Animation canceling, Dodging, weaving

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Also this is a mmorpg not a real combat simulator. Using elements to make combat look good (including animations) is fine, not using elements to reduce the experience by trying to make it too realistic.

Dolyem

Mag7spy wrote: »

as long as they have good animation / transition and make sure it feels fluid it would be fine.

Agreed, but theres nothing fluid about dodging mid-attack no matter how much your argue it. Dodging after it is finished? Yea you can make that fluid.

But proposing this....its not great

George_Black

Dolyem wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

as long as they have good animation / transition and make sure it feels fluid it would be fine.

Agreed, but theres nothing fluid about dodging mid-attack no matter how much your argue it. Dodging after it is finished? Yea you can make that fluid.

But proposing this....its not great

Why not dodge mid attack? The attack animation should be cancelled as well as the damage output. Otherwise you dont dodge. You get hit in the face.

In the case of your image the static lightning should NOT be there. The dodge is fine.

Dolyem

George_Black wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

as long as they have good animation / transition and make sure it feels fluid it would be fine.

Agreed, but theres nothing fluid about dodging mid-attack no matter how much your argue it. Dodging after it is finished? Yea you can make that fluid.

But proposing this....its not great

Why not dodge mid attack? The attack animation should be cancelled as well as the damage output. Otherwise you dont dodge. You get hit in the face.

Because it looks stupid. Now if you make the transition from the attack to the cancel to the dodge fluid, that'd be fine. But just having it be instantaneous breaks the fluidity.

Ludullu

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Lineage 2 had stats that would influence the animation speed of skills, those being attack speed(for physical skills) and casting speed(for magic skills), above a certain threshold of those stats some skill animations would simple not keep up with the speed the skills would apply its damage and that + no GCD gave the impression of visually animation canceling.

Love me some "fireball" Sorcerer, where Prominence's animation was so damn fast that you just had a ball of fire in front of the character

George_Black

Dolyem wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

as long as they have good animation / transition and make sure it feels fluid it would be fine.

Agreed, but theres nothing fluid about dodging mid-attack no matter how much your argue it. Dodging after it is finished? Yea you can make that fluid.

But proposing this....its not great

Why not dodge mid attack? The attack animation should be cancelled as well as the damage output. Otherwise you dont dodge. You get hit in the face.

Because it looks stupid. Now if you make the transition from the attack to the cancel to the dodge fluid, that'd be fine. But just having it be instantaneous breaks the fluidity.

One more transition would be nice. A quick one. But they wont spend the time and money for it 100%.
It's an mmo combat, not a singleplayer game. So it should be acceptable not to be the best looking.

The other thing about eso is that, besides the cost increase, you can spam dodge and block as often as you want, making the combat look stupid.
But dodge and block needed be as accessible in AoC. But they must cancel the attack animation and output quickly and reliably, otherwise they are no use.
That way the combat will still look good, unlike esos.

Dolyem

George_Black wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

as long as they have good animation / transition and make sure it feels fluid it would be fine.

Agreed, but theres nothing fluid about dodging mid-attack no matter how much your argue it. Dodging after it is finished? Yea you can make that fluid.

But proposing this....its not great

Why not dodge mid attack? The attack animation should be cancelled as well as the damage output. Otherwise you dont dodge. You get hit in the face.

Because it looks stupid. Now if you make the transition from the attack to the cancel to the dodge fluid, that'd be fine. But just having it be instantaneous breaks the fluidity.

One more transition would be nice. A quick one. But they wont spend the time and money for it 100%.
It's an mmo combat, not a singleplayer game. So it should be acceptable not to be the best looking.

The other thing about eso is that, besides the cost increase, you can spam dodge and block as often as you want, making the combat look stupid.
But dodge and block needed be as accessible in AoC. But they must cancel the attack animation and output quickly and reliably, otherwise they are no use.
That way the combat will still look good, unlike esos.

I'll agree to all of that. I only hope that they are able to add that small extra transition, even if it is quick. Otherwise it just looks like teleporting in place you know? And if the dodges are limited it will definitely help.

Mag7spy

ESO should not be used at the standard of the best, but at the same time budget matters as well with what they want to do as no one has infinite budget. Which i agree its a mmorpg not a single player game. I've never expected combat to be perfect or as good.

That being said yes you can add more transitions between skill use and dodge and make the dodge a bit slower during parts of animation.

Also i feel like i keep repeating myself again you shouldn't be able to dodge out of every skill and at any point in a skill. Example hammer skill you need to dodge at points before the hammer hits the ground, artist can take care of other issues with making it fade or not seeing effects.

We are talking about design here, if you have a issue with art that should be brought up at that point, it shouldn't be a reason to not include designs that bring more to the combat. Art including effects and animations.

JamesSunderland

NiKr wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Lineage 2 had stats that would influence the animation speed of skills, those being attack speed(for physical skills) and casting speed(for magic skills), above a certain threshold of those stats some skill animations would simple not keep up with the speed the skills would apply its damage and that + no GCD gave the impression of visually animation canceling.

Love me some "fireball" Sorcerer, where Prominence's animation was so damn fast that you just had a ball of fire in front of the character

Goddamn mages reached so high wisdom they wouldn't even needed to cast the spell and manifested it through their willpower.

Blindside

Animation cancelling to shorten cast times and fit in extra abilities is bad.

A keybind for canceling attacks to prevent yourself from hitting counters or blocks is good.

Mag7spy

Blindside wrote: »

Animation cancelling to shorten cast times and fit in extra abilities is bad.

A keybind for canceling attacks to prevent yourself from hitting counters or blocks is good.

Exactly what I'm saying.

ariatras

Mag7spy wrote: »

Animation cancelling works in a few ways, in the broken way it lets you skil some animations to deal dmg faster which is not good.

In the good way you stop your skill and go into another skill, so the stopped skill doesn't deal dmg. So you would use the other skill or cancel the animation by dodge.

Edit
Which helps since you can stop a long animation so you can react to something else. Its not something you should be able to spam every second though as everything has cooldowns.

This is pretty much what I understand it to be as well.

I would hope that nobody would want the "broken" system. It's essentially abusing a bug in the combat.

Cancelling an animation, which is usually associated with cast timers. Is a must dare I say 'must'

If I cast a 2 second cast. Let's say fireball. And during the cast something happens, or the target is tagged by another player, whatever reason. I can just move, and cancel the cast (and animation) dealing no damage. This is my favourite.

Instant cast spells should have very short animations, as long as the global cooldown or shorter.

There are games that have no such cancelling. Ragnarok Online for example. If I am a Wizard and cast a long spell. I can only cancel it by getting damage or using what's known as a fly wing (an item that teleports you to a random cell on the map) There is a class that has a specific skill that allows them to move whilst casting, and a spell that allows them to cancel at any time (without taking damage)

Then there are games which allow you to cancel the animation, but still cast the spell, which results in more damage, a lot more in many cases. Which is based on timing. And becomes increasingly more difficult the further away from the server you are. A mechanic that's not intended. I hate this one in particular.

PenguinPaladin

Otr wrote: »

I see that the wiki has contradicting information
One from 2017 says:
Animation cancelling will not be a combat mechanic.[39]
And a newer one
Evasion moves such as dodging and weaving will be present in Ashes of Creation combat.[3][4]

Why are people always intentionally trying to miss interpret quotes... its like saying, i do my research, but only give credibility to what agrees with me.

"Animation canceling will not be a combat mechanic" it is stated clear as day.

"Evasion moves such as dodging and weaving will be present" - there is an action dodge.... there may be stances which raise evasion... blah blah blah.

But "dodging and weaving" does not mean animation canceling.... as can be seen directly with the quote above... that there will be no animation canceling....

The weaving in the quote, is not the skill weaving in the title of the thread

CROW3

Folks hear what they want to reinforce their view. Old as humanity. 🤷‍♂️

Krald

It's really bizarre reading some of these replies.
I'm curious, what MMO have any of you played that didn't have cancelling?
It's literally been in every mmo I've ever played.
The game where it was least impactful was probably FFXIV, but even then you could start moving before the endlag of casts was completed. And frankly, that game essentially has 0 pvp, so its w/e.

Giving players the ability to reduce endlag by weaving into their next ability or movement skill simply promotes more freedom of skill expression and unique interactions. Forcing every single animation to ride out the entirety of its endlag is a massive slog, it essentially makes it fast turn based combat.

Obviously bad examples of this are block cancelling from ESO, it was obviously a silly mechanic that was far too strong, but imo basic weaving is essential to having exciting combat in 2022. It's been staple in mmos for near decades.

PenguinPaladin

Treefrog wrote: »

It's really bizarre reading some of these replies.
I'm curious, what MMO have any of you played that didn't have cancelling?
It's literally been in every mmo I've ever played.
The game where it was least impactful was probably FFXIV, but even then you could start moving before the endlag of casts was completed. And frankly, that game essentially has 0 pvp, so its w/e.

Giving players the ability to reduce endlag by weaving into their next ability or movement skill simply promotes more freedom of skill expression and unique interactions. Forcing every single animation to ride out the entirety of its endlag is a massive slog, it essentially makes it fast turn based combat.

Obviously bad examples of this are block cancelling from ESO, it was obviously a silly mechanic that was far too strong, but imo basic weaving is essential to having exciting combat in 2022. It's been staaple in mmos for near decades.

I think this is more definition drift....

Of course animations should end smoothly, and blend into your next action.

And some skills can even be cancleable. As part of the skills.

The refered to "animation canceling" that will not be in ashes is, the easiest reference i can think of is susano from smite. Where his dps without cancling animation vs with animation canceling changes by like 1.3 to 1.4 times...

Mag7spy

Doing more dps from animation cancelling is not what I'm talking about in this thread. Those are issues you need to make sure are iron out through the game. Also having points where you can animation cancel helps deal with that issue of exact timing and abusing.

Ie Can only animation cancel at a certain time before hammer fully swinging, ie only being able to animation cancel in spin.

*if you can put something that lets you knock back or up a target from upper cut on spin some moves should flow well into it so you can do a combo. If they have things like that Aoc will have very high tier combat.

PenguinPaladin

Mag7spy wrote: »

Doing more dps from animation cancelling is not what I'm talking about in this thread. Those are issues you need to make sure are iron out through the game. Also having points where you can animation cancel helps deal with that issue of exact timing and abusing.

Ie Can only animation cancel at a certain time before hammer fully swinging, ie only being able to animation cancel in spin.

*if you can put something that lets you knock back or up a target from upper cut on spin some moves should flow well into it so you can do a combo. If they have things like that Aoc will have very high tier combat.

With this concept of wanting combos you dont need animation canceling. You need low end lag on your combo starter, quick startup lag on your follow up attacks.

PenguinPaladin

Mag7spy wrote: »

Ie Can only animation cancel at a certain time before hammer fully swinging, ie only being able to animation cancel in spin.

This i wouldnt mind, being able to cancel a skill at certain times all dependent on the skill itself. However, i would want this to still put that skill on cooldown

Mag7spy

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Ie Can only animation cancel at a certain time before hammer fully swinging, ie only being able to animation cancel in spin.

This i wouldnt mind, being able to cancel a skill at certain times all dependent on the skill itself. However, i would want this to still put that skill on cooldown

Skill should still be on cooldown as you used it, you are simply trying to hard cancel it to avoid something or you deem its going to miss and want to follow up with something else.

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