It takes a special kind of superhero to go into a fight against the forces superheroes face with nothing but your fists and feet, but that’s the modus operandi for a number of them, and soon players in Ship of Heroes will get the chance to make one of their very own with a new Martial Arts melee powerset. This new set and a focus on better melee combat was the subject of the latest video from the game.
The video is developer footage of a martial artist having a fight with three evil cyborgs. The footage should showcase some notable improvements to animations in the game, as the devs have been paying attention to melee combat speed in titles like Black Desert instead of the speed of melee in a game like City of Heroes or WoW. As such, the speed of the fight is less “stand there and take your licks” and a bit more fast-paced.
Martial Arts will be the first of six melee powersets that Ship of Heroes will have at launch, along with Street Fighting, one that uses a short-range energy shotgun, a single fiery sword powerset, a dual blades powerset, and a sixth that uses an energy lance or spear.
As for what’s next in terms of testing for Ship of Heroes, there are plans to have a combat alpha with waves of attacking enemies of different types. The devs are hoping to have all six of these melee types available in this test, and are shooting for sometime in the second quarter for this phase of testing. In the meantime, you can check the video below as well as a gallery of screenshots for more martial arts superheroics.
