Some thoughts on Melee combat (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, April 09, 2018, 12:04 (2209 days ago) @ Ragashingo
edited by CruelLEGACEY, Monday, April 09, 2018, 12:11

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.

Yes, in terms of effects, perks, and other RPG-ish elements, Destiny's melee system does some cool things. The element that's missing for me is the more physical side of melee combat. Right now each subclass has their own version of a single "punch". There's no flow or chaining blows or blocking/countering (outside of the sword block). I'm not suggesting anything crazy complicated... I certainly don't want Destiny to become a fighting game. But I do see room to expand that area a bit.

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.

I agree. Apparently the Solar Titan's lower-tree melee is bugged (I was reading about it on reddit earlier today). It applies the burning damage, but the punch itself does no damage. If the post I read was correct, it was this way in D1 as well (which makes me wonder if its a bug at all... perhaps just a strange design choice?)

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.

Yes, that would be a tricky balance to nail. In my head, I see it breaking down something like this:

The weak melee weapon would deal only slightly more damage than a standard melee punch. It should be strong enough to kill most common red-bar enemies in a single hit (dregs, for example), but not much stronger than that. I don't picture it being particularly effective against more powerful enemies (yellow-bars). We have guns and power weapons for that. I see it as more of a fun and different way to engage low-level mobs.

A lot of the fun I had yesterday was not exclusively running around with a sword, but switching to the sword for short little burst, then back to my guns, then back to my sword, etc, throughout extended encounters. I'd just never tried playing like that before. Sword combat in Destiny has, for me, always been 1 of 2 things: Either I run around using a sword to kill everything, or I switch to Razelighter to take down a single yellow-bar, then immediately switch back to my guns.

What I found yesterday was this cool in-between space where I was switching back and forth between "shooter combat" and "melee combat" every few seconds. This put me in a zone with lots of excitement and tension, while also making me feel very powerful. So I'm not suggesting a new weapon type that could be used in place of the rest of the sandbox. I'm picturing something more niche than that, but a niche that Destiny doesn't currently cater to much.

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.

Totally agree... I think standard melees have a good place, and I wouldn't want anything to crowd them out.

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?

Potentially. Again, I'm not thinking anything crazy. But the ability to move slightly faster, have some light melee attacks that can chain between weaker enemies... perhaps some kind of unique dodge/roll move as well (like the arc-strider's mid-super cartwheel). I like the idea of being able to sacrifice a certain amount of stopping power in favor of a little more speed in situations where it might be useful.

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.

I'm torn on this point. On the one hand, I think Titanfall 2 has the best combat of any game ever, and about 75% of that is because of the speed and movement abilities. But, I also don't think every game needs to play like that or use that particular bag of tricks. I love plenty of games that move slower than Destiny 2 currently does (the Spies vs Mercs multiplayer in Splinter Cell Blacklist is probably my 2nd-favorite combat in any video game, and it certainly isn't fast paced). I don't have my thoughts on this area particularly well articulated. But something about Destiny's speed has always felt off to me. It's not that I think faster is always better. But everything about the game, from the design of the play spaces to the weapons and abilities to the kinds of enemies we're fighting, I enjoy all of it more when I'm moving as absolutely fast as the game will allow me, and even then I feel like I'm fighting against the game. I feel like I should be able to go a touch faster, but I just can't.

That's all vague and super-subjective, of course. But I can't stress how much my Ninja-Hunter build made the game "click" for me in a way that it never has before. The movement finally felt right. The problem is that so far, I've only found 1 exact build on one of my 3 characters that allows movement like this. It's great that I can do it at all, but I'd love to still have some variety open to me while maintaining this mobility.

What do you think about the video I posted? Does that look too fast for you?

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.

I miss them too. And there's certainly room for an exotic sword geared around speed rather than power. Fingers crossed :)