Quick Knife - Is it really the best option?

[Zolan]

I like the idea of rifle butts and pistol whips for quick-combat melee that does minimal damage or pushes someone backwards slightly. Something like the current MAX melee attacks.

Quick-strike knife kills, on the other hand, are the bane of FPS games.
Especially given how unrealistically (where realism counts) they are used in most FPS games.


You only need a knife in one of two situations (maybe three).

1. You are completely out of ammo.

- 1b. Someone else runs out of ammo and pulls out a knife. You want to be honorable and pull out your knife as well.

2. You are playing an infiltrator focusing on cloaking/melee attacks


Equip-able knife is the way to go.

[WolfAlmighty]

I'm fine with a one-hit-kill knife but only under three conditions (all of which must be met):

1) The knife is equippable, so no quick knife or dedicated melee button

2) You attack the soldier from behind. As fascinating as the breakdown by therandomone was, fact is you're not going to kill a soldier wearing body armour that's confronting you in a single knife stab. From the front or side, it should be at least three hits for a knife kill for someone at full health.

3) No auto-aim/lunge. As Stardouser mentioned, this got to the point of being absurd in Bad Company 2, where you'd just go into a building where enemies were and press your melee button and your soldier would literally pivot 90 degrees or leap across the room and insta-kill the nearest enemy. There are times when I had shot someone square in the chest at 5m with some 12 ga. from an 870 and he proceeds to fly across the room and OHK me with his knife. I realise there's lag and such to be considered, but just no.

[Algo]

I hate anything that impairs vision or movement or makes me artificially inaccurate.. I'm already sad enough that there are going to be flashbangs.

I'd rather have the old big fuckoff equippable knife. And one hit kills from the back with melee boosters (implants and/or cert perk) at most.

Rifle bash ok, but please for the love of god no stun effect bullshit i beg of you.

[Frotang]

Every other weapon and piece of equipment in the game requires you to press a button to equip it and then press a button to use it. So the fact that they make a button catering to one specific weapon that combines those actions is outrageous.

Here is how this can be done while still appealing to the players who want to quick knife.
Knife is an equipped weapon same as ps1 but you create a mele skill tree that when upgraded would reduce the amount of time it takes to equip said knife and could also have an option to upgrade slash speed.
This would enable players to quick knife if certed correctly but would take skill and timing. make it so theres at penalty for spamming use key before knife is completely out like a slower swing. That way a player who has perfect timing can basically insta knife if they are good enough.

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[Rhyfelwrr]

I like the risk around using melee... but if you have a quick-knife then most of that risk is nullified as within 0.5s you can blow his/her head off with your AR if you somehow manage to fail when you're sneaking up to someone or miss in that moment of franticness

BF2 and BF2142, using the knife took balls and it was oh so satisfying when you were rewarded for it.

I'd like to customize my equipable knife though maybe things like:

Your rifle butt
A bayonett
A massive serrated monster evicerating 24" knife/sword
A wrench or some other tool. (as an nod to other games)

[IMMentat]

TBH i'm against any knife-spam attack (equiped or not), mostly because they look stupid in third person in EVERY game I have played. Either the execution (Halo arm hit instakills, CoD stomach stabs against armed oponents), or visuals (left 4 dead mele worked the same be it a golf club or a katana) tend to be horrible.
Best mele implementation in a game were in TF2 (so many interesting options), Mount&Blade, AvP, Zeno Clash and Dark Messiah: Might and Magic. Most of these made mele an equipped weapon and used direction keys, combo's and "heavy" keypresses to simulate different slashes, parries and thrusts.

PS2 has no real need for a dedicated mele system like the games above so I will be content with a few canned Assassination moves. Backstabs should ONLY instakill if a player shadows an enemy for a few seconds, then let them choose the execution move by aiming at a soft-spot (knife to neck? knee kick then stab? choke-hold-snap? back/kidney stab?).

Some Specific mele-utility abilities could also be provided for Infiltrators (suprise, a brief turn-speed/angle restriction and hamstring, a slow) and MAX units (sweep (knockback), smash (imobilise/knockdown), crush (stuck between a lonley rock and an hug-er-if-ic enemy wearing power armour with a charge-ability)). Maybe let HA have weaker versions of other moves.


If you run out of bullets get a friendly engineer/terminal/LA to resupply you, if you are running around solo and expend all your ammo without thought then you deserve to get caught out and gunned down.

[Ghoest9]

Knives should only make sense if you are sneaking up behind someone.

[Zekeen]

Modable knives, push back rifle-bash, and bayonets.

1000x better than quick-knife, it's such a copycat thing it's terrible, it's even done the EXACT same way as CoD.

[WaryWizard]

The quick knife is the only thing I don't like about Planetside 2.
Except the TR of course.

Equipable knifes alla Planetside 1. If it must be osok make it from behind, and require an extended animation.

If you need to have a quick melee attack, it should be a rifle butt with minimal damage,and no stun or knock-back(abuse by multiple players hitting same target). It could disrupt animations like reloading, sprinting, hacking etc.

[Serpent]

Bf3 had the right idea. If you're behind someone, you should (with the right certs) be able to just kill them outright with a knife finisher. Otherwise Infiltrators might have a hard time getting kills, if you aren't good at sniping... Usually with me, I must find a specific sniper rifle that I like the feel of, and then I am able to snipe efficiently.

For now, equipping the knife should wait unless infiltrators are easily killing people with a quick knife function.

[Frotang]

Guys I already won this thread 2 pages back, end of thread. Devs go fix this now.

Originally Posted by Frotang

Every other weapon and piece of equipment in the game requires you to press a button to equip it and then press a button to use it. So the fact that they make a button catering to one specific weapon that combines those actions is outrageous.

Here is how this can be done while still appealing to the players who want to quick knife.
Knife is an equipped weapon same as ps1 but you create a mele skill tree that when upgraded would reduce the amount of time it takes to equip said knife and could also have an option to upgrade slash speed.
This would enable players to quick knife if certed correctly but would take skill and timing. make it so theres at penalty for spamming use key before knife is completely out like a slower swing. That way a player who has perfect timing can basically insta knife if they are good enough.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

[Sirisian]

What's with the biased poll? Modern shooter? You're discussing quick-knife vs quick-bash. We already discussed in depth that most people didn't want a modern implementation of the quick knife for Planetside 2. Many preferred a modified approach to quick knife, but were fine with quick knife when discussing it. Read this summary of possible options. My ideal implementation of quick knife was at the bottom. If you have time I'd recommend reading the whole thread. It offers some insight's into the community's reactions toward "modern" FPS quick knife implementations.

Originally Posted by Zekeen

What do you guys think?

I'm not against a rifle bash mechanic, but honestly I'd prefer throwing knives and other upgrades over a bayonet which to me sounds extremely lame in any foreseeable animation. Basically the concept of a quick knife finishing move at close range isn't really a problem. I think you summarized their implementation goals already.

Anyway the implementation I linked for quick knife takes into consideration most of the criticisms of quick knife to create a balanced and useful weapon while still allowing an equippable knife.

I think this thread though is testament to the fact that the community can evolve. We're seeing a lot of nice discussion involving the pros and cons of each system.

Also if it isn't clear if you don't read the other quick knife thread, quick-bash was brought up. Do you want a stun attack or just identical to a quick knife with a weapon?

[Zekeen]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

I'm not against a rifle bash mechanic, but honestly I'd prefer throwing knives and other upgrades over a bayonet which to me sounds extremely lame in any foreseeable animation. Basically the concept of a quick knife finishing move at close range isn't really a problem. I think you summarized their implementation goals already.

Throwing knives wouldn't make too much sense for PS2, seeing as we have silencers to fill that role. Though I know WHY you want that (cause throwins knives are awwwweeesome). Nevertheless, Planetside is LESS about 1 shot kills, so a quick-knife backstab is less balanced than an equip knife, then backstab.

Unless we want it so HA are immune to backstabs because of their higher life? But that would be too weird, wouldn't it? So we should stick with more balanced one shots.

Also might be better to limit backstab one shots to infiltrators.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Zekeen

Throwing knives wouldn't make too much sense for PS2, seeing as we have silencers to fill that role. Though I know WHY you want that (cause throwins knives are awwwweeesome). Nevertheless, Planetside is LESS about 1 shot kills, so a quick-knife backstab is less balanced than an equip knife, then backstab.

Unless we want it so HA are immune to backstabs because of their higher life? But that would be too weird, wouldn't it? So we should stick with more balanced one shots.

Woah who is talking about one-shot kills? I don't really like class advantages for back-stab. Also it's not really necessary with sane damage numbers. A heavy has a shield it can turn on and become nearly invulnerable already. When I say throwing knives I'm talking about the implementation from this thread:

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Version 4: Balanced Knife Design:

• Quick-button knife with post use delay equal to the unholstering delay of pulling out the weapon again. (Missing with a quick knife leaves you at a huge disadvantage time wise essentially).
  • Tapping the quick knife key swipes for 30% damage
  • Holding the quick knife key transitions to throwing knife after 1 second. 10 m range medium COF. 30% damage
  • Holding over 1.5 seconds has 25 m with small COF. 35% damage
• 3-mode equipped knife:
  • swipe, 30% damage. It's faster for continuous swipes than quick knifing since it lacks the transition back to a weapon)
  • stab, 35% damage, Audible noise like in PS1.
  • throw, single use 30% damage (better for multiple knives since there's no holstering delay)
    • Has pre (1 second to 1.5s when holding down the fire button) and post throw delay (longer animation).
    • If you don't hold the fire button for 1 second the throw is cancelled.
• Throwing knifes has Slow spinning projectile. So if you get hit the person that threw it might be behind cover.
• When equipped secondary stab mode does 75% damage when backstabbing stationary targets.
• Maxes takes 0% damage from knife attacks.
• Damage is uniform across all classes with no class (other than max) having advantages or disadvantages.
• If two people knife at the same general time the attacks are parried doing no damage allowing friendlies to kill the attacker. Rare, but this was brought up and is really necessary to help those at low health to protect themselves from a finishing strike. This increases tactics and fulfills the concept of a quick time event for protecting oneself from knife attacks that a few people want.

The full justification is in that thread though. We had a very long conversation about the pros and cons of such mechanics and tweaked the fake percentages for a while since people kept bringing up hard numbers. (It essentially forced me to define strict numbers). I feel odd linking it here since it's out of context with the original discussion which included some other points, but I think it can stand by itself now.

[The noob]

Why not have an implementation of both "quick" and "equipable" knives in the game? One button will activate the quick knife, which would do minor to moderate damage and would basically be more of a last resort rather than "lol I got close now I cut you". You can also choose to equip the knife, which leaves you more vulnerable to getting shot, both due to the fact you no longer have a gun equipped and that the knife takes longer to swing, but deals heavier damage than the quick knife, and might also allow infiltrators to backstab if they've certed for it (an assumption since they appear to be the only ones with a melee booster tree).