How to make combat smoother

Exactly.

It is, after all, in the actual actions and spells cast that all the work you put into customizing your skill tree and items shows its colors.

If this doesn't feel right, you don't get a satisfying pay-off.

It's a bit sad though... PoE had the potential to be a great spiritual successor to Diablo 2 in most aspects, but will have a big black spot on it because of this. The real successor has been turned into a money milk machine, and Torchlight 2 really looks like to lack in balance like the first did.

Each game has something which taints it enough for me to say "I'm not really sure you should take my money."

I was happy that this summer will be a time of three awesome ARPGs. Instead, there might be not even one. :(

(Though of course not all is lost: If the pressure is big enough, GGG might change their minds, Runic is aware of the balance issues, and in the worst case, it can be modded in.)

I have faith in the team to smooth things out as much as they possibly can, fixing the most glaring issues that affect the flow of combat, whenever they can.

That said, I don't feel as though the smoothness of combat is that big of an issue for me. I feel like it's nitpicking to ask for things like action canceling that could potential change the balance of the game and influence the popularity of weapons. I don't think that watching a witch put her arms at her side after an attack takes that long that it ruins the feel of combat.

I understand why some people want a better flow to combat. I also have asked for "more polish" with combat and animations, but I don't really think it's all that bad, and I do believe that the most serious of issues will be addressed.

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I have faith in the team to smooth things out as much as they possibly can, fixing the most glaring issues that affect the flow of combat, whenever they can.

That said, I don't feel as though the smoothness of combat is that big of an issue for me. I feel like it's nitpicking to ask for things like action canceling that could potential change the balance of the game and influence the popularity of weapons. I don't think that watching a witch put her arms at her side after an attack takes that long that it ruins the feel of combat.

I understand why some people want a better flow to combat. I also have asked for "more polish" with combat and animations, but I don't really think it's all that bad, and I do believe that the most serious of issues will be addressed.

The problem is that the animations last exactly amount of time as their Cast duration, so they would have to change the animations or it wouldn't look "smooth" in that aspect... its not something they are easily able to change. It would also cause balance changes because of the now faster animations.


MY SOLUTION I believe that if they would allow us to end the last 10% or so of the animation after the "contact point" has been reached, and just not allow us to cast for the rest of the 10% of the duration. Maybe instead of just cutting the animation just make 200% speed animations for the last 10% seconds for each animation would be somethin not too difficult to do. and thus you would have a 5% fix on the cast to move delay. Crank it up to 20% and that would take 10% off. gotta find the sweet spot here. Only problem is that this will still cause a balance change because now players wont be immobile for the entire cast duration.

BUT i say all this without knowledge of the limitations of the game engines and the amount of work that would be to implement.

I just need to stress the fact that this is a very important problem and I'm making a huge effort that this be fixed, not because it bothers me much, because everything else is enough to keep me.. but i know that this will cause in a huge loss of potential players... and the better the population, the more fun this game is, and so the more fun this game is, the more the population will increase over time like a domino effect... I don't want any new players to come in and not like the of the cast-to-move delay and leave the game with a bad taste in their mouth. MANY of which will be blizz fanboys and give the game a huge bad rep for it. IF people are saying nothing but good the playerbase.. gona need 100x more servers than you guys are anticipating :D I trust you have that side set up modular so you can add new servers seemlessly :D the populations gona go nutso.. d2 didn't do good because of its advertisements, it did good through word of mouth.. This game will do amazing

TL:DR This game is is perfect, but this is a big combat fluidity problem. Check out MY SOLUTION

And there you have it, ladies and gents.

Thanks for clearing it up, Erik. I look forward to those tweaks and we all appreciate the team's hard work in making our dream game.

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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!

Love! <3

That is awesome. Would this also make the transition between skill -> moving around feel more fluid?

That's good news. Usually it's not necessary to completely eliminate a big issue. If the severity is reduced enough, it pushes the problem to a barely noticeable level, and most games can finely get away with these.

I look forward to trying out these tweaks; what I'm really looking for in the current ARPGs is more potential for "micro" skills: Avoiding attacks at the last moment to maximize offense, dodging projectiles, accurate aiming, ect..
The sync issues should really be solved first though, because most of these tactics don't work due to the "random" nature of desyncs.

Was looking on google for something on this, and landed on this thread. Glad I am not the only one that feels this way about combat, especially melee.

You are not the only one, and it is being addressed. Breathe easy, son.