Some thoughts on Melee combat (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, April 09, 2018, 11:04 (2203 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by Ragashingo, Monday, April 09, 2018, 11:08

Thoughts?

Yes. :p

1. I think you may be selling the current melee system a little short. Charged melees have quite a bit of diversity from area of effect attacks, to ranged attacks, to significantly enhancing the survivability of a couple of the subclass builds. And even the basic uncharged melee does some pretty cool things, like on my Striker where an uncharge punch against lower level red bars instantly gives me a 50% damage boost and a significant range boost on my next melee. Likewise, my Defender build of my Sentinel regenerates health for me and my team with uncharge melees.

2. I do think that some of the charged melee attacks need a bit of a boost. The various burning attacks, and multi-target / aoe attacks... just don’t do much in general PVE combat. It is somewhat rare that a Solar Titan’s charged burning attack will even kill a lowest level enemy in Patrol. When you get up into Raids or Heroic Strikes, or Nightfalls, the various damage dealing charged melees are very underwhelming.

3. I’m trying to imagine how to properly space / differentiate the damage output of regular uncharge melee attacks vs using a sub-power-weapon type melee weapon vs a full on sword. If I can take down a standard Minotaur in around 6 standard melee attacks now, and it takes around 2 - 5 sword attacks (depending on the sword and light vs heavy attacks), where does a lighter melee weapon fit in? Even if my range is a bit off at it’s 8 melees to kill a stronger red bar enemy... you’re still looking at placing mid-tier melee weapons in a pretty narrow range that might be too narrow to really feel the difference between current swords.

So, basically, I don’t think it will be feasible to separate melee weapons by damage output. If we did want to add in more melee weapons, I’d look more towards interesting combat effects and interesting attack movement.

The problem with interesting combat effects is charged melees have a lot of that covered. Want burning? Or disorientation? Or Weakening? Or aoe? Or life draining? You can already have those through subclass trees and armor selection. A light melee weapons might let you surplant one ability with another... but that feels like it might eat into part of what makes the subclasses and skill trees unique.

For interesting attack movement, I’m thinking things like a one press (trigger pull) chain attack that sees you dash along a line of enemies. Or a chain attack that hits an enemy multiple times in quick succession. Or something that lets you block at the right time for a counter attack. But again, some of these very quickly up the damage output to the point where the melee weapon is no longer lighter than a sword. Would just having different attack patterns than the current quick swipe and upper cut (and overhand crash with Crown-Spliter) be enough to make other melee weapons worthwhile?

4. More mobility or additional movement options (grappling hooks / hanging off walls / teleporting ) scares me. Significantly. Like to the point that I am already a bit afraid that Destiny PVP is already on the road to becoming something I do not want to play before the year is out. I picked Destiny as my PVP game because it was slower and more grounded. Right now the buzz seems to be that gameplay should be even faster and even less forgiving. From my point of view, games where you move fast or high or in different ways already exist. I’d like to have an option that I can/will want to play.

Keeping these light melee weapon within the confines of the rule set I enjoy, I can see where a Hunter like combat roll or Halo 5 like Omni-directional dodge might still fit. But anything too much faster and players will be crossing the map so quickly that ranged combat and positioning is significantly degraded.

What I’d Like To See:

I miss the D1 Exotic Swords. We get bits and pieces of them here and there with Crown-Splitter and Quickfang and the Uppercut attack on most other swords. But I miss the big 360 area attack and the ranged Arc attack. I’d rather see those things come back and have maybe some other big, powerful moves added (how about a powerful forward lunge multi target stab attack?) than trying to fit “light melee weapons” in between Standard/Charged Melee and Swords.