Combos + Animation Lock

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

I would rather my character just be unanimated, like a cut and paste sheet of paper just moving around the screen, than be glued/bound everytime I do a weaponskill. It completely kills "fun" battle mechanics, and introduces an alternative mechanic called fighting the game.

Content's difficulty level should not be determined by the dangers of animation lock, but rather by smart design.

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Oh how wrong you are. Animation lock, especially in the fight which people complain about the most (the Ifrit fight), makes it so that you need to time and plan your weapon skills so that you aren't locked in place when plume or eruption happens. Taking animation lock away from the game takes away from realism, as well as some form of difficulty and extra level of strategy. Nobody wants to make this game any easier.

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We'll adjust the placement of actions so that even solo players can perform combos. However, for opponents that attack from very close range, it may be necessary to use some creativity to pull off a combo, with stunning the opponent being a viable option.

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I'm not sure if anyone has picked up on this yet but the "creative" method can be seen in the 1.18 weapon skill videos with Pugilist.

If I remember correctly, the Pugilist uses a stun counter "Jarring Strike", then buffs "Blindside", unlocks on the target and moves through it to be behind the target, then fires off a Blindside buffed Weapon skill.

I've been doing this while soloing on pugilist and it makes some of those "from behind the enemy" moves much more viable in a solo situation. I'm loving Featherfoot > Jarring Strike > Diversion > Jarring Strike > *run behind mob* > Light Strike > Pounce > Bloodbath > Blindside > Concussive Blow. Not only that but it provides a positive side to fighting within such close proximity of the enemy and gives that "Float like a butterfly sting like a bee" feel to the class.

Love seeing that critical on a Bloodbath buffed weapon skill.

It's not really all that new of a strategy as I've seen Thieves in XI use it when subbing Black Mage and using Sleep to get to the back of an opponent.

My main concern with combos is the server latency issues.
Currently in game there are two situations in the everyday that you need to readjust your position. Mob cone range attacks from the front and rear attacks (ex: tail whips), and abilities that are executed from a certain side of the mob.

For the life of the game, I've been unable to work with these because what the game is doing and what I am doing are never on the same time span. The game doesn't register that I've moved for several seconds, so if I do reposition my character either out of range of an attack I get hit regardless, and my own special abilities don't execute properly or at all despite doing them correctly.
I checked my ping and my connection is solid, I run the game on a high spec pc. Just out of curiosity I installed on a second pc and created a character just to watch my active one and my suspicions were confirmed. Whenever I would move my active character, the other pc didn't display the change for a length of time.

I'm really concerned that if the current build isn't able to communicate fast enough to react that I have changed positions and executed a specific attack with the dependent attacks already in the game, how the twelve am I ever going to be able to do a combo without extreme frustration?

I think what they should've done is basically animate weaponskills into two parts; A) the animation of our PCs executing the weapon skill. and B) the animation effect on the target.

It's really quite obvious when using a skill like bloodletter. We're stuck while shooting the arrow and STILL stuck while waiting for the effect on target to finish animating.

I think it's cool if the animation execution is elaborate, like Chaos Thrust. And as long as it has a good effect on target, we sacrifice maneuvering for damage. The tactical compromise could be between executing fast animating weaponskills so you can reposition to combo/escape zones or dealig big hits.

Animating exection and effects seperately could also help the combo system by graphically illustrating the combos through Skillchain/magic-burst-fireworks effects And allow some really awesome explosions without animation lock.

Speaking of which, when are we supposed to get information on class reforms. I really hope it's soon. I thought we were supposed to expect it this week.

Knowing the weaponskills we can use might shed somemore light on combos and how they work out, esp in parties.

touching on what you said, we shouldnt be locked in place while a WS's effect fades away.

blood letter for example, well...we've shot our arrow, done our attack, WTF cant i move while some big effect animation plays which has nothing directly to do with what im doing at that exact moment....


also player possition latency is the biggest killer in this game.

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Originally Posted by Rhomagus

I'm not sure if anyone has picked up on this yet but the "creative" method can be seen in the 1.18 weapon skill videos with Pugilist.

If I remember correctly, the Pugilist uses a stun counter "Jarring Strike", then buffs "Blindside", unlocks on the target and moves through it to be behind the target, then fires off a Blindside buffed Weapon skill.

I've been doing this while soloing on pugilist and it makes some of those "from behind the enemy" moves much more viable in a solo situation. I'm loving Featherfoot > Jarring Strike > Diversion > Jarring Strike > *run behind mob* > Light Strike > Pounce > Bloodbath > Blindside > Concussive Blow. Not only that but it provides a positive side to fighting within such close proximity of the enemy and gives that "Float like a butterfly sting like a bee" feel to the class.

Love seeing that critical on a Bloodbath buffed weapon skill.

It's not really all that new of a strategy as I've seen Thieves in XI use it when subbing Black Mage and using Sleep to get to the back of an opponent.

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word of advice if you haven't already disable auto lock makes movement in fights so much easier anyone doing Ifrit should already be doing this though.