Stances Should Be More Like Fighting-Styles

[Ishki88]

Idea might be ahead of it's time sadly.............but.........they could see take your custom stances into consideration for new stance mods........

[Xarteros]

I don't think you think aesthetic means what you think it means... changing the attack patterns isn't an aesthetic change, it makes the weapon better against groups, against single targets, at keeping you mobile, or at standing your ground. Those aren't aesthetic changes as they noticeably affect the performance of the weapon.

Also there's nothing stopping you from using Forma to change the polarity of that slot or adding polarities to the weapon until it doesn't matter what polarity the slot is, you don't need the extra capacity.

 

As for stances based around stagger, stun, ect that runs into issues with status resistance or immune enemies. What about using melee on, say, Corpus drones or walkers? Bosses? Specters? Other Tenno? If the enemy is immune to the status you're inflicting then the combo just kind of fizzles. Plus stuff based on knock-down and the like requires a humanoid opponent if you want the attack to interact with the enemy in a specific way, or you have to modify the animation for every type of skeleton in the game, which is more work.

 

If you don't like stances then no one's forcing you to use them. Personally I'm a fan of the changes and I like the different stances. This is personal preference, nothing more and nothing less. No change is going to make everyone happy. If they went with your changes there would be someone on here the next day arguing that now every weapon feels too generic or they have a better idea that they like more.

As for the Design Council, while I sympathize with your point I also sympathize with DE's. You're basically saying that they need to include the entire Design Council on all of their internal design discussions or that they need to reitterate the results of those discussions. Neither one is a particularly good use of time 99% of the time. Player feedback is useful sometimes, other times it's not, and it's up to DE when they feel player feedback is useful to them. Extra eyes and brains may find mistakes, but too many cooks may also spoil the meal.

 

Lastly, I've been trying to keep this discussion informative, respectful, and constructive, but I don't have to propose an alternative or support your ideas to do that. I'm a fan of what we have right now and I don't feel it need significant tweaks.

Part of what I meant about the polarities is that with the stance mod in the right polarity, you basically don't have to forma Melee weapons, or nowhere near as much. Currently, I hear more people talking about finding the right stance more for the mod capacity than the attacks, and that's what I think needs to change. 

You're right, some of the attack patterns are decent, with differing styles to focus on different types of combat (area, single target). I just want to be able to put on Stance Mod X for that area pattern, on any weapon, without having to farm 15 stances to use it on my melee weapons, presuming all 15 groups have wide-attack stances (which they don't all have anyway). If I want to go through fighting with a dagger doing lots of wide stabs and slashes, I'd like to be able to use the same mod to do wide area slashes with a heavy sword, or wide arcing hits with a whip.

I'm not suggesting it all gets done at once, that's too big a job for one big go. What I'd like is for them to make similar stance mods (all wide hits, all single target hits etc) into a unified stance, usable across all weapons that currently have a mod for it. It cuts down the number of mods we have to farm for, and when they get around to making appropriate animations for another weapon group, they can just add that weapon group to the list that can use that stance mod. It future proofs them against getting heaps of stance mods that are basically the same, and allows them to easily incorporate existing stance mods into new weapons at their own pace. If bonuses were an option, they could work those in later. As I've said, I just want them to consider a change now before they go working too much on it and would thereby be more reluctant to fix the issues.

Now, you mention that certain enemies are immune to status effects. Other than stuff like drones, which aren't realistic melee targets most of the time, what enemy is immune to knockdown? What enemy is immune to crits? What enemy is immune to being disarmed (other than melee-only enemies)? What enemy is immune to punch-through? These are the sorts of status effects that I've suggested for the stances. Not all of them would have status effects at all; I envisioned that a wide/sweeping attack stance would give a range bonus instead of any status effect (to focus on being an AoE/crowd control stance, giving it a clear theme/role). None of them require additional animations, or animations to be reliant on the individual 'skeleton' of the enemies, they just apply the 'status' on a particular hit. 

With the Design Council, I don't mean they should be governing every single point, but I thought that big changes, most importantly, deserve a bit of feedback. Not even necessarily requiring votes and community ideas, but if they said "Hey, we're revising Defense missions, here are our ideas, and what do you think?" then maybe they'd get some ideas they hadn't thought of. Currently, it seems more about little gimmicks, like 'what new weapon do you want', and the biggest thing is a new warframe every once in a while. Some of us actually paid to help provide ideas for the game, not for the platinum bonus, and the fact that the DC forum is almost always completely empty/out of date makes me a little disappointed. Personally, I think that the DC should never have almost complete-control over any project, and DE should ask for feedback a lot more often so they get creative ideas flowing in from the DC but they're never giving up their creative control to the DC (who largely votes for terrible things)

Now, just to clarify things, as much as I respect your opinions, I don't care about them here. I posted this here because I thought it has potential as an alternative upgrade/sidegrade to the system, and if DE doesn't like it then they aren't going to implement it just because I said it. The point of voicing ideas is to spur change if DE chooses to, so that's why I said I only want to hear other alternate ideas or improvement suggestions to my idea. If DE keep the system as it is, that's fine. The game isn't perfect, and they will never please everyone, but if someone suggests an idea that they didn't think of and act on it, then they get to choose for themselves if it's the path they want to take. They might hate my idea completely, but it might inspire some other change or improvement of their own, and thats what the suggestion forums are for. I'd have loved to have posted this in the design council, but that's rather ironically not even an option.

So yeah, I agree with a lot of stuff you say, and this is just my opinion just as yours is yours, but there isn't much point discussing this if there isn't any new/improved idea coming out of it. If DE look at this, they will see every problem they would have with it, moreso than what either of us can see, since they know exactly the sort of effort it will require. I normally put a little 'disclaimer' at the end asking people to not post if they aren't suggesting fixes/alternatives, but I must have accidentally deleted it from my original post. Thank you for the responses though, I appreciate you constructively criticize, but I want alternatives or improvements. If you want to poke holes in my idea, that's completely perfect with me, but I want you to patch those holes up with something better =)

[Fulmir]

Why? It's not like there aren't meaningful differences between the Stances, people just aren't really looking at those yet, and many people don't use Melee much beyond Mastery ranks anyway so that's going to muddy your sampling further.

What I'm trying to tell you is that's not a good system from a design perspective, because now for every stance mod you need to do a new animation set for every weapon and every Stance mod needs to fit every weapon thematically and functionally. Wide swings don't make a lot of sense on something like a Glaive but are super useful on the Orthos or Bo. A stance that lets you dance through and around groups works well for dual swords but not pole-arms.

It also closes them off from differentiation and is hard to communicate to the players. Imagine instead of a single entry for a Stance there's a huge list. Suddenly as a newbie you're going "well, there's an Orthos pictured on this Stance but I can use it for hammers and twin swords too?"

Plus this game is kind of about farming for mods. It's a loot-grind game and Stances aren't a particularly low drop-rate from what I can tell. Most players will pick them up in the course of play fairly reliably. It's harder right now for a new player to get a good Aura than a good melee stance.

Most bosses are immune to statuses of one sort or another. Rhino Spectre is too. My main objection was based off of what I assumed was a request for these to be animated significantly in some way. Beyond that though I feel that the stances should be a choice of which stance you feel plays best to you and your desires, not which stance gives the best bonus or status effect. Right now the stances don't matter too much, so it comes down to personal preference. I feel this is a more desirable situation than we have with Auras where only a small number are considered worth using because they provide provably better or more useful numerical benefits.

I'm not sure why you think they'd stop pushing terrible ideas if you gave them a major decision to chew on. They'd just get angry and indignant when their terrible idea isn't what was decided on. The other problem is that starting a feedback discussion on a major feature that's still in development means that DE either sits and lets the thread go in which case it may de-rail or focus on an idea they've already thrown out internally, or they're stuck explaining why something won't work to the players, which is going to start an argument at least half the time.

If you really want to design a game then get involved with mod projects, indie development, or look for a job in industry.

By the same token that they might not come up with every good idea they won't necessarily see every problem with an idea either. Besides, even if they do, I'm poking your idea with a stick so you can defend it or modify it based on criticism which will hopefully both improve your idea and let you create better ideas in the future.

Personally I'm all for more variety in Stances, but the two biggest chunks of your idea: That we should have fewer stance mods with global application, and that Stances should offer numerical benefits beyond the fighting style change, I just don't agree with, and any changes I would suggest to the current melee system would be better confined to their own thread. I also don't feel that criticism of your idea requires me to propose a better one when I feel what you're proposing would be a step back over the current system.

[Xarteros]

I'm going to be quick, because I'm busy.

If DE read this idea and think it's bad, that's their call, not yours.

Once again, if you're not posting alternative ideas, or improvements to my idea, there is absolutely zero point for you to be posting here, and I have pointed that out several times now.

[Fulmir]

I'm going to be quick, because I'm busy.

If DE read this idea and think it's bad, that's their call, not yours.

Once again, if you're not posting alternative ideas, or improvements to my idea, there is absolutely zero point for you to be posting here, and I have pointed that out several times now.

Okay, but just like you're allowed to post feedback on DE's ideas or other poster's I'm allowed to post feedback on yours. At this point we've hashed each-others points to death so I'm all for letting things drop.