Current Situation:
Right now there are complains that melee combat is not deep enough. The animations are easy to read and the parry window is really generous. Reason for that is that the melee combat has to work with a wide array of latencies.
To add more personal skill to melee combat, melee veterans introduced spinning to hide your attack animation to make parrying much harder.
The Problem:
While spinning is a possible strategy, it seems to be the only really reliable one and at the same time it does look rather stupid and doesn't feel appealing for some players.
Current Idea:
The idea was now to introduce parry break abilities into the game. While we don't know yet how these abilities should work, I feel as if such abilities won't bring much finese into melee combat.
My Suggestion:
I would suggest to bring in some mechanics from real fencing, since parrying hits is also prevalent there. These mechanics could also tie in really well with the various weapons and even our character attributes and play with the stamina mechanic more.
1. Forcing through the parry
Rather then letting the attack end, the attacking player is able to press the attack button again and keep it pressed. He will now use the strength and weight of his weapon against the strength and weight of the opponents weapon. The longer the forcing holds, the more stamina gets drained from each involved player. The defender could get a little multiplier which makes him drain a bit less, since a parry normally works with leaverage.
If the defender now releases his parry too early, the attacker still hits (maybe with reduced damage)
If the defender runs out of stamina, he can't hold his parry anymore and gets hit.
If the attacker runs out of stamina, his attack just stops.
The idea is here to give strength based characters a feeling of force behind their attacks. They could see who they fight, see their weapon and judge themself if it is worth it to try to force your attack through an enemy. Even if the enemy might be a strength based character too, if he lost some stamina already he might be more winded and you could get through his stamina.
2. Mutate your hit/hit from a different angle
This would be the opposite of the strength based variant. Rather then forcing yourself through the attack, you get a little window after you got parried to make another attack. That other attack would get another animation to give it a more fluent look.
Each consecutive hit you do will drain more and more stamina from you, so a flurry of blows might leave you without stamina soon.
A consecutive hit would deal a certain fraction of the orginal charged hit (first consecutive hit deals 80%, second 60% and so on) so you need to judge your opponent and your and their stamina to see if you want to go through with that.
The animation length of these attacks can also be adjusted, maybe each consecutive hit combos into a faster and faster animation so that eventually you will get through, but your investment was a lot of stamina for a fraction of your damage.
The new animations into which you combo your attacks after each parry will also make it harder for your opponent to read what you are doing and the endresult should be a higher likelyhood of getting a hit.
The speed of these hits, or the damage of them, could be affected by Dex, that way characters who invested more into dex feel more like nimble fighters, slashing from various angles to eventually get through the opponents parries.
Both things could also be combined so that you try to strike from another angle and eventually you try to force yourself through the parry.
More things could maybe be added.
The general gist is, to give each player new options and decissions to make. Decissions which go beyound: parry left/right/up/down, attack left/right/up/down, but also if you need to hold it and how quickly you need to change your parry direction.
With parrying also allowing you to return an attack it might also end up in a trade. The defender might decide to attack and the attcker to defend... or just get hit while hoping his hit hurts more.
Right now there are complains that melee combat is not deep enough. The animations are easy to read and the parry window is really generous. Reason for that is that the melee combat has to work with a wide array of latencies.
To add more personal skill to melee combat, melee veterans introduced spinning to hide your attack animation to make parrying much harder.
The Problem:
While spinning is a possible strategy, it seems to be the only really reliable one and at the same time it does look rather stupid and doesn't feel appealing for some players.
Current Idea:
The idea was now to introduce parry break abilities into the game. While we don't know yet how these abilities should work, I feel as if such abilities won't bring much finese into melee combat.
My Suggestion:
I would suggest to bring in some mechanics from real fencing, since parrying hits is also prevalent there. These mechanics could also tie in really well with the various weapons and even our character attributes and play with the stamina mechanic more.
1. Forcing through the parry
Rather then letting the attack end, the attacking player is able to press the attack button again and keep it pressed. He will now use the strength and weight of his weapon against the strength and weight of the opponents weapon. The longer the forcing holds, the more stamina gets drained from each involved player. The defender could get a little multiplier which makes him drain a bit less, since a parry normally works with leaverage.
If the defender now releases his parry too early, the attacker still hits (maybe with reduced damage)
If the defender runs out of stamina, he can't hold his parry anymore and gets hit.
If the attacker runs out of stamina, his attack just stops.
The idea is here to give strength based characters a feeling of force behind their attacks. They could see who they fight, see their weapon and judge themself if it is worth it to try to force your attack through an enemy. Even if the enemy might be a strength based character too, if he lost some stamina already he might be more winded and you could get through his stamina.
2. Mutate your hit/hit from a different angle
This would be the opposite of the strength based variant. Rather then forcing yourself through the attack, you get a little window after you got parried to make another attack. That other attack would get another animation to give it a more fluent look.
Each consecutive hit you do will drain more and more stamina from you, so a flurry of blows might leave you without stamina soon.
A consecutive hit would deal a certain fraction of the orginal charged hit (first consecutive hit deals 80%, second 60% and so on) so you need to judge your opponent and your and their stamina to see if you want to go through with that.
The animation length of these attacks can also be adjusted, maybe each consecutive hit combos into a faster and faster animation so that eventually you will get through, but your investment was a lot of stamina for a fraction of your damage.
The new animations into which you combo your attacks after each parry will also make it harder for your opponent to read what you are doing and the endresult should be a higher likelyhood of getting a hit.
The speed of these hits, or the damage of them, could be affected by Dex, that way characters who invested more into dex feel more like nimble fighters, slashing from various angles to eventually get through the opponents parries.
Both things could also be combined so that you try to strike from another angle and eventually you try to force yourself through the parry.
More things could maybe be added.
The general gist is, to give each player new options and decissions to make. Decissions which go beyound: parry left/right/up/down, attack left/right/up/down, but also if you need to hold it and how quickly you need to change your parry direction.
With parrying also allowing you to return an attack it might also end up in a trade. The defender might decide to attack and the attcker to defend... or just get hit while hoping his hit hurts more.
