Movement - Discussion / Thoughts / Philosophy

Nyk

Making this thread since I've noticed that this is something that a lot of players seem to care deeply about, most of the threads I've read about this has basically had the response of "This is still pre-alpha and movement will feel a lot more fluid and responsive later down the line"

Linking a video about movement in games that I highly recommend watching:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LNidsMesxSE

Looking at other MMOs I think most people myself including agree that WoW has the best movement, but its also very hard to describe why this is the case because its such a complicated phenomenon.

I'm going to steal a comment from youtube: (credits goes to KoTu)

as animator I can tell why WoW feels so good and snappy... WoW has almost zero blending between animations. Idle goes to run by a button press instantly, you can tap "w" fast and see how your character does this switch between poses. In modern realistic looking games you have different blending techniques to make everything look more realistic, which makes button press less responsive because you have this small window of "inertia". I personally think gameplay is more important than good looking blending animations and would rather see unrealistic pose switching than graceful yet sloppy feeling hyperreal body mechanics.

This is also mentioned in the video linked above when David Rosen compares Mario and Prince of Persia
(What WoW has done is closer to Mario in Rosen's example)

Now a question that has been asked is: "Is the movement going to be fluid and responsive?"
I would like to rephrase this question into "What sort of movement system is AoC aiming for?"

Totally open to have discussions about this since I understand that not all players are looking to have a movement system similar to WoW but rather have a movement system closer to X mmo out there

Final input for me: How fast you can strafe in WoW is for a very important aspect of the game, character being able to go from strafing left to strafing right on a DIME is truly a fantastic feeling

Thanks

phdmonster

I don't know.. The movement and animations in WoW may be snappy and super fluid and responsive but look and feel super unnatural to me.

On the topic of movement.. Of course it has to be responsive, but depending on whether they want to have essentially animation canceling or not. To be honest, it would be nice if the devs chimed in on this thread.

GreatThodric

Nyk wrote: »

Making this thread since I've noticed that this is something that a lot of players seem to care deeply about, most of the threads I've read about this has basically had the response of "This is still pre-alpha and movement will feel a lot more fluid and responsive later down the line"

Linking a video about movement in games that I highly recommend watching:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LNidsMesxSE

Looking at other MMOs I think most people myself including agree that WoW has the best movement, but its also very hard to describe why this is the case because its such a complicated phenomenon.

I'm going to steal a comment from youtube: (credits goes to KoTu)

as animator I can tell why WoW feels so good and snappy... WoW has almost zero blending between animations. Idle goes to run by a button press instantly, you can tap "w" fast and see how your character does this switch between poses. In modern realistic looking games you have different blending techniques to make everything look more realistic, which makes button press less responsive because you have this small window of "inertia". I personally think gameplay is more important than good looking blending animations and would rather see unrealistic pose switching than graceful yet sloppy feeling hyperreal body mechanics.

This is also mentioned in the video linked above when David Rosen compares Mario and Prince of Persia
(What WoW has done is closer to Mario in Rosen's example)

Now a question that has been asked is: "Is the movement going to be fluid and responsive?"
I would like to rephrase this question into "What sort of movement system is AoC aiming for?"

Totally open to have discussions about this since I understand that not all players are looking to have a movement system similar to WoW but rather have a movement system closer to X mmo out there

Final input for me: How fast you can strafe in WoW is for a very important aspect of the game, character being able to go from strafing left to strafing right on a DIME is truly a fantastic feeling

Thanks

I agree with KoTu on this. It should be snappy. Especially since we still play with analog keyboard presses. If it should be as snappy as WoW is up for debate. I wouldn't mind some inertia to get a feeling of heft. But it would have to be slight. Playability over realism. But it looks like they're going the snappy way. At least in the pre-alpha photage.

Nyk

phdmonster wrote: »

I don't know.. The movement and animations in WoW may be snappy and super fluid and responsive but look and feel super unnatural to me.

On the topic of movement.. Of course it has to be responsive, but depending on whether they want to have essentially animation canceling or not. To be honest, it would be nice if the devs chimed in on this thread.

What do you mean when you say that

of course it has to be responsive

and also say

look and feel super unnatural to me

If you have something that has inertia to it, then you wont be able to make it feel as responsive (since it takes time from key press to character doing what u want it to do


Also very interesting about what u said regarding animation canceling. Has there been any words if it will be in the game or not?