Melee Combat Need IMPROVEMENT!

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I'm wondering how V's variable movement speed will affect a melee build, or if the base speed can be upgraded. As it is in the demo, V moves quite slow compared to other FPS games. And there's a gradual increase in speed from motionless to full walking. This is common in TP games but the vast majority of FP games eliminate it or drastically reduce it.

IIRC there were abilities or cybernetic upgrades that increased movement speed. There are dashes too for momentarily boosts. That and i think some upgrades like Gorilla Arm might affect the melee in some way.
 
I think it's worth noting that the melee still looks -fun-,

Fun is subjective, and unless I missed something, knowing that I will have to hug my opponents to attack them both because the game is in 2D, and I saw no distance indications, nor I saw an attacking movement really doesn't help, at least for me.
 


After watching the fight again I think the other 2 biggest problems with cyberpunk melee alonside the absence of wounds and weak sound effects are:

- all the punches and blocking animations look the same.
The punches are always the same straight robotic movement. Melee could use more random animations regardless of V's level, such as uppercuts, right hooks... stuff like that.

- The camera doesn't sway enough when the player throws a punch or gets hit. Unlike Faith in Mirror's Edge, we don't feel the weight of the moves because of that. This gives also the impression that V doesn't use body movements to accompany a hit and that the hits don't connect with the opponents or the player.
 
Right now V is hitting the point which is designated by the aiming point. I think this should be changed and the V's arms and enemy animations should be synchronized together during the combat, so it would be considered as one animated object. This would allow to create more realistic animations overall, with better hit feedback. Also, paradoxically, it would make implementing h-t-h mechanics based on skills and parameter easier. Player could still choose which areas he wants to hit, by aiming at specific body part, but the actual hit and how hard it is, would be numbers-determined.
 
"You should rather be grateful they even have an option to melee" what a sad declaration kind of person who accepts anything without complaining lol.

Better than to not accept anything and complain constantly. I accept melee the way it is because it looks good enough to me and acceptable, being snarky wont change my opinion, if you are allowed to complain then I am allowed to stand by what's there. It's a great game, you'll buy it regardless of your complaining.
 
Better than to not accept anything and complain constantly. I accept melee the way it is because it looks good enough to me and acceptable, being snarky wont change my opinion, if you are allowed to complain then I am allowed to stand by what's there. It's a great game, you'll buy it regardless of your complaining.
as i said in a previous post i also intend to buy the game regardless of that but my enthusiasm for the game will not prevent me from criticizing what is weak in the game which for me was hand-to-hand combat.
 
Battle system looks like one of many melee first person systems out there. Nothing new, nothing outright bad. And visual feedback won't change a thing for me. I don't like first person melee because it's never satisfying or comfortable. I play games for many years and I'm yet to see one that I'll like. If a game has melee, the first thing I check is if it has third person perspective. If not - god help me... It's better be brief or simple enough so it doesn't get on my nerves.

I totally agree here. First person melee just can never look good. In order to appreciate the character movements and detail, for the action to feel cinematic, it would need to be third person.

The melee that we've seen looks just the same as other games; not great, not poor. Same kind of press button to slash as I remember from arcade games from early 2000s.

However I strongly believe it will do its job for a game like CP2077. The immersion comes from elsewhere.
 
Let's not devolve this into another perspective thread, please. One post deleted.

I think there's more to a combat system then the "cinematic" feel to it. That's just there to complement it not the other way around. Mechanically, it looks pretty solid. There are different moves like blocking, dodging, light/heavy attacks, punches, kicks, counterattacks. Now, for a stats driven combat system.. That's A LOT. And I' m willing to bet there are quite a few more we've not seen yet.

So the animations are a bit wonky.. big deal.. I see comparisons with Mirrors Edge and UFC.. OK, like I said, stats driven driven combat - that's quite different from a strictly move based combat system where there's considerably less variation in character damage output.

Games to compare this to are your first person RPG. Like Skyrim or Kingdom Come Deliverance.
 
Let's not devolve this into another perspective thread, please. One post deleted.

I think there's more to a combat system then the "cinematic" feel to it. That's just there to complement it not the other way around. Mechanically, it looks pretty solid. There are different moves like blocking, dodging, light/heavy attacks, punches, kicks, counterattacks.

Actually there is more than just a "cinematic" feel problem associated. I mean, I didn't remember seeing a mechanics which gives the player a sense of the range of its melee attack, and seeing that range is an associated problem.

Correct me if I'm wrong, because before posting I've watched the katana video again and didn't see any indicator of whether of not the enemy is at melee weapon range.
 
Actually there is more than just a "cinematic" feel problem associated. I mean, I didn't remember seeing a mechanics which gives the player a sense of the range of its melee attack, and seeing that range is an associated problem.

Correct me if I'm wrong, because before posting I've watched the katana video again and didn't see any indicator of whether of not the enemy is at melee weapon range.

Sounds like something that can be rather easily overcome with a bit of practice, so it's not a problem for me. That or the game does a trick in which it "pushes" you towards your opponent to connect. I've seen that in quite a few, actually. Can't really tell if that's also the case here unless i'm playing it.
 
Games to compare this to are your first person RPG. Like Skyrim or Kingdom Come Deliverance.

Skyrim have light RPG element, nothing great or too bad and combat is really weak, melee in KCD work if you do 1v1 duel style, the moment one more enemy come to fight you combat fall apart.
 
I think there's more to a combat system then the "cinematic" feel to it. That's just there to complement it not the other way around. Mechanically, it looks pretty solid. There are different moves like blocking, dodging, light/heavy attacks, punches, kicks, counterattacks. Now, for a stats driven combat system.. That's A LOT. And I' m willing to bet there are quite a few more we've not seen yet.

Yeah, mechanically it's fine. It's not incredibly robust but doesn't need to be. There is enough there to keep it interesting.

So the animations are a bit wonky.. big deal.. I see comparisons with Mirrors Edge and UFC.. OK, like I said, stats driven driven combat - that's quite different from a strictly move based combat system where there's considerably less variation in character damage output.

Animations being wonky is sort of a big deal though.

The player character animations, or what you see from the character perspective, aren't terrible. They could be cleaned up and polished a bit but nothing major is wrong there. The NPC animations are quite bad, IMO. That is the part I'd raise issues with.

The AI/behavior looked a little odd in that twin fight too. NPC's shouldn't turn and punch air twice or side-step/dodge in a random direction when not even engaged with the player character.

It's not the end of the world but if that twin fight encounter is the state of the hand to hand combat across the board it will be a problem. It might be something people can ignore but it's still there. Fortunately, I doubt it will look this way in the finished product.
 
First person melee just can never look good.
i wouldn't be so absolutist. maybe first person melee in an rpg, where the mechanical design of melee combat has to work in conjunction with a host of other mechanics, that may be true. or with a certain type of unarmed combat is animated specifically. remember, V's perspective is fixed even when they dodge. this is probably so the player doesn't get motion sickness from what V sees bounding about the screen every time you duck, weave, dodge and fake. first person melee can look good, it's just hard. and considering the implementation of every other hard af combat mechanic in this game, i can handle there being an L in the unarmed melee.
 
They shouldn't and they don't. Them punching air is the result of V dodging.

Go to 0:57-0:59 in the video linked by Blupixel. The guy in the grey shirt looks like he dodges twice for no reason whatsoever. He's on the left.

At ~1:08 in the same video watch the guy in the green shirt. V dodged the other guy and went backwards. Our friend green shirt was slightly behind, to V's left before launching those attacks. Yeah, for a split second V was probably in his melee range (mid dodge, it looks like, about the half-way point of the dodge). This does look like a case of V dodging his attacks. But he may as well have been arbitrarily swinging at air.

The earlier post by Sard covered most of the other problem areas.

I'm not sure if it's a case of animations running slow or what. Everything those NPC's do in that fight looked incredibly sluggish for the most part. Again, I hope it's just not fully finished yet.
 
Go to 0:57-0:59 in the video linked by Blupixel.

Yes, i saw that. Could have been a faint, or whatever.

The earlier post by Sard covered most of the other problem areas.

Overall there's nothing wrong with the combat. It could be better, yes. But so far as HtH melee goes it looks better than in most other first person action RPG's. It's mostly a matter of how much you expect from it.
 
That or the game does a trick in which it "pushes" you towards your opponent to connect.

It's actually not a trick, I don't know much about other IRL weapons handling, but in Kenjutsu making that step is the most common thing to do, and I would love to see that in C2077.
 
Overall there's nothing wrong with the combat. It could be better, yes. But so far as HtH melee goes it looks better than in most other first person action RPG's. It's mostly a matter of how much you expect from it.
I mean, you compared it to Kingdom Come which afaik is a small studio with little backing and Bethesda RPGs [...]

Being an RPG should never mean that it's to the detriment of the combat or feel of the game.

[...] I would also expect quality on par or close to with RDR2 given the length of development time, the exclusion of multiple perspectives, that they're the largest European studio and that they've claimed they want to have that level of polish.

It is what it is, but we shouldn't be happy with "passable" or "adequate". The game will be fun, and I'm sure it will be great, but fans should always be critical of a product, otherwise it's just to our detriment and theirs.
 
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