Parkour/Melee/Movement 2.5 (Interactivity!)

[(PSN)LeBlingKing]

Warframe has one of the most lovable movement systems in all gaming (at least, in my opinion), and I thought "Hey! Maybe we could make Movement more fluid and interactive! That way, we can definitely get the space ninja feel going down!" And thus, this topic.

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CHANGES TO SOME OLD STUFF

- While holding the Aim-Glide button, Aim-Gliding into a Wall will bring the Warframe into a Wall Latch that lasts twice as long.

- Enemy vaulting (yeah, it exists) has a chance to pickpocket the ammo of the enemy being vaulted. 

- Use key (X/Square/whatever Xbox One's is) now has to be held to interact with things like Ziplines and Ramparts. That way, if you wanted to revive a teammate or reload, you won't be stuck in a choppy unwanted animation.

- When in the window of an edge grab animation, you can either climb up the edge as usual or hold the Aim key/button to aim at the people behind you. It's functionally another kind of Wall Latch.

- Parrying a melee assailant will give you a chance to disarm them permanently, leaving them defenseless.

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MELEE

As of now, Melee exists as a number of edged or blunt ways to deal with enemies up close and personal. What this basically translates to is pressing E over and over again in different ways. 

Movement 2.5 will allow players to interact with their environment in ways that will amplify damage, engage different playstyles, and look fashionable as well.

Leveled Charge Attacks

 Charge Attacks, while being a fun way of only slightly increasing damage output, are not exactly used in the current melee meta. Movement 2.5 will allow you to charge different levels of Charge Attacks, each with different effects.

- When charging, each level of charge will be defined by the Warframe flashing their energy color, reminiscent of something like Focus Attacks from SFIV. 

Level 1 Charge Attacks (start-0.75 seconds) will deal double damage and ragdoll enemies to the ground, leaving them open for finishers.

Level 2 Charge Attacks (0.75-1.5 seconds) will deal triple damage and will make enemies Prone. What that means will be revealed soon.

Level 3 Charge Attacks (1.5 seconds) will deal quadruple damage, Prone an enemy, and have a guaranteed chance of proccing Status based on the weapon's damage types.

Prone Enemies and Interaction

So, remember when I said that Movement 2.5 is all about adding more interaction with your surroundings? A new game mechanic is added to enemies for this purpose.

Making an enemy Prone simply means leaving an enemy open for finishers, but for a longer window of time. A Prone enemy would look like they had been affected by Valkyr's Paralysis, for example.

However, there is a slight difference between making an enemy solely "open for finishers" and making an enemy Prone. Prone enemies are vulnerable to new kinds of finishing moves, called Environmental Finishers. 

Another feature new to Movement 2.5 is that you can cancel any none-"Hold E" stance combo into an instant Charge Attack solely by Holding the melee button. Cancelling from a Stance leaves enemies Prone immediately. From here, depending on your surroundings, you can either face your enemy and press Melee, and do a standard Finisher, or you can face a wall/the ground/the ceiling/an ally to do an Environmental Finisher on the enemy you last Proned. E. Finishers deal 4x that (!!) of a regular finisher's damage.

For example, a level 2 Sword charge attack followed by a Wall EF would look slightly something like this:

There are two things you should know:

1. Charge attacks, Naramon's Executing Dash, and parrying a melee attack while channeling are the only three ways to Prone an enemy.

2. You can only Prone one enemy at a time, which makes this mechanic ideal for single-target takedowns.

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CONCEAL MODE

Blah blah, interaction, blah blah, surroundings.

Conceal Mode will allow your Warframe to use their surroundings for cover, in order to help them get an advantage in ranged combat. Y'know that thing where Grineer and Corpus hide behind boxes and ledges and stuff. ...Yeah.

Walls/Doorways

In order to enter Conceal Mode, hold the Use Key when facing a wall / near a corner or doorway. You can hold the Use Key again to quickly get out.

While in this mode, you can Aim and Fire your weapon. One-handed abilities can also be used. Operators can utilize Conceal Mode with their Amps as well.

Ledges/Crates/Void Death Orbs

Concealing yourself on a ledge or crate allows for more useful maneuvers. For crates and Death Orbs, rolling while concealing will allow the player to switch which side they're concealing against.

Jumping while concealed will allow you to vault over the crate. This can be used for ambushes against unsuspecting enemies.

Be cautious, however, as concealing behind Death Orbs that are prone to explode will damage your Warframe.

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That about sums it up. If you have anything you would like to add or feedback you would like to leave, please speak up! Thanks for reading!

- LBK

 

[AperoBeltaTwo]

 You put so much effort in this post that I feel a complete d*ck criticizing it. But the main problem of "interacting with the surroundings" is that there isn't much of a "surroundings" to interact with. Warframe levels (PoE included) aren't designed with interactivity in mind, and Warframe gameplay and movement system don't encourage the kind of action kit you're proposing.

Edited December 28, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[(PSN)LeBlingKing]

2 minutes ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

 You put so much effort in this post that I feel a complete d*ck criticizing it. But the main problem of "interacting with the surroundings" is that there isn't much of a "surroundings" to interact with. Warframe levels (PoE included) aren't designed with interactivity in mind and Warframe gameplay and movement system don't encourage the kind of action kit you're proposing.

That's understandable. With current tilesets, interactivity isn't exactly... promoted. However, for people who would like to interact with the environment, whether or not it may be optimal, I feel that it could be made possible with a few right-sized tweaks to the current tilesets. Too small and they'll go unnoticed, too big and people will be disoriented.

[Repliscint]

Or how about DE gives another way to take down the bosses. With stealth and the mechanics you just described.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

32 minutes ago, (PS4)LeBlingKing69 said:

That's understandable. With current tilesets, interactivity isn't exactly... promoted. However, for people who would like to interact with the environment, whether or not it may be optimal, I feel that it could be made possible with a few right-sized tweaks to the current tilesets. Too small and they'll go unnoticed, too big and people will be disoriented.

That's the point, your proposition isn't enough to justify reworking every tileset in the game... and I instantly hate myself for saying that. 

I 100% agree that current melee is, to put it lightly, a bit BLAND. Which makes the emphasis DE made on melee weapons in the past year and a half since Acolytes even more criminal? gameplay degrading. But your concept doesn't really fit into the realities of the current game build, as I understand it (it's just my opinion). It would require multiple undesignated changes made into the game to implement. It would be great if infrastructure of interactive environmnet was already in place, but there isn't any. There's a reason why wall latching and wall running isn't often used in regular missions - there aren't an awful lot of walls to latch on to and no much of an incentive to do that in the first place.

 Yes, incentive to use a mechanic is another factor here as well. With how powerful melee weapons are right now, a mild finisher bonus wouldn't justify 0.75-1.5 second charge time on charge attacks. It's almost 2 second of standing in one place doing nothing and waiting for the charge time to kill one enemy, when 10 enemies could be killed within the same duration with just a passing swipe from almost any melee weapon in the game. And we don't meet enemies of a level high enough to require a damage boost wrom current melee weapons. 

17 minutes ago, skater551 said:

Or how about DE gives another way to take down the bosses. With stealth and the mechanics you just described.

Bosses would have to be redesigned specifically to work with these mechanics.

Edited December 28, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[steelblueskies]

well done writeup of your idea. nice job on the animations too ;). 

 

again feelsbad but well..

can't get behind cover system for several reasons, ranging from that we CAN NOT CHANGE RIGHT/LEFT HANDEDNESS yet, up though the looks good but breaks design it entails.

ex: hitscan designs can already fire "through" walls/from cover but projectile flight time weapons can not. its a small bit of balance and character and is only the first consideration affecting virtually everything you'd hit after right/left handedness. you also need a trigger point at every possible location for use, a new animation and blend state transitional animations for every frame in the game, and possibly spoiler mode too. considerations for sentinels and or pets- animations? behaviour changes on state? its just a nightmare death spiral of complications to really consider from nearly every conceivable side.

it could look interesting, but that really is all it winds up having going for it.

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the prone finisher section makes no real practical sense for most of the game. horde game, might be amusing but then so are other existing things that just don't fly because hordes versus time or execution cost.

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as to the first section.

going to be neutral on them, mostly you just propose extra(free ammo, free extra duration wall latch, etc).

HOWEVER the idea of wall edge hang animation versus cling or auto climb might be nice and simple enough to be done. i think everyones had a "ffs no don't do the long animation to climb up that why can't i cancel this and drop or at least move" at some point which this might also help with. this is probably the biggest gem in the entire list, as its supremely easy to visualize, solves a couple things, etc without a massive amount of comparative work. plus virtually everyone could use it at some point, and it goes in the "huh, why isn't that already a thing tier". this also probably entails the least work too as wall hang animations exist already and the climb up triggering already exists too. so it'd ust e mainly a control dynamics change which is *relatively* trivial.

 

the hold x to zipline however makes no sense. we have to hold x to revive a teammate for the duration of the revive in some platforms as default . so now holding will actively launch us onto a zipline for sure because its the exact same as the revive? i'm chalking this one up to the platform controls shoehorning needed for xbox and ps controllers due to a lack of unique buttons and possible combinations conflicting in user experience with other platforms( hey i have a few hundred possible binding keys to say nothing of combinations? i can just bind zipline reload and revive to different buttons? oh.) gonna let ps/xbox people consider this one as thats where it might be of use to look at it.

 

conceal mode? oh you mean the enemies have reduced detection range crouching state. yeah thats really how it is. again it might look interesting to add these, but frankly we have deus ex boss problems as is in design. can stealth or nuke or whatever your way though many things, but hit an exterm and can't just blow the ship to wipe em out. hit an assassination target and can't say.. lock sargas ruk in his room and vent it into space from stealth instead of try to gun him down.

which filters down to the singular real approach in the end. nuke it from orbit play. stealth gets the short stick in spite of how much its present in design. doing more with stealth? well. one can dream. or.. well theres spoiler mode stealth now permanently there which is hard stealth not soft like you suggest. and theres other hard stealth systems too. so yeah the likelihood of much more work for duplication of practical effect purely for pre war within play or visuals? i can't even stretch that in my dreaming as a reasonable expectation anymore.