I keep seeing TTK being polarized, heres what it means: Low TTK = takes very little time to kill, I'm talking lightly tap your LMB and 10 enemies are dead High TTK = takes really long time to kill, so your swinging all day and all you manage is to chip some paint off their armour Something needs to happen with Ranged TTK, its just far too low , so low all you have to do is turn off your brain (pretend your playing mine sweeper, point and click adventures!) and toss a couple of derps in your targets general direction and that's usually enough lol. /Cheasymode Ranged hand-holding ftw! (because profit for the profit margins!)
Beefing up the TTK on its own is generally an awful idea, we've seen what it does before and people just play as melee classes or a devastators, with tacticals reserved solely for capture duty. There likely would be a happy balance where tacticals are slightly competent at both but this would only really satisfy mediocre players as you will still be getting wrecked in melee and at range simply because you are a hybrid, worse than both but better than their weakest attribute, devastators will still be more competitive for ranged play and melee units for melee play, so most people will roll melee and the few players that are extremely accurate will rock the house with the heavy bolter. The thing to remember is that melee in this game is a low skill, high luck-based system and shouldn't be rewarded to the same extent as a system that requires you to have, relatively, perfect precision in order to achieve a solid TTK as well as target tracking & positioning. That's just the nature of good game balance. I wouldn't mind seeing a system that rewards aiming for melee weapons though - so they also have the option to land "headshots" if their targeting is on point for extra damage in order to speed up their TTK much like ranged TTK. Just a matter of figuring out how to do it considering this game uses extremely simplistic melee mechanics that are more luck than skill. But one thing I never want to see happen again is a ranged TTK increase, even by 50% - it's about fast enough that a skilled player can make a difference now with a TTK of like 0.4 - 0.7s or so with 1.4 - 2 seconds on bodyshots and increasing it would greatly depreciate the value of skill behind a ranged weapon. In Space Marine most people rolled melee for the same reason simply because it was easy and ranged weapons did pathetic damage unless you were hitting 90% of your shots with the Bolter, melee would still face-roll much easier so it was the most common play-style and was rewarded, despite its ease, with disruption and at least 3x the damage per hit of a ranged weapon.
"Point and Shoot" is not a high skill mechanic, anyone born in the 70's up (the birth of our Millenium's dark age of technology) can use a mouse and do this with ease as second nature. Its not hard, its why they have spread and recoil modifiers because without it, it'd be too damned easy. What it is though is a beautifully simple mechanic. Something Melee is sorely missing: Ranged: "Point and Shoot" (one action) - yes that's one action, your hand is bound to your eye and acts as one Melee: Gauging weather to: Strong Attack / Quick Attack / Dbash / (and hope it lands because nothing is consistent or reliable) or Manual directional evade / Circle evade to re-position and attack via Melee or Pistol requiring multifaceted situational awareness and hair trigger reaction times to avoid that one lazily derped bolt round that will clip your earlobe downing you instantly (Scores of actions too numerous to count) If Melee where given: The freedom and simplicity of Ranged's 360 spherical degree pin point accuracy Fast attack rate and instant delivery to target Which with Ranged, from short, medium and long range allows the appearance of smooth adjustment of trajectory Rather than Melee's slow glacial sweeping swings that lock in place part way through their trajectories animation, unable to be adjusted with anything near the razor sharp accuracy of Ranged And if Melee was so easy I think we'd be seeing more than 2 guys a match on Melee, its an ocean of Ranged Crutch man. Fuckin' tired of it.
Perhaps compared to CoD, CS, or Battlefield the TTK would be absymal, but that's definitely not the game we're playing here. Though remember, Lascannons and Stalker Bolters could kill in 1-3 hits respectively. Plasma Cannons were utter devestation, and the HB overheated about 1/3 as quickly as it does now and didn't even require extreme accuracy. The Bolter itself was extremely satisfying in terms of a battle rifle. In fact I don't think there's been a more true representation of a MEQ combat rifle. So it was very possible to have absolutely devestating weapons on all sides and still feel balanced, but here's where, in R. SM the balanced totally failed: Lascannons we're suseptable to aiming hacks. In fact the game itself was, but the Lascannons we're the favorite because they could one shot so having it as a sniper rifle was generally a bad idea. The Vengeance Launcher was by definition Over Powered as fuck. I don't throw that term out lightly. In fact I invite anyone to comb through my 6k posts and show how many times I actually used that term to describe something. I'll save you the time, it's for the VL. That's how fucking OP that thing was. And then the Power Axe. The axe was in a stupid state of uselessness in R. SM. because it dealt a ho-hum amount of damage - but really how "dead" do you need something? And didn't have the speed to deliver death effectively. So it got stuck in limbo between the extremely effective Chainsword, and the AoE devestation of the Thunder Hammer. Everything else in the game was damn near perfect for how it was supposed to "feel". The melta debate rages on but that's mostly a matter of taste. Now there's three lessons to be learned here and I've said them over... And over... And over... 1. Ranged can be powerful but it cannot be "the focus". In order to do this, only weapons that make sense to have huge DPS and headshot damage should do so. The best example is heavy weapons. Their DPS is just fine - they can't melee very effectively anyway so their on the super extreme whether we want to change that or not, it's the tacticals that are in an identity crisis. 2. Melee can be powerful, but it also cannot be the focus. But wait, what about the melee classes?! Well, if melee just one hits everyone and can easily get to everything without trying due to the TTK, it would be boring and useless, even against itself - which is what we're flirting with right now with ranged. 3. The keystone to both ranged and melee is the tactical placed square in the fucking center of it - the folcrum to the scale of 50/50. In fact I want people to totally forget everything else other than Bolter Tacticals for a moment. Pretend absolutely nothing in the game exists other than a 30 man game of Bolter Tacticals, LSM vs CSM. Currently, the sign of this is out of balance is that you would never see an instance of melee. Nobody would willingly get into melee with a knife with so many Bolters around at once. Compare that to: Serrated Blades, where a knife gains the DPS of a sword (but lacks durability - explained later) Smaller clip sizes, players can kill two players with headshots before needing to reload. A much stronger, a longer ranged (try extending it by 1-2ms) and 100% reliable Sprint Attack. Longer CD times for ranged to be shouldered to fire accurately again after a melee action, or switch to pistol automatically and have a short delay to switch back. Suddenly, Bolter Tacticals look a lot more like they did in SM and are plenty effective in both melee and ranged, even while carrying a full on Ranged weapon, and while they'll still have a preference for ranged fighting, I'd actually believe a 50/50 melee to ranged match would occur, there would be plenty of situations where getting into melee combat would be tactically important over getting into a fire fight every time. Now on the other end; melee. Remember the near useless Axe in R. SM? It had a lot going for it. Extra damage, extra lifesteal, better stun capacity, it just did not work as intended. It lost to the knife regularly. Sound familiar? Good, because EC has fallen into the same pitfall here as well. Particularly because neither bE nor Relic really tried to fulfill an identity with the weapon. It's just generally regarded as a slower, but stronger version of the chainsword. Some ranged weapons are in this catagory atm as well, but since ranged is really powerful, they kinda just get glossed over atm. So the identity of the weapon is important as it explains what it's supposed to do. The Chainaxe is a powerful and durable cutting tool, in TT it purely adds strength to the character, and in older editions even modified the armor save of enemies. One word in particular comes to mind when thinking of an Axe: Cleaving. So in realistic terms for bE to edit the weapon without changing animations (since they can't or won't do due to money), Axes are good at cleaving, or cutting through multiple opponents at once. What this means is that if the first player the Axe hits in its animation Arc FAILS to clang, the Axe will deal damage to the target (easy coding trigger), and then continue on through everything in it's path - ignoring all clanging sources thereafter - and triggering on hit effects all along the way if applicable. Thus the Axe's identity is generally OK in duels (which it generally isn't suffering anyway), and totally shines in a brawl: where, you guessed it, Orks and CSM want to be most. The Mace is similar, only that it's supposed to target durability, not out DPS anything. The mace, historically is a weapon you bring against heavily armored enemies you want to turn their brain buckets into Chum buckets. The mace is quite literally designed to invert someone's defenses against them. Hit a chest piece hard enough and it will cave in, suffocating the victim along with broken ribs. Hit them in the leg and crush bone and steel together, ect. As such, the mace is the master of Durability destruction. It cannot do this under the current conditions for two reasons: The penalty for broken weapons is total garbage. It is quite literally the epitome of what I've been saying all along; Avoid Melee at all costs rather than finish the fight in it. I understand that's the stop gap measure the devs took, but here's what it should evolve into: SUDDEN DEATH. Like Super Smash Bros ALL incoming melee damage is amplified to ludicrous levels once a weapon is broken. You clang. You're down. You get hit, you're down. Mace weapons should then deal 3 clangs to an Axe or Mace to break it, and a 4th clang to kill. 2 and then a 3rd for Swords/modified knives and 1/1 for stock knives. Like the Axe, it will cleave through targets if it CLANGS against the first target (the opposite of the Axe), it will CLANG against all other targets along the way regardless of what they do. PF and PKlaw: They get the best of both worlds. The first person they hit HAS to COUNTER them otherwise they'll sweep through and deal damage and impact to everything in the full swing. I considered AoE damage like the TH (maybe a power attack) but I think it warrants a gander to see how this performs. So what of swords and knifes then? Didn't I just talk up how Tacticals should be encouraged to get into melee, and yet at the same time solved the mass melee clanging problem and created monsters out of T3 and T4 weapons without having to change any animations - cept them ignoring clang? Swords and Knives are to remain "Precision" melee. Now I know that @ProteusVM described melee as random and often a luck based affair. I disagree somewhat until multiple people arrive, then it certainly feels that way no doubt. Do I think that swords and knives only be dueling weapons? No, I don't think that either. Without the ability to change animations, my best effort would be for Precision melee to gain some sort of bonus it WINS the RPS system WITHOUT clanging. Maybe extra damage to make that power attack really devestating, maybe an item that regenerates durability for an additional attack/save themselves from the "danger zone", maybe an item that allows a cleaving attack after a successful Precision hit to help swords feel at home in mass melee as well. There's honestly a lot of options here. Just remember, Sprint Attack (R. SM stats) itself is a pretty big boost that would help all classes emensely in melee. EDIT: CLEAVING: Should probably clang against targets that gain the Cleaving attack as well. Probably best if you're a swordman or even a knive to get in the face of an Axe/Mace and challenge them.in order to prevent them from.sweeping in from the side and splashing damage to you. Shields can block the attack from dealing damage but will absorb it as a clang instead. Breaking a shield is exactly like breaking a weapon. Don't clang with it, use your weapon if it's in the red!
Repost of posterity: Not everyone is created equally, not everyone can aim. This is true in any game. As for aiming/ranged play, it requires consistent tracking, awareness, appropriate crosshair placement, map knowledge and good battle-sense. Lacking any of these will get you killed, fast. As for melee - I agree there is some clumsiness to it due to the maximum turning range and a lack of movement and swinging being on different actions in the vein of Chivalry or Mordhau, but this isn't likely to change. That being said, something like this I can agree with - because it doesn't make ranged attacks as useless as they were in alpha. As for a lack of melee - it is easy, it is powerful, and it is superb at what it does currently: disruption, but melee will always lack against functional ranged weapons for the same reason they became obsolete in the real world. Killing potential at range >>>>> Killing potential in melee. It's more intuitive to modern gamers and provides you with a much larger killing field. Still, phenomenal players can make melee work - just not in the vein of a Black Templar. They use it to disrupt, not to clear a point, though that can certainly be done against mediocre players.
Another good example of the Knife vs Bolter identity is MoN and the Plague Knife. The MoN has quite a bit going for it to get itself into melee as well.. It's significantly tougher, and the Plague Knife will down virtually anything in 3 hits. I would not be supprised to see someone try to actually use a plague knife and Plasma Pistol next to a Plasma Pistol wielding Necrotic Chainsword GA, there's obvious synergy there. Personally I would like to see a Knife or even a T1 Axe (meat cleaver) for Khorne. Hell, give me a fucking meat hook at the end of one of Kharns chains and I'd be estatic. If it were possible to execute more people than normal, I would with it. Maybe that's the RTC version, and even their Devestators (teeth of Khorne) really wouldn't mind being in melee honestly. I really enjoy playing as a BolterBerzeker, up close, without a scope, and itching to stab someone in the face next to full blown Berzerkers. Someone said put a bayonet on a Heavy Bolter. For Khorne? Why the hell not? Even if it really adds nothing towards balence, you know someone like @DJPenguin is going to get a killing spree with it anyway. Tzeentchain the "Ranged" archetype in preparation for it's arcane rounds and I'm not sure how Slaanesh would benefit from a knife, but if @Sumshine or @Darthy has an idea then I don't really see why not, Last Carress, Felwrought Plasma, Force and Lash with Manhunter and it's conceptual little brother could be an interesting team concept while fitting perfectly with their archetype of hit hard, fast, shock and awe, then move on quickly while the terror remains. Hell, maces fit perfectly with this concept. If anyone has gotten close to the danger state, they've experienced dread for themselves, you KNOW what's coming if you fail one more hit. Why not give Slaanesh "Knives" a T1 Mace? Model: Shrunk down Slaaneshi version of the RTC Cestisus Powerfist. Extra spikey to keep the knife animations. Punching people in the face should yield results.
I'm the last person you need or want to preach about Space Marine to - I've got something like 2k hours, about 1500 of which was as a stalker bolter main. As for balance issues? The lascannon was OP simply due to its ability to fire 100% accurately in hip fire, not while aiming. It was easily countered as even with an aimbot, when you get headshot, your aim is thrown off target - unless the hack is compensating for that (which it may do, just requires a more tech savvy programmer) it's not a huge issue. The main issue was that fucking thing being used at point blank range with 100% accuracy in hipfire, it never missed. Plasma cannon was fine to be honest, it was a deadly weapon when you let it take a key position - but that's how it should be, it was also easily countered with headshots. Vengeance Launcher was powerful, sure, but you needed skill to use that thing to maximum efficiency. I challenge you to try and use that thing vs a GK player, that guy could likely be using a bolt pistol and he'd still knock the wind out of you before you can fire two shots. As for melee - they all had roles. Power sword & Chainsword were skins of each other but were DAMN powerful in good hands, power axe was solid for flanking or in combination with ground slam - you'd take their armour off with a landing and kill them in 1 hit from the axe. The thunder hammer was different, that one was more of a 'rule of cool' tool and worked best in dreadnought mode, where it was the de-facto best way to kill the dreadnought. Without question, that thing was beastly there. I preferred the shotgun melta to the 'tracking beam of death via DOT' gun, DOTs in a """skill-based""" third person shooter will never sit right with me. The bolter has low DPS in Space Marine? it had a TTK of 0.5 on headshots and 1.4-ish on bodyshots. About the same as EC, the reason why melee worked so well in Space Marine is because it didn't have this stupid counter system, it had a stun system that allowed a good player to regain initiative and try and recover, but there was no d-bash fast attack nonsense which just slowed down the melee. Make the melee swing-spam and add that stun for brief recovery (literally like 1.5 second stun) and prevent shooting during this period and you'll fix 99% of the problems melee has. Yes, you would see people rush into melee willingly. Because if you make melee powerful enough - by increasing the TTK to levels that melee rushing brainlessly would be viable - tacticals would no longer have a purpose, devastators would take up the primary ranged class and jump assaults the majority of the rest. Remember, in EC for LSM - CSM, the primary class is supposed to be the tactical marine, with a few specialist units supplementing that composition. It's not supposed to be an army of melee units because they form the basis of loyalist & traitor astartes forces. Remember, the good players with ranged weapons will go to heavy bolters and get that TTK without many downsides (devastators being shit in melee and somewhat slow isn't a huge penalty for 600 DPS) and anyone who cannot do this will play melee and go mental to their heart's content. I'd sooner rather see literally Space Marine melee, with swing spam and one quick stun to allow recovery and/or a free melee hit from the tac archetype. As for bolter TTK: View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlhr53c7ZMQ Watch this sometime. Again, being okay at both doesn't make it viable. If I can take 600 DPS on a heavy bolter - thus the old TTK - I'll take it over being able to fight in melee every time simply because positioning is king in a TPS, and much like Space Marine, being slow isn't a huge penalty even with a team of nothing but melee and enemies that are nothing but melee. A good player will still mow down his enemies until you also nerf the heavy bolter/plasma cannon and leave nothing but melee lol. As for smaller clip sizes, you'd be pushing bolters with 14 rounds in the magazine, or nerfing their damage by 18 - 24 (regular - drum mag) in order to limit them to 2 frags per mag. If tacticals are made mediocre through TTK adjustments, all you'd have created is making them worse melee classes considering that melee classes still possess I-frames, the ability to use cover, the ability to close the distance MUCH faster, more damage, more durability damage and higher durability in general. And this is correct after all - why would I play a melee class if I can do the same but as a tactical? The only way a system like this would work is with class limits to be honest, since balance is enforced by numbers in that situation - you can't have a team of 30 JPAs that way. If you lost to the knife with any dedicated melee weapon in Space Marine - that's an issue with your skill not the game. The melee weapons killed in anywhere as short as half a second up to 9/10ths of a second, being killed by a knife would require an exceptionally bad player, especially since the melee was on a jump unit which allows you to deal 50% damage with a ground pound. As for the axe, it worked in Space Marine. It's a powerful tool when combined with death from above in order to strip armour before one-hit killing a target with the axe, it just wasn't a tool for slugging it out with other melee players, versus a tactical or devastator though - brutal. This is how all melee weapons should work to be honest, if you don't clang, you deal damage to all targets in a cone ahead of you - it's part of the reason I agree with Thraxus that melee should have been more fluid, movement and melee separated to give us a combat system like Chivalry which would have allowed melee to outplay ranged classes by actually using the increased range of their melee weapons, not to mention potentially allowed melee to land headshots and deal more damage that way. This change sounds like a pretty solid suggestion to me to be honest. I'd like to see this thing function a bit more as a counter weapon, since the power fist is described as a weapon a user must be willing to take hits with in order to return them with a much more brutal hit. This means that a counter from a power fist should be a one-hit kill, if you get fast attacked while power attacking, power attacked while d-bashing or d-bashed while fast attacking, it leaves you dead or in the case of the d-bash, stunned enough for a fast attack to hit you and kill you. A power-fist should be the de-facto best and most powerful melee weapon but requires a solid player, it should also drain one bar of stamina IMO. A weapon that truly embodies defensive, counter-based play. I was talking about Space Marine - mind you, EC is still luck based and random because it is ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS just with fancy animations. You can't deny that lol. Something like these knife reworks could be pretty solid though - since the knife is currently rather effective against melee classes but as I've said before - anyone who outplays a melee class, INCLUDING A DEVASTATOR, should have the option to kill that melee class without it being heavily weighed in the melee class' favour. If you're a shit melee player who spams fast attack, you deserve to get stunned by a devastator's kick long enough for him to shoot you, just like being stunned by a tactical deserves you the penalty of taking at least one fast attack hit. Simply because melee classes have an incredibly easy time avoiding melee hits - especially JPAs. Cleaving should be on all IMO but should be better on some others, so axe and mace go through at least 4 - 5 targets, sword and knife only 2 and fist through as many as are in the cone, allowing you to potentially one-shot at least 6 - 8 players if they stand in a 90 degree arc in front of you for some reason. Sprint attack is already in here and works much the same way, including the same (roughly) damage percentages, it's just not viable because of the clanging & d-bash systems which arbitrarily slow down melee rather than making it a brutal, visceral combat system. I don't mind that melee takes no skill in Space Marine because guns also worked and I couldn't get trapped in melee simply because everything was so fluid - JPA jumps on me? wait for his hit to be about to hit me and press F, stunning him for a moment, roll back and start sprinting, if he tries to swing after me, roll again and start shooting, if he jumps and tries to slam onto me, wait to hear the jetpack SFX to indicate death from above before shoulder-bashing to gain distance, turn around and shoot him. That's how Space Marine was played at competitive levels, from myself, to GK, to WNx, to IF, SFU, Night Lords, VI, CSM, UM, xDAx, BOLTERJUSTICE and many others.
@ProteusVM I'm glad you enjoyed one of my suggestions, but on the topic of Sprint Attack, it absolutely isn't even close to distance, damage, or disruption in EC as it was in SM. Absolutely not, and that's a big part of the problem, for example you're suggestion about the PF is agreeable, but it kinda goes with how melee works atm. Overall, it IS a reactive system for most people. There's very little for people, specifically tacticals in this game to get that "death from above" into a quick attack kill, or otherwise Alpha Strike capacity that headshots allow from half the map away grant on every visible target. For example, a full on shoulder with a Tactical took off a players Armor. That's why MC combat stims would turn the Shoulder bash into a OHKO weapon. All of it. Not half. Not a knife strike, a full half of their hp was immediately gone and both the tackling body and the victim took a moment to recover so the assailant couldn't immediately finish them, nor could the other player roll away, both were firmly in melee range. Apart from that, I could use your own words against you and say that competent melee players find the RPS system doable and can score first on the board even if they can never compare to the sheer volume of kills ranged can get, but that's irrelevant, skill isn't the all important measure, nor should it be. This should not be an elitist community and yet many of the arguments I see against any form.of bringing melee and ranged closer together have thus far been met with fears of lowering the skill ceiling, when in fact it raises it, because players would have to be good at both, OR specialize in one thing. Fret not over melee, the is a general pattern of play that occurs in melee, especially among players that are experienced in it they know that each part of the RPS system is there for a reason, and that's the main difference between ECs and SMs melee, instead of a wieght system of one person delivering blows while the other is trying to reverse it and deliver the blows themselves, it's centered around getting the upper hand through a 3 fold syatem. No doubt was it rewarding, but there's a reason why I don't really champion full blown copy/paste timing based combat. At SMs heart that's what it was. Play it long enough and know that it's entirely about timing, whereas EC does have skill involved and I used to really dislike the system as a departure from the brawling of SM. But that's all it was, and Dark Souls is entirely dueling, thus not suited for mass melee where SM often shined the more combatants you put together, just look at the Carnage of Exterminatus. I'm again saying that a mix of both is possible, and the Tacticals remain the center of it all. They are the heart of this game in every possible way and should reflect it.
@Demetri_Dominov The shoulder bash/sprint attack only dealt that much damage to melee classes in SM, since they had 100 hp and 60 armour while tactical had 100 hp and 100 armour, it was a powerful attack, but it wasn't great versus tacs or devastators for anything other than a quick burst of damage plus it resulted in a stagger. As for raising the skill ceiling, I mean, you're not exactly raising much by making people learn how to play rock, paper, scissors more effectively. I get what you're trying to do, but it's not going to work, not without animation reworks & entire combat system overhauls. Melee in EC encourages luck of the draw and mediocre play where Space Marine encouraged mobility to make your melee worthwhile, rushing someone was certainly plausible but you'd get shot to pieces or even out-meleed if you tried it vs a competent player. As for 'elitist' community - it has nothing to do with that. It's entirely about preserving the "skill" of each mechanic rather than watering them down into easily spammable attacks, mind you, I don't have a problem with melee taking no skill to be powerful (melee spam like in Space Marine) but the system has to be designed for that from the ground up and I-frames should be entirely removed, as they were in SM. No magic 'invulnerability' frame mid-roll. As for SM - yeah, it was only brawling. But that's combat in 40k. Duelling is plausible too, but I'd rather see Njord's previous suggestion of using lock-on for duelling animations with clangs/clashing and such but have swing spam just be that, RMB mashing with an optional short stun to try and regain initiative. That being said, as long as you don't fuck with ranged TTK and it is still viable - as in not a 1s TTK on headshot and 3s on bodyshot - I don't give a shit, melee can be re-worked to their heart's content as long as ranged is not gimped into obscurity, otherwise I'll just end up running heavy bolter again as I did during that patch in the beta, was fun, but it was super broken and demonstrated why ranged weapons need to have a solid TTK. Relying on tacticals to go into melee is flawed, especially since you'd have to adjust ranged TTK to do so and basically make them worse at what they do for a primary role. Tactical archetypes in general in the fluff/TT of 40k are like 70% ranged, 30% melee more-so than 50-50 or even 60-40, they are hugely focused on ranged combat with melee as a last resort. All that being said, SM was the de-facto best 40k game ever made in my opinion to capture the atmosphere and feel of the Astartes within 40k's universe. It's a damn shame we never got xenos expansions for that game.
