25 replies to this topic

[Freeman 52]

In my short time with MWO I have seen two things that bugged me: first, the way lights can harass longer-range oriented heavier mechs with little consequence; second, the way in which a mech that loses all its weapons but remains alive has to turn tail and flee. Mind you: it may bug me, but these pilots are doing exactly what they should be doing! It's what the game encourages, and I tip my hat to all those light pilots who take risks to get kills - you are a credit to your weight class, and if you are on my team I want you doing exactly that.

I realized the reason these two trends bug me is because in tabletop BattleTech (yes, I am one of those people) there was one thing that made them less likely: the physical attack phase. A Locust may catch a LRM-only Catapult within the 180m minimum range, but if it is not careful it can get 65 tons worth of kick in the face: that's 13 points of damage, which was exactly enough to fully destroy the 1V's side torso; a defanged Atlas could still dish out 20 points of damage with a kick. Not to speak of punches, or physical weapons like those carried by Hatchetman or Axman, which made them really cool mechs.

Atlas pilot: "It's just a flesh wound!"


Now, of course this would throw the current balance off, giving a perhap an unfair adavantage to heavier mechs. One could compensate by rewarding lights with more XP and c-bills for evading attacks, recon or map exploration. But physical attacks could also be implemented as a high-risk high-reward system: maybe not falling down after failing a kick like in tabletop, but some kind of stun or loss of momentum. Plus I think concentrating on punching and kicking instead of firing can be enough of a disincentive for heavier mechs, sort of a weapon of last resort that lights should still be able to avoid.

I wonder what other people think. I know it is highly unlikely the game will ever include physical attacks, but do you think they would improve the game, or just add an unnecessary layer of complexity to this messy meta of ours?

[Kiiyor]

PGI have talked about adding melee in the past, and seem quite open to it, but cautioned that they would really want to make sure that it was added correctly.

It's also one of those "no ETA and not really even on our radar" things.

I'd love it though.

BERSEEEEEEEERKEEEEEEEER.

[Elizander]

I would like a long swing and recover animation on it and a cooldown because this game would look stupid if every mech was swinging their arms around like they do with knives in counterstrike.

I would also prefer it greatly if mechs would stop to attack with melee and the game not allow running and swinging.

Edited by Elizander, 03 September 2015 - 03:50 AM.

[mogs01gt]

If melee was added, lots of underwhelming mechs would be decent and clanners will actually be at a disadvantage in close range combat since well they dont have hands. The Shawk and Cent would LOVE this since they are designed to use their hands.

How many clanners have hands? 2 mechs?

[Troutmonkey]

For melee to work, I'd have to run up and hug the enemy. Then I'd lag around for a bit, and teleport out the other side where I would punch / kick the air.

Melee sounds nice as an idea, but fails in practice. Mech's move to fast and too far away for Melee to every really be a factor. It'd always be better to shoot than to punch

[Radbane]

A AC20 slug hitting your face is also a physical attack... if not, what? Magical? ^^

Jokes aside, there used to be knockdown. A mech without weapons could once upon a time ram an enemy, inflict neglectable damage but hopefully knock him over, making him a easy target for a friendly.

I whish we could have knockdown back.

[Radbane]

mogs01gt, on 03 September 2015 - 04:41 AM, said:

How many clanners have hands? 2 mechs?

But they have the scariest ones

[SgtMagor]

Atlas smash!

[mogs01gt]

Radbane, on 03 September 2015 - 05:06 AM, said:

But they have the scariest ones

lmao I forgot about those...I remove them on my crow!

Edited by mogs01gt, 03 September 2015 - 05:17 AM.

[Vellron2005]

Melee combat in MWO?

Lets get ready to rumbleeeeeee!!

If they introduce this, then they simply MUST add a melee only game mode, solaris-like, and call it World Robot Boxing! (WRB)

Seriously though.. it would be fun to play kick the trash can..

The only problem I have with this is.. I'm running out of good keyboard keys to place stuff on, I'm still trying to accomodate MASC! Where in all the nine hells would I put "punch" and "kick"

(I use only 3 weapon groups max)

Edited by Vellron2005, 03 September 2015 - 05:23 AM.

[mogs01gt]

Vellron2005, on 03 September 2015 - 05:21 AM, said:

Melee combat in MWO?
Lets get ready to rumbleeeeeee!!
If they introduce this, then they simply MUST add a melee only game mode, solaris-like, and call it World Robot Boxing! (WRB)
Seriously though.. it would be fun to play kick the trash can..
The only problem I have with this is.. I'm running out of good keyboard keys to place stuff on, I'm still trying to accomodate MASC! Where in all the nine hells would I put "punch" and "kick"
(I use only 3 weapon groups max)

If you know lore, the Battlemasters kicks are OP!

[SpiralFace]

mogs01gt, on 03 September 2015 - 04:41 AM, said:

How many clanners have hands? 2 mechs?

A "handful" do.... I'm so sorry.

But you are right.

Part of the TT "balance" from clan mechs wasn't just from BV, but also the clan's builds. Most didn't have hands, and with the rules for omnimechs forcing lower arm actuators out of a lot of builds, Most clan designs are on the back foot in Melee combat (which fits into their lore as well as they despised melee combat.)

This led to the diversity of play that you see with the clan vs IS dynamic. The skill with clan players in TT came from proper maneuvering of your mech to keep mechs at range and use your superior pilots / weapons and maneuverability to pick them apart at range before the IS players could feasibly do anything, but the flip side was, that due to the IS players typically outnumbering the clan player 2-3 to one, and having better mechs suited for close range combat, IS players needed to properly advance up the field, and try to catch the clans at close range, where their superior numbers, better CC, and slightly more heat efficient weapon options kept them as a viable threat.

So in the end, Clans won in 1v1 situations where the clan player properly positions in the previous turn. IS won in rush down and CQC situations with superior numbers, and better melee skills.

[Paigan]

OMG. This again.


1.)
Ranged attacks are physical as well.
You mean "melee" attacks, not "physical"

2.)
In a world of super-duper-high-energy ranged weapons, melee attacks (which have ultra-wultra-low effective energy in comparison) are SO EXTREMELY ridiculous that I can't even begin to express it.

My nice little anecdote for confused threads like this:
In the 80ies, many 'Mechs had melee weapons. I remember the Griffin in Crescent Hawk's Revenge being displayed with a SWORD.
Over the years, the melee weapons more and more disappeared.
And that is good thing, because it's just way too ridiculous to think of modern bipedal tanks to run around with swords and axes.

This is NOT your usual japanese child toy fantasy. If you want those, go play them.
BT is still far from realistic, but it is still a LITTLE more mature, settled, plausible.

Meaning: Melee weapons are TEH LOLZ

Edited by Paigan, 03 September 2015 - 06:06 AM.

[FupDup]

EchoFreebirth, on 03 September 2015 - 03:32 AM, said:

In my short time with MWO I have seen two things that bugged me: first, the way lights can harass longer-range oriented heavier mechs with little consequence...

TL;DR: You want your long-range sniper build to be able to brawl just as well as a mech equipped for short-range fighting.

[Kira Onime]

mogs01gt, on 03 September 2015 - 04:41 AM, said:

How many clanners have hands? 2 mechs?

-Mist lynx
-Arctic cheetah
-Kit fox
-Adder

-Ice Ferret
-Nova
-Stormcrow
-Shadow cat

-Mad Dog

-Gargoyle
-Executioner

[Yokaiko]

mogs01gt, on 03 September 2015 - 04:41 AM, said:

How many clanners have hands? 2 mechs?

You can turn the hands on and off on a couple mechs, but that is also lore based, clan pilot saw melee as dishonorable (much like LRM warfare) so they didn't employ it unless they had to.

The innersphere on the other hand had mechs with melee weapons, Berserker, Hatchetman, Axeman, Yen Lo Wang was feared for its "shield arm" also having claws to rend armor with and numerous examples of designs based on the need to lay a slap down manually (Warhammers sheathed PPC mounts for example).

In addition Death From Above was feared in TT, it was a high risk high reward thing, but the 20% to hit the head was about as good as it go barring a called shot on a shut down mech with a targetting computer, pulse laser and maxed out gunnery pilot. There was a 3055 mech called a Wraith, http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Wraith I LOVED THAT MECH, it was so fast, and spent enough time in the air that opponents had to stop and completely remove any negative modifiers to hit it, the pulse lasers meant that it could often hit back, it was my go to medium for screwing with heavier direct fire mechs.

....in MWO its a trumped up Spider, it would translate across like many mechs that I used to love.

[Anyone00]

The lack of melee would largely seem to be an issue of the lag and net code (also development time).
Mech on Mech collisions are janky as all out right now. Even back when knockdowns were in (several major revisions of the net code ago) just because it looked like you were shooting a downed mech didn't mean the server thought you were and they tended to teleport all over about a 30 ft radius when getting up. Side note: there could be a slam-into-something-and-be-stopped-dead-in-you-tracks-for-a-split-second instead of knockdown but that would still be dependent on the game's ability to handle mech on mech collisions.
Serious take a look at these:
https://youtu.be/WXZmJE0thAg
https://youtu.be/3uXvli0fK_E
Serious the last Mechwarrior video game to have melee attacks was the first one and that was due to its technical simplicity.

[Yokaiko]

Anyone00, on 03 September 2015 - 06:44 AM, said:

The lack of melee would largely seem to be an issue of the lag and net code (also development time bad developers).

They can't even do LBX ammo swapping.....

[Freeman 52]

I think a very simple, last resort kind of system would be great. And no, friendly forum posters, I am not saying this because I like sniper builds: I don't have any, in fact, my aim is too bad for anything but mid-range anyway. It's just that I was watching twitch last night, and at some point an Atlas lost both torsos and had nothing to do but run away from a Hunchback, whereas it would have been much more practical - and awesome! - to charge him and try to kick him. What's anime or sniper about that?

PS: "Physical" is the BT term, as opposed to "Weapon attacks" ;-)

[ZippySpeedMonkey]

Well here's a silly idea....

Build your mechs with some close in defensive weaponry....

I generally find that the so called "long range" builds are either pure LRM builds, or they're designed for high Alfa attacks, but are terrible in sustained combat. Either way, the onus for longer survivability falls squarely on the mech owner to design his mech smarter for just such occasions, or (shockingly) have his/her teammates protect them.

To blame the lights for taking advantage of your poor design choices is preposterous...