Dev Workshop - Melee Rework Phase 2: TECHNIQUE

[(PSN)Crazy_Mr_J]

Le 18/10/2019 à 19:58, [DE]Bear a dit :

7. Replacing Channeling with Heavy Attacks and the ‘Lifted’ Status

 

Channeling will be saying its final farewells in the Melee Rework: Phase 2 update, and instead is being replaced with a new form of Heavy Attack, as well as a new Lifted status effect. As we said before, Channeling Mods will also be changed to support this new system, as well as providing a larger pool of utility to choose from in your builds.

These are the changes planned:

• Heavy Attacks (Alt-Fire for Melee) - Heavy attacks can now occur at any time, simply by pressing the Alt-fire button while you have melee equipped or in your hand. This costs all of your Combo Counter (affected by Mods), so make sure you lay down the hurt! If you don’t have any Combo Counter active, you will use a Heavy Attack, but it will not benefit from any damage bonus from the Combo Counter. 
• Heavy Slam Attacks (Jump + Alt-Fire for Melee) - This new Slam Attack will create a new effect on targets, known as the LIFTED STATUS. When a target is Lifted, it is held suspended in the air, allowing a player to follow up on attacks while the target is held helplessly aloft. Again, if you do not have any Combo Counter active, this will act as a Heavy Slam attack without a damage bonus, and minimal Lifting Status.

The part in red really affraid me, especially in endless (i know you don't like the word "endless" but some peoples love to do longtime in endless sometimes, and, if we can do more, we can do less)

Why ? because, if you consume ALL of your Combo Counter with ONE Heavy Attack, it's a nonsense to use this Heavy Attacks during long endless i think, and used some mods for compensate this will be a very bad ideas for our builds. When i imagine more combos, it's for being more powerfull and more powerfull against IAs who are more powerfull and more powerfull, and i can't imagine doing the sacrifice of all of my combos for, after that, being less powerfull. That's not really pleasant to imagine, so i think this will be very unpleasant to play

[Xepthrichros]

Two suggestions:

1) Let the reworked slam attack mechanics get some benefit from Warframe altitude.
So, the greater the distance between the Warframe and the targeted spot on the ground, we get greater slam radius, damage, and duration of knocking enemies into the air. 
This may be an indirect buff to frames like Zephyr, Wukong, Titania, so now they can go higher and slam down with greater devastation. Other frames can benefit too, but probably with archwing or operator void dash assistance.

2) Regarding consuming combo counter for heavy attacks - How about letting us stock up on combo counter, and heavy attacks only consume the combo counter partially. So a player will not feel forced to expend their combo counter, and they can instead choose when and where to lay the smack down. For instance, they can use normal attacks to deal with weaker enemies while building up combo counter, raising it to a high number, and then when a bunch of tankier enemies appear at the same time, they can then unleash consecutive heavy attacks to take down these tankier enemies.

[Snoit]

So, autoblock in "gun mode" is gone or not? 

I mean not in "full melee" mode

[SilviaS12]

Just now, Snoit said:

So, autoblock in "gun mode" is gone or not?

Personally I think this should be a toggle. Currently it's still auto block. Not too sure what will happen after the update or if we still will get an update anytime soon as the ETA changed from "this week" to "we're close but not this week"?.

[Snoit]

1 minute ago, SilviaS12 said:

Personally I think this should be a toggle. Currently it's still auto block. Not too sure what will happen after the update or if we still will get an update anytime soon as the ETA changed from "this week" to "we're close but not this week"?.

If it be a toggle it's okay.

[SilviaS12]

Just now, Snoit said:

If it be a toggle it's okay.

If, but I doubt they will.

[Snoit]

3 minutes ago, SilviaS12 said:

If, but I doubt they will.

Please don't kill my optimism. Let's see what happens in the end.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

16 hours ago, Dragazer said:

Can heavy attacks be remapped to the "R" or reload key by default instead? Make more sense to me since we won't be reloading with our melee out anyways. Seems perfect since its right next to "E" key.

I know that right now pressing the reload key with your melee out will switch to your gun and reload, but that feels unnecessary to me when you can just right click to swap and then reload as normal. 

Just adding to this, why not simply bind heavy attacks to hold melee attack, replacing charge attacks? This would free both Reload (maybe for rage mode) and Alt Fire, which maybe could be used to allow manual block within fluid swap mode. 

[Dragazer]

1 hour ago, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

Just adding to this, why not simply bind heavy attacks to hold melee attack, replacing charge attacks? This would free both Reload (maybe for rage mode) and Alt Fire, which maybe could be used to allow manual block within fluid swap mode. 

I'm guessing its to avoid accidentally using a heavy attack since those consume all your combo counter now.

16 hours ago, GreyEnneract said:

I feel like they're saving the "R" key for the "Rage Mode"

Would make sense to have Rage Mode on alt-fire instead since its referred to as "Channeling 2.0". Seems like heavy attacks will be used more frequently, so putting it on alt fire would feel awkward to use.

[GreyEnneract]

21 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

I'm guessing its to avoid accidentally using a heavy attack since those consume all your combo counter now.

Would make sense to have Rage Mode on alt-fire instead since its referred to as "Channeling 2.0". Seems like heavy attacks will be used more frequently, so putting it on alt fire would feel awkward to use.

Looking at the replies here, it sounds more like no one wants to heavy attack.
Also channeling mods are being turned into heavy attack mods, so if anything heavy attacks are what's replacing channeling in their eyes.

[Loza03]

On 2019-10-25 at 3:03 PM, (XB1)Nightseid said:

I was hoping they were able to have block exist within fluid swap.

I did too, but I also heard a lot of suggestions that weren't individually very good. Even my own faced some pushback.

At the end of the day, a compromise is better than no solution, even if it's not the most elegant. I'm just happy there is a solution, honestly.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

4 hours ago, GreyEnneract said:

Looking at the replies here, it sounds more like no one wants to heavy attack.

Well, that would just be disadvantageous for them... From the looks of it, they have pretty insane multipliers (x5 at base, which will could probably be easily turned into at least a x10 or even higher with killing blow, and into even greater multipliers with combo, plus the across the board buff to melee damage compared to the current patch), it adds lifted status and doesn't burn all combo if you add combo efficiency. Imo, it will turn out to be a pretty powerful and engaging system. 

[GreyEnneract]

2 hours ago, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

Well, that would just be disadvantageous for them... From the looks of it, they have pretty insane multipliers (x5 at base, which will could probably be easily turned into at least a x10 or even higher with killing blow, and into even greater multipliers with combo, plus the across the board buff to melee damage compared to the current patch), it adds lifted status and doesn't burn all combo if you add combo efficiency. Imo, it will turn out to be a pretty powerful and engaging system. 

The only reason I'm fine with it is because the combo counter tiers are going to be much easier to build.
However if the base reset timer is still 2 seconds, then it will still be in a sorry state.
Also, I think it's 4x damage at base, but either way the damage potential is large.

[SteveCutler]

I'm very excited for this update, and happy with most of the changes. My only concerns are:

1. Will the new stances let us have full unrestricted movement? It sounds like they're still going to slow us down. I really hope not...
    
2. Why the Condition Overload change? I really don't understand the thinking behind this. I get the impression that you think it's a nerf, but it isn't. It's actually going to be a huge buff in ease of use, that will make it a mandatory mod on every single melee weapon. It will kill off any usefulness of pure status melee weapons, as it will be very easy to hit the limit of three status effects regardless. It will also be more boring to use, destroying the interactivity and synergy of setups specializing in proccing lots of status effects.

[lihimsidhe]

Alright!  I wanted to wait a bit to respond so I could address a few things at once.  With that said....

 

On 2019-10-18 at 3:14 PM, Nathren said:

If the idea is to allow the block key to be engaged while holding a braton or primary ranged weapon, I'm all for that as well so long as it's drawing the melee weapon for the duration of the block key being pressed. So I like that idea.

Do you mean that an Anytime Anywhere block animation is always depicted with the melee weapon?  If so I'm not entirely against that.  My main thing is to simply have an Anytime Anywhere block period.  If that's in game and its properties change depending on what the player is doing, I'd be open to them including your suggestion.

 

On 2019-10-18 at 3:14 PM, Nathren said:

Why wouldn't I want to be rewarded for my premeditated usage of my melee weapon to have the stronger manual block (assuming auto block in non-melee mod is still around and isn't 100% damage reduction)

This is a valid criticism and combined with your previous suggestion does have weight to it.  Whenever I approach mechanics I at least try to take a dash of the lore and realism into account.  Warframe has cinematics of warframes deflecting bullets with their melee. Without going too far into the weeds it's suffice to say their reaction time and dexterity has got to be absolutely supernatural bonkers by present day human limits with the bullet deflection just being what I'm aware of for speed feats.

The lore does support warframes being able to move so fast that the process of holstering weapons would be trivial to them.  So trivial I believe that the holstering system and how it splits into dedicated melee and firearm modes is not an optimal way to go.

When I look to legends such as Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, etc. who don't utilize a clunky holstering system I ask why.  Their combat systems are arguably much deeper than Warframe's with much more challenging enemies.  The mappings the player has access to in those games is that of unified, single, mode that allows the player to do insane things.  So if a unified single mode allows a player to explore greater depth in a more challenging game to great success then my conjecture is it would do absolute wonders in the braindead power fantasy that Warframe has become.  

Also when I look at a game like DMC it's not that their is no modes.  Dante, the protagonist has had different combat modes of combat called his Style System.  However, whenever Dante switches to a Style or a weapon the change is instant.  There is no buffering.  The player just has it instantly.  So really I could have targeted the holstering system as my point of pain instead of the dedicated melee or firearm modes.  Interesting.

 

On 2019-10-18 at 7:27 PM, Tarak said:

This, I personally still feel that allowing interrupting of equip animations is the way to go. Quick melee skips animations, so just change the function of weapon swapping to instantly equip the other weapon on press and play the anim, but allow us to interrupt it. Then you could just hold down the swap weapon button and hold the aim button to be instantly in block, or start attacking before the animation has fully played out. Makes so much more sense that way...

@Tarak: I may have addressed a lot of what you said in my response to @Nathren above.  However they did bring up a point of being rewarded for going full melee or firearms.  Do you think that tradeoff is worth not having an Anytime Anywhere block?
 

On 2019-10-18 at 10:49 PM, Inurian said:

Wait a sec; don't you still have the autoblock? you can just press quick-melee and instantly block it

Ha that's the thing Inurian.  Me and other Tenno don't want to have an intermediate step between not blocking and blocking. We either are or aren't.
 

On 2019-10-19 at 11:42 AM, CrimsonRain14 said:

Does sound great though, just tricky business to go about doing when it comes to blasts or lasers, which there is an unfortunate amount of.

There would defintely be some tricky business if put into Warframe that's for sure!  I'm not so worried about hitscan weapons.  Their very nature would promote a different strategy other than blocking.  However, if a Tenno did find themselves getting peppered to death they could at least block incoming fire and improve their chances of surviving.  But yeah you're right... tricky!!  🙂
 

On 2019-10-19 at 11:51 AM, Isokaze_BestKaze said:

However warframe isn't suited for this. First because we kill hordes, not a single enemy, and second because hitscan weapons exists.

What Warframe is and isn't suited for changes over time.  Granted... the scope of a game does help when thinking of how it should evolve.  There's a reason Im not on /r/cookingmama saying that the game needs more aerial combat in addition to making little frosted cakes super cute.  However, that doesn't mean that game couldn't be about that... for any reason.  Ultimately what a game is about is an ongoing conversation between the devs (if they're good) and its community.  

Warframe does err on the 'mindless horde' side.  There is no denying that.  However, that doesn't mean it can't change to be or have more than just that.  All that matters really is how many dorks like me reach DE's Sauron like gaze and see me saying, "Your game is too easy!  Play DMC and get back to me!", vs dorks like you saying, "Since this is a horde destroyer it shouldn't aim to be more than that."

tl;dr: games have many moving parts and those parts change over time in an ongoing game like Warframe.

 

20 hours ago, SilviaS12 said:

so if the blocking will be from a different source, like say an energy riot shield or something when in ranged mode this sounds more appealing, realistic and feasible to work as a block anytime anywhere when in ranged, but to magically whip out your sword to block whilst hold your sword with both hands already holding the rifle? At least for me that is totally unnatural.

I think you and @Nathren might be on the same page here.  Combined with @Tarak's suggestion I think we might have a better more sensible solution.

Block Anytime, Anywhere. The Tenno either can execute a single command (single key or multi key press)  to instantly or near instantly block. A block's properties can change depending on the last action performed by the player (ex: if they were firing a gun, using their melee, using their abilities, wall latching, mid holster, etc).  Blocking always should have been a fallback action for when a Tenno finds themselves in trouble regardless of what they are doing.  

The above suggestion rewards players who have willingly 'dedicated' themselves to melee as @Nathren suggested.  Perhaps blocking with melee generally negates most damage or even allows parries.  However if I block with my Boltor or I didn't last perform a melee class action, perhaps I always take chip damage.  Honestly as long as the player can do some form of blocking availible to them instantly in most gameplay scenarios I'd be pretty happy with that AND these suggestions make sense in universe.

After I get the sign off from most of the people I tagged (including you @CrimsonRain14) I'll edit the OP with the feedback.  🙂

[Dmitriy_D]

Цитата

Condition Overload - Now stacks at a maximum of 3 Status Effects, however damage is being increased from 60% to a higher percent to balance the change. Final % to come. 

Does it mean that CO formula now will be: (100%+120%) + 120%(100%+120%) + 120%(484%) = 1 064,8 % add dmg

or just 

100% + 120% +120% +120% = 460% ?

[Sharkgoblin]

9 hours ago, lihimsidhe said:

or even allows parries

you can parry in wf  by blocking with channeling on

[Kaleidoomscope]

On 2019-10-22 at 3:11 AM, Haelbrecht said:

I know, genius. The point is paying that much for Scoliac is not smart. There are plenty of other weapons who can achieve the same, while for example there are very few weapons that can achieve what can a gas Vulkar do for example. Not to mention that you can buy a Scoliac with perfect stats for 3k plat or less. 

Well sure, but whether a riven is perfect still depends on user right? I am that kind of person picky about riven. For example, for most primaries and secondaries (except explosive launchers) I consider +recoil strictly better than -zoom. And neg status chance on even a base 5% sc weapon is also bad. (Why neg status if you can get recoil?) 

And for scoliac, my view is that +melee damage, range and slide crit with negligible neg (such as finisher) is the only way to go. Not to mention that all the positive stats must be 0-5% less than the max value from riven calculator.

If this leaves you unconvinced, you are more than welcome to private message me and I’ll give you the reason why the 3k riven is not perfect in my definition. I am defending my point, not trying to persuade. Your point that paying 6k on a riven is not smart is subjective and offensive to me and that’s all the reason I am responding.

 

[bibmobello]

Heavy attacks must be really powerful to consume your whole Combo Counter!(but i doubt that...)

[GreyEnneract]

37 minutes ago, bibmobello said:

Heavy attacks must be really powerful to consume your whole Combo Counter!(but i doubt that...)

They deal 4x damage at base (0) combo counter.

[bibmobello]

3 hours ago, GreyEnneract said:

They deal 4x damage at base (0) combo counter.

Yes thanks for the clarification!  but my doubt is why should you consume your combo counter for a single attack even at 20X when you can have a lot of attacks at 4X? Maybe with the new system it will be easier to increase the combo counter.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

5 minutes ago, bibmobello said:

Yes thanks for the clarification!  but my doubt is why should you consume your combo counter for a single attack even at 20X when you can have a lot of attacks at 4X? Maybe with the new system it will be easier to increase the combo counter.

You can build your weapon for combo efficiency to maintain combo counter even when using heavy attacks, although some will still be consumed. Also, it will be very easy to build high multipliers, and even combo gain can be modded. 

[GreyEnneract]

35 minutes ago, bibmobello said:

Yes thanks for the clarification!  but my doubt is why should you consume your combo counter for a single attack even at 20X when you can have a lot of attacks at 4X? Maybe with the new system it will be easier to increase the combo counter.

 

On 2019-10-18 at 10:58 AM, [DE]Bear said:

As an expendable resource the Combo Counter should be easy to replenish, and the changes made should reflect how easy you can acquire and spend the Combo Counter resource.

 

• Blood Rush - Will now scale differently, using a stacking multiplier based on the Combo Counter, raising (X)% per Combo Counter tier (something much easier to achieve in Phase 2). We will provide the final % pending more testing. 

They've repeatedly said it's easier to gain, even in streams.

[Ayatan]

On 2019-10-18 at 1:09 PM, lihimsidhe said:

tl;dr: Melee 3.0 mockup

All in all this rework looks pretty f**king incredible I must say.  As someone I think at least slightly influenced Melee 2.x,There is only one core suggestion I have:

Block Anytime, Anywhere. The Tenno either can execute a single command (single key or multi key press)  to block. Allow most actions to be cancelled into blocks. Blocking always should have been a fallback action for when a Tenno finds themselves in trouble regardless of what they are doing. This is a clear example how dedicated firearm/melee modes hold back Warframe's potential. Also I can't mention blocking in a serious manner without referencing this. 

Imagine a combat scenario where a Tenno is highly engaged with the enemy.  Suddenly, a huge attack suddenly comes barrelling towards them and they do not have time to dodge.  Only block.  What sounds more fun and natural to you:

A) At the last moment the Tenno stops firing his/her gun and brings up their arms in the nick of time to block the attack.  Perhaps timing the block could lead to parries.

B) The Tenno has to stop firing their weapon, put it away, wait for their melee weapon to get pulled out, and then block.  If they have the time to do this you know what they could have also done?  Just about anything else in the game including moving out of the way thereby defeating the point of blocking.

Being able to seamlessly use block at any time adds an amazing amount of utility to a player's toolkit. If DE did decide to implment an 'anytime, anywhere' block I would hope they reconsider blocking not always negating 100% of the damage in all cases (maybe except for parries?).  A weapon having variable block cones, block %, and possibly even parry windows gives DE more stats to experiment with that make sense.  Why throw this design space away needlessly?

Again the rework looks f**king AMAZING.  It does truly.  However, until DE discards the notion of dedicated firearms/melee modes completely Warframe will always be playing 2nd fiddle to its own 1st rate potential. I say this because action legends such as Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, Nier: Automota, etc, have shown such an incredible path forward by having one unified 'action combat' mode.  This doesn't mean there can't be an other way but Warframe's firearm/melee modes do not seem to be an improvement over what those legends have done.

Also it's worth really driving home DE could literally create the most incredible combat system known to man. However, if the enemies remain stuck as ants we crush with hammers, all this work to make combat more engaging becomes a somewhat moot point.  We are still hammers crushing ants and combos and in depth combat is a distant option to nuking dumb, enfeebled enemies that literally run to their slaughter.

Love you guys, the game you make, and the work you do.  🙂

Using Moment 37 is probably the perfect example of why manual blocking is such a fantastic space for incredible in-game moments. Of course, applying that to a game with definitive ranged or melee weapons provides a different challenge and homogenizes play-styles that some players live for, so it might take some DE magic to blend and solve those issues that I have no real feedback for.

[Caliboom]

Can we please see the stats of the weapons? So we can adapt to the future changes.