I read a huge thread of irrelevent *****ing on the melee system.
The melee system in this game is fine. All the things that were complained about were easily countered, and I myself do it on a daily basis (the five button laser mouse certainly helps).
The secret of my success comes from being able to quickly select melee from my weapons list. You can do that via the wheel, but that requires a loss of motor skills for the most part in your mouselooking hand. And your other hand is usually holding your block key if your under heavy melee attack. The problem here is...well...the default key to select melee is the number 1 key, and I DON'T mean the number pad key.
If you use WASD configuration for movement, the 1 key isn't a huge way away. But for arrow people like me (I grew up on DooM, can't help it lol) the 1 key is way too far away. I bound my last free mouse button to automatically switch to melee. I know that probably sounds lame, but I also have another relatively close-by key bound to it as well.
So here's my situation:
Some guy zooms in and tries to melee me. I block, but because I have a beam weapon selected, I can't retaliate...and the enemy is free to continue rightclicking away until I release my block key.
What I do, is, as I block, I use my extra key to switch on melee. You can't lock on while your blocking, but once melee is selected I CAN retaliate during the pause from the enemy's attack being blocked. All I have to do once I hit the melee button is right click, and if he hasn't moved his ass out of the way, he is grand slammed into the far wall.
So the TIP is this: USE THE KEY BINDINGS TO INSTANTLY TURN ON MELEE SO THAT YOU CAN COUNTERATTACK, INSTEAD OF HOLDING BLOCK FOR 20 MINUTES.
Now that that mess is out of the way, I'd like to ask the QUESTION part of my post. More and more people are complaining about the melee and well...I noticed on a few servers that had players who I could NOT lock on to...and I have a laser mouse with good sensitivity...and I never have a problem getting a lock.
On many occasions, I've seen this "melee-proof" people standing still, with no real fear of being locked on to. I repeatedly tried clicking on a fellow who was standing still charging a spirit bomb, and it just would not lock.
And just tonight, in another server...I played in a game where melee worked fine, but the speed of the swoop was reduced to normal turbo booster speed...
Let me just tell you, that made the game totally suck ass. It was boring to watch, boring to play in. It was like,
"Hmm. Sit still and take 20 minutes to acquire my target my manual flight, or use a beam, and try to guide it to hit that really small red dot 20 miles away."
Success, it was just like the Alpha...failure, I didn't find it fun at all.
I'm sure it satisfied the wimpy clan that owned the server, since they apparently had such a hard time handling melee that they found a way to disable it.
The results in that server stunk. People would beam, teleport 6 times, charge, and repeat. It turned this normally action packed and hectic mod into the...tamest piece of junk I ever played, almost.
Finally, a suggestion: the only valid complaint about melee I saw anywhere was that when someone is locked and swooping you and you hit them with a beam, assuming they live, they are still swooping. The problem is easily rectified, but I think that it could be made into a cool part of the game if you just think of it for a minute.
What if, when a beam hits someone who is swooping, it reacts as a melee beam of sorts, where the blast pushes the swooping enemy away (for less damage, of course, until he hits a wall, just like the existing melee system). And the melee struggle meter could come up and the player who was swooping could try to struggle it away before he crashes.
Or an easier system would be to just make the beam explode like normal, but have melee hit effects on a player in swooping mode.
I think it might make the beamers satisfied without crippling the awesome melee system...and I imagine that wouldn't be too tough to implement, considering that it's just making a beam react like a melee hit.
If the beams were just gonna explode and have melee effects on a swooper (and swoopers ONLY I'm talking, not all players or targets, and only in a head-on hit, say...100 degree cone in front of the player), then the beams should do normal damage. If there was going to be an "impact struggle" system implemented, it would probably have to be a little smaller to balance out the amount of damage you'd receive from getting slammed against walls.
And the best part? An SSJ with 7 million for a power level hits a kamehameha wave that was generated by a target with a much lower power level, the beam explodes and does minimal damage without interrupting the swoop.
Sounds cool, doesn't it?
Well...that's all for now I guess. If anyone knows anything about the "unlockable" player problem, please reply with your thoughts and experiences. And tell me what you think of my tip and idea, too.