39 replies to this topic

[SkoII]

So it's been two years since the last thread that mentioned anything about the subject. I dont know if people gave up trying to ask, or they got tired of the mw game fans not wanting to understand what faithfulness to the table top that started it all is.


But I see the goals list from january of 2013 had " looking into melee weapons" as one of the upcoming goals. Any news on that? Kinda itching for a hatchetman or a neanderthal tbh, as it stands clan tech is plainly superior to IS tech, aside from good strategy, one of the few advantages inner sphere had on clan, was the ability to commit to good ole fashioned tonnage based bashing.

Before someone says , "not realistic" let me point out that if I wanted realism I'd be playing world of tanks, not world of giant multiton bipedal robots. Melee combat is in the table top, and not every map is a nice flat surface where we line up in nice Napoleonic era gunlines and exchange shots till the last of us drops(god knows making a straight line via coordination would be a nightmare with most PUGs in this game) .

Melee combat would add a nice semblance of variety to the game.

Also for the love of god and all that is holy or unholy, pleaaaase make flamers useful.

-this is a petition signed by both batman and the god damned god emperor of mankind, to oppose it is heresy.

Edited by SkoII, 05 January 2015 - 03:32 PM.

[Impossible Wasabi]

Given how poorly collision detection works, the Space Pope would say that melee is a bit of a lofty goal.

[Star Captain a e s t h e t i c]

Merlevade, on 05 January 2015 - 03:32 PM, said:

Given how poorly collision detection works, the Space Pope would say that melee is a bit of a lofty goal.

This, I dont think it is necessary, as it probably would be completely broken or abused in some way. More trouble than it is worth.

[Alistair Winter]

They will probably see if they can fix collisions and knockdowns first. When mechs can come into contact without teleporting and warping all over the place, melee is easier to do.

Good first post. 9/10.

[Brody319]

IT has not been 2 years, more like a few days.

Melee requires entirely new animations, entirely new mechanics and balance.

[SkoII]

Brody319, on 05 January 2015 - 03:55 PM, said:

IT has not been 2 years, more like a few days.

Melee requires entirely new animations, entirely new mechanics and balance.

To be fair every new mech requires new models, new bones, new rigging< new animations , new texture mappings , new niche balancing, etc.

So it's not particularly fair to just say, melee requires "x" its too much work. etc. As far as balance, I presume you meant in game balance, whereas there I dont think the developers are too largely preoccupied, if the amount of posts I see on the forums about the timber wolf is any show (or ppcs on that one quirked mech variant), or for that matter the state of the aforementioned flamers.

As for the two day comment, well my search fu indicated that the last post about this particular subject was from 2012, but then again I didnt search, swords, cqc, or hatchets. But more specifically because I wanted to know about melee in general, and a little about collision detection, as I've seen plenty of heavy and assault mechs be hugged by jenners , who happen to be bellow firing arcs and fire points.

[Bobzilla]

Clearly they aren't anywhere near capable of designing a melee system. Knockdowns probably won't make their way back into the game.

[XtremWarrior]

Alistair Winter, on 05 January 2015 - 03:39 PM, said:

They will probably see if they can fix collisions and knockdowns first. When mechs can come into contact without teleporting and warping all over the place, melee is easier to do.

Good first post. 9/10.

Knockdowns are not really needed for melee attacks, but collisions are.
I have the feeling that PGI really cares about melee, as it is a feature from the lore and the TT that had not been implemented on many Robot games and thus would give MWO something really unique (and really cool).

But it must be quite a nightmare to implement into the game: what kind of attack (punch, kick?), damage ratio (atlas' punch vs jenner's kick), animations, cooldowns, are they treated as regular weapons (bound to a weapon group) or a whole new action (with it's own key), etc.

Edited by XtremWarrior, 06 January 2015 - 06:34 AM.

[LordBraxton]

Bring back collision.

Charge attack is the only melee I need

[Dillirium]

What a sight it would be for an Atlas to grab a light mech that got stuck...glare at him with the skull head and light him up w/ the 4x SRMS from his left torso. We won't see it in this game but maybe some day someone will make a "badass" version of Mechwarrior. Mechwarrior Living legends was heading in the right direction before the license was pulled

[Chocowolf Sradac]

If this is to ever happen I thought of a great mini game for PGI

let people play rock em sock em robots with atlases.... and have the heads pop up and everything!

on a serious note with how the game currently is it would not work with how bad hitreg still continues to be

[Alpha Zulu Tango]

You guys need to know that the tabletop already has complete melee system with rules.

Mechs can puch, kick and hit with a weapon such as axe/hatchet or sword. There are other attacks also such as the famous "death from above" but these are easiest to digest.

Relevant rules in tabletop:

A mech can hit with an arm sporting hands and not firing weapons with that arm during that turn. A hit can do damage to any part excluding legs. A hit is 1/10 of mech weight per hand in damage. Ie. Locust 2 per hand and Atlas 10.

A kick will hit to either leg causing 1/5 of the mech weight in damage so Locust 4 and Atlas 20.

A hit from a Hatchet (axe is identical) will hit a little easier and does 1/5 of the mech weight in damage so as above.

A hit from a Sword will hit even easier and does 1/10+1 of the mech weight in damage so Locust would do 2+1=3 and Atlas 10+1=11.

In TT especially in low tech IS matches when stuff is heating up, kicks and punches are the way to do serious damage and for light wolfpacks kick gangbangs are the way to kill stuff fast and unfair.

Edited by Alpha Zulu Tango, 06 January 2015 - 10:01 AM.

[Chocowolf Sradac]

Most of us are aware that tabletop has a system in place for melee but the question becomes how do you translate that into a first person shooter and keep it a balanced system?

again not to keep beating the dead horse but MWO suffers alot of issues already that the Devs still need to get around go fix espicially when it comes to poor hitreg. Adding melee now would be stupidly broken in the current engine

[Alpha Zulu Tango]

Let me rephrase that "to those who are unfamiliar with the tabletop battletech rules" : )

Everybody can agree about the hitreg. Funny that MWLL (cryengine) didn't have any serious collision, hitreg or ping problems. You could shoot 400kph flying aeros with ppc sporting 300 ping.

[CaptainScumBa11s]

this a hundred times. Im willing to throw money till i get a bezerker.

[FupDup]

The biggest problem with melee in MWO is actually animations/modeling. Our mechs here are aesthetically designed like walking bricks with very minimal joint flexibility (mostly). For example, let's look at our Atlas.



I have a hard time imagining those shoulders being capable of more motion than simply rotating along one perpendicular axle at the shoulder joint. And even if it could somehow do that, it still probably wouldn't be very fast at doing so.

So we'd either have a slow-motion punch that looks comically stupid or a fast-motion punch that looks completely unbelievable for such a clunky and chunky unit to perform; people already complain about mechs being "too fast."

For better or for worse, Alex Iglesias' mech designs simply were not designed to have the same range of motion as a human being. The most you could hope for is a massively oversized version of the rockem-sockem robots uppercut.

Edited by FupDup, 06 January 2015 - 10:28 AM.

[El Bandito]

I would be content with just ramming and Death from Above, instead of melee combat. Make it so that both sides will sustain heavy damage from the collision, so that ramming and DFA cannot be cheesed over and over again.

MY STALKERS WITH NO SIDE TORSI MUST FIND A WAY TO HURT THE ENEMY!

It will also help ballistic mechs that ran out of ammo, to contribute to the fighting.

Edited by El Bandito, 06 January 2015 - 10:37 AM.

[SgtMagor]

Been waiting for years to see melee added to a MechWarrior game, Im running out of years, and hope that ill get a chance to experience melee combat with big stompy bots.

[Raggedyman]

Brody319, on 05 January 2015 - 03:55 PM, said:

IT has not been 2 years, more like a few days.

Melee requires entirely new animations, entirely new mechanics and balance.

Or you could just do what most FPSs do and have melee be a close-range high-damage attack. You still need the animations but the mechanics and balance can be done relatively simply.

[Kaeb Odellas]

FupDup, on 06 January 2015 - 10:24 AM, said:

The biggest problem with melee in MWO is actually animations/modeling. Our mechs here are aesthetically designed like walking bricks with very minimal joint flexibility (mostly). For example, let's look at our Atlas.



I have a hard time imagining those shoulders being capable of more motion than simply rotating along one perpendicular axle at the shoulder joint. And even if it could somehow do that, it still probably wouldn't be very fast at doing so.

So we'd either have a slow-motion punch that looks comically stupid or a fast-motion punch that looks completely unbelievable for such a clunky and chunky unit to perform; people already complain about mechs being "too fast."

For better or for worse, Alex Iglesias' mech designs simply were not designed to have the same range of motion as a human being. The most you could hope for is a massively oversized version of the rockem-sockem robots uppercut.

Punches are more than just arm and shoulder movements. A good mech punch is gonna utilize the torso and hips to provide force as well.

I think melee attacks should be a high risk, high reward proposition tied to knockdowns. Melee damage and impulse should depend on the timing of the hit, so hitting at the beginning or very end of the animation should do minimal damage. On the other hand, a solid hit should be devastating. If you hit a mech real good, and impact the force in the direction of the mech's movement you should have a chance to knock it flat on its ass. If you whiff the shot, your mech will be locked into a long recovery animation and should stumble and potentially fall. Preventing falls could be done by manipulating the throttle and steering.

You could give hand-equipped mechs a little extra melee damage on punches to finally give hand actuators a purpose, or perhaps have successful no-hands punches a chance to damage any weapons equipped in that arm.