Animation canceling

I suggest implementing animation cancelling at least for all melee spells

meaning: you cast spell, then you use move command in the middle of attack animation - as a result you deal damage and get additional 0.25 to 0.6 second to change position, with right timing of course (if you cancel too soon, you loose dmg proc, if you cancel too late you loose time for changing position - the better you are the more time you gain)

here's why:
1) Game will feel more dynamic and responsive
2) PvP will be moved one step into the right direction (all MobA games have animation cancels)
3) Playing melee Hit & Run will have more depth, since you will be able to juke projectiles while attacking

subjects to receive this mechanic:
frenzy
dual strike
viper strike
everything alike

and what do you guys think ?

Or you could just time yourself against the animation instead of an incredibly arbitrary point that changes from animation to animation.

what do you mean by "timing someone against animation" ?

anyway i've made this little diagram to explain better how it works:



if you make animation shorter with attack speed, DMG delivery point is moving so you need to adjust to different setups in order to get top efficiency

this is how it works in all good competitive games

I know what you meant, you want to pre-emptively end an animation in order to more quickly do something else. That is 99% identical to straight up reducing the length of the animations or making the animations faster. The only difference is that it isn't at all obvious to the player that it is possible to end an animation earlier and would be confusing for new players.

It would also look stupid being able to suddenly change from one animation to another without waiting for the first animation to finish.

it doesn't look stupid at all if it's implemented correctly

examples from other games:
DotA 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVw-D3-C9bc
LoL (1:10): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Evp8zST2A
Classic DotA(Warcraft 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1kOg55LZOg
Starcraft 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imMiaMYfLJQ (known as Stutterstep)


also early-cancelling (before spell effect / dmg tick) also known as feinting (HoN):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-akd5IaT8E

this one may actually look stupid but this technique is used for baiting long cooldown defensive spells or position changing spells (like leap or blink) without wasting mana / cooldown on your own big offensive spell, sometimes even used to bait jukes and thus making opponent more predictable / left with less options which leads to successful mindgame

ability to use these to your advantage makes the difference between average player and decent competitive player - when people demand "Skill-dependent PvP" or "Ability to outplay opponent", it's one of these mechanics that has to be implemented in order to satisfy them

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The only difference is that it isn't at all obvious to the player that it is possible to end an animation earlier and would be confusing for new players.

I don't think making the game all nice and easy for "new players" is GGG's philosophy (hopefully)
we don't want second D3, now do we?

As far as I can tell, the only point of animation cancelling is so that twitchy players who are used to clicking several times per second have something to do. Not sure if this is the crowd GGG is aiming for, though.

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Incompetent wrote:

As far as I can tell, the only point of animation cancelling is so that twitchy players who are used to clicking several times per second have something to do. Not sure if this is the crowd GGG is aiming for, though.

reason behind clicking several times per second in MobA games is to warm up your fingers and get the pace right without having to suddenly accelerate in the time of need (which most of the time gives you derpy results)
but that's not the point - it's about getting advantage from playing better than the one you compete with (whole point of PvP, and making the game more smooth in PvE)

see: Stacraft's stutterstep from link above and how much it's effective VS casual animating


Any Dev here?

You just want to remove/obfuscate Tells (Signs of what's to come) so that players in PvP can not tell what another player is doing until it is too late. Essentially making PvP more luck oriented and less skill oriented.

When I hear animation canceling I get horrible flashbacks to DCU to horrible exploits that where in the beta and that the lazy devs there still haven't fixed...

What OP wants seems simply to be a limited ability to move while attacking.
You still have the same time in between attacks as you'd do now but you could move a step in between each attack, without slowing down your attack speed.

And I am not against that, though the system the OP proposed seems overly complicated. I am aware that it is used in MOBA games. It is in those games because it was most likely the result of some inefficient code in Warcraft 3 and just got carried over.
Implementing the same effect to just work when you click and hold to attack a target, (taking a step during each attack so you can keep attacking a moving target for longer) seems like a much cleaner solution, that will make combat feel more responsive and fun.

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Zwets wrote:

What OP wants seems simply to be a limited ability to move while attacking.
You still have the same time in between attacks as you'd do now but you could move a step in between each attack, without slowing down your attack speed.

actually you can even boost your atk speed (and therefore DPS) a bit if you switch between move command and attack/spell enough fast (see example from DotA 2), it's not a significant difference but enough to change outcome of otherwise even duel

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And I am not against that, though the system the OP proposed seems overly complicated.

League of Legends for half of it's existence was considered a casual game, in fact animation cancel was there to begin with (taken from DotA as intended mechanic) - it's really not complicated, after enough practice you can literally feel it. "Casual players" will only feel the game slightly smoother and hardcore players will be really thankful

sorry guys but for me gameplay feels a bit 'wooden' as it is right now : (

"

You just want to remove/obfuscate Tells (Signs of what's to come) so that players in PvP can not tell what another player is doing until it is too late. Essentially making PvP more luck oriented and less skill oriented.

I have no idea what you just imagined but if adding animation cancelling to the game makes it more luck dependent, then I have no reason to maintain this discussion any more since you simply have no idea what you're talking about - It just makes no sense at all.

yea, I want to BLOW this game UP with some CRAZY BROKEN MECHANIC FROM MARS !! <evil_laughter.wav>

btw. it's even in D3 on certain resource spenders (but never on resource generators, which makes me believe that it's actually intended hidden mechanic)