25 replies to this topic

[Mahpsy]

Time for melee to be introduced?

[Castigatus]

They had it for a while, then they took it out because it didn't work properly and was breaking the game. I would also seriously doubt anything that needs any sort of significant programming effort would be feasible for them to do given the current state of the dev team.

[1453 R]

APPARENTLY - and this is from an NGNG stream snippet so take it with however many grains of salt required - the PS5 trailer for MW5 had Commandos with "Light Hand" equipped in their weapons loadout. Two each, one per fist. Melee might not be as much of a pipe dream as we all once thought it was.

Might. Note that "might" word. it's PGI so odds are still low, but it's baffling to think of what else "Light Hand" in the weapons/gear list on paperdolls in MW5 could be.

[John Bronco]

This situation never fails to be hilarious.

[PocketYoda]

And here i came for some mech porn.. Disappointed!

Typical lurm boat end game.

Edited by MechaGnome, 12 September 2021 - 09:35 PM.

[MyriadDigits]

1453 R, on 12 September 2021 - 01:57 PM, said:

APPARENTLY - and this is from an NGNG stream snippet so take it with however many grains of salt required - the PS5 trailer for MW5 had Commandos with "Light Hand" equipped in their weapons loadout. Two each, one per fist. Melee might not be as much of a pipe dream as we all once thought it was.

Might. Note that "might" word. it's PGI so odds are still low, but it's baffling to think of what else "Light Hand" in the weapons/gear list on paperdolls in MW5 could be.

Its worth pointing out that MW5 isn't MWO in quite frankly a lot of ways, regardless of how similar they look on the surface. Even if we were to ignore the dev resource issues facing MWO, the fact is that these are two very different games, on very different engines. MW5 having something means nothing for MWO.

"Might" is simply too hopeful a word to describe something that doesn't even have a snowball's chance in hell.

[Rkshz]

Mahpsy, on 12 September 2021 - 11:15 AM, said:

Time for melee to be introduced?

sometimes such situations happen, but in fact, very rarely



in MWO hand-to-hand combat is technically impossible, unfortunately

[Storming Angel]

For now they could just simply increase damage for ram, based on weight im sure they still have that somewhere.

[Zuul the Burninator]

Melee is such a bad idea, I hope it never shows up. Balancing it alone would be a nightmare... no thanks.

[HauptmanT]

Hah!
Lost a match a couple days ago, because 2 mechs managed to kick a spider to death guarding our cap in an assault match. We would have won, but they managed to kick his legs off. 3 mechs all out of ammo.

But this is the price you pay for not carrying at least one laser!~

[1453 R]

Zuul the Burninator, on 13 September 2021 - 06:33 PM, said:

Melee is such a bad idea, I hope it never shows up. Balancing it alone would be a nightmare... no thanks.

To be fair? Melee is an absolutely integral part of literally every non-MechWarrior BattleTech game, including the source material. Without melee, we can't ever get access to any of the well over two dozen designs that feature a melee-centric weapon. Numbers can be pulled from there as a start point. Not to mention all the technically-possible designs that make no sense without melee, like the already-existing Charger.

And frankly, all the yutzes that like to complain about crotch-sniffing lights that are "too small for my guns to reach!" would have no more lame excuse to hide behind if they also had a Punt Button.

Frankly I can think of ways to include pseudo-'melee' in the game even as it currently exists. You can do charges and full-body attacks easily enough. Introduce a "Charge" command/weapon that allows a 'Mech move a few KPH faster and deal massively increased collision damage for a couple of seconds, then give it a fairly lengthy cooldown. Something like two seconds of Charge vs. eight seconds of Nah, or whatever ends up working. Don't bother with knockdowns, obviously Piranha's no good at coping with those and in the current state of MWO being knocked down would be a death sentence anyways, but you could easily have significant collision damage from a Charge mechanic to roughly simulate the effects of melee combat without having to do any new animations at all.

And it would serve the purpose melee has always served in BattleTech - as a check to cheeky-s@#$ light 'Mechs getting too close and a way to cope with being out of ammo and weapons. In BT, a 'Mech is always dangerous even if it's down to nothing but one leg connected to a head - that leg can still kick. In any previous MechWarrior game, a disarmed 'Mech is completely impotent, and it has no business being such.

[Adeptus Odren]

1453 R, on 14 September 2021 - 07:25 AM, said:

Frankly I can think of ways to include pseudo-'melee' in the game even as it currently exists. You can do charges and full-body attacks easily enough. Introduce a "Charge" command/weapon that allows a 'Mech move a few KPH faster and deal massively increased collision damage for a couple of seconds, then give it a fairly lengthy cooldown. Something like two seconds of Charge vs. eight seconds of Nah, or whatever ends up working. Don't bother with knockdowns, obviously Piranha's no good at coping with those and in the current state of MWO being knocked down would be a death sentence anyways, but you could easily have significant collision damage from a Charge mechanic to roughly simulate the effects of melee combat without having to do any new animations at all.

This proposal reminded of Dragon-bowling in the early days. And lights not wanting to leg-hump assaults because they would be knocked down and finished off in short order.

[TELEFORCE]

Melee would get me to buy MW5. No other MW game has done melee!

[1453 R]

Adeptus Odren, on 14 September 2021 - 07:30 AM, said:

This proposal reminded of Dragon-bowling in the early days. And lights not wanting to leg-hump assaults because they would be knocked down and finished off in short order.

The key difference is that Dragon Bowling was about the knockdowns. The Charge mechanic I outlined wouldn't induce knockdowns, because yeah - knocking down something/anything in modern MWO is basically killing it for free. This is just damage, but honestly "just damage" is all you need to get the essence of melee back in MWO. A disarmed 'Mech would still be able to kill you, which is what melee boils down to. We could technically even get axe-wielding 'Mechs like the Hatchetman or Berserker in the game; the axe just gives them a gigantic bonus to their Charging damage. It wouldn't be 'proper' melee, but it would have the effect melee would have of forcing you to respect even a stick, and to avoid close quarters encounters with other 'Mechs unless you were ready to take a mudderfawgin' pawnch.

[pattonesque]

melee might be tough to balance but I'd be ok with their taking the time to do that if it means we can have Hatchetmen and Berserkers and a Yen-Lo-Wang with an axe

also you know the first melee mech pack they'd release (assuming that there ever is another mech pack for MWO) would sell enough to keep the servers on for decades

[1453 R]

I remember them saying, sometime in the distant past back when they were pretending to give a **** about this game, that if they ever did introduce melee, it would only be for specific, made-for-purpose 'Mechs like the Hatchetmook or Berserker. All the old **** wasn't rigged for melee animations, they'd have to redo the rigging.

It's one of the reasons I was ever so faintly hopeful from the MW5 thing - did they finally figure out how to do the animation rigging? I know the odds are microscopic, but still. And yeah - a Scarabus/Hatchetman/Axman/Berserker 'Lumberjack Pack' would stand a chance of becoming their single biggest best-selling pack of all time. Still, I feel like we don't need animations for melee, as amazing as they'd be, to just get melee. Making a Ramming Speed button would do the trick with a minimum of coding and screwballery, which is how PGI does anyways so why not? I may bust that idea out into its own thread, try and get a little more visibility for it before it inevitably gets shunted into the Vault of Dead Words.

[MyriadDigits]

1453 R, on 14 September 2021 - 07:25 AM, said:

Not to mention all the technically-possible designs that make no sense without melee, like the already-existing Charger.

In all honesty even with melee the CGR-1A1 doesn't make any sense lmao. After all, the only real difference between the 1A1 and say, the 1A5 if melee was a thing is that the 1A5 has actual weapons alongside the capability to play rock em sock em.

[Valdarion Silarius]

If we get melee in a workable state, then I want to slap a light with my Rifleman IIC barrels.

[1453 R]

Whelp.

This 'Legend of the Kestrel Lancers" thing has indeed confirmed that Piranha has gotten over their initial argument against melee, i.e. "we can't make it look right in real time." Obviously backporting 'Mech Fisting into MWO would be a titanic task well beyond what little piddling effort Piranha's willing to put into the game...but theoretically they now have far less excuse for not doing melee-capable 'Mechs in the future.

It's still the absolute longest of shots, and I still think we could get the effect of melee with a simple "Charge" function...but that was always the biggest of PGI's no-melee excuses. "We can't get it to work right and have proper weight in a real-time game." Clearly Piranha, you can. Just...y'know, let the rest of us have it sometime too, not just the MW5 people who didn't bother helping your company out when you were promising the moon and ended up delivering cheese.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Valdarion Silarius, on 14 September 2021 - 09:47 AM, said:

If we get melee in a workable state, then I want to slap a light with my Rifleman IIC barrels.

and in a real Mechfight , the Barrels wrecked faster after it ,as the Light Mech ...what more massive ? the Barrels or the Amor of the Light;) and Melee Weapons great against Bombers and VTOLS for it better 3 Heatsinks or 3 t Ammo

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 17 September 2021 - 02:09 AM.