46 replies to this topic

[N a p e s]

With colissions eventually coming back to the game there have been a lot of discussions also concerning the implementation of melee making its way in the game. Now I'm no lore buff but I don't see these mechs being ultra agile kung-fu masters and in that regards melee combat in MWO should feel weighted, slow and risky with a potential for some serious damage.

So the real question is, how do you actually transfer that into a game mechanic?

Many FPS games already incorporate melee strikes into their game mechanics but simply pressing a button when you're in a multi-ton killing machine doesn't seem like it would represent what we're trying to achieve very well.

My proposal, from an actual implementation/input point of view, is to incorporate a modifier key which when pushed allows for melee to be performed. Now when this button is pushed swinging the mouse performs a punch, simulating a whole ''put your body into it'' motion and involving the torso. The camera would follow accordingly to make aiming more difficult and it'd really be a question of timing the whole thing to get your punch to connect properly.

Additionally you could punch with either hand if your mech has 2 fists. So holding the modifier button and swinging from left to right would punch with the left hand and vice versa. Mechs with only one hand can only perform strikes with the arm that has a fist and mechs without fists are blocked from arm based melee combat.

To finish off the balancing I'd implement a melee cooldown, because your mech's gyros have to rebalance the weight. Damage could work according to TT values as a starting point and be modified as needed. Eventually kicks could even be implemented in a similar fashion.

Admittedly, this sounds a little bit gimmicky in terms of control scheme but I think it could add to the immersion factor and especially be overall more satisfying that simply pressing a random key and seeing a fist fly out in a straight line.

Any other ideas floating around?

Edited by Napes339, 25 January 2015 - 09:01 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

I'd Assign
P= Punch
K=Kick
and let the rest be someone else's headache.

[TELEFORCE]

I imagine that punches would be aimed with the normal arm-mounted crosshairs on the HUD, with some kind of range indicator appearing when a punch is possible.

There can be a similar system for kicks. I'm not sure how you would aim kicks. I imagine the leg that is closest to the closest leg on the target would be automatically selected to kick when commanded to. There could be another range indicator for kicking, then you have to press the kick button while the indicator is showing. If you miss a kick (kicking when the indicator goes away, even for a split second), you stand a 50% chance of falling over. Perhaps that will depend on how "balanced" the 'mech is, whether it's missing an arm, or if the torso is oriented in a certain way.

[Koniving]

This is definitely a difficult thing to approach.

Here I would rather not go with simply a spammable button or what not. And from DayZ-style games, I can tell you an "aimed" melee attack is a severe issue. We'll also have additional issues if it is stylized after Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Run at, slash, jump, U-turn, slash again, leap back, charge again).

To be perfectly honest the only 'satisfying' concept that I can think of is akin to a quicktime event (short of the button pressing). Whether it is automatic (with an enable or disable function) or something you press, the attempt should first have the pilot reach out to push something (official Battletech art of the standard cockpit design includes buttons for punches and kicks) and then the mech does something fitting to the situation.

An example is a slug from an Atlas to a Dire Wolf. If you succeed, you deliver the appropriate damage. If you fail, you have to 'catch' yourself to prevent a fall which could be something you have to hit. And if you fall, well doesn't that suck for you.

Another example is a Dragon or Centurion attempting to clothesline a Myst Lynx.

Cooldown or not, the cost of missing is devastating enough to scare people from spamming it.

In an Urbanmech versus Tarantula battle, the Urbanmech tried to kick me in which after failing to do so it fell on its backside. My second return kick pushed him off the ledge but not before he could lob an LBX-10 clustershot at me.

In another case, I kicked an Atlas with a Locust. With the weakened armor my foot went through the Atlas's back, crit some ammo and caused some surging explosions stopped by CASE.

Honestly in Clan versus IS battles in tabletop, the Clan almost always takes defeat at close range due to the literal melee form of brawling. So in a way it could help balance the game without having to nerfbat things or over quirken them.

At the same time, it can cause a lot of issues.
------
I don't trust PGI to come up with a solution, especially when I myself find it hard to come up with a solution.

Instead I would simply be content if melee was instead limited to this and variations there-of.

Even if set up in this method, you could still do the 'clothesline' attacks. Have a button that lets you stick your arm out at a certain angle, example a Centurion extending the claw out to 'catch' on something. Of course this would need collisions regardless of on enemy or friendly or environment, so if you try clotheslining a building for example you could damage your arm.

Edited by Koniving, 25 January 2015 - 09:41 AM.

[Burktross]

I had made this suggestion:

=============================================================================
Punching

Can punch once per arm (2)
Cannot punch from a limb that had shot any weapons within 4 seconds
Slows the mech down 25%
Cannot use arm based weapons for 5 seconds after punch
Takes 10 seconds to be usable oncemore


Kicking

Slows mech down by 80% while kicking.
All torso bound weapons are unstable (a la jumpjet shooting) from when the kick is initiated to 4 seconds after the kick either hits its mark or misses
On miss, small chance of falling
Can fall mechs 15 tons higher or any amount lower. Chance of this is scaled on tonnage difference.
Cannot kick for 12 seconds after attempted.

Then someone suggested these changes

Quote

Seems reasonable, but I'd make some changes. I'd cut the arm weapon lock times down, this isn't SWTOR and its ridiculous 10m Medpack CD's. 2-3s arm lock would be better IMO because it's a straightforward attack with no "special" bits to it like kicking. Same for the pre-punch firing lock, 1-2 seconds would be much better.

This way, if you want to punch things, then you stick to punching things until you either disengage or win. But at the same time, you're not so limited by CD's that melee is completely useless outside of the 0.01% of times you can realistically use it.

[Catra Lanis]

Don't think we can expectsomething fancy. I played a game long ago called Iron Soldier. There was just this punch and the rest you had to do with your body i.e. backing up to avoid it. Something similar but maybe with the ability to block a punch as well.

[Ovion]

The simplest way is to have it as a bindable weapon and/or p+k.

Every mech with a Foot Actuator gets a Kick, every mech with a Hand Actuator gets a punch.
Every mech with a Hand Actuator also gets a Melee Weapon slot with that actuator, that will replace that punch with the weapon.

Melee hits have a significant cooldown(4-5 seconds), and when used, prevent you firing the arms weapons when attacking, and then have a short cooldown (1-2 seconds) for all arm weapons, so making a melee hit is an investment.


That, or make it scale for cooldown.
The Atlas will have a punch damage of 10, a Locust 2.
So have it /2 cooldown for the attack, then that /2 for all weapons.

So a locust melee would have a 1 second cooldown, and .5second weapon cooldown.
The atlas would have a 5 second cooldown and a 2.5s weapon cooldown?

Edited by Ovion, 25 January 2015 - 10:00 AM.

[RedDragon]

Koniving, on 25 January 2015 - 09:37 AM, said:

(official Battletech art of the standard cockpit design includes buttons for punches and kicks)

Huh? that would be new to me. In lore, the pilots use their arm+foot controls to make attacks, not just buttons.

Either way, melee in any form complexer than "push a button and the mech does a punch that is registered as a hitscan attack like in old FPS games like Doom" would certainly be a nightmare for MWO. We can't even get proper hit registration for lasers after all...
Not to speak of problems like what would you do with mechs like the Stalker, Catapult etc. that don't have arms?

I'm all for bringing back collisions and ramming attacks (plus a real DFA attack) and maybe simple punches as described above, but anything more sophisticated is pure dreaming and a lot of wasted resources IMO.

[MoonUnitBeta]

To Punch, you gatta look to the right, swirl your mouse around in circles to power up your arm, and then throw your cursor into the middle and click. Then your mech launches a fierce bolo arm attack into where ever you were looking when you clicked.
lol
I think it'll be hilarious to see mech arms swirling around in circles and flying forward lol
Please.

[N a p e s]

Koniving, on 25 January 2015 - 09:37 AM, said:

Instead I would simply be content if melee was instead limited to this and variations there-of.

Even if set up in this method, you could still do the 'clothesline' attacks. Have a button that lets you stick your arm out at a certain angle, example a Centurion extending the claw out to 'catch' on something. Of course this would need collisions regardless of on enemy or friendly or environment, so if you try clotheslining a building for example you could damage your arm.

I feel like what I'm proposing is basically the button that lets you ''stick your arm out''. Torso twisting rapidly while holding that button just completes the punching motion and I think to get actual power out of it you'd need to do a pretty big torso sweep meaning that aiming would be rather difficult.

The ''quicktime'' event you propose could be cool looking cause they could just do a bunch of animations for different attacks but I'd like to have more control over it and without it becoming an automatic thing.

MoonUnitBeta, on 25 January 2015 - 10:09 AM, said:

To Punch, you gatta look to the right, swirl your mouse around in circles to power up your arm, and then throw your cursor into the middle and click. Then your mech launches a fierce bolo arm attack into where ever you were looking when you clicked.
lol
I think it'll be hilarious to see mech arms swirling around in circles and flying forward lol
Please.

That's a quirk reserved for the Atlas to balance it out with the Direwolf. Also, if you do it fast enough....



ROCKET PUNCH!

[Triordinant]

I'd start with Death From Above only at first then see how well that works out.

[Davers]

Mechs with gun arms should not be able to punch with them. Thus the Atlas would be a better pugilist than a King Crab.

[Koniving]

RedDragon, on 25 January 2015 - 09:54 AM, said:

Huh? that would be new to me. In lore, the pilots use their arm+foot controls to make attacks, not just buttons.

Not to speak of problems like what would you do with mechs like the Stalker, Catapult etc. that don't have arms?

I'm all for bringing back collisions and ramming attacks (plus a real DFA attack) and maybe simple punches as described above, but anything more sophisticated is pure dreaming and a lot of wasted resources IMO.

This is a combination of multiple images.

So a little bit more than buttons, sure, (the kick controls is literally 2 switches and the mech punch and grab controllers are 3 switches) but would you really want your melee attack delayed like that (having to do more advanced controls) when this game already defies the laws of physics with things like near-instant stop for light mechs and such?

Far as Stalkers and the like, quite simply you don't punch. Kick instead. I even used a Locust as an example.

What I mentioned was actually partly in knowing the fact that hit detection is awful (it is on DayZ as well, and all melee is 'aimed' like guns) which is why I was against the idea of having to aim and press a button.

But yeah, the basic collision attacks are best as they are simply forms of ramming. Want to jump kick? Ram while airborne; it worked really well in the past and was more than satisfying enough.

Edited by Koniving, 25 January 2015 - 11:07 AM.

[Alakan]

Keep it simple. Punches only. And they should be exclusively available to humanoid mechs with an actual fist arm.

Damage should be determined by a mix of factors including current speed and armor/hp value of the fist arm. To stop it from being spammed, damage should be dealt back into the arm with the small risk of critting the entire arm off. Of course to make it worth that risk, the damage to the enemy mech should be factored to be significantly higher than the damage to yourself.

[El Bandito]

Davers, on 25 January 2015 - 10:26 AM, said:

Mechs with gun arms should not be able to punch with them. Thus the Atlas would be a better pugilist than a King Crab.

Except the Stone Rhino. That mech's gun barrels are designed to batter the enemy.

Quote

The Stone Rhino also sported an interesting feature; each arm contained a retractable, shock-absorbing cowl covering the weapon barrels. This allowed MechWarriors to use the arms as battering rams without damaging the weaponry.

http://www.sarna.net..._%28Behemoth%29

Edited by El Bandito, 25 January 2015 - 10:31 AM.

[Davers]

El Bandito, on 25 January 2015 - 10:30 AM, said:

Except the Stone Rhino. That mech's gun barrels are designed to batter the enemy.

http://www.sarna.net..._%28Behemoth%29

I think this is a case of Corerule Ignore. Unless the Clans have a distinct shortage of mechs with hands, that is.

[El Bandito]

Davers, on 25 January 2015 - 10:31 AM, said:

I think this is a case of Corerule Ignore. Unless the Clans have a distinct shortage of mechs with hands, that is.

The Clans disdain the use of mech melee combat anyway. Asking them to melee with their mech is like asking them to wipe their arses without toilet paper.

Edited by El Bandito, 25 January 2015 - 10:33 AM.

[Davers]

El Bandito, on 25 January 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

The Clans disdain the use of mech melee combat anyway. Asking them to melee with their mech is like asking them to wipe their arses without toilet paper.

I realize that, but making attack options for the IS that are unavailable for the Clans would be a mistake.

[YueFei]

I never understood why a mech could fall over from trying to punch. Mechs may be slow and cumbersome compared to a human being, but I always imagined them moving with some grace rather than being clumsy.

I mean, Medieval knights were encumbered and moved slightly more slowly, and certain ranges of motion were restricted, but they still moved with a lethal grace and could throw a punch without falling down. Their techniques involved skill, subtlety, and explosiveness, not just raw clumsy strength.

Mechs are essentially armored knights.

Falling down from a missed kick I could understand. Although even that should be rare.

[Davers]

YueFei, on 25 January 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

Falling down from a missed kick I could understand. Although even that should be rare.

Until PGI sells the Banana Peel consumable.