Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?
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I can understand starting an attack/spell and then changing your mind. Maybe that big bad whatever is bigger and badder than you thought. If you do interrupt a spell or attack move then you should do no damage since you interrupted it. It should not reduce the attack or spell cast time of another move.
I'm also thinking more of the one cast or attack for the movement like 1 fire ball or 1 sword swing not continuously channeled spells/attacks or music. If a channeled spell/attack can be channeled for 30 seconds but I interrupt it after 15 then I should only do 15 seconds worth of damage.
I guess I also mean that if the spell/attack and the animation are the same. For example a spell/attack that should take .5 seconds does not have an animation that is .8 seconds. To me though this would be a bug that would need to be fixed not some work around that I need to do to short circuit the animation.
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@ladyrowan said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
For example a spell/attack that should take .5 seconds does not have an animation that is .8 seconds. To me though this would be a bug that would need to be fixed not some work around that I need to do to short circuit the animation.
But that's also something that can be a balancing factor. For example in fighting games, some moves can be canceled into another attack if they hit an opponent, allowing you to pull off a combo. If that move misses, then the whole animation plays through, giving your opponent a window of opportunity to punish the miss.
Granted that's something that's not very likely to be implemented in Fractured, but there is a martial arts school
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Seems like I'm in the minority here, but I support increasing the skill cap.
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@gothix said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
I'd prefer not to have it, and also to have forced global cool down on every spell.
In this way game becomes not only about who can mash his buttons faster in right order, but also puts more weight on general tactics and combat thinking.
^ this. Please let it be like this.
I hate animation cancelling in games almost all of the time. It ends up feeling horrible, and as if I have to abuse an exploit to be on par with other players (which is literally the case in some games).
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@vortech
i'm sure we all want that but many of us don't see how animation cancel does that. there has to be an alternative way to give skill cap and not allow the use of animation cancels.
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@target why don't they just have another animation for when you miss instead of cutting the attack animation short?
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Still think animation cancelling is just poor game design.
Why not have have have the animations be sort of charge bar. So if you complete full animation you do 100% of the damage potential. But if you cancel it halfway through, you will only do 50% of the damage potential.
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@lovechildbell If you're talking about the fighting game example, missing doesn't cut the animation short. The animation can only be cut short when the attack lands, allowing you to land followup attacks which is how combos in most fighting games work. Sitting through the full animation of the move is the punishment for missing.
@evolgrinz said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
Why not have have have the animations be sort of charge bar. So if you complete full animation you do 100% of the damage potential. But if you cancel it halfway through, you will only do 50% of the damage potential.
You're assuming that starting the animation of a skill will complete the skill's effect regardless of when it's canceled, and I will agree that implementation of animation canceling is usually bad design, but your suggestion wouldn't really work for a lot of attacks. If I swing a sword, but cancel before the attack lands, why should I do any damage? If I shoot a bow and decide to walk instead of wait for the recovery animation to finish, why would that arrow do any less damage?
Let's take a specific example from Dota: One of the heroes has a big flashy AoE stun ult that has about a .5 sec animation before the stun. One of the counters to this ult is an item that gives you spell immunity for 10 secs but with a long cooldown. If I'm playing this hero and I notice the enemy hero I'm targeting has this item, I can hit my ult key and then the stop command key. The result is the flash from the start of my ult animation beginning but then stopping abruptly. This would hopefully cause my enemy to notice the beginning of the animation and reactively use his spell immunity item causing it to go on cooldown while my ult hasn't.
My question to those against animation canceling: do you consider feints abusing bugs? And how would you implement feinting without animation cancels?
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@target said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
When someone discovered animation cancelling in the Diablo 3 beta, a Blizzard representative explained that it was intentionally added to make combat feel good and responsive.
...a Blizzard representative lied to cover their own asses, so they do not look incompetent, and so they do not have to waste an additional huge amount of resources on fixing that.
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Or just make it so animations can not be cancelled. You will have to wait for the animation to finish before you can use another skill or move (unless it's a skill that specifically mentions it can be used while moving).
This solves the problems and adds another strategic element to know if it's a good time to cast a longer animation spell or if it's a better idea to cast one with a smaller animation.
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@target I was and I worded it very poorly I should have said "why don't they just have another animation for when you miss instead of cutting the attack animation short when you properly animation cancel?"
As for your question you have feints by adding in moves that are feints. IMO I'm more against the whole idea of cutting short an animation that locks you into that move (as channels can be slightly different) as its pretty much the same thing with hit boxes and animations.
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@lovechildbell said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
why don't they just have another animation for when you miss instead of cutting the attack animation short when you properly animation cancel?"
Because that would be a lot less flexible unless they developed a new miss animation for every single move. Some moves are intentionally made to be safe - they have a very short animation even if they miss. These moves allow you to poke and prod at your enemy without putting yourself in danger, but the reward for landing them is small. On the other hand, you have moves with longer animations that are devastating if they land, but you're in trouble if they don't. Having a single miss animation removes all of this nuance to the combat system, and the lack of animation cancel on hit would probably look very janky for most 2D fighters.
As for your question you have feints by adding in moves that are feints.
And what would that look like if not an animation cancel? Keep in mind that feinting is inherently a very meta action. It's your mind vs your opponent's mind, not necessarily your character vs their character. You're tricking your opponent into thinking you're going to do one thing by initiating an action but then doing something different.
@evolgrinz said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
Or just make it so animations can not be cancelled. You will have to wait for the animation to finish before you can use another skill or move (unless it's a skill that specifically mentions it can be used while moving).
This solves the problems and adds another strategic element to know if it's a good time to cast a longer animation spell or if it's a better idea to cast one with a smaller animation.It doesn't need to be all or nothing. You can have some animations that can be canceled and some that can't; you can even narrow it down to some parts of an animation allowing cancelling and some parts requiring commitment. In a game with CC, long animation skills can be impossible to pull off, sometimes to the point their never seeing use. Animation canceling can be used to mitigate some of that risk and potentially open up build viability. Canceling the animation can even have a cost associated with it - going on coolown, or using mana, or even some other creative effects. Animation cancelling as a balancing factor can drastically increase skill variability.
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@target all correct, but I wouldn't necessarily say required. For example, since we know that each skill is going to have 3 variations, if you have a skill family that all starts the same, but have different endings, you get a similar result. For example, I'm going to spitball a skill called "Laser"
Laser 1 does exactly what you'd think - straight shot in one direction, very fast, pierces, but it has a slight wind-up, as a balance to it's power. Character poses for .1 seconds, that's their opponent's sign to dodge left or right.
Laser 2 is where this get's interesting - it's a forked beam. does more damage if both hit (only possible at extremely close range), less damage if only 1 hits, doesn't pierce - but it also tags out people who make the normal dodge decision for Laser 1, and has the exact same wind-up timing and pose as Laser 1 - basically it's a trade in power for the utility of snookering an opponent. Aiming is a stone plated pig, but a master gets a viable weapon, and all the others using the much simpler to aim Level 1 keeps the surprise viable the first time you fight someone.
Laser 3, isn't really one, but more of an auto-homing plasma ball for massive damage, with a wind-up of .3 seconds - and it's disrupt-able - you take any damage in the wind-up, you spend the (considerable) mana cost and launch no attack. But it looks, at the start, like the other 2, you just hold the pose longer. Problem - most dodges last .2 seconds - unless your opponent dodged instantly, there is a non-zero chance you'll launch this sucker before they can get a damage ability out to peg you, because we are playing without animation cancels in this scenario, unless the opponent is an archer, and thus have a 0 speed ranged attack. Won't ever be able to pull the move off again in this fight without some serious mucking, but you did just get off a guaranteed hit for massive damage - not a bad nuke. The balance assumes no animation canceling (At least on dodges), and revolves around people being more familiar with the lower levels to perform an effective feint to get the skill out. It's a Batman Gambit move, in essence - you make a play based on what you know the opponent will do, because the previous two levels trained them to do the single worst thing they could against this one, run away.
I'd honestly be a bit worried about fairness, except you can't use more than 1 variation, so you can't chuck Level 3, and then spam level 1 to get back that trained reflex - that's also a balance. You want to use it more often? Build a skill set that let's you stay safe for that duration. And watch out for archers, who can poke with both speed and range, and anyone using a poke-nova (a spell with low damage but massive AoE - something to find you, or at least disrupt you because it hits Everything; At which point your goal is to trick someone into spending their nova and then take advantage of it's cooldown to get your shot off. more skill in playing, less "skill" from in-game "power"). Conversely, your opponent might consider using 1 of the few dodges that are shorter than normal (in both distance and time taken), so they are fast enough to dodge a level 1, don't go far enough to run afoul of the level 2, and comes out of it fast enough to actually close on you if it's actually level 3. Hope your tool kit can handle that! XD
And that would be the point - the ability to craft a viable custom skill set, that plays in a way that the player likes, while at the same time preventing any build from being "the best" build. Having animation cancels to produce feints is one option, but it is far from the only one - what needs to happen, is that the devs need to decide what they want the balance to be - animation cancels encourage faster play, while locked animations require more precise play (because a miss leaves you more vulnerable when you can't get out of it). One isn't better than the other, though I'm sure everyone will have a preference. And you are perfectly right that you don't need to have a cancel on every skill - Might be more interesting if only 1 or 2 schools could do it, for example; assassin comes to mind XD - but I much rather have the decision be a decision, with the devs walking into it with open eyes, rather than the way it seems in most cases, where something went wrong, and they decided to call the bug a feature.
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@therippyone said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
revolves around people being more familiar with the lower levels to perform an effective feint to get the skill out. It's a Batman Gambit move, in essence - you make a play based on what you know the opponent will do, because the previous two levels trained them to do the single worst thing they could against this one, run away.
That's taking advantage of conditioning. While feinting also takes advantage of conditioning, the act of doing so is not necessarily a feint. Feinting is telegraphing an action and then changing that action.
And that would be the point - the ability to craft a viable custom skill set, that plays in a way that the player likes, while at the same time preventing any build from being "the best" build. Having animation cancels to produce feints is one option, but it is far from the only one - what needs to happen, is that the devs need to decide what they want the balance to be - animation cancels encourage faster play, while locked animations require more precise play (because a miss leaves you more vulnerable when you can't get out of it). One isn't better than the other, though I'm sure everyone will have a preference.
I'm actually not necessarily advocating for animation canceling to be in Fractured, I don't mind either way. I'm just addressing the fact that animation canceling can be an intentional and viable way to balance a combat system. Everyone here seemed to have some preconceived bias against the notion of animation cancelling and it was a little shocking to me. A lot of great combat systems use animation canceling and it can be used for more than just increasing DPS.
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@target So, we are in violent semi-agreement then! And, yes, that was an example of taking advantage of conditioning - didn't bother to use the term, since it was pretty clear in the example what I was talking about - but I do know it. And I do appreciate that not all conditioned responses are feints, though I do think this instance counts XD
Much like you were trying to note that animation cancelling was for more than dps, I was trying to point out that a similar result could be achieved without animation canceling.
Also much like you, I don't really advocate for a position on this either - EXCEPT that I want the devs to make the call at the start for which, if any, of the skills should have an animation cancel, and what this means, in terms of gameplay. I do not want a bug that becomes a feature because it is too much work to fix, and the follow on 2 to 3 revisions as the devs nerf and buff to fix the resulting imbalance because skills don't work the way they were intended.
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@evolgrinz said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
Or just make it so animations can not be cancelled. You will have to wait for the animation to finish before you can use another skill or move (unless it's a skill that specifically mentions it can be used while moving).
This solves the problems and adds another strategic element to know if it's a good time to cast a longer animation spell or if it's a better idea to cast one with a smaller animation.It doesn't need to be all or nothing. You can have some animations that can be canceled and some that can't; you can even narrow it down to some parts of an animation allowing cancelling and some parts requiring commitment. In a game with CC, long animation skills can be impossible to pull off, sometimes to the point their never seeing use. Animation canceling can be used to mitigate some of that risk and potentially open up build viability. Canceling the animation can even have a cost associated with it - going on coolown, or using mana, or even some other creative effects. Animation cancelling as a balancing factor can drastically increase skill variability.
You can still pull off the longer animated skills, you just need to set it up properly, like landing a CC 1st, so they can't CC your longer animated attacks. Think like the combo of polymorph + pyroblast of the mage from WoW.
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@gothix I don´t agree with you in the global cooldown.. You want another boring combat like FFXIV? Where the combat is so damn slow and static because of the global cooldown on every spell you cast? That makes combat a lot more boring..Global cooldown in my opinion something awful to have in a mmorpg.. My opinion only, everyone has their opinion of course ^^
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Global cool down makes game much more fair between players that have smaller and players that have larger ping.
No global cool down = button mashing = player with better ping wins. This makes game essentially NOT skill based anymore, but ping based.
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Not true. Ping issues have to be solved by the people themselves. Also it's buttom mashing if you play that way, if you play by combos, better skills for certain situations, it's not buttom mashing is strategic gameplay. Having global cooldown just makes the combat boring, static, lifeless...
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@frost said in Will Animation Cancelling become a combat mechanic one day?:
Ping issues have to be solved by the people themselves.
So players should move to different country (where server is) or gtfo? lol
Do you understand what ping is? The only way to "solve the ping" is to reduce distance between your location and server location. VPN only helps a tiny bit, but players that are closer to server will ALWAYS have a ping advantage.
This is where global cool down comes in, it doesn't allow players close to server to gain too much advantage by spamming their skills faster. It also makes game more tactical, and less of a button masher.
