PC [Semi-Spoiler] Why is Melee Turning into a Ranged Class?

So why not call this also a thrown weapon?

The answer is extremely simple; this would make Daybreak utter trash.

The long and short of it is if melee was short range only, it'd not only be terrible compared to mage and range, but also extremely boring. You can only reskin and upscale the basic broadsword so many times before it's dull. Spears can only be spears for so long before they just seem crippled. Melee has to expand in order to compete and hold interest. Otherwise, why would you play it?
 
Sudden thread necro!? Are people calling end-game melee overpowered or just that it has too many range attacks? (yes I did read through the comments) Personally I find it strange that late-game melee weapons do more damage with their projectiles than the actual sword.

Making the projectiles have less damage than a hit from the actual weapon does seem the easiest solution IMO
 
ranged melee is really just a way to adapt to the current endgame; bosses that kite you and shoot at you. without the ranged melee options, people would instead be complaining that melee invested characters have to use off-"class" ranged weapons and do less damage to them. i'd rather have endgame geared players being "too strong" than "too impractical."

without ranged options, melee stuff would become a raw mob killing setup while others become boss killers, and that would get frustrating when alone and you're trying to kill something like the twins with a flail.

basically, it's because it's fun. shooting energy blasts out of your sword feels good.
 
I fail to see how Rangers are punished for spamming. It's not exactly that hard to hoard large amounts of ammo.
Also, the whole Mana Sickness thing can be avoided by carefully rationing your mana and picking up Mana Stars (something that the Celestial Magnet and any accessory derived from it can greatly help with).
With Nebula armor and an accessory derived from the Celestial Magnet, if you're chugging Mana Potions, you're doing something seriously wrong.

Devil's Advocate:
Yet Melee doesn't need to do that at all. They don't need to hoard ammo or manage mana. Whether or not those are easy obstacles to overcome, they aren't present in the first place for the Melee class. One could make the argument that the resource Melee manages is HP, but so do the other classes.
 
Imho:

I think the real problem is the armor system. Since it is generally a flat reduction, that means it is very difficult to have light-hitting creatures and heavy hitters when the player can have a variety of defense levels -- even if player defense from armor was fixed, you still can have +34 more from accessories and the defense potion. On normal that's a spread of 17 damage, which is a lot if you look at taking multiple hits. There wasn't any easy way to fix this, so the game evolved around avoiding most attacks. That doesn't work great for melee though, so they have more armor, but that still doesn't solve the overall balancing issue well, especially if you have ranged attacks from enemies over a large screen (when the melee guy has to get close)

This is always a tricky thing is systems where defense subtracts from damage taken -- they do not scale well. On small scales they are fine, which is why it works pretty well before hard mode.* But they just don't scale up indefinitely without really artificial systems. This is why you don't see that mechanic in a lot of games and tabletop RPGs. When you do see it, it is either kept small or as a means to say "you are going at the problem wrong" -- not as the main defense system. Percentile reduction of one form or another is easier to manage and balance, and can scale a lot better. They've added that in a bit for melee, but it doesn't entirely resolve the problem.

If they went from the ground up (so far Terraria 2 and hopefully Otherworld), I'd hope they use a percentile reduction system of some sort, with small, controlled amounts of subtractive reduction. Generally having incoming damage reduced by 50% and then improving that to 55% or 60% is a lot easier to deal with than having incoming damage reduced by 50 and that improving to 55 or 60. You can also do a lot to make sure that percentile reduction caps out at a particular value like 75% (giving diminishing returns, so armor still has value -- indeed, you can ensure that each point of armor has the same value in terms of Time to Live, which is nice).

I don't think resource management is a real issue here. Ranged classes essentially have resource BUSYWORK. Ammo isn't hard to get a lot of and keeping a huge supply is easy. It just takes time. Magic users are the ones that have resource management, and that's it. Basically, managing ammo only occasionally is an issue because of bad planning or forgetfulness -- something you hit your head about later but with proper prep waaay before battle is not an issue at all. Mana management is a constant thing during battle. Totally different -- not that I am a fan of resource busywork.

*Basically, subtractive systems have a range of values for which they work (depending on the system), and after that they require some brute forcing to ensure pretty strict linear scaling. This means making sure everyone fits into the right range of defense values. Do it wrong, and it either players can't stay alive or they die too easy.
 
Well, at first i agreed with the OP about Melee having to much ranged weapons(Yoyo's,beam swords) but after reading through all the posts i have to say that its something they need for the later bosses and to keep it interesting, couse while its fun to swing your broadsword against early enemies to save ammo for ranged weapons, with many of the bosses having some distance between u and the boss is pretty much needed so u survive long eneugh to kill them(think WoF,Plantera,Twins ect.) without getting shredded by them.

And sure, a Throwing weapon class might be nice as well(knifefighter or something) but its not needed atm couse it would only make melee look stale.
 
The answer is extremely simple; this would make Daybreak utter trash.

The long and short of it is if melee was short range only, it'd not only be terrible compared to mage and range, but also extremely boring. You can only reskin and upscale the basic broadsword so many times before it's dull. Spears can only be spears for so long before they just seem crippled. Melee has to expand in order to compete and hold interest. Otherwise, why would you play it?
What I think they should have done is have melee be an early game class that is then outclassed by every other class in hardmode.
It would seem like a stepping stone class. Ranged and magic would become superior with the more powerful materials and you would move on.
It would force the player to adapt play styles in-game and provide more variety.
Too late for Terraria, perhaps Terraria 2
 
What I think they should have done is have melee be an early game class that is then outclassed by every other class in hardmode.
It would seem like a stepping stone class. Ranged and magic would become superior with the more powerful materials and you would move on.
It would force the player to adapt play styles in-game and provide more variety.
Too late for Terraria, perhaps Terraria 2

That, of course, would have prevented awesome things like Terra Blade, Terrarian, Solar Eruption, and Flairon from existing.
Special note on the Solar Eruption here: It's an endgame melee that technically does not have any projectiles.
So yeah, quit hating on the badass fiery chain sword.
 
That, of course, would have prevented awesome things like Terra Blade, Terrarian, Solar Eruption, and Flairon from existing.
Special note on the Solar Eruption here: It's an endgame melee that technically does not have any projectiles.
So yeah, quit hating on the badass fiery chain sword.
I'm not hating on the badass fiery chain sword, I am saying that if it could have been done different, they could have forced the player to switch play styles.
I think the last play through I was melee the whole game. No contest for all the reasons OP mentioned.
 
It's like 1am and I shouldn't be posting but I'm going to post anyway because I can.

What I think they should have done is have melee be an early game class that is then outclassed by every other class in hardmode.
It would seem like a stepping stone class. Ranged and magic would become superior with the more powerful materials and you would move on.
It would force the player to adapt play styles in-game and provide more variety.
Too late for Terraria, perhaps Terraria 2

How does rendering an entire playstyle "inferior" promote variety? If somebody wants to invest striking damage, then they should be allowed to without being entirely outclassed. Because, you know, games are supposed to be fun. Yes, people tend to invest in a gun for fighting the likes of The Twins, but by no means should players be overly punished for wanting to have striking investment.

The problem lies in something TVTropes called "Linear Warrior, Quadratic Wizard" where striking damage only really improved numerically while casters upgraded from a fireball to summoning blizzards and meteor showers, covering areas in nuclear rage. Terraria just has Quadratic Everything. I would much rather have a 200 damage sword that shoots bouncing rainbow cats than just a 400 damage sword that does nothing but swing really fast. It's more fun.

Sure, purely thrown things such as Vampire Knives and Daybreak could have been lumped into Throwing damage, but I believe that was mostly just added so stuff like Grenades didn't become silly with early ranged damage bonuses early in. It'd be nice to see more love for the entirely new damage category, though. Make some midgame armor from Ectoplasm, make an endgame armor from mixing and matching pillar fragments, who cares. Just throw them a bone.

Get it? Throw?

Ha ha, I slay me.
 
Well, this thread is right as hell. It's no longer "Melee", it's more like Warrior. All-around warrior, which sacrifices nothing for everything. Even Mages have tradeoffs for their weapons, not to mention Rangers. Warriors are meant to be "Melee", and should be as they are. Instead of making ranged weapons for "Melees" to easily pass the problems that comes at endgame, invent some weapons that are really close-range ones, not just Ranged/Magic labeled "high DPS only for Warriors".
 
Well, this thread is right as hell. It's no longer "Melee", it's more like Warrior. All-around warrior, which sacrifices nothing for everything. Even Mages have tradeoffs for their weapons, not to mention Rangers. Warriors are meant to be "Melee", and should be as they are. Instead of making ranged weapons for "Melees" to easily pass the problems that comes at endgame, invent some weapons that are really close-range ones, not just Ranged/Magic labeled "high DPS only for Warriors".

As mentioned before, there's only so much you can do with close-range weaponry before it just starts feeling like the same couple weapons, just slightly stronger.
It really wouldn't be satisfying if the endgame melee weapons were "Wooden Sword but stronger, for the twentieth time" and "Spear but stronger, for the tenth time".

As an aside, if anything, the most boring Moon Lord weapons are the Ranged ones. The Celebration is basically just a rocket launcher that fires two rockets, and the S.D.M.G. is the logical conclusion of "Minishark, but stronger".
But they get a pass, because Celebration is a fireworks cannon, and S.D.M.G. can take advantage of the wide variety of bullets.
 
As mentioned before, there's only so much you can do with close-range weaponry before it just starts feeling like the same couple weapons, just slightly stronger.
It really wouldn't be satisfying if the endgame melee weapons were "Wooden Sword but stronger, for the twentieth time" and "Spear but stronger, for the tenth time".

As an aside, if anything, the most boring Moon Lord weapons are the Ranged ones. The Celebration is basically just a rocket launcher that fires two rockets, and the S.D.M.G. is the logical conclusion of "Minishark, but stronger".
Well, You're right. But I can assure You that there are easily implementable full melee weapons with interesting, unique and fun mechanics that would do on endgame. I found some, and even "invented" few... Never posted it, though. And propably won't ever do it.
As for Ranger endgame weapons... You are totally right... "But that is another story, to be told another time."
If You know game from which I took green-coloured quote, then You have my respect. Hint: Vatar (don't even google it. If You don't know this game, it won't help).
Also, there is a thread dedicated to Ranger class problems after 1.3 update, and I bet You'd find it to describe these pretty accurately. If You are interested, It's in Suggestions>Equipment. This is not meant to be adversitement in any way - I just see that here comes the same off-top that does on another such threads, and would like to redirect it there.
 
Guys, guys, guys.... Buffed Arkhalis type weapon with longer range, endgame power and because of the nature, you could aim to use at a close range... (Maybe click per use to prevent it from being too op)

I have said this on 3 different threads. I would go out of pocket to fund this. If melee was strictly close ranged fighting, You would simply have swords swinging overhead. There isn't much skill in that.

Sounds like many people are melee haters. More to the point, there aren't REALLY classes. What is stopping a mage from using a meowmere when mp is running low? I use mana weapons and I use a full set of melee armor. I dabble in ranged gear too.

Maybe melee has become more ranged of late, but that is just because people aren't very creative with their suggestions. I seriously think a buffed Arkhalis type weapon would be so perfect. It swings like a sword would.

FYI: Melee endgame DPS gets beaten out by ranged and magic. Also, in my opinion, player vs entity, mage is usually king.
 
As an aside, if anything, the most boring Moon Lord weapons are the Ranged ones. The Celebration is basically just a rocket launcher that fires two rockets, and the S.D.M.G. is the logical conclusion of "Minishark, but stronger".
But they get a pass, because Celebration is a fireworks cannon, and S.D.M.G. can take advantage of the wide variety of bullets.

Who's been giving them a pass? I've been hearing the SDMG is boring but effective, but still incredibly boring, and the Celebration is nigh worthless.
 
Guys, guys, guys.... Buffed Arkhalis type weapon with longer range, endgame power and because of the nature, you could aim to use at a close range... (Maybe click per use to prevent it from being too op)

I have said this on 3 different threads. I would go out of pocket to fund this. If melee was strictly close ranged fighting, You would simply have swords swinging overhead. There isn't much skill in that.

Swords, Spears, Flails to start. Lots of close range fighting that's different. Of course, if you had multiple ways to attack/use a weapon, then that could add more variety still. So variety can be really good.

As for skill, one could easily make a case that positioning, movement, and having to manage being closer than other combat types but not too close requires more skill -- not less.
 
Melee weapons having some range is not really a bad thing, it compensates for a few weaknesses the melee class has - Not being able to consistently tank all the damage that being at a shorter range would force them to take because they couldn't dodge from such a close distance and being out ranged so hard in PvP that even with double defense they would still be taken down by any other class.

Even though they have higher defense and don't have to worry about ammunition and mana they still have a limit on their ranged attacks - They can not fire as fast as a ranger, aiming the projectiles and attacks is harder, a lot of ranged melee weapons don't have anywhere near the same reach, it's better to take warding modifiers on accessories in most cases so damage output is not as good as other classes.

A warrior can still have trouble competing in PvP because the speed, DPS and reach of ranger and mage weapons are still far superior, so much so that even thinking about trying to PvP against anyone with a SDMG or a Last Prism is basically suicide, even using a Terrarian, which has very long reach combined with a Yoyo Bag.

I think that these limiting factors placed on ranged melee weapons is enough, the only real problem that I can see is with Meowmere, in my opinion, the multiple bounces of the projectiles and the multiple AoE explosions are taking things a little bit too far for a melee weapon.

Apart from that, the only other real issue I see is DPS - Hitting with the weapon it's self should always do more damage than any projectile fired and that is not the case - So perhaps a slight nerf to melee projectile damage (Even if it is just something as simple as only allowing the effects of flasks to be applied on weapon strikes) could be a simple solution.
 
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