That's a great question. In my opinion, it all depends on what your goal is with learning guitar. There are so many ways to use the guitar that your practice should reflect your goal...
If you wanna be the "Bob Dylan" who uses the guitar to accompany yourself when singing, there's not the same need to be able to play melodies. But if don't sing, you may wanna play melodies and ultimately play both melody and chords down the road...
If you don't have a specific goal, it's always good to practice a little bit of everything! Learn some melodies (it's always best to memorize them!), some chords, a scale or two, some strumming patterns and maybe some finger picking... It's always good to be working on more than one thing at a time, so you don't burn out on one particular thing. Then you can always work on something else and come back to it!
Let me know how it goes,
Anders