Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
A. PLAYER's LH/RH options (which affects controls & mouse/key bindings), or
B. CHARACTER's LH/RH options?? (e.g. shield in MH, sword in OH for higher defense/block but lower damage/hit chance)
I wouldn't say it's hard to code, but having the ability to put weapons in either hand would require an entirely new set of animations. Essentially, each weapon swing would need double the animations (1 set for right handed users, and 1 set for left handed users). That is a huge amount of work and I honestly don't think it's worth doing.
I think you misinterpreted/misread my comment?
The complex coding was in reference to spell/particle effects and other things that might have been manually hard-coded like I had explained.
As for the extra animations, mirror-flipping models/rigs adds minimal extra work but comes with many downsides and is not ideal in any way.
It's obvious to anyone that adding left handed stuff without mirror flipping would require much more work.
B
It seemed as if they were just being facetious.
open a door.
Now imagine how many non-symmetrical animations in the game need to be reworked...
And do we typically actually use the doorknobs in MMORPGs?
This question is really asking: How much fidelity are we going to have in player animations?
If we're happy with no interaction animations (or generic ones), then it's even less meaningful to implement LH/RH
For example, if we want to "get into a bathtub", this too can't be mirrored because the bathtubs we've seen are not symmetrical along both x and y axes. But if we just press "E" and we're in the bathtub, then it's not a concern.
Position of weapon and shield are critical components to combat as well as reach. Being able to change hands would add a layer of complexity to combat. If the modeling tools don’t accommodate that easily then the tools suck frankly. For two-handed weapons, not having handedness takes away up to half of the positions and tactics as every right hand side guard or attack has a corresponding left hand (or sinister) guard or attack. Of course if all you are doing is swinging a sword then you are already taking away the usefulness of the weapon. Similar situation for shields used as blocking mechanisms rather that the way shields were actually used. And that’s not even related to the whole action combat vs tab targeting argument. Both systems including the proposed hybrid could apply these concepts.
For bows, handedness is irrelevant as the side you shoot from is based on eye dominance.
Noticed the dragons fighting with both front claws, although badly but it is alpha. Would also expect the wings and tail being swung around to hit characters and do damage as well as knock back. Based on the attacks, however, the system does not appear to take this into account and is instead handling damage via threat indicators rather than physics and spatial awareness. Yeah, it’s alpha. Or in other words, damage out of thin air. That forces the player’s attention away from the opponent and more towards the ground, and based on camera angle you can immediately lose the immersion of the combat. And since the position and movement has next to nothing to do with the attack, the corresponding defense or reaction becomes less than interesting. I for one think the whole on-the-nose telegraphing of the attack via threat indicators rather than say an animated tell takes away from the combat. It also takes away from the initial experience of fighting a monster for the first time.
The number one rule of medieval combat is not to get hit. That means position, cover and transitions are not trivial. Starting position sets up the line of attack and the line to cover. Opponent’s position also plays into that as well as the corresponding transition position and guard. Combat flows from that. Launching oneself into a bad attack angle or uncovered position is something to avoid and should be heavily penalized (e.g. auto crit). Except for maybe a shield wall or phalanx where you are fighting more as a unit rather than an individual, you are an idiot if you are just standing there exchanging blows like a turn-based RPG game.
If your combat isn’t considering this and instead it’s nothing more than a glorified hit box with animations then it would be even easier to implement left handed characters and character animations. If the system does take these factors into account, then WTF. Why do it halfway?
If you are simply going to say we will implement combat just like game X, then stop pretending at some sort of innovation. Also, just go with tab targeting. Besides, no one can see anything in a fight with all of the effects and chaos anyway.
The feature request is for the option for some characters to do things with the left hand that other characters do with the right hand. If characters aren't depicted as opening doors with hands at all, mirroring is not an issue in that instance.
(I think we did open doors in APOC, we just didn't use doorknobs.)
And, yes, whether mirroring entering a bathtub is a significant issue depends on the animation details for entering a bathtub. The more likely issue, I think, might climbing up on your mount.
I think this is a feature that should always be asked for in the early stages of game development.
Representation is important.
Could be that it's too late to implement for Ashes, if it's not already in the game design.
It's great to list the obstacles that might prevent the devs from implementing this feature if it's not already in the game design.
And...if it is too late...hopefully the devs will remember to add it as a feature in the next games the work on.
As usual, you didnt quite get the point.
Any animation at all that involves interaction with an object cant just be flipped. It needs to be completely re-rigged
Doors and baths were just two examples, rather than being what the specific point lives or dies on.
Other things that animations may interact with that need to be considered include -
Other players
Mobs
Arrows
Spell projectiles
Animals
Harvest nodes
There are no doubt more, but hopefully most people get the idea here.
If Ashes is going to limit visual quality to the point where melee combat is just two characters waiving weapons at each other until one dies, or trees get harvest when you swing an axe in their general direction, then flipping animations isnt going to be too much of an issue.
If they want animations to actually look good though, flipping them simply wont work.
To say it’s a waste of time is subjective and something I disagree with you on. It could go a long way in creating a sense of player choice and immersion.
However, I DO agree that meaningful content is more important. If it’s a left handed option in the game or meaningful content, I choose the content.
It is a waste of time. Rerigging and animating from scratch are a huge waste of time as @Noaani explained pretty well.
Like seriously, I had to work on a few animations before and not only trying to make various handedness work is a lot of workload, making sure both are the right quality is even more.
Some things simply shouldn't be a choice because of time dedication it requires
At least we agree on content being more important
This pretty much is enough to explain it
Lol - this was something that yours truly didn't understand about the appeal of "super-realism", such as Star Citizen is trying to boast.
Yes, it's *kind of* neat that the elevators are really elevators in SC - but that doesn't mean I will enjoy waiting for the elevator to arrive and also to travel 40 stories up or down, and also stop for other players' floors.
There's definitely a fine line wherein realism has its perks - but also its pitfalls.
Well some people do enjoy that, and for those people a game like Star Citizen is a godsend (or would be if it would come out lmao). This crowd of people do endlessly scream for an immersive "experience" over an adrenaline pumping game.
Then you have the other extreme where NOBODY cares about any immersion and only care about getting to the action ASAP. This is the crowd that always screams for faster mounts or flying mounts, and I actually consider this crowd to be more dangerous to game design because catering to this crowd you end up eventually without meaningful content and just endless action.
I do think this left-handed debate is something that would only really occur in an information drought when there's nothing else to talk/argue about lol
I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. Just stating what I find interesting in a video game.
U.S. East
The only games I know of that actually have your character use a doorknob "realistically" is in horror games where those animations add to the gameplay. In Amnesia for example, in order to open a door you have to hold click on the door and then "pull the door open" with your mouse (poor explanation but hopefully you get the point). The door will only open as much as you let it open, which has a huge impact on gameplay.
There are non-horror games that have realistic door-opening animations too (most notably Red Dead Redemption 2) but I would argue that unless it's a horror game, having such long-winded animations for repetitive tasks takes away from the gameplay experience.
I don't know about you but I don't want to wait 3-5 seconds for an animation every time my character wants to go through a door. It's one of those things that is great and immersive the first few times you do it, but after the hundredth time it just becomes tedious.
That's quite a common compromise yes.
Indeed.
And if the animation is flipped, that character will be reaching out to grab the door hinge, rather than the door handle.
The door example is just one thing.
As said many, many times in the thread above, assuming melee combat in this game is to be anything more than characters waiving weapons in front of each other until one dies, then it won't work.
If animations are flipped and you and I are fighting, I am now attempting to use my shield to block ... your shield. If you are left handed, not only do you need different animations than me, but I also need different animations to make things look even remotely appropriate.
Well... i understand is a lot of work but for us left handed people (10% of the population) is something important. If you wanna roleplay is easier if your character is as similar as you, and making your character left handed really helps, "i would never grab a sword with my right hand"
Just as I hate playing games where the only option is for me to play characters with European features, I imagine left-handed people hate playing games where the only option is to play right-handed people.
I don't know that Palia has figured out the left-handed thing, but it's great to see that they're working out having characters with non-European features and non-binary bodies.
If people never ask for it, no one will ever develop solutions.
Would you waste a lot of resources for a few players or use them for content that would attract far more players? In simpler games, hand dominance is not much to implement but in mmos it is far too much to use up resources for that.
I'm just keeping it real. Some things are a waste of resources to implement, some are not. That's just the simple truth
If ppl don't ask for something, usually they don't want it. Or they don't want to see messy solutions which seem to be pretty common