Magus, your idea is the only good one about the melee struggling that is in this thread.
The rest of it is so complicated...it would be such a handicap to the game.
Do you people want broken mice across the board? Computer keys aren't built to be repeatedly smashed on...or pressed in button combinations...and honestly, that system was so frigging complicated...do think anyone would want to learn that?
There are three requirements for GAMEPLAY DESIGN:
1.) Has to be intuitive (for instance, "let's make the left arrow key go backwards" is a bad idea obviously. Since controls can be customized this isn't as much of a problem, but there are still some retarded things to deal with...for instance, DMZ's controls are not intuitive at all...the fact that blocking is a toggle and not a dynamic function is bad design...so is making a five button combination to do a certain move, in an engine that does not like button combinations very much--if you cahnge your key layout most of the DMZ moves don't even work anymore).
2.) Has to be sensible for gameplay purposes (don't make unnecessary stuff...there's no need to have individual control over punches and kicks and left and right side attacks in a melee struggle, for instance...no one is going to ENJOY being in a struggle like that, it's way too complicated....I'm a veteran gamer and I reviewer and designer, and I can tell you right now that you'd have people doing two things: first, they be just repeatedly doing a certain move int he struggle like left handed punching over and over...just cause they can do it faster, and win that way. Second, you'd have people just plain teleporting out of them...cause they'd suck...there's no way if you had to control them that much that anyone could do it well enough for it to be interesting, and even then...if someone did do it well, it wouldn't be as fast as the show and everyone would ***** anyway).
and finally, 3.) Controls have to be responsive (can you imagine the chugging lag that would happen if you had these struggle suggestions implemented? The server would be FLOODED with DOZENS UPON DOZENS of multi-keyed commands to perform several different animations at a very high speed...LAG LAG LAG).
And to conclude on the retarded melee struggling system suggested here, outside of just being flawed by way of it's design, there is also to consider the animation involved. You press left punch, for example. The other guy's supposed to block it, and a series of dozens of moves like that are to be animated together in a hyperspeed string of animations...but if you control it on a punch by punch basis, that won't happen, will it? And it'll look dumb when you punch left and the other guy kicks right and it looks like your hitting each other but nothing's happening really cause it's just a struggle.
Jeeze. Does anyone even THINK before they make suggestions like this?
Oh...and that ki trail in DMZ is almost as ugly as the rest of that game, no offense meant. It'd have to be done differently to keep with ESF's quality graphical content and lack of absurd graphical anomalies.
The ONLY even remotely interesting idea in this whole thread is a combination of the power up trail thing with the boost achieved during swoop...I think that would be nice, and make players who are swooping a little bore noticeable and thus more easy to avoid.
Otherwise, I didn't see anything really salvageable in the thread that could be implemented realistically and have postive gameplay implications.
No offense meant. Thanks for hearing me out.