Melee: Present and Future goals!

[Swordsman]

I will be waiting with bated breath for more info from DE on this.  Hoping it does not end up harming melee effectiveness as it's my favorite part of the game. 

[vaarnaaarne]

There are some drawbacks to the combo counter as it is presently, namely that due to current mods and specifically Blood Rush the standout build in melee at the moment is using combo counter for a crit build. In a way, this is kind of a shame since it reduces build diversity when Blood Rush builds are clearly better a lot of the time. But it does point that the compensation to losing combo counter needs to be scaled appropriately, because the importance of even 2X much less 4X with Blood Rush can be enormous for melee DPS (especially because melee cannot reliably headshot and always needs to close distance). Additional note there too is that Blood Rush is a mod with unwarranted exclusivity to it (same as Maiming Strike really, but Maiming Strike is irredeemable well before that consideration), something that I think is not healthy for encouraging people to use melee as their main weapon or melee gameplay in general.

 

Another thing that's kind of overlooked but could be a notable improvement is doing away with the current air attacks for melee. Simply put, they're useless for everything except adding a tiny bit of distance to a jump and even there it's kind of superfluous. Often the only reason you get air attacks at all is because of momentum and downward terrain causing you to make one accidentally. It'd be better to instead add multiple hit air combo to each stance, so you can at least properly aim at and kill those Hellions when they're midflight.

[DiabolusUrsus]

1 hour ago, vaarnaaarne said:

There are some drawbacks to the combo counter as it is presently, namely that due to current mods and specifically Blood Rush the standout build in melee at the moment is using combo counter for a crit build. In a way, this is kind of a shame since it reduces build diversity when Blood Rush builds are clearly better a lot of the time.

Weeping Wounds is a thing, though. It comes down to base stats and if a weapon is better tuned for crit or status.

1 hour ago, vaarnaaarne said:

But it does point that the compensation to losing combo counter needs to be scaled appropriately, because the importance of even 2X much less 4X with Blood Rush can be enormous for melee DPS (especially because melee cannot reliably headshot and always needs to close distance).

Except the meter is also going to build faster, meaning that 4x should be a little less crazy to reach. This is a good thing, because needing to reach such high hit counts means switching between guns/melee is needlessly punishing.

Currently players must commit to melee for it to be effective, which I (as a player who prefers melee) see as a bad thing. Dynamic use of our entire loadout should be encouraged.

1 hour ago, vaarnaaarne said:

Additional note there too is that Blood Rush is a mod with unwarranted exclusivity to it (same as Maiming Strike really, but Maiming Strike is irredeemable well before that consideration), something that I think is not healthy for encouraging people to use melee as their main weapon or melee gameplay in general.

Blood Rush is easily available with a generous drop chance from Lua Spy. Of course, it should be better documented as such a critical mod... But it's not actually Acolyte-exclusive.

1 hour ago, vaarnaaarne said:

Another thing that's kind of overlooked but could be a notable improvement is doing away with the current air attacks for melee. Simply put, they're useless for everything except adding a tiny bit of distance to a jump and even there it's kind of superfluous. Often the only reason you get air attacks at all is because of momentum and downward terrain causing you to make one accidentally.

I disagree. I regularly use air attacks to kill Ospreys and Hellions, and they're alot more reliable than trying to time specific high-hitbox combos from the ground on most stances.

1 hour ago, vaarnaaarne said:

It'd be better to instead add multiple hit air combo to each stance, so you can at least properly aim at and kill those Hellions when they're midflight.

+1.

I dislike the air combos they showed in the streams because they look like they almost completely kill momentum. I think it would be much better for air combos to not ADD to momentum and allow multiple consecutive swings.

[Gnohme]

Uh oh. Killing momentum? I don't like the sound of that. I guess I haven't looked at the air combos yet.

[helioth137]

15 minutes ago, Gnohme said:

Uh oh. Killing momentum? I don't like the sound of that. I guess I haven't looked at the air combos yet.

I don't know what he's talking about, but i probably missed the actual "air" combos, I did however see the new "air-to-ground" slam attack and it looks more like it preserves momentum; It doesn't look you into a "crouched" position afterwards

 

[Gnohme]

6 minutes ago, helioth137 said:

I don't know what he's talking about, but i probably missed the actual "air" combos, I did however see the new "air-to-ground" slam attack and it looks more like it preserves momentum; It doesn't look you into a "crouched" position afterwards

 

Yeah the aimed slam does look badass. I need to watch more of the melee 3.0 videos from their streams so I can get a better idea how it's all coming together. 

[csaszar]

Reaching 4x combo counter isnt hard at all.

Either you use fast dual weapons or remain in a mission long enough.

Its needed only when effort is needed. For the star chart no effort is needed. Even the sortie missions are easy to do. The arbitrations are not hard but tedious needing only mediocre effort. At the time you would be challenged your party already left or dead anyway. The true challenge are the real endless missions - and thoose wont be melee doable with 3.0.

See thats the problem. Melee 3.0 is designed for mediocricy and designed for the star chart lvl of difficulty where no effort needed at all.

But even there it would fail miserably outside of solo playing because after the cinematic killing of 1 enemy the team already cleared the whole map. Consider this.

The current combos are not only very very effective but visually stunning and a joy to play. Tempo Royale is one of the most enjoyable and best looking way to play. Why to take it away? Strengthen the bad combos revise them, make them easyer to start but for god sake dont throw one of your best system out of the window.

I am aware you (DE) dont want us to actually do long runs and endless missions but getting no reward for doing them is a punishment enugh already you dont need to point it out wrecking the entire melee system too.

[helioth137]

4 hours ago, Csaszar said:

Reaching 4x combo counter isnt hard at all.

Either you use fast dual weapons or remain in a mission long enough.

Its needed only when effort is needed. For the star chart no effort is needed. Even the sortie missions are easy to do. The arbitrations are not hard but tedious needing only mediocre effort. At the time you would be challenged your party already left or dead anyway. The true challenge are the real endless missions - and thoose wont be melee doable with 3.0.

See thats the problem. Melee 3.0 is designed for mediocricy and designed for the star chart lvl of difficulty where no effort needed at all.

But even there it would fail miserably outside of solo playing because after the cinematic killing of 1 enemy the team already cleared the whole map. Consider this.

The current combos are not only very very effective but visually stunning and a joy to play. Tempo Royale is one of the most enjoyable and best looking way to play. Why to take it away? Strengthen the bad combos revise them, make them easyer to start but for god sake dont throw one of your best system out of the window.

I am aware you (DE) dont want us to actually do long runs and endless missions but getting no reward for doing them is a punishment enugh already you dont need to point it out wrecking the entire melee system too.

I can understand the points and worries you are bringing up

But it sounds like you have very, very little trust in the developers?

Did you forget that they are the same one's who designed the system as it is?

I'm sure an alternative to combo counter will come along, which will be better.

unless I'm missing something, I don't think they are removing stances???

Tempo Royal is also my favourite, so, good taste sir, good taste 😉

As for no rewards in infinite missions, i really disagree, 

Ranging from boosters to drops, you are rewarded

[csaszar]

 

 

2 hours ago, helioth137 said:

Tempo Royal is also my favourite, so, good taste sir, good taste 😉

As for no rewards in infinite missions, i really disagree, 

Ranging from boosters to drops, you are rewarded

Edited 2 hours ago by helioth137

Only a select mission types give bonus mainly its not rewarded at all or not enough.

The problem isnt that i am greedy 🙂 but the players doesnt have a real incentive to remain in a mission. 10-20 mins are the standard max sadly. In sanctuary onslaught its either at the 4th or the 5th round because the difficulty and the gains are not balanced - at least the players feel that way - and act accordingly.

As an another example: doing Mot 20 min then starting again gives you the exact same chance to get that Axi relic you are after than staying there 60 min. That is what the real problem is. No incentive to stay in a mission longer than absolute neccessary. The boosters that came in the 2 mission types are so meager no one considers them really.

And sadly as far as we could know the special weapon stances like Tempo Royal will be replaced 😞 

[vaarnaaarne]

21 hours ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Weeping Wounds is a thing, though. It comes down to base stats and if a weapon is better tuned for crit or status.

Except the meter is also going to build faster, meaning that 4x should be a little less crazy to reach. This is a good thing, because needing to reach such high hit counts means switching between guns/melee is needlessly punishing.

Currently players must commit to melee for it to be effective, which I (as a player who prefers melee) see as a bad thing. Dynamic use of our entire loadout should be encouraged.

Blood Rush is easily available with a generous drop chance from Lua Spy. Of course, it should be better documented as such a critical mod... But it's not actually Acolyte-exclusive.

I disagree. I regularly use air attacks to kill Ospreys and Hellions, and they're alot more reliable than trying to time specific high-hitbox combos from the ground on most stances.

+1.

I dislike the air combos they showed in the streams because they look like they almost completely kill momentum. I think it would be much better for air combos to not ADD to momentum and allow multiple consecutive swings.

Yea my bad on the exclusivity thing. I... I'm not sure how long it has been since I even did a Lua Spy. It's gotta be at least over a year. Like, damn.

Still, the interaction with the multiplier scaling mods is something I think melee 3.0 needs clarification on beforehand. Albeit, personally I figure they're honesty only a tiny bit less ridiculous than Maiming Strike, so maybe some other consideration should be done. But it's kinda like Multi-Shot, you can't really mess with it too much because of how things interact.

Anyway I totally agree, an air combo would really need to have no momentum of its own either for more or less (outside of maybe some sort of desired input, like say RMB air combo or something) and really just be something akin to the spinning lightsaber attack from SNES Star Wars games. That's the implementation style the air combo would really possess the most use, a repeating attack that moves like you otherwise would. Kind of similar situation with present wall-cling/run, the current single swipe is extremely clumsy and mostly something that just gets in your way by accident.

 

PS: Personally I just use a gun, make rude gestures at it, or pretend I don't notice it to hurt the feelings of a flying Hellion.

[Hyohakusha]

I've been saying all this since the initial reveal, and I'll keep saying it.

Removing combo meter on normal attacks/ buffing base damage will make low level tissue paper enemies become even less satisfying to kill, and high level enemies dgaf about base damage without proper elements and status.

Burning your combo for one strike is inefficient. Spin attacks with Maiming Strike, Organ Shatter, Primed Reach, Primed Pressure and 4x elements will become the new meta, changing nothing. There is not one thing said in any post or stream from DE about nerfing Maiming, even though that's their "reasoning" for doing this in the first place.

Making hold forward a universal combo input is a terrible idea, as you will only end up getting stuck doing the same combo over and over again, as we saw in the streams with Reb showcasing them. Animation steps that hold you in place only make this even worse, as you swing at the air, hit nothing even though you're holding forward because you need to close distance ALWAYS with melee. "Closer" attacks are only going to make this even more annoying, as you'll only have one overly complication option, instead of simply being able to MOVE TOWARDS THE PERSON YOU'RE TRYING TO CUT.

Removing quick melee for this ^ is also not a good idea. Polearms are popular because their quickmelee is better than any polearm stance, simply because it doesn't restrict your movement. Shimmering Blight is a perfect example. The first two swings are a direct copy of the quickmelee, the third swing locks you in place to be shot.

People complain about Maiming Strike because of +range +combo duration RIVENS. NOT MAIMING STRIKE ITSELF. If Scoliac rivens got a disposition nerf months ago, no one would have cared anymore. They are the #1 weapon that's abused in this way, which is why those rivens were going for thousands of platinum.

Simply fixing the math behind the interaction of Blood Rush and Maiming in addition to rebalancing rivens would have fixed this, easily. Buffing weaker weapons like Fang Prime could have been done the same way as the Secondary and Primary passes, with no need to butcher base mechanics of the game.

Adding another energy sink with this "devil trigger" mode won't help. New players already don't even have proper access to their abilities until they get Rage/ Adrenaline, Energy Pizzas or spend an inordinate amount of time grinding focus.

But hey, "rebalancing" melee will sell forma bundles and drive up interest in rivens, just like releasing primed versions of 5/5 disposition weapons like Gram Prime.

[RhythmScript]

With implied switching taking away “quick melee” as a concept I honestly think the better approach is to dig harder into “melee combos lock you in place with discrete root motion steps forward” and just make it so every melee weapon has access to the “quick melee endless loop” if they melee while sprinting. Give players the Raiden Ninja Run 1-2 slash combo and be done with it; for clearing hordes of grunts this (combined with high mobility) will make all melee weapons feel “mobile” while freeing the devs up to make the core melee rework closer to actual action game design with stationary combos based on positioning. Instead of this current weird half-and-half mixture where you can sort of run around kinda comboing and sometimes lock in place with odd timing between the hitboxes and lurching forward steps.

Bonus points for giving different attacks a different amount of combo multiplier increase, so that sprint-slaughter can be used to maintain the multiplier but only intentional combos can really effectively build it; if you pair that with a much higher rate of combo meter increase for actual combos (versus dash and slash), you can balance melee around comboing/juggling high priority targets and dashing around one-shotting the scraps at full speed until the next high priority targets spawn.

[(XBOX)Master Tutak]

Saludos

Desde la última actualización para Xbox One llamada 'Quimera', el mod de guardia para armas de asta llamado 'Maldición fulgurante' (Shimmering Blight) ha dejado de funcionar como antes de dicha actualización ... Ahora, al golpear se detiene en seco tras varios golpes (momentum) lo que provoca que no se pueda avanzar luchando y golpeando enemigos, o sea, que ya no se puede avanzar libremente golpeando enemigos como antes, algo que hace que te maten cuando se produce esa detención de movimiento, ya que justo en esos instantes, hasta que se inicia de nuevo el combo, no puedes hacer nada, y los enemigos te matan ...

Vamos a ver, señoras y señores de Digital Extremes, ¿a quién se le ha ocurrido la genial idea de cambiar el mejor mod de guardia de armas de asta del juego? ... ¿A quién se le ha ocurrido la genial idea de provocar que el mod detenga los movimientos (momentum) del warframe en pleno combate? ... 

Llevo casi 700 días en Warframe, y siempre juego en modo melé, a no ser de que por las directrices de la misión, deba usar otro tipo de armas ... Desde la fatídica actualización, no puedo luchar correctamente, ya que al detenerse los movimientos del warframe (momentum) los enemigos me dan caza y muero sin poder remediarlo, porque el warframe se queda absolutamente inmóvil y los enemigos me matan a placer ...

Por favor, Digital Extremes, en nombre de todos los que pensamos que han cometido un grave error al modificar ese mod, rectifiquen y devuélvannos el antiguo mod 'Maldición fulgurante' (Shimmering Blight) ...

El nuevo modo de combate Melee 3.0 que nos quieren obligar a utilizar, simplemente, no funcionará ... El hecho de que modifiquen las armas a melé para que todas, o casi, tengan los mismos combos, mismos movimientos y/o ataques, será un fracaso y no hará que más personas jueguen Warframe ...

Creo que les vendría bien recordar esa máxima que dice: Si algo funciona, ¿para qué cambiarlo? ...

Muchas gracias.

Master Tutak

[AresTheLegendary]

The sentiment that spin-to-win ruined melee already, and that maiming strike and ALL its riven counterparts/buffs be completely removed, or sub out that buff completely for something else. Whichever way it needs to happen, it needs to happen. Start with that. And no adding a substitute for it either that would be counter-productive. IMO just completely remove that buff and any trace of it.

Removing the combo multiplier doesnt seem like a sound idea, that's the one unique system we have that works well. You change/remove that, and there goes the entire way we use melee altogether. You'd be completely gutting one of the best features of Warframe that really isnt broken aside from noob--to-win. A slight addition or change will refresh the melee system, but completely rehauling it  is a bad idea.

[RhythmScript]

Honestly though maiming strike isn’t the reason spin2win predominates, its popularity is a symptom of spin2win’s dominance. It may have helped to cement the slide attack’s value as melee’s best real end-game option due to its extreme abusability, but even without it spin-spam has been a fact of Warframe since coptering.

The real problem is that slide attacks give you 2 things: (1) a big radial AOE hitbox, and (2) the ability to maintain your speed while generating said hitbox. In a game where all but the highest level content being run involves one-shotting enemies by the dozens, that’s always going to be the best choice of attack. Any attack that either interrupts momentum or has a smaller or harder-to-position hitbox will be sub-optimal if hitbox overlap = instant enemy death.

The real challenge is understanding the reality that Warframe is a game about one-shotting or two-shotting enemies as you encounter them and quickly moving on, and developing a satisfying combo-based melee system demands that this not be the case. If everything died in one hit, Bayo/DMC/GoW/whatever else DE is attempting to model their combat after would be an exercise in frustration and tedium.

So really, the only choices are to embrace spin2win as Melee’s Role In Warframe (by leaving melee as a means of oneshotting), nerf melee to a point that it loses its endgame viability (by taking away its ability to oneshot), or completely reimagine melee’s role in Warframe as something other than a means of DPS (by taking away its ability to oneshot ON ITS OWN but making it a useful complement to the oneshot-capable parts of your kit)

Realistically I don’t think anyone will be happy with the decision to do anything but the first option, which means whatever rework DE plans, it will fall into disuse just like Melee 2.0’s combo system did while maxed-Reach slide attacks and/or full sprint E spam continue to be the only worthwhile use of your melee weapon

[AresTheLegendary]

2 hours ago, RhythmScript said:

Honestly though maiming strike isn’t the reason spin2win predominates, its popularity is a symptom of spin2win’s dominance. It may have helped to cement the slide attack’s value as melee’s best real end-game option due to its extreme abusability, but even without it spin-spam has been a fact of Warframe since coptering.

The real problem is that slide attacks give you 2 things: (1) a big radial AOE hitbox, and (2) the ability to maintain your speed while generating said hitbox. In a game where all but the highest level content being run involves one-shotting enemies by the dozens, that’s always going to be the best choice of attack. Any attack that either interrupts momentum or has a smaller or harder-to-position hitbox will be sub-optimal if hitbox overlap = instant enemy death.

The real challenge is understanding the reality that Warframe is a game about one-shotting or two-shotting enemies as you encounter them and quickly moving on, and developing a satisfying combo-based melee system demands that this not be the case. If everything died in one hit, Bayo/DMC/GoW/whatever else DE is attempting to model their combat after would be an exercise in frustration and tedium.

So really, the only choices are to embrace spin2win as Melee’s Role In Warframe (by leaving melee as a means of oneshotting), nerf melee to a point that it loses its endgame viability (by taking away its ability to oneshot), or completely reimagine melee’s role in Warframe as something other than a means of DPS (by taking away its ability to oneshot ON ITS OWN but making it a useful complement to the oneshot-capable parts of your kit)

Realistically I don’t think anyone will be happy with the decision to do anything but the first option, which means whatever rework DE plans, it will fall into disuse just like Melee 2.0’s combo system did while maxed-Reach slide attacks and/or full sprint E spam continue to be the only worthwhile use of your melee weapon

This is just flat out wrong and a bad POV without understanding the underlying issue: balance. Nothing in the game scales like the enemy armor does, or like enemy damage does. The reason people use spin to win is because they find it difficult to deal with said mobs by any other means. And while most of the time it's against enemies that just require a little skill, at the extreme side of this, spin-to-win would definitely be the endgame as it's the only thing reliable enough to keep pace at extreme levels where one-shotting OTHER than S2W is impossible. Which is the problem: we have (or rather, dont have) end game where the best option for survival is a broken mechanic that takes zero skill or effort. The fact that S2W exists is a glaring beacon on the fact that we need proper endgame, and proper balancing of armor and damage scaling.

 

Maybe DE should look into the fact that melee is the only thing that scales it's damage (combo multiplier). Without it, even S2W would have it's damage capped to mods. Perhaps, as a suggestion, maybe DE should look into other forms of damage scaling in a similar way. But no, we need to get rid of S2W completely. People need to learn how to play properly. At the same time, that kinda also needs to be possible.

[DiabolusUrsus]

7 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

Maybe DE should look into the fact that melee is the only thing that scales it's damage (combo multiplier). Without it, even S2W would have it's damage capped to mods. Perhaps, as a suggestion, maybe DE should look into other forms of damage scaling in a similar way. 

No.

DE should step back and examine why they would want damage to scale in the first place.

Enemy scaling was never supposed to be at the forefront of gameplay to begin with, and the whole point of enemy scaling is to let enemies out-scale players and force them out of endless missions.

Players should not scale at all (beyond simply leveling up/equipping mods). DE needs to sit down and define a concrete "maximum" balanced level and balance player arsenals so that they are reasonably equipped to beat that maximum level. Then they should make it so that above maximum level, players start to lose effectiveness. Trying to make damage scale like CC was a mistake; DE should have simply stopped CC from scaling infinitely.

The fact that players need any scaling at all to keep up with existing content is a sign that balance is broken.

[AresTheLegendary]

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

No.

DE should step back and examine why they would want damage to scale in the first place.

Enemy scaling was never supposed to be at the forefront of gameplay to begin with, and the whole point of enemy scaling is to let enemies out-scale players and force them out of endless missions.

Players should not scale at all (beyond simply leveling up/equipping mods). DE needs to sit down and define a concrete "maximum" balanced level and balance player arsenals so that they are reasonably equipped to beat that maximum level. Then they should make it so that above maximum level, players start to lose effectiveness. Trying to make damage scale like CC was a mistake; DE should have simply stopped CC from scaling infinitely.

The fact that players need any scaling at all to keep up with existing content is a sign that balance is broken.

The problem with this is, players dont level. Mods are the only way to reach peak performance, not even so much the weapon, as the mods in it. DMG scaling is the ONLY  reason why melee is as powerful as it is. But to a point you're right, they have to take one angle or the other: remove the need for dmg scaling, or have all wpns scale similar to melee. Also, that a players peak damage be confirmed and established.

But adding/increasing the ability to scale your wpns, rather than overhauling the ENTIRE damage and armor system is a far more prudent idea. Removing CC is foolish, that's their golden unique system. And it's not easy to reach and maintain a high combo counter WITHOUT S2W. It's a good system, S2W just broke it. Then, however they decide to do that, it needs to be DIFFICULT to obtain that power, and NO ONE should be able to trade or buy into it. I hate the fact anyone can spend their money on plat n just BUY S2W without ever needing to learn how to play at high levels. They just buy into it.

 

So yeah, essentially, until a balance point has been established with mobs vs players, changing Melee at ALL before then is incredibly ill-advised. A side must be chosen first: make players stronger, or make mobs weaker. and making mobs weaker will gut the "endless" factor.

 

 

[FreeWilliam]

4 hours ago, RhythmScript said:

So really, the only choices are to embrace spin2win as Melee’s Role In Warframe (by leaving melee as a means of oneshotting),

They could also put a cooldown timer on maiming strike while still keeping the 'horde shooter/smasher' feel

[DiabolusUrsus]

8 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

The problem with this is, players dont level. Mods are the only way to reach peak performance, not even so much the weapon, as the mods in it. DMG scaling is the ONLY  reason why melee is as powerful as it is. But to a point you're right, they have to take one angle or the other: remove the need for dmg scaling, or have all wpns scale similar to melee. Also, that a players peak damage be confirmed and established.

That's the point, though. Players shouldn't scale, or else scaling enemies is redundant. Endless missions are supposed to out-scale players and make continuing impossible. Player scaling allows them to continue indefinitely until they get bored.

8 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

But adding/increasing the ability to scale your wpns, rather than overhauling the ENTIRE damage and armor system is a far more prudent idea.

No it isn't. There's no need to overhaul damage and armor. Most types of damage already don't scale, so only a few types need nerfs to prevent scaling. All DE needs to do with armor is to remove its quantity scaling for enemies and rely solely on health scaling.

8 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

Removing CC is foolish, that's their golden unique system.

Did I say remove CC? No. CC should still function normally up to the MAXIMUM enemy level.

Let's use L150 as an example. Up to 150, everything works normally.

From L151 onward, enemies start gaining scaling resistance to CC (reduced magnitude/duration) to stop it from scaling infinitely.

8 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

And it's not easy to reach and maintain a high combo counter WITHOUT S2W.

Yes it is. I never use spin 2 win; melee combo is only a function of mission duration.

8 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

It's a good system, S2W just broke it.

I disagree. The combo meter in its current iteration requires over-commitment to melee, to the point that it excludes using guns. Players should be able to switch weapons without penalty.

8 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

Then, however they decide to do that, it needs to be DIFFICULT to obtain that power, and NO ONE should be able to trade or buy into it. I hate the fact anyone can spend their money on plat n just BUY S2W without ever needing to learn how to play at high levels. They just buy into it.

This won't change as long as mods are power-ups and CC locking is possible.

8 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

So yeah, essentially, until a balance point has been established with mobs vs players, changing Melee at ALL before then is incredibly ill-advised. A side must be chosen first: make players stronger, or make mobs weaker. and making mobs weaker will gut the "endless" factor.

There is no endless factor to gut. The game is just as simple at level 3000 as it is at 300. High levels are meaningless until players can no longer cheese them.

Doing endurance runs is only a matter of attention span and tolerance for repeating the same optimal routines over and over and over. By stopping player scaling, reaching higher levels would actually mean something.

[AresTheLegendary]

46 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

That's the point, though. Players shouldn't scale, or else scaling enemies is redundant. Endless missions are supposed to out-scale players and make continuing impossible. Player scaling allows them to continue indefinitely until they get bored.

In the current system, players need to scale, or players wouldnt be flocking to S2W as the ONLY damage-scaling means of dealing with high level mobs. You're wrong.

46 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

No it isn't. There's no need to overhaul damage and armor. Most types of damage already don't scale, so only a few types need nerfs to prevent scaling. All DE needs to do with armor is to remove its quantity scaling for enemies and rely solely on health scaling.

There are only 2 options here: 1) Remove broken ability, understand reason for needing broken ability, polish system and expand on broken abilities niche, or 2) Understand that the entire way the game is made, is why the need for the broken ability is necessary, and completely overhaul the game and rebalance the relationship with damage and armor so it's no longer necessary. That's it. 2 options. Increase health is a band-aid on the situation, simply making them damage sponges and not solving the problem whatsoever.

46 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Did I say remove CC? No. CC should still function normally up to the MAXIMUM enemy level.

Let's use L150 as an example. Up to 150, everything works normally.

From L151 onward, enemies start gaining scaling resistance to CC (reduced magnitude/duration) to stop it from scaling infinitely.

Some people called for the removal of CC. Not all my posts and it's content is directed to you. However, this may be a reasonable/possible fix, if all weapons/skills get the same or similar function as CC. Melee cant be the only means to deal with high-level mobs. We cant be having classes completely useless at high levels (Ember IMMEDIATELY comes to mind)

 

46 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Yes it is. I never use spin 2 win; melee combo is only a function of mission duration.

Yes. It's called endless. The "end-game" we've been discussing this entire time. The only time where an infinite CC could be meaningful and worth discussion. S2w is completely unnecessary in any other part of the game and is ONLY necessary once skills and wpns damage falls off. That's why they took a nerf canon to T boltace.

46 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I disagree. The combo meter in its current iteration requires over-commitment to melee, to the point that it excludes using guns. Players should be able to switch weapons without penalty.

You are incredibly correct here, but................................you know......that's not a horrible idea.....allow melee CC to apply to wpns and skills (maybe a fixed percentage of the buff after looking at balance?)as long as its up and running. the penalty then would be constantly switching to keep the buff going, and that in itself would take a fair amount of attention and timing worthy of high-level reward. That's a GREAT idea actually. The removal of maim strike and its variants, coupled with this, i think would solve a MYRIAD of problems. You could then safely increase the difficulty of lower level mobs to match the new abilities of players (were it necessary). Quick melee could/would be a thing to put major consideration in. it would give dual wielding a new use. Obviously im coming up with all this as im typing, but honestly i think with some tweaking, that could turn out amazingly for all of us. We'd all be able to enjoy high level content, we'd have tons of fun using ALL abilities and weapons at our disposal, more builds would pop up. More mods for DE to create to make it happen, a whole new level of synergy for "masters of the gun and blade". Maybe at that point, removing S2W wouldnt even be necessary.

 

But again I'll say, it's a great point that you mentioned the over-commitment to melee as a source of advanced power. That in itself may be the second-most underlying cause of the entire balancing problem: Versatility. Even right out of the gate, melee is ur best option, only to hit end game and you end up going right back to it. Mid game is the only fun there is to have, n iits not much fun cuz we completely destroy everything mid game, but thats the only point in the game we can effectively use ALL our wpns and skills together, we just dont.

[RhythmScript]

3 hours ago, AresTheLegendary said:

The reason people use spin to win is because they find it difficult to deal with said mobs by any other means. And while most of the time it's against enemies that just require a little skill, at the extreme side of this, spin-to-win would definitely be the endgame as it's the only thing reliable enough to keep pace at extreme levels where one-shotting OTHER than S2W is impossible. Which is the problem: we have (or rather, dont have) end game where the best option for survival is a broken mechanic that takes zero skill or effort. The fact that S2W exists is a glaring beacon on the fact that we need proper endgame, and proper balancing of armor and damage scaling.



 Maybe DE should look into the fact that melee is the only thing that scales it's damage (combo multiplier). Without it, even S2W would have it's damage capped to mods. Perhaps, as a suggestion, maybe DE should look into other forms of damage scaling in a similar way. But no, we need to get rid of S2W completely. People need to learn how to play properly. At the same time, that kinda also needs to be possible.

I'll follow up here with 2 thoughts.

1) If it's true that S2W's dominance is entirely because it represents "Peak Brokeness", fixing it won't change anything because, to your point, the real problem is scaling. Suppose, momentarily, that Maiming Strike is removed or fixed or whatever and ridiculous crit abuse with slide attacks specifically becomes impossible. Until and unless the level infinity+ enemies start spawning, 90% of what you're going to kill is going to die in one hit. If it doesn't, then you'll never survive to the point that "Peak Brokenness" was necessary, because that's how the scaling works. That means that for a melee player, your playstyle will still revolve around S2W 90% of the time you spend in any mission; it just won't be your primary means of dealing with the ultra-high-level content that may appear toward the very end of the very hardest of those missions. In other words, melee will be your choice (via the big dumb AoE hitbox) as long as it can one-shot and/or two-shot, and once it stops being able to do that, you'll just stop using it. It will never reach a point where you, as a player, say "okay, the big dumb slide attack AoE is no longer the correct approach for melee, I'll switch to combos". Because there's too much wrong with combos in a game where your gun, or your 4, or whatever, is still going to two-shot the enemies that would require dozens and dozens of melee strikes.

2) If the problem is that melee scaling is inconsistent with the rest of the game's scaling, that might represent a fix all on its own: using melee as a MEANS to scaling.

Say, for instance, that you make the combo counter begin to DECAY after a period of not melee striking, rather than instantly resetting. That would mean that maintaining the combo counter without constantly meleeing would be viable. Now suppose, in addition, that the melee combo counter multiplier applied to ALL of the damage your frame put out; abilities, primary, secondary, and melee. Now, suddenly, melee isn't trying to figure out how to compete in endgame-scaled content, it is the KEY to endgame scaled content, because maintaining your melee multiplier lets you double, triple, etc., your total damage output with whatever you use as your primary means of offense.

Stack on top of this the channeling mods rework to allow the multiplier to be "channeled" into other attributes; 50% channeling of melee to Primary Critical Chance would mean at a 4x multiplier, you do 4x the damage with 2x the critical chance. Something like that. You can balance melee combat in that case in the way you would in a more traditional action game, where it's not necessary (or even desirable) for your melee to one-shot everything, because even in a 4-person death-spray fray you can isolate enemies one at a time and juggle them, using that to build the multiplier that will scale all of your raw damage output. If you spend too much time "spending" that multiplier using your guns or abilities, you will have to switch back to melee to refresh or maintain the multiplier.

Something in that neighborhood would encourage the use of melee interwoven with guns and abilities, and make it at least OKAY for DE to balance melee around something other than the current maximized-DPS oneshot meta, since its real function wouldn't be the dealing of damage, but the buildup of damage potential.

I'm not saying that's the correct solution but even outside the specific context of Warframe's existing meta, there's a real disconnect between what makes for fun and satisfying shooter combat (where many things die in a few hits) and fun and satisfying melee-action combat (where few things die in more than a few combo strings while playing defensively), and if you don't find some way to distinguish the two in terms of function, you'll either have bullet-sponge feather-touch gunplay that nobody will enjoy, or one-shot E spam melee where finishing a combo is so pointless you just recycle the fastest single-strike attack available (in this case, probably your spin).

EDIT: Read your last post and see you stumbled upon the same idea; as a player who enjoys Warframe solo, I can say that it would be really refreshing to be able to directly translate skill into DPS, instead of hitting gear/mod brick walls where no amount of evasiveness, accuracy, or general play level will do anything to stop an enemy from rebuilding its shield or just facetanking you until you are out of ammo and energy. Modding and weapon choice as a way of getting "scaled faster" rather than being a sheer cliff beyond which it is literally impossible to kill high-level targets (enjoy running Tyl Regor solo with the gear you've naturally acquired by that point to see what I mean). Not only because it improves the new player experience, but also because it provides a not-Riven-based means for making otherwise-suboptimal weapon choices or builds viable. Which, in turn, would promote more build diversity.

It might create some serious social friction in pub groups when people are trying to build or maintain their mult while someone else is just 4-clearing whole rooms, though.

[DiabolusUrsus]

53 minutes ago, AresTheLegendary said:

In the current system, players need to scale, or players wouldnt be flocking to S2W as the ONLY damage-scaling means of dealing with high level mobs. You're wrong.

Nope. Spin 2 Win is entirely a function of player laziness seeking maximum reward for minimum effort.

Do you think high-level content was impossible before Maiming Strike was added? Maiming Strike (or an equivalent Riven) is not required to deal reasonable damage to high-level mods. It only accelerates the scaling provided by Blood Rush because it calculates before the Blood Rush bonus.

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There are only 2 options here: 1) Remove broken ability,

Which abilities?

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understand reason for needing broken ability,

Why are they needed?

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polish system and expand on broken abilities niche,

What niche?

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or 2) Understand that the entire way the game is made, is why the need for the broken ability is necessary, and completely overhaul the game and rebalance the relationship with damage and armor so it's no longer necessary. That's it. 2 options.

Nonsense. Scaling powers are only needed at excessively high levels like 150+.

Except you have to remember that 150+ was never supposed to be fair or balanced in the first place. Thus, scaling powers aren't needed at all.

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Increase health is a band-aid on the situation, simply making them damage sponges and not solving the problem whatsoever.

... But enemy health already increases. That's part of enemy scaling. The only thing I suggested is stopping armor scaling (making armor the same regardless of level) to offer a fixed damage reduction and prevent armored enemies from getting exponential effective health bonuses.

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Some people called for the removal of CC. Not all my posts and it's content is directed to you.

Okay, so then quote them when you say that. Otherwise it seems like you're talking to me.

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However, this may be a reasonable/possible fix, if all weapons/skills get the same or similar function as CC. Melee cant be the only means to deal with high-level mobs.

Melee already isn't the only means of dealing with high-level mobs. There are multiple videos available of endurance runs where players are using guns and not melee.

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We cant be having classes completely useless at high levels (Ember IMMEDIATELY comes to mind)

I agree, but only because all Warframes should be equally (approximately) powerful.

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Yes. It's called endless. The "end-game" we've been discussing this entire time. The only time where an infinite CC could be meaningful and worth discussion.

Nope.

Endless modes are a player-defined end-game and not officially endorsed by DE. They have said repeatedly that endless modes are not supposed to be balanced.

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S2w is completely unnecessary in any other part of the game and is ONLY necessary once skills and wpns damage falls off.

Spin 2 Win is never necessary. Falloff can be effectively negated through the use of finisher damage and Warframe powers.

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That's why they took a nerf canon to T boltace.

No, they nerfed Telos Boltace because it stopped other players from participating. The wide AOE on a spammable attack was more of a problem than the damage.

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You are incredibly correct here, but................................you know......that's not a horrible idea.....allow melee CC to apply to wpns and skills (maybe a fixed percentage of the buff after looking at balance?)as long as its up and running. the penalty then would be constantly switching to keep the buff going, and that in itself would take a fair amount of attention and timing worthy of high-level reward. That's a GREAT idea actually. The removal of maim strike and its variants, coupled with this, i think would solve a MYRIAD of problems. You could then safely increase the difficulty of lower level mobs to match the new abilities of players (were it necessary). Quick melee could/would be a thing to put major consideration in. it would give dual wielding a new use. Obviously im coming up with all this as im typing, but honestly i think with some tweaking, that could turn out amazingly for all of us. We'd all be able to enjoy high level content, we'd have tons of fun using ALL abilities and weapons at our disposal, more builds would pop up. More mods for DE to create to make it happen, a whole new level of synergy for "masters of the gun and blade". Maybe at that point, removing S2W wouldnt even be necessary.

 

But again I'll say, it's a great point that you mentioned the over-commitment to melee as a source of advanced power. That in itself may be the second-most underlying cause of the entire balancing problem: Versatility. Even right out of the gate, melee is ur best option, only to hit end game and you end up going right back to it. Mid game is the only fun there is to have, n iits not much fun cuz we completely destroy everything mid game, but thats the only point in the game we can effectively use ALL our wpns and skills together, we just dont.

That's fair and potentially workable, but you're still missing the point.

Why are we scaling at all? Enemy scaling is SUPPOSED to eventually beat players. Endless missions are SUPPOSED to eventually become unbeatable.

There should be an official "max" level. Let's use 100 as an example. Up to level 100, players are guaranteed a fair shot at winning. Based on gear and skill, some players can go beyond that. For example, a strong coordinated group might be able to handle up to level 200.

The game is supposed to eventually become impossible for even them. Yet it doesn't. Players can beat enemies all the way up to level 9999+ if they really want to, because scaling powers enable them to cheese. All DE needs to do is take out those scaling powers. Then, suddenly, enemy scaling works like it's supposed to. Getting to level 150+ becomes an actual accomplishment instead of a menial chore that only requires a group of cheesy Frames with cheesy weapons. Then it MEANS something.

There should be no need for guns or melee to scale in the first place. The only reason players want scaling weapons is because scaling Warframe powers allow them to beat over-scaled enemies that were never intended to be beatable in the first place.

[RhythmScript]

14 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

Endless modes are a player-defined end-game and not officially endorsed by DE. They have said repeatedly that endless modes are not supposed to be balanced.

This makes sense, realistically the rewards stop scaling past a certain point and from there continuation is just about whether or not you feel like bothering.

14 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

All DE needs to do is take out those scaling powers. Then, suddenly, enemy scaling works like it's supposed to. Getting to level 150+ becomes an actual accomplishment instead of a menial chore that only requires a group of cheesy Frames with cheesy weapons. Then it MEANS something.

But then why bother doing that? If the whole point is that surviving past X point is not a part of the game design, why bother trying to balance anything once that point is reached? If the Endless Endgame isn't "endorsed by DE" why bother making gameplay changes that add to the challenge of participating in it? Why not just focus on making engaging content up to level 100 and then not caring about players who get beyond that?

If we're stepping back to that degree on Warframe balance, the real problem isn't the ability of players to survive to level 900 enemies with ease on certain endless missions by exploiting math quirks and building super-focused builds with ridiculous mods, it's the fact that most of what players are actually DOING when they play Warframe is running missions well below that point over and over to collect stuff. The fact that the daily gameplay loop for the average endgame player is "Speedrun Sortie for Riven > Cheese unveil > Speedrun Kuva Flood for Rerolls > Flip Riven for Plat" is the real brokenness. That players can survive for 4 hours in T4 survival instead of only 1 hour isn't what's broken, about anything in Warframe. It's that the builds that scale to that point are also builds that make microwaved paste of any content BALANCED for "challenge".

Melee 3.0, from what they've shown, seems to be more about making melee more engaging when faced with enemies that pose an actual challenge to kill, when the real problem with Warframe is (new players excluded) until you've scaled past the point of ridiculousness on endless missions, nothing is challenging to kill. Fixing Maiming Strike/S2W isn't going to fix that, it's just going to make melee something you don't use in your daily Sortie Speedrun. Yes, it would make melee more enjoyable for players who are either new or intentionally play the game handicapped because they find the challenge more engaging, but when it comes time to load out for whatever constitutes your current endless, mindless grind, nobody is going to pick something that doesn't kill as much as possible as fast as possible while allowing them to get from start to extraction in a minimum amount of time. Fixing the way level 800 enemies scale relative to Warframe powers or melee weapons or anything else won't have an appreciable impact on the daily level 80 slaughterhouse.

I'm not saying there aren't problems with the way enemy scaling is implemented, and I'm not saying the divergence of stat scaling in particular isn't responsible for centralizing the meta around corrosive/crit/slash the way it has, but I feel like we're preoccupied with poor balance in content meant to be impossible while turning a blind eye to equally poor balance in content just meant to be hard. So the real question is, what is DE's concern with "Spin 2 Win"? Is it that it can be abused against ultra-high level content to pass what should be impassable, or that it can be by players in a grind-hurry to melt content meant to sustain long-term interest in the game?

[AresTheLegendary]

Between the 3 of us, I can tell we are after the same goal. Me and Rhythm want to make us more powerful, and yet with a tweak in balance, where as Ursus is of the opinion we turn DOWN our capabilities in an effort to balance, for concern of making us too powerful for endless.

 

Now, where I think we can agree here, is, according to lore, we are SUPPOSED to be that much more powerful than our enemies. If we were to somehow incorporate the scaling of melee CC into the rest of our dps, and perhaps maybe lower the strength of the buff itself as it approaches infinity (omg calculus has just found its usefulness outside of school), we would be able to at least feign the display of more power by using all of our means to deal damage in fluidity, without breaking the mechanics of endless. But as Ursus mentioned earlier, an established peak of player damage output would need to be established first. Then you can apply caps and nerfs as necessary. Or, increase the scaling multiplier of enemies to correspond. In my head, if this were done properly, there would/should be no possible way for S2W to outdmg someone whos using all of their wpns, therefore, we'd be able to keep that mechanic (this is the 'ability' i was referring to), as it is STILL a decent means of survival.

 

Again, as Im typing this, I feel like there would be no other way than to increase the scaling multiplier of enemies, to match the increased dmg capabilities of players in this way. It would be difficult to add CC buff to the rest of player dps without increasing avg player dps at the same time. However, that wuold be an easy fix as well. At the end of all this, we want the difficulty of endless to remain the same, but without over-commitment to melee, but have the REST of our dps, scale WITH it, if for no other reason than fun-factor and diversity.