Melee Weapons, Ideas For The Overhaul.

[CubedOobleck]

I'm really exited for the melee overhaul shown in the livestream, I've always wanted to be to equip my melee weapon like that.

Scott has mentioned the swords too and it's awesome to know that their viability is a concern once again!

But I want to propose some changes that I think would improve swords a lot and the melee gameplay in general.

 

 

The one thing that truly doomed the single swords was the introduction of weapons with multihit. Being able to hit 3 things at once made all the difference in the world, I never went back to single target again. The multihit limit should be scrapped completely in my opinion: any enemy my weapon hits should take damage, let the range animations and player placement be the limit. Perhaps the damage done from a single hitbox should weaken as more enemies get hit (simulating loss in momentum).

 

Another problem for single swords was the introduction of dual wields. If you think about it, there is no gameplay element that separates these two categories of weapons (except the above-mentioned multihit), so they compete for DPS in the same niche. It makes sense that duals deal more DPS, but what if dual wield actually made 2 separate, but weaker, hitboxes. This way the weapons will have different niches: duals may do more damage, but only if you hit an enemy with both hitboxes/swords; single swords on the other hand will always deal their full damage as long as you hit the enemy.

 

Another important feature with swords (and not only those) is that they are middle ground weapons, good for both charged and regular attacks, but not excellent with either. The problem is that modding for both types of attacks is extremely inefficient, so the versatility of base stats is lost completely. This problem would be gone if only the mods for regular and charged attacks weren't separate.

Other benefits from rolling charged and regular mods together include, but aren't limited to:

more fun, because both attacks are modded a player can alternate between charged and regular attacks freely; less unbalance between charge and regular builds, because charge mods would no longer be stronger and more abundant (think nightmare mods); less confusion about what mods boosts what when you look at the miscellaneous attacks like slide/wall/AoE melee.

 

Finally, the stagger protection of the heavy weapons needs to go. It makes complete sense that heavier and bigger weapons are stronger, but that extra DPS and DPH needs to be harder to deliver.

Edited December 14, 2013 by CubedOobleck

[Nagisawa]

Every weapon except daggers (dual or single) should multi-hit.

[Einsig_SV]

The system you're suggesting for dual weapons already exists on dual daggers like the Fang.

 

Weapons based around attack speed like zorens, ichors and cleavers should not have charge attacks at all. They should auto-fire.

 

Now, the Fang fits a little bit oddly into that. It attacks extremely fast, but it does have the aforementioned double hit charge attack which lets it deal very strong and fast charge damage. I think whether a weapon has a charge attack or not should just depend on whether it's a pure attack speed weapon or not.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Ion_Sig

[Nichizzy]

Good suggestion OP!

 

I second this, melee needs to feel more intuitive and respond to the attack animation rather than statistical based as it is now.

 

Damages should be given when melee is in contact with enemy. Daggers will naturally hit less enemies due to the hitbox size and polearms will naturally hit more. Intuitive!

 

I fully agree with the damage reduction per enemy contact based on the logic of momentum. It sounds logical and can act as a balancing mechanism. Heavier and slower axes can therefore cleave through more enemies before the damage is redundant, while the lighter and quicker staffs cant.

 

Make attack buttons more intuitive. Maybe introduce a 2 phased charge (normal attack, light charge, heavy charge - controlled by the duration of melee button held). Each charge phase will have different focus on the attack. Eg, light will be a sweeping AoE while heavy is a single target focussed attack (this may vary depending on weapon speciality). For example, an axe may do an overhead cleave at the heavy charge attack with armor piercing damage buff for that animation style and phase. However, the armor piercing buff is balanced by the fact that the cleave is likely only to hit 1 enemy.

 

Not all weapons need to have the same number of charge phases. Unwieldy weapons may have up to even 3 charge phase (visually differentiated by the charging animation - difference in holding the weapon) while quick weapons may not need more than 1 charge phase. It could be expanded to balance the game by stamina draining. For example, charge 1 and 2 may not need to drain stamina during, but charge 3 needs. Therefore a Loki with Galatine may desire a frame build with more stamina in it - just so he can hold the charge and release that freaking long but devastating charge at the perfect moment.

 

Expanding on the above, weapons should have a subtle but different attack animation to it - it'll be alot of work for DE but it will make the weapons feel unique. In addition, these attack animations will make it worthwhile to master the weapon. For example, Dual Heat swords may have an uppercut combo which makes it more ideal to use against Infested since it's more likely to hit the legs, while the Orthos may be a sweeping strike angled strike from above which may get a headshot for the first hit and body shot for the subsequent ones.

 

Finally, a simple tweak would be to add the crouch, left + right movement mix to the normal melee combo. Pressing left and melee would initiate a left strike and right a right strike. Crouching and attacking would give u a different attack animation. This offers slightly intuitive control without breaking the game code. For example, when crouching and attacking using a dagger, it could be a "kidney shot", having an additional 5% stun chance - but balanced by it most likely being single target only. So you could effectively stun a mob 30% of the time (based on attack rate as well).

 

The idea and concept of the previous 2 paragraphs are realistic tweaks to allow flexibility and control over the melee attacks. It lets you use your weapon situationally, rather than tapping E button to get through the 4 hit combo movement - which is normally useless by the time u get to the 4th attack animation because it does not correspond with the situation at hand. Even if it does, it's just a different animation with the same statistical damage.

 

It becomes viable to use a weapon for a purpose other than pure DPS. Maybe you want to semi stunlock a difficult boss (or to break his attack combo, etc). If all weapons are DPS centric, then there will be only 1 best weapon per category, it becomes the default and all other weapons will be useless as a result.

 

Melee status chance should be modable to near 100% to make it worth attempting even in late game, just to get off that status. Imagine this: Defense/Survival Map: Ash modded to 90% radiation status chance on his melee, triggers bladestorm in defense missions, hitting 15 enemies in map at random (lets say high level so they're not dead). Out of 15, 13 got confused and creates pockets of resistance throughout the map, giving a little breathing time to the defenders/survivors. It's a mini Nyx. ^^

 

Alternatively, buff the warframes durability during melee (something like a bloodlust buff? increasing armor AND resistance to knockdown during melee which scales to game content) - easy way out :)

 

As impressive as it may be, lengthy attack animations should allow players to somewhat overide it mid-animation because its so long, it could kill us.

 

 

Melee needs some serious rework and should feel dynamic. I enjoyed melee such that I played melee almost exclusively with my Dual Ether (double slide attack ftw!) and Orthos from lvl 2 to 6. They both had 13k - 15k kills each back when all my range weapons had only 2-3k kills each. They're stuffed in the closet the moment I started playing higher leveled contents (lvl 40++, pre-Damage 2.0). Just not viable at all without Loki or Ash. Even with Loki or Ash, they're only viable up to a certain level, where the risk of dying is too great even in invis. Melee needs to be super good when you're skilled at using them. Right now it's just laughable.

 

We ARE Space Ninjas! Not Space Cowboys.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Nichizzy