A18's melee system, I dislike it.

[jeromeN7]

I hope A19 will have better melee combat. From what I've seen I'm the only person who thinks melee is half broken in A18. I recently noticed how I slowly quit playing after A18 came out and I have over 1100 hours played. Melee in A18 seems to be one of the biggest culprits. More often then not I feel like I should have hit a target but didn't.

 

What I think is wrong with melee:

-The weapons have terrible hit detection, and stop mid swing once they reach the center of the screen.

-The area effect on melee weapons is completely inaccurate and often hurts your friends, it happens often to me and my friend.

-With some melee weapons, the center of the screen gets obstructed by the weapon itself during the swing, making it harder adjust aim mid animation to hit the target.

 

What I think could make it better:

-It shouldn't be so easy to hit friends with area effect damage.

-Melee weapons should always hit in the center of the screen and even better match the surface area of the weapon being used.

-Without proper procedural animations, I think it was better when the weapons swing arch just continued on, for me the melee animations felt more natural in A17.

-If possible the center of the screen should rarely be obstructed by the melee weapon during the swing animation, or never completely obstruct it, until the target is hit.

-It would be a nice feature if there was procedural animation hit detection. If you hit a target the weapon stops, if you miss it doesn't, etc.

[Sydious]

I agree that the melee system is very poor compared to previous builds.  It's of my opinion that it had to do with the "glancing blow" system they put in place.  More often then not I end up hitting the wall or ground behind the zombie even with the cross hairs right between the eyes.  

[beHypE]

I can't say that i'm struggling too much when battling zombies that are standing. But dude, the amount of times i'm hitting the ground when i'm trying to headshot a knocked down zombie is insane.

 

Sadly melee is already very quickly outshined by weapons by design, it being so wonky doesn't help keeping it relevant past the first week or so.

[Viktoriusiii]

its better than A17... but absolutely horrible when compared to A16. No idea why they thought it needed changing. It was so intuitive and was working more than fine

[Shelgeyr]

  

1 hour ago, beHypE said:

I can't say that i'm struggling too much when battling zombies that are standing. But dude, the amount of times i'm hitting the ground when i'm trying to headshot a knocked down zombie is insane.

  Yep, totally this. I'm so sick and tired of punching floors.

 

1 hour ago, beHypE said:

Sadly melee is already very quickly outshined by weapons by design, it being so wonky doesn't help keeping it relevant past the first week or so.

Another point I'm going to have to agree on.
Even at level 90, with max ranks in Brawling, Flurry of Blows, and Sexual Tyrannosaurus, I'm still carrying an AK-47 (with no points invested in Machine Guns) for those oh sh*t moments when melee just doesn't feel up to the challenge.

When my "untrained" weapon bails out my "trained" one - there's an imbalance.
Not calling it a "balance problem" because "guns > fists" is sort of a fact of life, but the only justification I can honestly see for using melee weapons at all is to conserve ammunition and the only reason to spend points on melee (or unarmed) perks is that they perform really poorly with zero point investment.

That said, the rationale of "I'm gonna train at <melee skill> until it's a viable option for most of my zombie encounters and save my bullets for those times when melee just doesn't cut it" makes real-world sense to me, and not having to put points into gun skills to make them good enough to pull your fat out of the fire is also pretty realistic.
I suspect a gun tied to a stat I haven't boosted (like Rifles with my Perception of 1) would feel like garbage, so I'm pretty happy to be using a Machine Gun and at least getting the benefit of the points I spent raising my Fortitude.

[Pichun1]

I noticed the same problem. If I try a headshot I often miss the hit so I stop doing that and just point to the chest (and I miss some hits too).

[FileMachete]

Makes me wonder how much of this is due to the 'can't hit them when in x animation' bit?

Which I've really noticed in a18 using firearms. There are some very clear positions/movements where z's are simply not killable.

 

And saying 'killable' as it seems in some instances, the damage is dealt, but only enough to leave 1 hp or something, cause once the animation ends, any further damage and they die.

 

Pretty noticible using an SMG. Get a feel for how many, single-shot, body shots it takes to kill zed X, then try hosing them while watching the animations & xp notification.

[marbu]

Sorry to say, but Melee was never great in every alpha...

Besides this, 20 ping, strong server, 60+ FPS and you see zombies sliding around when standing up... or when they start running they slide too... Also missing footstep sounds / dogs is in every alpha too.

 

I dont care about new content anymore, they should finally fixup melee and fix the damn bugs.

[Rathskeller]

I want to jump on this thread and agree with the general consensus, I never played A17 but have played some earlier builds and now playing A18 and yes it's like playing whack-a-mole or whatever that game is called where you're smacking a mallet at moles or gophers that randomly pop up from different holes.  It was funny as hell at first but quickly turns into ranting and raving, yelling obsceneties, guzzling large amounts of my favorite beverage (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and basically raising my BP.

 

Please Pimps.... improve the melee!!!!

[asmosnuts]

Wrong wrong and wrong! That's what they'll tell you. "We love the new system and it's better for new players!"  Right up to A24 when its suddenly ditched in favour of a new "cool" system that new players will just luuuuuurve!

   OK sarcasm but this is retreading old ground, player opinions aren't valued and i'm sure our resident apologist will be along shortly to tell me how wrong i am! "cough Roland cough". Us elder players nooo nufffin Jon Snow, its the new player experience that counts! 

   Your're fine to be a playtester and bughunter, just dont have an opinion on whats wrong with the game. It just won't do chaps! Leave them to fix what aint broke and spend a year or three on a system that gets thrown out again and not bother with melee, map generation etc etc etc

[jeromeN7]

Just about every system in the game has been reworked many times. Sometimes the new system is worse then the previous, melee is a fine example of this cycle. When melee in A18 works I think its pretty fun, but not being able hit what I'm clearly aiming at, is broken.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Shelgeyr The AK 47 beats melee because it fires a ton of bullets per minute. Ofc it kills faster and better than melee. That also works that way in RL. Or do you think you could hit more targets in the same time beeing a skilled swordsman than someone holding a gun that fires 600 rounds per minute? 

 

That said, melee is freaking weird. You hit when you shouldn´t because you are too far away, same for getting hit. Then you see the freaking bat going trough their body without a hit. And how tf do you miss with a baseball bat when the Z is 30cm in front of your face? That´s impossible to miss.

 

 

[Shelgeyr]

3 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@Shelgeyr The AK 47 beats melee because it fires a ton of bullets per minute. Ofc it kills faster and better than melee. That also works that way in RL. Or do you think you could hit more targets in the same time beeing a skilled swordsman than someone holding a gun that fires 600 rounds per minute? 

Did you read, like ... anything I said?

[Boidster]

I've had pretty good luck with spears...by throwing them. Well actually I throw two then stab with the 3rd. Once I got the distance worked out, it started working alright for small groups of zombies. I used to like the sledgehammer in A15/A16, but for a mix of the reasons mentioned upthread it didn't really work for me in A18. My co-op partner is trying the pugilist/iron knuckles build and so far he's pretty effective even against wandering hordes so long as he can isolate them. If ferals show up he switches to the AK though. I throw my spears and then switch to the pump shotty.

 

The chainsaw is pretty fun as a melee weapon, but of course none of the stealth benefits. Headshots have an above-average chance of decapitation.

[quyxkh]

On 6/10/2020 at 7:40 AM, Shelgeyr said:

Even at level 90, with max ranks in Brawling, Flurry of Blows, and Sexual Tyrannosaurus, I'm still carrying an AK-47 (with no points invested in Machine Guns) for those oh sh*t moments when melee just doesn't feel up to the challenge.

When my "untrained" weapon bails out my "trained" one - there's an imbalance.

Of course there's an imbalance. Weapons have strengths and weaknesses. Low kill rate is the downside for melee. High cost is the downside for bullets and grenades. Collateral damage is the downside for explosives generally. Try to get by with just one skill, you're going to get et. 

[Worrun]

Totally agree. I have learned how to use the new melee system quite well and have absolutely no issues using melee against any number of zombies, but it is kinda' broken

[Shelgeyr]

5 hours ago, quyxkh said:

On 6/10/2020 at 8:40 AM, Shelgeyr said:

When my "untrained" weapon bails out my "trained" one - there's an imbalance.

Of course there's an imbalance. Weapons have strengths and weaknesses. Low kill rate is the downside for melee. High cost is the downside for bullets and grenades. Collateral damage is the downside for explosives generally. Try to get by with just one skill, you're going to get et. 

Seriously wondering how many people actually read entire posts before typing knee-jerk responses.

In case you missed it, here's the rest of what I said immediately after the part you quoted:

On 6/10/2020 at 8:40 AM, Shelgeyr said:

Not calling it a "balance problem" because "guns > fists" is sort of a fact of life, but the only justification I can honestly see for using melee weapons at all is to conserve ammunition and the only reason to spend points on melee (or unarmed) perks is that they perform really poorly with zero point investment.
That said, the rationale of "I'm gonna train at <melee skill> until it's a viable option for most of my zombie encounters and save my bullets for those times when melee just doesn't cut it" makes real-world sense to me, and not having to put points into gun skills to make them good enough to pull your fat out of the fire is also pretty realistic.

[quyxkh]

If there''s no complaint at all then you're just endlessly reposting elaborations, on ~a n00b with a machine gun can kill zeds lots faster than an MMA God with a machinegunjust fists~. F—ing duh.  Congratulations, you have reached diamond rank in that ever-popular game, "Captain Obvious".

 

If there's a point anywhere here, it's not in "not calling it a balance problem because [wall of text says what your point isn't]" because that doesn't say what your point *is*.

[Shelgeyr]

18 hours ago, quyxkh said:

If there's a point anywhere here, it's not in "not calling it a balance problem because [wall of text says what your point isn't]" because that doesn't say what your point *is*.

Really? That's odd, because I thought I was pretty clear.

Allow me to add bullet points to my original post so it's easier to spot.

On 6/10/2020 at 8:40 AM, Shelgeyr said:

• the only justification I can honestly see for using melee weapons at all is to conserve ammunition
• the only reason to spend points on melee (or unarmed) perks is that they perform really poorly with zero point investment.

Better?

[Viktoriusiii]

On 6/12/2020 at 12:45 PM, Shelgeyr said:

Seriously wondering how many people actually read entire posts before typing knee-jerk responses.

In case you missed it, here's the rest of what I said immediately after the part you quoted:

as a veteran of this forum, I can tell you that the number is close to zero. I have had arguments about things I never said and about things that I only partially said but within a completely different context. I have given praise to the game and the devs when it was justified, but every EVERY time when I gave criticism, I  was shot down. Sometimes belittleing, sometimes constructively but more often than not agressively or passive-agressive.

I get that not everyone can read every post. But there is a ton of people that will trash you for every criticism, no matter how valid. There are things that can be discussed. But a 33% positive rating on steam in the months of like overflow (because of that "comment for points thing steam held where every game got like 10-20% better recent ratings) is something that can not be ignored. And yet I was hailed a naysayer and I just need to wait.
Sometimes I feel people on this forum are an echochamber of love for the game. Even in the worst times, saying something bad always gets shot down.
To be fair, nobody official yet budded in here, but I think thats because this has been said multiple times and they just can't bother anymore.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Shelgeyr said:

Really? That's odd, because I thought I was pretty clear.

Allow me to add bullet points to my original post so it's easier to spot.

Better?

Is there a need for more justification? If ammo is easy to get in heaps, obviously no. If ammo is scarce (which I would expect in a survival game), mixing up melee and ranged may be a sensible move.

 

For me personally that is a big reason to use melee as I don't want to toil nearly every night in the mines to get the ammo for horde night

 

[quyxkh]

5 hours ago, Shelgeyr said:

Really? That's odd, because I thought I was pretty clear.

Allow me to add bullet points to my original post so it's easier to spot.

[

• the only justification I can honestly see for using melee weapons at all is to conserve ammunition
• the only reason to spend points on melee (or unarmed) perks is that they perform really poorly with zero point investment.

]

Better?

Okay, two things need to be said here. First and most important, I shouldn't have been so pissy about it. I'm embarrassed and sorry about that. Really.

 

The second is, what I was trying to say stands: what about that constitutes "imbalance"?  Try to kill all the zeds with bullets, you spend your life scrounging for bullet mats. Try to kill all the zeds with iron-age tech, you're going to die. What you're complaining about isn't imbalance, you have to balance your weapon use,  it's what *constitutes* game balance. Me, I think smelting dukes is a problem, but I like my game balance a bit more on the desperate side than most, you should have to invent or imagine your tactics, not just find some push-this-next "I win!" button.

[RestInPieces]

Wasn't the point of this thread melee animations and hit detection? Balance is a completely different discussion damn it.

 

 

[HungryZombie]

Does there need to be a point to using melee weapons beyond ammo conservation? Not seeing the problem.

[RestInPieces]

7 hours ago, HungryZombie said:

Does there need to be a point to using melee weapons beyond ammo conservation? Not seeing the problem.

The point is that when you decide to use melee weapons, for whatever reason, it would be great if melee felt more like this and less like that. Which would mean improving ragdolls, hit feedback animations (that are properly blended), hit detection and swing animations (atm only the machete's feel ok to me). They don't have to be of AAA quality, but they definitely can use some improvement all I'm saying.