Melee weapons as sidearms.

[xBlackCat 1]

I think that melee weapons should be made as sidearms, and as they haven't actually been balanced yet, it wouldn't be as hard to implement now as it would later.

There are several reasons I think this would be more fair. For myself and many others, the pistol is reserved as the zombie killing weapon. They are short range, the 1911 and revolver are one hit kills on zombies, the weaker pistols are quite quiet. They are a perfect fit for this role. This leaves the primary weapon as more of a PvP weapon, both for bandits and people who need to fight the bandits off.

Melee weapons are pretty much exclusively for killing zombies, so there's little reason to pick it up when it can only be paired with a pistol that's already well suited for it. As a sidearm, since they assume the same role, and people would be far more likely to use them.

If balanced properly, I don't think it would be unreasonable. Melee weapons are an inherently risky weapon choice, and if a player carries a loud primary like a sniper along with a melee, it leaves little room for error. In a bad situation, the sniper would be left with a choice between facing a large mob with just a melee weapon, or shooting and alerting every bandit and zombie in the area. The risk of the weapon would make up for the silence it provides.

Additionally, if the hatchet remains a primary, it takes up 10 slots. As a sidearm, the hatchet would only take up 5 slots. This would make it much more practical for the average player to carry one even if they don't use it as a weapon. Sacrificing 10 slots is a hard choice even if it means carrying a sniper and a silenced primary, a hatchet just doesn't compare. At 10 slots, I could carry 5 stacks of wood and ditch them as I need more room.

[xBlackCat 1]

sorry for the self bump, but i was really hoping for at least some criticism.

[Nowisius 0]

Have to agree in this, Sidearm would be a good choise for the Melee weapon.

One thing would be if you made the Starter Flashlight act as a weak Melee weapon. Then the new character would have somthing to protect him with agains the zombies, and would be able to navigate at night.

An idea would be to remake the Glock17.

It is a Sidearm, and it has a flashlight on it.

What you do is lower the range and change the image to that of a normal Flashlight.

I dont know how hard this would be to do cus I dont know the code of Arma2, but I read somewhere that the current Melee-Hatchet was accualy a remake of a Shotgun, so it could be possible. right?

[zeeb 6]

Then no OP melee weapons such as katana which you can literally just run and slash through 100 zombies without problems, there should be standard melee, shit you find on a daily basis, like wood branch, should broke in a 5-10 hits. Or something like that, and it needs to hit like 2-3 times before a zombie go down.

Else this game would be far to easy..

[codfish 0]

Hatchets are cool but replacing my juicy M4 which takes up 10 inventory slots in my bag plus ammo (x4-6) means it's just not worth it. I would however replace my much smaller side arm and ammo with it as then I may have the inventory space to bounce between pistol and melee.

Putting melee weapons into Arma 2 must be a weird and wonderful piece of coding which all may have noticed has introduced a plethora of new fun bugs to kick in the nuts! I'm not conviced it's the right move and I know for certain replacing your beautiful primary firearm with an axe would not be worth the hassle. The engine is not kind to equipment control. Imagine the chaos as you loose STANAG mag after STANAG mag to the bag bug alone!

Reg

[xBlackCat 1]

Hatchets are cool but replacing my juicy M4 which takes up 10 inventory slots in my bag plus ammo (x4-6) means it's just not worth it. I would however replace my much smaller side arm and ammo with it as then I may have the inventory space to bounce between pistol and melee.

Putting melee weapons into Arma 2 must be a weird and wonderful piece of coding which all may have noticed has introduced a plethora of new fun bugs to kick in the nuts! I'm not conviced it's the right move and I know for certain replacing your beautiful primary firearm with an axe would not be worth the hassle. The engine is not kind to equipment control. Imagine the chaos as you loose STANAG mag after STANAG mag to the bag bug alone!

Reg

From what I've seen around the forums, it seems that the melee weapons are just a shotgun that has been modded with a new skin and given ultra-short range. Really an elegant solution if you ask me.

@Demnish

Ive always thought that a melee weapon that could be easily and reliably used to kill massive hordes doesn't belong in the game anyway. Ammo conservation is one of the main stresses in the game, and as such, i feel that melee weapons should be more of a last ditch weapon; or as a weapon that can be used to take out a single zombie without creating a horde.

What I meant by rebalancing the weapon for a secondary role is making it so that there is a bit of a ballet required to get a zombie kill without being injured. Make it take 3 hits or so, make it have a bit of a wind-up, make it so that the zombie has a chance to get hits in if done poorly, make it high risk.

The fact that they are common and silent will make up for a heck of a lot of downsides.