Movement in melee combos

[Scar.brother.help.me]

 

So I've tested almost every stance in warframe (except the one I am missing for sword&shield).

The only 3 I really like now are Shimmering Blight & Bleeding Willow for polearms and Sinking Talon for dual daggers.

 What is common among these 3 stances:

1. They only have 2 combo technics.

2. Their first combos grant free movement to every direction you want.

 

After all the tests and about a week of farming/doing missions I've changed my mind about combo button combinations, especially about forward key in these combinations and most of all forced movement during absolute most of the combo stances, forced movement when and where you don't want to move. Pretty often I find myself behind enemies, especially when attack speed is buffed. Some gunblade moves are completely crazy, makes you jump back and sideways, falling from cliffs, missing targets, etc.

 

The problem here is the combination of buttons + forced legs/Body movement. When you want to move around spamming your melee, you eventually press any direction thus performing forward+E which most of the time craps up your movement, while you just want to get a little closer to the enemy to keep the distance and continue to hit it with normal swings.

 

3 stances above don't have that flaw because no matter which direction you go, pnly combo 1 with free movement is performed and that makes stances good and responsive.

 

My suggestion for ALL stances:

EAZIER OPTION 1.

If you just spam E, no matter what direction you go or stay in place, you perform combo technic 1 and these combos should ALL be free to move around.

HOLD BLOCK + E - combo 2

HOLD (BLOCK + BACK) + E - combo 3

HOLD (BLOCK + FORWARD) + E - combo 4

 

BETTER OPTION 2.

 

E - combo 1, free movement

HOLD BLOCK + E - combo 2, free movement (generally slower but harder hitting comboes with procs/multipliers)

HOLD DUCK/ROLL + E - combo 3, free movement (spin/aoe attacks vs crowd)*

HOLD (BLOCK + DUCK/ROLL) + E - combo 4, free movement or forward leaps/slides/special technics, whatever cool.

 

*potentialy a low spinning combo in future instead of just one slide attack, may be even consider -friction/+slide mods to improve sliding movement speed during those combos (just an idea).

 

OPTION 3 (better ideas for toggled on/off "allign attacks to camera"):

E - combo 1, stationary combos with uppercuts for lifted, slams, knockdowns, etc. (Like Reaping Spiral or Atlantis Vulcan combo 1 now, but remove even a slight movement, if there is need to move, we swithch to combo 2).

E + ANY Direction* - combo 2 free movement combos, anything that lets you run around swinging your weapon of choice like an old fast melee (doesn't have to be just 1-2 hits) until you stop to perform combo 1

Block + E - combo 3, some heavy or aoe combo, variation of combo 1

Block + E + ANY Direction* - leaps, dashes, jumps (forward if your melee attacks are alligned to camera, any direction if not)

*Combo 2 and 4 should override combo 1 or 3 as soon as any direction is pressed. Combo 1 and 3 should not "root" the player, and even if a swing of stationary combo  is not finished, legs should still respond and move to the desired direction, even before combo 3 or 4 swings begin.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Scar.brother.help.me

[Teridax68]

The fact that many of the reworked combos still force player movement I think signals to me that Melee 3.0 has failed as a sustainable melee model: it's certainly an improvement from the much jankier movesets of 2.0, but the changes did not go deep enough, and still rely on many of the same unhealthy principles. In this respect, I fully agree with the OP that whichever combos exist should always enable free movement. I also question why we have so many combos when they largely do the same thing, so I'd in fact advocate reducing the total number of combos down to whichever ones that work, too, instead of looking for replacements.

[TheDonutMan]

Totally agreed, forced movement is probably the worst part of the new Melee System, but far and away. One of the worst is Brutal Tide, for sparring weapons. I just want to punch the target in front of me, not perform part of Swan Lake. Makes me really miss quick melee.

Dont get me wrong. The stances and combos LOOK great, sometimes amazing, but half the time attacks miss because of that, and your positioning is really screwy. Therefore, they are, in practice, worthless.

[Andele3025]

20 hours ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

 

E - combo 1, free movement

HOLD BLOCK + E - combo 2, free movement (generally slower but harder hitting comboes with procs/multipliers)

HOLD DUCK/ROLL + E - combo 3, free movement (spin/aoe attacks vs crowd)

HOLD (BLOCK + DUCK/ROLL) + E - combo 4, free movement or forward leaps/slides/special technics, whatever cool.

Slide or rolls on already having to hold a direction, attack and block is not just impractical but would remove the point of dodges and slide attacks.
Current scheme with free movement/actually sensibly designed stances (e.g. what a better/return of tempo royale would be) instead of old stances butchered and glued together with animation locks or if people have such a problem with static combos being static

Base combo (free movement) = LMB
Gap closer combo (forward move with soft strafe/slide attack and old tempo royale block like strafe and camera steer) = LMB+RMB
Static high damage combo (lets you fully strafe and camera steer) = LMB+s (back keybind)
Static slam (hard root that can be camera steered) = LMB+RMB+s (back keybind)

First 2 letting you have any input other than back for movement.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

14 minutes ago, Andele3025 said:

Slide or rolls on already having to hold a direction, attack and block is not just impractical but would remove the point of dodges and slide attacks.
Current scheme with free movement/actually sensibly designed stances (e.g. what a better/return of tempo royale would be) instead of old stances butchered and glued together with animation locks or if people have such a problem with static combos being static

Base combo (free movement) = LMB
Gap closer combo (forward move with soft strafe/slide attack and old tempo royale block like strafe and camera steer) = LMB+RMB
Static high damage combo (lets you fully strafe and camera steer) = LMB+s (back keybind)
Static slam (hard root that can be camera steered) = LMB+RMB+s (back keybind)

First 2 letting you have any input other than back for movement.

I almost understand (never had an xbox) but kind of agree with whatever unbinds the derectional keys and lets us move freely while performing combos.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

And by the way, forward+E works  even worse when you opt out "align attacks with camera" and wish to spin around and hit in every direction.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

1 hour ago, Andele3025 said:

Slide or rolls on already having to hold a direction, attack and block is not just impractical but would remove the point of dodges and slide attacks.

I don't follow what you mean here at all, I guess this is because different ways of button bindings on controllers than on mouse + keyboard.

On PC even if combo 1 (E+E+E...) has free movement but combo 2 requires forward (W+E) - it turns combo 1 into a non-free movement as you start to perform combo 2 whenever you just want to go front. (Though if combo 2 was also a free movement just a different set of hand moves with procs, effects and multipliers - that could work. May be require some fine tuning but in theory it could be ok).

The problem is when combo 2 forces a movement requiring W+E, it already restricts combo 1 free movement as you can't press W and continue combo 1.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Scar.brother.help.me

[(PSN)jaggerwanderer]

Those three stance in the opening post combos are just the old quick melee moves. There's no animation lock or bad recovery either which makes them good. I'm just gald we can slide attack mid combo to move onto the next target without being stuck in a combo string.

[Tyreaus]

Agreed on the forced movement problem.

Also, easy + universal option 3:

Allow players to map inputs as they feel comfortable.

We can debate for years about whether forward or back or roll or crouch is the better input, but wouldn't it make more sense to just let people set their own inputs (and, ideally, input combinations) as they feel fit?

[Andele3025]

15 hours ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

I don't follow what you mean here at all, I guess this is because different ways of button bindings on controllers than on mouse + keyboard.

On PC even if combo 1 (E+E+E...) has free movement but combo 2 requires forward (W+E) - it turns combo 1 into a non-free movement as you start to perform combo 2 whenever you just want to go front. (Though if combo 2 was also a free movement just a different set of hand moves with procs, effects and multipliers - that could work. May be require some fine tuning but in theory it could be ok).

The problem is when combo 2 forces a movement requiring W+E, it already restricts combo 1 free movement as you can't press W and continue combo 1.

Im not talking console. LMB is just the actual old mouse button for attack.
EEE/no other input has no free movement on most attacks, it has animation locks that move you forward without steering (which you couldnt do if it had free move because you aint holding w/forward).
Just LMB (or e if you are doing quick attack style keybinds) should keep you in place or let you strafe with a or d (or s if s isnt used instead of no other input for static combos while allowing the forward combo to be used with no input/the static combos are turned into back combos while the forward become universal movement combos).

P.S. Align attacks with camera doesnt impact it/ just lets you do mouse streer in addition to stafre steer (which is the only way to control some animation locks like the forward block combo of TR).

Edited November 29, 2019 by Andele3025

[Scar.brother.help.me]

On 2019-11-29 at 10:04 PM, Tyreaus said:

Agreed on the forced movement problem.

Also, easy + universal option 3:

Allow players to map inputs as they feel comfortable.

We can debate for years about whether forward or back or roll or crouch is the better input, but wouldn't it make more sense to just let people set their own inputs (and, ideally, input combinations) as they feel fit?

Perfect! And an option on/off free movement. And let us decide how we want to play melee.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

Bump 

[Scar.brother.help.me]

So far Scythes have a nice Reaping Spiral stance, but it is no free movement, more like Atlantis Vulcan for nun-chucks: 

Combo 1: E - standing still combo, you can move slowly back and sides with some wierd momentum.

Combo 2: Fwd+E - a very nice combo, pseudo free movement for as long as Forward is held, you can turn left-right, while holdind forward and spin the camera (if your attacks are alligned to camera in options) - this would be so much better if it was combo 1 free movement..

Combo 3: Fwd+block+E - a very nice leap and a few strikes after!

Heavy Attack - slash proc!

 

Who haven't tried - check youtube for some insane Reaper Prime/Hate builds with 90% combo efficiency!

[shut]

On 2019-11-29 at 12:21 AM, Scar.brother.help.me said:

And by the way, forward+E works  even worse when you opt out "align attacks with camera" and wish to spin around and hit in every direction.

It makes me really happy to see another player point this out. Finding a fellow player who plays with "align attacks to camera" disabled feels like finding a damn unicorn.

This issue could be hugely alleviated by just letting "forward" include A,S,D in addition to W when this option is disabled (since those will all be "forward" relative to your character), but I guess there are so few of us that DE doesn't consider it worth the effort.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

17 hours ago, SortaRandom said:

It makes me really happy to see another player point this out. Finding a fellow player who plays with "align attacks to camera" disabled feels like finding a damn unicorn.

This issue could be hugely alleviated by just letting "forward" include A,S,D in addition to W when this option is disabled (since those will all be "forward" relative to your character), but I guess there are so few of us that DE doesn't consider it worth the effort.

Check out "option 3" (updated) in the first post, I adress this issue there.

[000l000]

Not being able to lock on targets efficiently while using melee weapons is quite annoying and it should definitely be part of a QoL. Sadly it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with animations, it's more related to physics and cameras. Currently we're mostly passing through enemies we have difficulties to lock on, even if most animations are quite nicely done, melee still feels clunky sometimes.

Ending a few feets behind an enemy in the middle of a fight is definitely something DE should work on. That and how melee works with verticality (stairs for example, it's such a nightmare).

[Hexsing]

So my main stances on my fave weapons are.

Grim Fury + Hirudo and I use the gap closer.  But I dont feel the forced movement on thus stance.  Brutal tide is not for me.

Crossing Snakes + Duel Keres - Again no forced movement on the third combo.  Which I use a lot.  

Slicing Feathers + Gunsen - the movement options are all very controllable.  

I'm finding it easier to control fast melee and the forced movement with these stances.  

I have not tested all of the stances however because I have a ton of melee.  And most stances.  

I'll test more.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

Found this topic, seems like more people dislike that forced movement issue.

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Scar.brother.help.me

[Scar.brother.help.me]

I have no idea how this issue bothers so little people in warframe. That makes me only think, that absolute most of the warframe players prefer firearms and don't care about melee at all. They would rather use polearm with free movement and just use it as a quick melee used to be.

P.s."was just trying out the new 2h Nikana, which is pretty fun to use with a combo efficiency build, but that stance.. you can't control your legs, the swings are very inconsistent and slow, this is such a drawback, this makes me wanna go back to polearms or scythe (which is more or less controllable) - and this is a shame, DE, you add wonderful things in your wonderful game, but you leave such frustrating issues with them like you never have time to try it for yourself and see how it feels, try your stances yourself, really, I am sure you'll want to make all stances as polearms and dual daggers now".

Edited December 15, 2019 by Scar.brother.help.me