(PC) Melee Phase 2: TECHNIQUES Feedback

[Acos]

2 hours ago, YourFriendlyNoggin said:

I just want to know why for love of all that is good in this world would you want this? Autoblock entirely removes control from players, interrupts all kinds of actions and slows you down more than it helps. You have such a good suggestion with separate keybinds for weapons so we can have better control as well, I'm confused! 

I personally prefer auto-block because it's more consistent damage mitigation that actively builds towards the combo meter; Not blocking when you could be seems detrimental. I don't find that it interrupts things to a degree I find bothersome; It won't take priority when you are attacking, dodging, aiming, shooting, etc. so the only time it comes up is when I could have been blocking anyway. 

Where I agree with you in finding auto-block annoying is times when I'm doing a normal jump, block in the air, and now I'm doing a glide jump with no intuitive way to stop it. I would prefer if THAT interaction was removed from auto-blocking, rather than removing auto-blocking as a whole. I actually prefer another players suggestion of holding the jump button to do a non-zoomed glide for melee/sniper enthusiasts to what I had suggested in my own post. That seems more intuitive vs adding MORE interactions to the alt-fire button. 

Edited November 8, 2019 by Acos

[Johan_Force]

I would like to see spin attack damage cut in half if not more people are still spinning to win and that defeats the entire point of redoing the melee system. I figure the only way to stop them is to nerf the damage to a point that its not viable. For those that try to defend spin2win attacks it takes the skill out of the game it becomes very annoying when your killing a group of enemys then some guy comes by you spinning and killing everything that you were just about to kill leaving then coming back just so that they can keep the combo multiplier up.

[ProfessorPlum]

Ultimately really minor things, but two small tweaks that would improve melee flow in general in regards to keybindings-

> Let us Heavy Attack into Quick Melee. Let's say I build a bunch of combo, then shoot some dudes, but then I want to either do a heavy slam or attack another dude. I have to then either swap into Melee State or do a normal attack into Quick Melee in order to then do that heavy attack. That Heavy Attack binding isn't do anything when I've got a gun out and I can't bind anything else to that key, why not just let that put us into Quick Melee too? 

> Make melee state always 'Melee with Fire Weapon Input.' I like this option, I'm glad it's there. If someone has a melee out, it lets a player choose whether or not they want clicking to shoot or stab. But there's a specific niche that it doesn't solve right now. Say I want LMB to always be 'attack with my weapon' and only want to melee to be the keybind. Right now, that's exactly what that does. Even in melee state. But if I swap to melee state, it can be reasonably assumed that I want to melee dudes. Right now, if you have 'Melee with Fire Weapon Input' disabled, LMB does nothing in melee state, so there's that little bit less flow between 'fluid swapping between shoot and stab, then a dedicated stabby mode.' This is especially notable in melee only missions and sorties or with exalted weapons, where I'd have to go into the options and fuss with that yes/no if I want that dedicated stabby mode to not just be me furiously mashing the melee key.

Again, really minor things, but those bindings aren't doing anything and I feel like it'd help polish the Melee State and Heavy Attack systems.

[Buttaface]

"No one uses heavy attack."

"I know, that's why we should make it the foundation of the new melee system! It will be GREAT just like how we try to cram Wall Attacks down their throat all the time!"

"But no one uses it. The players don't like it."

"The console gamer marketing test group didn't care one way or the other, but they don't like having their noob killz stolen by advanced melee players, so..."

LOL, new melee system is complete junk and the largest nerf by far I've ever seen in a video game.

But I guess the console kiddy demographic you are trying to attract with skateboards doesn't care as long as the guns still work and advanced players aren't stealing "muh killz!" with melee weapons.

Want constructive feedback? Then send me more than -three- formas in the mail to compensate for the 260 someodd on my melee weapons.

Until then, back to other better games I go.

GO on bended knee to the person, contractor, whomever was in charge of your melee system development when the stances were released in POE. BEG them to come back and fix this mess. Then get rid of whatever contractors, employees, etc. did this to what was one of the best melee systems in gaming for several years starting back with melee 2.0 and the removal of stamina. Crap now, a shame.

Any investors happen to be reading? It's your money they're wasting.

Edited November 8, 2019 by Buttaface

[Very_Melon]

3 hours ago, Buttaface said:

what was one of the best melee systems in gaming

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.

[Trav243]

I have taken some time to play with many of the weapons. I am a Polearm user and Its all good I guess. My only plea is that you manage to put to old Slashing Wing Combo back into Shimmering Blight as well as the old Lethal Gust into Bleeding Willow. Both Shimmering Blight and Bleeding Willow are as of now really the same and I feel that adding this back into Shimmering Blight and Bleeding Willow  will allow me to really care what stance to use. The only Polearm stance mod that feels complete is Twirling Spire. This is clearly for me all about the animations, so PLEASE bring them back.

 

Edited November 9, 2019 by Trav243
clarification

[Aekhon]

7 hours ago, Acos said:

 It won't take priority when you are attacking..

Yes it absolutely will.  I got repeatedly block locked on Venus by the Corpus guys who dual-wield axes (or mining picks or whatever they are).  Every time I tried to attack, they would attack, and the auto-block would interrupt my attack to block their attack, preventing me from hitting them.  The only way out of the situation was to dodge backwards out of their attack range so that they couldn't trigger the auto-block, then use a gun or ranged power.  Similar things happened with Grineer Bombards on Titan - it was just less annoying there because they don't fire rockets rapid-fire.  Still, I took more than a few rockets to the face when I didn't have to because the auto-block interrupted my attack when I was just about to cut the Bombard in half.

My personal vote is a hard no on auto-block.  I'd rather it be scrubbed from the game entirely, but as long as I don't have to deal with it on dedicated melee mode, I'm fine.

[0shi]

The dedicated melee mode feels very clunky to change to / from - Holding weapon change moves to it, but not away from it.

The dedicated melee mode uses the same key set as the ranged mode, which is pretty disorientating - I'd like the ability to at the least melee with my attack button, but this conflicts with the shoot button.

Turning on Melee with Fire Weapon Input is not really usable, because it makes transitioning out of the half-melee mode require a weapon change or a scope usage.

[DoomFruit]

12 hours ago, Acos said:

Where I agree with you in finding auto-block annoying is times when I'm doing a normal jump, block in the air, and now I'm doing a glide jump with no intuitive way to stop it. I would prefer if THAT interaction was removed from auto-blocking, rather than removing auto-blocking as a whole. I actually prefer another players suggestion of holding the jump button to do a non-zoomed glide for melee/sniper enthusiasts to what I had suggested in my own post. That seems more intuitive vs adding MORE interactions to the alt-fire button. 

I dunno about moving aim glide to the jump button. At least fairly often I'll jump once, glide for a bit and then jump again to gain some more height.

[affropiaf]

do somebody know how to manual parry ?

before the old blood update , it use to be manual blocking with channeling at the rigth time . 

do u figure how reflection mod work now ?

Edited November 9, 2019 by affropiaf

[Grave.Knight]

20 minutes ago, affropiaf said:

do u figure how reflection mod work now ?

It does not.

[ZephyrExia]

Just my 2c.

Heavy Attacks could do with a slight decrease in how long the attack wind-up is across the board. Even if I was going to use one, by the time the attack has even triggered, I could have hit the enemy with basic attacks, doing combined more dmg that one heavy attack (this is particularly apparent on heavy blades and polearms).

Some stances (eg Tranquil Cleave's moving right click + E) have a large pause after a combo, where the player has to wait for the animation to reset before continuing. This is exacerbated by animations where the animation just hangs in the final postions, when the weapon could have been moved from there several times over. So, theres a lot of needless downtime I guess.

Some stances could use a reduction in the forced pauses or forced movement slowdown on their walking E combos. I understand that we probably don't want players speeding around brandishing their weapons, but the forced momentum stops, personally, hurt the flow of melee combat.

I really love how Shimmering Blight has looping combos on stationary, and directional 'E', and that the polearm 'walking forward and twirling the polearm' attack is back with the walking 'E'. Shimmering Blight, despite not having a neutral right-click E is very fun to use due to its mobility. Its walking 'E' movement is, personally, the pinnacle of how all respective same button combos should treat player movement and attacks. I think this stance is exactly how fluid all melee should be (though please add a neutral right-click E at your convenience) and is the bar for all other stances to be measured against.

Nikanas on the other hand feel off to me. Before the update, I used to almost exclusively use Tranquil Cleave, as it appealed to me visually, and the combos were fun to use. With the update, however, it feels 'off' to use. My thoughts on Tranquil cleave are: 

• I'd like the neutral 'E' to be the same as the walking 'E', or old quick melee combo, as the stabbing motion makes the neutral feel disjointed.
• The moving E for Tranquil cleave also locks the player in place numerous times during the combo, mitigating any real movement, and making you progress at a snail's pace. In contrast, Tempo Royale slows down the player at key points in the moving 'E' combo, but never stops their movement completely, which in my opinion makes the stance feel better to use.
• The right-click + neutral E also feels disjointed. the animation is a 2-step swing, with the first second bringing the weapon to a peak (which functionally does nothing), followed by the actual strike (which I notice is swing that used to propel you forwards). 
• the Moving right-click +E is a slam attack without any launch, followed by two swings ending on a long delay. This feels like I just used a slam attack instead of an actual combo move.

The changes I'd like to suggest for it are:

1. Make the old quick melee the Neutral E combo, or make 'Beyond Reproach' the Neutral E combo, with or without the final 2 swings.
2. Keep the moving E combo the same, but allow for more momentum to be kept on the second swing.
3. Make 'Breathless Lunge' the Neutral Right-Click +E combo, and the final swing could be used as a launch attack.
4. Add travel distance back to the slide in 'Hook and eye', but move it to the first attack in the combo. So it goes TravelSwing> swing > swing >swing.

Blind Justice has a really nice Moving Right-click E, which feels good to use, and I would like Tranquil Cleave to get as fluid a distance closer.

Those are my thoughts and feedback, I thank you for your perusal.

 

 

[Jynx41174]

On 2019-10-31 at 3:07 PM, Sylonus said:

the only bit I like so far about any of the melee changes is changing the finisher button to the use button instead of melee.

Why?  Tapping E to Finish a bad guy off is a lot more intuitive, and a lot simpler than giving finishers a dedicated button.

Not to mention that it's absolute hell when you go to finish a guy and your entire hand decides to Spasm and lock up for hours because you have Cubital Tunnel Syndrome (same as carpal tunnel except it affects the elbow and the outside of the wrist) because it has decided that it's had enough

Edited November 9, 2019 by Jynx41174

[Sylonus]

1 hour ago, Jynx41174 said:

Why?  Tapping E to Finish a bad guy off is a lot more intuitive, and a lot simpler than giving finishers a dedicated button.

Not to mention that it's absolute hell when you go to finish a guy and your entire hand decides to Spasm and lock up for hours because you have Cubital Tunnel Syndrome (same as carpal tunnel except it affects the elbow and the outside of the wrist) because it has decided that it's had enough

Because I hate accidentally using a finisher when I'm intending to melee things, locks me in position, breaks up my combo and flow, and usually isn't what I want to do, alternatively when I'm sneaking around on Ivara, when I want to use a finisher, I don't want to accidentally do a melee attack with a dagger that doesn't finish off the mob and alerts everyone around him when he screams (this is less of an issue now, RIP Covert Lethality but still), also what's more intuitive to you may not be to others, for the record after the change E is now my finisher button, my thumb mouse button is my standard melee button. Regardless, what could you possibly have against letting it be mapped freely to the same button or another as I suggested?

Edited November 9, 2019 by Sylonus

[Jynx41174]

Yeah... I can redo my key bindings, but it would literally take me 3 weeks to acclimate... not only is muscle memory thrown way off but consciously having to remember that the bindings have been changed is more than al little bit immersion breaking.  I mean if something works and works well, leave it alone it doesn't need to be fixed

[Sylonus]

Except you wouldn't have to reacclimate if you could bind it to whatever you wanted, even as it works already now or as it worked before... By your argument they shouldn't change how it is now as it "works well"... regardless, again, why not just add the option? It costs nobody anything.

Edited November 9, 2019 by Sylonus

[Kaadu]

Melee Phase 2:

I'm not concerned about damage numbers, as long as the core mechanics are fine, numbers can be tweaked for balance between different melee modding styles separately. It's good there are even different modding styles now.

New melee combat feels good. Less key combination memorisation and more control about what you want to do each second.

Most styles are now much more fun to play, nami skyla and machetes don't feel bad to play anymore.
I think forward + attack always being an attack on the move combo helps a lot for fluidity.

Stances:

I don't mind attacks that alter or restrict movement, as long as it isn't the first couple of attacks in the W + attack combo.
Even stances that have movement locking attacks in their W+attack combo are usually ok since you can cancel the combo before the movement locking attack into a slide attack when you want to keep moving.

Having stationary higher damage neutral combos makes sense as well for the times when your target doesn't instantly die and you have to stop moving to hit it.
Also in general, having attacks have some form of movement lock or slowing helps give them weight. If you could move freely at all times it makes attacks feel weak and 'floaty'.
Though some stances could use changes of course. Gunblades, Glaives.

Vulpine mask could use a variant on the neutral combo: If you hold back and press e, the second attack of assailants guise steps backwards while doing the double stab, to space you better against a close range enemy when the combo gets to the finishing lunges. Otherwise, the neutral combo that is meant to hold you in place ends up past your target.

I miss the E E (wait) E combo on Wise Razor. I'm surprised it's not the new Forward + Attack combo. Or a style varient to the W+E combo you can do.

Equipped melee:

I'm not really sure why there is a equipped melee mode at all. Right click should manually block when your melee weapon is out (instead of aim glide), making dedicated melee redundant.
With the new 100% autoblock, swapping to quick melee for defence and only bringing out your gun when you need it seems like a better strategy.

The inconsistency between the equipped melee speed when you have a gun out vs when you have your weapon already out is an odd oversight.
Also, equipped melee not having auto block is a large weakness, so you shouldn't be using it anyway.

The new equipped melee does nothing when you press primary fire, which is very weird. If that button is being reserved for Rage Mode or something, Rage Mode could be put on 'hold weapon swap' instead of equip melee. If the hypothetical Rage Mode is a separate super melee mode, then it would make sense to have the new mode on a swap key.

Thank god you don't actuality need to use the clunky equipped melee mode. You can access the block+attack options even with your gun out.

Lifted state:

Things like the air combo and lifted state initially seem out of place, since it takes a while to perform. And warframe is a fast paced game, if the target doesn't die in a fraction of a second it usually means the player messed up somewhere.
Indeed, the lifted state seems to help enemies since they don't fall to the ground for a ground finisher. So you have to wait while the lifted enemies friends can shoot you.

You could add enemies that are specifically weak to air combos / lifted enemies. But that would appear to be retroactively adding a reason for these functions to exist. It would have to be like an enemy that can be permanently disarmed by specific melee actions, similar to the kuva guards being disarmed by transference.

Heavy Attack:

    I think I preferred heavy attack being [hold melee button], but I've gotten used to them being on secondary fire.

    Life strike being on heavy only is ok, but heavy requiring you to switch to your melee weapon (either waiting for the equipped melee animation or for your first attack to finish) then allowing you to heavy is a little slow. I think the previous hold melee to heavy attack seemed to charge the heavy attack during your strike, so it seemed faster.

Air Combos:

Air combo feels like it should be on rmb + melee. Since rmb in the air makes you hover (block+melee was the first thing I tried to get the air combo to work, I only read about back+melee in the patch notes later).
Possibly the first strike on the hover air combo could use a short range archwing like homing? To help stick to airborne targets.

Gap Closers:

Most of these don't seem worth using. They don't go very far and just walking over while blocking gets the job done. They are cool for style points I guess.
Some of them look like they could double as dodges, but I'm not sure they actually reduce damage taken.
Some gap closers seem to have a aoe combo after it, which is kind of neat, where you have to gauge the distance of the jump correctly to make the aoe part of the combo hit.

Parazon Mercy Kills:

That one mercy kill animation that throws the target behind you take a little too long to restore control to the player. You seem to stand still doing nothing for a few fractions of a second after the camera pans up, it doesn't flow very well.

Other:

While doing the grendel missions, it seemed like melee was the strongest tool in my arsenal. Spam jump and heavy slam to keep mobile and chain stun everything until it dies. Use roll the cancel out of bad positioning after a slam and jump away to safety. I think melee is better than guns now. Killing level 5 Liches seems easier with a melee weapon as well.

When auto blocking in the air, don't change the players movement path. Gliding should be tied to the right mouse button, not blocking.

Moving the execute button to X seems like a good idea. It could use a prompt though, I thought you took the ability to combat execute out completely.

Once again, please add manual block to 'quick melee' and remove 'equipped melee'. Once you can manual block in quick melee, a dedicated melee mode no longer needs to exist.

[thickbeagle]

This was removed with the earlier stage 1 melee changes, but the ability to bind mouse 1 click to melee in melee only mode was amazing and I would love to see that return. It was much easier on my hands and easier to move around when I was able to do this, and I don't see it being too much of a hassle to re-implement again.

[Arkandae]

il y a 2 minutes, thickbeagle a dit :

This was removed with the earlier stage 1 melee changes, but the ability to bind mouse 1 click to melee in melee only mode was amazing and I would love to see that return. It was much easier on my hands and easier to move around when I was able to do this, and I don't see it being too much of a hassle to re-implement again.

I think it's "melee fire input" in options/controls, can't test now.

[Nine]

I just wanted to say my operator gets bugged into attempting to uncoordinated-ly fist fighting when thrown by a lich. 

Honestly would appreciate not the removal of this, but allowing operators some low damage simple combos.
Bring back crouch 2028

[Mos-Eisley]

Are we going to get something like the Aura forma for Melee Weapon Stances? This is what I would really like to see...especially if there is going to be continued changes to the stances. 

[Redpaws]

17 hours ago, Arkandae said:

I think it's "melee fire input" in options/controls, can't test now.

I dislike this option in general, because neither option does what I want.

With "Melee with Fire Weapon Input" on
Pros: I can now use melee much more easily both wielded and in quick melee for extended periods, since M1 is far less tiring to click repeatedly to the alternatives.
Cons: If I'm mostly using my guns, quick melee an enemy or two, and try to go back to shooting, I very often end up just swinging more. This is extra annoying with slower melee weapons. To go back to shooting, I have to deliberately break my own flow, pause for a second while holding the aim key, and THEN I'll be able to shoot.

With "Melee with Fire Weapon Input" off
Pros: It's very seamless to go between shooting and quick melee, as I can just hit the quick melee button a couple of times and then hold down M1 to automatically start firing as soon as I'm able to
Cons: M1 is literally unused when equipping your melee weapon. Just... Why? I have the thumb button on my mouse bound to melee, but if I only want to melee, it gets tiring on the thumb with M1 being unbound and useless with this option off.

 

Please change it so even with "melee fire input" being set to off, you can still use the fire button to melee when you have your melee equipped. I've said this before, but the more I play with it, the more I'm annoyed at both the on and off option. I really thought the reintroduction to equipped melee would have fixed it, since it's such an intuitive control scheme. Can we please have this fixed/changed? It really would be the best of both worlds.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Redpaws

[Arkandae]

il y a 19 minutes, Redpaws a dit :

Cons: If I'm mostly using my guns, quick melee an enemy or two, and try to go back to shooting, I very often end up just swinging more. This is extra annoying with slower melee weapons. To go back to shooting, I have to deliberately break my own flow, pause for a second while holding the aim key, and THEN I'll be able to shoot.

I just tried, and indeed it's really badly done. 

Maybe doing a macro to change mouse input everytime you switch weapon can help you, but that kind of thing shouldn't be needed.

[knightofretribution]

The new melee system looks amazing but feels like butter in the jam or crumbs on your shirt. No matter how good the system is those crumbs just annoy me. And most issues boil down to two things.

Melee combo attacks are not completely intuitive.

   I can't count the amount of times I'll use the forward combo then accidentally switch to neutral combo messing up the combo or vice versa. You can be using a neutral combo and once the enemy steps back and you push forward, whatever neutral combo you were doing, whether to get that knockdown or forced proc's, you'll instead be doing a regular attack and have that split second wondering what happened. Granted it isn't game breaking, but again, crumbs on the shirt.

  I understand what they wanted to do with there being both a forward and a neutral combo to separate free flow forward attacks and hefty neutral attacks. The fact is, some forward combos limit movement, and some neutral combos have a lot of natural movement included. Additional, you can't mix the individual combos because it resets each time you switch combo.

  Just blend the neutral with the forward combo, it would leave you with a standard melee combo that you can use with any or none of the directional keys.It would give completely free movement,  attacks precisely where you want, and no accidentally combo meshing between forward and neutral combos ruining flow and rhythm. And a good example of this, polearm shimmering blight stance, has only a neutral combo and feels smooth as silk.

This leaves heavy attacks to be the hefty hard hitting attack they should be.

Heavy attacks feel clunky as heck even though they can be amazing.

  Honestly, there is only one reason why i hate heavy attacks. The Wind Up. Attacking with melee grinds to a screeching halt the second you start that 0.4- 1.2 sec windup on the heavy attacks. With how much heavy melee is being incorporated into the melee system, this is can not continue. Heavy Attacks are important, they should feel like it, and not make players ignore half of the melee system. 

  And the fix is simple, remove Wind Up. Cut current heavy melee attack damage in half and on the combo counter scaling, make it go up at a x2 damage modifier per stack, capping at x24 instead of x12. I think this would create no difference in current damage. And make them so much smoother to mix into your melee combos. jumping back and forth between regular and heavy attacks like you should be able.

  And if you didnt know, you can already spam heavy attack after heavy attack while ignoring wind-up if you hold guard.

  It would solve some glaive and gunblade problems. By making thrown and firing attacks only as a heavy attack, youd be left with a straight melee attack combo on your e button that can instantly transition into ranged attacks at will. You could also just spam heavy attack and kill the enemy before you even get in melee distance.

Edited November 12, 2019 by knightofretribution

[Hearsay]

My thoughts...

 

-Heavy slam feels pretty nice, although kinda seems to leave no reason to use a normal slam except for Exodias? 

-Heavy attacks feel a bit too slow to be useful and I'm not sure I 100% understand them.  Sometimes they utterly wreck, sometimes they just plink off.  And sometimes they plink but then I can murder the guy a lot easier?

-No way to "quick heavy attack" while holding a gun.  Number of times I went for a heavy slam and ended up looking like a chump instead since I had a gun.

-If you use a mousewheel to swap weapons, like I do, it appears impossible to enter melee-only mode without binding a new key.  Mousewheel weapon/item swap is super common in other games, so this needs to be addressed.

-Air melee + back in order to stay airborne feels... off.  I'd suggest moving it to air melee + aim/block.

-I miss some of the old aerial swipes and stuff.  Maybe reintroduce these as forward + air melee?