You can die from a bb gun shot but that doesn't mean that you'd put bb guns in a video game and cause them to kill you in a single shot. Just because it's possible for a space marine to be killed from a single bolt doesn't mean it makes sense or is likely. A space marine in power armor, I'd say, could never be killed by a single bolt. Not even the most perfectly placed round is going to punch through undamaged power armor.

You can compare many, many different games with each other and draw a lot of good conclusions. Games don't need to be incredibly similar in order to draw information from a comparison. With that said, Eternal Crusade and Battlefield/Call of Duty are actually very similar. The similarities go way further than that they're both shooters.

You're misinterpreting my point. This is it, and don't extrapolate anything extra, because it is a very simple point. People are afraid that if melee-ers could kill people in a single hit than it would be OP and unfair. This is not true. It is possible, but I point to Call of Duty, a game where you can 1 shot someone in melee, as an example of a system that does not make this feature OP, in fact, EVERYONE can do it and it's still not powerful.

I do not think that all melee attacker should kill in 1 hit, but I do think that the axe, maul, and fist (which already can) should. The heavy, not the fast. The fact that tactical marines cannot kill in 1 shot in melee or ranged is good and correct. The fact that ranged TTK is shorter than melee TTK is a bad feature. And coupled with the fact that in melee about 30% of your attacks are completely ignored means that the melee TTK is roughly 30% longer where it is already too slow.

I'm not saying that I think 1 hit killing in melee is fair and balanced simply because I see it happen in Call of Duty. I am saying that it is fair and balanced all on its own, and people are saying that it would be OP to be able to kill someone in 1 hit in melee and I am using Call of Duty as an example to prove that 1 hit killing in melee is not a mechanic that necessitates being over powered. It's all about context.

In the context of this game that we are playing, a MAJOR flaw is the FACT that ranged DPS is both higher and has a better range than melee DPS.

In a balanced video game, a submachine gun has a higher DPS than an assault rifle. The submachine has shorter range, however, and lower accuracy, as well as other factors such as possibly a smaller clip. These are the balancing factors. Longer range with lower damage, shorter range with higher damage. Some weapons like the Sniper Rifle confuse people because they have both high damage and long range, but, in fact, the sniper rifle has poor DPS because of its slow rate of fire and small ammo sizes. Shotguns have incredibly short range but very high burst damage. Currently, in this game melee weapons are like shotguns that require about 4 shots to kill and they are competing against assault rifles that take just a couple extra shots to kill, but have a much longer range.

No one would think it was unfair if I was carrying around a shotgun and killing people in 1 or 2 shots. On a side note, I thought Space Marine's interpretation of the meltagun was more accurate. A shotgun cannot even be blocked. The melee damage would be perfectly fine if clanging didn't exist. Without clanging as a factor, melee would be balanced with ranged. You'd run up and swing 2-4 times and be done with it. But, BECAUSE clanging is a very real feature in this game, melee weapons need to kill in 1-2 hits because those 1-2 hits will turn into 3-5 hits due to the clanging feature.

Please try not to run a mile with my argument and come back telling me all of the horribly and ridiculous things that you think I'm implying here. Everyone on this forum has a nasty habit of oversimplifying arguments and putting words in other people's mouths.

Also, I miscalculated the damage of a bolter. I was factoring in the chance to miss as part of the damage, which wouldn't make sense as the chance to miss is in the hands of the shooter.

Id be okay with the following:

Non-Eldar Chainswords, Non-Eldar Power Swords and Choppa should kill in 3 hit vs naked Marine or Ork. Eldar should kill in 2 hits but also die in 2 hits.

Axes should kill in 2 hits and with higher AP. Given them sword swing speed Downside is lower impact and durability.

Mauls should kill in 3 hits, like swords, with sword speed and AP between Chainsword and Power Sword. Main advantage should be better impact and durability.

They still frecuently do, both in canon books and the table top games. You're either understimating bolters or overstimating space marine power armor. Also yeah, helmets protect way less than other parts, because they're thinner and they have both optics (not made of ceramite) and the respirator (not made of ceramite). You also seem to ignore that 40k setting contradicts itself a lot and it shouldn't be taken too much seriously, it's rule of cool and the plot dictates what's going to happen. Also tabletop game mechanics have some "wut?" situations.

I misunderstood you then, but I still think is different, because here we have classes that are meleers vs classes that aren't. CoD is ranged vs ranged with both having the 1 hit kill melee option, you don't need to balance both melee and ranged in there because eveybody is equally powerful in melee.

Here is way more complicated because you have clear differences in classes, you have melers vs rangeds, and there isn't a simple solution, melers having more Armor/Health? removing stun/stagger features from both melee and ranged?. I think that while being stunned you should take more damage from melee would be a step forward but that's probably because I like this idea, and mostly because that seems to be one of the most mentioned problems that rangeds get more benefit from stun (Dbash) than meleers. I don't think that removing Dbash will make things more balanced, that's the only thing a ranged has to stop a melee in CQC and this game has a lot of CQC situations. Maybe make the clashes more a matter of skill than luck?

I think most of the problems with melee right are due performance issues, see latency, iframes, damage not being registered, animations, etc and not the lack of damage. I think these should be fixed first and then see how things go, then proceed with an actual patch improving melee if they're still behind.

It's definitely not performance issues. We wouldn't even be talking about this right now if that was remotely the case. Right now jump assault is garbage and ground isn't much better off. The toughness patch changed the dynamic of combat making melee players much more fragile than they were before.

Melee is inferior to ranged now, and it's not a secret. As I said before, if it was performance issues, this wouldn't be getting talked about. Ranged damage potential is in another league compared to what melee can do.

People should not act like this is more complicated than it is. The game had better balance with melee before the toughness patch. Now it doesn't. Re-balancing isn't going to rocket science if you actually address the issue at hand.

Scapegoating the problem on new ghosts in the machine, that just suddenly developed, is just delaying any kind of solution.

When comparing melee to call of duty we are not looking purely at using a knife, we are looking at close quarters combat and symbolic similarities.

In terms of game mechanics and battlefield roles, the melee class in eternal crusade very much resembles a shotgun class from call of duty. The melee attacks have almost the distance of a shotgun, which is unusual for most melee, but it's actually quite nice here and fluffy, too. Melee does not need to be an "I win" button, but it should feel a lot more like how it feels to use a shotgun. You're pretty much always outgunned by your enemy until you can reach that sweet spot. Once in the sweet spot, your DPS should be greater than that of a bolter. You take a power sword and a bolter and have them both attack an idle space marine and the bolter will outdamage the melee-er regardless of the distance. How is it that a bolter can deal more damage than a power sword at close range?

It would make sense for the bolter's damage to be relatively the same regardless of the distance (accuracy begins causing missed shots, but the damage shouldn't drop much). So I'm not saying that ranged should deal less damage in close quarters or anything. I acknowledge that in practice it is difficult to keep firing due to being attacked by melee attacks, but that's completely beside the point. A melee-er ought to be dealing damage quicker than a gun. Any anti-infantry weapon that has a shorter range and slower rate of fire than another anti-infantry weapon with a longer range and quicker rate of fire ought to have significantly higher damage.

A character with a chainsword is much like a character with a shotgun. The range and rate of fire are very similar. The melee-er has the advantage of not needing to reload (an issue I've touched on elsewhere), but the lack of damage that they deal when compared to other weapons coupled with the fact that they can be negated outright a good portion of the time is what makes them poor.

These are fundamental issues and are more important to address than the more specific mechanical issues that are occurring. Even if the mechanical issues that many suggest were addressed and correctly solved the balance issue, I still believe that this would be a fundamental issue that was just bypassed altogether. There are many ways to balance close ranged combat with medium and long ranged combat.

Another stupid idea that I came up with that isn't flat out damage increase.
When you melee attack after a roll you get a bonus to damage due mometum, because roll+melee seems to be worse than roll+range.
Added of course to the stunned chars take more damage from melee attacks.

Someone did the math for me(thx guys).

So with ranged damage mods and multipliers.

1. CQC Barrel
2. Ranged banner(+6%)
3. Head Shot damage (x2)
4. Servo Skull(+30%)
5. AP rounds

With a bolter we go from around 42 damage per shot to 114 to 115(or so) damage per shot depending on toughness. All 5 of those buffs can be applied at the same time.

Current damage unbuffed for melee is around 170 per fast attack for Chainsword. In order to bring melee up to par we'd have to be doing around 430-435 damage per fast attack with a Chainsword to equal those ranged buffs. Let that sink in a minute.

N.E.V.E.R.

That's pretty stupid though, you'll waste like 100 damage, with 300 damage on fast attack you should be killing everything, more than that is just a waste,... unless vehicles you want to count vehicles.

I'm just putting RDPS vs MDPS into perspective.

It's would be absolutely insane to be doing 430 damage per fast attack with a Chainsword, yet that's what we'd have to be doing to be on par with the highest potential ranged damage. It's really not that difficult or uncommon to have those buffs up. A squad leader nearby and a someone in squad with a servo skull, or a squad leader with a servo skull can self buff and get those types of numbers.

If we could simply headshot with melee we'd instantly go from 170 damage(unbuffed) to 240 damage per fast attack.

Again we're talking about fighting an active opponent that's fighting back. Anyone attacking an unsuspecting enemy from behind is going to murder that clueless opponent most of the time so the backstab damage bonus doesn't come into play versus active opponents that are fighting back.