Ideas for an overhauled melee combat

I’VE FINALLY FINISHED THIS THING (Postponed it several times)

Maybe we can all agree that melee needs to be enhanced. I had already my own thoughts on that, but I decided to make it because I think that there’s lack of in-depth posts about it. Also, was formulating my ideas in order to complement and develop some existant ideas further, also adding some new ones compatible to ideas like these (and other ones).

WARNING: lacked of audiovisual content, as I couldn’t find any of it to explain ideas better. Expect loads of text.

Weapons and attacks rework

Starting with the basics, talking about tweaked and likely more detailed classification of weapons/tools, strenght and general offensive usage.

Weapons categories
  • Blunt: intended as all those melee weapons or tools designed to hit with solid and brute impact force, causing bruising and crushing damage to the opponent. These would be hammers, bats, crowbars, etc.

image

  • Bladed: these are any kind of weapon or tool with a bladed edge (most of these made of metal) designed to slash and cutting apart at the opponent. These would be knives, axes, scythes, etc.

image

  • Piercing: weapons or tools mainly designed for stabbing, piercing through the opponent causing high damage in a concentrated wound area (bullets do this same, but at range). These would be stakes, pickaxes, pitchforks, etc. (I also suggest a bit more of variety for this type, e.g. stakes, chisels, hand drills, etc.)

image

  • Other: these would be weapons or tools that have an specific or unique type of damage that doesn’t fit in three previous cathegories. E.g.: blowtorches (fire), tasers (if added; electric), etc.

image

Melee strength

Determined by skills plus held weapon, doesn’t just determine the damage you cause to other player, but also determines how much probabilities you have of disarming an enemy upon a strong hit (blunt weapons being the best for this purpose). Also, strength determines how severe harm effects will be (bleeding, broken bones).

Charged attacks should remain the same as current mechanics: stronger, yet slower and stamina consuming, also having stunning/shoving values depending on strength.

Attack styles

The kind of attacks you can perform depends on the type of weapon/tool you’re holding, as it may be used accordingly to weapon’s capabilities. Every attack type should have their own damage type, strength and speed, but all of these should be able to be charged.

  • Swing/sweep: basic attack for both bladed and blunt melee, which may affect several enemies if used wisely. In 3.x you can only do this on you main hand’s direction, but in Unturned II should be enabled to do it side to side (like in Hotline Miami).

  • Chop: downward attack, effectively performed by all melee. Strongest attack type that may stun and/or disarm the enemy.

  • Jab: direct and frontal, mainly for one-handed and piercing melee. May stun enemies and push them away if strong enough.

References (self-experience)

Unturned
No More Room In Hell
Old School RuneScape
Hotline Miami

Weapon stance: weapons that can be held in more than single way can vary their attack types depending on current stance, e.g. reverse knives, on/off blowtorches and/or chainsaws, etc. (NMRIH and Cry of Fear as references)

Throwables

Theoretically, every single item ingame should be throwable. It could work with a key designed for dropping any held item, and if there’s a case on which the players want to throw it far away or to someone else, then hold the key and release.

It comes to terms of this topic when a melee weapon such as knives, hatchets, javelins, etc., can also be thrown to cause damage. For this, I suggest holding the drop key, then clicking to throw (just releasing the key would result in a non-offensive throw). (NMRIH as main reference)

New mechanics

Starting out with some ideas for new melee useful basic mechanics:

Dodging

Can either work by double tapping in a direction or by holding a specific key while moving. Just like jumping, it consumes stamina when used (sidestep length and stamina spent determined by skills). (CoF as main reference)

Bashing/shoving

Meant to push enemies away. If using guns, available as secondary melee attack for stunning and dealing moderate blunt damage (stabbing if bayonet). Has cooldown and consumes a small amount of stamina (bash force, cooldown time and stamina consumed determined by skills). (NMRIH as main reference)

  • Tackle: occurs if used against anybody while sprinting, for overthrowing and disarming the enemy. Also consumes more stamina than regular shoving and it’s usable against weak objects to break them, e.g. doors, glass, etc.
Blocking

When blocking, any incoming melee attack will be blocked or deviated, having a small endurance bar (or increasing suppression blur) that indicates how much you can resist before overwhelmed by attacks therefor lowering your guard. If last blow before overwhelmed is too strong, you may get disarmed (overall endurance for this principle up to skills).

Note: you can only block attacks effectively if holding a 2-handed weapon agaisnt another 2-h or a single handed one. One-hand attacks would rather be deviated rather than blocked, but as those are faster than 2-h ones, those should be usually dodged. (some medieval games and SW: BF2 [Jedi’s blocking] as main references)

Ambushing and grappling

For engaing surprise attacks at enemies, having to choose between assassination or subduing the enemy when reaching it from its back, just like in Metro series. As I’m not sure if unconsciousness feature will be applied in game, subduing an enemy should lead directly to restraining, whereas if applied getting the enemy unconscious should be the third alternative to melee ambushes (or just unconscious, then restraining).

Being subdued when ambushed can be counteracted in the very last moment by grappling with the enemy. The skilled a player is, the more time available there is to react. Subduing an enemy after tackling could also be a very useful workaround when facing an enemy with a gun (can be counteracted by grappling too).

It was a pretty hard post to develop without the help of audiovisual material. However, if anyone got useful additions to point out, please comment below. I want to know your thoughts!

  • All ideas are good and accurate
  • What if instead…? (comment)
  • I don’t like these ideas
0 voters
9 Likes

c a t h e g o r i e s

s t r e n g h t

Really man? C’mon.

(I laughed a lot either way)

Damn this is really good in general, only gripe (which isnt valid) is the title, it sounds a little click baity idk almost like it seems like this is the actual melee system in 4.x

Amazing in general

Edited :+1:

Small thing, I suggest shields to be added, from a metal trash can lid, to military grade bullet resistant shield.

Almost unbreakable guard, bash attack (can stun and push back), possably dual wielded (like lid and small police riot), and complate damage absorption untill a damage cap (like paintball for lid, to assault rounds for military) then it’s a damage reduction.

Thought?

(Also passive armor when equipped and “shot”)

Also small, melee weapons act as a tiny shield agenst bullets, but it’s Basicly worthless (hitbix to tiny to matter) but when hit, little-no damage, may disarm, and same for held guns.

(Shotgunned someone’s mini-gun? Well it no longer works anymore, so yay)

Anyone kinda with me?

2 Likes

I like most ideas except surprise takedown “assassination” kind of things. You can sneak up on anybody in this game if you max sneaky beaky and crouch along. Having an insta kill or even insta knock being close to someone is simply overpowered and I can’t see a way to balance it, everything else seems both unnecessarily complicated while being very reasonable.

While this seems like a great idea, it raises some problems.
A: It would make it too complicated to learn for new players, and might scare new players away from the game (They might think the rest of the game is like that as well).
B: Like the MC 1.9 update, it would probably make a lot of people angry. A lot of people like Unturned because of its simplicity (Unlike, for example, DayZ!), and this would probably spark outrage.
C: It seems to correlate with my favourite saying, “Realism for the sake of realism.” I like the idea of blocking, but dodging, shoving, grappling just seems too realistic/complicated.

Still, i’d give my right arm for a reworked melee system, if its properly balanced.

besides grappling, this is like Dying Light levels of complicated at most, which shoves…basically every one of your complaints out the window. because Dying Light('s combat) isn’t complicated.

I like all of these, except for the assassination, this isn’t a comical game like TF2, where this kind of thing makes sense. I see this working in 2 scenarios, 1, it’s a knife and 2, you hit vitals, like lungs and heart. Oh, and if the person being attacked is experiencing any kind of lag or desync then the could be killed even if they’re not even close or even looking at the attacker. I believe Meele should be different in 4.x, but I believe that sneaking isn’t a good idea in terms of a player, at that point you should just shoot them in the head if you have a gun.

Still, it’s Unturned we’re talking about. Hell, half of the players barely know english. I’m not sure how they would deal with so many new controls and techniques.

in 2.0 you had to go through like 7 different crafting materials/recipes/whatever just to be able to craft a crate. i think Unturned players can handle a little complexity.

Still. I think a lot of posts have managed to implement stuff like this in a better and more simple way, that doesn’t include 500 extra controls or fancy movement.

oooo, double tapping a or d, or pressing a key to make people piss off. sooooo complicated. /s

i’d argue it’s insulting that you think people are so stupid that they can’t handle what are essentially very basic ways to make melee combat more interesting. not even the *stupidest parts of the unturned community are that stupid.

1 Like

Well this is an entierly different game. Just liie 2.0 amd 3.0 they will be vastly different. This game is aiming f0for sirvival and realism thus making it more compøex. The kids who want to stay in simple 3.0 they can.
Grammar issue because im on phone and it wont let me check my spelling.

He is thinking about the 6 yr old kids that play the game ;p

I think a crowbar is an other, as it has blunt possibility and piercing possibility.

@Peedeoo7 I didn’t mention anything about shields because Idk if they’re being considered, but they would be a great addition. Existing shields in wide tiers (makeshift wooden/police riot/makeshift metal/military ballistic[also metal]) would be an awesome addition to season up both melee and gunfights a bit more.

I didin’t get this part, honestly.

Before answering everyone else, I want to clarify that mot of this wasn’t that well thought nor explanatory enough, as I was very burned out by that moment. But atm I’ve thought better of everything posted here so we can get to better resolutions according to everyone’s concerns.

  • Actually, difficulty of sneaking up on people is relative; I’ve sneaked upon players having ‘0’ sneak skills, lol.
  • Insta kill is only for backstabs, which is already hard to accomplish on most situations. However, if it results OP, it might be changed to hits from the back being very suppressing.
  • I stated that knocking out people might not be added, but if so, knocking someone by ambush is realistic enough.
  • Making it complex won’t make players flee unless it’s broken.
  • I personally liked MC 1.9; PvP before that is so silly IMO (current combat system isn’t complete and can actually be improved).
  • Dodging is simple; shoving works to keep zombies away and avoid grappling, which can be made simple by making it doable on specific situations and with not that much clicking/tapping in between.
  • Unturned actually is, started as and will still be a “comical” game, despite the direction towards realism it’s taking. Regardless, assassination makes much more sense in serious games, like Metro series.
  • You can assassinate with any weapon strong enough to do so, and aiming to te head isn’t a bad idea. However, assassinations might have a short killing animation like in EFT.
  • What if you don’t have a gun? Workarounds are necessary. Also, it’s needless to remember everyone here how popular PvP melee is currently (zero), and it’s because of it’s tasteless simplicity and the much higher reliability of guns.

In fact, melee fits on the cathegory on which their main damage relies upon, despite being able to be used with a secondary style causing a secondary damage type, as knives can deal both bladed and piercing damage and pickaxes deal blunt and pierce as well, and the list goes on… Weapons having just 1 type of damage (with barely few exceptions) is a 3.x thing that I want to see gone.

the 6 year olds can get out for all i care

1 Like

Maybe melee weapons should have hit paths rather than hit scanning. If an attack hits an equipped item, then it could cause no damage/reduced damage/damage to the item/suppression blur/disarm/whatever. With a shield for example the blocking function could stay as raising it in a static block to intercept blows, but with a top heavy or flexible weapon, such static blocks would be so ridiculously impractical, I would suggest instead the blocking key be used to swing the weapon in a figure eight motion.
The assassination/takedown/grappling/subduing/ambushing/restraining system IMO is missing something; the items players have equipped should impact how successful each player will be. For example, a musket with a bayonet may be a decent melee weapon, but if a player with a knife manages to begin grappling against the player with the bayonet, the player with the knife should almost certainly win.

As for throwing, I don’t think every item needs to be throwable and I don’t think we need a key for accidentally dropping what your holding (If you’re managing your inventory you can do it in the inventory interface.) I’d say the same key could be used for meleing with guns and throwing throwables.

2 Likes