combat skills/abilities and physics

visuals is what makes combat a better feeling and also awareness of what's going on

things like the well known warrior charge of wow.
Archeage bubble into the air of a mage.

and so forth..

IF you saw a sheep in wow.. you knew that you dont wanted to hit it..

those kinda visuals/mechanics are essential to the feeling of combat.

so what's the stance of ashes on this topic?

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Jahlon

Go play the BR and you can get a sense of what their visual look like.

As far as the rest, we'll need to wait to see Alpha 1.

Wandering Mist

You bring up a good point OP. Visuals are very important for quickly distinguishing what is happening in combat, and often times less is more here. There have been some games I've played where there are so many visuals on the screen that you can't tell what is happening at all, it's all just a mess of effects. Sure it may look good and give a sense of grandeur to the action but in my opinion that is not the true purpose of visuals.

The reason why we have different visuals for different abilities is to help us, the players, tell what spells are being used. I hope Intrepid will keep this in mind when designing the visuals and animations for the mmorpg.

Copperfield

yes... your spot on...

Games like BDO complete messup the visual interaction with awereness of what skills are being used.

that is a big no go for me.

if you look closely on the alpha gameplay vid.. you see the warrior 1hander/shield charge towards a mob..

I would love to see the an developer stance on this topic how they gonna handle it..

George_Black

I prefer simple but impressive fighter moves without too many flashing and colours.

As for mages.... it would be nice if AoC managed to satisfy all the robe boys and girls without filling our screens with all their effects.

George_Black

In ArcheAge (Unchained) I wanted to like the game but the big Hammer that was the animation of the best of my Twin Sword class was so off putting that I quit.

In Elder Scrolls also I found it off putting that for example when a DragonKnight casted Lava Whip the weapons be it:
Sword/Shield
Staff
Anything really
dissapeared completelly. Why was it so difficult for the Knight to hold the shield in the left hand and use the Whip with the Right?

another example. An ESO Nightblade would produce a Shadow Knife and stab with an ability.
In the meantime the Two handed sword, or the Twin Daggers or the Bow, quess what? Dissapeared.

Anothet ESO example.
My very char was deleted within 20 minutes of gameplay.
There I was with a Templar, holding a sword and a shield.
My go-to damage ability? Holy spear.
My Sword and Shield dissapeared in thin air replaced by a yellow light spear that pierced 3-4 times forward.
(There are no spears as weapon items in ESO)

Tera Online in my opinion has achieved the best combat animations back in 2014.
They were impressive, without too many flashes and colours, nor unexplained dissapearance of weapons.
The mages also had a massive pool of spells without being annoying by covering the whole field

George_Black

Black Desert although beautiful to look at wasnt fun on so many levels (p2w).

The abilities of my warrior were dissapointing.
Too many unnecessary flashes and colours made the slashes of my sword slashes look annoying.

Not to mention that the body motion wasnt natural or felt like flowing.

An ability often seemed like a slideshow of still motions.

George_Black

I also dislike when mmorpgs are full of AoE indicators, or just in general full of indicators

I like it more when the screen is natural.

Is that a lake of fire that this mage casted in front on me?
I dont need a red UI circle to tell me that I will get damaged.

Is that warrior about to swing a heavy blow at me?
I dont need his body to flash a warning red light as he is about to bring down that axe.

Did I receive a healing over time buff from the Cleric?
A subtle glow would be better than my character and armor dissapearing under yellow and green colours all over the body.

Ishka

Your post makes me wonder, what if some of the abilities we will have will be designed in a way they visually have an impact on a fight. Some will be without much visual effects for visual clarity sake and others are made to mess with the opponent's vision. For example the cliché of the ninja using a smoke bomb, or maybe a mage that uses a light spell to blind.

Wouldn't it be interesting gameplay wise to have such abilities, more than damaging or applying a CC, it could provide another "layer of mechanics" by limiting vision, it would be a double edged sword. What I fear is that in case of large scale pvp it becomes impossible to see things. But maybe such kinds of spells would have a counter, to take back the example of the smoke bomb, a mage using a wind spell that interact with the smoke and remove it.

What do you guys think ?

Copperfield

well a game can go multiple ways on this topic.. it kinda depends on the stance or pov of the developers..

- buff and casting indicators
- casting/buff indicators with minimal impact of awareness of visuals
- only visuals that show what spell/ability is being used
- complete disregard visual impact of awareness and make the game a fireworks of visuals

for me personally the way to go is to have buff indicators only.. and use meaningful visuals to determine what spells/abilities being used.

i think this will only benefits the enjoyment of combat.. and let the player focus on what your enemy is actually doing instead of button smashing your highest dmg spells/abilities against your enemy

example: if a healer tosses a selfheal on himself.. by showing a healing visual.. the warrior knows he has stun his target in order to prevent the selfheal.

indepth combat system is what a game thrives imo

Ishka

Regarding this, the MMO I like the most for its “clarity” is Aion. The buffs/debuffs icons are clear and if you learnt the game you recognize these at first sight, the visuals are balanced and hopefully there is a casting bar for you and your target, but when there is more than 60 skills at end-game, visuals are not enough.
Especially with the current shirt patches where everyone is capped in casting time and use spells at the rate of an assault rifle.

So I would like a casting bar no matter what.

Damokles

I think that melee dps cllasses should have simple animations and blood splatter on critical hits or something. I really like the Dota aproach for melee combat animations xD.

Ishka wrote: »

Regarding this, the MMO I like the most for its “clarity” is Aion. The buffs/debuffs icons are clear and if you learnt the game you recognize these at first sight, the visuals are balanced and hopefully there is a casting bar for you and your target, but when there is more than 60 skills at end-game, visuals are not enough.
Especially with the current shirt patches where everyone is capped in casting time and use spells at the rate of an assault rifle.

So I would like a casting bar no matter what.

Have you ever seen a Chanter actually spam his s*it? They are the best exmple for animations spams xD

Ishka

@Damokles All classes can spam shits in fact if the player is decent at weaving and using it's abilities. What matters is not the animations since we all attack quickly, but the debuff since most of the classes play around covering a silence, blinds, root,CC etc ...What can be used properly in aion are the sound.

For example the gladiator's lockdown, its 3s binds is very dangerous for physical classes, but if you pay attention enough, not even looking at the glad, you can instantly dispel the binds with a pot.

Back to Aion's skills animations, some skills can be recognized easily. But it won't matter at all, there is no i-frame mechanics, for example even if you could magically recognize a Templar's grab animation as a sorcerer, using the Stone Skin before the skill reaches you, you would still get caught, since the game is done this way.

Regarding animation in general, if there are no mechanics around it like blocking dodging etc... it can be shity or well made, I doubt it will have any impact.

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