Summary of Issues with new Syndicate Melees - Edit: My apologies to Design Council

[Tesseract7777]

DE, the new syndicate melees are pretty sweet so far. They look really cool, and I think a good job was done on the stats to make nice upgrades without making them too overpowered. For some weapons like the Heliocor, you listened to our concerns and basically made it a sidegrade to the regular version. And despite all the past complaints about the Boltace because it isn't a sword, it seems people are already enjoying that weapon. There is a lot of positive here. But there are also some big issues, and they center almost entirely on the new syndicate passives. 

This is understandable. The new syndicate passives really are a totally new idea, a new game mechanic, and are going to take some work to smooth out and get properly integrated into gameplay. For some of these it is obvious they work nicely, for others the execution seems heavily flawed. So let's go through a quick summary of the issues (other Tenno feel free to add your own issues/comments, as this is hardly exhaustive). 

Telos Boltace -- this weapon is actually going over fairly well, despite the previous grousing. The passive seems to be going over well as well... the only issue is that some people seem to be mentioning a problem with the combo counter, and that it might be partly bugged/broken with the Telos Boltace. 

Vaykor Sydon -- The passive is a bit ill advised, and perhaps the design council made a bit of a mistake here. For starters, we have a blind effect that can very briefly open enemies to finishers, on a weapon that has the lowest finisher damage (along with dual daggers) of any weapon type in the game. On top of that, this thing takes fifteen blocks to build up the blind, and you can't execute other actions in between. This is completely unrealistic and not useful/or really even useable at all. 

Suggested fix: Either drastically reduce the amount of blocks we require to set off the blind, or alternatively allow us to perform other actions between blocks, and simply add another block to the counter every time we block successfully. Once the counter is full we can set it off at our leisure. Both of these could make it at least somewhat useful, whereas right now it isn't. 

Secura Lecta: Wow the Lecta really got short changed here (pun intended). Some of the other syndicate melees have more than one effect, Lecta has only one and it does NOTHING to help in actual gameplay, just gives more credits. If it actually gave more resource drops and such as well, or had a second effect that also helped in combat, it would have the boost it needs. Right now... it feels like the red headed stepchild of syndicates. 

Sancti Magistar: I have heard reports that the blocking "status resistance" animation, on the Sancti Magistar, is causing people to get stunlocked by arc traps, this needs to be looked into. As for the charge attack passive... this would be more useful if charge attacks were not so bad in this game. They take way too long to execute and are not worth it... we need mods for charge attacks, or how they work to begin with needs to be buffed imo. 

Synoid Heliocor: Actually a really nice sidegrade stats-wise, the dual effects are really neat. The specter thing works pretty nicely actually... this weapon was a success overall I think. I have little I can see issue with here. The only thing I could add is that the regular Heliocor almost gets treated a little unfairly only getting half of the overall passive, but it does get more overall damage and crit to make up for it. 

Rakta Dark Dagger: I have already heard that the decreased visibility thing is bugged/or at least not indicated well in terms of being properly useful... and as it is a dagger, and doesn't have great status, this weapon is not going to be getting that radiation passive very often. Overshields on a dagger weapon? Why? Why? 

 

Seriously... why are we listening to the design council if this is what they come up with? On a frame that greatly uses a dagger... you are going to be trying to proc radiation and get overshields? No... you aren't. Not with any frame really, or with any strategy. And some report it can still use the syndicate mod, whereas Vaykor Hek couldn't use scattered justice. Is this because they don't come with innate procs, or is this is a glitch/bug? The Dark Dagger passive needs to be pretty much totally rethought/redone. 

Why did the passive not have more to do with stealth? Or fire even, as this is Red Veil, or really anything besides a buggy "decreased visibility" and another passive that you will basically never use? Even with the augment Rakta Dark Dagger's status is terrible... 

 

Please leave your thoughts here, this is far from an exhaustive list of problems, but I thought it would be good to bring together some of the major issues in one thread. 

 

IMPORTANT EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that the design council was really not at all to blame in this situation. It turns out that some have stated they DC was given the chance to offer ideas, but unlike many other situations, they were not actually allowed to vote on them. Voting on the ideas would have allowed the DC to weed out some of the worse ones, and elevate the better ones to a higher position, making it easier for DE to make a better choice. 

Instead, DE chose to rush out the new weapons and their new effects without really consulting the council for anything more than a little brainstorming. This was sloppy and has turned it into a very embarrassing release. We hope DE will look at the feedback given both in this thread and the entire weapons forum and consider some serious changes to make these weapons feel like syndicate weapons, and give people a reason to be excited about them. 

I would like to apologize to any members of the design council who were offended by my words -- I know the vast majority of you only want to improve the game, and your voice was not fully heard this time. I shouldn't have blamed you without knowing all of the facts first. 

The ball is in DE's court now -- the feedback is out there, and the good ideas are there. 

It is my strong suggestion if DE reads this thread: Please, take all of the recent feedback in the weapons forum, go back to brainstorming with the Design Council. This time, give them a vote and pick from the very best ideas. Give it some time if you must, but take the time to fix these weapons properly. This release was an embarrassing disappointment. We respect all that the devs do, we know the devs are very hard working people and doing their best. However, as players, I think I speak for most of us when I say that despite those that complain about waiting for content, what we really want is for you to release fully formed and properly thought out content. We know you are capable of releasing amazing content and that is exactly why the syndicate melees are so disappointing. They feel rushed, they really do. With the War Within this is understandable, but we would rather you take the time to do the syndicate melees properly, even if we have to wait a lot longer, then to have such sloppy rushed content that immediately needs a ton of fixing. Please, take the time to fix these weapons, even if it takes some time to do properly this time around. 

Edited September 18, 2016 by Tesseract7777

[Buttaface]

To be more blunt, Sydon and Dark Dagger are complete garbage, so bad that trolling by whomever pushed them through or advocated for the end result is a distinct possibility. They are -that- bad. No idea about the rest yet.

[Tesseract7777]

Yeah it almost feels like some people in the DC were trolling or something... the effects literally make no sense, like they were designed for the wrong weapons even. I am utterly baffled by several of the decisions made. 

[AM-Bunny]

2 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Yeah it almost feels like some people in the DC were trolling or something... the effects literally make no sense, like they were designed for the wrong weapons even. I am utterly baffled by several of the decisions made. 

Hey, don't disparage the entire DC; there were a lot of great ideas submitted. However, we had no vote or influence whatsoever over which were selected; in fact, a lot of the final decisions are strange amalgamations of various suggestions rather than a verbatim implementation of our submissions.

[bl4ckhunter]

24 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Seriously... why are we listening to the design council if this is what they come up with?

DE picked what they wanted arbitrairly out of more than a hundred proposals, whatever fault there is to be found it's one hundred percent on them.  

besides i don't understand how the synoid heliocor is even considered a sidegrade, does your definition of sidegrade consists in overall lower stats? mine doesn't. i need better eyes apparently, also this forum doesn't have a button for strikethrought font, why is that?

Edited September 16, 2016 by bl4ckhunter

[Tesseract7777]

1 minute ago, AM-Bunny said:

Hey, don't disparage the entire DC; there were a lot of great ideas submitted. However, we had no vote or influence whatsoever over which were selected; in fact, a lot of the final decisions are strange amalgamations of various suggestions rather than a verbatim implementation of our submissions.

Well, I only say some. It only takes a handful of trolls to get a wrongheaded idea into the mix, and make it appear somewhat reasonable. I'm sure the majority of the design council actually wants the game to get better, and for people to have an increasingly better experience. 

Edited September 16, 2016 by Tesseract7777

[Xekrin]

11 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Some of the other syndicate melees have more than one effect, Lecta has only one and it does NOTHING to help in actual gameplay, just gives more credits.

You wouldn't even believe the number of people who suggested it drop extra credits in design council, they did what people asked for.

Had to mention that before finishing the OP, doing so now.

[YagoXiten]

2 minutes ago, bl4ckhunter said:

DE picked what they wanted arbitrairly out of more than a hundred proposals, whatever fault there is to be found it's one hundred percent on them.  

besides i don't understand how the synoid heliocor is even considered a sidegrade, does your definition of sidegrade consists in overall lower stats? mine doesn't. 

Overall lower? The Synoid Heliocor has an 80%, rather than a 50%, damage increase whilst Channelling. It also has higher attack speed, and a much higher status chance. All together, I'd actually expect the Synoid Heliocor to outperform the usual Heliocor in very high level content, because the power of Corrosive and/or Viral procs is so significant.

[Mak_Gohae]

1 minute ago, Xekrin said:

You wouldn't even believe the number of people who suggested it drop extra credits in design council, they did what people asked for.

Had to mention that before finishing the OP, doing so now.

You can see how this makes sense cause Corpus are greedy blah, blah, but there should still have added a combat effect on top of that.

These are not weapons that people are going to get early on when they need credits.

It seems like they decided to stick with lore more than anything else when it came to assigning effects. And ended up with some weird results in some weapons.

[Vuli]

I disagree with you on the Synoid Heliocor. It is garbage compared to the normal one dmg and crit wise. In return we get a passive that, while cool, is very inconsistent with getting the enemy you wanted in a crowd. It also has problems if you are using lifestrike - need to channel to get life back so you don't die? enjoy the runner specter that you happened to hit.

It needs to have the same stats as the original Heliocor. It's not supposed to be a sidegrade, it's a freaking Syndicate weapon.

[bl4ckhunter]

2 minutes ago, YagoXiten said:

Overall lower? The Synoid Heliocor has an 80%, rather than a 50%, damage increase whilst Channelling. It also has higher attack speed, and a much higher status chance. All together, I'd actually expect the Synoid Heliocor to outperform the usual Heliocor in very high level content, because the power of Corrosive and/or Viral procs is so significant.

nevermind that, i mixed the standard heliocor stats up with my jat kittag's lol, shame on me.

Edited September 16, 2016 by bl4ckhunter

[Tradden]

I honestly think a complete rework of the Vaykor Sydon's passive should be in order. Before getting the Sydon, the only time I'd even blocked in the game was during the tutorial, if it was necessary for completing anything. To block 15 attacks for a fairly weak payoff was definitely not what I was expecting. The Steel Meridian syandana charges up from taking damage, so maybe the weapon should do something similar? I don't really know how I would rework it, but I highly dislike the current state of the Vaykor Sydon.

[Xekrin]

1 minute ago, Mak_Gohae said:

You can see how this makes sense cause Corpus are greedy blah, blah, but there should still have added a combat effect on top of that.

Agreed, I even suggested a few myself but they went with credits only for some reason.  Shrug.

20 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Seriously... why are we listening to the design council if this is what they come up with? On a frame that greatly uses a dagger... you are going to be trying to proc radiation and get overshields?

I agree with @AM-Bunny 

There were plenty of suggestions relating to fire and so on, but mostly it was trolling tbh because daggers are so, lets just say not great, that it was difficult offering suggestions on a weapon that was unlikely to be good no matter what it was given.

I hope i don't get in trouble for this but one person even suggested "Rakta Dark dagger transforms into a random weapon type at start of mission because no one uses daggers" paraphrased.

There were a few great suggestions IMO for dark dagger but for their own reasons they went with what you see.  We can only wait to see if they clean up these new passives a bit and make them more viable.

[Genji]

Synoid Heliocor

 

The specter isn't all that wowing given they "still" have poor following speed, I thought you'd get more or it'd become stronger over time. 

Don't hit a fodder enemy with it. 

[bubbabenali]

5 minutes ago, Mak_Gohae said:

You can see how this makes sense cause Corpus are greedy blah, blah, but there should still have added a combat effect on top of that.

These are not weapons that people are going to get early on when they need credits.

It seems like they decided to stick with lore more than anything else when it came to assigning effects. And ended up with some weird results in some weapons.

Yeah, the Corpus love money, blah blah.

Let's forget about the fact that the Corpus love pestering denial units like Nullifiers, Bursas and Scrambus' - how about to factor that into their weapon?.

Man sometimes I don't know if the DC members actually play the game - wait, considering the decisions they make continously I'm pretty sure they don't.

[Xekrin]

2 minutes ago, Genjinaro said:

The specter isn't all that wowing given they "still" have poor following speed, I thought you'd get more or it'd become stronger over time. 

I got a specter hyekka and it literally just wandered away without any regards to following or attacking nearby enemies..

I too was hoping for a small army or something, even 3 or 4 lasting half at long with increased speed and an AI that prefers combat over "doing their own thing" would be nice.

But it seems nearly any ability or mechanic that conjures up followers is doomed to obscurity.

[OniDax]

16 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Well, I only say some. It only takes a handful of trolls to get a wrongheaded idea into the mix, and make it appear somewhat reasonable. I'm sure the majority of the design council actually wants the game to get better, and for people to have an increasingly better experience. 

The fault is DE's, not whatever troll decided to troll DC. DE made the choices. There were enough decent choices in that thread, so if you feel some of the decisions were wrong, then you're saying DE made wrong choices. I'm not sure why you can't just say that. Maybe you feel like it's wrong to blame DE for something. IDK. But blaming "trolls" just seems like your way of not blaming DE. Whatever your reasons are, you're wrong. Trolls didn't make DE make their choices, so don't blame imaginary trolls for these weapons.

Anyway, enough of that. My biggest issue is that certain Syndicate weapons just aren't good. The Rakta Dark Dagger is one of them. I understand that the Dark Dagger is a terrible weapon, but that doesn't mean the Rakta Dark Dagger should've been bad as well.

[bl4ckhunter]

3 minutes ago, Xekrin said:

I got a specter hyekka and it literally just wandered away without any regards to following or attacking nearby enemies..

I too was hoping for a small army or something, even 3 or 4 lasting half at long with increased speed and an AI that prefers combat over "doing their own thing" would be nice.

But it seems nearly any ability or mechanic that conjures up followers is doomed to obscurity.

Still, the weapon is not too bad even if i'd rather have the standard syndicate burst, the lecta thought, it's just unredeemable.

[Fukushu]

9 minutes ago, bubbabenali said:

Yeah, the Corpus love money, blah blah.

Let's forget about the fact that the Corpus love pestering denial units like Nullifiers, Bursas and Scrambus' - how about to factor that into their weapon?.

Man sometimes I don't know if the DC members actually play the game - wait, considering the decisions they make continously I'm pretty sure they don't.

Not saying I'm defending all the choices made for these weapons, but you're looking at their quirks as if they were part of the faction they belong to instead of the Syndicate they come from. The Secura Lekta most likely produces extra credits due to the Perrin Sequence being formed by powerful merchants who broke away from the Corpus and plan on restoring order by bringing prosperity and direction to the world instead of focusing on profit through war, and the same can be said about the Vaykor Sydon having its ability activate through blocking due to Steel Meridian trying to protect those who can't defend themselves. While this may seem like me giving the Design Council more credit than they deserve, DE easily could've chosen ideas only if they worked with the lore of the Syndicates.

That being said, it would be nice if there were some changes to these abilities, like the Secura Lekta having something added along with the extra credits (maybe like a chance to disarm enemies since Perrin Sequence is more about profit than war), and it'd be nice if the blind stack for the Vaykor Sydon could be built over time instead of one and done, breaks if you even dare think about taking a light jog. Heck, decreasing the number of blocks needed to activate the blind would be enough in my opinion.

[Buttaface]

23 minutes ago, Xekrin said:

There were a few great suggestions IMO for dark dagger but for their own reasons they went with what you see.  We can only wait to see if they clean up these new passives a bit and make them more viable.

Reddit datamining had the dagger buffing movement and attack speed, which would have been GREAT. No idea how or why they replaced that with the incompetent design turd they did.

[MithrilDragon]

I'm just disappointed that the melee weapons don't have the syndicate burst effects.  I was looking forward to mothballing my Rakta Cernos in favor of the Rakta Dark Dagger or Synoid Heliocor.  Oh well.

[(PSN)MrNishi]

1 hour ago, Tesseract7777 said:

.... For starters, we have a blind effect that can very briefly open enemies to finishers, on a weapon that has the lowest finisher damage (along with dual daggers) of any weapon type in the game. 

Did DE revert the Spy 2.0 Melee Stealth Finisher changes, where every Melee class gets the same 8x multiplier at weapon level 30?

 

8x Finisher  * 400% Stealth multiplier for a total of 32x (or 3200%)

[(PSN)DBR87]

Let me get this straight... So we didn't get a Vaykor Ack and Brunt but we still got a Syndicate ability that requires blocking?

 

And the Troll of the year of the award goes to....

 

Well all my excitement for Syndicate melees are officially dead. At least Lecta has great stats, though.

[Snowbluff]

13 minutes ago, (PS4)DBR87 said:

Well all my excitement for Syndicate melees are officially dead. At least Lecta has great stats, though.

Not even a 10% crit chance.

Calling it now. I'm pretty sure these weapons are garbage. I was hoping for a Rakta Dark Split Sword, but I guess that confusion was cleared up real quick.

[Roboplus]

The only solace I can provide is that if DE had picked a wide range of choices and put them to vote, at the very least that Lecta passive wouldn't have gone through.

I can't say we collectively make the best decisions, but DC is full of vets. We wouldn't have voted for more credits.

Edited September 16, 2016 by Roboplus
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