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Melee nerfs - Primary/Secondary Re-Balancing


(XBOX)Maszy

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Melee is currently the meta, let's face it. Although this can be an essay long post on how I see it can be fixed, I'll try and be short.

The problem here lies with the introduction of 2 very powerful mods, them being Condition Overload and Blood Rush. These 2 mods are present in EVERY melee build and provide enormous buffs to the weapon of choice. This is not really a bad thing to be honest because there are still 4 mod slots to play around with and find what might appeal to each player. Maybe it's attack speed or more base damage, I myself like to go with elementals against factions etc. 

Now DE could introduce mods of similar power for primaries/secondaries, but that would make 2 mods mandatory and render a ton of them useless. That is effectively making a large mechanic of the game mindless and useless. Not to mention making the game a walk in the park for anyone who has 4 mods, and giving little to no reason to use or try anything else.

The problem here, I feel, lies much deeper and requires a deeper fix. DE sees "ridiculous" attack speed as an issue. I say the concept of space ninjas in itself is not the most realistic to begin with, but that is what players loved and continue to this day showing their support through various means. I myself would have never been bothered to write a post such as this for a game I could not care about. 

Melee needs a nerf. That actually is the case unless enemy AI is altered. Remember DE, nerfs are rarely seen as a good thing, and while AI behavior is much harder and time consuming to work on, it would fix the mindless melee chopping most players are into now. 

Weapon rebalancing. Mods is not the way to go, unless creating new mods and in the process throwing every other mod in the bin is DE's idea of fixing the issue. I see that as merely a band-aid on an internal bleeding. Weapons have many damage types and some of them are neglected. Who builds for puncture anyway?!

My suggestion is to rework the puncture damage type for every weapon and turn it into a armor piercing %. This % may vary between weapons (lower for high fire rate - higher for snipers and bows). That idea is something that makes sense to me at least. Work on already existing elements instead of adding more is my idea of fixing an issue here.

This is a much more complex idea but for the sake of readability, i'll keep it short. Point here is, fixing the already under-used elements instead of adding more content in a game that is already repulsive to new players due to its complicated nature.

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This has been discussed numerous times and you are wrong.
Melee is powerful because it can kill hordes of enemies fast and most of the time this game relies on hordes of enemies for the missions to be complete.
Guns won't be as powerful as melee even if they one shot everything in the game, because most of them are single target.
That's why aoe weapons are used more, even if the costs is loosing a mod slot for prime sure footed.
The solution is to change the game to not require you to "kill 50+ enemies/s", but that's not gonna happen so every nerf to melee will be only annoyance, every buff to guns will be futile.

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I might have missed the mark on why melee is powerful, but I refuse to admit that there is no solution to the issue.

Enemy AI still seems like the issue in need of fixing since if hordes of enemies just stand there, they are just asking for melee to be used. However, just making all enemies split and take cover would essentially lead to people overusing grouping up abilities like ensnare or larva, abilities which are already seeing a lot of use.

The more people are concerned with the issue, the better the solution will be.

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7 minutes ago, (XBOX)Maszy said:

The more people are concerned with the issue, the better the solution will be.

therein lies another problem; how much do people actually want change?

as long as DE keeps making game modes that are played just for the rewards and not because they're actually fun, efficiency will always be the main focus of the majority of players, and efficiency means doing the mission as quickly as possible. guess what, AoE and powerful melee helps tremendously with that, and without it you just have missions that are a slog, and just turn people away. imagine how many more people would burn out if they couldn't take their Saryns and Kuva Nukor/CO melee builds and other metas to the tedious missions they've farmed dozens of times over already. 

when people hear nerfs, they know it means becoming less efficient at getting things done quickly, which is completely counterintuitive to their chosen play style. I don't think enough people really care about wanting to see real change, and I reckon many that do aren't quite aware of what they are wishing for, and might not be best pleased with the results.

you can refuse to admit there's no solution all you want, but unless you can somehow come up with an all-new revolutionary system that respects warframes design while providing balance, then there really is no solution. 

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19 minutes ago, (XBOX)Maszy said:

I might have missed the mark on why melee is powerful, but I refuse to admit that there is no solution to the issue.

Enemy AI still seems like the issue in need of fixing since if hordes of enemies just stand there, they are just asking for melee to be used. However, just making all enemies split and take cover would essentially lead to people overusing grouping up abilities like ensnare or larva, abilities which are already seeing a lot of use.

The more people are concerned with the issue, the better the solution will be.

I support your comment but the DE and the moderation does not seem to hear us, the community is creative

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6 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

therein lies another problem; how much do people actually want change?

 

I have to agree with you. But what we do know is that changes are on their way and the least we can do is at least raise a few ideas in favor of fun.

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19 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

you can refuse to admit there's no solution all you want, but unless you can somehow come up with an all-new revolutionary system that respects warframes design while providing balance, then there really is no solution. 

There is a solution and I wrote it above. The thing is it will require a whole revamp of the entire game - not as many enemies, much larger drop chance because of this, principle mechanics of some missions(exterminate, survival, defence etc.) and many more.
The whole game have to change in essence to accommodate for the two weapon types. 
And to be clear I am not agains such a change, but I highly doubt it that the whole dev team will work for 2+ years to change the core game for this.
Everything other that this will be a bandaid at best and a fun quirk probably.

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3 minutes ago, vegetosayajin said:

There is a solution and I wrote it above. 

Unfortunately from a business standpoint, risk outweighs reward in such a scenario, I would understand if DE did not take a risk this big such as revamping their whole mechanics and risk the game loosing its identity and thus a large portion of its playerbase.

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1 minute ago, (PSN)drpunk-yo said:

As long as they rush us or we rush them then spamming hit is always gonna be easier than aiming.

Throw in heavy controller use by the community and this becomes a no-brainer. 

The best way to start to get melee under control is to nerf the ever-living-daylights out of both base melee range and the range mods. AoE is a real problem and this is one of the worst contributors to the problem. 

Get this under control and a lot of other issues will fade into the background. 

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2 hours ago, (XBOX)Maszy said:

Melee is currently the meta, let's face it.

It isn't since the meta is always the fastest and easiest way to skip the gameplay. Only time i see someone other than me using melee is spin-to-win spamming and that doesn't happen often when they can just get some rapid fire AoE gun to erase all enemies without aiming. All that is needed to kill melee for good is to "nerf" the mod combos that allow that, and then nobody will use melee. Except me of course.

This just means that nobody wants to play the game, they just want to get to the rewards. At this point in time, that shouldn't be a surprise anymore.

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1 hour ago, (XBOX)Maszy said:

Unfortunately from a business standpoint, risk outweighs reward in such a scenario, I would understand if DE did not take a risk this big such as revamping their whole mechanics and risk the game loosing its identity and thus a large portion of its playerbase.

And now maybe you get it. What you are asking for in your OP is a fundamental change to the game. If DE continues to nerf the things that work well, the grind will become much worse. AOE weapons, melee, and warframe powers with large ranges are what makes the grind tolerable. Nerf these and you need to substantially change the core of the game to account for the substantially reduced efficiency in clearing missions (reduce enemy count, rework enemies, increase probability, etc.). Everyone's tastes are different but Warframe won't suddenly become more enjoyable simply because it takes me longer to kill enemies. It will still be the same game, it will just be more painful to farm. Consequently, if you don't change the core design, lots of people will stop playing because the time to reward ratio isn't worth it. On the other hand, if you substantially change the core design, it's likely that a lot of people will leave because that isn't the game the signed up for. I think the reality is that at some point DE may just need to start from scratch with a new game. It seems unlikely to me that they will be able to stay ahead of player churn indefinitely. 

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3 hours ago, (XBOX)Maszy said:

Melee is currently the meta, let's face it. Although this can be an essay long post on how I see it can be fixed, I'll try and be short.

The problem here lies with the introduction of 2 very powerful mods, them being Condition Overload and Blood Rush. These 2 mods are present in EVERY melee build and provide enormous buffs to the weapon of choice. This is not really a bad thing to be honest because there are still 4 mod slots to play around with and find what might appeal to each player. Maybe it's attack speed or more base damage, I myself like to go with elementals against factions etc. 

Now DE could introduce mods of similar power for primaries/secondaries, but that would make 2 mods mandatory and render a ton of them useless. That is effectively making a large mechanic of the game mindless and useless. Not to mention making the game a walk in the park for anyone who has 4 mods, and giving little to no reason to use or try anything else.

The problem here, I feel, lies much deeper and requires a deeper fix. DE sees "ridiculous" attack speed as an issue. I say the concept of space ninjas in itself is not the most realistic to begin with, but that is what players loved and continue to this day showing their support through various means. I myself would have never been bothered to write a post such as this for a game I could not care about. 

Melee needs a nerf. That actually is the case unless enemy AI is altered. Remember DE, nerfs are rarely seen as a good thing, and while AI behavior is much harder and time consuming to work on, it would fix the mindless melee chopping most players are into now. 

Weapon rebalancing. Mods is not the way to go, unless creating new mods and in the process throwing every other mod in the bin is DE's idea of fixing the issue. I see that as merely a band-aid on an internal bleeding. Weapons have many damage types and some of them are neglected. Who builds for puncture anyway?!

My suggestion is to rework the puncture damage type for every weapon and turn it into a armor piercing %. This % may vary between weapons (lower for high fire rate - higher for snipers and bows). That idea is something that makes sense to me at least. Work on already existing elements instead of adding more is my idea of fixing an issue here.

This is a much more complex idea but for the sake of readability, i'll keep it short. Point here is, fixing the already under-used elements instead of adding more content in a game that is already repulsive to new players due to its complicated nature.

You're playing a horde based ninja game, let's face it. This isn't call of duty.

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Another way to coral melee is making combo gain much harder and giving the enemy ways to directly reduce and/or break the player's combo multiplier.

Certain enemy elemental status effects like electricity and cold will respectively drain the combo time faster and decrease combo gain chance multiplied by how many stacks are applied.

Make getting hit by enemy attacks reduce the combo count. 1 Hit - 1 combo in normal missions, 1-5 in sorties, nightmare and arbitrations, 1-10 in Steel Path

Give certain heavy enemies like the nox, bursas and juggernauts a melee grapple like what the liches have that will break the player's combo. This also applies to the liches.

Make all melee enemies highly resistant or immune to critical hits. If the player get hurt by a melee attack from behind, this will force a guaranteed stagger that ignores stagger immunity.

All enemies with nullifying abilities (Nullifiers, Scrambas, Stalker and his Acolytes) will break the player's combo when they hit them with their abilities.

Basically, put enough inconveniences and -you know- risk to melee to at force players to at least consider diversifying.

I don't mind for melee to be as powerful as it is right now but it should really have some drawbacks for that power. Even in Dynasty Warriors (particularly in the older games), blindly mashing square into is not a good idea lest you're okay getting blindsided by an enemy officer or specialist leading to you getting stun-locked and/or juggled to death.

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On 2021-05-28 at 11:56 AM, GuardWarg said:

Another way to coral melee is making combo gain much harder and giving the enemy ways to directly reduce and/or break the player's combo multiplier.

Certain enemy elemental status effects like electricity and cold will respectively drain the combo time faster and decrease combo gain chance multiplied by how many stacks are applied.

Make getting hit by enemy attacks reduce the combo count. 1 Hit - 1 combo in normal missions, 1-5 in sorties, nightmare and arbitrations, 1-10 in Steel Path

Give certain heavy enemies like the nox, bursas and juggernauts a melee grapple like what the liches have that will break the player's combo. This also applies to the liches.

Make all melee enemies highly resistant or immune to critical hits. If the player get hurt by a melee attack from behind, this will force a guaranteed stagger that ignores stagger immunity.

All enemies with nullifying abilities (Nullifiers, Scrambas, Stalker and his Acolytes) will break the player's combo when they hit them with their abilities.

Basically, put enough inconveniences and -you know- risk to melee to at force players to at least consider diversifying.

I don't mind for melee to be as powerful as it is right now but it should really have some drawbacks for that power. Even in Dynasty Warriors (particularly in the older games), blindly mashing square into is not a good idea lest you're okay getting blindsided by an enemy officer or specialist leading to you getting stun-locked and/or juggled to death.

Or we could just continue to avoid all those scenarios by playing normally like we always do. 

Only inexperienced players get hit by nullifiers, and enemies can simply be CC'd to be attacked, rolling guard or other ways to cleanse status, nuking etc.

And heavy attacks will reduce the need for a combo counter anyway.

 

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12 hours ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Or we could just continue to avoid all those scenarios by playing normally like we always do. 

Only inexperienced players get hit by nullifiers, and enemies can simply be CC'd to be attacked, rolling guard or other ways to cleanse status, nuking etc.

And heavy attacks will reduce the need for a combo counter anyway.

 

The point of those scenarios are more of examples to what I'm getting at, make melee have risks and actual downsides. Make rushing into a crowd without a backup plan dangerous. That's not limited to just what I suggested in my previous post.

Heck, what I'm suggesting could be as extreme as DE introducing a stamina system to melee that when depleted:

-Reduces your base damage, crit multiplier, attack speed and heavy attack windup speed.

-Increase the speed of the combo counter counting down and get an additive -50% chance to gain combo.

-When the stamina is depleted, if the player gets hit whilst performing a melee attack regardless of whether the attack damages then or not, there is a chance the player will be forced into a stagger animation regardless of their resistance immunity. If the player gets hit when performing a heavy attack in the same situation, the stagger is guaranteed.

Also mods to improve one's stamina performance are on both warframes and melee weapons.

Of course, I'm more than aware this specific suggestion will NOT go down well a lot of people, so i went for more conservative examples on my first post.

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4 minutes ago, GuardWarg said:

The point of those scenarios are more of examples to what I'm getting at, make melee have risks and actual downsides. Make rushing into a crowd without a backup plan dangerous. That's not limited to just what I suggested in my previous post.

Heck, what I'm suggesting could be as extreme as DE introducing a stamina system to melee that when depleted:

-Reduces your base damage, crit multiplier, attack speed and heavy attack windup speed.

-Increase the speed of the combo counter counting down and get an additive -50% chance to gain combo.

-When the stamina is depleted, if the player gets hit whilst performing a melee attack regardless of whether the attack damages then or not, there is a chance the player will be forced into a stagger animation regardless of their resistance immunity. If the player gets hit when performing a heavy attack in the same situation, the stagger is guaranteed.

Also mods to improve one's stamina performance are on both warframes and melee weapons.

Of course, I'm more than aware this specific suggestion will NOT go down well a lot of people, so i went for more conservative examples on my first post.

Yea it's not gonna happen either way. 

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On 2021-05-28 at 2:05 PM, (XBOX)Maszy said:

The problem here lies with the introduction of 2 very powerful mods, them being Condition Overload and Blood Rush. These 2 mods are present in EVERY melee build

N0eXFQl.png

You are wrong. CO doesn't work on glaives, they are still the best "melee weapons".

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vor einer Stunde schrieb Traumtulpe:

N0eXFQl.png

You are wrong. CO doesn't work on glaives, they are still the best "melee weapons".

Agreed. I'm too lazy to link one but heavy attack builds also use neither (mostly) and are similarily strong as glaive- and combo-builds for anything that isn't hoursss of SP endurance - where this whole melee "non-issue" comes from to begin with - a mode/difficulty level DE said they wouldn't balance the game around. I'm not blaming DE. Opinions change. I'm just pointing out that this whole melee damage balance discussion that probably going to get melee nerfed and will create a whole mess for everyone to work through is based on mostly endurance runs in a mode DE wasn't even going to care about further initially.

As someone pointed out earlier and I did many times in the past: this is more of an issue between single target vs aoe for the majority of the game and damage numbers are only secondary. I don't use melee as my main weapon type already anyways, but if I did and they nerfed it into irrelevance I'd switch to aoe guns and/or more aoe ability usage 90% of the time and not a damage-buffed 5 million damage Soma.

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52 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Yea it's not gonna happen either way. 

Eh, not like that stopped anyone with more loftier and wider sweeping suggestions compared to mine to post theirs. If my idea isn't going to work in practice, so be it.

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Yeah submitting ideas are d.o.a activity. DE don't listen anymore and players will just kill each other in threads defending their own opinions. No matter how great the idea, this forum cannot reach collective decision ever.

6-7 years ago DE might be really huge on listening to player feedbacks. Nowadays i personally think 90% of people on general discussion sub-forum are wasting their time.

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Melee is in a very good spot
Aoe guns are somewhat good
Single target guns are trash

Nerf melee - ->

Melee is trash
Aoe guns are somewhat good
Single target guns are trash

So everyone who wants to nerf melee wants mission to last 5 times longer? For what reason do some people want to spent more time on the same grind?

Just use single target guns and test it. Everyone who wants the game to be like that are insane or just dumb.

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