Glaive and Gunblade stance suggestions

[(PSN)digitalgabeg]

I've been playing the Deadlock Protocol update since it landed for PS4, and overall enjoying it. So, of course I picked up the Xoris and the Stropha and leveled them. The experience felt a bit klunky. Not because of the weapons themselves, but because of their stances. Glaives and Gunblades are unique among the melee weapon archetypes in that they all have significant ranged capabilities. The problem I'm feeling is that this ranged utility is implemented inconsistently, making it hard to use organically.

• With both types of weapons, all of the combos for each stance blend short and long range attacks together. I want to emphasize, the animation looks good on these. All of them are dynamic and fun; they look good and feel powerful. However, mixing short and long range attacks like that means it's hard to get an attack at the range you want exactly when you want it.
  • Other melee weapons allow you to jump into a close-packed group of enemies and engage all of them at the same time, but if I try to do that with a glaive or gunblade, half my attacks are long-range, are hard to target on close enemies in all directions, and are therefore often wasted.
  • Unlike other melee weapons, glaives and gunblades can engage enemies that are a little ways away, but again, half my swings are not long-range and are therefore wasted. This problem feels a bit worse on the gunblades, because many of the gunshot animations lock your movement while you shoot the gun, so rapid attacks also feel staccato and clumsy.
     
• When you use a glaive with a one-handed sidearm, the glaive has an entirely different set of combos and a unique hold-to-throw mechanic. The glaive-and-gun melee attacks are a little easier to use, because they're consistent - they're all the same whirl-the-glaive-all-around-you combo, which is reliable for enemies in all directions. For long-range enemies, you can shoot or throw the glaive instead. Also, the hold-to-throw mechanic allows you to throw the glaive in mid-air, which is good, but a bit slow and hard to target. So this pattern works well overall, but it ignores the glaive's stance mod and feels disjointed from the normal glaive experience.
   
• The glaive heavy attack is a long-range bouncing throw. This is overall great a great ability, but since it's a heavy attack, it has a long wind-up animation, and many of the glaives don't have any innate homing. This makes it hard to hit things with the glaive, and missing feels bad when you spent your combo on that throw. The fact that you can detonate the glaive in mid-air mitigates this issue a bit, but it's tricky to time that correctly, especially in the middle of a chaotic fight. Also, because it's a heavy attack, you can't use it in mid-air; this is especially frustrating in comparison to the sword and shield weapons which allow you to throw the shield (Cobra & Crane, Sigma & Octantis) because that maneuver feels very fluid.
   
• Some glaives have special features (e.g. the Orvius' suspension attack) which are cool but non-obvious and tricky to use. It used to be, you could get the suspension effect plus a homing effect by holding the melee button and letting go at just the right time. That still works (kind of, it feels inconsistent to me) on gun + glaive mode, but for glaive only mode you're supposed to block while doing a heavy attack. This should be easier to use, and not have a weird unique control pattern.
   
• The gunblade heavy attack is just a heavy gunshot, which is just fine but isn't very interesting, especially since many of the combo attacks also shoot the gun and don't spend your combo to do so.

So, here are the suggestions I came up with to address these issues. I'm hopeful that these tweaks would involve a minimal amount of work (e.g. new animations) to implement.

• Reorganize the glaive and gunblade stances so that all the blocking melee combos have only long-range attacks and all of the non-blocking melee combos have only short-range attacks. This would give us entirely short-range attacks by default, and allow us to choose long-ranged attacks when we want them, making melee combat more intuitive.
   
• Allow us to throw the glaive or shoot the gunblade in mid-air by using a blocking melee attack. You already use the block button to aim-glide, and the previous tweak assigned long-range attacks to blocking melee attacks, so this change should be intuitive and easy to use.
  • For the glaive, a mid-air throw should probably be a quick throw, with no charge time, no homing, and no bounces.
  • Maybe change the throwable shields to also throw with a mid-air blocking melee attack? That would make sense, having a standard pattern for "mid-air ranged attack" across melee weapons.
     
• The gun + glaive pattern is hard to tweak, since for that pattern the same button is used for both heavy attack and secondary fire. Ideally, the gun + glaive would use the same combos as the glaive alone does, but that might require more animation work. But even if we don't change anything else, we should be able to give the gun + glaive pattern the same mid-air throw via blocking melee attack, to keep that action the same as it is for glaive alone.
   
• Let's spice up the gunblade heavy attack, make it more fun. Instead of just a charged shot aimed right at the reticle, let's borrow from Mesa and do several rapid gunshots that are auto-targeted at enemies near the reticle, one shot per combo level, to reward a higher combo count.
   
• Let's also spice up the glaive heavy attacks. Make a heavy attack throw automatically home in on the nearest target, and make it bounce to one enemy per combo level, to reward a higher combo count. Also, make heavy throw attacks activate special glaive features, like the Orvius' suspension effect.

[Tyreaus]

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Reorganize the glaive and gunblade stances so that all the blocking melee combos have only long-range attacks and all of the non-blocking melee combos have only short-range attacks. This would give us entirely short-range attacks by default, and allow us to choose long-ranged attacks when we want them, making melee combat more intuitive.

Besides the possible animation jank, plus what counts as "long-ranged" for glaives (does it just have to leave the player's hand? Does it have to reach a certain distance? Do 360 attacks count - or not?), this makes sense. There's just a lot of work and headscratching hidden in the idea.

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Allow us to throw the glaive or shoot the gunblade in mid-air by using a blocking melee attack. You already use the block button to aim-glide, and the previous tweak assigned long-range attacks to blocking melee attacks, so this change should be intuitive and easy to use.

• For the glaive, a mid-air throw should probably be a quick throw, with no charge time, no homing, and no bounces.
• Maybe change the throwable shields to also throw with a mid-air blocking melee attack? That would make sense, having a standard pattern for "mid-air ranged attack" across melee weapons.

First paragraph and second bullet point make sense. I am not sure why the mid-air throw should behave different to grounded throws, though.

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

The gun + glaive pattern is hard to tweak, since for that pattern the same button is used for both heavy attack and secondary fire. Ideally, the gun + glaive would use the same combos as the glaive alone does, but that might require more animation work. But even if we don't change anything else, we should be able to give the gun + glaive pattern the same mid-air throw via blocking melee attack, to keep that action the same as it is for glaive alone.

At the point that dual wielding uses the same combos, and non-dual wielding has access to mid-air throws, it seems sensible to drop the dual wielding concept entirely. Especially if its current implementation creates issues. Heck, you could place the dual-wield charge throw mechanic, reticle style and button timing and mid-air capabilities and all, overtop the non-dual wield setups.

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Let's spice up the gunblade heavy attack, make it more fun. Instead of just a charged shot aimed right at the reticle, let's borrow from Mesa and do several rapid gunshots that are auto-targeted at enemies near the reticle, one shot per combo level, to reward a higher combo count.

This would help justify the almost absurd recovery time on gunblade heavy attacks. I do think there should be some way to cancel it - it could be quite time-consuming to roll through an entire 12 shots, plus the recovery time to add vulnerability to the player - and keep some of the combo charge. Not to mention the sense of "you don't need to keep pulling the trigger after the enemy's dead". That could be a unique feature.

1 hour ago, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Let's also spice up the glaive heavy attacks. Make a heavy attack throw automatically home in on the nearest target, and make it bounce to one enemy per combo level, to reward a higher combo count. Also, make heavy throw attacks activate special glaive features, like the Orvius' suspension effect.

I'm a bit iffy on this being default. It'd be nice for regular glaives to have the special homing effect to match Orvius's suspension mechanic - however those get activated - but the important bit being that it would be optional across the board. Sometimes you won't want a glaive to home in on a target, e.g. if you're landing a throw between two targets to get both in an explosion. So as long as there's some way for it to be optional without mucking about with other things like heavy attack explosions, sure.

[quxier]

Just about Gunblades:

On 2020-07-20 at 7:29 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

try to do that with a glaive or gunblade, half my attacks are long-range

You mean normal, Bullet dance's attack (pressing E)? Yeah, I have made topic about this here.

If you mean that your shots have close/mid/long range, then I guess it's specific to particular gunblade. For example Stropha is only for close combat, Redemer can shoot enemies at long range. Sarpa is in the middle.

 

On 2020-07-20 at 7:29 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Let's spice up the gunblade heavy attack, make it more fun. Instead of just a charged shot aimed right at the reticle, let's borrow from Mesa and do several rapid gunshots that are auto-targeted at enemies near the reticle, one shot per combo level, to reward a higher combo count

Not sure about auto-targeted part, but shooting more instead of stronger shot is imho better. However it should have more crit/status chance and be based on how many shots you make normally. For example Redeemer shots 10 pellets, so it should shot 120. Sarpa shots 4-5 so she should shot 48-60 shots.

[Zilotz]

On 2020-07-20 at 8:29 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

I've been playing the Deadlock Protocol update since it landed for PS4, and overall enjoying it.

I'm really impressed by people like you who can enjoy playing Warframe with a controller!

When i tried to do it i felt like i need at least 4 hands to control everything like i do on PC - very discomfortable feeling.

On 2020-07-20 at 8:29 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Reorganize the glaive and gunblade stances so that all the blocking melee combos have only long-range attacks and all of the non-blocking melee combos have only short-range attacks. This would give us entirely short-range attacks by default, and allow us to choose long-ranged attacks when we want them, making melee combat more intuitive.

I would propose the reverse for Bullet Dance on gunblades - all attacks are shots by default and blocking makes short range attacks.

Why? Because it is a stance dedicated for shots and constantly pressing block will not be convenient for it.

On 2020-07-20 at 8:29 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Allow us to throw the glaive or shoot the gunblade in mid-air by using a blocking melee attack.

Yeah, it would be convenient to have long range attack in air.

On 2020-07-20 at 8:29 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Let's spice up the gunblade heavy attack, make it more fun. Instead of just a charged shot aimed right at the reticle, let's borrow from Mesa and do several rapid gunshots that are auto-targeted at enemies near the reticle, one shot per combo level, to reward a higher combo count.

Could be good! Maybe even 3-4 fast shots per combo on each target(target number=combo).

On 2020-07-20 at 8:29 AM, (PS4)digitalgabeg said:

Let's also spice up the glaive heavy attacks. Make a heavy attack throw automatically home in on the nearest target, and make it bounce to one enemy per combo level, to reward a higher combo count. Also, make heavy throw attacks activate special glaive features, like the Orvius' suspension effect.

Looks good to me!