Preface: This suggestion is going to draw some anger. I get it. Let's just try to keep it civil. Please try post concerns, abuses, and reasons why you don't like it, as opposed to simply saying stuff like "I'm quitting if this happens, the game is dead and <insert unnecessary expletive here>." I don't play melee. Unless I'm forced into it, in which case I usually lose. I don't play it because I have piss poor reaction time (age will do that to you), and melee just moves too fast for me. Not to mention the lag. So I have a VERY rudimentary experience level with melee in EC. In tabletop, you cannot fire into a melee without some notable exceptions- Sweeping advance, barrage, etc. Here, you can fire freely into any melee engagement, without anything preventing you. The idea of melee locked classes reminded me of the Matrix Online. In Matrix Online (if anyone remembers it- it didn't last long), when you engaged an opponent in melee, both players were unable to be targeted by ranged weapons. People would run strictly Kung-Fu (and other martial arts) programs, get the jump on someone in PvP, and were completely immune to ranged weapons and outside effects. It was a duel to the death, or someone conceded (in a duel). That exact situation wouldn't really be feasible here, but my suggestion is something akin to it- Suggestion- When a melee class gets into range and uses Melee Lock-On, they become untargetable by ranged weapons (there are exceptions, see below). This puts melee attacker A at an advantage. So, if possible, melee player B would need to do the same thing to balance the field. Now both are locked in combat, unable to be directly targeted by ranged weapons that are outside of their duel. If both players are engaged in target lock (with each other), they become unable to remove the target lock until someone is dead. Forcing them to commit to melee until the end. This would give a more balanced playfield for melee vs. melee, stay somewhat true to tabletop, and make melee slightly more viable than it is now (engaging in melee can make them immune to ranged weapons, at least temporarily). Exceptions- Sticking with the "Barrage" weapon exception, the only Ranged weapons that could effect the Lock-On duel would be Mortar Mode weapons, Turrets, and tank main gun weapons. This would make melee players look for interior areas, cover or harder to see areas to engage in this type of gameplay. Which, I would think, they tend to do anyways. The risk is that most of those are area effect weapons, and you risk killing both combatants. I would like to note, that the system used in Matrix Online was horrible. The very system I demonstrated originally was ridiculous, made little sense, and rendered half of the usable classes pointless. Here, however, it is more accurate to 40K, can help close the gap between melee and ranged, give a purpose to the RPS system, and might even help keep people playing. (That was a lot of typing, but I got it done. Let the hate fly.)
I think it could work, if you reduced the range of target lock to be short enough that melee were not effectively indestructible, and have it break when the target moves far enough away. Dunno about exact range though.
Oh, so to counter balance that, when melee player gets in sight of ranged player, his arms fall off and he can't attack! Seems balanced in regards to OPs idea.
Why? The people with a knife/pistol combo can still fire at the person they are engaged with. You just can't hit a melee opponent who is engaged with someone else. I edited the OP to show that a 3rd party not engaged in the "duel" cannot fire a direct target ranged weapon at an engaged enemy. I seemed to have blurred that a little.
This sounds problematic on many levels. Here's a hypothetical scenario; a chaos JPA flies onto an object just off the ground and locks onto a lsm shield assault. Is the JPA free to fire his pistol with impunity because he's immune to ranged and the shield assault has no way of responding? Perhaps a better method would be to allow more maneuverability when locked on. Say a stamina cost reduction when dodging to the left or right, better giving you the ability to keep your target between you and your enemies? A skilled player would then be able to avoid getting shot but would not be straight up immune, particularly if they get flanked from multiple sides.
Technically, yes. But if the Shield Assault locks onto the JPA in return, neither of them can switch targets until one of them is dead. So that JPA wouldn't be able to sit somewhere, invulerable to ranged weapons for any length of time. And removing the target lock on the Sheild Assault (either by moving out of range, or deliberately), would means he can once again get blasted by bolter fire.
Melee is more of a guessing game than reaction game. I don't think it's age/reaction time (I skew older too) so much as it is that lag WILL radically affect your melee experience. Simply switching host continents changes melee dramatically. I'm assuming you, like many others, are always stuck playing with high latency.
I think we need to keep pistols usable in melee combat. Pistols in WH40k are normally supposed to be paired with a one-handed melee weapon (with rare exceptions, like Cypher, Seraphim, and others).
I find that melee works better if you don't really care about winning the RPS game and treat the three attacks like the following: Fast Attack - Quick, weak attack. Strong Attack - Slow, strong attack. Defensive Bash - Stun. And then just not even care about what attacks the opponent is using, and focus more on positioning than trying to counter their attacks. And then the exception is when you notice you're clanging a lot, and you switch from Fast to Strong or vice-versa.
