Combat Visual special effects - melee fighters. (No magic, that will be a different topic)

georgeblack

When ut comes to melee fighter combat abilities do you like flashing lights and colours or are you happy if the techniques of the fighters are depicted with nice ability animations?

Personally when it comes to moves using weapon and body, attack, debuff or block I dislike it when there is too much going on on the screen by MY attack as a warrior.
I didnt like the BDO warrior as much as I liked the L2 and Tera warrior.

However when it comes to selfbuffs, roars and battle cries I dont mind a bit of special effects.
I have heared that there will be optipns to tone down some of that but...

...what is your opinion on the melee fighter special effects of attack abilities?

Dygz

Hmmn. I'm not sure if it matters to me whether it's flashy animations or flashy hits.
I just want it to look cool in my gameplay vids.
I loved the animations from my Hammer in Bless Online. Also felt like my Hammer had weight to its impact.
I don't recall whether the blows flashed when they landed.

And, even though I'm a pacifist who prefers to avoid fighting in RPGs as much as possible, the blood spurts from slitting people's throats in Kingdoms of Amalur: reckoning was disturbingly satisfying and made me feel like a true Rogue.

Damokles

I think it depends on the class tbh.

The moves of a magic swordsman should be flashy because they are imbued with magic, while the normal moves of a weapons master should be efficient and smooth with no flashy elements (a pure killing machine)

An example would be:
-A weapon master has bloodspurts in his hitanimations/crits
-A spellsword lights his weapon on fire and makes a small explosion when he hits

Dygz

Ha. That sounds like the difference between flashy and sparkly.
Metal weapons might be flashy (I guess they might spark on impact, too.)

Ashes weapons are highly likely to be enchanted, too... so magical effects from weapons won’t just be related to class.

Wololo

totally agree with you here @georgeblack
attacks have more weight to them when the strength of lifting and swinging comes from the character itselve.
but meh its so hard to balance like.. the animation video released recently showed a 2 handed axe swing above the head having a change of momentum which would never be possible irl. it did have a great weighty feeling tho.
they cant please everyone but i am personally on the side that likes realistic animations because i did swing 2 real medieval swords before at a french castle, and that shit was heavy af just to pick up and hold in the air XD especially a longsword i can imagine once you commit to a swing there is no turn back or change of direction. from what we have seen so far i think they are finding a nice middle ground on animation design.

Wandering Mist

Since I usually have my camera zoomed out as much as possible when playing, visual effects don't matter too much to me. What I will say is that the visual effects need to match not only the actions being done, but the overall art-style. I wouldn't expect to see the same visual effects from FFXIV in BDO, as the art-style is completely different.

T Elf

As long as I can turn off blood, pick how many or how little effects, and who's effects, I'm ok.

Shoklen

Gritty or Flashy.... hum..

I'll have to agree it depends on the class and class/sub combination. Why not have both represented in the game world?

Dayuhan

I prefer "realistic" melee combat moves over flashy effects, and I put realistic in quotes because even this can be taken to extremes. A little blood and gore is to be expected, but I find some online games take it to far; truly, if characters bled as much as we see in some, not to be named, game combat animations the character (or creature) would drop from blood-loss long before the combat was over.

But realism aside, this is a high fantasy game, I think the flash should be reserved for the special abilities, critical hits, death blows, and the like. The normal hack'n-slash should have more subdued effects so when the real special attacks do occur their effect stands out as just that "something special", where the player of the character can say, "Yeah, that's how its done!" Otherwise it just gets lost in the deluge of slash and flash.

noemad

I prefer to have less flashy, mage-like effects when it comes to melee weapons. I loved the fatality animations in Age of Conan though.

Damokles

Another cool method to enhance the visual effects of melee attacks would be "metalglare" at the execution of charged abilities.

Example:
Do you remember all these cool sword-draw techniques from anime? Something like that, but only really sparingly ;D

Shoklen

Getsuga Tenshō! ~ Ichigo

EmeraldDarkholme

I don’t like flashy melee ability animations but that’s just my preference