In retrospect, what was the point of the melee mod nerf?

[Mints]

The stated purpose of the nerf was so that melee weapons could be brought in line with guns. I saw people complaining about "beyblading." Well, I'm seeing quite a lot of people running missions with Lich/Sister guns that nuke the whole screen. If the purpose of the nerf was to equalize weapon types then where's my Nikana that effortlessly slices entire rooms apart with one swing and zero effort? 😨👌

[LSG501]

4 minutes ago, Mints said:

 Well, I'm seeing quite a lot of people running missions with Lich/Sister guns that nuke the whole screen. I

Got to have a reason to farm the same repetitive process over and over again....  power creep still sells sadly

Honest opinion, it feels more about 'encouraging' people to play the new content and trying to get players to go for the new slot mods (not worth it imo) than actually making primary/secondary weapons better.... none of the changes have changed the fact that I still prefer to use melee (and was part of the reason I picked warframe over other games which focused on guns) in most cases.

 

[Mints]

Just now, LSG501 said:

Got to have a reason to farm the same repetitive process over and over again....  power creep still sells sadly

Honest opinion, it feels more about 'encouraging' people to play the new content and trying to get players to go for the new slot mods (not worth it imo) than actually making primary/secondary weapons better.... none of the changes have changed the fact that I still prefer to use melee (and was part of the reason I picked warframe over other games which focused on guns) in most cases.

 

You and I have something in common then, but here's the issue I have: Melee players are expected to build up power and momentum. We have to get within range and actually deal damage to compete. Meanwhile, Mr. Kuva Zarr doesn't have to do any such thing. On the contrary: Mr. Kuva Zarr's burst damage is consistent and requires absolutely no mechanical skill whatsoever. This is why I look back and ask "Why?".

[Hayrack]

There was no point, that's the thing. Stated reasons are so flimsy you just shake your head in doubt.

[Tyreaus]

Besides what LSG501 says:

Their stated purpose is still what they stated. That they seemed to have overshot doesn't change what they aimed for.

(My personal opinion is, and pretty much always will be: DE fiddles with too many knobs at the same time and they need to take things more step-by-step to see how individual changes affect things.)

[Voltage]

7 minutes ago, Mints said:

You and I have something in common then, but here's the issue I have: Melee players are expected to build up power and momentum. We have to get within range and actually deal damage to compete. Meanwhile, Mr. Kuva Zarr doesn't have to do any such thing. On the contrary: Mr. Kuva Zarr's burst damage is consistent and requires absolutely no mechanical skill whatsoever. This is why I look back and ask "Why?".

Because the state of the game has come to a point where damage is an afterthought to range in the common mission. Weapons like Kuva Zarr/Ogris/Bramma/Nukor or Tenet Tetra/Cycron just have aimless AoE. Melee has this too but as you outlined, it builds with momentum through a tileset rather than just sprinting/bulllet-jumping and nuking every enemy with Primed Sure Footed and no drawback.

We've come full circle to the days of Synoid Simulor, Magus Lockdown or Nuke Trinity.

[cute_moth.npc]

16 minutes ago, Tyreaus said:

(My personal opinion is, and pretty much always will be: DE fiddles with too many knobs at the same time and they need to take things more step-by-step to see how individual changes affect things.)

Basically yes I think this too. They'll neglect something for years (like status effects), then try and rework the entire thing all at once in one go.

Warframes could be made a lot better if they used more small tweaks too. Going in and making touch ups that go out like "okay X can be recast before the timer expires now" or "Y scales with enemy level now" would let them make huge improvements across the board and could be put out regularly..

[quxier]

4 minutes ago, Mints said:

You and I have something in common then, but here's the issue I have: Melee players are expected to build up power and momentum. We have to get within range and actually deal damage to compete. Meanwhile, Mr. Kuva Zarr doesn't have to do any such thing. On the contrary: Mr. Kuva Zarr's burst damage is consistent and requires absolutely no mechanical skill whatsoever. This is why I look back and ask "Why?".

But Zar  & co requires ammo, reload and aiming (not to shoot yourself). You can mitigate it via various things (I'm using Carrier).

Melees on other hand can be spammed. With bloodrush and few mods/focus you can keep ~8x combo multiplier (you loose 10% of combos). Add speed mods/frame and you are just melting enemies.

Some weapons are better and some are worse. However when it comes with PRimaries/secondaries there is disparity between them. Melees are "not so different" and difference can be easily "fixed" by mods (e.g. slow weapon -> slap some fury mod).

 

ps. I'm melee person. I love some weapon designs (sarpa, arum spinosa...) but stances are bad/boring. They won't even fix base problem of stances. It's easy to slap some speed + damage mods and see enemies die. I've put off any speed mod to feel it more.

[Tyreaus]

4 minutes ago, Grey_Days said:

Basically yes I think this too. They'll neglect something for years (like status effects), then try and rework the entire thing all at once in one go.

Warframes could be made a lot better if they used more small tweaks too. Going in and making touch ups that go out like "okay X can be recast before the timer expires now" or "Y scales with enemy level now" would let them make huge improvements across the board and could be put out regularly..

I think there is some kind of "go big or go home" philosophy at play on DE's end. I've seen them brag about the sizes of patch notes in the past, and while I understand the idea that big patches feel awesome, I can't help but feel it's hella detrimental.

I mean, besides neglect caused by conglomerating changes that you mentioned, there's an exponential management overhead. It comes across most readily with bug testing. If you add one thing and a bug crops up, you at least know to start with something related to that new thing. Add in five new things and now the first step is to figure out which thing to even start with. The problem area is massive by comparison, and that sifting through things can multiply time costs pretty hard.

The melee changes weren't all good, but I know that's one of the more successful pieces that they did. And it came in, well, pieces. I think a lot of Warframe revisited was done piecemeal too, though I'm a touch too tired to recall properly.

Not to mention other things like feedback being easier for players to give, since they can focus on smaller things and analyze more nuanced details, and for community managers to collect.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

"I'm not having fun with guns so all those melee users have to pay."

Never forget that misery loves company and people will tear you down if you're having fun when they aren't.

[Tiltskillet]

Melee still seems very good to me.  From my perspective, those nerfs were basically fine in the context of  Galvanized and Arcane buffs to ranged single target weapons.  

But they way overshot the mark with those same boosts to ranged AoE, especially at the top end.  

Which nobody could have predicted.  

Spoiler

 

[kyori]

None. It's a design philosophy in DE. They give you an advantage/good stuff, they will also have to give you a disadvantage/bad stuff. They called it Balance. It's already the usual practice in the company.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

1 minute ago, kyori said:

None. It's a design philosophy in DE. They give you an advantage/good stuff, they will also have to give you a disadvantage/bad stuff. They called it Balance. It's already the usual practice in the company.

It was actually because a youtuber made a video. 

Casuals piled on and even got youtubers to once again during a dev stream ask if they were gonna do anything about melee.

People asked for it. It started out "buff guns"....then some people started saying "it's not guns it's melee". 

[PublikDomain]

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

then some people started saying "it's not guns it's melee". 

Which it was/still is.

[BRZZAFK]

3小时前 , Mints 说:

 where's my Nikana that effortlessly slices entire rooms apart with one swing and zero effort? 😨👌

It's same as before. You dont use melee when aoe weapon can kill . And you dont use aoe weapon when nuker can kill. 

DE equalize nothing. These weapon are still different tool for different situation.

 

[ReddyDisco]

While i don't agree with berserker nerf (replaced it on most my builds), the gun changes have been fun. All the melee nerfs did was make melee slightly annoying and reduce the amount of viable hybrid melees (goodbye lesion, dex dakra)

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

3 hours ago, Mints said:

The stated purpose of the nerf was so that melee weapons could be brought in line with guns. I saw people complaining about "beyblading." Well, I'm seeing quite a lot of people running missions with Lich/Sister guns that nuke the whole screen. If the purpose of the nerf was to equalize weapon types then where's my Nikana that effortlessly slices entire rooms apart with one swing and zero effort? 😨👌

You’re missing the context here. AOE nuke weapons are great—- at killing low level trash mobs.

Prior to the melee nerf, melee was scaling very, very well. With people able to retain brutal amounts of area damage into the 1000’s of levels. Because that’s worth keeping in mind too, melee has some of the highest single target damage—- AND is also AOE.

It doesn’t matter how many forma you put on your Bramma, it’ll never be able to compete at that high level of content.

In short, weapons that nuke trash mobs aren’t hurting anyone. But weapons that scale up infinitely and are a one stop answer to all of your problems? That is bad for the health of the game.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

So what you’re saying is DE needs to nerf melee even harder?

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

3 hours ago, Mints said:

The stated purpose of the nerf was so that melee weapons could be brought in line with guns. I saw people complaining about "beyblading." Well, I'm seeing quite a lot of people running missions with Lich/Sister guns that nuke the whole screen. If the purpose of the nerf was to equalize weapon types then where's my Nikana that effortlessly slices entire rooms apart with one swing and zero effort? 😨👌

The nerf wasn't really a nerf, in my experience. Attack speed was made to be more reasonable (in regards to peak speed potential) but nothing else really changed enough to matter...and that's the cool part. 

In regards to the why? Well, that answer is simple: players complained too much about a nothing issue. That "guns vs melee" complaint campaign led DE to the realization of how silly attack speed and critical ramp ups were. It served as a reminder that DE actually takes a look at issues and trues to solve them, though not always in the image the complainers envisioned. Now, has melee really experienced a negative impact? Not that I could tell during my playtimes.

That said, has my gun game and overall fun experience gone up? HELL YEAH!!!! The changes are AWESOME in my book and has me trying guns I rarely used before. Each arcane and galvanized mod gives me great options to compliment whatever style I feel like going with. In fact, both sets of mods actually can create completely different setups that, for the first time I can remember, got me to use load out slots for guns! Good stuff!

[L3512]

2 hours ago, Hayrack said:

There was no point, that's the thing. Stated reasons are so flimsy you just shake your head in doubt.

Are you saying you have doubts about the whole

 

Buff guns.

Buff guns with slight melee changes.

Buff guns with melee nerfs.

Nerf BR because a tiny amount of weapons could consistently red crit with it alone.

Nerf berserker because one mod that breaks animations is a no no, two mods or wisp with no attack speed mods breaking animations is perfectly fine.

Remove gladiator set mods from deconstructor because even though it was change two years ago it was suddenly an  "unintended interaction."

Leave the vigilante set mods as is because even though it functions the same as the gladiator set, that's intended, unless of course it suddenly isn't at some time in the future.

🤣

[PublikDomain]

2 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

You’re missing the context here. AOE nuke weapons are great—- at killing low level trash mobs.

Thing is, just about the entire game is "low level trash mobs" nowadays because of how strong players have gotten. The only place left where you're not facing "low level trash mobs" is like you say a thousand levels into SP, and getting there is boring and takes a lot of time. Which is literally the reason SP was added in the first place: to give endurance players a shortcut to higher levels. Melee was the one stop answer to all of the problems players are going to face for hours and hours and hours deep into a mission, and now AoE weapons are too. Now we need a shortcut for the shortcut. This isn't sustainable or healthy for the game either.

[Merrcenary]

.

[trst]

It tried to narrow the gap between melee weapons and guns. And as they pointed out one of the biggest discrepancies they have is the scaling those melee mods offered which didn't exist for guns until Galvanized mods (and even then melee still has more scaling).

The problem with the nerfs made is that they ultimately did nothing other than nerf some spam builds on slow weapons. Even Glaives being the only directly nerfed class is still exactly as powerful because heavy attack mods were untouched.

And the nerfs were necessary to begin with because of how damage and number obsessed players are. People ignore the fact that guns were perfectly fine before the changes but would still ignore them with galvanized mods because of how much "stronger" the overkill of melee is.

[Sziklamester]

Basically the point was to try encourage people use these new set of mods on secondaries and primaries on that level where these items struggle. Basically nothing changed because the mods that got the nerfs are extras and not really needed to achieve dominance in the game only overkilling. I still use melee and guns when it needed but I do not play very high levels because see no reason to play against bulletsponges. A normal stat revise for weapon classes would have been better but it could have took them more time and they wanted to skip the time investment and they preferred to go on the route which is easier to do. They usually do bandaids and let in game for long time and when the game needs drastic changes then they change it or not.

Not all guns and secondaries needs buffs but a huge margin of them needed and still in the garbage tier. Entire weapon families suffer because not enough efficient in killing or not giving something unique to the table to be used more like AOE vs Single target weapons. 

[Silligoose]

7 hours ago, Mints said:

The stated purpose of the nerf was so that melee weapons could be brought in line with guns. I saw people complaining about "beyblading." Well, I'm seeing quite a lot of people running missions with Lich/Sister guns that nuke the whole screen. If the purpose of the nerf was to equalize weapon types then where's my Nikana that effortlessly slices entire rooms apart with one swing and zero effort? 😨👌

Your Nikana can still do that, can't it? I haven't played a long, extended run in a while, so I don't know how things have changed against really high level enemies, but melee doesn't appear to have any issue with Steel Path enemies in normal mission run-times or even Steel Path runs approaching an hour. In fact, when I'm in a mission with strong/durable enemies, specifically disruption, melee appears to still be the king in terms of pure damage output.

To me, personally, the issue appears to be that weapons were brought closer in line with one another, but that the target damage weapon type chosen to equalize to was melee, which was overpowered by massive degree - the damage output melee had was too great for the general content we encountered. It still is, but now other things are as well.

I understand why DE chose to buff ranged instead of nerfing melee more and agree that top-tier AoE's balance is off, but I find it ironic the game seems less mechanically and tactically challenging at late-game than early-to-mid game,.