Are melee combos too easy to execute?

[(XBOX)WafflyLearner89]

Personally, I find that it's less about melee combos being easy to execute and more of the fact that the melee system doesn't exactly have that much depth......

[ReddyDisco]

there are combos?

[0_The_F00l]

I liked the concept of the old combo system ,

But it was not practical , the speed variations for the same combo between weapons made it even more frustrating.

Some weapons Pause for 0.4 seconds to get the unique combo to continue , oh you waited 0.35 seconds ? Basic combo for you , you waited 0.45 seconds ? Starting new combo.

While others would need more or less of that waiting and you would never know by how much unless you spent a lot of time with it , and Ally speed buffs could completely screw you over too.

The current combo system is definitely easy , it's not necessarily a bad thing,  though there could be something extra added (like the glaive perfect throw mechanics ) 

[Slayer-.]

8 minutes ago, ReddyDisco said:

there are combos?

 

Spoiler

  

57 minutes ago, ReddyDisco said:

theres people in railjack? _{^{learn something new everyday}}

 

........................

[Yamazuki]

8 hours ago, PhiThagRaid said:

So, ofcourse the melee system would currently feel like a spam E gameplay loop if that is what the combo system allows. There is no reason to pace your melee strikes and when not switching to other weapons there is no reason to stop spamming E.

There is a reason to not just spam E, it's called efficiency. The only reason for anything in this game other than what ever is considered "fun".

If people want to spam E, let them, how is it any different to spamming LMB on guns without actually aiming? There is no variance at all in how pure gunplay plays, not even if you wanted to. The variance in Warframe mainly comes down to actually using abilities in the mixture, or weapon swapping. Even ranged weapons with alternate firing modes generally don't get used other than the generic use alt fire for an aoe boom.

It also makes no sense to say the "easy" combos led to E spam. People were just E spamming even before and entirely ignored doing combos. At least now anyone that wants to actually can do combos. Several stances are given superior mobility for mixing different types of attacks, some abilities even interact with specific attacks within a combo, and neither of these combos are tied to basic E spam.

People are just quick melee spamming because it's the only way to switch back and forth between the equipped gun and melee. Mixing combos requires you either fully enable melee mode, which completely removes the quickly swapping, or you have to spam E to avoid switching back to your gun. For people that do the priming shenanigans, enabling melee mode is wasted time. Then there's the whole group of people that primarily use ranged and only melee close targets, which they wouldn't bother enabling melee mode, or anything beyond tapping E or quick melee into heavy attack and immediately swapping back to their gun.

[Hearsay]

I remember the old combo system.  I remember learning all these deep and intricate combos, practicing them in a safe environment, only to end defaulting to "Spam E" anyway because trying to get the timing down on combos, especially the friggin' pause combos, was virtually impossible thanks to mods like Berserker.  Throw in trying to memorize the combos for a couple dozen stances with no real rhyme or reason or pattern between them all because I like to switch weapons based on whim and pretty much any combo that wasn't basic or hold right click or hold direction wound up not getting used.  Not to mention some stances were so awful that spamming quick melee was straight up better.

 

New system is a lot more intuitive.  Not the system I'd want (something like Dynasty Warriors I think would be perfect for this game), but at least I can reliably execute a variety of attacks depending on the situation and generally know which inputs will get the result I'm looking for.  [i]Especially[/i] if I've decided to go buzz sawing with a ton of attack speed.  Old combo system might have been all right in a much slower paced game, but that version of Warframe is long since dead and buried.

[Hayrack]

Why should my gameplay experience suffer because of everybody using powercreeped warframes, gear, arcanes, rivens and unbalanced buffs? Spammy combos are literally the only thing that help solo player to survive near level 100 enemies or squeeze out final seconds to achieve the mission objective. I don't play meta and face enough challenges, so why should I be punished because someone plays nuke gear and feel like game is to eZ?

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

My two cents, melee combos as they are now aren’t about being difficult to input, it’s about choosing when to use the right one.

When some weapons have four different move sets in one stance, plus heavy attacks I think they reason can have quite a bit of complexity.

I do however think that too many stances are redundant.

Perhaps a solution would be to add some more stances that are more complicated and have sophisticated inputs.

Or potentially, make stances intrinsic to weapons and allow us to cycle through stances while in game.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

The current system works, but IMO there should be a bigger delay at the end of a combo string, incentivizing mixing it up mid combat to preserve a continuous stream of hits. As a backbone, the 4 combo inputs are good enough, but there are definitely lots of avenues to be explored. There was a thread floating around about adding proper vertical launches (with another look at aerial attacks and lifting, giving them some relevancy), and contextual moves that can be performed to vault over enemies, or in general using enemies and terrain to perform cool attacks that weave together mobility and damage. DE also mentioned bullet jump melee attacks a while ago, that would be a very welcome addition. 

To me, the biggest wasted opportunity of the melee system is heavy attacks. Currently, they are bland and mostly unused, with the exception of a few specialized builds that do nothing but heavy attacks, moving from "spam E" to "spam alt-attack". Not to mention, the interactions between the combo multiplier, heavy attacks and critchance make any hope of engaging minibosses vanish into thin air, as absolutely nothing can survive a 12x heavy attack red crit, and 12x is stupidly easy to reach in no time with True Punishment and naramon/swift momentum to keep combo. A cool idea would be to add a mod slot alongside the stance one, that modifies the heavy attack animation providing flashy finishing moves. On top of the additional launches and aerial/contextual moves mentioned above, the combo counter, instead of yet another multiplier, could become a resource meter that is expended whenever a non-standard, and by extension more damaging, move is used (slide attacks, which could be buffed, bullet jump attacks, slams, vaults, improved wall attacks, flashy heavy attacks, even with AoE properties). Regular combo attacks would be your bread and butter, dealing lower damage but preparing stronger moves through the combo meter. If the numbers were properly balanced, it could be a good way to finally finish melee 3.0 and provide a more varied approach to melee combat. 

[BloodKitten]

the old melee felt like trying to make tekken combo, and if you have attack speed mods it made it near impossible to do combos you wanted, streamlining it is better and more accessable, just waiting for melee to recive the khora whip nerf because you can just spam E and beat 99% of the content without using the movement keys.

[(PSN)Unstar]

I won't say there's no value in having a combo system that is complex for the sake of complexity, but one of the things I love about Warframe is that when I want to do something, it generally is simple to translate my desires into actions.  Moving and sliding and doing aerial maneuvers are satisfying because they come naturally, in a way they would not be if I felt like I was fighting the controller just to be able to do what I wanted.

So I think it's very fitting that the combo system works like this as well.  We can do standard or "heavier" attacks and "stationary" or "mobile" attacks, for a total of 4 simple-to-perform combos that each fit a specific need.  It's intuitive and let's me do what I want, when I want it.  Personally, I think the current melee system is a homerun compared to the old one, and fits the game much better.  But that's just me.

[Deadoon]

Old combo system was significantly worse. It was a variable speed tempo game with modifier buttons as well. Your mods and other player's abilities would mess up the tempo needed for the hold and the delay based combos, or cause the delays to be so short you couldn't execute other combos which are modifier based.

[Slayer-.]

 

24 minutes ago, Deadoon said:

Old combo system was significantly worse. It was a variable speed tempo game with modifier buttons as well. Your mods and other player's abilities would mess up the tempo needed for the hold and the delay based combos, or cause the delays to be so short you couldn't execute other combos which are modifier based.

Yes that was frustrating if you had a speed modifier on you from a Warframe buff, made it near impossible to activate a combo under the old system.

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

Depends on how.much one uses melee. I sm rarely building comboes with melee. Quick strikes whrn needed otherwise i use my guns and abilities.

[Hokibukisa]

Look this game can't be dark souls AND a horde shooter at the same time. Have to pick one.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

7 hours ago, Hokibukisa said:

Look this game can't be dark souls AND a horde shooter at the same time. Have to pick one.

Well, there's a sea of options between dark souls' melee and Warframe's mash E, a decent example is almost any game made by Platinum. Warframe could really use some additional moves in its melee system beyond the 4 basic input combos, just to add flair and engagement, on top of making aerial combat viable.

[Hokibukisa]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)ShonFr0st said:

Well, there's a sea of options between dark souls' melee and Warframe's mash E, a decent example is almost any game made by Platinum. Warframe could really use some additional moves in its melee system beyond the 4 basic input combos, just to add flair and engagement, on top of making aerial combat viable.

I hear you but, the last survival mission I did was a "hard" mode (SP) for the nightwave act, and I killed about 1300 tough enemies in 15 minutes.

Thats bout 1 and a half "hard" enemies per second. And that was with Trinity a supposedly support frame.

How does a combo system make any sense in a game like warframe?

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

Just now, Hokibukisa said:

How does a combo system make any sense in a game like warframe?

Well, to make that carnage a bit less monotonous. Stuff like bullet jump spinning slashes, wall attacks that actually do something, air juggling working properly, heavy attacks with more character than just "a more damaging slash" (maybe moddable, like stances), contextual attacks that add interactions between the player and enemies, alongside a slight reduction in the effectiveness of the normal "mash E", would incentivize a more active melee play style that exploits terrain and other moment to moment cues, with the result of the whole experience feeling less same-y. 

[Hokibukisa]

2 minutes ago, (XBOX)ShonFr0st said:

Well, to make that carnage a bit less monotonous. Stuff like bullet jump spinning slashes, wall attacks that actually do something, air juggling working properly, heavy attacks with more character than just "a more damaging slash" (maybe moddable, like stances), contextual attacks that add interactions between the player and enemies, alongside a slight reduction in the effectiveness of the normal "mash E", would incentivize a more active melee play style that exploits terrain and other moment to moment cues, with the result of the whole experience feeling less same-y. 

That all sounds good but I still think it would neeed to become less horde shooter for that.

I like performing combos, it feels good. Same way shooting enemies with bows feels good. But I'm not dealing with 3 (actually) tough enemies, I'm dealing with 50.

I think my favorite melee combo system game was an assassins creed that took place in italy somewhere. And the reason it felt good was because it was challenging to take on 3 enemies at once, but it could be done and you felt like a badass.

But in warframe you're dealing with 50 not 3

[Slayer-.]

12 minutes ago, Hokibukisa said:

 

I think my favorite melee combo system game was an assassins creed that took place in italy somewhere. And the reason it felt good was because it was challenging to take on 3 enemies at once, but it could be done and you felt like a badass.

Yes it was awesome, once you remembered your combos you could disarm them and kill them with their own weapons and take on large groups of attacking soldiers when you weren't going the stealth method, you could also take on a whole group not just three in Assassin Creed [insert number] love all my Assassin games.

_{^{damn nearly just put 'love all my Ass games' then reread it didn't read well.}}

[Aldain]

2 hours ago, (XBOX)ShonFr0st said:

Well, there's a sea of options between dark souls' melee and Warframe's mash E

I'm not sure why so many people think there's only those two styles of melee gameplay these days.

Or why everyone defaults to Dark Souls when people say things are too easy, there's also a difficulty gap between "You're fighting the controls Souls" and "You're a walking immortal hitbox" but apparently Dark Souls changed all that.

...Did I ever mention I hate what Dark Souls did to the gaming community?

[(PSN)Yggranya]

2 hours ago, Aldain said:

I'm not sure why so many people think there's only those two styles of melee gameplay these days.

Or why everyone defaults to Dark Souls when people say things are too easy, there's also a difficulty gap between "You're fighting the controls Souls" and "You're a walking immortal hitbox" but apparently Dark Souls changed all that.

...Did I ever mention I hate what Dark Souls did to the gaming community?

Why do they default to dark souls?' Cause of the "difficulty" and how some mooks see it as some achievement. After dark souls, more and more games have totally counter-intuitive and just plain stupid designing, especially in combat, to make it "hard" and it all gets excused just for the sake of "difficulty"

 

...Yeah, i also hate it, but it's more than just the gaming communities. It's also the game developers. Players have something to prove, hence the BS "difficulty", and developers want to prove that they can make a dark souls, or a souls-like game.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

5 hours ago, Aldain said:

...Did I ever mention I hate what Dark Souls did to the gaming community?

Well, the amount of bad recreations of the soulslike genre speaks for itself. On the other hand though, I believe games like Sekiro absolutely nail the concept of action game difficulty, and its boss design is absolutely spot on. 

[Vytian]

I know I'm a tad late on this topic but I'm just now getting back into the game after being gone for a few years. I really enjoyed the combo system and I'm really bummed to see it gone. Then again I'm just a filthy casual :P

 

I have two main grievances with the new/current system, those being that it's just buttonmashing, and that all the cool combo animations that flowed into each other feel so jumbled now. Main example I can think of would be Swirling Tiger stance for Dual Swords. In the old system it felt so satisfying to pull off the combos successfully, the flourishes feeling like a reward for getting the timing down. Now those awesome flourish are just the start of the buttonmash "combos", making them feel much more lame. Plus the cool follow-up animations for those flourishes got all jumbled up, and it just feels like a bit of a mess imo.

Maybe I'm just not liking change, but it's really sucking a lot of the fun out of it for me.