Let's talk about the elephant in the room: punching.
Hello,
Let's talk about a subject never or rarely raised: the raw damage of unweaponized attacks: raw fists (or heirloom strikes).
I won't really venture into the realism, of the game: AL is a game where unarmored people can handle several fire weapon ammo shots point blank into the head, which can be bare or wearing a metal helmet, while you can down anyone with 4 punches (i.e. ~1.5x the damge of the smaller bullets). I mean... We're talking about a game where people die into metal boxes twice as big, then reincarnate in a card that gets them to respawn from an instant dropship. KK.
But that consideration apart, we need to really talk about those fists.
That damage (30 at that time), is not OP, nor is it weak, we don't really need my opinion about that damage.
It's just absurd by design for the reason I mentioned above. But let's keep it, cause anyway it's part of the game, so how about that punch thing?
- This triggers brutality instead of finer gaming at all moments
- This encourages people to last-punch out of fights ("took 30 bullets, lol, I can still jump on you and kill you with a punch on the foot"), which is not really adding to the game
- This triggers super-cringy kills thanks to lags (the main reason why Octane recently saw an increase in play for no reason other than a wee-double-dump enhanced distance, which is not as useful as PF zipline, WR portals or even Loba bracelet)
Also, not to mention:
- The audio is excessively noisy and loud (louder than an amped Sentinel)
- You can deafen your teammates
- You can team kill your teammates (there are tons of videos of that on YT, AFK, crash, reconnecting, into the ring, into the void, etc.)
- You can create useless frustration on downed people
- The animation makes most characters look silly, even with heirlooms.
- You can punch metal doors in two shots (at least that explains the damage to the head)
- All legends have the same punch damage and speed
I can't count the number of incaps I did with punches, nor the number of times I was incaped do to that. It's not personal, it's just that there are games where fighting with fists is a little more interesting, EA produces UFC 2, for instance. In Apex? It's just ridiculous, in the very first meaning of the word.
So, what can we do to make this a little less ridiculous?
My 2 cents, roast me, this space is designed for that:
- Reduce the average damage to 15 instead of 30.
- Change the damage and ROF of melee (excluding heirlooms, don't make them alter that) depending on characters so that the average remains the same (and balance that if it creates side effects)
- Allow destroying doors only with the special action, not just any punch effect
- Add exhaustion (like in Left 4 Dead)
- REDUCE THE AUDIO (really, really too loud), especially on team FF
- Remove FF target displacement
- Increasr self-stun effect during or after the animation
That being said: the Fight Night Ring animations are super cool. Maybe we could need them to be randomly used normally. What do you, think about that, mates?
