First, as a lore geek, let me give a little background here so folks know why I felt like making this thread.
They've said we are all going to be playing as Inner Sphere pilots, and Inner Sphere pilots trained for melee combat to varying extents. Melee combat was especially useful in urban environments, which PRI apparently favor. There were even melee weapons built into a few mech designs (see
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hatchetman note: sarna.net is an excellent battletech wiki, yall should use it).
So why is this important? Because the game takes place at the start of the clan invasion, and
clan pilots clowns don't do melee at all. They don't practice it, they don't even build their mechs with the capability. Clan mechs are the gunboats, with arms that only face forward and are little more than gun mounts. IS mechs were in general more humanoid and flexible, with shoulder/elbow/wrist actuators and often had workable hands (like the Atlas). This gave IS pilots a nifty advantage, and given clan mech's superior firepower, they need whatever they can get. I died a little inside every time I saw an IS mech in MW1-4 with their arms rigidly stuck to their sides with hands pointed forwards; built on the same principle as a gunboat clan mech.
Now lets talk in terms of gameplay. Try not to hate me, Skyrim fans, but first-person melee usually sucks when playing as a humanoid character, and it would probably suck in a cumbersome robot. They've said they were making it first-person only and to make it feel like a sim, and that would leave few options for melee combat. They could make it complex so it fits with a simulation, but that would make controls difficult and need a ton of hotkeys. Or, they could make it so it's "press X to punch, Y to kick."; and maybe track the firing angles of arm-mounted weapons so a skilled pilot can fire the correct weapon while punching to put a laser into someone's chin, which sounds awesome to me. Throw in some nifty animations, and we could see some spectacular things on the battlefield. Simple melee gets the job done, and will keep people from walking into eachother and standing face to face in a "who can shoot faster" contest, as happened quite often on the allegedly much bigger maps in MW4.
So why make this thread? Because it seems extremely odd to make us all play IS pilots in smaller environments, including urban maps, without having any option for melee. So why, if we're playing the melee-capable factions on maps where we will inevitably be in close range combat, can we not at least some basic melee attacks?
Anyone agree/disagree or have more ideas for melee gameplay?
4
