Great-Scythes: Lephantis first?

[Bryntwulf]

A few Devstreams ago, the team mentioned that they were dissatisfied with Scythes as a whole, and would like to rework them so that they were more similar in size to polearms. For this I have one simple request:
Could you make the first one Lephantis' Great Scythe? We havnt had a new boss weapon in a while, and I've always wanted his. It just looks so... wicked. 

[(PSN)CrimsonAxure]

Did DE see my Greatscythes post or something lol

[Othergrunty]

Did they say that on a recent devstream? I really can't recall that.

As for full sized farming style scythes.

Keep in mind those are difficult to make stylish or dynamic in games especialy those in which you have to attack constantly like in Warframe.

Scythes are among the fictional weapons* which are especialy in need of requiring specific setup or environments to look dynamic, since their size and blade placement really limits the moves you can reasonable make with them.

To compesate for that visual media either make each of their strikes mean business (ala. one swing everything gets cut to pieces) or they give them to characters who can wield them supernaturaly to the point the character could aswell wield anything (fish, shoelace, garden gnome, etc.) as weapon and make it look cool, leaving the scythe as just for visual fluff.

In games like Diablo II or Dynastie Warriors where you fight large groups of enemies on wide open fields and little need for visual finese in the presentation of the strikes. You can go with the same boring left, right, left, right swings over and over.

In games like Dark Souls were you normaly either strike more focused or have pauses between strikes, they can also go with a few simple strikes, because each one means business.

Meanwhile in fighting games like Guilty Gear or Soul Calibure, they usualy go for the super natural approach (weapon floats around freely, characters throw it and it returns, it's moved as if it's weightless, etc.) and also use the controlled limited environment for full effect. After all. That long, top heavy, one sided blade will hit something sooner or later if the enemy can only escape in a limited amount of direction. Also they complete the different characters, being part of their style.

Similar boss characters with large scythes also profit from the enclosed environment, aswell as not being locked in the movement limit of player characters, plus often meaning business. Which brings us to Lephantis. A Scythe works for it, because the players only have a limited amount of space they can escape to and as boss it's strikes can be slow but they mean large amount of harm.

This all doesn't work so well for Warframe. We can't just have 3 swings over and over like in Diablo II or DW, because DE will want to create stances with multiple different animations for it, but without going full supernatural there are only so many ways to swing a scythe. But they can't go supernatural either, because that would defeat the style of the weapon. In that case they might aswell just throw it into the polearm stances and accept it's constant clipping.

The current scythes with their shorter handle, feel like a compromise DE had to make, to add these types of weapons to the game without having to worry about the long handle and blade too much.

Of course this is all just my impression of the situation, but i think full length scythes are either going to give DE a headache to make look right or they could easily disapoint players when they hit the game for not feeling as cool as in their favorit game/anime/comic to feature them.

* They are real farming tools. But nobody would ever use them as weapon in the standard configuration with the blade to the side. Farmers drafted to war would rather put the blade in line with the stick to use them as makeshift bills or glaives.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Othergrunty

[(PSN)psycofang]

They dont actually have to go supernatural with the moveset or boring 3 hit swings. I forget what game it was but they showed the most viable means of attacking with a fictional battle scythe.

When people see scythes they make the mistake of only seeing thr blade when in reality you can attack with every part of the weapon, much like pommel bashing with a sword/battle axe or downward cleaving with a shield to deal mortal damage to the neck area.

One of the slickest moves i saw from this game was the way the user tried to decapitate the mc, he didnt fight with just the blade, he fought with the blunt arc and the shaft of the weapon.

2 moves he did really stuck out out of all the methodical turning and 2 handed twisting on the scythes shaft to maintain momentum.

One instance the "villian" parried the mc by raising the broad head of the scythe to hit the MCs sword and knock him off balance only to immediately afterwards turn the blade in reverse shaft facing the mc and the blade being held to the villians rear with the blade pointed outward.

The villian then struck the mc in the stomach twice putting him in the blades "box"* and used a full body turn allowing the shaft to slide down his hands and turn only to grab the very end of the hilt and swing with extreme force. 

*the area to which the blade would strike at its advantage

Another  one was using the broad end of the blade to bash the target near and above the shoulder area and turn the blade in a circle (likr how you would turn a key) and push it past their head in one motion then  pull the newly positioned arc back and decapitate them from behind while the scythe user is still standing in front of the target.

-this was actually an original method of reaping and a tricky means of attack using a weapon known as the Kusarigama by throwing the bladed end past the target and pulling it back into a vital area.

There were other more simple methods of attack like holding the center of the shaft and bashing 1 side of the enemy with the shaft and turning a swing with the bladed tip into their opposite side.

The issue concerning the blade is that its unrealistic to use NOT because it cant be realistically used but because of how utterly absurd the fighting style required to use it is. It requires extremely high amounts if strength and stamina, forethought and planning and most swings with the bladed end must be thr Coup de Grace or youre left dangerously wide open to any form of the words counter attack.

 

That and the fact that its unwieldy and requires near the same number of years of pure effort and training as one with a real battle bow compared the great scythe in normal human standards becomes a gimmicky polearm.

 

Buuuut this is Warframe so...realism can bite it?

 

 

[Othergrunty]

On 25.9.2017 at 8:04 AM, (PS4)psycofang said:

*snips*

Buuuut this is Warframe so...realism can bite it?

Agreed on the last part and you make some good points.

Still we will see if DE can make it work if they decided to create polearm length scythes.