Skill Animations Are Extremely Fast

Blindside

For PvP, the animation times are way too fast for people to react to. At 18:08 into the tank showcase, the shield charge barely has any travel time and acts as more of a teleport than a charge. Right after, the stomp that knocks down the enemy looks like it's around 1/4 of a second.

Most animations should generally be around .5s, .75s, or 1s long as they give .25s, .5s, and .75s respectively for the average person to see and react to. With the current combat, the likelihood that you get hit by a skill the enemy uses is extremely high unless you have a combination of inhuman low reaction time, extremely low ping, are out of range of their attacks, or can chain defensives for long periods of time.

The safest option is going to be to create distance the instant the opponent approaches into their attack range because you won't have enough time to tell what skill the enemy is using, much less be able to figure out what you want to use to counter it. This is insane fast-twitch levels of combat that you would see in a fighting game. I noticed this for the ranger showcase as well where the arrows moved so fast I assumed they were hitscan (also evidenced by the fact that arrows seemed to travel through terrain, so the projectile trail is likely just for show.)

The flipside is if you're the melee attacker and the enemy dodge rolls backwards once, you miss 3 skills cause you can cast half your bar in 2 seconds.

https://youtu.be/DwWK9HJNJRQ?t=1088

Chocometeor

Good Point i think for a ''good'' everything they did was TOO fast no place for reaction time in Pvp

Ironhope

I absolutely agree.

Attacks and abilities in general are too fast.

Too flashy.

And choppy with unnatural and inproper body movement.

There's a lot to improve until Alpha 2.

Liniker

I completely disagree, I would dislike a slow combat, it looks good the way it is

Ludullu

Liniker wrote: »

I completely disagree, I would dislike a slow combat, it looks good the way it is

But don't forget that we're seeing lvl15 (allegedly) content. Now imagine all the atk. speed and cast speed buffs of a lvl50 char. Then add gear with those stats. Then add several abilities on top of super fast basic attacks. And all of that happening with 500 people in roughly the same place.

It's gonna be an unbelievable mess. While I do agree that slow combat probably wouldn't quite work, I do think that earlier lvls should be slower than what we saw, so that they could ramp up to a good fast pace at top lvls with top gear and buffs.

JamesSunderland

I like the current speed of the skills shown and believe not all skills should be reactable especially ones as low damaging as the ones used by the tank, big AoE damaging skills like the fighters Hammer or the Rangers Snipe makes sense to have such long wind-ups tho.

JamesSunderland

NiKr wrote: »

But don't forget that we're seeing lvl15 (allegedly) content. Now imagine all the atk. speed and cast speed buffs of a lvl50 char.

Sadly we currently don't know if Attack Speed stats will exist in Ashes to speedup skills further, but if they exist i would definitely agree with the skills being currently too fast.
There was Magical Casting Speed in A1 tho.

Orbificator

Was also one of my main takeaways. The animations are so fast they just look "off". It really takes away from the power behind them.

Simply put, the attacks just don't look believable and give an uncanny valley type feeling.

Songcaller

The animations are relics of the instant cast classes from A1. Unfortunately, the devs have moved towards slower mechanics but have maintained a lot of the animations. Thus, there is a disparity between the effects and the procedures. The basic attacks are too fast, floaty and flashy. The main abilities are stunted, static and simple.

Individuated Soul

I was going to make a similar topic after watching the vid more closely, but I also think auto attacks are the problem. The auto attacking is too quick, too flashy, too loud, and visually creates a mess when multiplying players.

My fix would be to smoothen out movement, slow auto attacks according to weapon type, and try to make things more weighty and visually clear. They are creating such an immersive fantasy world yet the combat is a bit arcadey in its current presentation. After that skills can be seen as either clear or not.

Even though WoW is a different game, but the earlier expansions paced combat really well.

Spif

The animation needs to telegraph/animate, get to the damage point and reset back to base within a specific time frame. They referenced some skills being "off-GCD", which implies that there will be a GCD.

I personally am not a fan of long animation abilities unless they have a cast time, but I am a fan of having the point where an ability deals damage being towards the end of the animation unless it is a multi-strike kind of ability. This leaves room for cancelling the ability (assuming the caster can interrupt it with dodge/block/whatever) but having the downside of cancelling being dealing no damage. Or the enemy can interrupting it with CC and avoid the damage.

IMO the worst kind of animated attacks are ones where damage is dealt early on. The attacker is now stuck in a long recovery animation after seeing/hearing the ability connect. No counterplay, damage was too fast. The likelyhood of someone figuring out animation cancelling becomes very high

Some skills should be balanced to *not* telegraph for very long (IMO), but they should be off GCD and balanced accordingly. Another option is to have abilities with varying "GCD". IE, animation windows of 1s, 1.5s and 2s. Then those abilities can be balanced according to their GCD time.

Azherae

I have no particular specific feedback to add to this, since we are finally at a point where Intrepid must define their actual target audience when it comes to combat.

My main takeaway is that their current direction is popular with a certain target audience (so far seems to be only 40% of posters here, but nothing says 'sampling bias' like a forum used by hardcore players of a game).

I don't know if Intrepid 'understands' that they're at the point of making a real choice here, or if they hope to 'think outside the box', but I'd like to assume that they know enough math and gameplay principles to know they're at a choice point.

For others: I personally doubt they need explanations of the effects of their choices, at this point. So, my question is, what can we still give them? More importantly, if a given person ends up in the camp-not-chosen, how can we focus feedback helpfully anyway?

90% of what they even could make is 'defined mathematically' every time they make a new 'real choice'. If they need us to tell them 'hey your math is wrong' at this point, we have other problems.

tl;dr Nothing's supposed to be reactable/particularly counterplayable, the animations are consistently too fast for this to have been a design goal.

Voxtrium

I would like to see a level scaling attack speed and cast speed increase with class dependent ratios.

(Random numbers)
For example a fighter has a attack speed ratio of 1 and cast ratio of .75 a mage cast ratio of 1 and attack ratio of .75 (Each class at level 1). As you level up your stats increase with level so maybe at level 50 a fighter has a 1.5 attack speed ratio and 1.1 cast speed ratio and inverse for the mage. Then you can stack AS and CS buffs as % of the ratio.

Just a thought though, not entirely sure if it would make the game more fun.

Nerror

I would like to see slower swing speeds. I know they said they are going for fast swings and poses at the end, and they certainly achieved that, but I think the swing animation is a little too fast. Too fast for my suspension of disbelief anyway.

Blindside

Try muting the video and playing it in .75 speed. I actually feel like it makes the combat look better.

It's still kind of janky like this, but the animation speeds aren't as egregiously fast as in normal speed. Guess it could be a good example of what the combat could be if it had better readability.

Stalwart

I'm guessing they are trying not to slow down the game for animations. A 1 sec gcd is too slow imo. I'd like to see 0.5 sec at least. Animations have to match the gcd or they will get chopped.

I certainly don't want to slow down the gcd because animations look fast. I'm sure ppl also wouldn't like if animations get cut off constantly.

Basically the fast animations are a good sign imo.

Songcaller

Gcd was the method to quell lag in the early days of Internet. It meant someone with better Internet didn't win against someone with worse Internet.

Gui10

Ashes is not a platform fighter. Some abilities will take longer to channel, and visual tells will help you figure out whats being casted. good luck.

Stalwart

Neurath wrote: »

Gcd was the method to quell lag in the early days of Internet. It meant someone with better Internet didn't win against someone with worse Internet.

It's more than that. If there was no gcd you could spam 1 skill after another and there would be no time to animate what happened.

Songcaller

You have animation locks to prevent that, though, that's why animation cancelling can be op when found. GCD stops rapid use of skills due to lag. In AA you can spam archer shots almost successively with small lag. The gcd slows the process down to balance the projectiles between poor Internet and fast Internet. Its why WoW's GCD is so large to this day.

Stalwart

Neurath wrote: »

You have animation locks to prevent that, though, that's why animation cancelling can be op when found. GCD stops rapid use of skills due to lag. In AA you can spam archer shots almost successively with small lag. The gcd slows the process down to balance the projectiles between poor Internet and fast Internet. Its why WoW's GCD is so large to this day.

I think that just semantics of the name. You could be right but, I'm referring to gcd as simply the minimum time you must wait between inputs.

Azherae

Stalwart wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

You have animation locks to prevent that, though, that's why animation cancelling can be op when found. GCD stops rapid use of skills due to lag. In AA you can spam archer shots almost successively with small lag. The gcd slows the process down to balance the projectiles between poor Internet and fast Internet. Its why WoW's GCD is so large to this day.

I think that just semantics of the name. I'm referring to gcd as simply the time you must wait between inputs.

But GCD refers explicitly to a 'Global' Cooldown, and those things are entirely subjective because cancels and cancel windows are explicitly encoded in certain games.

Animations do not have to match any 'GCD', the animations define it.

Stalwart

Azherae wrote: »

Stalwart wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

You have animation locks to prevent that, though, that's why animation cancelling can be op when found. GCD stops rapid use of skills due to lag. In AA you can spam archer shots almost successively with small lag. The gcd slows the process down to balance the projectiles between poor Internet and fast Internet. Its why WoW's GCD is so large to this day.

I think that just semantics of the name. I'm referring to gcd as simply the time you must wait between inputs.

But GCD refers explicitly to a 'Global' Cooldown, and those things are entirely subjective because cancels and cancel windows are explicitly encoded in certain games.

Animations do not have to match any 'GCD', the animations define it.

Some games have animation locks some do not. Not having any animation lock is why ppl complain about how eso combat looks. But it does have a gcd of about .9 sec to limit input. (More to it than that but it's irrelevant).

What I'm saying is you take all these factors put them in a pot what you come out with is a minimum time between actions. It could be longer in some instances but I'm calling that minimum time your gcd.

Beyond that it's just semantics of how you lock animations (or not) and combine it with a gcd. Either additive or overlapping. Etc. Etc.

Basically all to say having faster animation is a sign that the game will play faster than only one input every second.

Dolyem

Definitely thought it was too fast for the weapons being used. 2 handed should be slower, maces should be slower. They were swinging them like the dagger showcase. It's likely these were just placeholders with no real balance applied to them. But really, the timing of abilities and weapon attacks will be balanced during testing. I wouldn't worry too much about this showcase on this topic.

Songcaller

So, in the tank archetype we have Grit which operates outside of GCD. It can't be spammed because of cooldown but it can be used at the same time as another skill which is on GCD. Do you believe that is a failure of GCD or do you understand that GCD is not designed to stop rapid skill usage?

Stalwart

Neurath wrote: »

So, in the tank archetype we have Grit which operates outside of GCD. It can't be spammed because of cooldown but it can be used at the same time as another skill which is on GCD. Do you believe that is a failure of GCD or do you understand that GCD is not designed to stop rapid skill usage?

I don't care if you call it the father of time, somewhere exists a way to stop skill spam. In games I played it was specifically the gcd. I don't care what you call it from the game you played. It's besides my point anyway.

Grit is specifically an off gcd skill. Which being called that actually solidified my terminology. You notice that it is just an aura with no animation there is a reason for that. Nicely done.

Songcaller

In SWG the devs turned everything instant cast and the animation cancelling was inherent. People used macros and one shot each other because all skills were used at the same time. One action per button press is the limiter in Ashes. I've had the same argument over 'Hardcore'. Just because you call the preventative measures GCD doesn't mean GCD doesn't have an actual purpose which is what I've previously stated.

The devs could put a GCD of 10 minutes into the game and the animations would still be too fast.

Azherae

Ugh, the fact that this is the type of conversation we're still having at this point of development is so disheartening...

Stalwart

Neurath wrote: »

In SWG the devs turned everything instant cast and the animation cancelling was inherent. People used macros and one shot each other because all skills were used at the same time. One action per button press is the limiter in Ashes. I've had the same argument over 'Hardcore'. Just because you call the preventative measures GCD doesn't mean GCD doesn't have an actual purpose which is what I've previously stated.

The devs could put a GCD of 10 minutes into the game and the animations would still be too fast.

What I'm saying is that the animations being that fast might just be an indicator that they are going for a faster time between skill inputs. If you had 1 second animations then unless they were okay with it being choppy you are probably looking at 1 sec between inputs. I'm am perfectly happy with the faster animations if it means we can get say 0.5s between inputs.

Songcaller

Okay cool. The issue right now is the possibility of cast speed increases. The devs should work backwards and increase the animation speed for lower level. It won't look good if the hammer is like a rapier in Zorro's hand. The items would appear weightless and its why I sometimes use the term 'floaty combat'.

The devs like flashy, elongated animations and then try to have the rapid deployment too. Either you animate for speed or you animate for elaboration. Mixing speed and elaboration causes fidelity issues which have been highlighted numerous times.

Stalwart

Yeah I have no issue about changing the look of the animation. Something they will definitely need to iterate. The speed of animation though is something that needs to be determined to coincide with the speed of combat or risk truncated animation that many ppl don't like.

If the animation are just fast for being fast and not helping the speed of actual combat then I have no issue with slowing them down. I'm not set on the visuals of faster animations alone.