(PC) Melee Phase 2: TECHNIQUES Feedback

[Reppuzan]

  

On 2020-01-01 at 7:33 PM, Maxim_M_Payne said:

I must respectfully but vehemently disagree with you.

I disagree. Literally every combo started the same way by forcing you to go through the same standard attack animations before you get into the combo you actually wanted.

Take Tempo Royale for instance. If I wanted to fly across the room, I'd have to stand in place and swing twice before actually starting my forward movement.

Or Clashing Forest. If I wanted to flying kick at someone, I'd have to swing in place twice before actually executing the kick, breaking momentum.

All of the old melee stances had the weird problem of the gap closer taking place after you've already started attacking, so unless you're already in their faces, you're swinging at air when you want to close the ground quickly.

Granted, I dislike using the current Clashing Forest (I liked the old keybindings better for that one and most of the other Staff stances), but I have to disagree that the old control system was smoother, especially given my preference for high attack speed melee weapons.

I do miss some of the more unique animations of stances like Carving Mantis (i.e. using planting one sword in the ground to swing around and kick everything), but for weapons like Sword and Shields functionality has been greatly improved. I wouldn't even touch Rending Crane in the past, but now I love ripping through crowds with my Dohkram Zaw thanks to it.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Reppuzan

[Andele3025]

22 minutes ago, Reppuzan said:

I disagree. Literally every combo started the same way by forcing you to go through the same standard attack animations before you get into the combo you actually wanted.

Take Tempo Royale for instance. If I wanted to fly across the room, I'd have to stand in place and swing twice before actually starting my forward movement.

Or Clashing Forest. If I wanted to flying kick at someone, I'd have to swing in place twice before actually executing the kick, breaking momentum.

All of the old melee stances had the weird problem of the gap closer taking place after you've already started attacking, so unless you're already in their faces, you're swinging at air when you want to close the ground quickly.

Granted, I dislike using the current Clashing Forest (I liked the old keybindings better for that one and most of the other Staff stances), but I have to disagree that the old control system was smoother, especially given my preference for high attack speed melee weapons.

I do miss some of the more unique animations of stances like Carving Mantis (i.e. using planting one sword in the ground to swing around and kick everything), but for weapons like Sword and Shields functionality has been greatly improved. I wouldn't even touch Rending Crane in the past, but now I love ripping through crowds with my Dohkram Zaw thanks to it.

Quoted the wrong person there, its Maxim_M_Payne who said the quoted part.

Tho even so you're wrong about one part. At no point had to wait/stand in place with Tempo Royale for a gap closer because August Mesto had full free movement during the initial part (as did most parts of TR) followed by partial keyboard strafe (the thing slide attacks have) and full camera steer during the forced forward dash flips. The only hard root in TR was after the spinslide of the pause combo/on the zornhau-ish vertical strike and that kicked in only after 3/5th of the animation was already done (as in active only during the front part of the cleave). In fact the doublespin of TR somehow survived not getting a animation lock and still has the full free movement.

Similar thing for Rending Crane and both S&S stances where most of the work in making the stances more functional was just the keybinds and trimming off the branching node design into each attack chain being fully independent.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Andele3025

[Reppuzan]

22 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

Quoted the wrong person there, its Maxim_M_Payne who said the quoted part.

Tho even so you're wrong about one part. At no point had to wait/stand in place with Tempo Royale for a gap closer because August Mesto had full free movement during the initial part (as did most parts of TR) followed by partial keyboard strafe (the thing slide attacks have) and full camera steer during the forced forward dash flips. The only hard root in TR was after the spinslide of the pause combo/on the zornhau-ish vertical strike and that kicked in only after 3/5th of the animation was already done (as in active only during the front part of the cleave). In fact the doublespin of TR somehow survived not getting a animation lock and still has the full free movement.

Similar thing for Rending Crane and both S&S stances where most of the work in making the stances more functional was just the keybinds and trimming off the branching node design into each attack chain being fully independent.

Thanks and sorry for the misquote.

I forgot that's how Tempo Royale's August Mesto worked, so thanks for the correction.

I still wish stances like Shimmering Blight got more techniques, since right now they're functional but they're missing an awful lot of variety compared to stances like Final Harbinger, Eleventh Storm, Blind Justice, or  Crushing Ruin.

[Borg1611]

Heavy blade stances need some forced slash procs. It seems odd that my giant swords can't cut things as well as a sword and shield. Did we forget to sharpen them or something? 

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

This is a reaffirmation that Telos Boltace is bugged for client-side users. 

Normally as a host when using the Telos Boltace, the second syndicate slide attack ability will proc Lifted status onto enemies within the afflicted range. However, as a client if you perform the same procedure enemies are ragdolled instead.

This is not to say it’s the same as the ragdoll from the Telos Boltace prior to Melee Rework Phase 2: Techniques, which was purely a lateral force push. Here whenever the client uses the second slide attack mechanic, the enemy is launched in the direction in which they’re supposed to be Lifted but instead go through the full momentum of being thrown toward that direction. They can be projectile launched verticality upwards, diagonally, etc. every which way the Lifted status is supposed to direct them but with the full momentum of slide attack’s “push” left unchecked.

Please investigate this issue. It’s a concerning QoL issue for this weapon.

[Koldraxon-732]

I've been experiencing a slight inconvenience with Nikanas and two-hande Nikanas, as well as a small number of weapons.

Some of the stances behave oddly - the animations or attack moves feel misplaced (i.e: Nikana blind justice stance quick-strike idle, but is the -very- slow twirl with an upward cut on moving, which really breaks the stance flow due to how hideously slow it is, or 2h Katanas' wise razor having the twirl-strike as the idle attack rather than on the move-forward which would've visually made sense) in some cases.

Though that's just how I feel. Also, hammers no longer have the ability to do that distance-closing charge-spin we see Baliffs and Wolf of Saturn Six do.
Thirdly, throwing melee weapons should have the throwing attack be a toggle enabled by using the reload key on melee weapons unless that is reserved for the replacement for channeling that is yet to be implemented.

Modular weapon tangent:

Spoiler

Speaking of weapons, though this is a tangent, I would like to see more modular weapon parts with Grineer, Corpus, Sentient, Tenno, and Orokin/Prime styles - basing them on or splicing them from exiting weapons (i.e: Broken War mounted on the end of a staff to make a hybrid polearm, or added to a shield). The idea for modularizing existing weapons (i.e: Zoren) is based on the mention of the idea of modularizing Archwings- which would not only make weapons more cosmetically varied, but also more personal.

 

[DoomFruit]

Nearly every single stance basically slaps the controls out of your hands when you use it and either glues you to the spot or shoves you around in some direction. There are precisely 5 ways in which you can still move freely while attacking: polearms with shimmering blight or bleeding willow, dual daggers with stinging thorn, nunchucks, unstanced rapiers... and slide attacks. All other melee stances (or unstanced weapons), EVERY SINGLE ONE, takes control away from you the moment you press the attack button.

Completely ignoring my movement inputs is a bug, DE. This really ought to be fixed.

Actually, it ought to have been fixed 6 years ago, back when stanced melee first came out. It wasn't as bad then, but it was still too much. There's a reason why the majority of players used quick melee despite it not having any built in damage boost or forced procs.

[daemon512]

I know I'm late to the party, but I stopped playing and just came back after about a year, to see that my melee has been changed (and not necessarily for the better).  I'll start with the first thing I noticed:

Archwing melee no longer "locks on" to targets.

People didn't like archwing before, and I've seen there are some other (non-melee) changes to the mode due to Railjack coming out.  This change, however, breaks melee in AW.  Try as I may (particularly in Railjack, the mode created to get people more into AW), I can't hit fighters coming at me (and past me), except MAYBE once, if I get really lucky with the timing.  Even in normal AW missions, you have to run up exactly to the target, stop, then hit it before acquiring a new target, the "fluidity" that was there before is gone.  It means that, when I used to use AW melee often (probably >50% of my AW damage was there), now I don't use it at all.  It also seems counter-intuitive as now there is some "locking on" with the regular melee, which didn't need it (as you're fighting in more 2-dimensional space, rather than 3).  I've read (but not tested) that this isn't the case with the veritux/prisma veritux, so it may have been an accident, but please fix this, I don't want to HAVE to play with a particular weapon to make it viable at all.  This brings us to the regular melee:

The new combo "fluidity."

Combos used to take some timing and skill to complete.  The new combos are "repeatedly press E" or "hold forward and repeatedly press E," etc.  This makes combos less fun, less fulfilling, and just encourages button mashing.  I realize that changes are being made to make things simpler for the "casual player," but here's my big issue with this: mashing E was already viable with most weapons.  You'd do 2-3 parts of a combo, and do a lot of damage anyway.  If I was ranking up a melee weapon for MR, for example, I didn't bother to look at the combos, because I knew that with a decent build, I could mash E to kill enemies, maybe adding in some spin attacks that were the same across stances.  Combos felt like they were meant for the end-game players who, in order to kill the larger, badder units quicker, would take the time to learn the combo.

On 2019-10-31 at 7:09 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

No more waiting for a combo attack animation to end before you can start spamming the attack button again! Embrace the fluidity!

 

This says it all.  "Don't learn combos, just spam the attack button, that's what we're calling fluidity!"  (Note that I don't have any issues with the non-bold part of the quote.)
On to more specific issues.  I'll admit that I was previously only really familiar with the staff and rapier combos, so that's all I'll talk about here:

Staff combos feel lame.

I recall the staff combos being fun and visually pleasing.  Now, whether I spam E or up + E, they seem both short and lackluster.  It isn't particularly fun to do, I'm just hitting while spamming the buttons.  I suppose this isn't a major issue, and maybe I'm not remembering the old stances, but I'm not getting the enjoyment out of them that I used to.  Speaking of...

The changes to Vulpine Mask have both made strange choices and has neutered the stance.

This one is close to my heart, as I'm one of the few people (at least in my experience) who played rapiers, even during the "spin to win" days.  The reasons, as I see them, that most people didn't play with rapiers are:
1) The reach on these weapons is very small, you're not likely to be able to hit many targets at once
2) The combos were long and challenging
However, these drawbacks had positive tradeoffs, making the stance still viable, especially for the late game:
1) People would (typically) only chose to use the stance on high-level, difficult targets
2) The single-target damage was (as I understand) unmatched
They made the rapier viable in late-game warfare, and gave them a purpose.
The changes to the stance have made the combos shorter, far less satisfying, and (maybe most importantly) removed the finisher, which was SOOOOOO satisfying to do, and made adding finisher damage to the weapons part of a viable build (yes, you can still use finishers on downed enemies, but it isn't the same). 

Additionally, while I'm not particularly happy about the slash proc being moved to the second attack (meaning conditional overload takes another hit to kick in), I can deal with it, but impact procs have been added everywhere (I don't recall them being in previous versions of the combos, and I can't find an "old version" to check against).  I think that DE did this in a "the sword is feinting and moving so fast that the enemy can't keep up," using the impact proc as a form of "confusion," but if this isn't the case, it doesn't make sense that a weapon that is meant to be as light, fast, and thin as possible is causing impact procs (and I believe that at the very least, the slash proc has a short cc effect as well). 

[supernils]

Did they actually do ANY adjustments on stances after this thread? Or was this all a joke?

Every single critique boils down to this, and this is what stances rework was all about (right, and timing clicks, that was awful):

neutral combos should NOT move you forward

forward combos should NOT lock you in place

It's that simple. No 25 pages of feedback needed.

Yet I'm sitting here trying really really hard to accept Burning Wasp on my Galvacord as usable (just one example of many) and it frustrates me to no end.

Stances rework was really really needed and that is why I'm glad we got it. Many stances became much more usable. But I cannot understand how many of them still are flawed or downright unusable. Wasn't the problem understood?

Anyway, I guess the issue is over, might aswell archive this thread.

[SteveCutler]

I don't think they did make any changes. I completely agree, and it's been said so many times already, but it seems like the ship has sailed and they've moved along to other projects now. Neutral combos should not move you forward. Forward combos should not lock you into place (or restrict your movement speed in any way). I tested all the stances before and found that while some of them were improved with the update, more of them were actually made worse! For example rapiers, claws, nikanas, sword and shield, they had full speed forward movement before and ever since this update they've been ruined. Feels bad man.

[Azamagon]

20 hours ago, SteveCutler said:

I don't think they did make any changes. I completely agree, and it's been said so many times already, but it seems like the ship has sailed and they've moved along to other projects now. Neutral combos should not move you forward. Forward combos should not lock you into place (or restrict your movement speed in any way). I tested all the stances before and found that while some of them were improved with the update, more of them were actually made worse! For example rapiers, claws, nikanas, sword and shield, they had full speed forward movement before and ever since this update they've been ruined. Feels bad man.

And Staves! Clashing Forest used to be one of the best stances, now its forward combo - while still allowing some forward movement - is so mudwalkingly clunky.

[Traumtulpe]

22 hours ago, supernils said:

Every single critique boils down to this, and this is what stances rework was all about (right, and timing clicks, that was awful):

neutral combos should NOT move you forward

forward combos should NOT lock you in place

I'd like to add one thing to the list:

Don't block sideways movement during combos. It feels terrible.

[Maxim_M_Payne]

I stopped playing Warframe actively last December; and I'm only stopping by to confirm that these melee issues still go unfixed, and that there's accordingly very little reason for me to play. I might pop in to see what the Scarlet Spear rewards are, but I wasn't able to muster up the will to even finish Rising Tide as a quest because of how bad and awkward close-combat feels now. I thus suspect I won't even be able to participate in the operation, and quite honestly, I don't feel like I'll be missing much.

But in the interest of futile catharsis, I'm reminding DE that:

• They cannot sweep this under a rug. Congratulations, DE; you've now effectively utterly ignored melee player feedback for eleven months, beginning with Buried Debts. The Old Blood only exacerbated melee problems, and ripped out what was still fun about Stances, and the old, player-favorite moves from Combos with them. It doesn't even deserve to count as a reset to the timeline, this has been eleven consecutive months of tedium that made me quit the game for the forseeable future. I was never interested in Warframe as a shooter, I was explicitly drawn in by the (no longer truthful) premise of being space ninjas. It's clear to see how well the team's been handling development of that angle.
• Exalted Weapons were delightful before, but are now pure torture to use; with what was once fluid, satisfying rapid-fire melee rampages turned into the same truncated, movement-locked messes as every other Stance, and like them, the coolest moves are lobotomized, shortened, choppy versions of the moves we had before, with abyssmal range to match.
• Melee 3.0 remains a joke, and is, was, and will remain worse than Melee 2.0. Even in the event DE finally fixes this, my faith in any of their feedback statements and promises about future content is gone, and they can kiss any hope of me spending my real-world money on their trainwreck goodbye, for now and until I have any reason to believe they actually read their own forums.
• Manual blocking is still not properly fixed, and that AI you crammed into it needs to be murdered. Actions are still completely and randomly interrupted by its asinine attempts to "help us"; just give the players back full control of our own melee block, you know, the way we've literally been asking you to restore it since Buried Debts.
• Related to the above, block percentages should not have been universally changed to 100%. A game is no fun when you have no real risk, and even a ninja has their limits. A six-inch dagger is not going to deflect a giant laser blast like an actual sword and shield or a giant hammer would, and the weapon stats should still reflect this.
• Valkyr, (reworked) Wukong, Rhino, and Excalibur were once my favorite Warframes. They're now nothing more than painful reminders of what was ripped away, and sit gathering dust without any real use. After all, what's the point in specializing in melee and tanking when it feels awful to even use close combat?
• Stats on melee weapons were increased too much, especially when accounting for the fact you also boosted the melee mods. We wanted weapons to be equally usable, yes; WE DID NOT WANT THEM TO BE SO LUDICROUSLY STRONG THERE'S NO POINT MODDING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, ESPECIALLY WITH THE NERF TO ENEMY ARMOR SCALING. Part of the fun of Warframe (was) it's customization, both cosmetically and in the build we used on our weapons and Frames, and now that personal touch is pointless. When everything easily does 500-1000+ damage, Heavy Blades, Scthyes, Two-Handed Nikanas, and Hammers no longer feel heavy or two-handed. They just feel like a more sluggish version of a dagger or sword, which again, renders player choice and customization utterly pointless. That's infuriating, and the worst possible way this could have been handled.

All of the above (and this isn't even counting the issues with visual changes to melee) issues amount into one hyper-exacerbated, fury-inducing trainwreck that successfully turned me off of Warframe.

I don't feel like a Tenno. I don't feel like a space ninja. I don't even feel like a normal ninja. I feel like an overweight man at a Renaissance fair who downed five pints of vodka and got duct-taped to rollerskates and a Ginsu knife set; futily flailing around because he's intoxicated enough to think he looks cool. And like that poor, soon-to-be-hungover SOB, trying to play what once was one of my favorite games just makes me naseous and sad.

I don't care anymore. I don't have faith in the company or the developers. I can't have fun as my beloved Valkyr, and Stances just aren't the same. I've made the same points over fifty times rephrased slightly differently in both the Phase 1 and Phase 2 megathreads, and it's clear DE has never been reading our feedback, because those same in-game problems that the former melee-centric players like me were enraged by keep going unfixed.

Titania's Prime is coming with Pangolin Sword? Woohoo, I can't wait to cartwheel around with the spins that Vengeful Revenant doesn't contain in its moveset anymore. There's nothing to be hyped about.

This is driving me insane. Even if it's another three months out, I am not going to let this thread die. I am going to restate the same stuff I've said so many times, even knowing its utterly futile, to let this development team know how they broke a berserker main's heart.

In fact, I've so utterly lost it that I think I will post again, critiquing Melee 3.0 to the tune, rhyme, and meter of Phil Collin's 1981 smash-hit Coming in the Air Tonight.

I'm not joking. I've snapped.