Why Leveling Melee Will Always Suck Regardless Of How Good Melee Is...

[Xylia]

So on Livestream, they talked a little bit about how they want to do Melee 2.0 before they change the "level melee weapons by keeping them on your back" and I want to take a moment to try to explain why melee weapons are a pain to level.

 

Before I say anything else, I will admit that I missed the first ~30min of the livestream due to my ISP going down. So if something was said I missed, then I apologize and welcome anybody correcting me.

 

 

The first thing I want to say is that thanks to Damage 2.0, we no longer get a "free ride" on low-to-mid level Infestation with Slashing Weapons. They used to do 3x damage against everything except Ancients. Now they merely do... what is that again, +50%? Impact weapons now do +25% ... and puncture does equal damage. This is a pretty decent drop in DPS (Unranked Ankyros still doesn't work very well when I tried it in low level Infestation). This was the only saving grace to level weapons without "leeching" (which DE doesn't want us to do). This might be fixed with Melee 2.0, sure.

 

Second of all, even if we fixed the first point, there's the problem of the New Infestation mechanics -- there are no low-level Infested anymore except for Venus/Earth outbreaks, which means you can't pick&choose when you want to level a weapon. If an outbreak occurs on Venus/Earth, you better take care of any melee leveling while you can!

 

Third of All, leveling weapons against non-infested is a chore. Why? Because Melee is.......well.......Melee Range! This means you have to run up to your targets and THEN kill them with your melee weapon. This is why Infestation missions rocked for leveling melee -- they run up to you in melee range much faster than you can run up to single targets in Grineer/Corpus missions. Trying to level a melee weapon by killing Grineer and Corpus one-by-one makes maps take a lot longer (5min boss runs become 10-15min+ because you have to run everything down). Even if you improve melee damage and mechanics, this is always going to remain a problem, and melee weapons will be VERY FREAKING SLOW to level.

 

Fourth, to touch on the Infestation Mechanics.... all Infested missions are now "Invasions" -- you have helper NPCs..........which end up stealing a lot of your kills if you're trying to run down your targets. That grineer with the bombard? Good luck competing against him for kills, ditto for that Eviscerator over there who is mowing down Chargers left&right.

 

TL:DR; Melee 2.0 will not fix the problem with trying to level melee weapons, especially if you force us to use the weapons to level them.

 

What we need is for melee to level differently (lower the amount of XP it takes for levelup, or something to account for how hard it is to get XP on a melee weapon, OR, leave a few Permanent Infested nodes in-game so that we can continue to use the Infestation as punching bags).

[Ronyn]

melee, if done right, could be truly epic to use.

Many melee focused games have shown that its possible.

[Xylia]

melee, if done right, could be truly epic to use.

Many melee focused games have shown that its possible.

 

I am not arguing that.

 

Melee can be awesome! But still suck and take forever to gain XP on because of how you have to chase everything down to melee.

 

Who cares how awesome melee is if you can never get levelups on your stupid weapons to fit the mods on to make it awesome?

[yggdrazzle]

No, we just need to divide spillover exp (wasted exp) from rank 30 weapons/frame ability kills to the unmax'd weapons (1,2,melee) so you can level it and use it, along with your abilities, as you please and still rank it up

 

It doesn't even have to be 100% of the wasted exp, it could be 50% divided and it would still be amazing.

 

Ofc DE doesn't want us to have any of the wasted exp, since they expect us to grind forever

 

 

 

 

A more grandiose solution is if they introduce weapon and ability scaling, so if you bring a level 10 melee weapon to Venus, you can actually use it w/o feeling useless compared to your allies.

Edited December 13, 2013 by yggdrazzle

[Ronyn]

I am not arguing that.

 

Melee can be awesome! But still suck and take forever to gain XP on because of how you have to chase everything down to melee.

 

Who cares how awesome melee is if you can never get levelups on your stupid weapons to fit the mods on to make it awesome?

I'll explain myself better.

Take Ninja Gaiden for example: many of the enemies are soldiers with guns who attempt to fight you at range.

In Ninja Gaiden the player character has various capabilities that allow him to close the distance and shut enemies down at high speed.

If DE can capture that kind of melee it should keep melee from leveling slow.

 

One aspect in particular-If DE can factor in the time it takes to close the distance into how long it should take to kill someone with a melee weapon they will be on the right road. 

 

 

Not that I am against-

 

 

 

What we need is for melee to level differently (lower the amount of XP it takes for levelup, or something to account for how hard it is to get XP on a melee weapon, 

 

Edited December 13, 2013 by Ronyn

[Xylia]

I'll explain myself better.

Take Ninja Gaiden for example: many of the enemies are soldiers with guns who attempt to fight you at range.

In Ninja Gaiden the player character has various capabilities that allow him to close the distance and shut enemies down at high speed.

If DE can capture that kind of melee it should keep melee from leveling slow.

 

One aspect in particular-If DE can factor in the time it takes to close the distance into how long it should take to kill someone with a melee weapon they will be on the right road. 

 

Perhaps. I still think it will be slower than gunning down all 10 people in the room in <5 seconds, though.

 

But meh.

 

I'm more posting this to make sure they think "hey it will still suck to level a melee weapon if we don't do something about how much time it takes to run things down to get XP" etc.

 

I want to make sure this doesn't become an oversight, to make sure they understand one of the big problems that causes us to want to leech in the first place.

 

Damage 2.0 did wonders for leveling our guns -- guns I hated back in the day I took out lately and suddenly they're actually do-able! The Hind... I hated the Hind. Took it out in a Lv20 infested level and I was killing crap left-and-right, did 25>30 in two missions. Took my Lv10 Hek out which I couldn't stand to use on anything past Mercury.... took it into Lv25 Infested Mobile Defense... it was on Level 30 in 4 missions.

 

I want to make sure Melee 2.0 does similar wonders for leveling melee weapons.

[Ronyn]

 

I want to make sure Melee 2.0 does similar wonders for leveling melee weapons.

Yeah....I agree with your concerns and overall intent.

So we are on the same side.

[letir]

One aspect in particular-If DE can factor in the time it takes to close the distance into how long it should take to kill someone with a melee weapon they will be on the right road. 

 

Isn't change stagger/knockdown problems. Also, high-lvl enemies can just kill you.

[Ronyn]

Isn't change stagger/knockdown problems. Also, high-lvl enemies can just kill you.

Yes of course those are important concerns.

I consider things like stagger/knock down and enemy damage output as part of the overall melee system.

If DE wants melee to be a viable option it isn't just about cool attacks and player damage output but about ensuring that we have the capability to fight enemies at close range for prolonged periods.

 

It will all factor into the expected time it takes to kill an enemy with a sword as opposed to a gun.

 

Again-If we were to look at the better melee based action games. Part of the reason melee works is in the specific way that the player and enemies interact at close range.