Are melee weapons in shooters overpowered?

[Cherry Cola]

If they weren't overpowered, they would be pretty worthless.

This.

Does anyone remember the knife from Counter Strike? It was completely worthless. One slash took 30HP and the stab was slow enough for your enemy to turn around and shoot you in the nostrils.

Melee weapons need to be one-hit kills, otherwise it's not worth the risk.

Helena Bonham Carter agreed with me!

Now I can die a happy man

 

[Rahnzan]

Melee weapons bother me in TF2. I successfully killed with them only once - it was with a Scout, I was pummeling a Heavy walking up some stairs and he wasn't paying attention because "lol just like Meet The Scout." That ceased to work for the rest of the match. When my friends (read: more experienced players) tried to pull them on me - while I was using the Sniper, I pwnt them dead with the supposedly shitty lil machine gun and they kept crying foul. How the hell are melee weapons supposed to be scary if you still have ammo in that game?

Why do melee weapons work in real life? Because bullets dont have guaranteed stopping power, it's not that your muscles stop working when they're shot, it's that your brain tells them to stop moving because they received damage and might make the wound worse. Pain keeps us from moving on. When we're so hopped up on adrenaline we don't feel bullets going in. Knives are different, and while I dont recommend stabbing any cops or military men decked out in full body armor to test the theory, the reason they work is because you KNOW that fucker is being pushed into you. Invisible metal objects with tiny cross sections will get past the radar but a piece of metal an inch wide being jiggled around inside your collar bone by an imprecise hand is going to get noticed. From the front, an assailant has 20 good feet to run up to you and gank you before you've got enough time to figure out what's going on, draw your weapon, and place two rounds (note I'm not mentioning taking time to aim) somewhere on that person that will stop him cold.

The reaction to a stabbing isn't "I'VE GOT A GUN I CAN WIN!" it's "OH FUCK I'VE BEEN STABBED!"

 

[BadgeMan]

Like any weapon in a shooter, it can be very difficult to balance a melee weapon but that still doesn't take away the harsh sting of pain at being knifed by someone with commando equipped in COD. =)

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

In many games melee weapons prove more powerful on an indivudal attack basis than a bullet. From a realistic standpoint that is certainly overpowered. From a gameplay standpoint however, they rarely are.

 

[cptawesome]

i think that if you bumrush a dude who is wielding a fully automatic weapon and live long enough to stab him, you have EARNED that one-hit kill. Also, statistically speaking, wounds that stab/impale do more damage than getting shot. Finally, it's fun to knife someone and say "Let's stab it up, stabby-style!"

 

[mechanixis]

Generally I think they are. Waving a combat knife in someone's general direction from five feet away does not instantly instantly kill them, otherwise family dinners would be bloodbaths. I find games that use the melee-attack-as-a-quick-finisher system - like MW2 or Halo - really break immersion, because it reminds me how un-grounded in reality the game I'm playing is. The usual counterargument is "but otherwise they wouldn't be useful", but then again, who says melee weapons need to be useful? Or at least as "useful" as guns. The system I prefer is using melee attacks to stun your opponents rather than outright killing them. The original Left 4 Dead is a great example of this, as bashing a zombie with a rifle butt does very little damage, but sends them sprawling long enough for you to line up a quick follow-up headshot. Gears also has a decent system in that it sets up a little quicktime event to represent a little hand-to-hand struggle between you and your opponent; even if it does end in a ridiculous chainsaw homicide, at least it makes melee combat brutal and less than instantaneous.

My ideal melee combat system for a multiplayer game would be a sort of competitive quick time event. You press the melee attack button to initiate the attack, and the opponent will have to press a corresponding button to block. Each player has three or four buttons to represent different attacks, and each attack they launch triggers an attack-specific quicktime event for their enemy to block it. Both players have to defend themselves and stay on the offensive. A quick, decisive succession of blows by one player will daze or disarm their opponent, ending the brawl and making an opening for a quick gunshot kill, while in a prolonged fistfight one player will eventually run out of health and simply collapse.

It's a moderately complicated system, but one I think any game that claim to be "realistic" deserves.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Counter strike.
THE KNIFES THEY DO NOTHING!

After my Counter-Strike phase ended, I heard and saw the words owned and pwned. It really took all the luck and skill in the world to kill someone melee.

I respected every knifer and Rifleman who used a scout.

After that, shooters were swipes for alternative attacks and chainsaws on guns.

 

[Ekibiogami]

Its allways Overpowerd, Or Worthless.

 

[Sparrow]

You expect to be able to fight back after having a dagger lodged in your spine?

You expect to get up after being shot?

No... wait...

 

[FightThePower]

Those Knifers turn into confetti if you possess a shotgun. The SPAS-12 is awesomely powerful, it's overlooked simply because it's the first shotgun unlocked and that it's pumping animation is roughly 1.5 times longer than it needs to be, so it's firing rate is a lot faster than people think. AA-12 is fully automatic, Striker just plain hurts, M1014 is still a nice piece of work and the model 1887, used so frequently with a certain attachment its simply called the Akimbo are all very nice options for putting 6 pounds of metal in anyone stupid enough to try and knife you from the front - otherwise? Yeah, you bloody well deserve to have your ass handed to you, neatly carved, on a silver plate.

Fact - All of the automatic weapons at optimal ranges kill in 3-4 bullets with no cover.
Fact - Shotguns either kill in one or two shots depending on range, and the ones that need 2 are either akimbo, auto or semi-auto. Did a lot of testing, the shotgun damage doubles within 2 meters so there's no reason you can't oneshot someone.
Fact - Knives are still used at close range even with commando. At it's maximum range (say 4 meters?) there's plenty of time for the target to sidestep.
Fact - Assault rifles can get about 2 shots in before you get hit by the knife.
Fact - If you nerfed the knife even a little say, make it a two hit kill? The target would have enough time to kill you dead when you pull back for round two even if you knife him from behind he can probably prime a grenade. Try to get the backstabber achievement sometime and figure out just how difficult it will be to knife them precisely from behind if you want to do this DnD style. Instead of crying bullshit over the lunge people would cry bullshit over not one-hitting someone.

Things you should do:
1) Bring a Shotgun. Failing that?
2) Side step the dumbass. Failing that?
3) Don't hang around in tight spaces with a weapon that needs 3 shots to kill.
4) Stay out in the open. This is related to 3
5) Play with friends who know how to watch your back. Cant tell you the number of times I died because everyone thought they were Rambo.

Yes there's an advantage that lets you leap from incredible heights - consider this, there aren't a lot of really high places you can leap off of to outright kill yourself. In Call of Duty 4 there was something like, 5 places? The best you got in most of the maps in the new game are second story buildings and you survive those easily enough in the previous game. If someone leaps down and cracks his legs with a red face and stabs you dead, the end result isn't going to be much different from the guy who jumps down, doesn't crack his legs, doesn't have a red face, and stabs you dead.

Another thing? the knife at it's longest optimistically has a range of 4 meters. That's the longest kill I've been able to get judging by eye and considering that the character model is roughly 5 feet in height (since he crouches a little) to compare the distance too. That's a lot but in the old game there was enough dedicated-server lag I could run straight up to someone from a more literal ten meters away, swerve up to them and jab steel into their face. This game doesn't have that kind of lag anymore. Commando is necessary to go in knifing and the old defense method of using a shotgun STILL - WORKS. There's no sense including a weapon in the game that does less damage than a shotgun at a maximum of 3 feet with a one second reload time.

You're right, but I don't think it's that easy to take them out with Shotguns. Well, it isn't easy if you use the SPAS-12; basically, if you fire the shot slightly off-centre you won't kill them, even at very close range. I got knifed by one of these pricks the other day so I wisely decided to whip out my shotgun because that's how you deal with them. Unfortunately he was being smart and zig-zagging towards me holding a Care Package marker and even though I hit him with the SPAS, I was slightly off-target, so by the time I had pumped the second shot he was already in my face. I refuse to use the other Shotguns because they are so ridiculously spammy.

Smart Knifers will never try and take you head on anyway, they'll probably flank you and by the time it takes to switch out to your shotgun, you're already dead. Not to mention staying out in the open protects you from Knifers but leaves you exposed to everyone else. They can be taken down and I wouldn't say it's overpowered, but it's incredibly cheap and frustrating.

Incidentally I once countered a knifer with a Riot Shield. I laughed my arse off. He should have just circle-strafed me and knifed, instead he tried to take me head on.

 

[retro himself]

MW2 is not all FPS games. In almost every FPS game the melee weapon requires at least two hits. Games like Counterstrike, TF2, the original CoD, Half Life, Quake and well, just about any FPS game ever. Melee weapons are usually measly weapons designed to be used either to humiliate someone, because it's kinda hard to kill someone with a melee weapon, while your opponent is well armed, or it's to be used as a last resort weapon. And they fucking suck. They're definitely not overpowered, neither undepowered, but just right for the stuff they're supposed to do: kill weak enemies that are close and/or don't see you.

half life made a reasonably powerd melee weapon but fcked it up by giving you a gun that regenerates ammo so you never have to use it

Which gun do you mean? The gravity gun? It's more fun than the crowbar but I still use the crowbar to quickly dispatch headcrabs.

 

[MagnetoHydroDynamics]

GO PLAY INSURGENCY!
No knives - No bullshit.
Guns are lethal enough.

 

[Shenanigans176]

I think the best system for meleeing was in CounterStrike: Source. First of all, it's exceptionally hard to get to someone head on weilding a knife, and even if you do, it only does 65 damage from the 100 health they start with. However, if you somehow manage to sneak up behind someone, which is my favorite thing to do, it does 165 damage, well over the health of any individual. This is really fun in my book just because it's a change from the normal pace of the game.

 

[goodwithwords08]

In games like Killzone and Call of Duty, knives are pretty much one hit kills, prompting you to do things you wouldn't do in most games like rush into fire and shank someone like an psychopathic murderer from a slasher movie. There's also a similar problem with the Lancer in Gears of War, where you could almost casually slay locusts individually as easily as Leatherface kills dumb teenagers.

Well those games are trying to be realistic and a knife to the chest or a chainsaw to the chest would pretty much kill you in one hit in real life.

 

[WestMountain]

They should make more games like BF2 where you have to equip the knife and theres no auto-aim lunge in it, and it should always be the last resort.. But that isnt mainstream enough and now all high-budget FPSs will probably have a knife button

 

[ezeroast]

i like it in cod6(mw2) multiplayer, makes the game play faster and tests your reflexes.
Oh and it feels realy good to shank someone from behind.....

with a knife....

 

[Icehearted]

As long as they don't have lunge, they are fine.

In some spots lunge in melee was about all that saved my bacon in Halo 3 on legendary with skulls on.

In multiplayer, bah, who am I kidding, I avoid multiplayer like the plague. So...much...racism...

 

[Kinghoza]

Cry babies all of you