Melee is quite janky

[WarMage]

Hey guys,

New player. Been testing the combat system quite a bit. Melee is probably the worst offender. Super janky. Sometimes you can hit, other time you don't sometimes your attack reset if you click too fast thus hitting nothing..... wtf is going on with that ? Makes melee a RNG mess.

As for firearms, I'm not that far into the game but it's, again, a 50/50 bet that a NPC will shoot you through cover. Been killed through wall before from a shotgun. Or if I hide behind the same cover as someone else but on the opposite side and try to shoot him all my bullets get stopped by said cover but then he gets up and shoot me in the face even if I'm crouched ? The f ?

[Rotorist]

you don’t want to just smash the melee button or it’ll just reset your attack. stay a good distance away and time your attack. use power attacks by holding lmb or rmb.

could you please tell me which cover was giving you trouble? over the years i have been finding and fixing these covers to make sure player can shoot from it without getting blocked. looks i still missed some. thank you.

[WarMage]

I appreciate the reply.
I'll try to get back to you with the exact cover but I've started a new save so it'll take a while to get back there to give you a proper description.

I don't hate the game, I like the Stalkers vibes, I think it could be fun to play but the fighting mechanics are, as far as I can tell, either very difficult to master or janky. For another example, it's not rare that I run up to a NPC to melee him and he'll just dance around me, passing through my body while I pull my arm back to swing and dodge the swing by getting behind me before the swing can come back and hit ahead. That's quite frustrating.

Edit
Also adding one more thing. If you're trying to sneak, once you kill one guy and the other NPC have been alerted, even if they haven't "seen you" and aren't "shooting" if you circle around them from afar they'll automatically change from one side to the other side of the cover they're taking cover from ..... just to be "on the right side". They shouldn't even know where I am.... so why is the AI having the NPC switch over ? Can't flank anything because of that...... then what's the point of sneaking around ?

Edit 2
And what about the NPC that can instantly turn around and shoot you point blank in the face with perfect accuracy the one tenth of a second after you've smacked them on the back of the head with a crowbar ? If the guy isn't dead he should be staggered for a while. At least a second. That should allow me to follow up with yet another hit. One more thing that makes melee quite weak and dangerous.

Edit 3
Seems gun have a lot of "stagger" right. So that guy point blank empty his pistol into me right. My guy stagger a lot and it delay my follow up melee attack 2-3 seconds until I finally get one off and finish him. So.... why gun stagger but melee don't at all ?

[Rotorist]

Originally posted by WarMage:

I appreciate the reply.
I'll try to get back to you with the exact cover but I've started a new save so it'll take a while to get back there to give you a proper description.

I don't hate the game, I like the Stalkers vibes, I think it could be fun to play but the fighting mechanics are, as far as I can tell, either very difficult to master or janky. For another example, it's not rare that I run up to a NPC to melee him and he'll just dance around me, passing through my body while I pull my arm back to swing and dodge the swing by getting behind me before the swing can come back and hit ahead. That's quite frustrating.

Edit
Also adding one more thing. If you're trying to sneak, once you kill one guy and the other NPC have been alerted, even if they haven't "seen you" and aren't "shooting" if you circle around them from afar they'll automatically change from one side to the other side of the cover they're taking cover from ..... just to be "on the right side". They shouldn't even know where I am.... so why is the AI having the NPC switch over ? Can't flank anything because of that...... then what's the point of sneaking around ?

Edit 2
And what about the NPC that can instantly turn around and shoot you point blank in the face with perfect accuracy the one tenth of a second after you've smacked them on the back of the head with a crowbar ? If the guy isn't dead he should be staggered for a while. At least a second. That should allow me to follow up with yet another hit. One more thing that makes melee quite weak and dangerous.

Melee against humans is very difficult unless you can one-hit kill them. I know I might have misled you into doing that when I give you a crowbar and instructed you to kill the border patrols with it, but those border patrols are weak, so you can one-hit kill them. For humans in the zone, you will need a better weapon with a lot of arm strength to pull it off, or you have to plan out two or three power attacks at them. If you are the stealth-kill kind of player, a little bit later you'll be able to get the Garrote to strangle them.

I agree that their reaction is too robotic when you melee them. I think they should stumble each time you hit them from the back when they don't see you, giving you a chance to hit them again. I just never expect player to melee humans so it was never a suggestion that got brought up.

For now, I think you should stick to the guns and use the cover designated by the icon when you press X, but I'd like to know which ones were giving you trouble (a screenshot would be easy for you to show without having to type an essay lol) so I can fix it.

Thank you for your feedback and patience!

[WarMage]

That's a great answer.

Following the game beginning and tutorial it effectively led me to think that going melee was an option albeit a slow and steady one. That trying to "stealth kill" my way through certain obstacle would be possible. The idea was reinforced by the mention of a chokehold in the skills and yes the border guards scenario.

I like challenges so I don't mind repeating the same map / attack until I can wipe out a camp just the way I want to. But even after 3 hours of testing melee through the potato farm quest I can say with certainty that there's way too much RNG involved.

Of all my melee only attempts :
3 succeeded with 0 HP lost
8 succeeded with more than 50% HP lost
Most of the rest were wipe or I had to pull out my pistol to kill that one too annoying shotty NPC that tend to be laser precise and pivot like a freaking hydrolic turret.

Well... I guess I'll wait to get a better melee weapon and like you suggested get more "arm strength" to one shot stuff.

I don't mind using gun it's just that I enjoy conserving ammo whenever possible.

[Rotorist]

Originally posted by WarMage:

That's a great answer.

Following the game beginning and tutorial it effectively led me to think that going melee was an option albeit a slow and steady one. That trying to "stealth kill" my way through certain obstacle would be possible. The idea was reinforced by the mention of a chokehold in the skills and yes the border guards scenario.

I like challenges so I don't mind repeating the same map / attack until I can wipe out a camp just the way I want to. But even after 3 hours of testing melee through the potato farm quest I can say with certainty that there's way too much RNG involved.

Of all my melee only attempts :
3 succeeded with 0 HP lost
8 succeeded with more than 50% HP lost
Most of the rest were wipe or I had to pull out my pistol to kill that one too annoying shotty NPC that tend to be laser precise and pivot like a freaking hydrolic turret.

Well... I guess I'll wait to get a better melee weapon and like you suggested get more "arm strength" to one shot stuff.

I don't mind using gun it's just that I enjoy conserving ammo whenever possible.

wouldn't it be nice to get the garrote and strangle them? it's usually a very addictive way to silently kill, lol

[Nodo]

I do find it strange that more scrawny characters don't have reliable stealth gameplay. It's counterintuitive that if you want to play stealth at the beginning of the game then you actually need a really muscular guy to do so.

[*****]

I think the game may benefit a "super specialisation" of a melee expert... a character type making melee playable...

[BeefChunks]

doom slayer class that gives you an instant death sword and multiplies your health, movement, speed, and stamina by 10 /j