Melee combat is seen as the truest test of skill. "Anyone can pick up a gun and shoot it, but engaging someone with fists or weapon in hand and beating them to death with it is the greatest feat a fighter can accomplish." Melee fighting puts yourself at risk, a good player who reads his opponent and gets the upper hand enough to win a melee fight is a champion. Many of us feel like Melee is lacking, though. As a "rock-paper-scissors" mechanic, we have Rock (attacking) and we have paper (blocking). Scissors is supposed to be like, waiting and then punch, but that's just throwing a delayed rock. If we could grab, then we could beat paper and of course rock would beat scissors. Traditional fighting games do have some slight RPS combat, but there's enough moves with enough variation in utility that RPS fades away into a true test of skill. What's great is,
positioning, mobility, and current weapons are our "other moves/utility". We have most of the basics down, this mechanic would finish off the mechanic and make half the game feel so much better. A true counter to blocking!
Yeah, this will take work to implement and balance. You've already spent some, what, ~5 years on SFD? That's a long time. If you want to reach as wide an audience as possible and get "filthy rich" then you might need to spend some extra time polishing what you've got to ensure it's quality. What other mechanics are there for you to work on before finally crawling out of pre-alpha? What else is there to work on before game launch, aside from bots? Some new weapons maybe? Some new cosmetics? I understand wanting to release the game already, it's been in the works for ages. I get that. But if you think the grab idea is good, don't you want your game, this labor of love, to be the most it can be when it's presented to the world? This is a VERY unique concept you have going for you, releasing it at full potential is, imo, the only way to truly do it justice.
You've got a respectable portion of your community posting here. I've never seen so much discussion spurred forth in such a short amount of time over something, and I've been a forum mod for 2-3
years. I've been on the forums for longer than that, too! What's crazy to me though, is that you have a lot of diversity in the people posting here. You have both of your most active mods (arguably your only active mods, really), you have prominent forum posters (Judy Hops, Duck, Shark, Failman, Zyfex, Scarface), you have people that are big in the scripting and map development area (Esper and Bash Kraken stand out a lot to me), and you even have people that
hardly use the forums posting here, the same people I see in my server more than I have EVER seen them on the forums (Retired Santa, Danger Ross(This guy is an old vet too), Zere, NTN9)(haha if I didn't use your name don't feel bad). You have people from pretty much
every group in the community here. This wasn't just some "oh hey it's that dumb thing nobody wanted", this post already had a little discussion and some 12 likes before it was cancelled. For a planned feature, and really for any post on the forum,
12 is a fucking LOT. I had my post about Sniper balance up for a WEEK before it got TEN likes.
We've already made a handful of topics and had plenty of discussion about grabs being in SFD, all of which have a pretty similar theme: Blocks have no straightforward counter, which is something we want. Dives beat blocks, I guess? But those don't reliably do damage since you have to go off a building with them to make them take fall damage. Even then, if you don't go that far, they can recovery roll behind you and you won't have any time to get a real punish. If they roll then kicking them will just stagger them. But here, let me go get some links towards posts that all discuss grabs and what they'd like from them.
Starting off on the old forum:
A post by iTurtle
This one was made by Wozenbelt
Written by our current mod, Sol
Here it is in the OP of the idea suggestion thread.
This one was wonderfully edited by Shock.
Made by Gwen, a prominent scripter that founded Octothorp iirc and also made #Wizards!
A detailed post by Maxco.
Cool, so that's 7 links talking (generally) about grabbing an enemy for a short moment and doing something with them - mostly around the theme of hitting them a time or two, or throwing them. And since I can't just search "grab" on this forum,
I had to dig these ones out by hand. Also, a handful of posts I dug through mentioned them being
excited for the
new grab feature.
This one is centered around a powerup that gives you the ability to grab
Of course I'd post my thread. I feel differently about some things here but not grabs - I summed that up as necessary.
Then of course, there's the discussion throughout this thread. Perhaps I've said more in chats with my friends, though there's still enough support here for grabs from people that also haven't posted in this thread. This mechanic isn't just some random "hey that would be cool", this is something a lot of people want. This is something melee has needed for a very long time.
What more can we all say about grabbing that hasn't been said already? What constructive feedback is left? I mean, I didn't think anything was left if I'm being completely honest, but Duck managed to say something cool about the spacing game that shows there's a variety of options from different ranges players can use, especially if blocks get added in the manner you discussed. We can keep posting all we want, but at the end of the day, this is it. This is our argument for grabs. We've stated our cases time and again and here we are. After we all gave our input, here it was! A thread that said "hey, we're going to add it!" Before the thread was cancelled I believe I saw ~10 likes on it. There was some discussion on the thread, a couple people thought it would ruin the game, the post had no discussion for awhile and out of the blue it was cancelled. Now you have
over 20 unique users from different groups of the community stating that this was a bad move. As Klip stated, the like system was implemented so that little "I agree" posts didn't have to exist. So now, we've ALL made our "we disagree" posts. I've NEVER ONCE seen THIS MUCH OUTCRY over something that's been announced or done. This isn't just something you need to address, say "too bad so sad" and move on. This entire burst of activity is a result of a common feeling from the community: Something is wrong with Melee, and we all want a fix. Grabbing is supposed to be that fix.
And now you want to cancel it because of throwing?
Yeah. We're all upset.
If you want to open a poll with a handful of features you're looking at adding before releasing Beta/the full game, and then have a vote for which one gets cancelled, go for it. You've already worked for this long, I would hope releasing a full and complete game would be the goal instead of cutting corners at the last minute to release something that isn't perfect. Even if you release
the roughest testing versions of grabbing possible, that's what we're here for. You might get complaints like "wahhh this isn't polished" but
isn't that exactly what happened after throwing was released? We all stated how powerful throwing was and it was toned down accordingly. Give us some rough versions of grabs that work well enough and let us test them. We can try to help find a happy middle ground that makes the mechanic work without you guys doing all the work on your own.
This is a pre-alpha. When we download the game we accept that there will be bugs and problems. Currently? Melee has this huge issue where RPS is missing scissors aka blocks have no straightforward counter. Hoping for a fix soon; willing to bugtest and analyse/review as necessary.
This is what your community wants and what your game NEEDS. Don't leave this issue as-is.