It has been a while, since the last suggestion for a melee-rework. This is based on ideas I had over the past year and also some stuff proposed by others. I will try to keep it at a level I think you (the devs) should be able to do, based on what you have done in the past. 1) Remove the Aimlock. I am putting this first as the greatest challenge because I am simply not sure, if you can do this. It's no secret I loathe the aimlock but, in this case, it is actually a necessary step to ensure the further changes are balanced and work out. 2) Normalize attack-speed. I don't like taking away uniqueness, but that's the only way this can work. No more slow Axes and mauls. We could go with an idea @Fiendly had that got slightly buried, to make slow/fast versions of every weapon. Naturally normalizing damage, LP and impact goes along with this. I honestly don't know, what to do about Fists but then again I don't care too much about fists. 3) Heavy-attack->Leap-attack. Decrease the frame-durations of heavy-attacks to match those of quick-attacks. Actually, I would probably find middle-ground instead, as Quick-attacks are a bit spammy. Also, we might have to do some fine-tuning to ensure this isn't faster than regular movement. All that should be special about Heavy-attacks is that they have more range and break Debashes. 4) Defensive-Bash. Shorten the durations so you immobilize yourself less and noone can dodge out of it. Remove the stun-frames and replace them with regular, old damage. 5) Light-attacks should also gain a backstabbing-bonus. Now, what is the purpose of all this? For starters, melee should be more about maneuvering and less about Rock-Paper-Scissors. Light-attack is now not a hard-counter to Heavy-attack, but you can walk around a badly placed heavy and hit them in the back. With slightly longer animations, hopefully the game is a bit more about reading and less about guessing, too. There are still a lot of things that need to happen. For instance regarding Iframes or the movement-restrictions you have when executing a melee-attack. Clanging and weapon-breaking too, using ranged weapons in melee. I have ideas for many of those problems. But my first goal would be to establish a working framework that does not rely on RPS as much. Damage-values might have to be adjusted.
Oh its impossible we dont have devs for that , so i am just gonna grumble in my corner until melee becomes playable
Removing the aim lock is easy. Rename the internal keybind and remove the option to bind it to a key. It's still there, but no one should be able to use it. Smart pistols fixed as well - win win.
Was going to start my own thread on this, but you beat me to it I'll go through each of your points, then suggest my own ideas. Maybe if we didn't go flying forward with every melee swing, but until that changes, it's best to leave it in. My suggest there would be to have it that only the top half of the body does a melee swing animation, but minus the leap and allowing us to keep moving. If you need an example, think of the Commissars from Fire Warrior, but less dorky and 2002 looking. Here's a video example to get an idea: I think that may over complicate things, because then we would have too many weapons, many of which would just be variations of the same weapon (which we already have, what with alts, MCs etc.). My suggestion here would be give all weapons a combo string, then there's a brief pause before starting the combo again. The combo number would depend on the weapon being used, with melee specialists getting +1 to that combo (with Orks maybe getting +1 as a racial thing? Might be OP though). Power Fists/Klaws would only get a combo of 1. No, not reduced by 1, they would only get a one swing combo. Though if speeds were to be normalised, the Klaws would need to be as fast as Fists. If you still wanted weapons to clash like they do now, just take out the stun/recoil animation and just have the white flash effect to say that the two weapons hit, and, of course, your weapon takes durability damage based on the clash. You could also make it that when two attacks clash, a short dueling animation could play between the two duelists, but I'm not sure how well that would go down. Either way, there would need to be new animations here, so this isn't likely to happen without new dev members or volunteers from the community (i.e. Steam Workshop). So they're more akin to an overhead swing/leap, but with a lot of risk reward added in? Yeah, I can dig that. I honestly would've said make it a melee stun move that has a 2-3 second cooldown. Use it more as something to throw an opponent off balance than just a counter to quick attacks. You mean they don't already? I thought that had been a thing since ages ago... anyway, not sure how many people would react to that, so I'm undecided on that front. And that was my two cents (sorry for the long read)
Back-stab bonus for light attacks would be a nightmare. I already end up one-shotting various people based on their current loadout with a chain-axe from a power attack to the back. This would increase TTK for people with gear against people with no gear, making the introduction level that much more painful for new players, as well as forcing the toughness meta to go that much further and everyone will be doing 130-160 toughness in every build except cheese builds. Until movement is more free and less restrictive and as long as rolling gives 100% i-frames even if you roll -into- the melee attacker, aim lock is required. Tracking people with such a clunky and restricted pathing with each swing would be a chore of a headache. Add in the fact that the rushing attack doesn't always properly go off, ranged will be able to dance around the swings just like you can do with the power fist ATM, except with every weapon even the dagger. The largest issue is the belief that melee is a rock-paper-scissors system. RPS in video games means you -know- exactly what your opponent is using, and therefore can use the correct counter. In this, due to latency and animation durations and the god-roll giving i-frames, you can use a losing move and still manage to recover from the bad pick, sometimes without taking any damage. There's been a lot of times where someone did a d-bash on me while I was still getting my power attack charged and interrupted me mid-swing because I was apparently half a second late server-side even though I wasn't client side, or I use a d-bash, they hit me while I'm kicking, yet they manage to roll out of the kick and wasn't caught in the recoil of hitting the d-bash with their regular light attack and got away scott-free. It isn't really "RPS" until each one clearly blocks the other 100% of the time when used on the other, even if you're a click or two behind them. Rolling still needs a cool-down inbetween uses. Being able to bring 3 stamina and roll-roll-roll while you time them just right while your buddies shoot at the melee is of the same light as back when tactical could full-duration stun melee classes. That was changed, but the rolling wasn't.
@Wolf-Steel I think a lot of people are actually trying to find systems that aren't the current RPS one we currently have. Heard the complaint that it's too spammy, and I have to agree with them on that. It does feel like most fights are resolved by just spamming the same thing over and over till you win.
