"Look and Feel" - Character responsiveness

lgtm

I think this topic is hard to approach because look and feel is not easy to measure. In the context of this post, look and feel relates to how responsive your character is to player input. This is the most critical area that AOC needs to think about.

Responsiveness gold standard - WoW
One thing (perhaps the only thing) that keeps world of warcraft enjoyable (pve and pvp) is that character responsiveness is exceptional. There are no abilities that force_the player to wait. If you want to stop what you're doing to move, interrupt or stun, you can (with no delay*). The character is responsive to the player input immediately.

Responsiveness in Ashes of Creation
Ashes of creation melee feels like you are locked in, and your input ignored.
Playing a tank and activating a melee swing locks you in to that swing for 0.1-0.3 seconds. During this lock, if I want to strafe around the target I can't - I have to wait for that lock to finish. While this seems insignificant, it takes away control from the player and impacts that look and feel.

Interested in other thoughts here, I genuinely believe that responsiveness and "how it feels" is the highest priority. My solution would be to take the WoW approach - do not lock instant abilities, respond to player input immediately.

Trowyn

I dislike any form of lock in animation. I understand the need for it in certain situations such as longer casts or higher damage attacks for the sake of balance, but on a spam attack it feels both clunky and out of place. I'm also not a fan of attacks that move your character forward on their own. One of the main issues with combat right now (for me at least) is that spells cannot be queued or at the very least prioritized over your weapon attacks. This paired with lock in animation that doesn't line up with it's visual and audible cues makes for either a guessing game of when I should be able to cast my spell or ability, or a whack a mole button mash to be as effective as possible. It also feels like dodge is worthless, but I have not experienced any telegraphed moves to see if it would be useful to avoid those.

Possible tangent.

That being said, I don't really want to see Ashes take on the same approach WoW has with optimal rotations and always pressing a button style of play. I'm really hoping for something more engaging than learning a rotation and following that to the T or as closely as humanly possible. Not trying to bash on that, it just feels like the game becomes artificially more difficult by introducing a keypress "game" on top of the game and I would prefer to see more engaging combat encounters and mechanics instead.

Asytra

I don't mind having to wait for the animation to play out, it avoids cancer like "weaving" in Elder Scrolls Online. It also discourages button mashing, so definitely a pro there. THAT SAID, for interrupts, it would be nice if these would cancel the animation so that countering play would still be an option.

My only real beef with combat right now is that my character (a dwarf) clips INTO the mesh of most enemies, especially the lizards, cat-things, and bears. I.E. anything that walks on four legs. This is likely an issue with their hitboxes, but it's pretty jarring and definitely takes me out of it when my whole character is obscured.