Now that melee is worth using again, DE needs to *urgently* fix stances/animations.

[Traumtulpe]

Let me get straight to the point without sugar coating it; Melee stances and their animations are *way* worse now than they were before melee 2.9. And I don't know why they've been downgraded like this, it makes no sense and must be urgently rectified now that people are using their melees once again.

What's the issue? Simple, take Vulpine Mask (the rapier stance), before melee 2.9, and I'm talking about the main (the "hold") combo:

During this entire combo the player was able to move freely in any direction of their choice, now the only direction they can move in is forwards, and even the forwards movement is constantly getting interrupted. <- This is a huge downgrade and makes stances feel like garbage.

The player was also able to not move at all, not even a tiny little bit, by crouching during the combo. Now combos will catapult you forwards against your will and past your target, unless you have melee lock on activated (which is also complete garbage and feels horrible to play with).

And the player still had the option to use the stances innate movements, like we are now forced to, by not pressing any movement/crouching. Now we have no options.

Furthermore, the animations of the legs and the upper body were seperate. You could have perfectly natural walking animation (even sideways, with the legs pointing to the side), while the upper body did its attack animations. It looked great. Now your legs always point forwards, and do the attack animations, even while walking! Its complete jank all around, everywhere you look!

So please, DE, *urgently* decouple leg and upper body animations, completely remove any interruptions to movement in any and all "forward combos", allow "forward combos" to also be executed with the "sideways" input (you currently, and wrongly, get the "neutral" combo instead).

Edited December 21, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[helioth137]

can't relate to what you're saying, too exaggerated, melee is better than ever, animations and combos are fine, 2k hours played, mastery rank 30...

[Traumtulpe]

1 minute ago, helioth137 said:

too exaggerated

There is precisely zero exaggeration in my post. It is 100% accurate. You're free to not care about animations/melee fluidity though, I do.

[helioth137]

melee IS fluid and animations are good though, your post comes across as really over the top and whiney, sorry to say.

Perhaps there's a reason they decided to lock you into the movements, like committing players to their actions, i.e, risk/ reward, and they already tried having lower body movement not associated with upper, and it was just weird and wrong. If you have any experience in martial arts, you know that the whole body is needed for power, not half of it.

If you really feel so strongly, then perhaps you can make a video about it, or gather other players who feel the same, because I just don't.

[Stormandreas]

I wouldn't say melee is really worth using again personally.

Melee's problem isn't in it's stances (ok... SOME are), or it's power... it's in it's competition.

Guns, have both range and AOE at their disposal for the most part, as well as Multishot and a whole host of Primed and Galvanized mods that drastically increase the power, not to mention extremely easy to activate Arcanes which further strengthen them.

Melee on the other hand, requires getting up close to enemies*, does not have AOE mostly and any that there is is pitifully weak at best*, has no mulishot, and lacks primed, galvanized and useful arcanes. Out of the melee arcanes we've gotten... about 2 are actually good (now that Melee Influence has been nerfed, only Crescendo and Exposure are really actually powerful).
The rest of the melee arcanes all have conditions that are either too random or fluctuationg (such as Retaliation requiring shields which can very easily get ripped off), or flat out don't have good effects.

Tennokai enough to bring melees up to the same power as guns either. A free heavy attack now and then, requiring a hybrid build on a melee, does not sort the fact that they lack all the benefits that we use guns for.

Melee's main use currently, really is utility. Holding an Innodem for sprint speeds. Praedos for Parkour velocity, Ceramic Dagger for a stat stick, Rakna dark dagger for shields, Furax for secondary fire rate or Ripkas for gore chance.

 

*Exceptions to these are Gunblades, Exodia contagian and Gunblades. There's a reason all of these melees are far far stronger than all the others... because they have range or AOE, or both, that is incredibly effective.

[Traumtulpe]

2 minutes ago, helioth137 said:

If you really feel so strongly, then perhaps you can make a video about it, or gather other players who feel the same, because I just don't.

Unfortunately I can't make a video about stances prior to 2.9, since I have no access to past versions of Warframe. As for current stances, you can just try walking sideways while attacking with them, it evidently doesn't work, and in the cases where you're actually allowed to move for one attack out of the entire combo, your legs keep pointing forwards and look super janky.

Like I said, you're free to not care about this stuff though. It's fine if you just activate melee lock on and mindlessly attack, I wouldn't enjoy that at all though!

[Rian17]

I generally feel the same about the stances/movement, it's been so many years by now that I can't hardly remember how most worked but I do remember it feeling much more fluid with minimal forced movement,

One weapon type I'd really like to use the two handed nikana but the one and only stance it has is so immensely clunky, sometimes when I wanna try something different I'll dust of the tatsu prime only to soon remember that the stance makes it feel like ass to use

[0_The_F00l]

There are a few select stances that do have forced movement where previously it was a lot more free form - probably it recognised the input just once at the instance before the animation started but now because of hold action the animation continues with the original momentum intended.

It's not unusable but will make some stances more awkward if you have gotten used to them.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

51 minutes ago, helioth137 said:

can't relate to what you're saying, too exaggerated, melee is better than ever, animations and combos are fine, 2k hours played, mastery rank 30...

About 13,000 hours on the game and LR1 if we're bringing that up lol. 

I think he has a valid criticism about how movement works with some of the stances.

Sometimes the ideal scenario is to stand next to an enemy nand continue hitting it until it dies but the stance excessively moves you forward for no good reason automatically.

Its why out of all the melee weapons in the game i started using about 3 of them and ignore the rest.

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

Furthermore, the animations of the legs and the upper body were seperate. You could have perfectly natural walking animation (even sideways, with the legs pointing to the side), while the upper body did its attack animations. It looked great.

Did it really…?

I’ve seen games with that sort of system, and it looked like an upper body flailing around while the legs moved like the torso was a tank turret. Do you have video of these old animations?

[Traumtulpe]

7 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I’ve seen games with that sort of system, and it looked like an upper body flailing around while the legs moved like the torso was a tank turret. Do you have video of these old animations?

I don't, unfortunately. However I can assure you that it looked much better than what we currently have. With enough attack speed, the legs just flail around in their attack animations during movement (where you are even allowed to move) - it would be vastly better if they just walked normally.

You are correct with your "turret tank" analogy, that was basically how it worked. It might not have been perfect, but again, *vastly* better than what we have now. And, also again, you always had the option to not make use of the "turret tank" animation by just not moving sideways - no movement input resulted in pretty much what we have now.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 minute ago, Traumtulpe said:

I don't, unfortunately. However I can assure you that it looked much better than what we currently have. With enough attack speed, the legs just flail around in their attack animations during movement (where you are even allowed to move) - it would be vastly better if they just walked normally.

You are correct with your "turret tank" analogy, that was basically how it worked. It might not have been perfect, but again, *vastly* better than what we have now.

I dunno... Most of the melees feel decently grounded, and in order to sell some of those hits or get crazy with the movement, the whole body would need to be involved instead of just the legs moving around.

I agree plenty of stances could do with an animation passover, and that sliding animations aren’t great, but I’ve seen seperated torso and legs and think that the freedom of animation involving the entire body is worth the small price of slide animations (which I wouldn’t mind seeing our momentum arrested to let the animation not slide; melee already has a “You better make sure you know how vulnerable you are while swinging” design, so it wouldn’t be out of place for us to be a lot more grounded and would help the animations look better and hit harder)

[(NSW)Greybones]

13 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

-snip-

🤔 Though I guess we do have the moving forward wildly swinging animations that could potentially be separated…?

For animations like the standing or blocking or block-forward, complete body control of the animation is better. But we do have those ones where we just sort of move ourselves forward while attacking…

Hm. That might be a case for separated torso, since usually those attacks aren’t trying to be too heavy-hitting or full of power and thus don’t need to lean into full body mechanics so heavily

Edited December 21, 2023 by (NSW)Greybones

[Traumtulpe]

6 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

For animations like the standing or blocking or block-forward, complete body control of the animation is better. But we do have those ones where we just sort of move ourselves forward while attacking…

Hm. That might be a case for separated torso, since usually those attacks aren’t trying to be too heavy-hitting or full of power and thus don’t need to lean into full body mechanics so heavily

That's precisely what the difference of neutral combo vs forward combo is for, is it not? The neutral ones can have big animations and big damage, while the forward ones can have lighter attacks that mostly involve the upper body.

If you look at the combos and their multipliers (and the forced procs before most of them got deleted anyway), the forward combos were clearly meant to be weaker.

[Yamazuki]

With Tennokai a look at heavy attacks is needed too. Nikana needlessly moves you forward and the attack misses a lot unless you moved back, and Syam still deals zero damage at times.

[Traumtulpe]

4 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Nikana needlessly moves you forward and the attack misses a lot unless you moved back

How would you feel about the option to crouch in order to perform the attack in place? Personally I like having attacks with flashy movements - if I also have the option to attack practically instead.

[(NSW)Greybones]

Just now, Traumtulpe said:

That's precisely what the difference of neutral combo vs forward combo is for, is it not? The neutral ones can have big animations and big damage, while the forward ones can have lighter attacks that mostly involve the upper body.

If you look at the combos and their multipliers (and the forced procs before most of them got deleted anyway), the forward combos were clearly meant to be weaker.

I think that’d be fair, and would like to see some examples of separated legs and torso to see whether they would truely be as bad as I imagine. Attack speed is always going to mess with the feel of an animation (I often avoid too much attack speed because of the impact it has on the feel, if not downright equipping mods that reduce its speed to make them feel heavier), but the legs not sliding while using the attacks that are meant to be used while moving seems a good thing

[sunderthefirmament]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

Let me get straight to the point without sugar coating it; Melee stances and their animations are *way* worse now than they were before melee 2.9. And I don't know why they've been downgraded like this, it makes no sense and must be urgently rectified now that people are using their melees once again.

What's the issue? Simple, take Vulpine Mask (the rapier stance), before melee 2.9, and I'm talking about the main (the "hold") combo:

During this entire combo the player was able to move freely in any direction of their choice, now the only direction they can move in is forwards, and even the forwards movement is constantly getting interrupted. <- This is a huge downgrade and makes stances feel like garbage.

The player was also able to not move at all, not even a tiny little bit, by crouching during the combo. Now combos will catapult you forwards against your will and past your target, unless you have melee lock on activated (which is also complete garbage and feels horrible to play with).

And the player still had the option to use the stances innate movements, like we are now forced to, by not pressing any movement/crouching. Now we have no options.

Furthermore, the animations of the legs and the upper body were seperate. You could have perfectly natural walking animation (even sideways, with the legs pointing to the side), while the upper body did its attack animations. It looked great. Now your legs always point forwards, and do the attack animations, even while walking! Its complete jank all around, everywhere you look!

So please, DE, *urgently* decouple leg and upper body animations, completely remove any interruptions to movement in any and all "forward combos", allow "forward combos" to also be executed with the "sideways" input (you currently, and wrongly, get the "neutral" combo instead).

I don't think decoupling upper and lower body for melee animations is a realistic request.  That said, I do think that any stance that excessively stunts your forward movement while holding W + E should be examined.  As it stands, I write off entire weapon categories on this criterion alone.

[Traumtulpe]

3 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

As it stands, I write off entire weapon categories on this criterion alone.

Same. Though I don't see why decoupling the animations would be unrealistic, we had stances that did this in the past.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

quite a few stances need full reworks anyway: Two-Handed Nikanas are the obvious one, but I'm not a fan of Scythes either. IIRC one of the combos on Stalking Fan has a final attack that deals less damage than a heavy attack and takes way longer to pull off. 

[crazywolfpusher]

2 hours ago, helioth137 said:

If you have any experience in martial arts, you know that the whole body is needed for power, not half of it.

ok bruce tell us more

[Xzorn]

After returning from a 5 year break I noticed a lot of forward momentum was removed from melee.

While the melee before was more "floaty" it also played better into the speed ninja play of the game. I actually prefer methodical animations when you do things off-timing you get punished, being unable to block, roll or similar in time for an attack. Still, it just doesn't follow the way Warframe plays at all.

They also added air juggling to a lot of combos which I hate so much. Baruuk's 4th is partially ruined by rogdoll nonsense. Killed Blade Whips for me.

Also, someone should tell DE that Rapiers are very effective at slashing. Lunging is just their advantage due to weighting.

[(XBOX)Skyvernn]

I feel like the changes made to melee stances in the current iteration need a check over once again. Personally I used to use the tatsu a lot even if it wasn't the best melee weapon around because it had a unique stance that felt smooth. After the stance changes they completely shuffled the various combo's are executed with the movements and made it incredibly clunky. 

Would also say a few other stances in similar aspects to the two-handed nikanna's that used to be more free flowing would be tempo royale for heavy blades and defiled snap dragon on blade and whip. If they don't intend to review the stance changes at least adding a new two-handed nikanna stance should be a priority for how they butchered the stance in the melee rework.

Could go on with plenty of other stance changes that took place but it would turn into a rant haha, I miss the old system as it felt like the player had more control and the combo options added diversity. 

[LostImbecile]

 I played the game before that melee update, as nearly exclusively a melee main, and I completely agree, share the same thoughts as well.

 I don't remember what exactly changed but I do remember how much more restricting melee felt after, it violently dedicates your movement, feels like it locks you to a certain direction or forces you to move, and it completely messes with your momentum and what you planned to do, by either reducing it, altering its direction or acting like a nuclear explosion happened behind your back.

 It's somewhat off and kills the real "fluidity" we had back then, but I also felt that melee felt more repetitive after, perhaps for the same reasons, I'm hoping they work on it again, it's what makes the game fun for me personally, and I'm relying on a lot of attack speed to offset it

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

2 hours ago, crazywolfpusher said:

ok bruce tell us more