PC Bladed combat in 17.3

1) Michonne calmly and easily walks backwards hacking heads in half and completely off. She doesn't run backwards.
2) Unless you increase zombie speed to jog or run, the current backward speed IS faster than the average zombies. You can easily do exactly what Michonne does. Calmly and easily dispatch them while walking backwards.

3) I agree that more agility based actions would be fun and desirable. I'd even be for faster backpedaling being one of the higher tier perks because regardless of your claims it is going to be tough for anyone to full out run backwards and not stumble when the the terrain is uneven and cluttered just as it is depicted in the game.
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There is a misrepresentation of what I am suggesting. Nothin like a run, just a quick walk or jog. Just faster than the 3mph walk we have now. 6mph would be sufficient.

With that said, after more thought, I think this is the simplest to both implement and achieve what many of us wish we had in melee combat. Any kind of dodge at the expense of stamina would be a game changer tactics wise, and I think would fill the gap a lot of us feel about current combat finesse. Not asking for fencing pro like dodge, just at least a jump in the reverse with a double tap would be nice. Make it your jump ability but only in the horizontal plane.

So you could have a jump of 1 meter in any direction as a quick move and that would enable you to get out of the way of the arm coming your way once you missed the head shot. Because it costs stamina, you aren't going to be dodging many times without getting exhausted, but this opens up a more layered and tactical combat system without a ton of work on the dev side. Simply implement jump in the 2 horizontal axis with either a

WASD double tap or a WASD + "SPACE"

 
There is a misrepresentation of what I am suggesting. Nothin like a run, just a quick walk or jog. Just faster than the 3mph walk we have now. 6mph would be sufficient.
With that said, after more thought, I think this is the simplest to both implement and achieve what many of us wish we had in melee combat. Any kind of dodge at the expense of stamina would be a game changer tactics wise, and I think would fill the gap a lot of us feel about current combat finesse. Not asking for fencing pro like dodge, just at least a jump in the reverse with a double tap would be nice. Make it your jump ability but only in the horizontal plane.

So you could have a jump of 1 meter in any direction as a quick move and that would enable you to get out of the way of the arm coming your way once you missed the head shot. Because it costs stamina, you aren't going to be dodging many times without getting exhausted, but this opens up a more layered and tactical combat system without a ton of work on the dev side. Simply implement jump in the 2 horizontal axis with either a

WASD double tap or a WASD + "SPACE"
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I like this idea and especially as something more interesting than just more fall damage prevention.

 
WASD Double Tap dodge!

Reminiscent of many games, going all the way back to Punch-Out!

Great idea.

This would feel great in this game and suits it well.

 
Looks like zombies attacks works in another way then player attacks, Its looks like not hitscan, more like some kind of AOE splash, because often you may be hitted even if you run behind enemy during attack animation. But possibly this happens because result calculates when animation starts, and no matter what you do next. Also you may got hit if you kill enemy during attack animation. Anyway combat system looks very unfinished.

 
Yep, melee combat in A17 is boring af, while it never was particularly exciting anyway. Before, at least it was sorta dynamic, dash in and out, breaking heads. Now you slowly move backwards, staying out of reach and hold down LMB. Does really anybody need a tutorial for that? lol

Having said that. Once you've got a couple of perks maxed out, in particular parkour and anything melee and stamina related, you can bring some fun back with jumping around and over and on top of zombies like a bloody madman. The downside is that once you get there, all zombies cept for the rare biome spawn runs, and with the increased requirements in the precision department, the fun yet again is drained severely. It works nicely with walking and jogging zombies, though, you might wanna try it out.

 
I guess what you don't know is that you can still step in and step back with ease and never get hit. But now that you do know it, please stop standing still while in combat.
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Yeah this still works, just a bot harder vs running zombies. but vs normals you should not be getting hit in melee at all, if you are, your just bad. As for the dismemberment chance, I feel its far to high. it should be maybe 15% at level 5 in the perk. Being able to have a 50/50 chance of instakilling everything is kinda boring, you might as well just use a wooden club and just swing like crazy till head pops. I honestly feel the unperked chance of decap to be more than enough. It happens often enough that its nice, but not too often that it breaks the game.

As for bladed weapons. My issue with them was the machete is way to weak for a lv 70+ steel weapon to craft, when you can make a iron club at the start of the game that has higher damage. Not to mention the sledge, You bascally need too many perks to make bladed weapons viable, compared to blunt where its viable from the start, even without perks. I love my sledge though, from cracking skulls and raiding poi's. Saves me the time of having to switch to fireaxe or pickaxe, as I can just sledge it down if somethings in my way.

 
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-Only few people have the capacity to become world class gymnasts - why should your character be one of them?
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In general I agree with your position, but want to poke at this one because it made me laugh.Only a few people in the world have managed to survive the zombie apocalypse, and my character is one of them!

 
Yeah this still works, just a bot harder vs running zombies. but vs normals you should not be getting hit in melee at all, if you are, your just bad. As for the dismemberment chance, I feel its far to high. it should be maybe 15% at level 5 in the perk. Being able to have a 50/50 chance of instakilling everything is kinda boring, you might as well just use a wooden club and just swing like crazy till head pops. I honestly feel the unperked chance of decap to be more than enough. It happens often enough that its nice, but not too often that it breaks the game.
As for bladed weapons. My issue with them was the machete is way to weak for a lv 70+ steel weapon to craft, when you can make a iron club at the start of the game that has higher damage. Not to mention the sledge, You bascally need too many perks to make bladed weapons viable, compared to blunt where its viable from the start, even without perks. I love my sledge though, from cracking skulls and raiding poi's. Saves me the time of having to switch to fireaxe or pickaxe, as I can just sledge it down if somethings in my way.
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I think the almost 50/50 chance of insta-killing is fine once specced into it. It kinda helps even things out as towards the late game, we're more likely to be fighting ferals/irradiated rather than regular zombies compared to the start.

However, I do agree with the Machete being rather weak for a level 70 steel weapon. The cost and damage doesn't seem to justify its use. At this point, I'd rather just stick with the Hunting Knife as its alot cheaper to repair. The Sledgehammer can be crafted very early and only needs forged iron to repair. So we're basically getting the best weapon in the game early very early on. As a fan of bladed weapons, its kinda disappointing that blades in general aren't exactly given much love.

 
Currently we have a wooden club, iron club and sledge hammer in the first category. The second portrays bone shiv, hunting knife and machete. For the sake of arguing, we also can use all axes, shovels, hoes, wrenches, hammers, torches and flashlights as weapons. The difference is only slight as all weapon damage is so low it barely changes anything (due consider all of the bonuses from perks that ramp up the damage in various ways).

So comparing only the base damage you have (from most to least, what is in the configs):

- Sledgehammer (42), Steel Fireaxe (30), Iron Fireaxe (26), Steel Pickaxe (22), Iron Club (21), Machete (20), Iron Pickaxe (17), Wooden Club (16) along with Bone Shiv (16), Steel Shovel (16), while the rest are below.

Taking into account the speed with which you attack, you get the appropriate damage per minute (speed * base damage, not taking stamina into consideration):

- Chainsaw (5 * 300 = 1500), Sledgehammer (1428), Steel Fireaxe (1410), Iron Club (1092), Auger (3.5 * 500 = 1050), Steel Pickaxe (1034), Machete (1000), Iron Pickaxe (935), Wooden Club (880) along with Bone Shiv (880), while the rest are lower.

You can clearly see how using some tools is better than the weapons or almost equal. In the past blades had better dismemberment while clubs had stun, now this is forgotten, referenced perhaps only in skills in some way. Also, if you take stamina into consideration, Chainsaw wins even though it gathers Z attention (is loud), Sledge is 2nd best, but very slow, but so is Steel Fireaxe. Even Iron Club is better than the machete in base damage, as well as DPS...

MOST IMPORTANT THOUGH!!!! Machete has lower range (2.4) compared to Fireaxes and Steel pickaxe (2.9) and also to all shovels (3.4). Only Bone Shiv, Hunting Knife and Flashlight has lower range (which also makes blades early on very tough to handle as you need to go closer to enemies). So yeah, go figure...

 
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