The Enemy Strikes Back: Making “Melee Mode” Better

[4MostlyHarmless2]

You know what’s missing in Warframe’s melee? Good melee enemies.

Think about it. We don’t like using melee against high level Corpus/ Grineer/ Corrupted because we get curbstomped by overwhelmingly superior firepower (a.k.a Reality Ensues). However when it comes to high level Infested, we’re still more willing to whip out the weapons and spam E (or whatever button you’ve bound melee to) like there’s no tomorrow. Why is that?

It’s because of the nature of the enemy. When the Infested attack, they hardly give you room to fire a rifle. While you can spray and pray, there’s a rather satisfying feeling when you pull out a melee weapon and carve a path to survival through the horde.

When we’re faced with a wall of lasers and bullets, however, the satisfying feeling disappears. The reality of facing off against ranged weapons with a melee weapon sinks in, and attempting to kill one target with your sword results in you getting riddled with projectiles from everyone else.

It’s a small wonder why melee weapons like greatswords and polearms tend to dominate the melee scene: with their long reach and sweeping stances, they nullify the danger of being shot in the back by just hitting (and killing) everything at the same time. On the other hand, the short range but powerful melee weapons like high crit Dual Swords, Nikanas, and Dakra Prime/ Broken War (with Crimson Dervish) also remain favorites with their capability to eliminate enemies quickly; the faster the enemy dies, the less time his (or her) buddies have to shoot at the player.

While many would decry the current melee system to be flawed, I am of the opinion that it’s not the system that needs changing. What really needs changing is how the enemies react to us when we pull out our melee to start the dance of death.

Let’s make the Enemy Strike Back.

 

ENEMY AI AND WEAPONS

As we all may have noticed, regular enemy “melee” is currently very limited: either they have a dedicated melee weapon (Butchers, Scorpions, Prod Crewmen, etc.), have the ability to elbow you in the face with their weapon (any ranged enemy), or they groundslam you to knock you away (most grineer heavy units).

The ability to switch between melee and ranged forms at will is currently held by boss-type characters (Vor and Kril). Of course, applying this to everyone will probably be quite difficult as it means adding additional AI to every single ranged unit in Warframe.

The best solution is to change the glowsticks that all ranged units use when disarmed, into actual melee weapons that vary per unit. I’ll give a list of suggestions later per unit for each faction.

Each faction (aside from the infested) should also have a unique way of approaching melee combat with the Tenno. Here are a few suggestions:

 

GRINEER 

 

 

The Grineer are currently the only units with a decent variety of melee AI. If you take a moment to observe the behavior of their current melee- only units, you’ll see what I mean. Scorpions, Powerfists and butchers don’t always rush in blindly: they often hide themselves behind available cover when they can before rushing in. Flameblades teleport in behind you to whack you with a glowstick (which has just been recently changed). Drahk Masters can block damage with their forearm. Shield lancers block damage and charge you with a shield bash if you get within range. Bailiffs have a slash dash that can knockdown and even kill the players. The Prosecutors on Ceres are the only enemy units who attempt to negate damage by blocking with the Amphis.

So what could be done is to apply these AI behaviors as secondary behaviors for their ranged units that will only activate once in a disarmed state. Instead of wasting time creating all new melee behaviors for Lancers and Elite Lancers and Troopers and every other ranged unit, it would be much faster to recycle the melee AI that already exists and distribute it accordingly. Here’s a list of ranged units, their substitute melee weapon, and the melee AI they should adapt:

 

Lancer: Cleaver :: Butcher AI
Elite Lancer: Machete:: Scorpion AI
Eviscerator: Ripkas (or one Ripka):: Powerfist AI

Ballista: Sheev :: Butcher AI
Trooper: Ack and Brunt (or just Brunt) :: Shield Lancer AI
Seeker: Sydon :: Prosecutor AI
Scorch: Twin Basolk (Or Basolk) :: Butcher AI

Commander: Dual Cleaver/ Dual Machete (DE pls) :: Prosecutor AI
Bombard: Jat Kittag :: Bailiff AI (without dash)
Heavy Gunner: Manticore :: Prosecutor AI
Napalm: Brokk :: Bailiff AI (without dash)

 

 

CORPUS

 

 

The Corpus don’t have any good melee AI, as the current list of their melee units include the Prod Crewman, the Comba/ Scrambus units with the energy barriers or the Lecta, the Shockwave Moa (arguably a form of melee), and… that’s it. In my opinion, though, their faction has the most hilarious melee attack in Warframe: the MOA kicks. That attack alone is enough to convince me that the Corpus don’t really need a more sophisticated melee AI. After all, there is nothing more hilarious (and humiliating) for a Tenno to get kicked to death by a bunch of angry MOAs in melee mode.

While the idea of applying the MOA’s melee AI to the crewmen would make for a very interesting sight (The crewmen do have boots that look like they could cause some damage though), the Corpus seem to be the type to prefer proxies or ranged weapons rather than get their hands dirty in melee. So the first option for the Crewmen, once disabled, should be to run away into cover. To prevent them from becoming entirely useless, however, the variants of crewmen should provide minor buffs to nearby MOAs and Ospreys when forced into melee mode.

Crewmen: Prova:: Speed buff

Elite Crewmen: Prova:: Damage buff

Detron Crewmen: Obex:: Shield buff

Sniper Crewmen: Obex:: Accuracy Buff

Corpus Tech: Serro:: Health Buff

 

 

 

OUR MELEE

So you know how I said earlier that it’s not the melee system that needs tweaking? Well I kinda lied. There’s one thing that I’d like to have added to our current melee system, and that is to give channeling while blocking ranged damage a chance to disarm the enemy. The chance to disarm per weapon should vary, but these are the general rules:

 

Hammers, Scythes, Heavy Blades, Nikanas, Polearms, Sword and Shield, Machetes

DAMAGE REDUCTION WHILE BLOCKING: HIGH
CHANNELING DISARM CHANCE WHILE BLOCKING: NONE- LOW

These weapons, which currently have the highest damage reduction when blocking, should have the lowest chance to disarm while channeling. Exceptions here are Machetes: they can have high damage reduction and decent to high chance to disarm while channeling, since they currently don’t have anything near decent damage. 

Swords, Dual Swords, Blade and Whip, Staff Weapons

DAMAGE REDUCTION WHILE BLOCKING: MEDIUM
CHANNELING DISARM CHANCE WHILE BLOCKING: MEDIUM- HIGH

These weapons should have decent to high chances to disarm while channeling.  These weapons can be considered as the middle ground, having decent damage reduction as well as decent to high chances to disarm opponents.

Daggers, Dual Daggers, Tonfa, Claws, Sparring, Glaives, Whips, Nunchaku

DAMAGE REDUCTION WHILE BLOCKING: LOW
CHANNELING DISARM CHANCE WHILE BLOCKING: LOW- MEDIUM
CHARGED ATTACK DISARM CHANCE: HIGH

These weapons should have a low to decent chance to disarm while channel- blocking, but with a twist: they have a very high chance to disarm the enemy when using charged attacks (whether channeling or not). Nunchaku are the exception: they should have either a decent or high chance to disarm the enemy while channel-blocking.

 

CONCERNS

 

You may be wondering, “Why not just make it a bunch of mods?” Personal reservations about the mod system aside, giving each set of melee weapons the ability to disarm is a good way to make the melee playstyles different. A player with a Heavy Melee weapon may have amazing attack and defense, but unless they are playing Loki they will have to brave the gunfire and hope it doesn’t kill them first. A player with a medium melee weapon can easily switch between attack or defense, either going for the enemy first or blocking so that they can disarm the opponent and force them into melee. Those wielding lighter weapons will try to use charged attacks to disarm ranged opponents, or just run in slashing wildly if they wish.

 

OTHER CONCERNS

1. “But I can still use a gun and do the job better by killing the enemies faster”

- Perhaps, but the point of my suggestion is not to make killing enemies more efficient: it is to make killing them feel slightly more rewarding because you’ve been fighting them on more equal terms.

2. “Even though everyone has fancy melee weapons, I’ll still end up mashing E ”

- Okay, but at least you’ll be trying to dodge their melee weapons while doing it. The problem now is that we just mash E mindlessly while the enemy keeps shooting at us, making melee feel ineffective and useless. If the enemy has their own melee weapon out, at least there’ll be the feeling of fighting enemies on slightly more equal terms.

3. “That’s a lot of coding and AI behavior to be applied to all the units, wouldn’t it be easier for them to do X?”

- While I admit I have no practical knowledge of coding and programming, DE’s recent “experiments” into enemy behavior and attack patterns (most notably in Rathuum) have proved they are capable of the coding to put in more complex behaviors. 

 

 

And there you have it, my suggestions for melee. It's a lot bigger on the inside, so open those spoilers wide. 

Comments, feedback and suggestions are very much welcome. 

 

Edited May 2, 2016 by 4MostlyHarmless2
Formatting issues and spoilered for convenience