PC What is wrong with melee?

In previous alphas I always played on warrior and typically went sledge with the occasional playthrough using the machete as far as melee and had no problems taking out most any zombies and clearing pois with those. In this alpha I've so far found that while the sledge is still king as far as damage and knives are still perfect for stamina efficient killing, there have been several changes which make the early game especially difficult. I quickly found that zombies preemptively swing at you which is easily avoided but the range of melee for the player is now much shorter, and for the early game where stamina is a very exhaustible commodity that means that you either take a hit or two and use knives or use sledge and run out of stamina in only a handful of swings. The spear is decent but when you've got multiple enemies it doesn't compare as far as base damage goes considering the only way to do decent damage is get rid of your weapon which obviously is suicide when facing groups. Overall I enjoy that early game is harder yet I also believe that the range of player melee should be made somewhat longer and stamina should be somewhat less easily exhausted otherwise it makes getting hit and possibly even dying quite inevitable especially for newer players.

 
I can't use the sledge, I am horrible with it. I just can not time the swing right. However, I know it works just fine cause hubby and son use it , and very effectively.

Now baseball bats, mmm yes. My fave melee weapon. Hits the spot everytime, with a satisfying THUNK!!

Only one problem with it, if I continue to yell out batter up!!! every time I swing, there might be a divorce in my future LOL.

 
Freshmint has posted 2 excellent videos showing my exact problem. Don't release A18.0 in this broken state <3 thanks :)
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Cheers for saying this. I've posted on the dev diary, the bugs section, this thread and the steam forums. How do we know if they have acknowledged it and are looking to fix it?

Its night and day the glancing system has been introduced in a slightly buggy state and thats what experimental is for.

* It hits but misses targets on the same swing due to its slow updating

* The main center point of the crosshairs hit is sometimes at random ignored due to glancing swings and how it updates regardless of multi hit

* Random range off effect and inconsistencies

* The invisible swinging arc does not match the weapons movement and overshoots

* Glancing blows register on a flat axis across the screen rather than on a 3D plane that matches the animation(no depth)

* Melee weapons have no occlusion when hitting targets so a hit travels through a target like electricity and hits one behind or beside

* No interrupt animations to know when landing a hit.

And of course videos on page 2 to prove it.

Its a reasonably decent problem that needs to be address. After seeing many changes in animations over many alphas I feel like they are finally starting to look complete so props to the devs animator and his work.

Zombies I believe will be getting an update in A19 and they are also doing bandits. It was never viable and ready many alphas ago because it just wasnt ready and good enough to implement. Hitboxes may be improved at the same time.

 
I can't use the sledge, I am horrible with it. I just can not time the swing right. However, I know it works just fine cause hubby and son use it , and very effectively. Now baseball bats, mmm yes. My fave melee weapon. Hits the spot everytime, with a satisfying THUNK!!

Only one problem with it, if I continue to yell out batter up!!! every time I swing, there might be a divorce in my future LOL.
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The baseball bats normal attack hits halfway down the bat and doesn't feel right and has no weight behind it.

Every weapon needs to feel like your hitting a baseball of a tee. If you air swing momentum takes you through it, but if you hit you feel a clunk and weight from the ball. Weapons right now have this, but only if you hit where its supposed to be dead center and when it matches the animation. There was a slowing effect on a hit added in A17 that still exists in A18 but it only works on weapons that have a full follow through. The machete is the only one I can think of as all the others now finish on the crosshair.

 
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The weapons themselves need some work to, other than sledge and club the rest of them just aren't really viable later game especially on higher difficulties, due to lack of raw damage and due to lack of useful secondary effects. Sledge/club is so good because it knocks down things easly, and a zombie on the floor is a easy target, or is taken out of the fight for a few seconds so you can focus on something else. Spears can't do this reliably unless you throw it (which imo is a really stupid mechanic who would throw their weapon away?), spears have virtually no flinch/stun/knockdown on normal swings, stun baton is just a complete joke in every way, fists, well they'd rank 3rd for a decent weapon after sledge, then clubs, then comes fists, its main downside is its very short range and low damage till steel knuckles, and the fact its knockdowns etc aren't as reluiable as he sledge or club.
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I agree with you completely but just wanted to add...

Baseball Bat >> Re-enforced Metal Club.

My tier 2 (found) Bat with 1 mod does much more damage than my tier 6 Club with 4 mods and is much more effective

Wish I could find a better one.

 
Can anyone reproduce the results i showed in the video?
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I have no recording software set up, but I can confirm that glancing blows mess with the main hit. It happens when zombies are lying prone after being knocked down and you try to smash their head with a sledge; you hit the floor under their head for full damage and only glance their head.

 
The animations just seem...off.

The way the weapons are swung doesn't make any sense, It's like I'm trying to tap something 2 feet from my head tip of the baseball bat, instead of trying to swing for a home run with the zombies head. The tip of the weapons stays super close to you.

Killing floor 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 do melee weapons right. In 7 days to die it just seems off.

 
I agree with you completely but just wanted to add...
Baseball Bat >> Re-enforced Metal Club.

My tier 2 (found) Bat with 1 mod does much more damage than my tier 6 Club with 4 mods and is much more effective

Wish I could find a better one.
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Baseball bat counts as a club so it was included in club.

 
The main issue I have is when the zombie is too close to you. If the zombie is literally running up against your face and you swing the sledgehammer right on his head it will just flat out miss.

 
Killing floor 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 do melee weapons right. In 7 days to die it just seems off.
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Dead Island and Dying Light as well, to stay within the genre. But Fallout and Skyrim do it better as well, and their systems weren't even particularly good. Hell, even Minecraft feels better from what I remember, at least I knew what I was gong to hit when I swung my weapon.

I really don't get why 7DtD has to do it both differently and worse than any other melee combat I've ever played. Makes melee totally unfit for the later gamestages.

 
For me Melee is nearly the best its ever been .

Shamway Factory with a Baseball bat = no probs
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What difficulty though? if your on adventurer or nomad, its not surprizing as both are rather jokes difficulty wise, nomad a little less so, as at least on nomad zombies do their full damage and the player doesn't get a huge damage bonus vs zombies. Mind you sledge/clubs (including baseball bat) are really the onyl viable melee weapons later on, not just because of the weapon itself, but because of sex t-rex being in the same tree, and when you get 5/5 in that, you can power attack 1 hit kill things with a sledgehammer for 0 stam cost, as the kill shot refils the 25 stam or so it cost for the power attack. Assuming you 1 shot with it.

 
I did a couple tests on a row of Zeds in DM .. (press alt when spawning 25, makes for a nice row)

It's pretty .. undescribable. Fun, while testing, but ... ouch :)

Zeds 1,2,3,4 standing in a row. Swing a sledge between 2 and 3, missing both intentionally. 1 and 4 lose their heads to the glancing blow, 2 and 3 are unaffected.. :)

In the actual game, couple issues

- it feels like there's a minimum range, especially when you get a rager in your face, it's not registering any hits. This could also be a short timing issue with hit boxes, as the timing from "getting enraged" to "getting in your face" is pretty standard 0.1 seconds or so, so maybe the animation change messes up hit boxes entirely. Would need to test properly, but not the easiest to set up

- a zombie that is getting up doesn't seem to register head hits.. plenty of grass and clay gathered from behind the head. I miss some myself of course, I know I think I miss less than I do - :) - but I don't miss THAT much on a mechanic that seems identical to A17.

 
I checked this out trying to find out more of A18, skip forward to 9:41 and ignore the rest I guess. Maybe this is not what is brought up here but it seems to be about the same as A17

and the zombies are getting knocked off their feet.
I do not see this issue with the sledgehammer in this video but then again I have not played A18 yet and maybe this guy is playing on the easiest level too, I don't know.

This video has made me want to try it out.

 
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I agree with the OP. The weapons feel like they have no "weight" behind them, as if they are made of paper. It's a weird phenomenon that swings that are supposed to connect don't and the ones that miss hit. I remember having my crosshairs on a zombies head, then power attacking and the club hit his arm first and completely missed his head. Even thought my crosshairs were directly on it. This happens a lot.

I wonder if your first contact is a glancing blow then any other hit is negated. Like only one hit per entity - per swing.

Edit: Gotta say, I'm not a fan of the new animations either. They look unnatural and a lot of them cover up a large portion of the screen when performed. Don't know what could be done about this though.

 
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