While a lot of these ideas sound great at first, I think an easier solution would be that you can interrupt the loading animation by using your bayonet, but that the animation would simply start over again.
Bolting is actually a little slower from hipped mode than from iron sights, so I don't see bolting as the issue.
The real problem here is NOT with the guy who's jumping around, strafing, etc. It's a problem inherent to video games -- namely that melee combat cannot be accurately reproduced.
In real life, I can move my arms across my body to stab somone without having to turn completely. I can also turn my head and torso independently of one another. Video games don't allow for that generally. Those that do have typically been focused around giant, slow-moving robots (IE: Mechwarrior) rather than nimble humans.
Put simply, melee combat is HIGHLY nuanced. ANY system that seeks to replicate it in a video game will necessarily be flawed or so complex as to render it unplayable.
In RO, the major problems with Melee are:
- Your view is locked forward and you lack peripheral vision.
- Your entire body moves as if the spinal column has been fused together -- no neck or torso independent motion.
- With the exception of some of the free-aim system, none of your arm movements deviate from where you are looking (straight ahead). In other words, you can't cross your arms over your body to do anything towards the sides.
- You have to perform complete animations and your movement is limited to those specific animation. Look, if I'm reloading a rifle with a bayonet already fixed, and Joe Enemy comes running around the corner, I'm not gonna keep loading the stripper clip -- I'm going to gut him like a fish with my bayonet, to the best of my abilities, even if the clip is still poking out of the chamber and only 3 rounds are loaded. That CAN'T happen in RO, due to the animation system.
All of this is (imperfectly) represented by things like strafing. Strafing isn't LITERALLY about sidestepping. Strafing REPRESENTS things you can do in real life that you can't do in a game like this -- like running forward while shooting to the side (which you'd normally do by crossing the rifle over your body to shoot to the left if that's where you saw an enemy, for example).
The system does get abused, but it's the best we've got and mucking around with it will only produce DIFFERENT frustrating situations rather than a BETTER system.
Think about it. Let's say we limit your speed while reloading. Now assume you're charging across an open field, reloading as you go (you already can't sprint, by the way), but you hit the reload key. Oops! Now you have to slow to a crawl while you reload.
Or let's say the game is changed so that you can't jump or strafe while bolting. Anyone wanna time how long it takes after this change for people to start complaining about "SMG whoring pwnzored me! No fair!"?? I give it 0.03 seconds after the change goes live.
Leave the system alone. I don't like it anymore than the rest of folks out there when I try to stab someone, but jeez, melee combat isn't ever gonna be perfect.
FPS games are best designed for the "S" part -- shooting. Shooting can easily be recreated on a computer. Melee combat? No way, man. WAY too complicated to be done with any level of realism whatsoever. The game's found a "good enough" balance in its melee combat, I'd say, and mucking around with it further is only going to cause problems.