Skill Animations Are Extremely Fast

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

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Comments

Gizban

Blindside wrote: »

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.

I just tried the video at .75 speed and WOW, what a difference. Looks a lot better!

The hammer movements were not good though. Way to 'light' for such a large hammer. Was just flinging that thing around.

Veeshan

problem is here is they might be fast to make gameplay feel better/responsive making gameplay feel better but we cant see that from video so i cant comment on combat until alpha 2 where i can get access to combat myself so i can see how it feels

Ace1234

There needs to be unreactable attacks- if everything is reactable, its the same thing as players retreating to get into a position where players can just react at that spot- except that playing based on reaction alone inherently promotes very passive/wait-then-respond gameplay, and discourages proacrively making plays and engaging enemies. The unreactable nature encourages players to engage because the defending enemy cannot simply wait and counter your action. The solution to maintain a skill-based nature and avoid frustrating rng interactions, is to provide players will tools to prepare and counter potential options for different situations they might find themselves in- this requires planning and strategy and is healthy for the combat, and rewards you for taking initiative and actually engaging the enemy.

Really the only thing that needs to be "reactable" are the situations themselves- the player should have the ability to react and respond to the situation at hand, not necessarily the attacks themselves.

MybroViajero

From my experience playing video games and not only MMORPGS I think the most important thing is not how fast the attack is but that the game gives you options and possibilities to react to those attacks.

It doesn't matter if the attacks are too frenetic and fast, if the combat system gives you the possibility to have a reaction to that attack then there is a balance in that system and therefore that combat is viable.

Now it all depends on tastes, there are people who like a slower and more strategic combat, there are others who like a more frenetic and reactive combat, I personally think that with the hybrid combat Intrepid could try to reach a middle ground, a balance between fast and slow, between frenetic and strategic.

Solvryn

MybroViajero wrote: »

From my experience playing video games and not only MMORPGS I think the most important thing is not how fast the attack is but that the game gives you options and possibilities to react to those attacks.

It doesn't matter if the attacks are too frenetic and fast, if the combat system gives you the possibility to have a reaction to that attack then there is a balance in that system and therefore that combat is viable.

Now it all depends on tastes, there are people who like a slower and more strategic combat, there are others who like a more frenetic and reactive combat, I personally think that with the hybrid combat Intrepid could try to reach a middle ground, a balance between fast and slow, between frenetic and strategic.

Depraved

they probably havent balanced the stats yet. skills look fast because the characters have a high cast/attack speed that isn't final.

also, the tank charge being so fast means as an opposing player, you don't want to be in his range. you most likely want to be behind your tank. you know, spacing and all that.

sidenote: projecties or hit scans don't have anything to do with the speed of the arrow, or whether it can pass through terrain or not

Garrtok

I agree, much too fast

Strevi

Mayors should have a policy to slow down the time flow on their ZoI. !!

WeGbored

Please don't ever slow down combat or add in ungodly long animation locks for no reason.

Blindside

Ace1234 wrote: »

There needs to be unreactable attacks- if everything is reactable, its the same thing as players retreating to get into a position where players can just react at that spot- except that playing based on reaction alone inherently promotes very passive/wait-then-respond gameplay, and discourages proacrively making plays and engaging enemies. The unreactable nature encourages players to engage because the defending enemy cannot simply wait and counter your action. The solution to maintain a skill-based nature and avoid frustrating rng interactions, is to provide players will tools to prepare and counter potential options for different situations they might find themselves in- this requires planning and strategy and is healthy for the combat, and rewards you for taking initiative and actually engaging the enemy.

Really the only thing that needs to be "reactable" are the situations themselves- the player should have the ability to react and respond to the situation at hand, not necessarily the attacks themselves.

For visual stimuli, any attack with an animation of .25s or less is generally difficult for the majority of the population to react to.

In terms of skill design, abilities designed to interrupt should be have animation times of .25s or less. On the other hand, any skill that does larger amounts of damage or crowd controls for extended periods of time should have longer animations around .5 to 1s.

Basic attacks on weapons can be faster (ie. .25, .25, .5 for a 3 part basic attack chain on a dagger) because wasting defensive cooldowns to avoid basic attacks (that don't have cooldowns) is generally a waste anyways.

Your point regarding passive play also reinforces the need for skill canceling in AoC. Skill canceling enables offense with the goal of baiting defensives out of the way. For example, I can engage with a high damage ability to force the enemy to react, but cancel my ability to put it on a shorter cooldown. Thus, I was the aggressor but still won the trade as the enemy wasted a defensive ability on nothing.

Azherae

Blindside wrote: »

Ace1234 wrote: »

There needs to be unreactable attacks- if everything is reactable, its the same thing as players retreating to get into a position where players can just react at that spot- except that playing based on reaction alone inherently promotes very passive/wait-then-respond gameplay, and discourages proacrively making plays and engaging enemies. The unreactable nature encourages players to engage because the defending enemy cannot simply wait and counter your action. The solution to maintain a skill-based nature and avoid frustrating rng interactions, is to provide players will tools to prepare and counter potential options for different situations they might find themselves in- this requires planning and strategy and is healthy for the combat, and rewards you for taking initiative and actually engaging the enemy.

Really the only thing that needs to be "reactable" are the situations themselves- the player should have the ability to react and respond to the situation at hand, not necessarily the attacks themselves.

For visual stimuli, any attack with an animation of .25s or less is generally difficult for the majority of the population to react to.

In terms of skill design, abilities designed to interrupt should be have animation times of .25s or less. On the other hand, any skill that does larger amounts of damage or crowd controls for extended periods of time should have longer animations around .5 to 1s.

Basic attacks on weapons can be faster (ie. .25, .25, .5 for a 3 part basic attack chain on a dagger) because wasting defensive cooldowns to avoid basic attacks (that don't have cooldowns) is generally a waste anyways.

Your point regarding passive play also reinforces the need for skill canceling in AoC. Skill canceling enables offense with the goal of baiting defensives out of the way. For example, I can engage with a high damage ability to force the enemy to react, but cancel my ability to put it on a shorter cooldown. Thus, I was the aggressor but still won the trade as the enemy wasted a defensive ability on nothing.

This is technically, again a thing that 'people had discussions about', then 'people were mostly split on', then 'Intrepid decided to go one of the two ways'.

Obviously I am not 'telling you what to do', but I definitely suggest that you don't put a lot of hope into this game, because it's also true that in this case, Intrepid had the option to go the other way, got a specific set of feedback, and then chose not to do that because a subset of the community was meaningfully against it.

If we assume that by now they have their core combat loop decided (mainly because if we don't assume that we'll be expecting a very far out release) none of what you're mentioning is very likely to happen, even if we get skill canceling, it most likely would be implemented in the other way and not actually force the trades.

playerEra

From what I've seen so far I would tend to agree, the animation does seem abit fast, I'm struggling to see how this would work in PvP as without a clear animation how will people know what attacks are incoming and when to interrupt.

I think as a whole it needs to be slowed down otherwise Zergh v Zerg PvP will just be flashing lights and number pops

Vaknar

NiKr wrote: »

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.

It's important to note that the team hasn't done proper balancing quite yet, so there is a chance that level 15 gameplay looks and feels differently by the time Beta 1/2 are released.

Ace1234

@Blindside

For visual stimuli, any attack with an animation of .25s or less is generally difficult for the majority of the population to react to.

In terms of skill design, abilities designed to interrupt should be have animation times of .25s or less. On the other hand, any skill that does larger amounts of damage or crowd controls for extended periods of time should have longer animations around .5 to 1s.

Basic attacks on weapons can be faster (ie. .25, .25, .5 for a 3 part basic attack chain on a dagger) because wasting defensive cooldowns to avoid basic attacks (that don't have cooldowns) is generally a waste anyways.

Your point regarding passive play also reinforces the need for skill canceling in AoC. Skill canceling enables offense with the goal of baiting defensives out of the way. For example, I can engage with a high damage ability to force the enemy to react, but cancel my ability to put it on a shorter cooldown. Thus, I was the aggressor but still won the trade as the enemy wasted a defensive ability on nothing.

Yeah I get you, but even defensive skills don't always have to be used reactively in order to be effective- it goes back to my point about having tools for the situation at hand to counter incoming threats. This means if you are trying to close a gap in order to apply your own offensive pressure, that you should have defensive tools to do so, as long as you use them in the correct manner for the situation at hand, which wouldn't necessarily require reactive use to a given attack, but more of a strategic planning and situational response kind of approach during combat. So even non-basic attacks could be unreactable and it would be fine, it really is just dependant on the overall kit each combatant has available, you don't want to overload an encounter with too many unreactable options within a given situation, rather than spreading them out acrossed their kit to be used in different circumstances, which is more manageable for the opponent.

As for the animation canceling, I totally agree and suggested that myself on the past to be used for the same purpose you described, but as long as movement is snappy enough to allow you feint with your movement itself (super smash bros style) then that should be sufficient as a tool to mix up your timing to avoid becoming to predictable/counterable when trying to initiate an interaction.

Blindside

Ace1234 wrote: »

@Blindside

For visual stimuli, any attack with an animation of .25s or less is generally difficult for the majority of the population to react to.

In terms of skill design, abilities designed to interrupt should be have animation times of .25s or less. On the other hand, any skill that does larger amounts of damage or crowd controls for extended periods of time should have longer animations around .5 to 1s.

Basic attacks on weapons can be faster (ie. .25, .25, .5 for a 3 part basic attack chain on a dagger) because wasting defensive cooldowns to avoid basic attacks (that don't have cooldowns) is generally a waste anyways.

Your point regarding passive play also reinforces the need for skill canceling in AoC. Skill canceling enables offense with the goal of baiting defensives out of the way. For example, I can engage with a high damage ability to force the enemy to react, but cancel my ability to put it on a shorter cooldown. Thus, I was the aggressor but still won the trade as the enemy wasted a defensive ability on nothing.

Yeah I get you, but even defensive skills don't always have to be used reactively in order to be effective- it goes back to my point about having tools for the situation at hand to counter incoming threats. This means if you are trying to close a gap in order to apply your own offensive pressure, that you should have defensive tools to do so, as long as you use them in the correct manner for the situation at hand, which wouldn't necessarily require reactive use to a given attack, but more of a strategic planning and situational response kind of approach during combat. So even non-basic attacks could be unreactable and it would be fine, it really is just dependant on the overall kit each combatant has available, you don't want to overload an encounter with too many unreactable options within a given situation, rather than spreading them out acrossed their kit to be used in different circumstances, which is more manageable for the opponent.

As for the animation canceling, I totally agree and suggested that myself on the past to be used for the same purpose you described, but as long as movement is snappy enough to allow you feint with your movement itself (super smash bros style) then that should be sufficient as a tool to mix up your timing to avoid becoming to predictable/counterable when trying to initiate an interaction.

Yeah I agree. Duration based damage reduction buffs or channeled defensive skills (ie. 3s duration block) are examples of this. Animation canceling would be very nice for both sides on this fight.

The defender could end their defensive early to counterattack and the attacker could cancel their attack to not waste it into a defensive used too early.

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