Love the Combat Updates

Glory

I just wanted to give Intrepid big kudos. I love the weight of the new attack animations. A real step in the right direction. Keep up the great work.

Link to content for those who haven't seen: (Starts at 12:07)

https://youtu.be/P2-swmpaW8Y?t=727

Plateau

Yeah it looks very good. I just have one tiny nitpick, which is that some of the attacks freeze-frame before the weapon actually lands, and then skip over the middle part of the animation (where the hit should actually occur).

But it looks properly weighty and impactful. The sound effects are nice. The animations look good (not quite perfect though). The weapon trail is cool, but slightly too bright/thick.

Wandering Mist

I don't think anyone will deny that it looks amazing, but as I've said in previous threads, making combat look amazing is completely different to making combat feel amazing.

Ravudha

yep love the evolution of combat and especially the enhanced fidelity of ability effects - definitely headed in the right direction - props to the dev team

akabear

The work in progress looks great across the board.

Personally, would like to see some of the effects toned down a little or become sparingly used as it may become a bit overwhelming when sustained or large fights. Perhaps the scaled theatrics?

Atama

This is unrecognizable compared to what I saw in APOC.

That’s a good thing. It looks really good now. Those sword moves in particular are awesome.

mcstackerson

Thanks for posting.

I will reserve judgment until I play it but initially, root motion on all attacks has me a little worried. This is how Crowfall started and they ended up changing it because it felt clunky. Maybe they got the movement during the animation right but I was hoping they were going to do this for certain abilities and leave the basic attack how it was.

noemad

leonerdo wrote: »

Yeah it looks very good. I just have one tiny nitpick, which is that some of the attacks freeze-frame before the weapon actually lands, and then skip over the middle part of the animation (where the hit should actually occur).

I noticed that too. I thought it was just my sucky internet connection at first but when it kept repeating at the exact same spot I realized what was going on.

One of the things I really liked was the armor they showed at just past the 59 minute mark. The stuff they showed in the past bugged me because I like a more realistic style of armor. Also I'm not a fan of asymmetry in general but especially on armor. What they showed in this video looked really good and eased some of the fears I had. I'm also not a fan of the overly flashy, spiky, winged weapons. That style just reminds me of bad 80s fantasy movies. If they just do the same kind of thing with the weapons, that they are doing with the armor, I'll be set.

Varkun

It was good to see the progress with some of the animations and to hear about the changes they have made. It is all just a work in progress at this point and with constructive feedback from we the community will hopefully only get better.
As a couple of people have pointed out a few concerns above in a constructive manner just as it should be.

ferretstalker

The melee combat looks way too heavy to me. Y'all know what I'm talking about, the meaty "chunking" going on with every hit looks jarring and it looks like it's overcompensating for a lack of visual hit indicators on enemies. Magic skills feel the same, with giant, bright, flashy spells hurting my eyes with their Unreal 4 lighting glare at every chance.

It's all steps in the right direction, but I'm still pessimistic about the final product. APOC's combat is a floaty, spazzy mess, and a smart developer wouldn't have gone through the trouble of designing a combat system like that solely to test the server's infrastructure.

seaber

'Improved' animations are not going to be noticed in actual combat, only rp combat.

The 'floaty' feeling of melee combat in apoc almost certainly comes from being able to move while attacking and new animations won't fix that.

Plateau

@ferretstalker There were "visual hit indicators" in the combat preview on stream. It was just kinda hard to see it through the weapon trail, which was too bright and/or thick. Also they went through the trouble of designing the system because they want to use that system as part of the MMO. It's a first draft, but it will eventually evolve into what we see in the MMO.

@seaber They announced a shift towards "root motion" (IDK exactly what that means, except that certain attacks lock you in place, or lock you into a certain movement like stepping forward while swinging). That should help with floaty feeling.

Wandering Mist

@leonerdo I was confused by this too when they mentioned it, so did a bit of research. From what I understand, every character model has a "collision capsule" which interacts with the physics engine and tells the game when you, for example, hit a wall.

With this in mind, the following article explains why root motion is so much better for combat animations.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Animation/RootMotion/index.html

It makes me wonder though why they didn't do this from the start.

Plateau

@wanderingmist Okay, then it's as simple as I thought. Attacks determine both animation and location/movement, rather than movement (and leg animation) being independent from attacks. I wasn't sure if there was a more nuanced/complicated system. I mean, I'm sure it's more complicated on the technical side, but the end-result is pretty straightforward.

Atama

wanderingmist wrote: »

It makes me wonder though why they didn't do this from the start.

Because they had other priorities first. Most likely the attack animations, etc. were from a stock set that the engine included. Once they had more basic systems functioning and stable they’ve moved on to making combat look and feel better.

Think of it like making a web site. You start with designing the menus and frames/templates then leave a placeholder for content (bunny with a pancake on its head maybe) just to see how the site works. Once the site’s structure is in place, then you fill it with real information and images.

Plateau

@atama That may be true. But it's more likely that they just wanted to try the free-movement kind of system first. Ya'know, the kind that most tab-targetted games have, where the vast majority of zero-casttime abilities don't affect your control of movement. Allowing more control of your character is an admirable goal.

This new system will be more rigid, and maybe that makes it feel better for some people. It certainly makes things more consistent, and that's probably better for PvP, considering that action-combat makes it hard to find consistency against targets who actually dodge, duck, dive, and dodge. A little less dodging and a little more getting locked into animations, means that combat isn't as wild and hitscan isn't as over-powered. We'll have to wait and see if it actually leads to a better experience overall.

Both are valid systems I think.

Wandering Mist

@Leonerdo it will definitely make hitbox detection more reliable. If they don't use root motion you can easily have the character model move outside the collision capsule. If you get hit by a spell during such an animation, it will look like your character gets hit but the hit doesn't register because the collision capsule is in a different place.

The downside to the system from a gameplay perspective is that once you start an attack animation, you are locked into it until the animation finishes. Of course it depends on what attack you are doing.

It will probably feel quite jarring to play in melee for those who have played a lot of APOC already since you won't be able to move all the time when attacking.

LieutenantToast

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts on what you saw of the new root motion animations during yesterday's livestream! I'm sure that as we move into the next testing window, this is something we'll be asking for more of your feedback on - how it feels, how it looks, etc.

CrazySquiggle

All I can say is they went from this game being AS polished as Fallout 76 about 6 months ago to being WAY more polished than both fallout 76 and Anthem now. I am already impressed . . . but my bar was not very high to begin with

I didn't know anything about steven or IS before I seen the summer kickstarter and was already impressed then. So many games are just mediocre nowadays and we are finally seeing some studios (old and new) come out and either keep up the good work or take the bar of standards and raised it a mile. A current example of this is Division 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2 (ONLY the single player campaign). Both games are very well designed and you can tell some care was put into them.

Varkun

LieutenantToast wrote: »

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts on what you saw of the new root motion animations during yesterday's livestream! I'm sure that as we move into the next testing window, this is something we'll be asking for more of your feedback on - how it feels, how it looks, etc.

Hmmm, the next test window. Let us hope the next test window is sooner rather than later . With the talk of internal testing being done they may be needing we the unwashed masses to test again soontm

Wandering Mist

@varkun let's hope so. Combat is something that needs to be tested hands-on so the more time we have to test it the better (assuming it's ready to be tested). For a lot of people, myself included, the combat is the thing that will make or break this game. Give me smooth and engaging combat and I will play this game for hours and hours. Make the combat clunky or boring and I will probably quit after a single hour.

grisu

It's great to see the progressive steps and I'm looking forward to try it all out in Apoc.