Most Of Melee 2.0 Is Useless

[lautalocos]

(at least from saturn to wave 1000 defense)

 

WARNING!: wall of text incoming!

 

what can i say? it´s just a fact.

why, you may ask?

 

1) parry: completely useless. easier to just shoot or do a normal melee attack against the enemy.

why? (for the sake of clarity, "parry" means the phase when the enemy is blocked and thrown out of balance, "riposte" is the attack phase where the tenno attack the enemy)

 

-killing 1 enemy won´t stop the other 3-20 to stop attacking me.

 

-i overkill the enemy

 

-the heavier enemy units that i could maybe (and thats a very forgiving maybe) use a parry against are ranged units

 

-the parry window is really, really small. way to small for such a fast paced game. even the riposte has a very short time window to press the melee button, and if the attack is started too early, the tenno does a normal melee attack (altough i think it still has the damage multiplier of the riposte, but im not sure)

 

-the special riposte animation takes too long, braking the flow of the gameplay.

 

-(this one might be my lack of skill, someone pleace tell me if im wrong or not), you have to stop blocking to do a parry. what i mean to say is that you can´t just channel at the right time to parry, you have to channel and block at the same time to do a parry, effectively making you stop blocking before the parry.

 

2) melee channeling: badly implemented,but i guess it can be fixed with mod balancing

 

-it´s suppoused to make us sacrifice energy to do extra damage, but with very easy to get mods, we can make each channeled attack cost 1 energy (even less of a worry to players with flow/energy siphon) and still get lots extra damage from channeling.

-mods like life strike augment the energy consumption by a lot, but makes us inmortal as long as there is an enemy at the reach of our melee weapon

 

those 2 points made melee channeling just a straight damage boost with a so very small drawback that i don´t think anyone has a valid reason to NOT use melee channeling all the time

 

3) melee combos: almost no need to do them (except sometimes to build up the melee combo, but only works in some stances, and to look cool (props to the animation team))

why?

 

-melee damage is high enough to kill any enemy without the need to do a combo. some combos happen naturally while pressing buttons, but not because the players need them, but because they just do because the player decided to not attack for a second (DISCLAIMER: this does not mean melee weapons are too powerfull and i believe the damge they do is fine, at least in general, without going into specific cases)

-some slow you down, or some make you go past your enemies, altough i guess thats something the player has to get used to as do when appropiate, but because the player has no need for the combos, he doesnt use them, and then, of course he doesnt get used to them

 

T4: i haven´t still played T4, but if it´s as difficult as the mysterious shipments missions, then those missions will even destroy the idea of parrying not because it is effective, but for having fun.

not blocking for a second meant instant death for my loki, and i rather not be spamming invinsibility trought the whole mission

 

the buffs to melee weapon damage was good and needed, no problem there

i personally believe the combo system is a little bit too unforgiving, but some people say they have no problems with it, so i guess i won´t mention it

 

 

CONCLUSION:

the melee system can be fixed to work properly and be balanced, but there will still be some big problems:

 

-the parry system is designed with not such a huge quantity of enemies around, but at the same time, already reaching the planet saturn, the fourth planet in the game, the parry sytem becomes useless because of the amount of enemies

 

-as soon as a player gets the mods, there is no reason not to channel (altough this may have to do with the enrgy system in general)

 

-again, the combos are useless

 

 

SOLUTION:

 

there are many options to the melee system:

 

1) balance the channeling mods/energy system so it becomes a tradeoff of energy for damage

 

2) make it so that the damage boost from melee channeling/combos is needed, by making enemies have more health, but to still make the game balanced, lower the enemy quantity (not really low quantities, but not the crazy amounts of 5 enemies in a 3x2 meters room.

 

DISCALIMER: i just want to mention that this change above would make single target warframe abilties and sniper rifles actually usefull

 

3) the change above would make parrying usefull, but still not great.

make the animation faster and the parry frame longer so the flow of gameplay isn´t broken. you could even make the attack speed make the animation faster (just don´t make the enemy move in slow-mo if using a slow attack speed weapon)

 

4) add heavy melee units. even if enemies got a health boost, all the melee units are really easy to kill. as an example, make one that we would really want ot parry because he is has a lot of health and he does lots of damage

 

 

 

 

the post made by nothionphil about how we didnt need AI because the enemies die so easily got me thinking:

why should they die so easily? where is the fun in that?

 

and then i realised that warframe is a game with lots of very weak and easy to kill enemies, but it also is a game with very few, but very powerfull enemies that can kill you easily and take a while to kill

 

one game is what some people in the forums call endgame, the other is the very beginning of the game

 

warframe doesnt really know if it wants to be a fast, but still tactical shooter about space ninjas, or a game about killing dozenes of enemies at the press of a button, more like a game of wizards with guns.

 

i personally prefer the first one, and i think the game won´t realize it´s full potential until it chooses what it wants to be

Edited June 12, 2014 by lautalocos

[Toaman1994]

Nnnn.....my Dragon Nikana says otherwise.

[lautalocos]

Nnnn.....my Dragon Nikana says otherwise.

read the post.

 

melee is usefull and it works, but most of it´s mechanics are useless

[CY13ERPUNK]

+1 OP

[Tulzscha]

Moved to the proper section.

[zavienh5]

oh well, we all just have to accept it sadly

[Arenzo4]

i agree with parry not being to useful

and with channeling being a boost with very little drawbacks
-they wanted to make melee stronger/more viable etc and they did

 

also having heavy melee enemies would be awesome

[paragasu]

combo are useless?....what?....I can't even....

[lautalocos]

combo are useless?....what?....I can't even....

what use do they have? melee damage is high enough without the need of doing combos, effectively making them useless.

[Nagisawa]

what use do they have? melee damage is high enough without the need of doing combos, effectively making them useless.

combo are useless?....what?....I can't even....

The problem is that the combo chains do LESS damage the more moves you pull off per attack. Yes, the math and numbers bear out too. It's easier to do the basic three strike combo than try the fancy ones. More efficient and effective.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Nagisawa

[lautalocos]

The problem is that the combo chains do LESS damage the more moves you pull off per attack. Yes, the math and numbers bear out too. It's easier to do the basic three strike combo than try the fancy ones. More efficient and effective.

sadly this is true.

[WhisperByte]

There's also the fact that stamina drain from blocking is based on enemy damage so you can block around 5 shots with base stamina in T4 void (or at least that's how it was during Shipment missions). Considering how much rapid fire our enemies have...

[IfritKajiTora]

Invisibility Lokis and ash is OP and Blindness of excalibur too they are making 4x more damage and channeling only 2x....WHAT? There is no point of using channeling when using them :/. 
Invisibility adn Blindness should make 2x damage and Channeling with melee weapons should make 4x more damage, swap it and it will be good to use. Right now I don't really use channeling in melee :/.

Melee is lack of Multislash other shoting weapons have Multishots which makes all shoting weapons OP vs enemies and compared to melee.
Enemies have strong melee attacks

,,-killing 1 enemy won´t stop the other 3-20 to stop attacking me''

 

The problem for me is that: when you are using melee weapon the enemies just shot you all of them this is impossible to dodge :/ while using shoting weapons you can just hide behind the fillar and take cover, melee is now the weakest way of defeating enemies.

It could be good fix to game, if you are using melee weapon and attack one of the enemies all near enemies will stop shoting and take to the hands their melee and will try to beat you because their melee weapons are the strongest so it could actually fix the problem with melee that you cant dodge bullets.
I got that many times in missions they are shoting at me several bullets and shield is still on, one melee hit and WUT all shield depleted +some of the health.
So this should buff enemies and buff melee using.

Edited June 13, 2014 by IfritKajiTora

[DalaiLlama]

In my experience, either the enemies die before I finish a combo because I need to bring a very powerful melee weapon to do any damage in a gun-toting party (which says something about Melee 2.0 itself) or the combo is too long to justify whatever I'm trying to achieve with it.  I don't even spam E anymore; I hold the mouse button on my karak.

[SoulEchelon]

Edit: Eh I'm too sleepy.

Edited June 13, 2014 by SoulEchelon

[Nagisawa]

I think the real issue is the Stamina bar.  Why do we have one.  We take on multiple HUNDREDS of foes and WIN, and yet, we get TIRED???

[Xzorn]

  I don't even spam E anymore; I hold the mouse button on my karak.

 

Karak? Wtf?

 

To OP: Damage, combos and Parry are all good points. There's also the point of positioning. There's no real trade off for time spent chasing down or running into melee over simply shooting the enemy. With the exception of life strike there's no real survivability improvements either. In fact in many cases you lower your survivability by going into melee with many different frames.  Its a game where kills per minute wins and melee just doesn't do it better than guns, regardless of damage output.

[iceagex]

i miss my Galatine OP charge damage, 10k to 180k, no combos, just one slash and they're all dead  ='(

Edited June 13, 2014 by iceagex

[lautalocos]

I think the real issue is the Stamina bar.  Why do we have one.  We take on multiple HUNDREDS of foes and WIN, and yet, we get TIRED???

again, another mechanic that works if the game was about killing few, powerfull enemies, instead of herds of weak enemies.