Auto Block MUST DIE

[MJ12]

On 2019-08-10 at 8:01 AM, marelooke said:

That It interrupts whatever else you are trying to do.

I am pretty sure that autoblock only interrupts "Whatever else you are trying to do" if it triggers on a stagger/knockdown, at which point you would have been interrupted anyways.

I might be wrong, but my anecdotal experience is that the only thing autoblock does is make it so that as long as you're holding a melee weapon and not attacking you take less damage from anyone in front of you.

[TaylorsContraction]

On 2019-08-11 at 9:51 AM, Birdframe_Prime said:

Don't ask me, it's literally their own words from the Workshop threads and DevStreams.

block combos are some of the best for many weapons.  problem is everyone was just spamming slide attacks,  by far the most powerful aoe brain dead easy mode attack in the game.  no one was using melee for combos,  just the spin attack.  i guarantee if you look at ratio of kills via slide stack versus all other melee attacks,  it would be something along the lines of 1 million to 1.

[Awazx]

I love the automatic locking system as it is. I don't see any significant problem with him.

However, the solution is simple: add an option to the "OPTIONS" menu:

-Automatic lock: YES / NO.

You are welcome.

[svegurok]

I don't understand why Aiming/Blocking takes out your weapon. Before you were able to Aimglide/Blockglide depending on what weapon you were holding. I just don't understand why they removed switch function. now we have way less control than before.

[Birdframe_Prime]

8 hours ago, TaylorsContraction said:

block combos are some of the best for many weapons.  problem is everyone was just spamming slide attacks,  by far the most powerful aoe brain dead easy mode attack in the game.  no one was using melee for combos,  just the spin attack.  i guarantee if you look at ratio of kills via slide stack versus all other melee attacks,  it would be something along the lines of 1 million to 1.

Okay, let's clear this up, because everyone and their dog has gotten at me for simply reporting why blocking was removed according to the people that removed it.

What DE said was, and I'm paraphrasing, that what they wanted to do was integrate the melee combat more and rework it entirely in the process.

So, one of the key things they pointed out to solve was that, firstly, the majority of people genuinely only used the melee functions that were available in quick-melee. Secondly, that slide attack spam existed, and thirdly that even among people that used melee mode for all its combos the usage of block was criminally low, lower still was channelling, and by result that channel blocking (which is so obscure players haven't even included it on the Wiki, it increased the damage reduction of blocking and added reflect to it) was used by such a small percentage that DE actually laughed about it.

The fix is far more than just the things we've seen so far, well, there are a few things we've seen so far that indicate the direction we're going, and the rest they put into threads and DevStreams.

Their first step was to stop the one thing they pointed out was actually getting to the point it was considered an exploit in long-run survival; the melee through walls function. A player could find a place, like a corner next to a door, where the AI could not accurately path to them until they hit line-of-sight and then melee through the wall with some form of protection to stop the enemy spawning behind them or flanking them. The basic melee scaling would mean that they could maintain this function for hours. So, gone was the melee through scenery. Only Excal's EB can create attacks that do that now, and it can't scale up off those so it runs out of steam faster.

The next step was the fast switching to actual melee mode instead of a quick-melee function, so that now people instantly have access to combos they would ignore due to them previously having to manually switch over. Now your quick melee is the combo that you'd want, in theory.

The next? Hasn't properly come out yet. It's the removal of having to use the block, pause or random direction buttons in your combos. All melee stances will mimic the Wukong Iron Staff style, with a combo for moving while hitting trash mobs, a combo for taking on heavy targets, an aimed gap-closer combo and an aimed AoE attack combo.

After that, they'll be removing the channelling function completely and they even want to remove the current format of the scaling combo counter. The idea instead being that you build up the combo counter faster, and then use it as a resource (like the Devil Trigger from the games we all know) in order to produce better effects than channelling ever did. At the same time, to compensate for the scaling factor of the combo counter, they want to adjust the base stats of melee across the board (as they did with the Primary, Secondary and Beam weapons before) in order to make their range, their supplemental stats and so on actually viable at more levels, and function better with this proposed new melee boosting mode.

And this isn't even touching on the new functions that will be Heavy Attacks, Melee Rolls and soft-lock-on functions to improve melee even further. So Heavy Attacks will be the improved version of Charge Attacks, where they will be slower, but instantly triggered attacks that you can work into any combo or perform separately, they will have additional modding options (we saw an example of a Reach mod that instead of simply increasing your range, it granted Heavy Attacks greater Punch Through to allow those to hit enemies behind cover. These would be complimented by the soft-lock-on function which players can turn on or off, so that if they're in melee mode then melee doesn't fling them past their opponents and causes them to circle them when in range, so all combos function as fully as possible, and so that if you Dodge, it actually only does a half-duration quick-roll that is capable of interrupting combos and Heavy Attacks to prevent us taking damage because we pressed too many buttons.

There aren't half-measures in this, there's a full rework that they've cited, and because of how big it is, they've only begun to do the stages so far. That's why this state we're in is not Melee 3.0, it's still 2.9 as Steve said.

This overall plan is why manual blocking has been removed so far; because the plans for melee are bigger than just 'oh, nobody used that part, let's get rid of it'.

So can everyone please stop quoting my comment with what they think are 'gotcha' comments, because I'm not expressing an opinion, I'm reporting the stated reasons.

[ZarTham]

Have my support, auto-block is a pain the a**, and like many others said, a simple option toggle for quick melee is WELCOME.

Can you DE? Please? Add an option to toggle quick melee on/off? 

[ReshyShira]

On 2019-08-10 at 10:26 AM, AreeSoothsayer said:

I've been patient.

I've been polite, if a bit whiny.

No more.

 

For the past months I have had to use the Zenistar simply because it works without autoblock #*!%ing it up.

Jump smash? *bang* Nope you're aimgliding because one grineer shot at you.

Combo that will wreck an entire line of enemies.. *DENIED* as it's canceled by incoming fire.

Taking aim for a headshot for nightwave... *nope* guy you weren't aiming for shot at you and your melee comes out sometimes to block it.

Just make the main fire button switch to gun out. The Aim/Block button should work like it used to. So I block when I want to, and can even pull off the combos attached to that button.

 

don't get me wrong, the switching back and forth is a good thing.... IF it had been attached to the gun fire button and not the Block/Aim button.

They just need to make it so you aren't stuck in an animation when it activates.

[Teridax68]

15 hours ago, MJ12 said:

Melee in Warframe seems to be intended to be a fully viable alternative to gunplay, rather than a 'backup' weapon. This isn't completely true in all aspects (sadly you can't kill Eidolons, Orbs, and several bosses via melee) but that seems to be the intent. Moreover, melee damage output in Warframe is relatively lower than in a lot of games where melee is mostly intended as an emergency close-range backup or humiliation move.

See, I can fully agree with this: I too want melee to be equivalent to gunplay, and so bosses to be made melee-friendly, and baseline melee damage to be raised, even at the cost of our combo counter and its associated mods (which was a promised Melee 3.0 change). I also personally really like blocking on at least a conceptual level, as I think it has the potential to play into the Jedi fantasy of stopping ranged attacks with a melee weapon, and even reflecting shots back at the attacker. In this respect, my stance is very much to keep it, though I still don't think it really satisfies the function of enabling gapclosing on its own: on one hand, we're really fast and have a whole bunch of ways of covering ground without taking too much damage (enemy accuracy is dependent on our movement, so moving fast means taking less damage than standing still), but on the other, many if not most melee combat situations will have us taking damage from all sides, something directional blocking isn't well-equipped to respond to. This I think is one of the reasons why autoblock isn't popular now, because its benefits don't feel especially tangible, so forcing players to block whether they like it or not was clearly not the winning formula. Beyond that, even if blocking were made manual and much stronger (as it deserves to be, imo), I'd still say it would be more of an alternative to just directly gapclosing or dodging, rather than an enabler to the former.

[svegurok]

@Birdframe_Prime thank you kindly mate i honestly did not know that. I knew some stuff about Melee 3.0, like light/heavy strikes and rework of combo counter, but did not know it would be this vast.