I'm going to just disagree here, respectfully. The reason being that a boost form a Jetpack can't take you out of the maximum damage range of a sidearm, assuming you started in melee range. In addition, the accuracy (again in my opinion) is still plenty good for headshots, as I do it pretty often with my Bolt Pistol. We'll agree to disagree.
Different movement style. You can turn the character without turning the camera, so meleeing 360 degrees is easy. In EC you need to turn the camera to aim your melee. ie. you can press S and melee in SM and you automatically turn. If this system was in EC, locking would not be needed.
Really? For me Space Marine's had depth-less slasher crap for melee. It also had soft lock with considerable directional magnetism. EC's full active lock has been much less reliable than SM's passive during alpha.
Sure. Statement stands: The EC hard lock was a ton less reliable than SM's soft assist version at certain points during development. You wanted to free aim very frequently or you'd miss every time on anyone not standing still, especially power attacks, cause you couldn't walk while charging them and they didn't curve to the target once triggered/released. Fist was barely usable at all if you tried to use Lock-On. Those were good times.
I love answering this question because the best multiplayer 3rd person view melee games don't use lock-on and it's awesome. Prepare to be enlightened on games you clearly never heard about! Dynasty Warriors Series (2 players) Jedi Knight Series (20+ players) Kingdom under fire (2 players) Mount and Blade Series (200+ players) War of the Roses (40+ players) War of the Vikings (40+ players) Lord of the Rings: Conquest (40+ players) Savage (64+ players) Gears of War (2 players, not exactly melee dominant but its definitely a piece of it) Warframe (10+ players) Minimum (40+ players; Dead game, but was fun while it lasted) Happy Wars! (40+ players) Mortal Online (no clue, infinite?) Bladestorm 2 (I think has coop now?) Vindictus (10+ players) Tiger Knight: Empires (40+ players) Orcs Must Die! Unchained (10+ players) Of Kings and Men (EA but targeting 200+ players) I am sure there are more, but these are all of the ones I have played.
Ok, which one of those has melee locked to the direction of your camera? i.e you can't turn your character without turning the camera. In Warhammer 40k Space Marine camera doesn't lock your melee direction to front of it, but you can turn the character facing the camera. And which one of those has movement as part of the melee? i.e your melee hits cause you to take an uncontrollable step forward. In Orc Must Die! Unchained, you can move freely while swinging melee. We're talking about very, very different melee mechanics here.
Personally I'm neutral on auto lock but can see the hate behind it. If we removed it then the combat will have to be more fluid like space marine. Right now we don't have that and auto is needed to 360 fist scope people. If we had fluidity I feel melee would generally be more balanced and enjoyable. For emperors sake animation makes games
I have proposed in the past that when aimbot is removed the melee needs to allow SOME movement adjustment through the attacks (roughly 30-60 degrees). What could also be fun about this change is each race could have varying degrees of allowable movement during attacks, obviously Eldar would have the most and Orks the least. Answering your question: Dynasty warriors series (not 100% locked but not totally free form either, maybe a good reference?) Vindictus (Only power/unique attacks are mostly locked, light attacks are free form) Bladestorm (Reduced motion more so than Dynasty Warriors, but not 100% locked) The rest of the games aren't locked, but they definitely have a max turn rate that is unaffected by mouse sensitivity.
Not to undermine your argument (I think auto lock should stay) but Melee is locked to your camera so you can't attack in a direction you're not looking, although you automatically turn your body with the mouse if you hold down the attack button, and any WASD movement will turn your body towards the direction the camera is facing Granted, M&B has a vastly different melee system (one that IMO would not be very fitting for this game) but still
