How to make combat smoother

"

Erik wrote:

Lucid88:

We actually do plan to take away some small amount of time at the end (and the beginning) of animations to make them appear smoother when chained together. This will indeed remove the "stop" between animations where the movement slows down at the end of an attack, and winds up at the start of the next. Combined with some more long term idle pose changes (making them more aggressive), and overall improved animations I am sure PoE combat will be up there!

I had faith, just wanted some reassurance here :D You guys are the best at what your doing! Keep it up. Now I will be able to sleep better at night :D

These problems are so frustrating because of how few things are wrong with this game otherwise.

My 2c.

Movement smoothness:

Turn speed needs to go up a little, but this is mainly caused by a crappy implementation of holding down LMB to drop movement targets. It just drops them too slowly.

Move your mouse in a circle around your character and click as fast as you possibly can. (You might have to follow the circle a little slowly because of the slow turn speed.) Uncanny, right? Pretty much fixed.

This is not hard to solve.

I am curious if perhaps the devs aren't seeing this (and the shift issues) because they're playing on super low latency internal test servers. Maybe?

Attack cancelling:

The misunderstandings about this floating around are disappointing. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwg5ZtsNr3w if you aren't familiar with the traditional implementation of attack animations.

So what we have now with PoE is, if you want to do maximum damage output, you absolutely have to stand still. Which would be fine as a design decision if it wasn't so incredibly stodgy as a play mechanic. Traditionally, the time between the damage point in the animation and the end of the animation is a "hey, use this to move/cast a spell not attached to the swing animation" grace window, and it's become popular because that is a wonderful mechanic. It's a little rhythm game with each attack, except you're making strategic decisions with those windows (move a bit/cast a spell). Also, the option to cancel an attack before the damage point is huge too: you can decide that the time invested in the current swing is something you're going to sacrifice to get out of the way.

As others have pointed out, an earlier damage point does NOT mean more overall DPS, all else being the same. In the normal paradigm, you may cancel the rest of the animation, but then you are not able to start a new "swing timer"/normal attack for the rest of the time that that animation finishing would have taken. This is crucial. Bear in mind that this cooldown only starts if an attack is made successfully: if you've cancelled your animation before the damage point (as is possible in the traditional paradigm) then you can start a new attack as soon as you like. To address issues with button spamming, repeated commands to use the same attack on the same target are essentially ignored - i.e., they allow the current attack/animation to proceed without cancelling it.

I'm not entirely convinced redoing animations is such a big deal. Sure, you might end up having to move some damage points around, but simple pre-/post- damage point animation duration adjustments plus tweaks where it looks awkward isn't actually that big a time investment, especially for an issue of this magnitude.

The idea that this is going to be sidestepped by simply disallowing any animation cancelling (and "removing some time from the end/start of animations") is worrisome. This generation has been conditioned to enjoy the modern paradigm of animation cancelling (as I've outlined above and as is evident in all modern RTSes and RPGs) and I hope GGG thinks about what they're doing in not implementing it.

I also want to apologize if this sounds overly negative. I am incredibly excited about this game, and this is something that I will nag about relentlessly for quite a while if it isn't fixed (or reasonably justified), because it's so integral to the combat feeling fluid, which is half the point of ARPGs.

<3

"

Corpsious wrote:

Movement smoothness:

Turn speed needs to go up a little, but this is mainly caused by a crappy implementation of holding down LMB to drop movement targets. It just drops them too slowly.

Move your mouse in a circle around your character and click as fast as you possibly can. (You might have to follow the circle a little slowly because of the slow turn speed.) Uncanny, right? Pretty much fixed.

This is not hard to solve.

I am curious if perhaps the devs aren't seeing this (and the shift issues) because they're playing on super low latency internal test servers. Maybe?

Attack cancelling:

turn speeds are fine, you shouldn't be able to move like you have lightning speeds. Its unrealistic and would look stupid. you would see kids just spinning in circles all day.. just a bad idea...


Attack Canceling will throw off the balance of the game, Its not supposed to be like league of legends or dota. The game has made it its own by the smooth realistic movements of the characters... and if you read developer Eriks' post they are fixing this problem. When they do this it will be as smooth as butter.

"

We actually do plan to take away some small amount of time at the end (and the beginning) of animations to make them appear smoother when chained together. This will indeed remove the "stop" between animations where the movement slows down at the end of an attack, and winds up at the start of the next. Combined with some more long term idle pose changes (making them more aggressive), and overall improved animations I am sure PoE combat will be up there!

"

lucid88 wrote:

turn speeds are fine, you shouldn't be able to move like you have lightning speeds. Its unrealistic and would look stupid. you would see kids just spinning in circles all day.. just a bad idea...

I couldn't agree less.

The ability to spin around in a circle is simply a function of having full control over your character's movement.

With all due respect, any argument that you should not have full and total control over your character's movement in an ARPG is asinine.

Arguments that it's unrealistic are irrelevant. Hardly anything about ARPGs is realistic.

And concerns that immature people might just stand there spinning in circles due to a well-implemented movement system are so far down the list of importance compared to gameplay responsiveness as to not be worth mentioning. You don't cripple your game's character movement because "a few people might make their character look silly".

"

Kaiji wrote:

"

lucid88 wrote:

turn speeds are fine, you shouldn't be able to move like you have lightning speeds. Its unrealistic and would look stupid. you would see kids just spinning in circles all day.. just a bad idea...

I couldn't agree less.

The ability to spin around in a circle is simply a function of having full control over your character's movement.

With all due respect, any argument that you should not have full and total control over your character's movement in an ARPG is asinine.

Arguments that it's unrealistic are irrelevant. Hardly anything about ARPGs is realistic.

And concerns that immature people might just stand there spinning in circles due to a well-implemented movement system are so far down the list of importance compared to gameplay responsiveness as to not be worth mentioning. You don't cripple your game's character movement because "a few people might make their character look silly".

.... Turning is animated, i dont want to be able to click behind my character and have him flip to the otherside without turning just so i can have "complete control"... you have full control of your character, its part of the movement system. Won't be changed as movement animations wouldn't look smooth anymore.

I suppose they could speed it up a tad. but i dont want characters doing 180 flips without it being an animated turn.

"

lucid88 wrote:

"

Kaiji wrote:

"

lucid88 wrote:

turn speeds are fine, you shouldn't be able to move like you have lightning speeds. Its unrealistic and would look stupid. you would see kids just spinning in circles all day.. just a bad idea...

I couldn't agree less.

The ability to spin around in a circle is simply a function of having full control over your character's movement.

With all due respect, any argument that you should not have full and total control over your character's movement in an ARPG is asinine.

Arguments that it's unrealistic are irrelevant. Hardly anything about ARPGs is realistic.

And concerns that immature people might just stand there spinning in circles due to a well-implemented movement system are so far down the list of importance compared to gameplay responsiveness as to not be worth mentioning. You don't cripple your game's character movement because "a few people might make their character look silly".

.... Turning is animated, i dont want to be able to click behind my character and have him flip to the otherside without turning just so i can have "complete control"... you have full control of your character, its part of the movement system. Won't be changed as movement animations wouldn't look smooth anymore.

I suppose they could speed it up a tad. but i dont want characters doing 180 flips without it being an animated turn.

Control responsiveness should always take a back seat to other concerns.

I don't want my character to herp and derp taking his time to turn around while I'm kiting a mob. I want him to turn around the very millisecond I give the command.

This isn't a reality simulation. It's a computer game. Insisting that things need to act realistically in a fantasy game just makes zero sense.

Games like this have their roots in roguelikes, where graphics always took a back seat to playability and I see no sensible reason to buck this trend.

If GGG seriously think that enforcing moments where you lose control of your character at important, decisive moments (such as kiting) is good game design, I wish them the best of luck.

its part of the movement system, mobs cant flip around either, its fluid movement... learn how to move fluidly and you will have no problems... if what your saying is the games too hard for you because the movement is too realistic... then i say QQ. i have no problem kiting the way movement is. wait until they smooth it out and see how it is. I bet your complaints will go away.


OR stack +movespeed and your problems will go away yo.

"

lucid88 wrote:

if what your saying is the games too hard for you because the movement is too realistic... then i say QQ.

The movement isn't realistic. If I decide to start turning in real life, there is not a short pause where I continue walking briefly and then start turning. I just start turning when i want to.

I have no problem with the brief "turning around" animation. I'm saying that there should be zero pause between me giving the command to turn and my character starting to actually turn.

In a nutshell the player's character moves in increments consisting of a certain amount of distance, and that should not be the case. If I change direction, my character should not continue moving in the direction it was moving for one more millisecond. It should start moving in the direction I tell it to immediately.

"

lucid88 wrote:

OR stack +movespeed and your problems will go away yo.

I shouldn't have to customize my character in a certain way to make up for poor game design.

"

Kaiji wrote:

"

lucid88 wrote:

OR stack +movespeed and your problems will go away yo.

I shouldn't have to customize my character in a certain way to make up for poor game design.

I shouldn't have to "customize" my character with +HP cuz i got low health :( but thats the way the cookie crumbles.

"

lucid88 wrote:

"

Kaiji wrote:

"

lucid88 wrote:

OR stack +movespeed and your problems will go away yo.

I shouldn't have to customize my character in a certain way to make up for poor game design.

I shouldn't have to "customize" my character with +HP cuz i got low health :( but thats the way the cookie crumbles.

No its not the way the cookie crumbles.