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In action combat games, why is Melee always the most underpowered combat style?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,387
In games with more action combat, it always seem like Melee combat is underpowered to the ranged combat.
It places Melee at a huge disadvantage.
Takes the fun of playing a melee oriented charater. Usually force ranged specs on characters at al times to compete.
Melee armored knight is a popular role in RPG genre,
but in action combat games ranged beats melee.
So these two conflict with each other.
how can this issue be addressed?
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Got to agree with this person, especially on point three.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
I third that, OP sounds more like he's trying to troll and get some people heated rather than actually ask a question. Give us some examples, because I've played a lot of MMOs and I really don't know what you are talking about.
Every game is like this.
Name me one in MMO in the last 15 years that had super powerful melee compared to caster classes. It doesn't happen.
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That is kinda true, action MMO doesn't really make ranged more powerful. Having a ranged advantage automatically makes it easier usually.
So ranged is over powered because its ranged?
Can anyone tell me what happens when a rogue gets near a ranged, or a tank built for DPS?
Its a rhetorical question.
The ranged dies, and most of the times very fast.
Ranged is over-powered when at range.
Melee is over-powered when in, well, melee range.
Se how they balance out. It pure f****ng genius. And doesnt take much of an IQ to figure that one out.
An 8yr old can figure out a toon with a sword needs to be next to someone shooting arrows at them to "kill" them. And Im sure they can figure out that a person with a bow wants to stay away from a person with a sword.
I really dont think th OP is an idiot, so this must be a troll thread.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
I don't see action combat imbalancing ranged vs. melee performance. Could the imbalance seen be the comparing tank classes vs DPS?
seems to me if OP plays any mmo in general and doesn't know the difference between Sustained DPS and Burst DPS they are A.) Trolling or B.) If they are at least level 10 and don't know the difference by now they are too ignorant to be playing an MMO in the first place. Just my opinion.
P.S. It really was a stupid question which is why everyone is bashing you. My advice?
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Consider the source, people.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
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Wow, when's the last time you played an MMORPG? Implying a relationship between sustainability and attack range is some fairly outdated thinking.
Any decent game is going to balance PVE capabilities factoring in movement time differences and boss mechanics which favor one or the other. In any decent MMORPG melee characters tend to have enough movement capabilities that movement isn't a big factor anyway. Certainly that's been true in WOW for years.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It not just a problem of distance, but also a problem of accuracy and reloading time between shots.
See in historically combat, range suffers because you can't reload superfast while maintaining good accuracy.
However in MMOs you can because in MMOs we are spoiled by guns and our entire perception of range weapons is base on guns, and even developers suffer from the sin of designing range attacks based on gun's mechanic (all thje magic are also based on this principle). And that is where the problem lies.
If you play War of the Roses then you will see what is close to how range attacks really works before the age of gunpowder.
I'll even name two just from WOW:
1) The post-cataclysm protection paladin with his AOE shield throw of death...plate armor tank who regularly topped the DPS charts. They've been adjusted a bit but for a while they were ridiculous...and self-healing.
2) The current DPS Monk (Windwalker) which is also self-healing.
I know, I know... WOW jumped the shark a long time ago but you wanted some named... there you go
As a matter of fact, in WOW, casters are at a distinct disadvantage: no more DPS than anyone else and squishy as hell. I think their sole purpose in the game is to get hurt so healers have something to do.
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Lets look at solutions to this problem.
TSW restricted the range of ranged weapons, not sure ranged class fans liked that, but it worked.
CoH had Super travel powers to get a melee to his target quickly.
Space Marine used melee only jet packs to allow them to get in close quickly.
The best soultions have involved making melee more mobile, I think Space Marine is the way forward, give melee a way of closing distance fast and being hard to hit while they do so.
Ranged combat was very powereful in real life as well.
In the end, It's alright if range combat is powerful as long as you don't have unlimited arrows/ammo.
The GW2 warrior would like to have a word with you...
Because Action Combat in MMOs is non existent or sucks donkey balls?
Play Mount&Blade, Chivalry or War of the Roses and you will see, that Melee is everything but underpowered. But to be fair, all those games miss magic completely and magic could be the factor of gimping Melee, as it is the case for most not action combat based MMOs.. and especially CC magic like root, snare and mezz is the lonely dead of any melee character.
It's partly a matter of wording.
"Why is melee always underpowered" is much different than "What are some games where melee felt stronger than ranged classes?" Both are asking the same underlying question, and yet the first question would provoke much more irritated responses.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The reason why melee is often underpowered is because melee has an inherent disadvantage, range. And since the range is usually so small it makes it even more profound due to lag (e.g. you seem to be in range but due to lag you are not). So in effect it makes it much harder for melees to hit a ranged class.
This can be addressed in a number of ways and usually it is by making ranged classes frail so if they do get hit, they get hit for a lot. However since melees can be tanks you cannot give them too much damage as that would make it hard to balance them if they both can take and deal a lot of damage. For rogue type classes this is not an issue because they are also frail so their damage is often through the roof.
However one thing that a lot of devs fail to take into account is that ranged ammo should be limited and once they run out they have no choice to go melee, which puts them at a significant disadvantage. Mages have a limited amount of mana but they usually dont run out in the middle of a fight so that is rarely an issue.
So how I would balance this is to make ranged attacks more limited, so you have to hit or you run out of ammo, that would give the advantage to melee, if they are skilled enough to avoid the attacks and if the ranged is not skilled enough to land his limited number of attacks.
Also, one thing that often annoys me when playing a melee is that it is so easy to run away from a melee by zig zagging, strafing etc. I personally prefer a system like in AC 1, which mean that once you closed the gap, the melee would stick to his target and it would be very difficult for the target to un-stick (unless he landed a root spell or something).
Finally something that few games do right is that it allows ranged classes to keep using ranged attacks while in melee range and altthough that should be possible, it should also be very prone to interrupts. Why? Because ranged attacks are done at range and requires a degree of concentration. You try to shoot someone with a bow when he is in melee range and swinging an axe at you, it is very difficult. Same with spells, it should require concentration to cast a spell, so again if a melee is swinging an axe at you it should make it much more difficult to get a spell of.
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Pretty much all melee classes owned all of the range classes. It always bugged that shyt out of me how a "fencer" using a night stick or a Tera Kasi (sp?) could wtf own pretty much any Master BH, Pistoleer, or Riflemen in pre-cu.
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Maybe melee is under powered in action mmo's due to how dominant they usually are in standard mmorpgs. When I think back to DAOC and how easy it was to lock a mage or archer up, with a few instants, completely keeping them from using the things that make them what they are, i tend to think that melee has most of the advantages in PvP. Warlocks could drop some instants in your face and get some distance to punish you a bit, but in all honesty I cant think of another ranged class that most melee classes didnt walk all over.
With the newer generations of mmorpg's im constantly reminded every single time i play that most melee classes with have atleast 1 ability that instantly teleports them in your face. People love to moan about how ranged classes have range as an advantage but when the enemy can click a single button to counter your advantage, I simply do not understand the concept.
As far as action oriented MMO's are concerned, I still havnt seen many that fit the profile of "melee classes are weak". Tera for example, I had no trouble playing my lancer. Even in these action oriented games it seems that melee consists of two types, one deals tons of damage and the other has tons of crowd control. I simply do not see any evidence to substantiate your accusations. Maybe we are playing different games...
It seems like since hte beginning of time this has been the formula:
Melee Fighters: High HP, low damage
Ranged fighters: Medium HP, medium damage
Magic Users: Low HP, high damage
What games have you played which were remotely like this? Most MMORPGs balance damage based on role (healer:low, tank:med, DPS:high) and it's entirely divorced from ranged vs. melee vs. hunters. And then survivability is some separate sliding scale between durability (tanking damage) and avoidance (avoiding damage)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This guy always posts stuff he already knows the answer to and just wants to get people to respond. All his posts are the same formula. Pretend your confused or need help and appear to be reaching out to the community.