Melee: Present and Future goals!

[Melody_Pond]

Sadly I was MR 24 before I learned why channeling was beneficial. I thought it just made your weapons attacks stronger at the cost of your energy that your warframe would use. why do that when I need that energy. Learning that not only was it more powerful but i could vaporize the enemy leaving no trace. 🤯🤯🤯 Im not sure how some of these changes will benefit the community as a whole. Our play style can be so different so finding something that allows each one of us to be awesome in our own way is big. My friend Loves slide attacks where i don't. So he builds around being able to use slide attacks where i build in ways that will be beneficial to me.  There is just so much about this game that I only know about because of another player. The codex isnt helpful for most of these things and for me isnt desirable to read to learn how to do these things. also as i can not access this in the simulacrum to practice its just another thing that makes it difficult to do.

[LuckyCharm]

How will the heavy attack system work with weapons that have unique effects? Will I for example be able to charge up zenistar's combo counter, throw out the heavy attack to launch the disk and have my disk effected by my high combo counter for the duration? 

How will it work with caustacyst? Will that heavy attack leave a strong corrosive trail if I have it charged up?

Glaive? Will this throw with the heavy strike?

Twin Basolk with their mod? Will it be instant cast now like valkyrs hysterical assault or will it still be wonky with a long cast time that may or may not miss enemies?

Gunblades? Is the heavy strike shot going to be faster now we can have a seperate button for it?

Jat Kittag? Will it still have it's cool spinny rocket hammer animation on heavy attack?

Can think of a lot of interesting things to try with these. 

 

And can we spam heavy attacks without the combo counter levels? 

[Elanair]

So far you only have three methods of actually going about efficiently when using melee:

- mash quick melee as fast as you can with a polearm

- repeat doing the same easy-to-do combo (usually done by holding block) over and over again while forgetting the others exist because they are either too hard to to or inefficient

- spin to win like Galen in LoL, nuff said

Is that fun? I honestly doubt it. Is it efficient and powerful? Yes! Is being efficient and feeling extremely powerful fun? Yes, for a while and then you focus on your goal more and less on the melee. Sadly, despite how boring it is people will defend this boring melee to the end, why? Because the ends justify the means, because people fear loosing their powerful and efficient farming 100k focus tactic or their preferred method of clearing an exterminate level in under 1 minute by spinning around like a blender. I've been there, power is intoxicating but you end up really bored after a while, well that is IF you actually care about melee, if you don't? You only see it as a means to reach whatever goal you're aiming for while mindlessly mashing the melee key without a care. At least until a new better alternative comes into play.

I would like a melee system that is more engaging and fun to actually USE but at the same time efficient and powerful. A system that actually rewards your skill in melee as much as your ability to aim a gun properly while still keeping it fun to watch, while still retaining the cool factor of playing a space ninja and adding the weight to your blows so that you feel the impact of your weapon on those poor bastards.

Looking back at the list of changes I admit that some changes seem a bit bad and I would like to share my thoughts with some of them.

Channeling and block:

Tried a few builds around it but was never satisfied with the performance, I only enjoyed the eye candy effect it offered and I'll probably miss that but I can't say that I'm sad seeing channeling gone. Despite this I'm not sure if setting it always-on block will be that good of an idea as it is. The fact that channel blocking used up our energy was one of the reasons why I never used it, I would suggest perhaps removing the energy cost and instead make it so you can only block for a limited amount of time at any one point. The point of the game is to kill your enemies as fast as possible, not stand there as a training dummy and get wacked repeatedly. Block should either help you close the gap to your enemies while taking as less damage as possible or used as a 'oh S#&$' fall back plan when you're close to dying and you need a breather to regain health or shields.

 

Combo counter:

The whole idea of combo counter damage multipliers only applying to heavy attacks and then the points been used up is quite bad in all honesty, it seems like something that isn't fun and a bit too complicated. To be quite honest I would see this whole system removed and replaced with something else that can help us deal with higher level enemies mostly because I find it very restrictive and I dislike the whole 'wind-up' time as you need to keep hitting enemies over and over again in order to increase the combo counter to be efficient. More so you lose all those combo counter points the moment you switch to a primary and secondary weapon, it actively forces you to have ONLY the melee weapon equipped in hand at the time in order to be efficient instead of actually allowing a more free form approach where at a moment's notice your melee weapon will be as useful as your primary and secondary the moment you whip it out. Instead of the combo counter I would suggest focusing more on the weapon combos in order to deal with higher level enemies.

 

Now for a suggestion.

Weapon combo:

I think perhaps the focus should be taken from the combo counter and pushed towards weapon combos, as such I would prefer seeing weapon combos reward players more when they use these but in order to do that I think that some changes would be required:

1. make weapon combos easier to perform

 This shouldn't be that difficult if we now have light and heavy attacks (although those might need some work) which can allow combos such as:

light attack -> light attack -> heavy attack

light attack -> heavy attack -> heavy attack

light attack -> heavy attack -> light attack

This is a very simple version of what I mean but I think this would still work better than the current combo system we have where some combos are so difficult to perform that are just not worth it.

2. higher damage multiplier on weapon combos

Scale it up more, with each successful hit performed in a combo chain, this will promote the use of careful combos instead of mindless bashing the keys - CYCLONE KRAKEN's multipliers come to mind as a good example for this.

3. Channeling as a passive effect, maybe?

By removing channeling there would be quite a few channel mods that have no use such as Life Strike. My suggestion would be to allow channeling to take effect as a passive 'last hit' effect which we can use to  'customize' our weapon combo chains with mods. Basically at the end of each combo chain we receive a pre-determined effect depending on the mod we slotted in that attack combo chain slot. 

Example:

light attack -> light attack -> light attack (Life Strike effect triggered on the last combo strike to heal yourself)

light attack -> light attack -> light attack -> heavy attack (Energy Channel triggered on the last combo strike to do more damage)

This will allow players to customize their weapon stance even more by performing specific combos they can receive desired effects, whether healing, releasing all of the damage stored as energy from Energy Channel or other various effects. Of course the effects will have to be buffed since the current versions will simply not be up to par.

I believe this would add an extra layer of customization and utility to melee weapons and make every combo more useful while serving a specific role depending on the needs of each player while at the same time still keeping some parts of channeling.

Oh and add the channel visual effects as you get closer to finishing the combo, for badass effects! 😁

EDITED: Mostly grammar errors, my bad.

[IronArchangel]

Ok so I read over the changes, watched the dev stream. Lets see, pretty sure they said "heavy attacks weren't used, lets move them" then heard "your combo counter will feed and be expended for a heavy attack." (Insert Bill Nye saying that just makes not f****** sense, that's just bulls***). That said, I can't wait till next week when the devs realize their mistake of implementing that (should it directly effect blood rush and crit as a whole) completely ruin crit built melee weapons as a whole AND at the same time make condition overload builds the only viable melee builds in the game. To that I say at least cassowar rivens will skyrocket. In any case, I hope they will change it and make sure blood rush is not effected. People should have the option to build crit, status, or both on a weapon and play the way they want. By taking something players use (blood rush in this case) and making it absolutely useless is a huge problem as it eliminates the choice and creativity of the player. I have seen Digital Extremes follow this path recently and it has been seriously worrying some players. However, I will get into that path later and focus on some of the great things. 

Range is being fixed. This is really necessary as I feel it will make heavy swords, dual swords, nikanas, and so many more weapons viable. A lot of these weapons have lacking range making them feel like they do not reach as far as they need to with base range. By increasing the base range and nerfing range on mods/rivens, I feel like it is a fair trade off. Just do not take it too far and make mods like primed reach and range on riven mods entirely useless. Some weapons thrive off of range. Next, the walling nerf. This is nice, but I think we need to not lose sight of the idea that this is a game and it needs to remain semi-realistic. That said, I feel like they should nerf exactly what happened in the gif above. You should not be able to have free 5-10 meters of punch on your melee weapon. However, I still thing weapons will need to be able to corner to a degree. You can't just swing into a wall and stop due to your oversized range, no can you not hit the target if they are behind the slightest of cover. There needs to be a balance to this as to not make enemies too hard to hit when there are objects all over the tile sets. On top of this, they need to address this problem as a whole. I think we need to stop bombards, nully shields, scarabas, and so on from walling as well. Finally, I think the channeling changes are decent, but it can't just be removed or cast aside. It needs a fix like every other melee weapon. It needs to work when it is supposed to, and give a significant buff so that channeling mods are actually worth utilizing. I feel there should be weapons built for channeling. Built for efficient frames to burn the huge reserves of energy and convert it into damage.

In any case, I think I will keep an open mind about this until I hear blood rush got a huge nerf and so on. If I don't hear that I think I will greatly enjoy my time with this update next week. That said, I mentioned the idea that DE was sort of killing creativity and I am seriously hoping this update thoroughly promotes it, but I have my doubts. I believe changes to how frames and weapons worked since the release of PoE has not been handled well. Examples I will cite briefly are the Ivara//arca plasmor, Ember, Chroma, and Wukong "fixes." Now these to some degree are fixes, but at the same time are direct nerfs. The first was Ivara's 2 and arca plasmor. Tell me guiding a giant radiation ball around the map wasn't fun. It was a creative build that was NOT really efficient but got patched out anyways. Ember wasn't just killed, she was murdered. A bad rework has seen her down on play charts for a reason. Sure, press 4 and win needed to go, but the way they did rework her sparked outrage from fans for all the right reasons. I seriously hope they look into buffing her sometime or putting more work into her. Next was Chroma. Vex armor being re-castable was a nice buff, but the amount of damage chroma lost made him only worth playing in eidolons. I was a chroma main for just about any mission, but the loss of overall damage means I need to value power strength over every other stat, save for duration which is also fairly necessary. I had builds which could be used for team buffs as well as more efficient builds for doing a DPS roll, but strength is too important now and I am pretty unhappy with that fact. Finally, Wukong had quite the creative glaive build with his one. We knew for a fact DE knew about it before ESO but did nothing. DE could have easily changed the amount of time between ability uses to better effect his 1 making it take time between wipes. If the problem became more wukongs brought in, then they could have just scaled range back on his iron vault augment. My fear is DE does not care for our creativity. Their solution is nerf nerf nerf and call it a change to cover up the fact that these were direct nerfs. Yeah, I will get a wukong and ember rework. Maybe even the other frames I listed as well. Even ones I did not. However, I have seen first hand how Digital Extremes handles these and I know it will take years or until a priming for these things to happen. That all said, I understand DE is in favor of more direct approaches to the 'problems' that arise and because of this I feel great fear for blood rush and crit melee weapons as a whole. 

Aight so that is my opinion on what they have given us. I still have a lot of respect for the team of people who works hard to bring us new content, but I do not always agree with their changes and hope they take our feedback and use it to make the game better!

[Aldrr]

First things first, yes, yes and yes, the spin-to-win / roflcopter mode needs to go, great to see it among the goals you are reaching for! 👍

I don't know what your plan is exactly, but based on the dev workshop I had this thing on my mind (may not even align with the direction you're taking melee towards, may not even be viable, but I'll throw it in the hat anyway):

What if we treated the combo counter as a kind of currency people could use to gain combat buffs?

• light attacks build up the counter
• heavy attacks / slam attack / more complex combos spend some of the combo to grant a buff to the weapon / the frame carrying it
  • the buffs would consist of a flat damage bonus (even to light attacks) and some added benefit, which would depend on the weapon type 
  • some wonky examples off the top of my head:
    • daggers could have a boost to attack speed or finisher damage
    • whips could briefly switch to an alternate moveset where attacks pull enemies towards the frame and open them to finishers or every swing of the weapon applies the same damage to every enemy within range, in a 360 degree arc
    • sword combo buffs could add a slash or elemental based status chance (thinking of nikana / broken war or the prova here for example)
    • hammer combo buffs would stagger or knock enemies down more frequently
    • sword & shield weapons like the silva & aegis could add damage reduction to the frame (because... well, shield ^^)
  • the higher the combo tier (ie 1.5x vs 3x) = more combo counter is spent = more powerful the benefit earned

For example with a popular heavy blade, the Galatine:

• light attacks build up combo counter and are not influenced by the counter at all, as stated in the workshop
• a basic combo or heavy attack or slam attack could provide the flat damage bonus
• a more complex combo would provide the flat damage and a boost to slash status chance
• the top-tier combo could escalate the above with longer status duration (or attack speed to help stack up the bleed?)

Never really hashed it out, just some idea I had. >.< Maybe it'll give inspiration to folks who know the system like the back of their hands.

[EnderXen]

Very good proposal to eventually improve the flow of melee, which is unfortunately a bit "locked" into a few repetitive loops: blocking loop, melee combo loop as I try to slash forward and spin, so I'm all for more complex combo system and switching between channelling/blocking, slash & heavy attacks. However, the balance will be tricky to achieve as it will break all the previous meta behaviors and assumptions about melee.

What I expect from good melee system is to allow a good flow and being able to scale against higher level enemies without being one-shotted. As Blocking & Channeling will be merged, energy could not be drained when parrying or even have a mod to earn energy when successfully parrying so that would entice players to switch to this while harassed by many enemies, build up energy or combo meter and then counterattack with abilities or heavy attack. 

[(XBOX)JasonsNightmare]

Wall of text warning.

General critique of proposed melee changes.

 

I don't get it. Ember gets reworked because in lower levels she was too powerful, but she didn't scale into end game. The proposed changes to melee combo counter will be like reverting to older Ember, higher base damage but lower scaling, requiring even more work in the long run to bring everything back. Why not just add heavy attacks as planned, and make the combo counter scaling more dynamic? As it stands, with the proposed changes, I can only think of running Conditioned Overload on my melee weapons, as crit scaling with Blood Rush and Body Count doesn't seem remotely viable if it doesn't affect normal attacks and the only thing that the combo counter effects consumes your stacks. 

Range changes make sense, and I tend to agree that most weapons need more range, but it would be nice to keep the ridiculousness of Primed Reach. As long as it doesn't go through walls, then what's wrong with having a 10m effective range on a polearm? The Ancient Healers' tentacle attack has a relative size-to-range ratio that makes frogs proud, but warframes are made of the same materials and are getting hit with the hammer. Clearly breaking the meta is the idea, but daggers are far from meta, and they definitely aren't getting a serious enough range buff to warrant using them over my carefully built Plague Kripath polearm. 

Overarching idea: make combo stack with normal attacks but only buff heavy attacks, even out range values and revert range mods to their original state (there was a glitch that made them add range behind the weapon, cutting effectiveness in half), keep melee from going through walls (nothing wrong here, just noting changes), nerfing crit-on-spin mods (really shouldn't be as powerful as they are, this is overdue), channeling and blocking are improved, and overall stats and values are adjusted.

Higher base damage and lower stacking makes the newer, high level content more challenging because scaling is more important than base stats. The changes to the combo counter and to heavy attacks shouldn't limit scaling, and should require no changes to base damage unless that particular archetype suffers from a lack of damage. Improving scaling would be nice, but ultimately unnecessary. Crit seems like it will take a hit as a result, and we have yet to see how weapons like the Fragor Prime will fare after the update. The Venka Prime seems to give us a way out of this scenario. Making various stats even more dynamic per weapon or per archetype could give the system the shock of life that it has been needing for some time, like the extra effect of the Jat Kittag's slam attack in addition to adding slam attack damage to all hammers, or some other archetypal special effect. Polearms and whips could just have stupid range, but low spin damage, while dual swords keep their high spin damage and lower range. 

Ultimately, there aren't a lot of details about this update, but most of our concern should be on the combo counter and how the changes will affect scaling. Ideally we will see many new things added or changed in the update, like what I mentioned for archetypes, but we just don't know yet. Scott, please, don't force the combo counter to only affect heavy attacks. I'm excited about heavy and normal attacks on melee, but if the combo counter is just a resource for heavy attacks then using normal attacks becomes a chore, whose sole purpose is to make another attack usable, and suddenly normal attacks aren't enjoyable anymore. New stances that incorporate the heavy attacks would be great, but only if they are built around stacking many fast attacks followed by a single heavy, then repeat as fast as possible. I don't feel like this part will make melee worth using beyond level 40, and I know I am not the only one who would like you to address these concerns.

[--RV--ChaosStar]

Nice. To be honest I was getting tired of the *clear the next room with spin attacks* tactic that had become meta lately, but I do have some concerns a point or two mentioned in this dev workshop:

On 2018-05-11 at 8:09 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Combo Counter minimum hits per tier adjusted significantly so higher tiers can be reached more quickly and easily. Combo Counter damage multiplier may apply to heavy attack only and all points are spent on attack.

1)Hope this doesn't affect how the Blood Rush and Drifting Contact/Body Count combo will ramp up your critical chance as you build up your combo counter, as this would see melee return to the dark days before operation Shadow Debt, with melee being mostly a box opener rather than being the effective murder weapons they are at present, especially in an endurance run where one can ramp up the damage multiplier and critical chance to great effects. 

2)Spending all your points at once sounds fine and all but it will break the flow of melee. Assuming you will still be able to ramp up your combo counter and have regular critical hits on your normal combos, wont using all the accumulated combo at once just reset you to square 1(combo 0, no increase in critical chance due to Blood Rush)? Yeah, I somehow don't think this will be used much at all if it's like this outside of the cool factor of "holy s**t I just hit that dude for (insert ludicrous number) damage" 

On 2018-05-11 at 8:09 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Base damage increased significantly to compensate for loss of channeling and combo counter multiplier on normal attacks

Again assuming the combo counter will only stop affecting the damage on normal attacks, how much is "significantly"? 4x, 3x, 2x? In my opinion this damage increase would make the make or break on this changes because let's face it, in general melee scales better than the rest thanks to the damage multiplier, critical chance and critical damage multiplier as well as the status chance as well the mods to back this stats up. But at the root of this power is the damage we get from the combo counter and it's effects on the critical chance in pair with Blood Rush.

Well those are my concerns, but I do like the general idea of the rework. I do hope you give us more details and numbers asap. 

[Showerwalker]

the whole change seems a bit questionable

"channel removed emerged with blocking, because no one uses them" - nor blocking, nor(er) channel blocking. we'd probably use them more if our warframes doesn't have abilities.

"Melee don't go through terrains", does this really fix the automated gameplay?? what's the difference between enemies dying 2m behind the wall and enemies dying just around the corner??

"Light attack not effected by combo multiplier + Heavy attack consume all combo points" - how does this provide more depth to melee? isn't this just straight counterproductive to why combo counter was made in the first place? melee combo supposedly help with damage problems with prolonged missions, now L-attack no longer effected by it, and H-attack just removes it, there's a logic problem here. Of course u WANT us to use H-attack so combo now easier to build up for you to 1-shot(i hope) ur target, but if this sound similar just keep in mind the majority of players don't bring Covert Lethality setup because its too tedious, despite no L-attack build up needed.

 

making players having to do more s**t doesn't provide more depth to gameplay, allowing them to achieve more does. (i know this change isn't strictly one or the other, but please listen to everyone's complaints)

also, how is the automated problem so hard to solve, here's a quick idea, hitting just air lose x-amount(~50?) of combo counter. those players who actively play the game have no problem with landing hits, if we occasionally miss, meh, jump in and earn it back, while those who automate slide-attack behind corners obviously either fail due to low dmg and kill/minute or die from survived enemies. Best part - glitched enemies won't be a problem. it might not be perfect but at least a less aggressive approach.

 

TL;DR bad rework starting point.

[zentora7]

As much as I think the developers are genuinely doing a good job with shaping out the game to be fun and make players have a more active play style with abilities and weapons. Some points from these proposed changes and some other nerfs or reworks that have been seen in the past keep on coming back to the same issue for me, personally and I think that some people would agree. These are just some personal opinions about what I think might make the player base happier with the game and just meant to be overall constructive criticism... no negativity intended

 

About these "boring and idle play styles" that come about and why they come about. 

While I do agree that some play styles such as the blow-yourself-up Trinity and spam-spores-on-molt Saryn are exceedingly boring, I feel like some of the reworks are dealing with the symptoms to some of the bigger problems. Something that those strategies and the Maiming Strike builds have in common are that they exist to ignore the requirement of LOS (Line Of Sight)  to enemies to kill them and that's the real problem that really made itself more seen on game modes like Sanctuary, Defense and even Index; a lot of enemies tend to just stand in other rooms or areas and not do anything and not actively pursue the players. This has become a problem especially on maps like Akkad where I'm sure everyone has had to go further away from the objective to deal with one or two pesky enemies deep in the caves running against a wall or in Sanctuary on the Lua tileset or other such tile set where some enemies just wait in areas and players have to play this game of hide and seek with them rather than actually fighting them. 

 

Why I personally think that it's not a problem with them being too "powerful"

A lot of these reworks (while I do think the Saryn and melee reworks look interesting and very fun personally) are aimed at fixing very boring parts of the game but the reason players are adopting these more boring play styles is to deal with these problems especially when running solo or in a less than perfectly planned out squad that was found on a public match. In the case of the Trinity problem that DE and a lot of players dislike so much, if you think about it, it's not actually particularly overpowered or anything except maybe in Index. It only kills 3 enemies at the time and if the aforementioned enemies were not idling away in other areas (drastically reducing enemy density and many times delaying defense waves), it should not be near as fast as actually just using the weapon normally in a squad full of people running corrosive projection as the explosions on unarmored targets should be enough to deal with at least a couple of enemies at once. same logic applies to the maiming strike builds hitting in wide areas and through walls because it allows players to play the hide and seek game that the enemy AI is promoting as it lets you kill enemies while staying as mobile as possible and lets you run of to find other hiding enemies. Weapons that have decent AOE or crowd clearing capabilities (such as the Arca Plasmor, Lenz and Pox) should be performing on par with these strategies as they also have high damage in wide areas but they aren't due to the way enemy density is being decreased by these idle enemies.

 

Shouldn't moving around to get to enemies be good? Also, why people run these strategies over others if they're not really overpowered.

While I do think that staying mobile and moving around is important and should be a part of the game, it should be to get better angles at enemies using vantage points or peeking from behind walls to attack or avoiding enemy attacks rather than for looking for idle enemies in far away rooms that are not engaging the player. If this was the case, plenty of other weapons would be able to fill the role of the maiming strike builds well enough to the point that where even if it was less effective marginally, people would prefer to run that because then they would have more options and because doing a variety of different things would be more fun to the point that it is worth it to not get too repetitive. This is a video game and most players in the game are here to have fun but a lot of the anti fun related to these strategies is coming from watching other people deal with dumb problems that you are struggling to deal with using strategies that you consider to be boring or not your style. As it stands, the nuke Trinity, Maiming strike builds and Day Equinox are most reliable ways of solo clearing Elite Sanctuary to zone 8 which is required to get the full rotation of rewards and personally, the reason I use a maiming strike build is because it allows more freedom in choosing what warframe I want to bring in and to a certain degree, what primary and secondary weapons I use until my efficiency drops too low and I need the maiming strike (despite the fact that these other weapons can very quickly take down groups of enemies around me because they aren't as effective with dealing with the idle enemies).

 

What I think of these strategies that DE is regarding as boring

In a lot of cases, I agree. The Trinity strategy is really boring and so was spamming Spores on Molt but if the new options that DE provides through reworks such as the one planned for Saryn is truly more fun and is as effective (and if the idle enemies wasn't such an annoying and un-fun issue to deal with), people would choose to run those rather than stand in one spot and press the same buttons over and over again like in the case of those two strategies. Also, the people who actually find these strategies satisfying would still be able to run these strategies but not have a huge edge over the people who'd rather have fun. It should be a matter of personal taste and some people genuinely enjoy doing these things even though there is a more interesting alternative that might even do a bit more damage. It's not to say that the Saryn or Trinity strategies in question are very passive as they require players very actively doing repetitive actions so it's not to say that they would be just as powerful with less effort (which would be kind of dumb). For the case of the maiming strike builds, while I agree that I do find them boring and repetitive after a while I do find something fun about doing it and it's not even because of how effective it is, but because its actually a different but still active way of using melee weapons. Sure it gets repetitive faster and it's not for everyone, but it is genuinely intuitive and interesting as a mod that changes the play style of a weapon entirely and lets players focus on something else. In a conversation I had with a friend the other day, we talked about it and thought that perhaps the problem isn't maiming strike, but that there aren't more mods like it that drastically but effectively change the play style of weapons and that leads to a lack of options and also that the way melee is right now, it's not as effective to a player who enjoys using melee weapons but needs to deal with looking for the idle enemies I keep mentioning. 

 

About using macros as shown in the GIF to exploit these strategies and how it's too effective for too little effort

Yes and I do think it's really silly what the person is doing in the GIF and that it shouldn't be happening in the game, but I think such strategies aren't actually that profitable or effective in the game as you'd still require input from time to time or else you'd run out of life support and you aren't getting too much out of it. In an ideal world, there could be a test that appears on screen of some sort or some kind of way to check if the player is just afk and using these macros to passively farm but even if that's not feasible, I do think it is reasonable to just leave those players as is as it is only their own fun that they are missing out of, they do not negatively affect other players and they would not (perhaps I may be wrong here) gain a significant and unfair advantage against other players in the game. 

 

Ideas to push players out of these "boring play styles" and and explore and enjoy more of the game content that people worked hard to develop

The way that this can truly be solved in a way that players can truly enjoy the game and everyone can be happy with the changes made is that there need to be more options to run missions effectively (namely defense and sanctuary onslaught) so that people can use different play styles that they find fun in their opinion without nerfing these other strategies that some people actually enjoy or have invested in. This way players don't feel pressured to use these boring play styles because they won't feel like they are losing out and they won't feel like there is a point to doing something they don't enjoy. To accomplish this, enemies need to stop idling in other rooms or other areas and not engaging the player. If it's too hard for the enemy AI to be fixed, a better and more immediate fix is that enemies should just not spawn in such areas in the first place. There already exists an animation for enemies spawning in LOS of the player in Sanctuary and if all enemies in Sanctuary were to spawn simply closer to the player, then players can employ all kinds of different weapons and strategies to kill them but still need to stay mobile and they won't have to go in with the few, limited options to play hide and seek with the enemies. This could even extend to other endless mission types such as Defense and survival where these strategies are seen to be problems so that enemies don't just idle away in some place away from the action decreasing enemy density and not engaging the player. Such enemies contribute nothing to the game as they are not threats to the player since they don't engage the player but they reduce enemy density leading people to do these hide and seek strategies. Perhaps it might add an unwanted layer of difficulty to some when enemies spawn around them and players will find it more difficult to hide away when needed but this is difficulty that can be good for the game as it will encourage the mobile and not campy play style that DE wants to push and also stop players from hiding away and funneling enemies in ways that are passive and can be considered as exploits. Imagine in if in the maiming strike example as shown in the GIF above if enemies could spawn next to that player. In this example, the player would be put in more danger and that exploit wouldn't work anymore. Perhaps it might seem as not lore friendly outside of Sanctuary Onslaught for this to happen but it is a solution that could be worked on to extend such lore friendly LOS spawning to other game modes. 

 

What I think of the current solutions that DE is pushing and why they won't be as effective

While a lot of the reworks that DE have done to warframes or weapons have pushed them to have more interesting play styles such as removing Excalibur's map wiping capabilities that used to exist in Radial Javelin, a lot of these fixes tend to lead certain frames or weapons like Telos Boltace or at one point Mag to irrelevancy (and DE has shown through the RIven system that they care about avoiding this) and worse still, it just leads players to other strategies because they will still want to find other ways to deal with the same problem as the root problem has not been addressed. New warframes and weapons are released all the time and that's what's great about the game but it will also lead to people just over-investing in new, unexpected ways to tackle the idle enemy problem and then complaining about DE later when something they have invested in becomes useless. While this current methodology of simply rooting out and reworking all these strategies is doing something for the game, it is not as effective as solving the un-fun problem of the idle enemies in the game and opening the game up to more variety in play styles for the players and letting people enjoy the game more. As boring as some people find these strategies to be while still wanting to do them because they have a "camp mentality" there are far more players who find it boring to have to look for those few random enemies sitting around doing absolutely nothing but reducing enemy density in endless missions. 

 

In a nutshell, I feel that DE is somewhat forcing players into a play style that they consider to be more fun and ideal without addressing the question of why players are resorting to the more "boring" play styles that they seem to dislike so much and I think that the root problem is enemies idling in safe areas and it can be solved and maybe even could be done so temporarily with just a little bit of sacrifice in not being lore friendly outside of sanctuary onslaught. 

 

Btw... totally unrelated but... just wanna say that I am a little bit irritated with them fixing glitches causing things to be overpowered or reworking things ultimately making them weaker or less popular without also some kind of a buff to balance it.... look at Exodia Contagion... while it was ridiculous because of the bug before, it was only used because of that.. while it did need to be fixed they should have increased the damage of the projectile or given it more utility in some way because it was a fun way to use a weapon before that now no longer is worth the effort and risk of self damage... also... what's up with War, Telos Boltace, Simulor and other such weapons that have been nerfed or have not held up still having terrible Riven dispositions despite being so unpopular?

 

Also wanted to say that I'm super psyched and hopeful about the plans for melee changes and would like to thank DE for continuously improving the game so much and so well :D

[REX-BOOM]

I like an idea of heavy attack. Yet LEAVE CHANNELING ALONE i love my lifestral galatine! Best way to go with inaros / augment desacrate nekros / non-ult valkyr etc. I also fear not applying combo multiplayers to normal attack wil ruin balance in endless missions ( long survival / defence / sanctuary oneslought) 

And imagine fighting like *e e e e e e e łeft, e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e left*  

I'd forget to do *left* 

 

Or at least make combo counter not expire, not " vanish" after some time, yet in the other hand, bosses  would be like *spawns, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, enters room, 1shot boss, leaves*

[Czin]

Extra range/channeling effects should be used, so if you have range mods/additional range than the base, maybe add a "ghost" like void energy extending from the weapons? I've had this in my mind for ages...

[Altagraive]

As long as spin cheese is removed I'm happy.

Sell those meme strikes fast before general public awakened to these changes.

[0_The_F00l]

Hello DE ,

Your original post leaves a few points in the open,

would need clarity on:

1. How will it affect mods dependent on combo counter (blood rush , weeping wounds) and by extension war frame abilities that are affected by combo multiplier
2. what happens to weapons with unique charge attack abilities (Zenistar , Sancti magistar etc.)
3. Will heavy attacks have any innate non combo dependent multiplier to damage or special feature (guaranteed knockdown/ ragdoll / stun / Crit / Status / higher speed etc)? there would be no reason to start with a heavy attack in early combo if there isn't.

I noticed 2 points which are causing concerns , and since this post is appearing to be incomplete i am not sure if my assumptions are correct,

1. Heavy attacks reset Combo counter completely? - this does not agree with me , will need to see how the overall rework will be. I have a suggestion to make it better , let the heavy attacks drain x amount of combo counts , where x = (number of enemies hit)x(current combo multiplier) , damage will be applied to all enemies in range before the reduction of combo - this feel balanced at low count your drain will be low , at higher count your drain will be higher but you do much higher damage too - will keep people using both light and heavy attacks, light attacks to build combo , heavy attacks to take advantage of it.
2. Light attacks do not benefit from combo multiplier - this will reduce scaling - i do not support this , especially if combined with above point, if you can tell us what kind of base melee damage boost you are considering i may change my opinion.

Finally i have suggestions for the overall rework,

1. Make heavy attacks have unique features - Hammers stagger , daggers bypass armor, swords get guaranteed slash procs etc. - each can be unique to the weapon itself or the overall weapon type.
2. Add range of weapon to the Arsenal UI - this is just plain QoL expectation - why would you not want to let us see the range of our weapon ? we will find out by testing (roughly) anyway.
3. Let the combo multiplier drain slowly instead of immediately - the combo extender mods (blood rush / drifting contact / gladiator rush) can decide how quickly or slowly it drains.

 

Once again let me say your original post is lacking enough details and i make these observations based on certain assumptions - my above points may not be ideal if my assumptions are incorrect.

Also i am all in for wall blocking melee attacks (hah!) and mitigating spin2win - i support it fully.

[EpicBred]

vor 17 Stunden schrieb peterc3:

Well timed to you, the host or DE's servers?

Well, many things in the game dont work correctly if you play online and have a bad connection, especially the interaction with enemies. Unlike things like hit detection, which suffers from a bad connection, you only get bonuses for a well timed dodge that you dont necessarily need. Not having that bonus doesnt hurt you.

 

[PETI258]

The whole melee rework is a very bad idea because you are making 1 problem go away but creating a dozen more.
The core gameplay is suppose to be kill as efficient and fast as you can to get the loot/rewards so you need to change the followings to make the game enjoyable if you rework melee:

1. Get rid of the maze tiles and make them bigger.
2. Get rid of the AI prefers to hide behind objects (or the rooms they spawn).
3. Make the spawns better (when you leave a couple enemies behind you should never go back and kill them if you are 3-4 tiles advanced already.
4. Punch through mods for melee.

But I do have a suggestion to partially get rid of the maiming strike problem make other weapon kills generate more affinity or higher change/amount of resources.
Make a system where you kill 1k enemy you get 1 extra capacity (only for primary and secondary weapons and the max would be +10 capacity as the stance gives to melee).
 

Btw for those who agree with the changes do you want warframe powers to be line of sight checked too because probably that is the next step to get rid of Ember Wof, Equinoxx Maim, Frost Avalanche and so more so it only do dmg if you can see the target?

[Ulvra]

First of all, I'm sad to see channeling go. It was a mechanic that I enjoyed and paired with something like the energy regen exodia of zaws it was a lovely thing to have, but that being said having more variety in melee will be a welcome change. I've never been a fan of the fairly limited combo builds, things like pause combos were things I only did for fun in the Simulacrum because in the heat of the moment I know I will never be able to hit them reliably, so I mainly went for things like forward, backwards or block combos that you can actually pull off, however other than the flashyness of the animations it's not really "fun" to just have to hold an additional button. It works, but it's not interesting really, that being said though I do have a few concerns.

 

Flavour
During the stream there was talk of unifying combos across stance cards and while this sounds well and good it does give me some concerns because it limits what you can do with a stance. Today we have a wide variety of various stances which can vastly change the feel of a weapon and thus add more of a personal touch. Is your polearm a stabby one (Twirling Spire) or a choppy one (Bleeding Willing/Shimmering Blight)? Do you want to just bash things in the face (Rending Crane), are you a crazy berserker (Cleaving Whirlwind) or maybe you're a blade dancer (Tempo Royale)?

I fear that these flavours is going to go away and leave melee just a bland need-to-have experience, so I'd ask that rather than try so hard to make everything uniform, make sure you don't do it at the cost of the flavour, variety and fun that is melee today.

 

Heavy Attacks
One thing that made me quite concerned the moment I saw it on the stream was the knockback applies to the heavy attack. This is all well and good, but knowing from playing with weapons like the Mios, whose base combo (Defiled Snapdragon) is bloody funny when flinging an enemy through the room, it's definitely not even remotely useful for actually killing an enemy, instead it just puts them out of range where you can't get to them in time to deal with them and instead results in them getting back on their feet and resuming battering you with rockets from a far (therefore when using the Mios I always use the block combo). While it certainly looks good to have that "power" of a swing, it will not be useful unless you are certain that you can kill the target and with damage scaling off of the combo counter for the heavy attack with no measure off the normal attacks of how much damage you are doing it makes it really hard to know when enough is enough, making it a gamble whether you waste your counter now to maybe kill the target or have to wait longer.

I hope that this knockback is removed. A stagger or even a knockdown will be good, but a knockback across the room is a prospect that I dread.

 

Combo Counter
Finally my last point is towards that of the idea that a heavy attack should expend your combo counter. Now generally I think this is a good idea and with the increased base damage as well as a less insanely escalating exponential rise in hits needed to build your counter it can work out, but... I know from myself that if I stand in a situations where I have to spend all I have to do something, when I don't know if I might need it more in a moment, then I tend to not use it.

Essentially what the system would result in for me is that I'll barely ever use the heavy attacks because "I might need it", which is sad because it's a feature that could help to make melee much more fun, so I would propose something slightly less drastic: Rather than make heavy attacks expend your entire combo counter, let it expend half of it instead. This way you will still get larger benefit from building up more, but you won't end up in the situation where you just used your charge only to realise you now needed it more, simply because no matter how many times you heavy attack you will still have some extra juice left in you (as long as you keep on fighting of course), however spamming the heavy attack would make the benefit of it neglible thus evening it out.

This of course results in a combo counter that could potentially keep growing and thus it might be necessary to still have some exponential rise in needed hits (though not to the extreme we have today), but for me it'd mean that I'd use the system a lot more than I otherwise would.

[(PSN)AeehyehssReeper]

On 2018-05-11 at 3:11 PM, lihimsidhe said:

 

tl;dr: Change the existing firearm/melee modes into a quick firearm/quick melee system

 

that's a pretty big list of cool features which I definitely support for the future (bringing up ninja gaiden with regards to charged attacks is a great idea I never considered before- you referring to the whole UT auto-combo kinda system? :D)

but the little tl;dr sums up a pretty big thing I've been wanting for a while

there's been a few times where I'd do things like alternating between big, quick melee sweeps and gunfire just for the sake of it, and it felt really good - most of the time I do kinda forget about it tho, and largely cuz it gets old pretty quick with a limited quick melee moveset

I feel like a reasonable starting point, after the new round of melee changes ofc, is to just focus on tearing down the whole rigid melee/primary or secondary mode (I know dual wielding for secondaries is already a thing so maybe this is kinda in the works or at the back of their mind)

if I could add another example of a game I thought handled this pretty well, and in a format I think closer to Warframe, I found Warhammer 40k: Space Marine did a great job of seamlessly blending shooting with simple melee - some of the later points you were talking about in terms stance/animation iirc worked pretty much as described in that game

 

[_N_I_N_T_E_N_D_O_]

Is Physical and Elemental dmg changes after this?

[(PSN)Gin_Da_Merciless]

I would like to see stance switching during combos like you would switch stance and restart your combo with another stance. Melee aimed while blocking to attack those flying and short enemies or aim for headshots (Heavys included).  Stealth/finisher should be its own button (that unused button for melee/reload button for guns) and there should be A LOT more finishers. Downed enemies would be included with the stealth/finisher setup. Combos need to incorporate heavy attacks and that finisher button i just mentioned while removing the hold, pause and directional input as to not mess up the flow of combat.  Heavy attacks should drain x.5 of the combo counter so as to use heavy combos. The higher the combo counter when u start the heavy combo the more dmg you.  Ex. Heavy-heavy-heavy as a combo will only completely drain X.5 of the combo counter.  Slam attacks would be heavys.  If you use lifestrike then that would activate when you use heavy attacks.  

If channeling and blocking are being combined then there should be a reward for perfectly timing your block.  When you do this for bullets you reflect them back for double dmg or stun whoever your aiming at when reflected. Melee would be unchanged.  Perfect block will restore a fair amount of energy.

[Xardis]

We all know what DE wants to do: remove damage multiplier from combo counter. I dont think its a good move. Sure, I would reduce it. To like +15% more damage per tier for all weapons, Venka Prime included. What should happen next is the change to combo timer - make it lose tiers, not everything when the timer goes to 0, also base timer should be 10s and mods to its should be weaker. On top of that Blood Rush should give +44% crit chance per tier scaled from modded crit chance since the tiers will be much closer. Weeping Wounds with 40% is fine in my opinion. On the other hand Melee Prowess should get a buff to 90% status chance bonus from 15%. There should be some new mods to charge attacks only (or those that were turned into channeling should be rolled back). 4 new counter mods - 1 mod that gives additively +20% more damage bonus per tier (35% per tier in effect). And 3 hybrids, +10% more damage and +20% crit per tier, +10% more damage and +20% more status chance (scaled from modded statsu chance), +20% both status and crit chance per tier. All melee weapons should get x2 damage boost, some weaker ones x3 (like skanas and other very low tier weapons). Charge attack (or heavy attack, whatever DE decideds to rename those to) consume 2 tiers of combo counter and get x3 bonuses from it (if you have 5th (x1.75 damage) tier of combo counter with blood rush on you would get x1.75x3=x5.25 damage multiplier on that attack and +220%x3=+660% crit chance scaled from modded crit chance (if you had that one on 20% it would be 20%x7.6=152% crit chance)).

[Irisena]

1 minute ago, Xardis said:

remove damage multiplier from combo counter

what? excuse me, either i'm dumb or am i missing something? I heard that DE WANTS to ramp up the combo counter so we can get that sweet, sweet 3x damage easier, BUT they want to "readjust" (which i believe will be a huge nerf) the combo multiplier mods like blood rush, etc.

[Diezen]

On 2018-05-12 at 9:07 AM, (PS4)Zerorama7 said:

Um atlas yea but khora no. Unlike atlas she adds to the combo counter.

Atlas also adds to the combo counter with his landslide. Khora used to not but now she does (though it did use combo multiplier before the whip added to combo per enemy hit). It functions the same now where enemies hit add combo so it doesn't time out, always has for Atlas. If you're talking about the number that shows up when Atlas uses Landslide, that's a separate multiplier that multiplies with the combo one. So 4x at third landslide+, and times 2-3.5x whatever melee combo count you got.

It's still a loss of a big chunk of damage, so something has to be done with that removal.

[(PSN)JustitiaCaelum]

This should be interesting. Based on how parkour 2.0 turned out, there is reason for optimism with this melted system change. However, reading the workshop has generated a few questions/concerns:

if combo counter resets every time a heavy attack is used, how will blood rush and weeping wounds be affected? Even with the intended change of making combo counter climbing faster, expending all your counter for a lvl 100 enemy still leave you having to star from scratch on the next 20 lvl 100 enemies. And on the topic of combo counters, can we expect a similar change to how sniper combo works, i.e. You don't lose your 4.5x combo after 3 seconds if you don't use drifting contact?

In regards to spin attacks, I have mixed feelings. On one hand spamming spinning is silly, but it is very effective, especially on whip and polearms and staves, not only because of maiming strike+bloodrush, but because of how awful the attack animations are on those stances. Even for the videos here, it just looks like recycled swooping falcon stance. Can we expect new combos, preferably with sweeping motions since we are dealing with a lot of enemies? (And since I am a console Tenno, I must point out how silly the back combos are. We can't face forward while doing the back combo on controllers, because left stick move the character, not backpaddle/strafe)

Finally about the range and striking enemies through walls. Before rivens, the highest melee range is ~8m. It is only a big problem now because Scoliac has max disposition. Certainly it would make sense to cap the range, instead of creating situations where a polearm swung by the mighty Tenno to be blocked by a barrel, if I am understanding the "world geometry" correctly.

all this for a final thought: the proposed changes has potential for a more interesting melee system, however at the cost of efficiency. Since efficiency is all the rage these days (it is literally an aspect of the game, in sanctuary onslaught), it needs to be handled carefully so that we can still enjoy this game that we love. Keep up the hard work DE.

On a side note though, why make the heavy attack launch the enemies? Has the blowback from damage 2.5 showed nothing?

 

[FataL-Flaw]

On 2018-05-11 at 3:09 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

...

• Melee attacks (including spin attacks) will no longer sweep through walls or objects.

...

• Combo Counter minimum hits per tier adjusted significantly so higher tiers can be reached more quickly and easily. Combo Counter damage multiplier may apply to heavy attack only and all points are spent on attack.

...

I see some positive changes, but see many potential negatives...

RE: "Melee attacks (including spin attacks) will no longer sweep through walls or objects."

     --I agree with the idea that players should not be able to perform cheesy tactics like spinning into a wall, but here is one important point:  Melee is already significantly disadvantaged by the necessity to "close the gap" before you can do any damage.  This is why 2-handers, whips, range mods, and spinning attacks are so popular (even without maiming strike).  Hopefully you do not relegate melee back to utter pointlessness by removing all of its small area clearing advantage.  Maybe a mod that would still allow melee to go through walls?  Since guns/explosives offer an identical feature, some innately..  I'm not advocating for the continuation of corner spinning into walls.. just cautioning against making it too difficult to realistically use melee... because there are many areas of the game that are not large empty rooms devoid of any boxes or objects like in your videos...  Don't turn melee into an inefficient combat form that is "just for the challenge."

 

RE: "Combo Counter damage multiplier may apply to heavy attack only and all points are spent on attack.

     --Are you really going to completely nerf Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds by breaking the way the combo counter works?  That's taking it a bit too far, in my opinion... Any real crit weapon build essentially NEEDS blood rush to hit effective damage levels..  Or is it your intention to make it so melee can no longer reach red crits etc?  Even when players build and mod weapons specifically for it?  Is it okay for the innumerable firearms to one-shot things, through walls and doors from hundreds of meters away, but a melee weapon doing the same from 10 meters away must be fixed?  

     So many of these changes look on paper like you guys are nerfing all of the popular melee acolyte mods, but doing it in an indirect way by breaking the mechanics they depend on..ie combo counter..so at the end of the day you can try to evade the rage of players who spent hundreds of plat or countless hours to acquire these mods..