The entirety of your posts project a solo oriented combat system designed for one-on-one combat. Again, in a game like Mount and Blade (for example) directional swinging is far more intuitive because battles aren't necessarily large scale, and are usually between a handful of people; When they are involving large amounts, your swings usually get caught on other people, which just leads to everyone aiming upwards. In Chivalry, large battles become very stale very quickly because team killing tends to happen more often than not. This leads to everyone either aiming upwards or stabbing, and again, isn't very "dynamic".

If someone isn't as good with directional swinging, they're going to be a hindrance to the team, making the overall experience unpleasant for everyone. That's not me saying to get rid of FF, simply that directional swinging will increase FF incidents and piss off more people and generally make large engagements not fun. I don't want to go into battle worrying about if the guy next to me is going to horizontal swing and kill half his team.

I agree that oversimplifying the melee will do more harm than good. But directional combat is something that works in select situations and can lead to unpleasant gameplay, especially with FF. You don't need "skill" driven melee combat which generally boils down to attack -> block -> attack -> block until someone fucks up and gets their shit rocked. Obviously there is a little more to it than that, but at its core that's directional combat.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that having a simple way of attacking the enemy in melee is perfectly fine. This simplicity should be complemented by being able to block just as easily. However, give players more agility when it comes to combat and don't restrict them with a stamina bar. Allow players to dodge roll, or shoulder charge, or stomp the ground to get breathing room, or slam the ground with your thunderhammer, or kick someone in the face to break their defense. When you successfully block someone, have it stun or auto-counter the enemy giving the defending player a free hit. That way when you do manage to block someone, it's rewarding and will force the player to plan his attacks instead of just mashing right mouse button.

Now I am by no means saying copy & paste Space Marine's combat, as it does have flaws(The SM's were a little too clunky, which entirely defeats the purpose of the Black Carapace implant). But that it should be far more than just a passing reference as everyone is so inclined to believe.

Also QFT.

This I definitely agree with. It sounds trivial to have some sort of kick or tackle but it really changes the dynamic of a melee fight to be able to stagger your opponent in some way in a crucial moment. I also agree that if players get an ability like this it should be fairly tricky to land and have an associated cooldown or diminishing return to it so players can't spam it. Nor should it be a super powerful ability, just simply something you can time just right to get the upper hand if you're skilled enough.

I REALLY hope a kick, bash or tackle of some sort makes it in

We play tournaments in SM with FF turned on. Rarely do you kill your friend if you adjust your play style to compensate. Occasionally you ground pound in and kill your buddy when his health was too low and you were trying to save him.. ect. In real melee the only types of attacks you use to intercede in another melee are precise stabs or such and truth be told it all depends on the direct circumstances. I'm NOT against your solution. It works for me. Usually in real melee it's a bunch of shields pressed together with people stabbing in between trying to break the shield wall. I used to do SCA combat. Also, in real melee, you'll find that the technique of the swing is more important. For instance, I killed people on the back swing because my slash swing was a fake so I could wrap the blade past their head and come back full force on their head from the rear with the back side of my blade. My only point in bringing this up is there's no way to make this as technical and realistic as it should be.
Also, just because it's on a server doesn't mean we're going to be real time. You're still going to be reacting to things that already happened. So, you kind of have to dumb it down to what I've previously described because you're not going to be able to have instant observation and reflex short of a LAN.

I'm fine with this.

Personally, to get that *visceral* feel, melee combat should involve plenty of dodging, directional/timed blocks, snap-shots and a stun/knockback shoulder charge. Basically, a more refined version of Space Marine, s system easy to get into, but hard to master. So an ork fresh out of the ground has very little chance against a SM veteran of 4 campaigns.

I like all of this. The last part brings to mind a point that's been bugging me. Each faction has it's own flavor of melee. It's going to be hard to balance "technical" melee with Ork brute melee, Eldar slippery melee, and SM/Chaos technique based melee... then you have the subfactions... just more reason to keep it simple and to the point.

I would like at least light, heavy and charged attacks plus blocks and evasive movement, sprint attacks with some kind of knockback can be cool... i see the melee combat working more like a action rpg similar to The Witcher 2 and stuff like that than something more slow and "tactical" like M&B.

Perhaps just different animations? Eldar do an acrobatic dodge(maybe a spin), SM/CSM roll and Orks....lunge? As long as it all happens at the same speed/distance it won't affect gameplay.

i don't think there should be any auto stun or auto- counter if you successfully block. I think you should beginning a small window of opportunity to ether counter or stun them, all depending on the weapon both you and him our using. Think parrying in dark souls, some weapons/ shields were good for this and you had to learn when to try and Perry depending on the weapon the enemy was using. And some times is just wasn't possible to parry the blow because of the weapon. Things like some giant axes/ mace, etc.

As fr kicking/ getting knocked down, you could include a stat like poise and maybe even stability so you could endlessly block.

you don't need to have a hundred different button for different attack, you could probably do it with just a , normal attack and a strong attack and a block/Perry button. Then things like jump attacks or kick could just be a simply hitting strong or normal attack and a directional key at the same time. They could easily just take dark souls combat and refine and tweak it for mass combat. Maybe even add in that weapon clashing if you two keep swing the same attack at each other, there's a chance you weapons will lock with each other then you enter a rock/paper/scissors fight or one of you try's to pull back.

Basically the melee fighting doesn't need to be overly complicate with 100 button/ chain combos, but it need to be deep enough to keep people thinking and guessing and make you feel good or like a bad ass when you come out of the bloodly knife fight on top using your wits and skill and not because you pulled off the "unblock able curbstomping orama" combo that you YouTube.

heck you could have it soo timing to parrying a swing with a weapon from a ork is different then parrying a swing or attack from a eldar, make it so there plenty of life and time to becoming really good at melee. Each race has its own fighting style.

Never did SCA but I have many friends who have. You can always tell the better Chivalry players from beginner because they use simple but effective tactics. There's a feint mechanic where you pull a swing before it hits. Parrying has a tiny cool down period but more than enough to be fatal if you're too quick to block. All the new people spam horizontal strikes over and over. The more experienced people simply duck as they wind up a thrust. An experienced archer can prod a knight to death if the knight relies on the same tactic the whole time.

Yea, it really can't be terribly complicated. I would say something more similar to the Chivalry system with three buttons but I don't see much thrusting with chainswords. It could be implemented for power swords or other weapons. I'm mostly trying to avoid certain aspects of Space Marine. It was great to look at but I didn't feel that in control of the swings. It was just a flurry of swings that didn't have much aiming involved. Mash the left mouse button pretty much. I really disliked that.

hm, some interesting points. I guess you're right about melee having to be "basic and powerful" in "a mass open world shoot fest" which EC will be, as things will be fast and so you can't have the slowed down melee which the system I talked about (so Chivalry's system) has (basically summarizing what I understood you said). I just feel like "basic and powerful" melee would be boring, but I guess anything more complicated wouldn't work, as you said.

EDIT: there should be some middle ground though (not sure what it would be)