I’ve been away for about a year, and recently started playing again. I’m noticing something off about animation timing, and I thought I’d ask if anyone else is seeing this, whether it’s normal and expected, or if it’s a known problem.
When I use an area of effect power (hammer: razor shards) against a group of low level zombies, the moment I touch the activation key, they all drop dead to the ground, and then the animation of the power starts to unfold. It looks really weird, like they’re dieing in anticipation of being hit.
While the damage calculation doesn’t need the time the games visuals have to cover 1 second (Global cooldown) until the next ability can be cast, which leads to some drawn out animations.
Interesting. Is it the case for all powers, that damage is calculated, applied, and animated instantly on activation, and then the power animation itself unfolds over the next second?
It would seem to me that damage could be calculated at the start, but that it could be applied at an offset time, or at least animated for the target at the offset time where the power animation would be showing an impact to the user.
You will notice it on any ability that says it is “instant”. The damage is instant, but no matter how short you make an animation, you can’t make it instant. It is mostly obvious in 1hit situations, as the enemy flops over before you even touched it, according to your animation. Only way to fix it would be to give everything a cast time instead of being instant like it is now =P.
That timing thing is bothering me for quite long already. I can understand it from numbers point of view but sure not from in story/just common sense point, because, come on, it’s pretty immersion breaking.
Could not agree more, but i feel like a fair number of players would storm Funcom HQ if they put a cast time on every ability in the game ._.
… seeks cover
In my opinion the problem is the animations, not when the damage is applied. If I’m using an “instant” attack I don’t want a 700ms windup before my character swings the hammer. In TSW the animations were quick so you’d have maybe a 100-150ms delay between the mob dying and the animation reaching the point where they “should” die (you already have to wait your ping time for the server to tell you the monster died so at 100ms ping this drops to a perfect match), here it’s 5-6 times as long so it’s extremely noticeable on almost every weapon (iirc shotgun’s are only about 350ms animation delay, pistols are almost a full second).
That’s a good point; an ‘instant’ attack should not take a long animation. I understand it needs to fill out to match the minimum animation length, but it could do that with a recovery animation after the immediate hit. Sort of like, a swing follow-through in golf. So, wham, the hammer would swing down as fast as reasonably animated, and then the character would work a bit getting the hammer back into a proper rest state before allowing the next power to activate.