How To Fix Melee Combat

[noveltyhero]

Check out my other How Tos:

How to fix U14:https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/265419-how-to-fix-u14/

How to improve Kubrows:https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/269989-how-to-improve-kubrows/

How to "leak" more lore:https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/262718-how-to-leak-more-lore/

 

 

 

Hey guys,

 

Today I want to crack down on melee. I am having a blast pulling off combos and dismembering enemies like its a creepy pasta Christmas ^^

 

However there are several issues with it and I feel like these can be fixed. My plan is to limit melee more therefore making it more effective, so let's get started:

 

 

 

 

Movement

 

I feel like really restricted when meleeing because I have to stand still, ever tried to run after a guy but he is always 50cm ahead? Well that is highly annoying, my suggestion is to make all swords and light weapons free to do on the fly when heavy weapons (Hammers, Axes, 2H Swords etc) would limit your movement speed by 50%-60% depending.

 

This would make melee more mobile therefore actually improving it, because when there are 50 level 60+ enemies in front of me I cannot stand still.

 

Another thing is that combos are locked to stand still as well, how about we allow the player to pull certain combos off whilst moving? Again, making melee combat more mobile the less you stand still the better as far as I am concerned in a ninja game.

 

All of this will make melee easier to use in harder situations therefore making melee less useless when compared to guns and what not

 

 

 

 

Accessibility

 

A huge issue I have is that there seems to be a delay when not wanting to melee. The game seems to register how many times you press the button and then execute, for us button spammers this is bad, as soon as you let go of the button meleeing should stop. We let go of the button for a reason and that reason can be the difference between loss and victory. 

 

Not noticeable with fast weapons as their animations end quickly but I noticed this happened heavily when using the Scoliac (whips are so much better now that we have stances)

So you can try it out yourself

 

 

Another issue is that you cannot do combos with quick melee and I completely understand why that is so. What I am proposing for this is that upon mastering a weapon (rank 30) you can then do the first combo using quick melee. 

 

This allows for some minimal comboing without equipping the weapon itself, the option should remain regardless if you Forma a weapon or not afterwards.

 

 

 

 

The Combo Counter

 

The combo counter is the simplest one to fix. I love the whole additional damage per hits and such however building up combos seems incredibly difficult, made more difficult by how the enemy spawns.

 

So to fix that I suggest that we should have 8 seconds or so (should be tested of course) before the counter resets so that you have more incentive to use melee. 

 

Genuinely the most I managed to acquire was around 2X damage and let's face it everybody loves combo counters and when the COMBO BREAKER!!! comes in you are more likely to try harder next time and improve upon your skills ^^

 

 

 

Combos

 

Like I said combos are a great addition to the game and the fact that they are mods is an entirely different discussion. Combos did however feel limiting and here is how we make them better:

 

No more pausing as part of the combos please. You cannot stop at high levels, that just cannot happen, your shields can go down in a second if you pause and the bigger problem is because of this constant pressure it is hard to co-ordinate yourself so you know when to attack again.

 

These can be replaced with forward, block but not backwards as another OP has stated, you want to move towards your enemies with speed and ferocity when meleeing them.

 

Knockbacks need to be added in, if you block and also attack you should knockback your enemies, or just make that part of the Shield and Sword stance.

 

Every weapon should have an innate basic combo, this means that if you don't have a stance you can still enjoy your weapon.

 

As I said before you should be able to perform every combo whilst moving, except the ones which launch into places and such for that particular animation.

 

 

 

Directional Attacks

 

For the obvious reasons this should be an optional feature for controller users and such.

 

However we should have a 40-50 degree arc (0 being the direction we have right now) in front of us towards which we can perform our attacks, if you want to aim up or down you can do as you want to and this allows us to attack flying enemies as well as lower enemies with ease with of course attacking weaker points of the enemy.

 

Combos can be left as they currently are with no problem just as long as the first (basic) combos are free in direction of attacks.

 

 

 

Blocking Projectiles

 

I think that blocking certain projectiles should reflect them to a certain degree as well as affect the enemies. I was fighting an Anti-MOA and it launched that thing at me, I blocked it then it went into a group of Corpus but it had no effect on them and that was quite annoying.

 

The bigger annoyance is that you can't do anything against rockets as they explode and damage you anyway  (not sure if it is reduced) however it should be that you reflect it back to where you aim it and it will damage the enemies. By this you can potentially reflect rockets into groups if you are quick enough.

 

 

 

 

*I will edit this as necessary 

 

 

What do you guys think?

Suggestions are always welcome

 

Thanks! :D

Edited July 25, 2014 by noveltyhero

[SciKnight]

 

 

Movement

 

I feel like really restricted when meleeing because I have to stand still, ever tried to run after a guy but he is always 50cm ahead? Well that is highly annoying, my suggestion is to make all swords and light weapons free to do on the fly when heavy weapons (Hammers, Axes, 2H Swords etc) would limit your movement speed by 50%-60% depending.

 

This would make melee more mobile therefore actually improving it, because when there are 50 level 60+ enemies in front of me I cannot stand still.

 

Another thing is that combos are locked to stand still as well, how about we allow the player to pull certain combos off whilst moving? Again, making melee combat more mobile the less you stand still the better as far as I am concerned in a ninja game.

 

All of this will make melee easier to use in harder situations therefore making melee less useless when compared to guns and what not

 

 

 

 

DIdn't even read the rest. You are only limited by your stamina. You can melee while sprinting just fine until you run out.

[noveltyhero]

DIdn't even read the rest. You are only limited by your stamina. You can melee while sprinting just fine until you run out.

Not sprinting, basic walking forward seems to limit you to one place, I will do further testing tomorrow to be sure though :S

[noveltyhero]

DIdn't even read the rest. You are only limited by your stamina. You can melee while sprinting just fine until you run out.

Tested with my D. Nikana and whilst I can move it is very very limited, so my point stands in terms of making the melee more mobile :/

[Zardbooster]

Some of the melee weapons can be used while moving without having any impact on your movement, while others completely stops you for the duration of the animation, or at least make you move at snail's pace.

[noveltyhero]

Some of the melee weapons can be used while moving without having any impact on your movement, while others completely stops you for the duration of the animation, or at least make you move at snail's pace.

No weapon should stop you completely and heavy weapons should just decrease movement (unless some wombo combo stuff happens).

 

Otherwise in a fast paced game like this melee is just too overwhelming at higher levels and even annoying :/

(eg. charge attacks did not limit your movement until the actual attack initiated)

[SlyBoots]

Movement

 

I feel like really restricted when meleeing because I have to stand still, ever tried to run after a guy but he is always 50cm ahead? Well that is highly annoying, my suggestion is to make all swords and light weapons free to do on the fly when heavy weapons (Hammers, Axes, 2H Swords etc) would limit your movement speed by 50%-60% depending.

 

This would make melee more mobile therefore actually improving it, because when there are 50 level 60+ enemies in front of me I cannot stand still.

 

Another thing is that combos are locked to stand still as well, how about we allow the player to pull certain combos off whilst moving? Again, making melee combat more mobile the less you stand still the better as far as I am concerned in a ninja game.

 

 

 

Accessibility

 

A huge issue I have is that there seems to be a delay when not wanting to melee. The game seems to register how many times you press the button and then execute, for us button spammers this is bad, as soon as you let go of the button meleeing should stop. We let go of the button for a reason and that reason can be the difference between loss and victory. 

 

Not noticeable with fast weapons as their animations end quickly but I noticed this happened heavily when using the Scoliac (whips are so much better now that we have stances)

So you can try it out yourself

 

Directional Attacks

 

For the obvious reasons this should be an optional feature for controller users and such.

 

However we should have a 40-50 degree arc (0 being the direction we have right now) in front of us towards which we can perform our attacks, if you want to aim up or down you can do as you want to and this allows us to attack flying enemies as well as lower enemies with ease with of course attacking weaker points of the enemy.

 

i'm going to strongly agree with these points, as these have been the plague of our melee system ever since the beginning - and the much lauded rework didn't even begin to address these (with very late exceptions).

 

the first two points are basically what make each and every somewhat slower melee weapon a complete waste against enemies that retreat from melee - so most corpus, grineer and corrupted. that said, whips get a free pass on this due to their incredible range. i'm pretty sure that being locked into consecutive slow animations in a reasonably fast paced game was on one of these forbidden sins written on those stone tables that old bearded man brought back from some mountain...

 

aaaanyway if someone needs points of reference how melee should work, pick up the venka claws or run around with nikana quick melee - wasd overrides the lunge animations. counterpoint would be any heavy melee.

 

and the third point i quoted - oh boy - just tilt the damn upper part of a warframe body to let us melee on slopes or hit these pesky crawlers or even *gasp* flyers without having to resort to the ever present solution to everything: slide attacks...

Edited September 17, 2014 by SlyBoots

[(PSN)KaxMcc]

 

Hey guys,

 

Today I want to crack down on melee. I am having a blast pulling off combos and dismembering enemies like its a creepy pasta Christmas ^^

 

However there are several issues with it and I feel like these can be fixed. My plan is to limit melee more therefore making it more effective, so let's get started:

 

 

 

 

Movement

 

I feel like really restricted when meleeing because I have to stand still, ever tried to run after a guy but he is always 50cm ahead? Well that is highly annoying, my suggestion is to make all swords and light weapons free to do on the fly when heavy weapons (Hammers, Axes, 2H Swords etc) would limit your movement speed by 50%-60% depending.

 

This would make melee more mobile therefore actually improving it, because when there are 50 level 60+ enemies in front of me I cannot stand still.

 

Another thing is that combos are locked to stand still as well, how about we allow the player to pull certain combos off whilst moving? Again, making melee combat more mobile the less you stand still the better as far as I am concerned in a ninja game.

 

All of this will make melee easier to use in harder situations therefore making melee less useless when compared to guns and what not

 

 

 

 

Accessibility

 

A huge issue I have is that there seems to be a delay when not wanting to melee. The game seems to register how many times you press the button and then execute, for us button spammers this is bad, as soon as you let go of the button meleeing should stop. We let go of the button for a reason and that reason can be the difference between loss and victory. 

 

Not noticeable with fast weapons as their animations end quickly but I noticed this happened heavily when using the Scoliac (whips are so much better now that we have stances)

So you can try it out yourself

 

 

Another issue is that you cannot do combos with quick melee and I completely understand why that is so. What I am proposing for this is that upon mastering a weapon (rank 30) you can then do the first combo using quick melee. 

 

This allows for some minimal comboing without equipping the weapon itself, the option should remain regardless if you Forma a weapon or not afterwards.

 

 

 

 

The Combo Counter

 

The combo counter is the simplest one to fix. I love the whole additional damage per hits and such however building up combos seems incredibly difficult, made more difficult by how the enemy spawns.

 

So to fix that I suggest that we should have 8 seconds or so (should be tested of course) before the counter resets so that you have more incentive to use melee. 

 

Genuinely the most I managed to acquire was around 2X damage and let's face it everybody loves combo counters and when the COMBO BREAKER!!! comes in you are more likely to try harder next time and improve upon your skills ^^

 

 

 

Combos

 

Like I said combos are a great addition to the game and the fact that they are mods is an entirely different discussion. Combos did however feel limiting and here is how we make them better:

 

No more pausing as part of the combos please. You cannot stop at high levels, that just cannot happen, your shields can go down in a second if you pause and the bigger problem is because of this constant pressure it is hard to co-ordinate yourself so you know when to attack again.

 

These can be replaced with forward, block but not backwards as another OP has stated, you want to move towards your enemies with speed and ferocity when meleeing them.

 

Knockbacks need to be added in, if you block and also attack you should knockback your enemies, or just make that part of the Shield and Sword stance.

 

Every weapon should have an innate basic combo, this means that if you don't have a stance you can still enjoy your weapon.

 

As I said before you should be able to perform every combo whilst moving, except the ones which launch into places and such for that particular animation.

 

 

 

Directional Attacks

 

For the obvious reasons this should be an optional feature for controller users and such.

 

However we should have a 40-50 degree arc (0 being the direction we have right now) in front of us towards which we can perform our attacks, if you want to aim up or down you can do as you want to and this allows us to attack flying enemies as well as lower enemies with ease with of course attacking weaker points of the enemy.

 

Combos can be left as they currently are with no problem just as long as the first (basic) combos are free in direction of attacks.

 

 

 

Blocking Projectiles

 

I think that blocking certain projectiles should reflect them to a certain degree as well as affect the enemies. I was fighting an Anti-MOA and it launched that thing at me, I blocked it then it went into a group of Corpus but it had no effect on them and that was quite annoying.

 

The bigger annoyance is that you can't do anything against rockets as they explode and damage you anyway  (not sure if it is reduced) however it should be that you reflect it back to where you aim it and it will damage the enemies. By this you can potentially reflect rockets into groups if you are quick enough.

 

 

 

 

*I will edit this as necessary 

 

 

What do you guys think?

Suggestions are always welcome

 

Thanks! :D

 

 

I disagree with a lot of you said. But that's probably because I disagree with your general plan to limit melee. I think that since the main theme of the game revolves around being a badass space ninja/marine then the core gameplay would reflect that. Limiting melee in favor of ranged combat would make sense for the game if the players were just marines and not ninjas. At least from my point of view. I agree with some of the issues you have brought up but I would solve them in  different ways.

 

Movement

 

It is very true that melee as of now has an issue with movement in general. Standing still isn't the issue though. In many melee centric games you are not able to run forward while attacking but you will never have an issue catching enemies. This problem exists is due to three main things. No immediate recoil, lack of forward movement during swings, and no decent long range melee attacks. When you are attacking an enemy via melee the first strike should make the enemy recoil so that the enemy will stop moving. Since the enemy recoiling will force them backwards each strike should come with some forward movement to close in on them allowing consecutive strikes to land. This way instead of chasing the enemy constantly the player will only need to connect the first strike for them to be able to combo the enemy. This of course doesn't apply to enemies immune to recoil and if you stand still when attacking you may not be able to land the first strike anyway, which leads to my next point. Balanced and mid-long range melee weapons should come with some type of semi-long range attack. I don't mean throwing like with the glaive but something more along the lines of the stinger from devil may cry or Excalibur's slash dash. An attack with a decent amount of forward momentum that would enable the player to land a strike on enemies that are slightly outside of the their immediate area. This attack should either be able to knock down the enemy or transition smoothly into a combo. The slide attack for most weapons would work perfectly for this. The issue is that they currently don't transition into combos well enough to be useful.

 

So on to the subject of combos and standing still. Since each strike that is executed without running is supposed to have its own forward movement the player won't be able to move in any direction they please while the animation plays. the animation can't be designed to move in every direction and still look natural without having to resort to creating combos that only utilize the upper body of the character. Any combo that includes more complex movements like spins, rolls, leaps etc. will require the player to relinquish control of movement for the duration of the animation. This wouldn't be such an issue if the combos in game came with their own movement. The player would simply need to choose their moves well so that they never end up where they don't want to. It also adds an element of risk/reward when choosing which move to use. Slower attacks that make you vulnerable for longer will result in a higher damage output while shorter less risky attacks will result in less. It forces players to make quick decisions during melee combat which is great if you want to add a level of skill. Also it's important to mention that in the event that control is taken away from the player it should be given back as soon as realistically possible. As soon as a swing ends the player should be able to block, dodge, jump and move immediately.

 

Accessibility

 

I agree with you in that the current input method needs work. Queuing inputs is a terrible idea for melee outside of very specific situations. BUT, when you begin to execute an action you have to commit to it. you should never begin to attack if you know that it could get you killed. That begs the question how can we make attacks that take longer viable when you can die very quickly. Short invulnerability windows, the option to cancel the action early, the ability to stagger enemies beforehand to make an attack opportunity are all options. I'm not going to give a definitive answer because it depends on the weapon and what it's purpose is. I'm not sure if you are suggesting that you should be able to cancel out of any attack but I can say that it's not a very good idea to do that as it is very exploitable and possibly game breaking.

 

I agree about combos being available from quick melee though. Ideally melee and ranged combat should mesh together so that utilizing both effectively is possible.

 

The Combo Counter

 

The combo counter as is kinda sucks, but I would prefer it to not be a specific number of seconds at all. I would rather the combo counter ramp up steadily and ramp downwards exponentially depending on player performance. Taking too much damage in a short amount of time, getting knocked down and having your shields break(basically circumstances that can be avoided through skillful play) should cut chunks out of your multiplier and starting at 3 seconds of inactivity your counter will begin to drain at a steadily increasing speed.

 

Combos

 

Having pauses in combos isn't an intrinsically bad thing. The way in which it is implemented is just very poor. You can find pause type combos in many action games that don't slow the combat even a little. As of now the pause window on many weapons is very short as the time between the strike ending and the character returning to idle is practically nonexistent. The window for input needs to be wider but any action should be able to be preformed during that window. So if you want to continue moving you can.  Pause combos should only require the player to stop button mashing just long enough for the animation to end. Which leads me to say, once again, if you are in a situation in which pausing for less than a second will get you killed you probably shouldn't have taken the swing in the first place.

 

Coordinating your combos is an issue though. the starting and ending point of each swing isn't clear enough to determine at which point you are in your current combo. The input queuing doesn't help either.

 

Knockdown needs to be weapon specific. Allowing very quick strikes to induce a knockdown would make them a little overpowered. Makes sense for heavier weapons and shields though.

 

Agree 100% with innate combos.

 

Directional Attacks

 

Attacking enemies above you could be handled by incorporating ground to air attacks or any aerial attack(and you can already crouch attack and slide attack for enemies below you). The particular method of input for these attacks is subject to opinion since everyone has something they are more and less comfortable with control wise.Though I wouldn't mind having this angled attack added as long as I could bind it to its own key.

 

I apologize if I come off sounding a little douchey at points I really mean no disrespect.