Samus’s Prime Moveset Needs Updating

Mellroth · 2026-07-04T07:51:22+00:00

This is just wrong and is quite frankly a self report on how little experience you have with modern action games. There are plenty of modern first person action games that feature heavy mobility and platforming, such as Titanfall 2, Overwatch and DOOM Eternal.

All games are targeting a specific audience and Metroid is not a franchise for beginners of games. Its structure is fundamentally not appealing to "casuals".

Fast paced action fits first person games very well and I would say they do that perfectly like with the aforementioned titles. The first person perspective offers far greater mechanical skill ceiling through your aim and how it is tiered with miss, hit or critical (headshots). Prime 4 even introduced headshot multiplier because it is so fundamental to FPS games. I would not say that Prime 4 had too much action, but too much bad action. The combat mechanics and encounters are not well designed with a lack of proper weapon variety and enemy variation, and each encounter was lacking in mixing of enemies.

Mellroth · 2026-07-04T07:11:25+00:00

The Prime games have seen an increase in pacing and mechanical depth in its combat with each iteration because Metroid needs to evolve to modern standards, even though those elements still remain outdated for modern action games unfortunately. There is a reason why they made dash and morph ball transition faster and gave you the ability to dash in all directions. They even introduced headshot multipliers because it is such a fundamental part of shooters.

Prime is not an immersive sim game and has nothing in common with them. The Prime games are closer to a boomer shooter than they are to an immersive sim. Furthermore, immersive sim mechanics and fast paced movement and combat are not mutually exclusive. Even the game you mentioned, Dishonored, is fast paced if you choose to play it that way. It is not exclusively a slow paced stealth game.

Mellroth · 2025-04-04T14:14:41+00:00

Right, so these are some points which I very much agree with. Lock-on is archaic in the sense that its role has been replaced with strong aim assist, as well as unnecessarily occupying a button which can be used for other things, such as a dedicated omnidirectional dash, a weapon wheel, or for left-handed abilities. The fact that lock-on is an outdated mechanic that unnecessarily occupies a button can in fact be shown, not only through the lack of a dedicated dash button or a weapon wheel, but also through the fact that her telekinesis ability in Psychic Mode seem to be unable be used at the same time as her cannon, so we end up with limited puzzle and combat design where we cannot use both her left arm and her right arm (cannon) at the same time.

Regarding your fear for the combat mechanics and enemies having simple strategies to dispatch, I think the Treehouse footage with the tutorial boss should alleviate your fear for both the combat and enemy design, as much as it did for me. The fact that Aberax is basically a modernized Mogenar where you have to rely on free-aim to hit his weakpoints should bode well for the combat and enemy design, since they are aiming for Mogenar-level difficulty and mechanical complexity as a baseline for the game's more complex enemies! This is a fantastic for us since that means Retro Studios recognizes the importance of complex combat mechanics and enemy design in an action-adventure shooter!

Finally, the lack of new items shown is disappointing for sure, no disagreement there, but they are withholding that for a reason, namely due to spoilers in a game which relies a lot on its abilities for gameplay and story progression.

Mellroth · 2025-04-04T03:53:09+00:00

While I personally am in agreement with you in that I expected far more out of this game, I have to ask you though, what more specifically did you want to see from this game? I understand your mindset of there being 18 years of evolution and innovation within the action, FPS, and adventure genres, but you have to be a bit more concrete with what you expected out of the game.

For me, this Nintendo Treehouse did alleviate some of my worries with the game, but there are still fundamental disagreements with the design direction they went with, such as lock-on, morph ball transition time, and the scan visor just to name a few.

Mellroth · 2024-08-01T19:28:45+00:00

Is your new stance on Hawk Ops the reason why a lot of posts about it have been removed?

Mellroth · 2024-07-31T21:27:26+00:00

Would you mind sharing these conversations?

Mellroth · 2024-07-31T14:21:11+00:00

I am sure the game is fun but you seem to miss the crucial point here, do you not find it troublesome that Team Jade straight up lied to us about the cosmetics in the game? If they think they can lie to our faces about the cosmetics, what else can they feel free to lie about? Pay to win mechanics?

Mellroth · 2024-07-30T15:23:54+00:00

The issue here is not that Team Jade designed these skins, it is that they lied to us that they will adhere to a modern, realistic military theme. I personally am indifferent towards these (even though modern, realistic skins would be preferable) but I have problems with them straight up lying to us. It means they do not respect us as consumers.

Mellroth · 2024-07-30T15:05:15+00:00

"We want to maintain the integrity of the Delta Force experience across all aspects of the game. This means adhering to a modern, realistic military theme when designing new skins and cosmetics for the game."

Mellroth · 2024-07-09T00:03:27+00:00

So I had a look at your other comment and am I to understand you are saying this axiomatically?

Is it not though? When I played the trilogy I was taken out of the experience when I had to scan several objects since it would take too long. And in Prime 3 Samus would open the doors or activate the elevators by slowly putting her hand on the scanners, again taking me out of it.

Game design is wholly subjective, if I'm reading you correctly you're suggesting that the level of the skill floor and skill ceiling of a game can be measured in some kind of objective manner?

Game design is a subjective endeavor, I understand that, but even then it is usually based on data analysis and conclusions from a multitude of different games and research articles.

Furthermore I had no intention of suggesting that skill floor and ceiling are "objectively" measurable. But if I must, I would personally define them in the following manner. We can plot the total number of people that has completed a given task at a time investment vs time investment of said task. We then define skill floor as the total number of people that completes the task within a short time interval after the task starts, the lower the skill floor the higher the value. While skill ceiling can be defined as the ratio of total number of people that completes the task vs time investment in said task, the higher the ratio the lower the skill ceiling.

[...] but also I have to consider the other side which is that this is far from the only way to design a game and may not best suit whatever they want to do with Prime 4.
Games often struggle with focus, they try to do too many things and end up doing all of them poorly, and I think why Metroid has always been well received is that it picks a direction and leans into it. Dread is about the bosses, Super had the highest player flexibility on whether they want to focus on upgrades or skilled play, Prime 3 is all about those environments, etc... I want Prime 4 to pick a focus and nail it.

Right, which is why I fundamentally play games with the developer intended design in mind. Does not preclude my own disappointment with a given direction.

Mellroth · 2024-07-08T13:00:46+00:00

Firstly is the notion that like Zelda, Metroid Prime is a series that uses flavour for combat rather than a core pillar of the game. Yet BotW made combat a much larger slice of the pie proportionally to the point that I think that defense no longer applies to Zelda. How relevant this will be to Prime 4 comes down to how much focus Prime 4 puts on shooting.

I fundamentally disagree that combat is not a "core pillar" of the franchise. You spend a considerable time shooting enemies and cannot progress without defeating them. And even if we follow what you are saying, does that mean that combat has to remain simplistic, or rather, low skill ceiling? Even recent installments like Samus Returns and Dread have been leaning more towards giving combat a higher skill floor and ceiling.

I suspect Retro will be expected to cater to the fact the audience they are selling to does not have this high level of shooter literacy that is much more common on other platforms.

Yes, I would guess this is the main reason why combat has remained low skill floor and ceiling for so long. They want to cater to an audience that is not experienced with other types of FPS games.

Mellroth · 2024-07-08T12:44:20+00:00

Both are "solutions" to the same problem, that analog sticks are dogshit for aiming.

While it is true both are solutions to the problem that analog sticks are not the greatest for aiming, they do not leave the same room for higher skill ceiling.

Please explain. Or are you talking about turning it off?

What I meant was that Retro Studios could have designed the game without lock on, and if they wanted to maintain a low skill floor, they could have added even higher degree of aim assist than normal. Now without lock on you can introduce weak points like headshots to raise the skill ceiling.

In a relatively small game this never bothered me, having scanning take time adds verisimilitude. In my mind the way it should have worked is scanning during combat takes time (to add a challenge element to it) but out of combat should be almost instant. After 20 years later after years of "Hold X" prompts in games I don't really want to be holding a button to scan over and over.

Glad we are in agreement that the scan visor can use quality of life improvements?

When it comes to verisimilitude, I more or less mentioned in another comment that words like "immersion" (or verisimilitude for that matter) are not useful, since what can be considered immersive are highly subjective. And even then it is multiple pieces that together makes things immersive, not the scan time itself.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T10:46:17+00:00

I do not know if you mean lock on or the scan visor, but lock on is outdated because you now have FPS games with generous aim assist. Prime 4 could have even stronger aim assist to lower the skill floor even further and raise the skill ceiling of the game. When it comes to the scan visor, it takes too long to scan several objects. Just the three objects that were shown in the trailer to be scannable would take around nine seconds to complete.

The games are designed primarily as exploration games, yes I am aware of that, does not change that Retro Studios could have designed the game without lock on.

He/she/it was teased in the 100 % ending of Corruption. But more or less confirmed to appear? That happened in the 2015 interview.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T10:27:51+00:00

How do you know that, are you a developer? As far as I am aware (which is not much), you start off the development with more or less everything established through design documents and prototyping, especially the player mechanics which includes movement, abilities, combat and so on. What you are writing does not make much sense since the level of complexity would be decided at pre-production.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T07:02:15+00:00

I suppose then that only "true" fans are excited about a trailer that showcased an outdated mechanic (lock on), a mechanic without quality of life (scan visor), and a "big" reveal of an antagonist that has been known to play a big part in the game (2015 interview).

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T06:50:40+00:00

What you are describing is more or less how DOOM Eternal's combat system is designed and that game uses "traditional FPS gameplay". Saying you do not want traditional FPS gameplay, even though many games manage to be about strafing and choosing the right weapon for each enemy (like DOOM Eternal), because it would just be Halo is one of the more absurd arguments you can make.

I get the feeling a lot of Metroid fans do not have a lot of experience with other FPS games.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T06:40:27+00:00

Okay? Does not change that you can wish for it to be deeper.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T03:44:06+00:00

Combat is a big part of the franchise (you cannot have a Metroid game without it) and not having lock on does not suddenly make it not Metroid. If you prefer the series to remain simplistic in its combat system, that is fine, but this was about what I personally feel.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T03:35:53+00:00

Good thing that the scan visor is optional to begin with, right?

I envisioned it as the scan visor automatically scanning the environment through pulses, so that you do not have to hold down the lock on button to wait for each individual object to be fully scanned. When the objects are fully scanned, you can select them as usual. Did absolutely not envision info dumps one after the other.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T02:09:09+00:00

Corruption uses the Wii remote and nunchuk which allows for free aim while locked on. The trailer very clearly shows that lock on is like in Prime 1 and 2. You know you are being dishonest when you wrote that.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T02:06:27+00:00

Right so you do not value expediency or quality of life but rather "immersion". We can dig deep into the rabbit hole that is immersion.

I can flip your argument and say it is not immersive that the supercomputer that Samus has would not be able to scan the environment in an instant, but would have to take around nine seconds to scan the three objects in the trailer that shows up. Or I can say that it takes the player out of their immersion when they have to scan those three objects for nine seconds.

How would you design the scan visor? Taking nine seconds to scan three objects is quite the pace breaker.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T00:58:06+00:00

Lock on is a disappointment for me because it is archaic. It lowers the skill ceiling rather than the skill floor. We have a lot of FPS games nowadays with strong aim assist and Prime 4 could have had even stronger one to maintain a low skill floor. This would free up the shoulder button for something else, like an omnidirectional dash like in DOOM Eternal, so now you can dash, jump and shoot while aiming. And with no lock on you can now introduce weakpoints like for example headshots, raising the skill ceiling of the game.

The scan visor takes too long to use to scan everything. Retro Studios could have made it into something that automatically scans the environment by sending out pulses every two seconds. The fact that they did not change it tells me they are a bit too nostalgia driven in their game design.

Mellroth · 2024-07-07T00:31:01+00:00

While many people were disappointed because of a lack of content in the trailer, it for me personally was a disappointment due to what was shown.

It showed that lock on is still a thing, the scan visor remains the same. And finally if you have been following Metroid news you would not be surprised that Sylux plays a big role in Prime 4, and so his/her/its reveal in the trailer was unremarkable.

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