Archmelee is currently dead, and I don't like that

[Recyclotron]

The title is not clickbait. There is currently absolutely no reason to use archmelee weapons at all from my point of view.

With the rework to archwing flight movements, it's important to remember that they removed an important feature: archmelee tracking and automatically putting the archwing in "archmelee range" before a viable attack. Sure, it had its own problems of taking bump hits which also triggered the shield recovery timer to start all over, but it was still viable in archwing missions. Now? There's absolutely no reason to swing when the 3m range can't hit a target in archwing missions, let alone in actual railjack combat.

To fix this, my proposition is simple. Both give us back the archmelee tracking AND increase archmelee range all around (like, in the order of 10m) so it might be viable in railjack missions to use archmelee weapons and avoiding the "bumps". Furthermore, I get that you can actually use archguns in ground combat because of Venus content, and that getting archmelee weapons in ground combat probably would need tons of rework or rethinking of the entire archwing system as a whole to make it balanced, but isn't effectiveness the reason you added rivens to archguns in the first place? Make archmelee weapons absolutely destroy enemy ships since they're not even used for anything else with rivens if that's what it takes! It's hard enough to get in melee range for the fighters in railjack, why not reward us for actually getting in range and trying the odds when you normally just get your archwing destroyed under concentrated enemy fire anyway?

Obviously I can think of detractors. But as it is, archmelee is simply dead. No point in even equipping an archmelee weapon, just level and get all that focus in your riven'd archgun. Adding 10m range to all archmelee weapons is something that can probably be coded in 4 hours if you're being extra cautious not to add any more bugs, and I'm probably WAAAY overestimating how easy that is actually to implement. Try that in your development builds and tell me that it isn't fun or effective if you make archmelee actually work.

Sincerely,

 - A concerned Tenno

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

I've attempted to hit railjack enemies with my melee and they are flying way to fast (even for guns in many cases). The auto tracking is kinda essential for that kind of gameplay.

As far as changing a number for range, that should be a quick and simple adjustment. Mechanic changes take more time and effort.

[Skaleek]

Prisma Veritux still has its lockon mechanics.

[Slayer_of_PCs]

My go-to for fighters is to hit them with cold status and melee with prisma veritux. It works great. 

[CopperBezel]

Oh my god, is that the difference? It's because I was using the Prisma Veritux? It never even occurred to me that might be why it still worked for me while it seemed to work for no one else. I didn't think to try any other archmelees because I don't have any others.

Yeah, you can cling right up the butt of an enemy fighter and hack away all day. With apparently exactly one archmelee. 

[KaizergidorahXi]

This, absolutely. I was super excited with the release of Railjack to finally try the Archwing Melee in an actually fun mission type but I haven't had a single Archmelee kill since it's release because the enemy ships are impossible to hit without the auto-tracking.

[yarl5000]

I hope they bring back the lock on feature.  

 

Guess I will change to prisma veritux until they fix the rest.  I really enjoyed punching everything to death with the Knux before so I hope I can go back to that. 

[Quimoth]

They are disabled because they would be to OP. As mentioned above though, the prisma veritux allows us to see WHY and HOW it would work.

So here are my reproduction steps, some are optional but definitely help:

1. Equip Amesha and Prisma Veritux
2. Make sure your amesha has as much strength as you can strap on.
3. Cast your warding grace (3) to slow enemies to a crawl
4. Try to fly in front of any grineer fighter.
5. Press E, see how you magically destroy fighters in most cases because of collision damage (you can do the same from behind and it wont even scratch veil fighters)

This behavior isn't consistent but I'm pretty sure if figured how it works and why it would be messed up to have.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Quimoth

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

It was never alive to begin with

[Salvator_Dracerta]

Just come here to bounce the post up and to tell that I cant agree more with you.
The ArchMelee nowadays are useless even for the enemies close by. if you're not EXACTLY close to the enemies that you can smack their faces with a Lato Prime, you wont hit them at all, and end up doing a few awkwardly spin before you can grab a gun to shoot them. And who the **** have that much time and safety to find a practical chance to do that? Especially when they also have a big gun in their hands that do the job much better.

[Sapphirya]

On 2020-01-02 at 10:46 AM, CopperBezel said:

Yeah, you can cling right up the butt of an enemy fighter and hack away all day. With apparently exactly one archmelee. 

It works with the default Veritux too. I can only assume it's like that because these weapons share animations with Titania's mini-archwing mode.

On topic: I agree. I used to love melee in archwing, because cleaving through hordes of fighters was pretty fun. Now, though, it's borderline impossible to do so. I have not bothered to touch my Centaur at all since archmelee was destroyed. And combined with the recent changes to archgun projectile speed, space combat has become wholly unpleasant and basically the opposite of fun.

[Gravitus123]

Yeah theyre totally useless at this point also all of them seem to have lost their tracking on attacks except the prisma veritux

[Xzorn]

Archmelee was never really comparable in the first place. I played Archwing a good amount before they screwed it all up. Back when you had to farm the weapons. That short road to farming the weapons was the only time I ever used melee.

Only way to get Archmelee viable would probably be to do the opposite of what DE did to normal melee. ie more than double it's damage then add some type of defensive measure. Honestly though Archmelee doesn't even make sense outside piecing weapons. There's no weight and you'd have to use thrust to get any force behind a hit so you wouldn't just bounce off the target hence spears are the only thing that make any sense.

[DatDarkOne]

On 2020-01-02 at 9:26 AM, Recyclotron said:

it's important to remember that they removed an important feature: archmelee tracking and automatically putting the archwing in "archmelee range" before a viable attack.

I had just noticed this recently myself in AW.  Makes it somewhat annoying as hell to use the AW melee.  I wonder if this also effects Titania in RW mode.  If so then that would suck monkeyballs.  

[OmegaVoid]

On 2020-01-02 at 4:02 PM, Quimoth said:

They are disabled because they would be to OP.

I hope the devs can fix this bug, and give us back our Archmelee, then.

Especially now the Veil fighters are taking so long to chew through with Archguns, hitting them with melee would be something to do while the Archgun recharges, and could be used to apply extra staus procs with co-ordianted builds.

Everything else aside, Archmelee used to just feel really good to use, and I want that back.

[OmegaVoid]

On 2020-01-10 at 9:05 AM, DatDarkOne said:

I wonder if this also effects Titania in RW mode. 

IIRC, Diwata did briefly lose its lock-on recently, then got it back.

Speculation: possibly the Diwata is too tangled up in the Veritux code for the devs to easily separate the two?

If so, then probably the Veritux still has its lock-on mechanic due to the protests of Titania-lovers.

[DoomFruit]

5 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

IIRC, Diwata did briefly lose its lock-on recently, then got it back.

Speculation: possibly the Diwata is too tangled up in the Veritux code for the devs to easily separate the two?

If so, then probably the Veritux still has its lock-on mechanic due to the protests of Titania-lovers.

Christ. I have no idea how to respond to that - that the game's code is so badly mangled that this even happens, or that they felt the need to actively destroy a full half of archwing's arsenal.

[waterboytkd]

The return of Archmelee tracking would be nice. It'd give Archwings outside of Amesha a nice way to deal with fighters (get on top of them, then spam melee, letting the natural lunge keep you on target). 

Alternatively, a neat mechanic might be allowing Archwings to "grapple" enemy fighters. Get close enough, and you can hit X to latch on, then your melees automatically hit it. Thematically, I like this, but it would probably take way more effort than to bring back something that was already in the game before.

[OmegaVoid]

3 minutes ago, waterboytkd said:

a neat mechanic might be allowing Archwings to "grapple" enemy fighters.

Didn't Itzal recently get something like this? I haven't tried it yet, but I gather it wasn't generally well received. 😆

2 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

they felt the need to actively destroy a full half of archwing's arsenal.

Well, in principle Archmelee is half its arsenal. In practice nothing in an Archwing mission makes it into melee range once you've acquired the Archgun mods... unless you wanted it to, 'cos using Archmelee was great fun.

And in theory you can still hit things with Archmelee. Just in practice you'd need to finely match your course and speed to the enemy to land more than one or two hits in a row. The speed of the enemies in Empyrean makes that idea a non-starter for Railjack missions.

2 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

I have no idea how to respond to that - that the game's code is so badly mangled that this even happens

I stress that my notion of the Veritux family still having the lock-on mechanic because Diwata depends on it is entirely speculation. It's been so many moons since I used either Veritux, I can't say if it ever lost its lock-on. If all Archmelee lost the lock-on functionality at the same time Diwata did, and the Veritux got it back at the same time Diwata did, then my theory looks quite likely. If Veritux never lost its lock-on at all, then then it'd probably be wrong.

An alternative theory would be that when the Archmelee weapons had their lock-on removed, the Diwata was included in that by accident, and the Veritux was somehow overlooked.

[DoomFruit]

21 minutes ago, OmegaVoid said:

Well, in principle Archmelee is half its arsenal. In practice nothing in an Archwing mission makes it into melee range once you've acquired the Archgun mods... unless you wanted it to, 'cos using Archmelee was great fun.

That depends. If you're using a larkspur or fluctus, or you're doing an MD or intercept - yeah. But if it's an exterminate, then you're going to be chasing down small, fast-moving enemies while you yourself are small and fast-moving. Melee autotrack was extremely good at smashing enemies which were clustered or close to you, and enemies were never that far away in the corpus ship when you had the speed mod. With universal blink, it would have been even more devastating.

But no. It's been beaten to death with the nerfhammer now.

[OmegaVoid]

Actually, one thing Archmelee was incomparable for was Locust Drones!

Cyngas, Imperator Vandal, they could take care of everything else on sight, Grattler as soon as it's in range. Locust Drones, though, were a cinch with the melee but a PITA to shoot down.

4 minutes ago, DoomFruit said:

enemies were never that far away in the corpus ship when you had the speed mod

I've had Hyperion Thrusters for ages, but never felt the need to use it until Empyrean dropped. 😆

But, yes, if you had Hyperion Thrusters slotted, I can see how melee would've been very effective in that tilest, given how quickly things would be coming into range!

[waterboytkd]

1 hour ago, OmegaVoid said:

Didn't Itzal recently get something like this? I haven't tried it yet, but I gather it wasn't generally well received. 😆

I haven't played Itzal yet, but from what I gather, it got Valkyr's ripline, which is quite different from what I suggested. Ripline either A) pulls you to a stationary object or B) yanks an enemy in your direction. The issue with B is the momentum is insane (at least for Ripline), so enemies don't come to you; they tend to go way past you. Having an enemy go from 100 meters in front of you to 100 meters behind you doesn't really help "close the gap". 

But in that suggestion, I meant your Archwing actually attaches to the enemy, going wherever they go, and you get to freely melee it. Think of boarding vehicles in the Halo games (if you ever played those), where you then punch out the driver and take over. Only here, rather than taking over, we just shred the hull with our archmelee.

Edited January 12, 2020 by waterboytkd

[RedDirtTrooper]

I mean, unless they make archwing weapons, including melee, actually do viable damage against railjack enemies it's kind of a moot point.

[DoomFruit]

21 hours ago, RedDirtTrooper said:

I mean, unless they make archwing weapons, including melee, actually do viable damage against railjack enemies it's kind of a moot point.

Archwing weapons (at least, the phaedra and cyngas) used to be extremely effective at killing railjack fighters. Good enough, in fact, that DE had to throw out a panic kneejerk nerf in the form of both enemy health increase and butchering the crap out of the particle (?) proc which the phaedra could lay on in huge quantities and allow you to even kill immortal veil enemies with sustained fire and proc stacking. Because god forbid that the players have some way of actually fighting that's not a giant, slow-moving target made out of tissue paper and equipped with twin spitball launchers.

[(NSW)Hermy]

Well the Problem is i can't level my Archwing weapons as good in Archwing missions anymore because of the changes... (No experimental flight, just fast and slow instead of boost speeds and blink is not usable in indoor missions) It's even a lot harder to fullfill some Archwing missions.

In Empyrean it's also impossible to level your Archwing at all because you get killed instantly when leaving the ship exept if you already have a fully levelled Amesha.

Even shooting Enemies is impossible with most Archwing weapons because the projectile speed is too low.

And Archmelee ist completely unusable. You should be able to block with it and at least lock onto enemies if you aim at them and then press attack.

If it's this bad for veterans imagine how new players who just got their first Archwing feel when they try their very first Empyrean missions...

 

 

Edited January 26, 2020 by (NSW)Hermy