Proposal To Fix Melee: Normal Vs. Charged Attacks

[LunarWind]

Stacking Damage on normal attacks.

I'll elaborate:

 

Currently, normal attacks are almost unanimously agreed upon as being the inferior method of dealing damage with melee weapons. They work great for afflicting status effects and stunning groups, but in terms of damage they are severely lacking when compared to Charged Attacks.

 

I propose a stacking damage boost for normal attacks. This would be something like 10% more damage with each consecutive hit, stacking up to +40%. (Note: these are example maths, DE knows the game mechanics/balance and should formulate proper values)

 

This bonus could apply in one of two ways.

 

#1:

A flat stacking bonus when attacking the same target. Like a debuff on your target, this would allow you to deal more damage with consecutive attacks against the same enemy. For attacks which hit more than one enemy, you could stack the debuff and receive increased damage against as many as you could reliably hit.

Obviously, this would need to have a short duration. Possibly 1 second or even a bit less, to ensure it is a string of consecutive hits that gain the bonus.

 

#2:

Bonus applied per animation. You could have strings of attack animations, with further ones receiving more damage.

This would represent a sort of 'combo' system, where the 3rd attack deals +20% damage, and the 4th attack +40% ... whatever you think works. The drawback would be that if you cannot kill the target in one 'chain' of attacks, you go back to the non-modified damage animation.

This could, however, help to balance it's use against bosses. You then need to make sure that one 'chain' of animations does roughly as much damage as a comparable charged attack from a charge-focused weapon. OR, possibly, deals similar DPS.

 

Either way, this system could help to make normal-attack focused weapons (New Ankyros, anyone?) fare better against their Charge-focused counterparts. It would also add some more interesting melee mechanics, making normal attacks more than just "Mindless E Mashing".

 

Can you think of any problems with this system? Specific weapons which could abuse it? How? How could it be fixed?

 

Thank you for your consideration, please bump/flame/discuss this post so that DE can notice it.

Edited May 5, 2013 by LunarWind

[LunarWind]

Bump.

Yes, I typo'd the title, but the idea is good!

 

Needs feedback / recognition.

[Deaths.Reap3r]

Thats actually a fairly reasonable idea :)

[Ferriwind]

I think normal melee and charge attacks should be differentiated by more than just damage.

 

Normal melee should be much more fluid and have rewarding and specialized combos(a different combo for a specific enemy. Grappling or dash+impale for example would be better stuns against some enemies while others would resist those combos).

 

Charge attacks should always multihit in their attack range and could bring out special characteristics of the melee weapon being used. This would really give charge attacks a powerful but unique(maybe flashy) presence rather than just outright armor ignoring damage. For example, releasing a poison gas from Mire or for Bo make the charge attack a two hit combo move that utilizes the thrusting characteristic of polearm weapons...

Edited April 20, 2013 by Stygi

[Onite]

My problem with melee is not just damage, but the flow of it. I made a thread about it.

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/31956-more-fluid-melee/#entry290671

 

 

Basically i absolutely hate how melee feels when you're doing simple attacks.

[Tetsmeha]

The stacking effect on normal attacks would make it really great, especially if damage mods could stack too like fire dmg, etc.

[CamWiseOwl]

Stacking? Like Combos? :D

 

I'll be happy when it's this mental:

[Tetsmeha]

Stacking? Like Combos? :D

 

I'll be happy when it's this mental:

 

Wrong thread

[MIKUiqnw0]

Please implement.

 

I totally want my Fang to outperform everything.

[LunarWind]

I agree that a complex combo system would be nice, but it's alos a TON of work for the development team. Like, an entire updates worth. Maybe update 10 or 11.

 

The main merit of my suggestion is that it requires only a moderate amount of effort from the developers.

Since I have no idea how the Engine handles things, seeing as they BUILT IT THEMSELVES (Queue Applause), I added two different methods of possible implementation.

 

The vast majority of suggestion threads I see in these forums do not take into account how much work it would be for DE to implement into the current version of the game. Rather than a perfect system we won't see in the game for a year, I'd like a decent system we could have in a month.

[LunarWind]

Bump again, so far this is a great idea.

If you've got reason to think it wouldn't work, please share.

 

This is intended to be a fix for melee damage, Normal Vs Charged attacks.

Animations and flow of combat are different issues, I'd just like to see a purely balance focused fix for the viability of the two different style of melee combat.

[LunarWind]

Bump, we still need a fix for Melee.

Normal attacks are still pretty underwhelming.

 

I would also like to add that while making the Pressure Point mod more powerful would affect the melee balance, it isn't the only answer.

I'd like a more 'ground level' solution for this, something that makes normal attacks more unique or appealing when compared to charged attacks.

[Ronyn]

Damage being raised on consecutive hits is a great idea.

Its not the final peice of the melee puzzle by any means but its a simple yet effective way to bring a bit more depth into the system in the meantime.

[Fluffanutter]

Combo's bad, quick time events lock you in place to be shot in the Face.

 

Fluffanutter

[shubomber]

I would definitely be in favor of melee combo chaining and stuff like that.

[lncarnation]

Which weapons are you using  for melee damage.... Because my dual ethers never require to be charged... Haven't even used a potato on them yet..

[Chtulie]

The problem with a normal attack melee weapon is that they have tons of quick attacks, with low damage for each in a game that has a ton of armoured opponents. A charge attack weapon gets an armour penalty only once and loses a few percent of it's high damage total. A low damage weapon gets it's damage reduced significantly with each hit, making it like trying to stop a rhino with cotton balls. Which doesn't work, as rhino players will attest (imagine the new grineer rifle as the cotton balls).

 

Unless I'm mistaken about how the armour system works. I do think I know that armour piercing mods are more important then damage boosting mods, at least at first.

[lncarnation]

The problem with a normal attack melee weapon is that they have tons of quick attacks, with low damage for each in a game that has a ton of armoured opponents. A charge attack weapon gets an armour penalty only once and loses a few percent of it's high damage total. A low damage weapon gets it's damage reduced significantly with each hit, making it like trying to stop a rhino with cotton balls. Which doesn't work, as rhino players will attest (imagine the new grineer rifle as the cotton balls).

 

Unless I'm mistaken about how the armour system works. I do think I know that armour piercing mods are more important then damage boosting mods, at least at first.

 

Armor Piercing mods: An elemental damage modification which does full damage even to armored targets

[LunarWind]

I generally use either the Dual Zorens, Plasma Blade, or Amphis as my melee weapons.

I also have Furax and Ankyros which I use occasionally.

 

The current problem with Normal attacks is that they do little damage to start and have a weak +damage mod.

This means that additional elemental mods (ice, fire, AP) don't add nearly as much to normal attacks as they do to charged attacks.

Additionally, since ALL charged attacks ignore armor automatically, that's one more mod that you don't have to put into a charge-focused weapon, and significantly more damage dealt to armored enemies (Grineer, ancients, bosses).

 

Since charge attacks have their special attribute (Armor ignore and sometimes stun) I thought it'd be a nice tough for normal attacks to have theirs.

 

I think that originally Warframe melee combat was designed around players mixing normal and charged attacks, but that is not what has happened.

Since we have damage mods that affect only one or the other, people use either one or the other.

 

My proposed changes (Or a similar system) would be a fairly simple fix for normal attacks to bring them in line with charged attacks.

I tried to change nothing outside of normal attacks and envision a concept which requires the least amount of work while still providing an interesting and fun mechanic for players. Much better than a bland +dmg buff.

 

This would also help melee fighting feel more like an alternate combat technique, rather than the thing you do when your bullets are all gone.

[lncarnation]

atm I pretty much only use melee on infected maps and occationally when I'm messing around. I think maybe bumping up the base damage a little more could be good, but I generally have little to no problem with killing with my melee weapons of choice.  Dual blades and gram tend to be my choice melee's

[Ferriwind]

This system is bad because it gives players tunnel vision. Also, it further restricts the possibilities of melee. Instead of expanding its use throughout the mission, it simply encourages using melee as a playstyle through increased damage but at the same time, the mechanic restricts the actions of the players. Even if normal melee users(not charge attacks) benefit from this, they would be forced to use multi-hit weapons or adhere to a fixed playstyle of attacking one enemy and finishing a long chain of attacks to maximize their damage.

 

This also doesn't really take into account current ground slash and jump attacks. It'd be best to just increase the strength of Pressure Point and work on improving melee mechanics and fluidity. A flexible but simple melee system would be best even if it will take a while to implement. For now, we have the mod system.

[Chtulie]

Thinking about it, the trick with a charged attack is about making sure you're not interrupted before the swing. Normal attacks chain into a default 3 move combo (or was it 4?). How about the trick there would be to land all hits on the same target without being interrupted by or accidentally landing on another foe, and then the last hit just gets a huge boost in damage. It's how beat 'em ups have done it in forever, from Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage to even more current stuff where managing to land the last hit of a combo does something considerably more then just another hit.

You can even get different effects per weapon. It doesn't just have to be damage, it could give a long stun, or send them flying way away, or knock them back hitting other foes in the way, etc.

[Ferriwind]

The majority of enemies in warframe have guns. And if you haven't noticed, these guns really hurt of the last couple updates. So you can't really compare beat 'em ups to warframe. You also have to be careful of getting stun locked to death in warframe.

 

The alternative would be to make each melee strike in the animation do different damage or have added crit etc. regardless of the comboing and hitting of the same enemy. This makes much more sense and you don't need to have a multi-hit weapon.

 

You never know what melee mods will be added though.

[Chtulie]

Can't really compare no. But there are considerably, way more weapons for the melee slot then there are for either the pistol or rifle/shotgun/sniper slot. So there seems to be a preference on the developer side towards melee.

Or it could be the other way that they care more about the guns, are more careful about introducing guns and consider melee unimportant enough to just jam in whatever idea seems good at the time.