Suggestion: Animation canceling?

In real life you can't cancel your movements if you are governed by the forces of nature. For an example, swinging a giant 2-handed weapon would surely make you swing with it, and when it stops, you stop. You can try to stop it, of course. However, in these games, skills do things that are inhumane, such as ground slam. It deserves long and precision-based time frames per use.

This game isn't going to cater to people who can't decide their actions promptly.

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Deceptionist wrote:

In real life you can't cancel your movements if you are governed by the forces of nature.

In real life yo don't cast fireballs. We should avoid "real vs. gaming" comparisons, in my opinion. He was arguing the fact that when you start the animation... you must wait in place until it finishes. So you can't move/strafe/kite while fighting.

This choice makes the fight choppy and unresponsive, in my opinion. When you need to carefully avoid/kite stuff, PoE does not allow a lot of planning and tactics.

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Loque wrote:

This choice makes the fight choppy and unresponsive, in my opinion. When you need to carefully avoid/kite stuff, PoE does not allow a lot of planning and tactics.

I understand where your opposition comes from, but here's how I see it:

The game is supposed to be tough. When you input an animation, you are obeying that animation time. You shouldn't be able to cancel your animation. The point I was making between this game and real life wasn't about a splitting image of reality's physics, but how even in real life, things you do have to finish before you start the next move.

You can't jump off a bridge and run at the same time.

Maybe they could make the animations less choppy, of course. But I don't want them to completely negate the purpose of having animation time frames. People should live by the consequences rather than remaking them in their own favour. It never works, and it only leads to greater consequences.

If finishing animations is that big of a deal, why don't you just get increased cast rate / faster attacks to finish the animation faster?

OP has a point, and I don't really see why implementing animation canceling would hurt the gameplay at all. It rewards skill and quick fingers, gives the player more control over their character actions and the overall gameplay would feel smoother and more responsive.

"It doesn't work like this IRL" is a really weak argument when speaking about virtual fantasy worlds in general, and even if it wasn't I bet a well-trained top level warrior would stop bending a bow in order to dodge a slowly moving fireball.

T-UP.

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derFreiBierFred wrote:

"It doesn't work like this IRL" is a really weak argument when speaking about virtual fantasy worlds in general, and even if it wasn't I bet a well-trained top level warrior would stop bending a bow in order to dodge a slowly moving fireball.

T-UP.

Like I said:

No cancel, less clunky.

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Jicyphex wrote:

. . .

P.S.: Not a complaint, just a suggestion/question.

Wrong. Totally a complaint.

Also, suggestions go in the Suggestions forum. . .but I don't think this qualifies, as it is a complaint.

The animation times are there as an implicit cost of using the particular action. The high damage of slow weapons is "paid for" balance-wise by having to deal with a longer animation time.

In addition, based on what I have read of how the netcode in this game works, it may actually not be possible to implement animation cancelling. Basically, right now, when you use an attack/spell, the animation plays and your client immediately tells the server you are making an action. After the server acknowledges your action, server sends back the amount of damage you did. Under ideal conditions, the damage packet arrives and is displayed on your screen at around the same time as the animation shows you making contact with the enemy. Since the action request is sent to the server at the start of the animation, allowing animation cancelling would allow people to bypass the long animation time of some attacks/spells and still be able to do damage.

Animation cancelling would really only be possible if it was a single-player game with all the calculation and animation done on the same computer.

D3 definitely has animation cancelling of some sort. Or just very quick animations followed by a delay before you can begin the next one. Either way, in D3, you could step-shoot-step-shoot without sacrificing any DPS. As far as I can tell POE and TL2 have longer attack animations with zero delay before you can begin your next attack. This means that any time you step between shots, you sacrifice DPS. And if you want to shoot at your max DPS, you are stuck to the ground. This is probably what makes people say D3 has more "fluid" combat etc. There's room for more movement without sacrificing DPS.

Personally, I prefer the POE/TL2 way. If you want to kite, invest in higher attack speed weapons. Then you can shoot and dodge quickly. But if you want your maximum DPS, you have to plant yourself on the ground. Putting down your max damage makes you vulnerable.

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VoxelSquid wrote:

The animation times are there as an implicit cost of using the particular action. The high damage of slow weapons is "paid for" balance-wise by having to deal with a longer animation time.

The long animation time would still exist, even with animation canceling. If you cancel your animation before it has finished, your spell will have no effect. The "drawback" of long animations would still exist in this case.

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VoxelSquid wrote:

In addition, based on what I have read of how the netcode in this game works, it may actually not be possible to implement animation cancelling. Basically, right now, when you use an attack/spell, the animation plays and your client immediately tells the server you are making an action. After the server acknowledges your action, server sends back the amount of damage you did. Under ideal conditions, the damage packet arrives and is displayed on your screen at around the same time as the animation shows you making contact with the enemy. Since the action request is sent to the server at the start of the animation, allowing animation cancelling would allow people to bypass the long animation time of some attacks/spells and still be able to do damage.

Animation cancelling would really only be possible if it was a single-player game with all the calculation and animation done on the same computer.

Well, animation canceling is definitely possible in multiplayer games. Warcraft III had this mechanic 10 years ago.

I can understand that animation canceling is definitely not a top-priority issue right now, though.