How to make combat smoother

Personally coming from the bellyflop that is Diablo III and it's end-game, I gotta start off by saying this game looks incredibly promising in regards to satisfying my still existent urge for smashing monsters in the face!

My biggest concern is really with the smoothness of movement and skill use. Currently I feel the biggest issues here are that you can stutter-step, but it's not very smooth. Also I wish some spells would be 'more instant' and castable while moving (such as molten shell).

I have complete confidence in the fact that devs will make it work somehow, since you seem like an incredibly dedicated and passionate bunch (the opposite of those profit-hungry bloodsuckers who developed that last game I played).

So essentially this post is just to introduce myself to this community and state that you have me as well as two friends who followed me from Sanctuary as new customers and that we are all loving the game! Keep up the good work!

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I think it fits here...

Holding the RMB down with a melee skill needs to function as "Attack+Move". The character should pathfind to the cursor, but stop and attack enemies along that path.

The current implementation makes attacking in a constant smooth manner impossible, even when surrounded by enemies.

Currently:
Left click and hold on first enemy.
He dies in one swing. You are now holding the LMB down over empty ground and trying to quickly get the cursor over the next monkey that is darting around wildly.
OR
Left click and release, expecting the enemy to die in one blow. Begin trying to target the next enemy.
Oh... he didn't die. Quickly try to RETARGET the first guy, as your character is swinging at the second one...
And back..and forth...

All with gaps between attacks, as with a fast attacking dual wielder, it's tough for the player to keep up! So the characters animations appear even clunkier, as he spends a good amount of time standing around between swings as the player fumbled with carpel tunnel.

Suggested Fix:
While RMB is held down, the character should check for an enemy in his melee attack range every X game ticks.
If one is found, he should stop moving and attack until it is killed. And then the search resumes.
The character moves towards the cursor while the search occurs if no target is found.

How about implementing a feature "Attack Recovery Rate" a cousin to "Hit Recovery Rate" mod ? This way, you wouldn't throw of off the game's balance, besides combats would be much more diverse and varied.

Its wery important for the game to look smooth. I was playing diablo 3 for last month i must say that PoE is much much better game, honestly it beats d3 in almost everything. Diablo3 offer only the smooth battle, with i really like and everyone likes, so if you fix the problem you will get nice player base.

Additionaly after checking PoE recently i noticed that the zoom in (the view) is still to close comparing to D3. Still need some work i guess.

The clunky battle is mostly due to the stops after each attack that you write about.
Though redoing animations can be hard, but like i said before, it will be worth it. The gameplay will be much better.
You can also increase base attack speed, it would give some life to the game on starting difficulties.
Though to balance it you would need to reduce dmg or increase defense/hp of enemies.

Also a lot of skills in D3 can be executed 'on the run' without even need to stop, especially but not exclusively CC skills for example WD hex, mass confusion, horrify and so on.
On the downside they can't be aimed and casted on chosen area they are always centered on a player, still it's fresh approach and adds more dynamic to the fight.

One of the few things that bliiz has done right developing D3.

Imo some PoE skills could be made to allow ppl cast them on the run. For example as a reward for lvl it to 10 lvl or maybe even by linking it with dedicated support gem.
Wouldn't hurt balance I guess.

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ness wrote:

Also a lot of skills in D3 can be executed 'on the run' without even need to stop, especially but not exclusively CC skills for example WD hex, mass confusion, horrify and so on.
On the downside they can't be aimed and casted on chosen area they are always centered on a player, still it's fresh approach and adds more dynamic to the fight.

One of the few things that bliiz has done right developing D3.

Imo some PoE skills could be made to allow ppl cast them on the run. For example as a reward for lvl it to 10 lvl or maybe even by linking it with dedicated support gem.
Wouldn't hurt balance I guess.

daym son, alpha. ^ Yep this would make the gameplay so much smoother and fastpaced, don't see how it could hurt.

I want to like this game, issue i have is the Camera angle of way off. It needs to be on a angle more, look at other Hack and slash games out there, POE is the only one with a top view and this gives me headaches.

I was playing the ranger ( with bow ) and being planted and not able to move even tho the arrow is half way across the screen is just plain silly.

Good luck with POE since GGG will need it, if you will not fix the combat.

I think the angle is fine. I also think combat is fine, but if you have read these threads on this topic, you know taht GGG has already addressed this topic and has plans to improve smoothness. Look, if you don't want to play the game until it is a bit more polished, I don't think anyone would hold that against you. I would like to ask that you be courteous and thoughtful in your posts. These are indie developers with limited cash who still make time to talk things out with the community, not Activision Blizzard

It's also worth noting that a lot of combat clunkiness comes from desynchs.

Sometimes sweep will hit monsters in the area as it moves round properly - other times it will seem to do nothing to surrounding monsters, only for them to drop dead 0.5 seconds later. This makes things pretty horrible, and it's nothing to do with latency either (i have 30 latency). This is compounded by flicker strike rubber-banding and desynching.

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Valadur wrote:

I run around and notice that my aura is not activated. Pushing the aura button while running has no effect. I have to stop, cast that spell and resume running. Instead, when I press the aura button, the character should automatically stop running, cast the aura and continue to run.

Yeah, this one is kind of annoying. Personally I'd like to see this taken one step further (concerning auras) and actually make them possible to cast while on the move.

In general I'd say all defensive skills should be possible to be cast on the run.