Melee vs Aoe (spin off post)

General
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So this post about Uber Abby was tangentially talking about an issue that I’ve been sitting with in my brain for a while and thought I’d try to barf it up into something attempting a coherent idea/thought on this subject. I’ll try to keep this relatively concise.

I am a massive melee style fan, all the way back to my days in the 70s with TTRPGs and most definitely all through my years (broken by long dry spells of none) of computer gaming (Apple IIe Castle Wolfenstein for the win.)

The big problem as I see it, is actually not technically one of mechanics and too much AoE. Those are all there, of course, and all contribute to the underlying aspect that companies don’t seem to get real melee battles “right.” It’s actually one of PERCEPTION from both gamers and the developers.

The video below is the feel I want from a melee character.

The important word there is ‘feel.’ As in tone, theme, style (not so much ‘emotional’ feel.')

Two major components of all aRPGs that have become ubiquitous with the genre are ‘adds’ and ‘speed.’ I used to argue for games that had slower combat (it’s why to this day I still think Wolcen’s combat actually felt the best of any aRPG I’ve played especially from the standpoint of melee.) But I no realize that is never going to change, this need for ‘faster’ which necessitates mechanics that make progress go quicker the MORE you kill which then necessitates putting in more adds which then leads towards AoE naturally clearing trash mobs faster.

So how do you give a melee feel to this?

I think designers could look at better giving skills and abilities that under the hood are clearly AoE spells but have the feel of melee “style.” To use LE skills as an example, skills that pull enemies in followed by a sweeping blow that slices everything in half, like Flame Reaves Infernal Calling node, do this better (animations could lean into this much better as well to sell it) than say, skills like Healing Hands (either as spell damage or turning into melee) because AoE “disguise” is barely even there.

Weapons are often used as just stack sticks, (d4’s newest season literally dropped all defining implicit on weapons) which is a shame because it is one place that could make play style identity really shine.

And the environment. In the video, if this wasn’t a fight between a boss and three npcs, imagine a horde of spiders and the figher sweeps his blade with full force, knocking a dozen of them back and off the edge of that overhang, killing them in an instance. Melee feel, AoE clear.

And has there every been any though to dynamics? Maybe it’s too time consuming? But in todays day, especially with AI processing, would there be a way to know that a character is a melee build (like our fighter below) and instead of throwing 300 3xp mercenaries into the frey it throws 3 300xp mercenaries.

I also realize that LE won’t necessarily change this, nor will anything currently on the market but I still feel like companies making attempts to address this (or maybe I’m naive and they really just don’t care) are going at it from the vantage point of how they game is currently played and not thinking outside the box to get at what MAKES melee feel like melee. i.e. just because this is how it’s ‘always’ been doesn’t mean its the only way it has to be.

Just food for thought. I have no doubts at all that we’ll all have opinions about this, yay, nay, constructive, or not.

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They’re actually linked. Over time ARPGs have become more crowded, which created a need for skills to kill more at once, either via big AoE’s, fast attack/cast speed or just big damage.

If you compare PoE and LE to D2 or GD you can clearly see this. You have a better melee feel on the latter games because they have scarcely populated areas (compared to modern games) and thus can have a “truer” melee than LE or PoE.

There are still games that lean into this, like No Rest For The Wicked (although that also leans into a more strategic combat borrowed from souls-like games), but ARPG players these days prefer to kill 200 mobs at once on screen than just packs of 10/20 mobs per screen.

And when you have that many mobs, you can’t have true melee anymore. Killing 200 mobs crowding you (or worse, sniping you from afar) means you need some means to have AoE/splash for melee, otherwise you’re stuck 5 minutes per screen just clearing stuff other skills dispatch in seconds.

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Yeah, I agree, that’s why I mentioned this as a specific description of the relationship.

I don’t have a lot of experience with soul-like games because almost all of those are 1st person/3rd person games, to my knowledge, and I have a rather severe physiological reaction to those types of games. From what I’ve always gathered about them their more akin to old arcade games like Dragon’s Lair where you have to learn the patterns and such but that’s probably a simplification from not much experience with them.

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If they are infact linked (not disagreeing btw) and all arpgs end up going down this path during game play (which is fine) then the pure melee classes can simply be fixed by increasing AOE to match to avoid the yucky feeling of smaller attacks ending up standing on top of Abberoths hoof creating a “excuse me sorry, I didnt see you there” situation. I started rive this season and ditched it because of the aoe and omen windows - solution? Simply double the size of rives aoe. Will it unbalance the game? No. Rive isn’t as strong as ES or WP. I mean it can be pushed hard with the new ammy (god I hope they balance this thing).

Vengeance? Defensively strong already - give it more aoe and add in something that spreads to cause more aoe - when its phys give it corrupted blood, when its fire give it spreading flames.

Beastmaster - dear lord where to start.. you have this big hulking human all muscled up, pure melee speed, pure attacks and what for? So he can jump in, hopefully live and hit an enemry 3-4 times to buff his underpowered wolf pack so they get more dmg just in time to die to one of Ubers generic attacks because they’re so weak. OK OK I’m off on a tangent there - point is BM’s aoe is horrible too, even when you add aftershock idols.

Simply give the existing “melee” stuff much larger aoe. The damage on them is already underpar all it’ll do is give QOL feels to have it being played. They can work on balance later I think I heard them say LE should be balanced by season 26 (apart from Falconer)

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I don’t think they all end up going down this path. It’s a design choice. D2 didn’t go down that path, nor is it going that way with D2R and the new expansion. GD also didn’t go down that path and it’s considered by many as one of the best ARPGs as well.

It was mostly PoE and D3 that started going down this path and modern ARPGs tend to follow in their footsteps.

As for your solution of bigger AoE for melee skills, sure, that’s what PoE did. You swing your sword and you wipe out the whole screen. I’d argue that’s no longer melee, it’s just a spell that you cast with a sword instead of a wand. Then again, I was never a big fan of melee, even in D2/GD (even in D&D, really), so my opinion is biased and probably not too relevant for a satisfying solution.

Personally, I enjoy the “less mobs on screen but harder to kill/more dangerous” approach of D2/GD, but that is not where LE is headed and it’s too late to turn back at this point.

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I kind of like a mix of both - hard single ones and then small packs to pop. The end of last year I brought GD and had a play with it and found myself down rabbit holes of all their streamers/creators and their intense forums looking at and trying builds and most of them when I was playing were big aoe clear builds for each and that mechanic you got to in one of the newer areas where you warp into a zone thats just level after level of mob til you call it quits and get rewards were just big packs too so I guess I didnt get the same experience. I played D1 never D2 then tried D3 for 5 mins and haven’t tried D4 haha

Now that I’m used to how smooth LE is though going back to some builds on POE2 has felt clunky/slow. Some of the metas are up there but I still like LE for the way it feels which is why when I found it I ditched POE2 and stayed. I literally went back in a rage the other day due to Nemesis and crafting in the state it is for me and the amount I play and the reason this is my main issue followed by the ridiculous balance but as CoF it doesnt technically affect me just makes me mad lol

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as a “tru melee” enjoyer, i would say most modern d-likes have HORRIBLE trumelee gameplay.

to me the biggest problem is pacing. melee only shines when deliberate combat is emphasized, but most modern d-likes often go the route of speedy zoom zoom content which takes away any reward for playing deliberately as it does not reward deliberate content. the best way to play is to blow the screen up and quickly clear the map in 1 minute.

currently 2 “recent d-likes” are close to this. titan quest 2 and nrftw. nrftw does have OP builds but for the most part the trumelee feel is FUCKING SOLID in nrftw. its going to officially release soon.

as for trumelee in LE. i think LE is struggling to keep this game financially viable before worrying about trumelee.

if LE was balanced around actual trumelee then i might actually come back to LE, but sadly some encounters where theres tons of projectiles/aoe, trumelee feels like an unwanted stepson

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I guess that depends on what you consider “small packs”. Given your description of your experience with GD, I’d say our definition differ.

In D2, packs are usually 5-8 in size. They might have a rare (which makes the rest of the pack stronger) but they don’t usually surpass that. A champion pack tipically consists of 3 champions. There are a few zones where you get more packs, but most zones will have a dozen packs, at most.

So it’s a slower, more methodical playstyle. It’s not as slow/methodical as No Rest For The Wicked, since that game aims to be a Dark Souls d-like, but it’s far from zoomy and there’s no insta-screen wipes like in PoE.

And there’s definitely never a time when you get hundreds of mobs in the same screen, again like in PoE (and LE is going the same way too).

Most players these days don’t want actual true melee. They want “melee” that has AoE and is fast.

PoE2 was actually balanced around true melee when it started, but players immediately complained that it was too slow and too boring, so GGG caved and is going the zoom zoom/hundred mobs on screen/screen clearing route as well.

I still enjoy LE a lot, but I know that part of it is simply because I never enjoyed melee, even in the slower games.

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Haha sorry I might have made that confusing - GD to me was quite big packs/aoe heavy when I played it. I prefer like rares/champs being alone and a challenge and then packs of 4-6 that need aoe, kinda like old WoW dungeons when you first meet them. Theres always going to be the struggle of everyone like different things but I really do think the builds are imbalanced and they should add to the plainer melee classes

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This is kind of what I think already happens with these games. See the two skills I mentioned above, in fact, this all started for melee when Smite was a huge proc with those idols and it became the AoE clear Sentinel build.

It’s kind of a band-aid and I was arguing for thinking outside the box to find ways to fix it. I certainly don’t have any real solutions, as I’m not a designer all I know is that most ‘melee’ builds in aRPGs these days don’t give me the feel of actual melee. (@DJSamhein mentioned D2 - old D2, not before they buffed the crap out of everything, as a way it used to be done)

Same.

Yup, I feel the exact same way. That’s why I’d love to see something different rather then the current band-aid method to fix this by just making melee skills AoE skills without addressing that distinct impact in the video I posted.

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i resented and in fact HATED ggg for splitting poe1 from poe2 as poe1’s truemelee was literal dogshit. i kept playing poe1 and giving ggg supporter pack money because when they announced poe2 they made it seem like it will fix melee for poe1.

years later they split the 2 games. what the fuck have i been playing all these years for? where the fuck did all my money go if not to make a better poe1 via poe2? for me to finally enjoy melee?

eventually i saw a ton of interviews with jonathan where he said in order to make melee good they were forced to split the 2 games, poe1 is “kinda too far gone”.

and yeah POE2’s melee was GREAT. sure it was rough, but i actually learned how to fight balbala, learning how to dodge or even just move out of her attacks. it was marvellous. i fought her with basic mace attacks and won. it felt earned.

then when we get to end game mapping we get random mods such as monster speed/aoe which made it literally impossible for me to react to.

and its exactly like what you said. ggg caved. i prayed hard that ggg would NERF everything else to the same level of maces or even weaker than maces. but no.

i still play poe1. poe2 is something i actively avoid. its such a sore spot. it had so much potential.

but if i m being honest, ggg only did what ggg always does, which is follow the majority. their success depends on their supporters. majority of their supporters dgaf trumelee and dgaf standard. a double whammy on my part where those are the 2 game modes that i truly prefer.

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the question is, how does EHG make trumelee feel good without making everything else worse.

my stance on LE’s melee is the same as my stance on POE’s melee. it simply is not that type of game.

i’ve long come to terms that if i had it my way, a vast majority of current enjoyers would quit the game. its a ship long sailed.

NGL, LE still has the potential to give tru melee justice. the amount of content isnt as staggering as poe yet.

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So, I don’t think it is so much about “modern” ARPG. Instead, I blame the dreadful “game as a service” concept.

These companies are not primarily interested in making a game, they want to create a permanent space where players will come back again and again, forever and ever, and not go to other places.

It creates an inflation between them: for players to come back to you and not the competitors, you have to offer MORE. More monsters, more speed, more flashiness, more complex mechanics…

All that is bad for melee, but unfortunately I fear it will keep on getting worse.

I agree with your observation that PoE was the first to go that way. D3 later on, only when they started focusing on rifts and seasons. It was fine at first. D4. Undecember. LE. That’s all the seasonal guys.

I also agree that GD has a much, much better-feeling melee. D2 as well. Wolcen. Van Helsing. I believe that is because their aim was always to sell a finished, pleasant to play product, balanced with no extreme one way or the other. They don’t really care if they are “more” anything than the neighbour, plus they don’t have the pressure to add another layer of flashiness and complexity every four months.

I agree that is a choice, not all ARPGs are going this way (thank god). I just think the choice is not just in the playstyle, but is largely dictated by the business model.

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Yes, I think that is a fair assessment.

Although I must point out that while D2 wasn’t a live service game, it did have ladders (seasons) and it was the first in the genre to do so. And many of those ladders came with a patch that added new stuff.

So the model was already there, in a primitive fashion. They don’t sell MTX but they did have the incentive to sometimes add new stuff to attract new players.

Although D2 was pretty much the sole competitor at the time, as well, so there was no other game to “beat”.

I still believe you could make a live service model arpg work with a slower combat and a true melee in it. I don’t know if it would be as successful as the current zoom zoom, though.

I think most modern players want the zoom zoom and don’t want to go back to a slower combat that doesn’t have 200 mobs on screen at the same time. That’s what we saw in PoE2, which is sad because I actually liked 1.0 campaign a lot more.

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This is something I come back to a lot. And I fully appreciate it. It sucks because the games that are clearly more geared towards the style of combat I’m looking for, I cannot play because of a physiological defect in my inner ear/brain pathway. :rofl:

If this ends up being the end result, I get it completely. But I don’t want to ever stop challenging to look at something afresh. You never know when someone might actually click it.

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i actually ragequit poe several times. but one reason why i play poe more recently is because ggg actually buffed melee damage. i actually feel like i m not having the worst build ever anymore and can actually do damage.

even then i have to temper my expectations. melee still is worse off as anything melee can do ranged/aoe builds can do better. when a boss creates area denials, tru melee need to run like a bitch, trying to survive and re-engage. but for builds that dont care about range, they can just kite and maintain damage.

i really wish modern d-likes was more than this but it always boils down to the majority of d-like enjoyers.

most of them want ultimate power fantasy where they hold down a button and everything on screen dies or gets heavily damaged.

look at LE. the minion builds. theyre crazy, you walk around and everything melts as your swarm deletes enemies. why bother playing melee risking your character when you can just walk around and passively win doing minimal effort?

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I would disagree about “most modern players”.

However, I would agree if we amend it to “most players engaging repeatedly in seasonal games”. Which is the target audience, so yeah, same result from the business owner point of view, it amounts to most returning players, the ones bringing in the cash.

I think it comes with the territory: if your playing plan is to make a character then max-level it, kill all the bosses, complete all your gear within one month to be finished before the next season of your other favourite ARPG, you kinda HAVE to be zoom-zoom.

Personally, I am incredibly slow. I like slow paced meaningful melee combat, I like to do each and every side quest, and visit every nook and cranny of the maps. Sadly, that means I am a horrible customer for seasonal games.

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