I had the idea that all ranged or aimed weapons should be used in first-person perspective but switch to melee and then switch to a third person.
The justification being with melee the position of your body relative to the enemy is far more important to judge, you need more peripheral vision which is achieved by pulling the camera back, you don't need eye-perspective to reduce parallax.
One feature I wish games used with 3rd person perspective is to blur the field of view that is outside the eyeline of your avatar. So you can't just stand on the corner of a corridor and use the camera to peek around, you at least have to stick your head out a bit.
But switching between 1st and 3rd person perspective can be jarring unless done right.
One thing I can't decide on is whether it is better with or without aim-lock for melee weapons?
One good thing about locking aim is the camera could go free for the ideal angle between your avatar and the enemy. It would also free up the mouse/joystick/pointer to pull off complex moves like upper cuts, slashes, and parry left or right and so on.
But this may give a melee weapon user too much advantage over a gun user as it becomes too easy to circle strafe and heckle attacks.
One idea is the target lock with melee is "weak" and will degrade with time after you have aimed and locked onto them, too much movement, getting hit or attacks then the lock will loosen. So the lock has to be disengaged, re-aimed and then locked. The closer to centre mass you lock then the "stronger" the lock will be.
But locks are far from ideal, because one of the first rules of combat is "don't aim for where they are now but where they will be". So if the enemy is strafing hard to their left, a lunging sword attack must be aimed to the space into which they are travelling, and you have to judge how far based on speed and distance. With a lock, it either makes it too easy as it auto corrects making it pointless to ever bother trying to dodge, or doesn't and then two melee people are endlessly circle strafing each other, never hitting each other once.
Combat must favour the bold, a system that can only land a hit if someone screws up a hit means people will keep shields up for ages, constantly waiting for the other to attack and miss.
Nah, I think as great as having attacks based on joystick/mouse gestures, they won't make gameplay as fun or deep as having 100% manual aim.
