019-06-28 at 12:01 PM, Teridax68 said:

I guess just pick the most basic version of each grip type, e.g. the Bo for staves or Skana for swords. If those can be made into a good enough proof of concept, then the rest can differentiate themselves with more interesting mechanics.

Relying upon a feigned lack of understanding of what I was trying to propose only came in much later in discussion, and moreover, my initial proposal was not exclusive to my own model, as even under your system, I still believe it would be better to table the overhauling of generic weapons to a later date to make for clean re-releases, rather than slap on a new generic moveset and have players forget about all but the most statistically powerful versions.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I believe players would respond negatively to the loss of multiple polarities across the majority of their owned melee weapons especially because the wipe seemed entirely pointless... and so I suggested a way to side-step that expected backlash.

Based on no evidence but your own personal take that itself is founded upon your own hypothetical set of change, and contradicted by existing evidence, which is likely why the muddle in discussion happened in the first place. Not every player has an idea for a melee rework they're constantly comparing to changes to the game, but we do have a history of how players respond to the game's changes, which does not lend credence to your conjecture here. You are obviously allowed to express concern, but framing it as this categorical prediction when you outright admitted having no leg to stand on isn't really arguing in good faith.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Because a change that was both seemingly pointless and controversial made even less sense to me than a simply pointless one.

But again, that was simply not your approach, as your main argument was that players would revolt against a perceived loss in investment. Arguing that there would be backlash to a change, and arguing that said change would bring no benefit are two entirely separate arguments. I also find it difficult to believe how your understanding would have completely failed to change over the course of our exchange when I provided explanation and justification multiple times on request.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I'm sorry; I had asked you rather explicitly before and not gotten a satisfactory answer:

Except I did provide an answer to that exact question:

On 2019-07-08 at 1:08 PM, Teridax68 said:

So first off, it's worth pointing out that the assumption of wiping polarities comes from you, not me: there are ways to do what I propose without such a loss, such as by just remembering which polarities are attached to which skin (however, I still don't think the loss is so serious when players seem fine with repolarizing reworked weapons or frames). Moreover, as stated several times already, "just rework it" takes work, and would be a massive undertaking when attempting to rework the entirety of melee weapons. My proposal ultimately aims to reduce the system down to its simplest, most solid framework and build up, rather than go through a much more onerous process of transitioning over a hundred melee weapons simultaneously. This is also, of course, presuming one is to keep polarities, when we both seem to want to change or do away with them.

Point being, you have been repeatedly abusing the fact that we are discussing paper concepts on an internet to obfuscate the implementational difficulties of as conceptually simple a notion as "just rework it", and in this particular case I would not go for your solution because it would be more work overall than what I'm proposing for less benefit. Repeatedly asking for justification on the same matter, all while rejecting the answers given out of feigned misunderstanding or dissatisfaction (itself with no justification given), is sealioning pure and simple.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I fully understood that you intended to convert weapons into skins and then re-implement them one-by-one, but because I was thinking in terms of my own envisioned rework at the start of that topic I didn't see any need to reduce initial overhead - any overhead related to my proposed changes would be fairly minimal and easy to manage. Thus, for lack of a clear answer I continued attempting to explore the subject up until I stumbled onto the root cause (tangling up the details of our individual reworks).

But again, even in the context of your own rework, your proposal does not address one of the core issues of melee, which is that melee weapons are largely generic, and that simply making them good later on runs the risk of players ignoring them. Keeping their polarities also means you will still be constrained to a melee mod system that is itself heavily flawed. If that's beyond the scope of your proposed changes, that's fine, but then your solution isn't going to comprehensively fix melee in Warframe.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

No, I have been debating you on whether or not that backlash would occur. I don't find your counter-examples plausible for reasons I have detailed extensively.

No, you haven't detailed anything extensively, you've just introduced false and irrelevant distinctions in all the examples I've brought up to reframe them as exceptions to some unspoken rule, without ever providing even a single instance of the backlash you claim would happen. Your entire rejection of the many, many examples I have given boils down to nothing but repeated special pleading and arguing from your own unsubstantiated opinion. It should not even be up to me to prove that backlash wouldn't happen when you have outright admitted you had no evidence to support your proposal that it would happen, so really, why you would even continue to debate me on this topic after the fact is beyond me.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Literally, where did I do that?

I remember saying this with regards to your suggestion of stripping vertical progression out of the game:

But nothing to that effect with regards to your skins proposal. My question has consistently been: given the choice between pissing players off and taking steps to placate them without inhibiting your goals, why would you choose the former?

Again, see the above quotes I listed where you frame my proposal as so harmful, malignant even, that its implementation would never pass by DE. A recurring problem with the discussion we've been having is that, because you're relying so heavily on assumptions you've made that are not universally shared or justified, your questions and claims are frequently loaded, such as in this case (one needs to assume that the choices you listed are indeed the only two choices at hand, and map onto exactly two of the proposals made thus far).

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

But that doesn't even make any sense.

Players level new weapons in high-level missions anyway.

How interesting, I had no idea missions like Arbitrations, ESO, Eidolon and Orb Mother hunts were the go-to for leveling unranked weapons, as opposed to, I don't know, Hydron, or simply carrying weapons around when running fissures, Nightwave, and so on. My mistake! /s

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Many players level melee through stealth, which would not showcase the new movesets.

Except it would, because finishers would be gone, regular attacks would be different, and certain unique heavy attacks would lend themselves well to stealth (e.g. that whip grab move, or some AoE attack that could stealth-kill tightly-grouped enemies at once). What basis do you have to claim otherwise?

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Players who don't level melee through stealth often go to places like Hydron, where they may not even use the weapon and instead rely on shared affinity.

If a player levels the entirety of the melee weapon roster without ever using said weapons, that's on them. This is also ignoring how taking out weapons and keeping to just one will make that weapon gain more Affinity, so if the goal is purely to level melee weapons, you'd still be better off stripping down to melee and completing Hydron in fewer rotations, which would also practically force the player to engage with the new melee system.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Again, how does refunding time discourage players from actually playing with those weapons? It stands to reason that if the player is going to bother reapplying polarities - whether required to level the weapon each time or not - they intend to play with it.

Because those polarities weren't applied on every polarized melee weapon at once. It is common for players to polarize a weapon at one point in time because it's strong or because they like it, only to abandon said weapon with the advent of one with bigger stats, or that just looks better. Many weapons have fallen to the wayside over time, and having players take the time to repolarize them would be a good opportunity to get them to reengage with the toys they've discarded.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

If the player is at risk of simply ignoring reworked weapons, giving them an extended list of busywork to get back to where they were isn't going to get them to change their mind. Rather, it will make the decision to bin the weapon altogether that much easier.

... how does this make any sense? Not making players engage with content is likely to keep that content out of sight and out of mind, whereas giving them a nudge to give those weapons a try would have them rediscover and enjoy a weapon they'd have otherwise continued to ignore if they had no incentive to try it out post-rework. Since when does having players engage with a feature automatically make that feature undesirable? Most of these points you listed feel like a bit of a reach.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yes, because at the time I saw it as a necessary evil for lack of alternatives. I didn't see any ways around the related backlash, so I saw it as inevitable.

But, as had been pointed out in the latter half of the point that you cut in half, the solution proposed was so obvious and easy to consider that it would be rather dubious for someone of your creativity to fail to think of it, particularly as the suggestion is by no means original. You visibly did not care about alternatives to begin with, and are doing a poor job of disguising it here.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

That "discrepancy" should neatly underscore your fundamental misunderstanding of my perspective on the issue. I am not against incurring backlash for the sake of improving the game. I'll readily say as much when it comes to the subject of things like nerfs, where perceived loss is needed to improve game balance. However, if there are ways to sweeten the deal without undermining the intent of the relevant changes I think they should at the very least be considered and in most cases implemented.

... which I proposed for your suggestion, while defending my own choices with reasons clearly listed, all of which were more substantive than "dunno, don't care". There is no misunderstanding here, you are simply accusing me of such because I've failed to share your self-professed ignorance of justifications I've laid out, and of glaringly obvious solutions to a problem you were in no hurry to solve. No matter what spin you put on this, it is visible from the discussion we've had that you've devoted significantly more effort towards poking holes at how my proposal would handle backlash you have failed to justify, than you have towards addressing the problem of backlash in your own proposal that does, in fact, have notable precedents. You had significantly more reason than I to make sure your changes wouldn't generate pointless backlash, yet you clearly did not apply the same standards of scrutiny for yourself as you did for me, simple as that.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

First, it's important to note that you're excising some key words from my statement:

In other words, I appreciate having a core pre-existing set of universal mods available to apply to each new weapon and I wouldn't want to need to hunt down additional mods to support new weapons. For example, I delayed trying out Sarpa for a very long time due to not having its custom Bullet Dance stance. That delay would only have been made worse if I needed to also collect other custom mods for its simpler attributes.

Okay, so first off, your claim was that I would be replacing these stat mods with Nightwave-like mods, all of which have much more unique mechanics, so you are the one misrepresenting my point, not the other way round. Second, I did make the point that weapons should come with at least one or a couple of mods readily usable so that you wouldn't have to wait until you found another specific mod to be able to use your weapon at full power (which is the case when you're missing a stance mod). This is implicit to a larger goal of establishing an environment that minimizes vertical increases in power. If you need universally-applicable generic stat mods just so that you can bend any weapon out of shape enough to play in the one manner you prefer, then the weapons you are modifying are not going to be innately pleasant to you anyway, and you may as well pick the ones that do in fact play the way you want.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

With that in mind, this point initially became relevant here:

You can't make shared stats less accessible to one class of weapons over another unless you remove or alter mods shared between classes if you ALSO reject that variations in base stats could be sufficient.

But I do reject that variations in base stats could be sufficient, is the point, as noted with the example of attack speed. Also, altering mods between weapon classes in the style of Speed Trigger is already not taking mods out of weapon pools, so really, you are establishing a false dichotomy here that is based on way too much extrapolation, that is itself contradicted by the very argument you gave.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

You further expanded upon this by suggesting stat mods tailored specifically for daggers and separate mods tailored for heavy blades, and framed having more mods to collect as a benefit. As stated above, I disagree with that perspective.

Yes, by trying to solutionize every single one of my examples given and turning them into entirely different mods that would fit your system, all while arguing on your own personal distaste of weapon-specific mods, despite you subsequently backtracking and claiming that "there is space and benefit from weapon-unique mods like those acquired from Nightwave". The fact that the examples I gave listed specific mechanics, e.g. armor reduction or conditional bonus damage, and not just generic stats, renders this particular claim even less comprehensible.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

You later went on to say this:

As I responded to this quote originally, I see mods as meant to fine-tune our weapons. Therefore, I interpreted your conditional suggestion as continuing to apply... and again, disagreed with it.

Fine-tuning a weapon does not equate to changing literally all of that weapon's stats, or changing them by the exact same amount each time (in fact, fine-tuning implies that whichever stat mod exists would alter each weapon's stats in a manner more adapted to that particular weapon). Your wording of the matter here is nebulous and heavily conditional upon your own personal interpretation of terms used, which I think detracts from the point. In the end, I want mods to be bespoke to weapons, regardless of whether they alter generic stats or introduce more complex mechanics, because that lets them be tuned to a much finer degree than if every melee weapon had access to the exact same mod pool that would all affect them in the exact same way. There is a fundamental contradiction between wanting to fine-tune weapons, and holding a vastly different array of weapons purely to a set of one-size-fits all customization options.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

But again, this is rooted in a differing standard for what is acceptable diversity:

Given that Corpus weapons would offer elemental combinations not normally achievable through mods (e.g., Rad + Heat) and those individual elements would be made mechanically diverse, I would be glad to have a generic rifle in the Corpus arsenal.

Okay, so first off this is flat-out wrong, as can be proven by just slapping Heated Charge onto an unmodded Nukor (you get Rad + Heat). Also, why Corpus specifically when a Grineer weapon like the Atomos or Nukor would do the same? Those weapons, by the way, go directly against the damage type separation you established, as their damage is purely elemental and would make no sense to be physical. Your system is restrictive, doesn't apply cleanly to the existing arsenal, and appears to be based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how modding for elemental damage works. Even if you were right, I don't think mixing and matching elements in niche combinations that can't be achieved through mods is really adequate enough justification in itself for the large consequences it would have, nor do I think that really creates a truly deep faction-based distinction when elemental effects are limited in numbers and fairly coarse-grained.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I'm not discounting the multitude of other Corpus weapons; I see no problem with them sharing the same elemental distinction because by my standards Arca Plasmor, Flux Rifle, Lanka, etc. are adequately diverse already. When it comes to roughly interchangeable weapons (e.g., Dera vs. Tetra) I'm not saying that both of them have to stay the same. Whether Dera or Tetra is kept as a generic rifle doesn't really matter to me, but I would like to keep a generic plasma rifle available.

... but why?

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

True, so it should be plainly obvious that I am dissatisfied with the combat status quo and existing faction design and want to change them.

Then why use the status quo as an argument against more complex Corpus weapons?

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Why? The AI would not be equipped to fully exploit the individual/combined elemental effects any moreso than they currently do, whereas Crewmen filling the air with clouds of expanding bullets or gaining stacking damage from successive hits would likely change things quite radically.

But I'm not talking about AI here, I'm pointing out that if Corpus weapons distinguish themselves by each applying a bevy of elemental effects, having Corpus units in their current high numbers pile all of them onto us, two elemental effects at a time per unit, is going to be a clusterf*ck, in pretty much the same way as if their weapons had other unique mechanics for us to bear in mind.

4 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I would prefer to leave a generic rifle in the Corpus arsenal. I don't think every single weapon needs to be differentiated as significantly as you do. I agree that having X+ different generic Tenno rifles is unnecessary, but I don't see a problem with 1 generic Tenno rifle, 1 generic Grineer rifle, 1 generic Corpus rifle, etc. provided that they all have distinguishing traits not shared with the others (e.g., the Corpus version would be battery-powered with a unique elemental combination, whereas the Tenno version would use conventional ammo and benefit from more flexible elemental modding).

I don't think every weapon needs to by hyper-complex and unconventional, I'm just pointing out that the Corpus are the faction least suited towards generic weapons, as their entire theme is geeky gadgets and loopy schemes in the name of profit. I don't think there is actually that much difference between a "generic Grineer rifle" and a "generic Corpus rifle" when the difference boils down to some relatively inconsequential mechanic like ammo recharge, either, nor is elemental modding really that compelling an argument when a) you apparently want elemental mods to remain universal anyway (so all weapons would be equally flexible, unless you're making all Tenno weapons status-based or the like), and b) that just diminishes the distinction brought about by elemental-centric weapons. I don't think the Corpus, Grineer, Infested, etc. aesthetic is really adequately captured by just arbitrary damage type allocations or ammo recharge mechanics, and I think there's more that could be done to bring each weapon in line with the faction they come from, particularly since we have so many good examples already (e.g. the Lenz, the Grakata, the Dual Toxocyst, etc.).

Aldain · July 10, 2019

10 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I mean, I don't think either of us are writing those posts to entertain an extending audience, but okay.

Its not about that, I mean this is supposed to be a feedback section and this thread (I think?) is supposed to be feedback on the coming standard for Melee.

Assuming somebody from DE were to come to this thread (which is a long shot I'm well aware) they will have an enormous amount of alphabet soup to sift through to see the details contained within.

All I'm saying is that it is often better to keep feedback, and even debates regarding feedback more on the concise and focused side for the sake of any readers.

DiabolusUrsus · July 10, 2019

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Your quote has no relevance to the sentence you are responding to. This:

And this:

Gets much closer to it, with you implying my proposal would be too controversial to be worth consideration, and outright calling it evil.

Ah, so now you're shifting course from "you gave me an ultimatum" to "you gave me an implied ultimatum," while the quotes I originally gave you are entirely relevant because their contents should have made it explicitly clear that your inferred meaning was incorrect.

If you actually process the content of what I originally wrote:

Arbitrarily removing polarities from entire - often expansive - arsenals, on the other hand, would be seen as entirely unprovoked and self-evidently malignant.

You'll see that I never said that your proposal would be too controversial to be viable, nor did I call it evil. My point was that the purpose of your proposed change was (at the time, due to the main misunderstanding between us) so arcane as to appear purposeless.

If you take things away from players without compensating them and they don't understand WHY you took them away, they are going to see that action as malignant regardless of whether or not it actually is.

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Relying upon a feigned lack of understanding

Yes, my confusion regarding your intent was merely a facade for clinging to a lost point despite my demonstrated willingness to concede points multiple times in this very discussion, and the post I dedicated to clearing that misunderstanding as soon as it clicked was an obfuscating lie.

Without doubt, I am merely ignoring your proposed solutions until my own position becomes untenable and not failing to understand them the first time around.

Clearly, I am deliberately misleading you by freely revising my positions on particular issues rather than seemingly contradictory changes originating from your own misunderstanding of my responses.

If your suspicion of my character and insertion of nonexistent subtext into my statements is going to continue tainting any efforts I make to communicate, that's simply not worth the time and effort I have to put into this. I'm done.

4 hours ago, Aldain said:

Its not about that, I mean this is supposed to be a feedback section and this thread (I think?) is supposed to be feedback on the coming standard for Melee.

Assuming somebody from DE were to come to this thread (which is a long shot I'm well aware) they will have an enormous amount of alphabet soup to sift through to see the details contained within.

All I'm saying is that it is often better to keep feedback, and even debates regarding feedback more on the concise and focused side for the sake of any readers.

Ah, that makes sense; thanks for clarifying. Bit of a moot point now, but I'll keep that in mind moving forward.

Teridax68 · July 10, 2019

2 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Ah, so now you're shifting course from "you gave me an ultimatum" to "you gave me an implied ultimatum,"

Implied or not, an ultimatum is still an ultimatum, and is still not a good thing to set in what should otherwise be a civil exchange of design ideas. It is you who are attempting to shift the goalposts here by trying to tell me that it's okay for you to have devolved the conversation into unjustified hyperbole and erased any possibility of compromise, simply because you did not literally tell me it was your express intention to set an ultimatum.

Quote

while the quotes I originally gave you are entirely relevant because their contents should have made it explicitly clear that your inferred meaning was incorrect.

How? My "inferred meaning" was that you were massively exaggerating a conjectural problem of player backlash against my proposal simply because I did not see a need for your own proposed "fix" of special Forma. Pulling a quote talking about how you have issues with turning some, but not all weapons into skins, therefore has no relevance to the subject, nor does it in any way invalidate the quotes I myself pulled that were in fact salient.

Quote

If you actually process the content of what I originally wrote:

Arbitrarily removing polarities from entire - often expansive - arsenals, on the other hand, would be seen as entirely unprovoked and self-evidently malignant.

You'll see that I never said that your proposal would be too controversial to be viable, nor did I call it evil. My point was that the purpose of your proposed change was (at the time, due to the main misunderstanding between us) so arcane as to appear purposeless.

If you take things away from players without compensating them and they don't understand WHY you took them away, they are going to see that action as malignant regardless of whether or not it actually is.

Except the only person here not understanding why is you, even after I gave abundant justification on the matter. You have been arguing entirely from your personal opinion, without being able to point to even a single external example, which makes it equally clear that the one person seeing my changes as "malignant" (definition: harmful, malevolent, injurious; therefore synonymous with evil) is you. This is further evidenced when you doubled down on the matter:

On 2019-07-06 at 1:01 AM, DiabolusUrsus said:

Because removing polarities from weapons has nothing to do with improving the melee system, and is in no way needed to accomplish said goal. It would be senseless destruction of progress that doesn't even contribute directly to the intended changes.

I don't have any precedent for that, because DE wiping player progress for no apparent reason is - thankfully - unprecedented. I should think that community response to such an incident would be glaringly obvious, though.

This is you, using your own words to tell me why you think my proposal would be "senseless destruction of progress", adding that it "doesn't even contribute directly to the intended changes", which makes sense in the context of the design conversation we're having, but not in the larger context of releasing a game-wide update to the general public. You're not speaking for the general playerbase, you're using the playerbase as a vehicle for your own opinions regarding my suggestions, and so by your own admission without any basis in fact.

Quote

Yes, my confusion regarding your intent was merely a facade for clinging to a lost point despite my demonstrated willingness to concede points multiple times in this very discussion, and the post I dedicated to clearing that misunderstanding as soon as it clicked was an obfuscating lie.

Without doubt, I am merely ignoring your proposed solutions until my own position becomes untenable and not failing to understand them the first time around.

Clearly, I am deliberately misleading you by freely revising my positions on particular issues rather than seemingly contradictory changes originating from your own misunderstanding of my responses.

Except even after "clarification", you have insisted on playing this little game of he-said she-said where you claimed to have somehow missed all of the points I had clearly laid out, multiple times over, which you had directly replied to, so something isn't clicking here. Your post you claim that aimed to "clearing that misunderstanding" was full of untruths, and as I pointed out in my response to it, reframed a lot of our discussion by inventing an entirely different narrative, one where I apparently never justified myself on the one detail of my suggestion you decided to focus on, and left you in the dark across all of these replies (or worse yet, confused you by referring exclusively to my own system, something I never said or did). The fact that you conceded obvious points such as mod drains on melee weapons (while still categorically denying a rather obvious double standard on your part) does nothing to help the fact that you stubbornly decided to latch onto a secondary detail of my proposal and repeat the same argument over and over again in an attempt to pick the entire suggestion apart, long after I had addressed said argument. You have visibly been arguing in bad faith, and so patently as a result of me not conceding to you when you really wanted me to.

Quote

If your suspicion of my character and insertion of nonexistent subtext into my statements is going to continue tainting any efforts I make to communicate, that's simply not worth the time and effort I have to put into this. I'm done.

Except we're talking text, not subtext: you have picked up the habit of arguing on the letter, rather than the nature of what I have said, and attempted to play gotcha with me by claiming that you did not use the literal exact words I used in reference to your posts (e.g. malignant vs. evil), or that you get to somehow absolve yourself of your opinions by hiding behind the pretense of speaking for the collective playerbase. You are arguing dishonestly, and have strayed completely off-topic in having it revolve entirely around yourself and your prior statements (which I have shown to be able to pull easily as needed, so I don't quite understand the attempts at historical revisionism here). In the end, your character is irrelevant to the discussion, but so long as you continue to use underhanded and counterproductive rhetorical tactics, conversation will not advance. Communication and deception are two different things, and while I have proven myself more than happy to communicate with you and share, discuss, and evolve ideas with you on this very thread, I'm not just going to take your word for it when you tell me my proposal will never work simply because it doesn't work the way you want it to, much less leave demonstrable falsehoods unchallenged out of politeness.

Edited July 10, 2019 by Teridax68

DiabolusUrsus · July 10, 2019

46 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Implied or not, an ultimatum is still an ultimatum, and is still not a good thing to set in what should otherwise be a civil exchange of design ideas.

Which is why, as I just finished telling you, I did not actually set an ultimatum of any sort. That you interpreted what I said as such is your own mistake, not mine.

46 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

How? My "inferred meaning" was that you were massively exaggerating a conjectural problem of player backlash against my proposal simply because I did not see a need for your own proposed "fix" of special Forma.

No, your "inferred meaning" was that my response was an ultimatum, which dramatically and inaccurately colored your interpretation of all the subsequent points I made on the subject. Yes, the discussion got out of control, but you are 100% as culpable as I am in that regard.

46 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

attempted to play gotcha with me by claiming that you did not use the literal exact words I used in reference to your posts (e.g. malignant vs. evil)

This quip perfectly illustrates exactly how poorly you are understanding what I say. I was not arguing that your reading was incorrect because I used "malignant" and not "evil." I am well aware and will readily admit that the two are synonyms. However, what I actually pointed out was that the grammar structure of my sentence clearly sets the noun modified by evil/malignant as the perception of your idea, not the idea itself.

I understand that you don't believe my assessment of said perception is accurate, but I never issued you an ultimatum - expressed or implied - no matter how you try to spin it. If you see my """ultimatum""" as the origin point for where this discussion stopped being civil, you should perhaps consider that my intentions and arguments were never as nefarious as you're assuming they are... your disagreement with them notwithstanding.

Teridax68 · July 10, 2019

12 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Which is why, as I just finished telling you, I did not actually set an ultimatum of any sort. That you interpreted what I said as such is your own mistake, not mine.

Even if it was not your intention, you had nonetheless framed the discussion as such: either my proposal would have to take in your suggested adjustment, or there would be player backlash of a magnitude DE wouldn't consider risking. Putting aside your quibbles on whether or not you literally gave me an ultimatum, the fact remains that your insistence upon such a backlash has been as shrill and hyperbolic as it is completely unsupported by any evidence.

12 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

No, your "inferred meaning" was that my response was an ultimatum, which dramatically and inaccurately colored your interpretation of all the subsequent points I made on the subject. Yes, the discussion got out of control, but you are 100% as culpable as I am in that regard.

But then how did your own quote disprove my "inferred meaning"? I guess I could have done some of the discussion better, but the fact remains that our conversation spiraled out of control specifically because you insisted upon elaborating at length upon how my proposal without your suggestion would undeniably, categorically generate backlash, against all evidence to the contrary. The fact that this one aspect of my proposal ended up dominating discussion, when it was only a secondary feature of the larger plan I was suggesting, can only be attributed to you, as I certainly was not as keen to go over it in such painstaking detail as you were.

12 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

This quip perfectly illustrates exactly how poorly you are understanding what I say. I was not arguing that your reading was incorrect because I used "malignant" and not "evil." I am well aware and will readily admit that the two are synonyms. However, what I actually pointed out was that the grammar structure of my sentence clearly sets the noun modified by evil/malignant as the perception of your idea, not the idea itself.

... which, as I pointed out farther above in my post (which you should thus have read at that point), is itself disingenuous, as you have clearly been hiding behind the conjectural perception of the playerbase as a vehicle for your own opinion. Moreover, you called the same proposal "senseless destruction of progress" without even bothering to take the extra step of hiding it behind the pretense of perception, so your opinion of the idea itself is abundantly clear. Once again, you are attempting to argue on the letter of the argument, and not its substance, proving the very point you attempted to refute.

12 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I understand that you don't believe my assessment of said perception is accurate, but I never issued you an ultimatum - expressed or implied - no matter how you try to spin it. If you see my """ultimatum""" as the origin point for where this discussion stopped being civil, you should perhaps consider that my intentions and arguments were never as nefarious as you're assuming they are... your disagreement with them notwithstanding.

I may not be able to peer into your mind and divine your true intentions, but I can certainly look at the facts, and the fact remains that you chose to reorient discussion almost entirely around this one sub-topic: look back at your posts, and at how the amount of text you dedicated to the argument increased exponentially, going from one small sub-paragraph to six dedicated paragraphs, to then taking up more than half your post, to then consistently taking up the majority of your post in spite of substantial increases in volume of text. Look at how you went from expressing mild disagreement with my approach (an approach you acknowledged within the context of my own system, e.g. with references to distancing oneself from Melee 1.0. with unique moves per weapon, so you outright lied in your claim to having misinterpreted me), to insisting that there would be unprecedentedly massive player backlash to that same approach. I'm not spinning anything, I'm referring directly to things that have actually happened. It is you who are trying to put a spin on events, by inexplicably trying to rewrite history in a conversation that has a paper trail from start to finish. I don't think you did any of this with harmful intent per se, but I do think you got carried away with how forceful you were on the matter, and did a very poor job of backpedalling later on.

SnowWarFr · July 11, 2019

Can we get a combo rework?

The New Melee Bindings are as Bad as I Expected

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